And Now For Something Completely Tasteless
Once again I have been distracted from You Again by something that needs to be done right away: a short story. Don’t ask.
Here’s the tasteless part: While I am still trying to figure out the plot and structure of this sucker, I am confounded by a plot point. The story is about two recent high school graduates, both girls. They have to get rid of the body of an adult male, fast, so that it will never be found. I have googled for “How To Get Rid Of A Body” but most of what I’ve found involves cutting the body into pieces. These girls don’t have the time or the stomach for that. They aren’t your average high school girls–one has a vicious temper and the other is the daughter of a mob boss and nobody to mess with, either–but they’re not sociopaths and they’re on their own on this one–can’t call in help from the mob–and about to leave town. It’s midnight, the body’s in the trunk of their car, they’re leaving New Jersey to go to Ohio where one of them will be starting college . . .
I’m trying to think of something original and quirky and funny which will also be deep and meaningful, but at the moment I can’t even think of a boring way for them to do it. No, I’m not going to do a collage for this, jeez.
There are no nearby building sites about ready to pour concrete; that’s too easy.
They’re in a dorm room in a boarding school, so forget lye in a tub.
They don’t have access to a boat so they can’t dump it in the ocean.
I’m thinking, I’m thinking . . .
Anybody got any ideas? (She asked, a little afraid of what might show up in the comments.)
Okay… I’m a litle nervous to be the first to suggest something but here goes. Is there a nearby well to dump the body in? Or maybe an abandoned car to stash and torch? The car one seems to be in close enough contact to leave a lasting impression on the girls, but distant enough that they could add an accelerant, tuck tail and run. Are they in a large city or a small town? In a city, they could leave the body in the local vagrant part of town. In a small town, cover the body in honey and take it out in the woods to be discovered by local wildlife. Okay, I’m starting to scare myself, so I’m done. Muuuhahahaha! Okay, NOW I’m done.
Too bad this isn’t set in New Orleans. You could have them dump the body in with other bodies in above ground crypts.
I don’t suppose there is an unattended grave site just waiting for the coffin to go in. You could have them stuff the body in with the one waiting to be buried.
It just seems quirky to dump the body in a cemetary.
Pig farm, gross- but a couple of years ago I saw some news stories.
OOOO!! They’re at college, right? What about a body farm, like the one at University of Tennessee? That (as shown on CSI) would be a perfect dump site, and it would work with the story of the girls being in college. And yes, I’m one of those people that sit in class with my hand raised going OOOOO, OOOOO. Anybody got a problem with that?!?! Read my earlier posts. Just kidding!
I hate to say it, but they could dump the body near a ’skid row’. Sadly, homeless bodies don’t get reported/found/solved as often. Also in a dump, where raccoons or feral dogs roam. I’m feeling pretty icky about the fact I thought of these things. No more Forensic Files on Court TV for me!
The pig farm would actually be brilliant … I have seen those stories too and they are real.
They’re in New Jersey? Dump it in a dumpster. Seriously.
I was thinking wood chipper. Just have it suck him up and chop him to bits. A bit messy, but they are in Jersey, right? LOL
Jenny, you really need to get out more.
How did this adult male die? Are there signs of foul play? Makes a big difference as to whether someone might investigate later. Forget about “never be found” — everything turns up sooner or later. And what time of year is it?
A fire in a vacant building in a bad part of town would erase plenty of evidence, but raises all sorts of other questions.
Or they could say he is very ill, perhaps comatose, and leave him in the “care” of some kind, elderly (think very elderly here) people in the wilds of [somewhere], convincing these good-hearted souls they are going to find help. The elderly, inattentive people discover at some point after the girls drive off that their new charge has up and died, poor thing, and give him a decent burial when they can’t reach the girls at the phone number they left. It would be the only decent thing to do. Really.
Is this a comedy? Because I see all sorts of potential for humour there. Okay, sick tasteless humour, but still.
P.S. - If you go this route, be sure to have those dear girls move him from the trunk to the back seat before they try to unload him. And swaddle him lovingly in a blanket or two. Maybe even wrap his head injury in a bandage.
ok, well this seems kinda off-track but my dad always says that if i ever decided to kill someone i could just dump them in the woods up here in the UP because no one would ever find it….don’t know if that’s any help. good luck figuring it out!
Um, mail the body? Maybe it’s just the upper part of his torso so it will fit through the slot. Wear gloves, put it in a plastic bag, wrap it in brown paper (lots of comic relief possible there), dump it in one of those UPS all-night boxes with a random To: address in Alaska and a return address of say, the concierge desk at the ___ Hotel.
Oops, I didn’t notice the “never be found” part. Mailing wouldn’t work unless they can mail it to a valid address where they know it’ll just get processed by being completely ignored, like a very bad customer service department at Sears.
Perhaps there’s an old abandoned well? Handy things, old abandoned wells. And where there’s a well, there’s a way.
Sorry, couldn’t help myself. But I’m thinking an old prestigeous boarding school might have had a groundskeeper or caretaker living on site at one time and the abandoned cottage or whatever is probably a popular site for teenage highjinks.
There could be a necessity to avoid other kids, perhaps the boyfriend of one of the girls is having a midnight tryst? And maybe something that prevents them from driving right up to the well so that the two of them have to carry the body a ways over and around obstacles. Might be quite a job for two lightweight teenage girls. Throw in some tripping and falling in. Maybe there’s a hill and the body gets dropped and rolls? And then when they get it up there, they’d have to manage to lift it over the well wall. And maybe there’s something blocking the well so the body gets stuck and they have to heave it out and then unblock it, possibly nearly falling in themselves, before finally dumping the body in.
