Just an Accident.

[Michael] The phone-call had come a few hours ago to Imogens office. Michael's explanation had been simple and straightforward: The young Fianna had found a corpse at the edge of his packs newly claimed territory. Male, in his thirties or possibly forties. A few wounds, but nothing that was clearly a fatal blow. Could she take a look?

For whatever reason, she said yes. It would take a few hours. Michael neither asked nor was offered an explanation for the delay. Instead he gave the kinwoman exceptionally precise directions, and told her he would be watching the body until she arrived.

And that is exactly what he does. The weather has been unforgiving throughout his vigil. A cold, wet mixture of rain and ice falls constantly now. The ground in this secluded locale is still littered heavily with fallen leaves from the bitter winter. The sound of the precipitation pouring onto the forest bed is almost deafening when compared to the silence one typically experiences this far out. The young Fianna stands alone in this place, his murky green eyes fixed on the dead body.

He waits, patiently. Unflinching.

[Imogen Slaughter] A beam of a flashlight cuts through the darkness, long before the wind shifts and he smells the kinswoman's approach - a mix of cigarette smoke, clean skin, soap and the city. Her breeding wafts on the breeze as well, but it is somehow a different sense - caught by the lizard brain and not the human brain.

She steps through the woods - carefully but not in perfect silence, following the directions (turn left at the tree with a boulder in front, proceed fifteen feet) written on a small notebook in her inner jacket pocket. She does not check them as she moves through the steps.

Her brilliant hair is damp by the time she reaches the small clearing, the red muted to a hue of rusted iron. Her wind-breaker is soaked, and the chill has seeped into her bones. For a moment, a thought comes clear to her mind - I hate Chicago. - and then is subsumed beneath the layers of her denial.

"Lovely weather, isn't it just?" she says glancing at Michael in an almost cursory fashion before she trains the light on the ground, passing it over the body as she approaches it. In one hand, she carries a metal briefcase, which she sets down as she approaches.

[Michael] "Oh aye, perfect for picnics or late-night autopsies. If only we'd brought the fancy cheese."

Hours in this weather have soaked him through and through, but still he quips. The heavy scarf he wears tonight is being used as a makeshift hood, though the green material is so drenched it is of little use. Likewise his black wool coat, which seems bloated with water. Complaining won't make him warm, so he focuses at the task on hand. "Found him pretty much just that way. I gave him a half roll to look for injuries on his face and chest. There are some bite marks I couldn't identify, but I'm thinkin' some scavengers got to him."

Michael does not crowd the doctor as she works. Instead he stands a few feet back with arms crossed over his chest. "I'm sorry to have you come out in this, but I wanted an expert opinion before I disposed o' it."

[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen shakes her head briefly, dismissing the apology. "I've come out in worse," she says, sinking to a crouch in front of the body, her gaze passing over it, briefly, before she lifts up the flashlight, extending it in his direction, "Hold this and point at th'body would yeh?" she asks, absently.

Should he take it, she reaches into the pocket of her windbreaker, retrieving a packet of sealed latex gloves. The way she opens the packet and slips the gloves on denotes familiarity. Habit, as if she has done this a hundred times before.

She focuses on the front of the body first, examining it for bites, and then the bites for signs of blood - the symptom of a beating heart. She examines him for the cuts that Michael described and then the cuts for their potential impact. Only when she has completed a thorough review of the front will she reach under the corpses shoulders and turn him.

"I don't imagine time of death matters to you," she asks once while she has a dead man's hand in hers, her fingers lightly manipulating the joints

[Michael] Michael moves the flashlight carefully to better illuminate Imogens work, craning his neck to watch the examination. "It does. All o' the information is pertinent as far as I'm concerned. This is my packs protectorate and dead bodies don't bode well, Doctor. If he was some lost hiker with a bad heart, fine. But if he was brought out here to be killed, or dumped..."

There's no need to finish that thought. A quick blast of icy wind cuts its way through the trees and inspires a round of mumbled swearing from the Irishman. "Christ's sweet sake why couldn't this bastard died in the Spring? People don't have a bit o' decency about them anymore."

