Norman Cayce

Concept: County Coroner

Desc: Tallish and skinny but not cadaverous at all. Short curly brown hair. Glasses for reading. Wears steel-toed, non-slip tread boots with nearly everything. (“You would not believe how often they’ve come in handy. Now I just wear them all the time.”) White lab coat and dark blue cover-alls on the job.

History: Norm didn’t grow up here. He grew up in a flyspeck small town a few miles from town proper. And as is typical of a lot of places like that, there wasn’t a lot of work to go around.  Norm caught kind of the double whammy growing up. He personally was a bit shy and introverted, but his family was large and a bit rambunctious.  The sort of family that seemed completely unable to keep anything nice or capitalize on any good fortune. In fact, the night that Norm graduated from the community college as its salutatorian, They caused a drunken brawl and uncle Jimmy got arrested for aggravated assault. Don’t even get me started on the weddings and funerals.

 Norm never fit in at home and was not enough of a redneck to fit in with his peers in town, so he moved to the city and got himself a job working for the Coroners office. Norm wasn’t death-obsessed or anything, but he was a bit of a nut for detective literature and fancied that he could learn some stuff working there.  He was never going to have the right temperament to be a cop.

     He had the idea that he might work the job and maybe consider going back to college to get another degree, but the work was long and occasionally hard, and the money while good, was often soaked up by the doings of his feckless family. “Mom, you tell Randy that I’ll bail him out this time, but this is the LAST TIME!”

    The silver lining in all this was that the Medical Examiner, Arlene Bruckner, took Norman under her wing and probably taught him more about forensic science than any three other professors ever had. She was an older broad who smoked her Pall Malls and drank a 6 of Miller Tall every single night of her life. But her mind was still razor keen and perhaps more than teaching Norman the ins and outs of forensic science, taught him how to think and do so coherently. He’d have done anything for that old broad.

    So it was a rude shock when Norm came into the morgue one morning only to find she’d been torn to pieces. as if she’d run afoul of some frenzied animal.

    Now, the new County M.E is a fairly laid back guy who doesn’t seem interested in solving Arlene’s murder and is routinely telling Norman how to do his job...in a way that Norm finds very very suspicious. And lately, he’s been finding discrepancies in the paperwork. Serious discrepancies.

(Note: A Coroner is a person who is ultimately responsible for a number of the investigative/paperwork aspects of a person's death. They go around, collect the body, determine cause and time of death, are responsible for the disposition of the body and are responsible for determining if an investigation into the cause of death is necessary.  If an autopsy is to be performed, then this is done by the Medical Examiner unless you’re in a jurisdiction where the two offices are merged, or only one exists for whatever reason. Both positions are officers of the court. Some Coroner positions require a special medical degree, others are elected positions. Still others are the sort of position where one can simply work up into the position and this is the case here.

Attitude: “Pay attention. I’m only going to say this once. I take this work deadly serious. We have a responsibility to do the needful for these people. Some will come through these doors with no family. no friends. no one to care that their lives have been taken from them.  We are the only ones that can help their spirits rest or move on.  That’s a serious responsibility. If that’s not something you can handle, then please, fuck right the hell off now.”

Skills: A nice pile of dots in academics and sciences. At least 4 dots of Intelligence. He makes a decent living but has to be careful about divulging what he has or how much he makes to any member of his family because they’ll figure out a way to spend his money for him. “Aw COME ON MAN! This bass boat ain’t just for me!  You can get just as much use out of it as me. It’s fer all of us really!”   This is the reason why Norm can afford to make a down-payment on a nice house but prefers to rent a tiny tiny apartment. Any extra space he has would end up being taken up by some relation getting evicted or divorced.

Gear: Like many crime scene investigation professionals, he carries a large tackle box full of useful small tools, reagents, powders and evidence handling gloves and bags. He normally has a pocket protector the houses 3 ultra fine point zebra pens, 2 extra juicy permanent markers that he gets from dollar tree. Tongue depressors, fruit stripe gum, and a scalpel with a plastic cover over its blade.

Home: Norman's apartment is a marvel of efficiency. It is very small, and it's a good thing that Norman isn't even the least bit claustrophobic.  He's taken to purchasing appliances from Japan and Scandinavia. They are cultures that have internalized the idea of the microscopically small apartment and thus make appliances that take up very little space. The one full sized extravagance in the place is a battleship gray metal desk, where his computer sits and where his bookshelf rests. His cat "Tora" is the one element of chaos he allows in his life, and even she is remarkably well behaved compared to most of his family.

Circle: Norm has about 4 people who help out with various tasks around the lab and out in the field. Most of these people think Norm is a decent boss to work for, but that he could stand to have a drink and/or get laid a bit more often. 

Norm’s entire social life revolves around his church. He sings in the choir and is a pretty good second tenor. A perfect night off for Norm involves, petting his kitty, Take-out from the Chinese place down the block, reading a detective novel or futzing with the spec script he still plans to send to CBS for C.S.I. (Still not perfect yet.)

Story Uses:

“That investigation is ongoing.”

If you can’t see how to use a county coroner who has an axe to grind against whatever supernatural nut-job tore his former boss and friend apart, then either you are mind-shockingly unimaginative, or you are very tired and maybe you should lie down.

“Look. I’ll do as you ask, just don’t hurt them.”

Conversely, If you can’t see how it might be to your advantage to have the County Coroner in your pocket by holding his family hostage, Well. There’s not much I can teach you at all.

Connections:
*As you can imagine, he's on a nodding acquaintance with Trent Parker of Parker Mortuary and Black Creek Cemetery 
*It's a fairly famous story in law enforcement circles about how they were trying to locate a murder weapon in the field and an excited Officer Honus Brightwater ran up to Norman holding the shotgun in his ungloved hands.  The tongue-lashing he received at Norman's hands and later Arlene's, has passed into legend.  At times it is re-created at departmental Christmas parties.
*Knows Detective Bela Janofski. Considers him one of the good ones.
* For a few dollars, has gone "On background" for Patricia "Carnie" Pitt. but refuses to appear on camera for any reason. Likes her. Has asked her out, but their respective schedules are brutal.