Conglomerated Meat Products Limited has a rather infamous reputation, beloved by customers for low prices and hated by nutritionists for how those prices are achieved. At least they were, and those detractors would love more information. Alas, the last three health inspectors to visit the plant have vanished without a trace, the police somehow never finding evidence of foul play… -- Deathshead419
On paper, it looked like a very good business. It never ran out of supply, and could fulfill a great deal of demands. Regardless of the availability of the source material. That was what gained the attention of the inspectors.
They went in, went missing, and their vehicles or belongings turned up very far away and under mysterious circumstances. No lingering traces to place where they had been before they arrived to the place of discovery. Police were baffled. Government agents were baffled. Forensics experts were completely perplexed. There should be some kind of trace, but they found nothing. Well. Nothing out of the ordinary.
And of course the factory managers of Conglomerated Meat had seen the inspectors, and seen them leave. They even had securicam footage of their car leaving the lot.
Sufficient proof, on first appearances.
Though anyone investigating anything knows better than to stop at first appearances. Jo Gunn knew it better than most. They called her in whenever the professionals had run out of ideas, and they had done that three hare-brained concepts ago.
"It's not fucking aliens, George," Jo sighed. "Occam's Razor says that it's something so simple you've overlooked it."
"I have never heard of that band," said George. "You keep that indie bullshit to yourself."
Jo felt the migraine creeping up on her. Good old George. Good old dumb-as-a-bag-of-bricks George. "Okay George. Just run me through what Forensics found."
"Well, there's no fingerprints, no weird DNA, no unexpected trace..."
"George," warned Jo. "I asked what Forensics found, not what they were looking for."
"Huh?" said George, looking up from the pages of the report. Eloquent as always.
Jo plucked the report from his fingers with a, "Thanks," and read through it herself. It was faster that way. They found the missing agents' fingerprints, their DNA... and some former missing agents' DNA. On the same evidence. Not epithelials. Fragmentary cell blobs. And they found pig DNA, which was what one might expect from an inspector visiting a pork sausage factory.
The pig DNA was also in fragmentary cell blobs. Like one might expect to fly loose from meat processing equipment.
Oh. Oh shit.
If Human DNA was flying off in fragmentary cell blobs, that had to mean that the factory was also processing people. Jo called up Forensics and said, "Do a full DNA profile of all the fragmentary cell blobs.
"I know where all the inspectors have gone," Jo announced.
"Just like that?" said George.
"Meat Savers, for twenty dollars a pound."
[Photo by Allen Rad on Unsplash]
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