[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen's breath exhales sharply, caught somewhere between a scoff and amusement. "Yeh are likely goin' to need to learn t'pick yer battles. There's taint here, just like every where else. S'not going to be expedient to research every corpse yeh find.

"Especially when spring comes around and every once and a while, a hiker or what have you begins to thaw out."

A few more moments of silence while Imogen continues her preliminary review of the body. It is as she is at the corpse's head, turning it from side to side, that she speaks again. "I think he fell," she says, turning the body's flaccid neck sharply to the side exposing the sticky and bloody mess of his hair. "See tha'? S'blunt force trauma," with gloved fingers she touches the skull, deliberately depressing the broken shards of the victim's skull.

"We might find a rock wi' blood on it or perhaps signs of a slip over there-" gesturing toward an embankment., "But really, I think perhaps we should just move him."

[Michael] "I don't pretend t' believe I can clean up the area entirely, Doctor. But we are only just establishing ourselves out here, and we've got to start somewhere. This poor lad is just the first thing of interest I've found out here." The Ragabash kneels beside Imogen as she points out the nature of the mans injuries, nodding to indicate his understanding. The flashlight is extended back to it's owner when she suggest moving the body.

Once his hands are free Michael rolls the corpse on its back and, after steadying his feet, lifts it over his shoulder in a traditional firemans carry. Like most Garou and a few kin, Michael is no stranger to dead bodies. He is casual in bearing the gruesome load. The expression on his face never changes, even when a few large insects flee the lifeless mans clothing and scurry across the Fiannas hand. He simply shakes them off and turns his attention to the rain-soaked redhead. "Any thoughts on where to take 'im? I was just going go a bit deeper in and bury him..."

[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen shakes her head slightly, "If yeh do that, and someone finds them, then it's murder, and all the more sensational." She wipes her forehead with the back of her wrist, swiping water from her skin and pushing hair back out of her eyes.

"Personally, I think we should find somewhere t'dump him, preferably wi' a hill, a rock and preferably wi' snow. By the time he's found there won't be a crime scene and th'case will likely be closed as accidental."

A beat, "Particularly if I get the case."

[Michael] "There's a small rise to the north, a little less than a kilometer maybe. There are less trees so it's bit more exposed, but the snow falls heavy and land is jagged. Probably a nice little hidin' spot or two over that way. Unless you're thinking o' taking him from the woods entirely. In that case I haven't the slightest idea." The tone of their conversation is fairly casual considering the morbid circumstances. As if that thing on Michaels shoulder was a painting, and Imogen was suggesting potential framing locations.

[Imogen Slaughter] "Woods would be better," she says. "In case someone knew he came out 'ere fer a walk."

The details she considers are perhaps unique to her profession. She thinks not only of the immediate issue but five steps ahead to the later ones. Or perhaps it is merely experience with this sort of thing - over and over again.

She removes her gloves, the tips of the fingers darkened with fluids not entirely explained by blood, but the body's later effusions, as the organs begin to melt to soup, as serum and other fluids begin to leak from the nose and eyes and eventually the very pores of the skin.

She is undisturbed by their subject, by the body hanging loosely over Michael's shoulder. The conversation is simply to her - this body is not a person to her, but a hunk of meat like a rib-roast. She does not much care if anyone would miss him, or come looking for him, cry for him at night.

At least not in any context other than how it might protect the Veil.

[Michael] "I'll take him that way myself, no need for you to stay out here in all this pleasantness. I thank you for your time, Doctor. Will you be able to find your way back out then?" He already knows the answer to this question, is already taking a few steps backwards into the woods. The weight of his parcel is shifted ever so slightly to ensure a comfortable walk.

[Imogen Slaughter] He thanks her, "Don't mention it," the sentence is absent, almost thoughtless as if she's said it a hundred times.

"I can," she answers his question though he likely knows it already. "Just back out th'way I came." A pause, a dry look at both Garou and his burden, "Ha' fun."

With that, she turns and walks, as mentioned, back the way she came, her arms drawing in closer to her body to protect herself against the cold.