by Nathan Wada

Created on: August 09, 2009

SETTING: Homicide scene. Pre-dawn. Thursday. Pick a metropolis, any metropolis.

CHARACTERS

NATE: a grizzled, fairly jaded, mostly even-keeled homicide detective. The detective wears gray slacks and a powder blue tie with a jaundiced shirt that was once white.

CLAIRE: a rather frenetic forensic anthropologist. In something of a gender role reversal, she is the mercurial yang to Nate's measured yin. Claire dons a plum colored dress.

ACTION: Color as metaphor drives the mood and action of the scene. The colors sporadically appear and evolve through the actors' points of view. Nate's objective and surgical observations register in subdued blues. Claire's hyperkinetic interpolations manifest as flashes of yellow, orange, and red that highlight details of the crime scene.

(Sirens, flares, flashlights, and still-pooling blood notwithstanding, the scene opens in grainy and diminished black and white shades. The subtlest tinges of blue emerge as Nate begins to survey the crime scene).

NATE: ... this guy's still draining, how long does it take for four liters of blood to coagulate? Weird, the 187 was called in 70 minutes ago. This guy have no plasma or what? Claire, get over here with that camera and start your read. Get us anomalies, angles, measurements, all that noise...

(Nate pauses to take out some chew. Scene remains in black and white as Claire gingerly circles the corpse. When Claire picks up on the "anomaly" Nate previously solicited, the camera zooms into the victim's face as a yellowish orange is briefly flashed across the entire scene. Through Claire's point of view we can see the blood as red against a background that remains black and white.)

CLAIRE: Jason! ...I know this guy. This is Jason Barkowski, we were are Grinnell together. We even ...

NATE: Dated? Yeah Claire, we vet our outside help too. Just because you're not officially PD doesn't mean we don't know what your hamster had for brunch 11 days ago. You and this live wire were together for seven months a few years ago until he left you for that Miss County Fair Des Moines, or so the legend goes. My condolences. Think you can hold it together enough to still do your job?

(Nate tossed the previous words cavalierly over his shoulder as he went over to inspect the body himself. The broad, blue veneer we see of the panorama of the crime scene begins to take on purple tinges as Nate's gaze zooms in on the still-viscous blood. He reflexively checks his watch as he is puzzled by the discrepancy

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