Bag em and put it in the cafeteria refuse dumpster the night before the truck comes.
Continuing on, plan a big party with lots of trash to discard so that bag is just one of many. Make sure the bags ooze a lot so that the dumpster guys want to avoid one more icky bag.
Now, this one is gross: Find out when the dog pound euthanizes its dogs. If they bag em for the dump, add the bag as just one more bag.
Oh, just make sure they remove any identifying items from the body - clothing and wallet and jewelry and such.
Depends on where in Jersey you’re talking about…I live in the Pine Barrens and let me tell you, when you’re angry at someone and driving down the road, those woods sure do look like a good place to dump a body.
GatorPerson,
I think the euthanized dogs go to the rendering plant. I don’t think they are allowed to be sent to the dump.
How old is this boarding school?
We really like the abandoned well idea, but if the school has an incinerator… that could work. (Although, to be really stealthy, it helps to go back later and break up the bone remnants.)
NJ to Ohio - hmmmmmm, probably up 81 to NYS thruway. Lots of Finger Lakes, but no access to a boat. Both Seneca and Cayuga Lakes are quiet deep. So is Skiniatlas and they all have peers. Tie a cylander block in the dead of night and toss the body there. Although the time of year could be an issue since where the peers are located are kind of hopping during the late summer early fall.
Lots of remote places on Lake Ontario, maybe? If you’re driving to Ohio you’ve got from Syracuse to Buffalo to play with that. Don’t know Lake Erie that well.
I like the idea of burned beyond recognition. The city of Auburn is a relatively depressed area. It’s also got a prision, not that it matters, but find an old car, and have the girls try and blow it up. Could be comical with a few failed attempts until the car goes boom.
You could also smoother the body in peanut butter and dump in a wooded area up in the Aderondaks (can’t spell to save my ass) where there are all sorts of wild animals that love peanut butter. Trust me. I once watched a bear eat all my sandwiches for the next day’s lunch when I was a camp counselor. We were in the Dix Range.
Personally, if it were one of my pretent characters (thought I needed to clarify that notion, not me personally, but a fictictious person) I’d chop the body, stick it in a blender then dump it down the toliet and flush. I know, I’ve got issues.
Umm…not really original…but…could there be a wood chipper on campus?
SQUICK!
WHY?????
Oh please don’t.
I’m impressed. Three hours and I’ve got more than 22 ways to get rid of a body. Inspiring.
Keep ‘em coming.
Since your girl graduates are not up for dismemberment or the classic wood chipper, how about having them create a way for someone else to deal with the body disposal? Somewhere between New Jersey and Ohio, see if your protagonists can sneak into a large city hospital morgue, swipe a gurney, and toe-tag their stiff as an unclaimed & unknown body to be donated for medical research. Or the girls could claim to be young social workers who know the wishes of this, their client-the poor, poor man. Either way, someone else will ship their corpse away and dispose of him–and he will not only be history, but gone, never to return.
Lots of bridges between NJ and Ohio. Tie some concrete blocks/bricks to him, dump him over the bridge, hope he sinks. Not perfect with guarantee of never turning up again, but as long as he’s heavy enough, he’ll sink. Non-squicky.
Otherwise, definitely the dumpster idea. When they find a living baby in a dumpster, or even a dead one, I wonder how many hundreds or thousands we’ve missed. Because really, a baby’s easy to hide in a couple of bags and it’s not like there’s much actual interaction between the garbagemen and the garbage they haul.
Here’s one I’ve thought about.
Drive out on the interstate. In some places, the roads split up, and there are wooded areas. Some of them go down into hollows, beyond the reach of the maintenance crews.
I’ve wondered if anyone would notice if a body is dumped there.
The only problem might be having a friendly state trooper stop at an apparent breakdown, but your two girls should be able to handle *him*, shouldn’t they?
OK- skimmed past the rest of the comments, so not sure if anyone suggested this yet, but…
I just read Hogfather (you, Jenny, turned me onto Pratchett, giving the publishing industry even a larger cut of my income), and remembered Chickenwire’s story after reading your prompt. Maybe the girls are close enough to a river/lake and have the idea of wrapping the body in chickenwire to ensure that body parts don’t float to the surface. Maybe one of them is a Discworld fan, too. Or it could be a tribute in disguise. Good times at any rate.
Sitting here at the ice rink with hot hockey dads who just happen to be cops. the suggestion is to use some kind of acid and pour it over the body. Leaving it to animal consumption is unrealiable. Burning will still leave traces of residue and make the body identifiable. Anyway, not sure what the acid is called, but acid is the general consesus. Gotta love hockey dads.
I would think the ideal place to hide a body would be in a morgue. Switch toe tags with a valid resident to delay identification.
Or left on a mortuary’s doorstep with a fake contact name and address. Or a medical school, with the cadavers.
Don’t suppose there’s a handy sarcophagus nearby? (Well, it worked for Agatha Christie.)
Does this boarding school have a reeeeeeally deep dark basement that no one ever visits?
I’m picturing a couple of teenage girls driving around with a corpse in the backseat.
It would be awfully convenient and probably suspect if this school was near a cemetary where someone was due to be buried the next day (well, it worked for Dorothy Sayers).
Variation on Jamie’s idea: could they steal a car, put the body in it, and push it over a cliff to make it seem like he died in the car crash? (Well, it almost worked for a villain on Perry Mason)
I really need to stop reading old pulp fiction.
