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From
"Ashes"
by
JJ Sargent
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"Oh, one
more thing, Ben. There’s something you should know
about the ashes."
"What’s that?"
"There aren’t enough to account for a 200
pound white male in his late-forties."
"Go again..."
"You see, even if the body were completely
cremated, there’d be more ashes. I’d
expect about a liter. What we’ve got here is about a
fourth of that, even less. The
old lady said she didn’t flush anything. It’s as if
this is just part of the guy, maybe
forty pounds. And there’s no bone. I can’t tell you
for sure what temperature
produced these ashes, but to completely devour the bone
and everything,
and not even scorch the toilet paper nearby, or the
curtains on the window?
Hell, the whole house should’ve gone up."
Roberts looked at the puzzled look on his partner’s
face. "Spontaneous human
combustion," he said.
"There’s never been any documented proof that
the human body could ignite itself
from within. To destroy remains like this? It would take
the heat of a crematorium,
over 3000 degrees."
"Maybe he just had bad gas and he lit one of his
cigars or something. I don’t know.
What I do know is that we better have some kind of
answer soon. We’ve got
reporters outside, a son about to be executed. It’s a
media circus. And who knows
how many more of these we’re gonna see today."
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