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instructed.
    I grabbed the industrial flashlight that I used for commercial diving, and crossed underneath the caution tape. A second photographer stepped down from the aluminium ladder that was being used to ascend to the top of the silo. He stumbled through a few puddles when he reached the ground, tumbled onto his chest and remained on his hands and knees for a few minutes. His stomach and back muscles contracted violently. I closed my eyes and turned around as he began to vomit.
    â€œGet in and get out,” Mull said, folding his arms sternly across his chest, beginning to worry about the integrity of the crime scene. I felt like telling him he was right—that things had gotten worse—but decided to allow his uncertainty and misgiving to remain uninterrupted. Looking into his eyes I knew that he was thinking about his daughter. They were watery and doleful. I wished it could have been as simple as I once thought it would be.
    I climbed the ladder slowly to the top of the silo and swinging myself through the missing roof section, descended a series of rusting metal rungs that formed an internal ladder within the silo structure. From around some sixty feet in the air I leaned into the void and maneuvered the flashlight’s beam around in a clockwise direction, surveying the scene, and came across what appeared to be the body of a girl floating on her stomach. There appeared to be nothing above the surface securing her body in place; no wires or cords. There was no movement of any kind inside the silo.
    I dropped cautiously into the water and was struck instantly by the horrid stench of rotting flesh and animal feces. Some of the fluid splashed across the upper surface of my lips. It was apparent the body had been here for some time, left to waste away in a pool of muck and shit. With my back against the cylinder I moved along the face of the wall, hoping to get as far away from the body as I could. The body rested perfectly in the middle of the silo, rising and falling with the displacement of the water. I placed a mask over my eyes, took a quick breath and plunged underneath the remains towards the bottom of the structure and confirmed what Mull had suggested. The silo was layered on the inside with a dense concrete and steel wall, about eight feet thick, which appeared to be sufficiently intact to have retained the water and debris inside. Someone would have to check and see what the previous owners had stored there. Not that it would really tell them anything. If it indeed had been a dairy farm, it was probably filled with feed or corn. I broke the surface, ripped the mask from my face and gasped for air. There was a body bag already draped over the edge of the crumbled silo wall from where I had come in, looking as ineffectual as a face towel hanging over the thin construction of a bathroom rail. I wasn’t going to be able to carry the body out with me.
    ***
    A large crane had been brought to the site to help remove the body. I secured the mask back over my face and pulled down carefully on a line attached to what was basically a submergible gurney, similar to the ones used in rescues by the United States Coast Guard. Giving directions, I told the operator to lower the line. Pulling it towards me, I maneuvered the equipment and secured the body inside. Raising my arm above my head I signaled that crane operator could pull the harness up. Slowly, the body ascended from the water. Motioning to stop, I adjusted one of the straps. For the first time I could see what might have once been a girl’s face. The flesh around the construction of her nose had begun to peel away, the bones of her nasal cavity protruding out from underneath. I covered my mouth. What was left of the hair on her scalp resembled algae or kelp floating on the surface of the Dead Sea.
    It was a majestic and historical body of water, the Dead Sea, which was rumored to cover the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Because of the