Oh dang. I missed the “never to be found” reference. That does thicken the plot a bit. Will ponder further.
If this is an old boarding school, would it have an incinerator in the basement that would fit a body, a la Gross Pointe Blank?
Remind me to never anger the Cherries…
Um, cooking flesh smells like, well, cooking flesh.
Shredder/grinder. I have one, a really big one. It clogs up easily if I put anything wet in it like, several eggplant or cucumbers or zucchini. Then me and my fingers have to dig in to unclog it. Ick!
Some animal facilities incinerate their euthanized animals. I think the one here does, but I ain’t calling to find out lest I get on the sheriff’s bad girl list. I do think some send theirs to the landfill.
Has anyone ever read One Foot in Eden by Ron Rash? He had a character to wrap a body in chicken wire and lash it to a high tree limb, then the character put a dead horse beneath the tree to explain away the buzzards (and the smell.) That body was never found. Just a point of reference here. Excellent book though; Only wished it was longer.
There’s a social network called “Crimespace” that may offer some help for you.
I’m slpenney on it; the url is http://crimespace.ning.com/
nudder idea …
if any groundswork had been done recently - bushes planted and such - the ground would be fairly soft and 2 girls, working diligently, might be able to dig up a big enough space for a body. I’d have them bind the body up and maybe wrapped in plastic. So then they fill in the hole and plant the shrubs back on top. Ummmm, probably they should discover a bag of mulch to cover any signs of disturbance. This would be especially good if the shrubs were to be part of a hedge that was intended to grow and serve as a boundary, as opposed to a garden area that might be disturbed the following year.
Or … using the morgue/hospital idea, they could switch bodies, giving the one they are trying to get rid of any identifying items from the other body. Then other body could be disposed of however because you don’t care if that one gets disposed of.
That should read “gets discovered” not “gets disposed of.” Sorry.
OK, I asked my DD19 what SHE would do with a dead body, if she had one to dispose of. She was horrified, thank you very much. After she finished giving me the evil eye and interrogating me about why I wanted to know such a thing, she said she’d call the cops.
Who, in NY hockey circles anyway, apparently recommend acid. Sigh. Jen-T, you need to get out less.
I suspect if she and her BGF were really confronted with this problem, the solution might somehow involve My Space or You Tube and a trip to the beach. Probably they would make enough money off it to cover the cost of gas. Don’t ask me how, I don’t want to know.
Still looking for more disposal methods? There must be a lot of farms up in that area between NJ and OH. Root cellars keep vegetables fresh all winter long. A body tucked into a corner would hardly be noticeable. Summertime? Ahem. Have you ever been anywhere near a root cellar where the potatoes have gone bad? You want a place where something dead would “never be found” — not by sight, smell or touch — that is absolutely it.
Of course, if it’s wintertime, any nearby snowbank would do the trick. At least until spring.
Yes, it’s right before college starts, so it’s August.
This is excellent stuff. It’s giving me all kinds of plot points. Also it’s hysterical.
But I’m not believing for a minute that JenT is helping. She’s just using this as an excuse to talk to hot cops.
Jenny, she does not need an excuse. I was on the phone with her at the time. Very interesting…
Did I mention I plan to visit her this summer?
Hate to state the obvious, but if one of the girls has a dad with mob connections - what about a garbage truck? All they have to do is dump the body (hopefully wrapped in something other than an old rug or garbage bag???) in one of the dad’s garbage dumpsters and let the truck haul it away to God only knows where????
BCB suggested MySpace or YouTube. As a high school English teacher, I can definitely see some of my student, if confronted with this situation, starting their own http://www.MyDeadBody.com webiste.
However, if I were a recent high school graduate and needed to hide a dead body, I would be the stupid girl who would hide the body in my backyard. You know, with Chester and Snowball and that crazy cockatoo. God I loved that bird. Why not bury Dead Guy Larry there too? And hopefully I would have a friend, a smart, dead-person savvy friend, who would convince me that hiding a dead body in my own backyard, WHERE THE POLICE WOULD FIND IT, is NOT okay. And she would convince me to hide it with someone or something associated with high school. Because it is hard to think beyond high school when you are 18. Maybe it is with the Queen Bee Girl who we don’t like, the thought process being, “Well, if someone gets caught, it might as well be her.” (Although, I have to assume that given that these are Crusie heroines, one or both of them will have an attack of conscience when Queen Bee is arrested because a dead body is found in her cheerleading locker.) Or maybe they bury the body in the football field. That would make for interesting high school reunions.
As for “deep ane meaningful,” I like the idea that the girls THINK they are burying high school and the fears associated with high school and the troubles in their current lives with the body. But they will learn that bodies are difficult to hide, and of course, we never really get to bury the past. We just learn how to deal with it.
One of the girls could be dating a local Ohio boy who’s family owns a Bio Clean Service.
Death, Crime, Trauma. We do the cleaning so you don’t have to.
10% Clandestine Drug-Lab Decontamination for the month of August.
I’m insulted. Of course I’m helping! I mean I can’t help it if there are hot hockey dads who just happen to be cops on one of my kids teams and I can’t help it that I get elect… volunteer to drive said child to practice. I further can’t help it if they just happen to be sitting at the table I want to be sitting at. Sheesh. But man, you should see these guys. Yummy.
