Criminal Evolutions
Herb Kauderer
Looking backward she cannot trace the path of her career from college to criminal justice, to forensics, to blood-stain splatter analysis, to autopsy technician, and finally to forensic entomology, (the study of insects growing in corpses), to this terrifying moment.
And now she perches on her lab stool, struggling to write a report that makes clear to non-specialists that the colony of arthropods within this corpse is nothing seen before.
She will wait for the DNA test to be sure, before she files the report. In the meantime, every time she stops writing, she sterilizes the room, the equipment, and her hands, over and over, praying the alien contamination has passed her by.
First appeared in The Detective’s Ghost Oct 12 2017
