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The severed arm

The severed arm is a bloated human forearm in a black turtleneck sleeve and glove, found among dead fish on the Marblehead beach at the start of The Summer Service.
Type Item (remains)
Aliases the arm
Holder The task force, in a cooler in the trunk of the Biz's car
First appearance Summer Service 01

Description

Church bells strike three as the team walks the beach past broken, freshly repaired and taped-up windows. Kurt rolls Investigate a Mystery (12), works out that the blast came from the harbor and moved inland, and finds the center of the damage. Something black is bobbing among the dead fish. It is a bloated, fish-eaten human arm in a soaking wet black turtleneck sleeve and black glove, with a violently splintered bone, running from the middle finger to past the elbow (Summer Service 01). See the beach and harbor.

History

  • Bagging it. Huell asks the woman at Harvard's Bait Shop for a large trash bag. The smell lessens but does not go away. The team decides not to remove the glove, since the hand might come apart, and leaves the arm for a medical examiner (Summer Service 01).
  • Calling it in. From a payphone Andrew tells Diane he has found an arm. She offers to send forensics and recalls that the brief said local police were hostile. Later she arranges for a forensics team to arrive the next morning and tells the team to keep the arm on ice (Summer Service 01).
  • The cooler. The team buys a cooler and ice at a beach store and duct-tapes it shut. Kurt rolls Sharp for Preparedness (10) and finds Tiger Balm in his kit, which everyone rubs under their noses. The cooler goes into the trunk of the Biz's Buick with the windows down. A young woman tells Kurt he smells (Summer Service 01).
  • Running gag. The smell soaks into the Biz's car, fueling repossession jokes. A small boy stops to stare at the team, holds his nose and starts crying. In Summer Service 03 Rita jokes that the Biz's car, supposedly already repossessed, is "why he put the severed arm in it" (Summer Service 01, Summer Service 03).

What remains unknown

The owner is never identified, and the arm's later whereabouts are never stated. The black turtleneck and glove could suggest one of the missing earlier survey team, but no episode says so.

Appearances