Okay, so I e-mailed my State Trooper friend and he’s with the acid. It will destroy the body. Second choice would be the meat grinder. Otherwise you are left with an identifiable body. Dumping in a lake is a good one because unless they know to look for it, well, if you tie something to them to make them sink, it could be a very long time before he/she is found. However, the bones left behind would be identfiable. No one liked my peanut butter idea. Geez, I thought it was funny.
I’ve sent another e-mail to an ex-homicide detective, but haven’t heard from him yet. I’ll let you know. I always weird him out with my questions and usually get this as a response first “You’ve got to be joking? Why would you want to know that?”
Great, I think I’ll just drop in on Jenny and check it out before bedtime. DH is on a golf trip so I am home alone. Why am I the one stuck in the bad movie scene and now refuses to go upstairs and will just sleep on the couch, thank you very much. With all the lights on.
I’m going with the abandoned house on a back road. Sit him up in a chair. (My FIL died sitting in a chair in his PJ’s.) Got to take the fingerprints off and have no dental records. That would get icky.
I just turned on more lights.
Since they’re not sociopaths, and they are after all very young, how calm are they going to be, when faced with a body to dispose of? Probably not very. Acid sounds too premeditated, and where are they going to get that much concentrated acid from, anyway? Sneak into the chemistry lab? Sounds too impractical.
Vicious temper and formidable characters aside, likely these girls have never committed a crime, and will be in at least a bit of a panic. As a result, I’m thinking they won’t think much past the obvious solutions:
- dumping in the woods: but to hide the body far from a road, they’d have to do some serious hiking with a heavy load, so that’s impractical.
- dumping in a deep lake: I like the bridge idea someone mentioned earlier. Warm water in the summer will also speed decomposition, and there’s less chance of someone (say, a hiker) stumbling across the body by accident.
- burying in an area of campus that’s in the middle of being newly landscaped. I like this idea the best, because it’s close and quick, and doesn’t require them to do much carrying of the body, as well as making sure that wheelbarrows and shovels and bags of dirt are just lying around. A nearby dumping ground is also ideal because I’m guessing it won’t be long before the body starts stinking in the muggy August heat; the quicker the disposal, the less driving, the better. There are also interesting psychological implications with the amount of time they’ll have to spend digging to make a hole deep enough to avoid accidental discovery, and how the prolonging of the nightmare will affect them. Finally, this could also provide an interesting place for either or both of them to see again years later, if the story goes that way.
Well, tie a cinderblock to the body and dump it off a bridge is a pretty traditional mob method. What if they tied it to an ankle, the shoes come off when the body hits the water, the rope slips, and they end up chasing the body as it floats down the river?
Could they stuff the body down a manhole? If they saw someone working in one recently it might be quite a while before anyone would need to go down there again.
My daughter went to boarding school and they had a crew team. There’s a boat house and boats. : ) How about if the girl going to college is going on a scholarship to crew for them. They could take the boat out to the middle of the lake, weight the body, and toss it over the side. If caught bringing the boat back in she could use training as an excuse. It could be quite humorous if the other gal wasn’t accomplished at rowing. The boat (shell) is usually manned by six or eight rowers, but with two, one at either end,there’d be space for a body
in the middle.
So on the acid idea….I have a few questions.
Like what kind of acid, where would they get it, how much would they need, and how dangerous would it be to the girls themselves? I assume they’d want to destroy the whole body to keep it from being identified, but would they actually need to? What do the hot cops say?
And when will this story be published?
Well, I was just reading one of Barry Eisler’s John Rain books, and the protagonist is an assasin. Anyway, apparently if you poke enough holes in the body so the gas can escape instead of getting trapped, it’ll never float, and only somebody diving is going to see it. So if you dump it somewhere with terrible visibility and a really mucky bottom that sinks down forever…
Well, supposedly it’ll work. Are you sure they wouldn’t just get hysterical and call the police, though?
The story is a freebie that will up on SMP’s website as a teaser for Agnes and the Hitman, assuming I can write it. It’s a story from Agnes’s youth.
She had an interesting youth.
If they plan on burying it, wouldn’t the body decompose more slowly if it were wrapped it plastic? Also, another idea from literature (this time Roses For Emily- maybe one of them plans to be an English major?), sprinkle lime around the area where the body is to prevent any noticeable scents, although not sure how you could ensure that any pesky animals wouldn’t dig up your hard work.
And if the girls are heading to Ohio, could there perhaps be a farm in the southern part of the state with a Hodge family in residence? Or is that just too much of the tie-in cheese?
I immediately thought of two things, neither of which are very practical, but you didn’t ask for practical - either bury the body in a (very large) time capsule, or figure out how to get it into another person’s closed casket. (Caskets always seem way too big for just one person anyway.)
i agree with JJ, (sulfuric, battery, etc) acid. if they can’t get that, find some caves, go to the end of those suckers (not the tour guide ones), and drop him off some cliff inside them.
deep, deep woods
cover the body with wax and you have artwork for mob dad’s house
it’s not that hard to cut the body into six pieces, bury them (far apart from each other) in deep woods, and off you go
piranhas anyone? (ok, not exactly around ohio, but you never know)
BBQ the body
never bury body near murder site. different county/city/state if possible.
Moot can make another appearance
i’m trying to remember how they killed the teacher in Killing Mr. Griffin.
just leave the body in the neighborhood after making sure no evidence was left (cover hair, cover hands, wear same clothes fiber as victim, etc).
i guess there isn’t any quicksand in the area?
so, how did they kill him, what evidence was left, etc? those are the only ways i can think of that don’t involve them getting squimish.
there’s an insect that can strip a whale down, but i’m not sure what it’s called
ok, people posted before i did, but i have to say, “this is Agnes’s youth? hee hee”
oh yeah, poke the lungs so air escapes, i remember that.
just scatter small body parts along the rode as they drive across the states.
