Tricked

Tricked

The Iron Druid chronicles

By Kevin Hearne

Chapter 15

The key to faking deaths is a fine appreciation of arterial spray patterns. One might be tempted to simply smear a bit of blood here and there, but forensics fellows these days are a bit more sophisticated than they used to be. If they figure the scene is a fake, they'll tell the family and the said family will never hold that all-important funeral for closure. Without a body, the coroner would never issue a death certificate, but the police would at least designate it a cold case if you could convince them there was a high probability of death.

I have found that blood bags work very well at simulating spray with a strategically poked hotel apply pressure to the bottom of the bag, practice a bit, and before long you will be able to write stories of carnage and odes to gore.

A small fan brush – the sort that one dude used to paint happy little trees – can paint a picture of bluntforce spatters if you flick the surface properly. Don't use a toothbrush; those patterns are recognizable. You could even talk to yourself, as that painter did while you flick blood around : ”And may be over here we have a nice stab wound. And, I don't know, may be there is a few more back over here. Multiple stab wounds. It doesn't matter, whatever you feel like.”

When it comes to the actual blood, my former policy was that it was best to use somebody's else. You could even leave someone else”s hair, as long as it was plausibly the same color, and that was the best practice, because magic users would have no way to track you down. Can't do that anymore, however. Police routinely send all blood and other biological samples to labs for DNA matching, because some of theses goodies might belong to the suspect. It's tougher to fool the coppers these days, but I enjoy the challenge.

Granuaile wasn't worried about constructing the crime scene, however. She steered me away from that topic.

“What I want to know is how you get around the documentation issues,” she said. She was driving us down to Flagstaff as Oberon napped in the backseat.

“Documentation of what?”

“Of your life before you take on a new identity. I mean, you can't just show up. You need all this stuff. A credit history. How do you do it?

Tricked. Illustration by Elena.