I sat on this chapter for three months trying to decide if it was funny enough to post.
And I'm still not sure.
part three.
Andy, visibly shaken: I never seen a dead body before.
Pause.
Andy: Which made pulling the plug on my Gram-gram a little complicated, but...
Pause.
Andy: It's just not my scene.
--
Michael, still a sweaty pale green: Where could this kid have come from?
Pause.
Michael: Could Toby have killed him and left him here before he fled the country?
He nods.
Michael: It's possible.
--
Creed, casually: You know, I finally heard that Miley Cyrus speak the other day.
He nods cautiously.
Creed: Somehow it just seems wrong that she can talk at all.
--
Despite everything, Pam couldn't help but be amazed at the types of conversations that came up during the "waiting for the police" part of her day.
"Does anyone know this guy?" Oscar finally came out and asked.
Mostly there was silence, but Jim somehow found it in him to shake his head.
"You can't know that for certain," Dwight corrected him quietly. "If someone really wants to, they can change their appearance completely and hide in plain sight. Like that Serbian war criminal."
Creed nodded in recognition. "Garth Brooks," he volunteered.
Phyllis squinted. "Garth Brook isn't a war criminal."
"Probably he is," Jim said, more out of nervousness than anything else.
--
Jim, with glum distraction: Yeah... I didn't think I was the kind of guy that made jokes in front of dead people, either...
Pause.
Jim: But I've really learned a lot about myself today...
--
"He looks so natural," Kelly mused.
Pam blanched. "He's missing half of his face."
"I thought that was just something you said at funerals. I didn't think it had to really mean anything," Kelly replied defensively. "Like 'I'm sorry for your loss.'"
"This isn't a funeral," Stanley ruminated lowly.
"It could be, though," Phyllis offered. "I mean, I know none of us knew him, but that doesn't mean we can't say a few words or something. What do you think, Michael?"
Michael had been uncharacteristically silent since he unearthing of the corpse, which failed comfort his employees for the same reason most biological entities are less at ease about a hurricane when they realize they're in the eye of it.
Michael shook his head. "I just can't believe this happened on my watch."
Phyllis placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.
--
Michael: This is the worst tragedy since Kelly Bundy had her boobs cut out.
--
Jim had taken the opportunity to slip away from the crowd and stare wistfully over the gate.
"Hey, Tuna!" Andy called over.
Jim turned to face Andy and Dwight, who were standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a way that couldn't help but draw attention to their many Dweedle Dee and Dweedle Dum-like qualities. "Yeah?"
"Who won?" Andy asked.
Jim cocked an eyebrow to indicate his complete lack of understanding. "What?"
"Who won the contest?" Dwight demanded.
Jim looked at each of coworkers in turn. He thought about that pathetic look he'd seen in Andy's eyes in the breakroom earlier that day and the horrible unearthly wailing he'd heard coming from Dwight's bedroom the night he and Pam had stayed at the farmhouse. He looked at each of them in turn and he saw that same sad, crippling desperation in both their eyes.
"You know what," he said finally, "nobody wins."
And, with that, he walked away.
--
Dwight, biting down on his fury: I cannot believe that Jim would let me down in this, his most sacred of callings... when I infiltrate my woman with mystic lightening rod, I need to know that she is truly mine by right of conquest!
--
Andy: ...
He looks sidewise at the camera.
Andy: You know, I kinda think the Tuna knew what he was doing this time.
--
Michael continued to stare at the body as though hypnotized. "I can't believe we all end up like this," he reflected.
Oscar raised an eyebrow. "Yeah... I don't think most of us end up in a car with our faces shot off."
"It happened to my dad and my uncle," Michael said softly.
Oscar was saved from having to deal with this new information by the timely intervention of the authorities.
"Dunder Mifflin?"
Jim nodded. "That's us."
"I'm Investigating Officer Horovitz, my partner Investigating Officer Diamond," the cop said, giving the standard police introduction for his partner. "We'd like to ask all of you a few questions."