Actually, I live next to a cemetery. And I’ve always wondered about the refuse pile they keep at the back. All that dirt displaced by coffins has to go somewhere… Why can’t it hide a new(er) body?
Actually, for that matter, there are stacks of old tombstones outside the cemetery maintenance shed (I’m afraid to ask them why), so why couldn’t they bury the guy, put one of those spare tombstones on top. If anyone were to uncover the body, the mislaid tombstone would sure throw them off.
I think it would depend on if they were just hiding a body or hiding who the body was as a person…
Because then you’ll want to make sure there are no identifiable traits like fingerprints or teeth. If these’re young girls too squeamish to do a little cutting, perhaps they are just looking for a quick drop off that won’t be associated with them?
Over here (Montreal,) they have St-Vincent de Paul Society or Salvation Army type stores all over the place with these huge dumpster bins where people can leave donations… Let’s say the story takes place fifteen or more years ago if its from Agnes’ youth? You’d run very little risk of the store having cameras outside…
Or if its just a dump and run situation what about somewhere off the beaten path? Say a Catholic church is near your girls’ school? They break in and set the body up in the confessional, hilarity ensues…
I think the stumbling block here is that hastily dumped bodies never stay hidden. Hiding them will only work if they’re hidden in an abandoned area while putrefaction takes place, even bodies covered in cement or bricked in decompose and give off some odour…
OH - LMAO!!!
Who knew getting rid of a body could be this funny?
I’m not sure if I have any useful suggestions…
I seem to remember an NCIS episode where they found some body’s in some waste barrels… they were only found ’cause someone knocked one over…
… ok, so now I’m remembering this scene from Storm Boy, where their trying to hide this big freaking fish (kids - who’d have ‘em?) - a tuna I think - it was massive. Anyway, they put a dress on it and a big floppy brim hat, put it in a wheel chair and wheeled it through town
lol
Not that this would be remotely useful in the hiding-of-the-body part.
Wasn’t there another incidence in a TV show where the body was put in a wheelie-bin? Or was it a couple of wheelie-bins? The night before the garbage truck came around. Put out on the curb, and hey-presto - no more body… except, I think the body got found…
My bet is on the acid - failing that, dumping in a large body of water in chicken wire as previously suggested (Go the Pratchett!)
If the girls had access to a medium-sized company, they might do the following: enter the shipping department. Most of them have machines to shrink-wrap goods of larger size, so they should wrap the body good and tight. (And completely, of course.) Then put him in one of those large octabin containers and fill up with plastic granules or similar stuff. Close lid and seal tight. Take black marker and write “rejected, back to Smrwskoska” on the outside, maybe add some extra official-looking stickers, if possible dirty and unreadable. Put on fork-lift truck and store in the very back of the storage room, if possible on a higher level. Nobody likes to handle or inspect things like that, nobody will unless they are in the way, because it means extra work and who knows about Smrwskoska anyway?
Now it’s not completely fool-proof and I’m not quite sure about how long it will take until the smell comes out. But it sets a nice alternative to the same old ‘drop off bridge, throw into lake’ method. (I never killed somebody yet, although I often wanted to.)
Now if this happened in Agnes’ youth, almost twenty years ago, maybe there were still electro-plating shops with openly accessible detoxification basins (in my family, we had one in the backyard, almost like a pool, only filled with weird-colored mud). It might take a while to dig up a body from there and I wouldn’t bet that after that, it was still recognizable. But before you use that version, you might want to ask an expert about it.
Take a page from the Dixie Chicks… Good-bye, Earl…
If the girls are going to a midwest university, say IU, there’s usually a nice big lake close by… Lake Monroe. Big being the operative word. You want a nice big lake because the Ohio River is too unpredictable and the body could dislodge and be found. But a nice big lake is placid. It’s not that hard to get a rowboat (and safer than negotiating the currents of the Ohio River). Also if they tip the rowboat they could still probably swim to shore towing the boat and maybe only lose $20 worth of old wooden paddles — commonplace on the lake.
There are enough little coves to be unobtrusive.
Ok, this sounds like I went to IU. I did. It sounds like I waterskiied allover Lake Monroe. Which I did. It sounds like I know the Ohio River pretty well. I used to live right on the river. So I did. And it sounds like I put way too much thought into this.
Which I didn’t.
I camped on Lake Monroe. Alot. We waterskiied there alot. And at night we did battle with raccoons — of which there seemed to be alot.
Cheers,
i
They’re traveling through NJ and PA. Exit 1 NJ Turnpike, turn left and you are in swamps. Lots of swamps. Not your SC gator-swamp. This is NJ devilish blue crab swamp and I’ve seen what a blue crab can do to something meaty. It’s not pretty. Also South Jersey is home to the Pine Barrens, miles of empty forest filled with hungry wild things.
There’s an atomic generating station in that neck of the woods. I’m told the cooling pipes that dump into the Delaware river are nothing to be messed with. The locals stay clear of that area.
In PA there are steel mills. Dump the body in the scap pile. Sooner or later it will be melted down.
I thought about this some more. It’s midnight, teenagers, they have to be somewhere in a specific ammount of time. Either the mob girl will already know how to dispose of the body because it’s a family tradition passed down from generation to generation or she’ll believe she knows based on TV and whispers she overhears from her relatives. (Fargo was released in 96;CSI 2000.)
