Physical Traces

We found the victim still breathing in the makeshift operating room, her body wrapped in bandages and hooked up to an assortment of life-sustaining apparatus. Whether she was actually alive in a useful sense was something that remained to be ascertained by our medics.

Without any doubt, this was yet another incident of bodyskinning. The culprit was nowhere to be seen, but from the state of the victim, there was still about two or three days before the process was completed. And if the criminal was smart (which for this particular crime they all were), she would only return when the bodyskinning was completed and ready for harvesting.

Two or three days meant that she could really be anywhere in the world, much less this country. Particularly if she was wearing a suit. After all, one of the key advantages granted by a suit was untraceability. Be someone somewhere for a day, and another for the next. That's why catching a criminal is so difficult nowadays- how many people do you need to keep a look out for?

Of course, thanks to this successful raid, we had already learned several facts about the criminal. This was one of the chief benefits of finding a victim still the midst of the bodyskinning process, the small prospect of rescue notwithstanding (most victims were braindead, as sentience was not a requirement for bodyskinning). Our new knowledge about the criminal were obtained not from physical evidence left behind on the scene, nor from circumstantial witness accounts, but from the simple fact that nobody makes a bodysuit for fun.

A bodysuit is made to be used.

With high certainty, the criminal, or at the very least someone involved in the transaction, was female. And thanks to the more identifiable nature of a female body, we also were able to narrow down the range of heights and bust-waist-hip statistics for the criminal.