Dwight immediately jumped at the officers.
"Except him," Investigating Officer Horovitz said simply.
There was a general nervousness as to whom exactly would be the first one to speak to the police, followed by a smaller sort of nervous as to whether it was a "who" or "whom" situation, but the end it was Pam who took the initiative to step and say "let me show you where we found the body."
Pam lead the policemen to the car where the body was still waiting, a task not made easier by the crowd that had milled around it.
"I guess you must see a lot of this, huh?" Michael asked, trying to speak as tersely as possible.
Investigating Officer Diamond eyed him with cold disdain. "There were exactly two homicides in Scranton in the last year."
"Oh my God," Michael gasped in horror.
Officer Diamond said nothing.
"How old do you think this kid was?" Michael persisted. "Nineteen, twenty?"
"He's twenty-seven," Investigating Officer Diamond said gruffly, holding the dead guy's driver's license aloft.
"The same age as Kristen Bell," Michael said, hushed as though it were terribly significant. "Everything has come full circle."
"Don't you think he looks like Balthazar Getty?" Kelly squeaked, as though she were looking at a friend's MySpace profile.
"Kelly, the man is dead," Pam pointed out bluntly.
Kelly recoiled, slightly hurt. "I'm just trying to honor his memory."
"You know," Michael began, drawing himself up to full pomp, "There's a lesson in all this."
"Oh, here we go," Stanley grumbled.
"This could have been anyone us," Michael argued. "Especially Meredith. He blew his mind out in a car..."
"Actually, it hasn't been ruled a suicide yet," Investigating Officer Horovitz pointed out.
Michael brushed him off. "Just a matter of time."
Investigating Officer Horovitz nodded. "Just a matter of time and the laws of physics being completely rewritten on the fly, yes."
"Well, there you go," Michael said, as though he'd just handed the officer an Emmy. "I wasn't just watching Harvey Birdman Attorney at Law for laughs, you know."
The officer grunted something, but Michael wasn't about to start listening to reason at that point.
"I don't know about you," Michael continued, trying to keep the tears from obscuring the vision of the people he cherished more than his iPod full of Bill Cosby albums, "but I couldn't live with myself knowing that had happened to any one of you. They say the hardest thing in the world is to lose a child, and my heart's just too big to survive something like that."
"So, you're not going to adopt us?" Pam asked.
Michael shook his head. "No, Pam," he choked on hushed emotion, clearly thinking he was crushing her every last hope. "No, I'm not..."
Pam let out a silent breath of relief while the rest of the office and the visiting police presence could only look incredibly confused.
"But that's not enough," he continued, "I still be worried about all of you... coming into work every day and parking in Crime Alley."
"There's been one crime in this parking lot in the thirty years since this building was erected," Investigating Officer Diamond argued, wrestling down his fury.
"Actually, we found a marijuana cigarette here two years ago," Dwight pointed out, while Kevin tittered like a school girl over the word "erected."
"So, that's two crimes that have happened in this parking lot," Michael whispered.
"Three if you count the hit and run you did on me last September," Meredith reminded them.
The two cops looked at each and Investigating Officer Diamond turned to a fresh page in his notepad.
"It wasn't a hit and run," Dwight hissed. "And Michael made sure you got medical attention after he crippled you temporarily."
"Thank you, Dwight," Michael nodded gratefully. "I know it's just a matter of time before this parking lot claims its next victim, and I'm not about to let it be one of you, so..." Michael took a breath "...effective immediately, you're all fired."
And with that, Michael turned and ran back into the building, not doubt to unless a sea of tears that would put Alice Liddell to shame (and not a cake marked "eat me" in sight anywhere).
And, for a time, there was silence.
"Do you think we should still say something?" Phyllis nervously asked.
Everyone turned to stare at her with a total lack of comprehension, which made Phyllis understandably nervous.
"For..." she shrugged her head in the direction of the dead man.
"Oh, who the fuck cares?!" Stanley shouted.
End