Whatever it is needs to sound brilliant (and easy) from a teenager’s pov even if the idea’s full of holes.
What’s the reason that they wouldn’t call the mob girl’s family? Do either of them have family in Ohio? Have either experienced life outside a city such as hiking or animals on a farm or are they diehard city girls? Why is it important that body not be found and identified? That may give clues as to what their options are and/or what they have access to.
OH is scaring me.
On the Ohio Turnpipke there is a whole lot of nothing. Dump him in the woods along the turnpike and he’ll never be found.
And as for Kieran’s mailing reference, that might work. Box him up and ship him to somewhere relatively unpopulated, like Wyoming or Alaska, but don’t use a return address and don’t put enough postage and he’ll end up in the Twilight Zone known as the …wait for it… dead letter office.
I crack myself up.
I don’t know much about the geography of things from NJ to Ohio, but I have to side with Inge on the lake thing. There was a case in NW Indiana 15-20 years ago where a body was found in one of the hundreds of little lakes up there, many on private land or in the middle of nowhere. It took over six months to find, and even then it was just stumbled upon and could have been easily never discovered at all. I think jewelry and dental records were the only way they could confirm the identity of the body.
And for some weird reason, I have a sudden urge to watch “Weekend at Bernie’s.”
This is Agnes as a teenager? Not sure any of us can come up with anything quite quirky enough for Agnes. Pretty sure the root cellar idea is out, though, unless you’re going to have her flashback to it when the kid falls through the wall into the basement in the first scene. Or is that a memory? Bob knows the difference.
And whose idea was it, exactly, that you all needed to tease us even more about this book than you already have?
Wait a minute… so this short story takes place in the past, sort of like info dump and set up and maybe foreshadowing and stuff that happens before the real story starts? Gosh, Jenny, it sounds a bit like a prologue.
Does Bob know about this?
A Pennsylvania slag pit/bed/whatever they’re called.
Or dump the corpse in an abandoned coal mine tunnel in Pennsylvania
Oh! She’s Agnes. Well, just pick up the phone and call Uncle Whoziz. Doesn’t he fix everything? Or is that Shane’s Uncle Whoziz?
Love the tombstone idea. Maybe they read the magazines that advertise foreign countries needing bodies for research, no questions asked. Send it! Or send it to some mob guy. He wouldn’t report receiving a surprise body.
Okay, heard back from homicide detective friend. Actually, it was more like a grunt. He’s not the most talkative fellow. Anyway, he said there is a place called The Delaware Water Gap that is along the way. I have no idea, never heard of the place but he thought it might be a good place to dump the body…said something about tarps, weights, chains….
that was all he wrote.
And hey, I’m willing to talk to any hot guy anytime, anywhere, just for you Jenny!
In Snatch they feed the bodies to pigs (also a real killer who did that) but I don’t know where 2 college girls in Jersey would find pigs…
It scares me that you can Google a question like that and come up with any answers at all.
Me, love your “dead letter” idea. If you seal the plastic enough, the smell wouldn’t get out. And one girl could insist on sending him off to his great reward with a little TLC, by wrapping him in a brown paper package tied up with string (such a wholesome, cozy thing to do, she’ll say, like in the Sound of Music) and the other could remind her of UPS regs about tape, not string, and they fight over who wraps corners better.
Well in Deadwood they just fed them to the pigs.
Or you could try pouring acid over the body. What about lyme…doesn’t that disolve stuff…? I should have paid more attention in chemistry class.
I’m going with the dump the body in the lake idea. I live near a lake with God only knows how many bodies in it - some of whom even wound up there by accident. If it’s a calm, deep lake and they weight the body good enough - I don’t know that I’d tarp it, you’d want the water and fish to get at it easily but who am I to argue with a murder cop - it would never rise. I’d bet that the body rising to the surface is a lot rarer than we think, especially if the water it’s dumped in is calm and there are lots of fish. If it didn’t rise before winter they’d be laughing, there’d be nothing left but bones and they would scatter. Also, the water would wash off any trace evidence and fingerprints from whatever they used to weight him.
The comedy could come from them wrestling with the body, maybe they get stopped for speeding or something - no, driving too slow. They are afraid to get caught so they go too slow and get pulled over. Agnes tells some big tale about bad night vision and they are really tired so the cop directs them to a little campground near the lake and gives them a stern warning about driving tired and some boring statistics about how many people it kills each year. It would also be funny to hear them arguing about what to use to weight the body with - should they could steal plate weights from the campus gym or go with cinderblocks and chains.
I’m wondering if they killed him or just found the body.
I’m with BCB, we don’t need to be teased any more.
I’ve been thinking about chemicals they might be able to use that might also be easily available.
If the school has a pool, they would have access to chlorine. I’m not sure what chlorine would do to a body, but it can’t be good. Where’s Grissom and co. when you need them?
But I think burying the body under the shrubs is the best bet. Maybe without plastic wrap so the body would compost better? I have this vision of folks talking about how someone disappeared years ago and then going on to talk about how nicely that hedge has grown up.
OH - you scare me sometimes.
I have been to a pig farm and seen a pig eat another pig. I know this is plausiable, but it was already done in “Snatch.”
So, I suggest trying to hide it in plain sight — I love the idea of donating the body to science, but I think there would be paperwork issues.
If they were farther south I’d suggest trying to donate it to a voodun priestess, but what about just having one or both of them sleep with a lonely mortician who will agree to creamate the body.
Or, they could break into a vetrianary clinic and fire up the old boy themselves. . .
