Grave Doubts by John Moss

stranger, What do you do? or, How do you like the weather? He needed to know where people were from. He was so completely a creature of one city, it connected him to the larger world.
    “Cabbagetown,” she said. “That’s right here in downtown Toronto.”
    “I know where Cabbagetown is,” he said quickly, staring at her for a moment, trying to place her within the social spectrum — tenement or townhouse?
    “Working class, poor,” she declared, as if reading his thoughts. She was neither defiant nor ashamed; it was like saying she was brunette or a woman. “And what about you?”
    “The same.”
    “What are you two on about?” asked Shelagh Hubbard, turning around as if she were coming up for air.
    “Common ancestry,” said Joleen with a laugh.
    “Common heritage,” Morgan amended. She was of Chinese extraction — Morgan hated the brutal and trivializing term, “extraction.” They were both from Cabbagetown.
    “Joleen, eh? Did your parents ever go to Nashville?”
    “When your last name is Chau and you don’t live in Chinatown, you get called ‘Joleen.’ It’s about trying to fit in, avoiding the ethnic thing.”
    “You draw from a counter-ethnicity,” said Morgan, rolling the name Joleen through his mind with a country cadence.
    “I like that,” said Shelagh Hubbard. “You could have been an academic, Morgan, the way you make up your own jargon. There’d be a publication in that: ‘Crossing Over: Second-Generation Immigrants and Counter-Ethnicity in Naming Their Offspring.’”
    “I’m seventh-generation, actually,” said Joleen.
    “I’m from Vancouver, myself,” said Dr. Hubbard, as if her declaration made sense. “We’d better get back to work,” she continued. “We can’t leave everything to Professor Birbalsingh. You can watch along if you want, Detective.”
    “The clothes,” said Morgan. “How did you remove them?”
    “Very carefully. The limbs articulated with gentle persuasion. Hers were easier than his.”
    “They didn’t have underwear on,” said Joleen. “She didn’t even have bloomers.”
    “They weren’t invented yet,” said Dr. Hubbard.
    “Open-crotched culottes. Whatever. She wasn’t wearing anything under her petticoats. Neither was he — no underwear under his trousers. The frock coat is fine worsted but his pants are a really coarse twill. You can bet they didn’t get dressed like that on their own.”
    “The clothes are as valuable as the lovers themselves,” Shelagh Hubbard observed.
    “I doubt they would have agreed,” said Morgan.
    Shelagh Hubbard smiled enigmatically.
    “And the bodies?” he asked. “They’ll be examined and recorded and then shelved, I suppose.”
    “We really should get back to work.”
    “What are we looking for?” he asked.
    “We? Anything at all. The cause or causes of death. They might have died separately. You could help us track downtheir identities, Detective. Not that it really matters, but it might give us insight into why they were killed. I doubt we’ll ever know by whom.”
    “It matters. Without names, they’re generic,” Morgan observed. “Without a story, they’re artifacts.”
    “I think you’d make a better poet than professor,” said Joleen.
    “Thank you,” said Morgan.
    “We’re looking for anomalies,” explained Shelagh Hubbard. “Discovery through difference: what is out of place, what distinguishes these individuals from others, who are they now? As bodies, they’re generic, yes, but as artifacts they are a present phenomenon, one which we need to study, Mr. Morgan.”
    “Sorry. Carry on, by all means. I’ll just take a peak in the box.”
    “Those are the heads. I think it would be better if you left them alone for now. We need to examine them in laboratory conditions.”
    “We’re in a laboratory,” he said as he lifted the top off the box. The heads had been carefully arranged side by side, protected from sliding about during transportation by a black, velvety