Faster Than the Speed of Light and Seriously CSI

First I must clarify – I am of no interest to CERN since I truly did not break any Universal Laws and did not go faster than the speed of light.  I am pretty sure you know that, but just saying.

I did get a speeding ticket Friday afternoon.  It was a fine day for driving; clear roads running alongside a river with just a few graceful twists, soft meanderings that beg for the thrill of a pounding engine, and rubber gripping and releasing and then gripping again the pavement.  Hmmm a little dramatic I think.  Just the facts ma’am, just the facts.

I was speeding.  The car ahead of me was also but being the last vehicle I was easier to catch.  85KPH in a 60.

The nice young man was kind, and ticketed me for 10 K over instead of 25.  Now if this had occurred a few years..um..a few decades ago I would have just had a friendly warning.  Sigh.  But I’ll take it.

Something else happened this weekend during my bimonthly visit to my  hometown when I stay with my sister and we catch up on family and friends.  J lives in a high rise on the fourteenth floor and her balcony overlooks the visitor’s parking lot in the back.  It’s a lovely quiet building inhabited with a mature population and seems to be child free.  The neighbourhood is all large aged trees, gracious old homes built long ago, most of which are now apartments.  It is walking distance to the downtown, should one feel so inclined, and a slight change in direction takes you to Victoria Park, where summer concerts, picnics and winter skating and Christmas lights provide old-fashioned entertainment.

Saturday morning my sis went out early with her daughter to run some errands while I slept in.  The plan was that she would pick me up at a designated time and we would head off to meet my SIL for brunch. (See I can’t get up early for chores but I can always rouse for food.)

I went downstairs at the appointed hour and did not see her immediately outside so waited in the hallway.  A gent exited to take some refuse out to the dumpsters which were immediately to the side of the door.  He returned immediately, garbage in hand, and said that the police were outside and he could not throw anything in the dumpster.

Curious, of course, I went out, spied my sister parked across the road, looked at three police cars and it drivers forming a barricade around said dumpster, looked at the yellow caution barrier and got into the car wondering what it was all about.  We laughed and speculated possibilities with my SIL saying how my own care which was parked near by was part of a crime scene.

Things had not changed much by the time we returned except for a whole lot more police and vehicles and cameras and lights.  Soon Forensics vehicles and a huge traveling laboratory surrounded the building.  Throughout the remainder of the day, evening and night we frequently peered down to watch the activity and wonder when Gil Grissom would arrive. Rumours flew that a body had been discovered so then we discussed whether it could have been a homeless person who had tried to find protection from the cold.

Then the evening news announced that  ‘human remains’ had been discovered.  The dumpster was removed to a forensics site.  The biggest lights I have ever seen connected to its own generator turned the land around the building into day.  Somehow in the weirdness of the whole thing we found humour.

Sunday some officers came door to door in the building asking questions.  J and I went out Sunday afternoon and as we were returning she received a text saying that the news announced that the human remains were in fact a female torso.

The ride home suddenly became very quiet.  Jokes about CSI, Grissom, dastardly deeds, and body parts were laid permanently to rest.

Somehow just knowing the gender changed everything.  The was someone.  Someone’s daughter, sister, possibly mother and someone’s friend.

Then the though that a murderer, a real someone, who not only killed this girl but did it with malice, had only been a few feet from us; from our world where CSI only happened on TV or in the movies.  A shadow of fear moved in.  The kind that makes you watchful, and aware.  The kind that grieves for the unknown.

This morning our local Hamilton paper had a small article regarding something ‘macabre’ in Kitchener.  The dismembered torso of a woman as dressed in a black T-shirt that read, ‘Forget princess, I want to be a vampire.’

The article says that the discovery was made by ‘unknown passerby’.  Well in fact my sister saw the woman calling to the policeman and heard him advise her to go home and they would come speak to her and her husband.  So the passerby is not entirely unknown and the grisly discovery was made not as they were ‘passing by’ but we think were probably ‘dumpster diving’. (A new term I just became familiar with and all too descriptive.)

An emotional pallor surrounds us this day.