Interesting responses… I’m wondering if someone posted this question to find out just how creative we all could get.
And there’s another Mary responding,that’s confusing. I thought I was unique
If they don’t have a handy morgue or incinerator nearby, I’d say the “under-the-hedge” technique sounds pretty good. Agatha Christie books always have a gardner who’s doing “deep trenching.” Not sure what that is, but it leaves a nice deep hole, which would help. (What do garderners do in August? Harvest things?)
Just ran across this article:
Surgeons complain over shortage of corpses
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2007/03/13/ndead113.xml
An aside story - about 10 years ago I awoke at the crack of dawn at our cottage on one of the finger lakes to a few helicopters flying low. When I looked out over the lake, there were a ton of rescue, sheriff and trooper boats. There had been a late night accident and they were searching for a body. While down there they found the remains of someone else.
And people wonder why I’m afraid to swim alone at night…dun da dun da dun da…
Look, there is hardly any place more lethal than a farm. You’ve got hogs that will eat ANYTHING.
You’ve got big plowed areas.
Youve got outbuildings.
You’ve got fertilizers, pesticides, antibiotics, etc.
You’ve got ants.
The acid (or alkalie, I’m not sure) you need will be called either Lye (as in soap-making) or lime, which may be a country colloquialism. It’s the stuff that was used to clean out the pits of outhouses.
You buy it at the feed store in hundred pound bags.
But, for Jiminy’s sake, don’t put the corpse in the lake. That may be some town’s water supply, and decomposing things are already plentiful in lakes. That is one reason why tap water tastes so vile in the summertime.
With DNA, we no longer need teeth & fingerprints to tell if the bits are human, and, if the guy is a con, his DNA may be already on file.
So, either misidentify the corpse and put it in the morgue, the funeral parlor, the crematorium (or the incinerator in the basement), or the coal-fired boiler, or else take it to the farm and return it to the Universe via pigs, the plow, or the privvy.
Just, keep it out of the water supply.
Sal
This is gross but… an old cop friend of mine was telling me how he’d “get away with it”. He’d gut a deer and bury the body in the deer and hide it deep in the woods.
Sounds effective to me. Scary.
lbooth
Oops, I answered the March 14 post, when the “get rid of the body” party seems to be going on here. A body in a hospital morgue won’t work, because it’s probably going to a funeral home and a family viewing. But for ease of disposal, I kinda like the crypt idea if you can’t cremate the body. Maybe a fresh gravesite that could be re-dug easily? You’d have the concrete vault lid to open, but you’d have no worries about a decay smell giving away your body. Low likelihood anyone would look in the casket again.
Is this the sort of campus that has tunnels connecting the old buildings? If so, maybe one of them connects to the sewer system, or has a link to same behind some locked door?
For that matter, old buildings and old tunnel systems often have places no one really goes anymore. Maybe just stash her in some side tunnel or behind some locked door underground and solder it shut? The body will probably decompose before anyone gets down there again to notice the smell.
Or how about the basic: just putting it in the dumpster right before pickup? Around here, I’m not sure anyone would notice if a body got dumped into the sanitation truck along with the rest of the trash.
Well, if they’re on their way to Ohio from NJ, have them stop by one of the interstate dump areas where the road guys put the road-kill carcases. Strip the body and take it to the back of the pile. They’ll have to drag the body through or over some obstacles because the dump sites are usually against a tree line and/or have discarded cement and rock slabs surrounding them.
The DOT guys (or maybe just my local highway/turnpike contractors) place the dump sites at some midway point between cities and use either the flora or the slabs or both to hide the carcass pile from passing motorists. You have to know what you’re looking at to spot them. It generally involves an off ramp leading to what looks like a gravel road that quickly turns into a dirt road, a huge pile of road chunks and heavy underbrush.
The girls could leave the body for the flesh-eating bugs (http://www.ummz.umich.edu/mammals/dermestid.html) and carrion animals. Pitch one piece of identification or clothing off every bridge they come to starting about 200 miles from the body. By the time they reach Ohio, they should be scot free.
Oh, one more thing. I’m told the smell at a carrion dump site is horrific. (I had a friend who stopped at one of the sites because of car trouble.) The girls would definitely have to stop somewhere (preferably a no-tell motel complete with raised eyebrows from the clerk) for a complete shower and change. They’ll probably have to ditch their own dirty clothes with the dead guy’s clothes.
Here is an article by the World Health Organization on disposal of bodies in an emergency situation
http://wedc.lboro.ac.uk/WHO_Technical_Notes_for_Emergencies/8%20-%20Disposal%20of%20dead%20bodies.pdf
I’ve been trying to remember an oilfield saying- “one bag of ? and two bags of lime- no body no crime” and I can’t remember what the other chemical is
Egads- concrete vaults are most often used in large cities where they have time to deal with such minutae or where they have a high water table- in my small town they are not required- and many places that require them now didn’t 20 or so years ago
I don’t know why everyone is thinking small lake when they will be traveling right near one of the Great lakes.
They can rent a boat for a day or two. Find a secluded area to get the body aboard (wrapped and suitably weighted of course) head out until they’re at least an hour from shore and no other boat in sight - dump the body and head back.
If they’ve wrapped it well - I’d say in Saran wrap and chicken wire - and weighted it with about 4 cynderblocks wrapping into the chicken wire with the body… it will sink and never be found.
I didn’t think I was that devious. Heh.
If it’s an older boarding school, there’s always the furnace.
