You Are The Detective

via.

Being a detective isn’t just about investigating the body; it’s about investigating the material culture of which the body was — is — a part. You are indeed your television, your washing machine, your car — it’s the whole Trainspotting monologue all over again. You are the detective driving his 1993 Hyundai Elantra through preorbital dark circle weather in Scranton, Pennsylvania listening to Sufjan Stevens’s second album on the state, amazed that he was able to not just finish his first fifty state project, but then had a go at doing it all over again.

You have been called out to what everyone casually referred to as The Ring Pop Factory over on Sanderson Avenue. There is a body. It is your job to go and look at the body. Looking at dead bodies is your job.

Here are a list of items found on the body: a tin can of mints (Altoids), a folded grocery shopping list on yellow legal paper featuring items and handwriting that suggested that the list was written by a kid (‘food for astronauts but not the dull powdered kind im [sic] talking about the kind where you pour water on it and pop you have a whole thanksgibing feast before you like one giant out of control chia pet’), and his wallet. Inside the wallet you find a library card, a driver’s license, a Starbucks gift card, thirty-three dollars, and a photograph of the victim having a beer with a former star of the Pittsburgh Pirates…