You don’t know what the fuss is about. It’s not like they stopped you from touch­ing the clothes before, back when they were still on the body. Why are you at any more risk of con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the evi­dence now than then?

Fed up with the bull­shit, you stride to the ele­va­tor, and plum­met down to the Skull level. It used to be called the M level, but you decided to name your level M instead (for Mag­nif­i­cent, obvi­ously). The morgue was left with a skull-shaped button.

The doors open slowly, and you, an aveng­ing angel, power through the open­ing, stand­ing tall, ignor­ing all in your path. Inci­den­tally, this causes you to step on a live rat.

With a squeak, it dies. You make sure to give a well-timed snarl. It’s obvi­ous you must have intended to step on the rat. Per­haps that’s why you’re down here in the first place!

Except it’s not.

Clothes are the reason.

You come to a fork in your path, and with­out a pause, take the right.

Fig­ures. There’s all the peo­ple who should be cat­a­logu­ing the evi­dence. The very peo­ple who for­bid you to look at it.

“TAKE THAT YOU OPTICAL-NERVE CHEWING FINGER-MASTICATING RAT-MOUTHED SLIMEBALLS! Com’on! Hand over the eye­balls! And be care­ful! They’re prime bright-blue eyes! Worth quite a bit, those! Told you he’d win – ”

You hate to inter­rupt a lovely game of minia­ture golf played with balls made of hair glued together with dead throat slime (you for­get what that’s called) and put­ters made from leg bones, played on a sur­face paved with… some type of inter­nal tis­sue, per­haps intes­tine, and with human eyes for betting.

Or, you would hate to inter­rupt, if it weren’t for the extreme right­eous anger you’re about to intro­duce them to. If it weren’t for said anger, you think you’d put down three bright emer­ald eye­balls on the teen with painted-on acne.

You grab the acne-obsessed teen around the throat, and imme­di­ately wish you hadn’t. It would appear he trans­planted some zits from some of the bod­ies onto his neck.

You slam him against the wall and get right up into his pimple-penned smarmy face.

“You will tell me the loca­tion of the clothes.”

He stares at you wide-eyed. He prob­a­bly expected a reac­tion to the zits around his neck.

“Now,” you growl.

“Box thirty five!”

You toss him at the oth­ers. They dodge. You pay no mind.

Instead, you stride to box thirty five. You open it. You examine.

They are, indeed, the cor­rect clothes.

You search the pock­ets. A few pieces of paper; a wal­let; a pencil.

You un-wad the piece of paper.

A45. The Nile Apartments.

You pon­der as you sink into a handy chair.

“I require some cheese!” you exclaim.

You wait.

No cheese is forthcoming.

Slowly, you stand, and glare at the morgue employees.

They’ve gone back to their game – only this time, it’s clear they’re try­ing to sneak it, with their hushed voices and whisper-quiet taps of the balls.

“I said,” you com­mand, your voice dark and threat­en­ing, “I require cheese!”

They all stare at you.

“NOW!”

They all rush off, trip­ping over each other.

You walk up to the balls of hair and pocket them.