You know those big yellow barrels they put on the highway offramps so that people hit those instead of the concrete? yeah. I always thought they looked like they could hold a body nicely… If they can get a bag of lye, take him to the mountains on a back road, dig a shallow grave, layer it with lye, take off all jewlry, clothing, etc, throw body in hole, layer with more lye and throw some dirt and rocks over him. the lye will eat the flesh away and keep the critters away so the grave won’t be disturbed. Never know he was there in six weeks…. And if you are worried about forensics–wash the body first at home, wrap in new shower curtain, transport that way. Yeah, I have WAY too much time on my hands while I am driving home through the Altamont every morning….
I skimmed through the comments (laughing all the way) so not sure if this was mentioned or not. The geeky kid with thick glasses cliche might be a good person to use. The girls, reasonably attractive could persuade him to help them out. He somehow had funeral home connections, wants to be a motician, always has his nose stuck in a vampire book… okay, I’ll stop. Just go with the pigs.
I’m a fan of the abandoned and limed outhouse idea. If the guy was a shit to begin with …
LOL Sally J - I’m changing my vote. I’m with you - drop him down a thunder box!
Jennifer Talty mentioned something about driving past Buffalo to get to Ohio as a possible route. Niagara Falls is about an hour away (maybe less?) from Buffalo. Put him in a barrel.
Here’s a great accounting of some attempts to survive the falls: http://www.niagarafallslive.com/daredevils_of_niagara_falls.htm
All of the attempts to survive the plunge occur over the Horseshoe Falls (the Canadian side) because things aren’t so dire at the bottom of the falls. So it stands to reason that the American side (no border hassles with that body in the truck) could really go to work on a corpse and make it hard to recover/ID. But there’s a lot of security in the works to prevent people from going over the falls, so it may be more trouble than it’s worth to dispose of ol’ Corpsie that way.
Locate the nearest Senatorial office/rally/homestead.
Jack open the trunk of the most expensive car there (best performed at night).
Slip dead body from your trunk into other trunk.
Said body will not only never be found, but several witnesses will swear they saw said adult male boarding a banana boat to Brazil.
Umm… rendering plant, anyone? So long as good ol’ Dead Guy gets into the heat thingy before anyone notices, he’s just so much goo real soon. If these girls are cute, I’m sure they can distract the workers long enough to get him down the ramp and in the glop.
Quicklime outhouse is good, too.
How ’bout dropping him off at a plastic surgeon’s exam practicum? Apparently, they like to use _real_ heads for the facial reconstruction exam and they chop ‘em off right there and send the bits back to the body supply later for “disposal”. You can read Mary Roach’s book _Stiff_ for some more utterly bizarre uses of dead bodies, like… military test dummy! What fun! (When I die, I want to be the leg that saves mankind….
)
When I read all these suggestions, I feel like either the dead guy must be an anorectic dwarf or the two girls (one of which is pregnant, too)are weight-lifters to begin with. Very athletic, at least, if they must drag the body over obstacles, dig holes, row boats for hours… I think it’s not only the place of disposal but also the previous handling that makes it difficult. Plus, I wouldn’t know how to get hold of a ton of lime in the middle of the night.
Lime … if we go with the burying him under a bush idea, the groundskeeper might have a lot of lime on hand. Its used for balancing the acidity of the soil. Some plants like more, some less. So it could conceivably be present already where landscaping is being done.
Is there anyway to stop at an airfield on the way and stick the body in the wheel well of an outbound airplane? (Hopefully outbound someplace remote/odd.) I’m not sure how it might work, but a fall from a great height would make it hard to identify/find him.
There could be lots of giggles trying to get him unseen to the plane/planning how to keep him falling out too soon. Maybe the mob daughter has heard a rumor of this being done?
[I cannot believe I'm being so callous.]
Oh oh…grizzly bears could finish off anything left if he dropped in a remote enough area, like the Rockies of British Columbia. I assume he drops when the wheels are lowered for landing…
I love the idea of dropping him in the trunk of some hoity toity politicos car- especially since this guy was probably known to a few of them if he was LL’s ex boyfriend and she has mob connections then he probably also had mob connections and I’ve met very few honest politicians, especially in the all about me 80s
What with the driving around with a corpse in the backseat and the “Weekend at Bernie’s” reference, I’m thinking of “S.O.B” and sending him out to sea on a flaming pyre, or taking him to a party, a la WaB. Neither of which really answers your requirements, but they’re funny and the kind of thing kids might do. Although more guy kind of kids, I imagine. Something creative and female and teen angstly. Hmmm.
“By the time they reach Ohio, they should be scot free.”
LOL! Was this guy’s name Scott, by any chance.
Dump him in the room of some other student they don’t like.
I know you said this following answer is too easy, but it plays into the girl with mob connections and the girl with the nasty streak…why can’t there be a building under construction at the school? Some sort of ironic one, such as the school’s new chapel or new department of etiquette and manners (which our dearly deceased had none of).
Taking into accounts these two girls’ limited arm strengths, I’d go this route. As far as playing into the one girl’s nasty vicious streak? Maybe she writes real small in the wet cement “[Dead Guy's Name] was here.”
Stephen’s also one of the regulars at Crimespace - an excellent resource.
I know I am wicked late here, but you’d have to kill a moose or an elk to have something big enough to stuff a body in, and they haven’t made it to the south yet.
The scary part of this whole thing is I was driving in the pine barrens with my mother two days ago (before I read this) and randomly wondered out loud how many bodies were probably dumped in the woods. She looked at me like I was out of my mind, but seriously, you would never find one out there…