Anna wore a mask but still pinched her nose as she gingerly followed Nygma and Otis over the police cordon, stepping across slippery rocks coated in slimy moss.
The reported body parts had been found on a stretch of shallows near an old sewage outlet. The tide had pushed several pale, twisted pieces of human remains onto a pile of loose stones, where they stood out starkly beneath the gray daylight.
"This is the spot, Mr. Nygma." Fighting the churning in her stomach, Anna pointed at the waterlogged scraps of tissue wedged between the rocks. "And all of these, too."
Nygma crouched down and gently shifted a severed arm with his rubber-gloved hand, examining it intently for a while.
"No substantial bloodstains at the discovery site. The skin is wrinkled and pale from prolonged immersion... this isn't the primary crime scene," he murmured. Then he pointed his cane toward the circular sewage outlet nearby, which spewed wastewater like the throat of some enormous beast. "Significant tissue swelling, edges worn down by the current... they weren't dismembered here. The water carried them downstream, then the rocks and trash caught them."
Just then, Otis gave a startled cry. "Mr. Nygma, Officer Anna! Over here... there's another body!"
Behind several rusted metal components, a man's corpse lay facedown. Unlike the carefully cut body parts, this corpse had been stripped naked, without even his underwear left behind. Half his right hand was missing, and his exposed skin bore several obvious bruises and a vicious knife wound across his throat. Most striking of all, however, was that despite his clothes being gone, the metal skull mask on his face remained securely in place.
"One of Black Mask's men..."
Anna spoke quietly, a trace of tension in her voice. "Looks like even the homeless know that