Calling all my fellow writers

[annathepiper]

This is not for me, but rather, for kisanthe! She needs a plausibility check on a scenario she's got going on in the plot for her Nanowrimo effort. Anybody out there with suitable clues want to take a crack at this?

Short form: Heroine's best friend has been killed off in a horrific and nasty way. kisanthe needs to have the heroine be called in to identify the body rather than the best friend's actual family members, and we were trying to figure out a plausible way for that to happen. The best thing we could come up with was a scenario where the cops find multiple ICE numbers in the victim's cell phone, for both appropriate family members and the heroine. Cops call the family members but learn that they're out of town and that the heroine is local, and secure the family's permission to then call the heroine and have her come on over and ID the body. We're assuming that the family would naturally be notified by phone the instant the heroine says yea or nay.

Does this work? Would actual cops do that? Any suggestions/tweaks for the plausibility here would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Comments

[otoselkie.livejournal.com]

I can't help, but little_details is usually a font of information on such questions :).

[annathepiper]

Cool, thanks for the tip! :)

[gerimaple.livejournal.com]

how about: best friend's family are so dysfunctional and sucky she set up the heroine as her Power of Attorney person, so someone she trusted would be responsible and keep the asshat relatives at bay.

[annathepiper]

We'd thought of that one, but from what she was telling me it felt wrong for the character to have a PoA. kisanthe said that since the character in question is only 24, she was having a hard time seeing her thinking of having a PoA.

[solcita.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't know that cops actuall use the ICE thing or if it's just Internet legend. I can ask some of my acquaintances at work tomorrow, though, if you like?

[annathepiper]

If you have an opportunity, that would be incredibly helpful! Thank you! :) :)

[morgie.livejournal.com]

ICE?

Vic could have best friend listed as emergency contact, and not have family in the area? (not sure if that'd work though)

[annathepiper]

ICE = In Case of Emergency.

Well, "no family in the area" was part of the scenario I described above, see. kisanthe is seeing the character as being on decent terms with her folks, so we were kinda thinking that even if the family members weren't necessarily outright tagged as ICE contacts in her phone, any halfway decent cop would be able to figure out who her family members were and contact them as next of kin. Which led us to wondering if, if the heroine were also tagged as an ICE contact, whether the cops would contact her if they were given permission to do so by the non-local next-of-kin, on the assumption that a fast ID of the body would be better than waiting for the kin to get into town.

My trick

[kirbyk.livejournal.com]

She and her best friends coincidentally have very similar last names.

I once dated a girl with the last name (at the time) of Kruger, compared to my Krueger. Random people often assumed we were siblings, despite the different spellings. It's plausible enough that if they found her number, maybe a business card or a cellphone entry, with the same last name, they'd call. Maybe throw in some local issues, like a protest or a crane falling on Bellevue, to make the police department overworked at the time, and I'd believe it.

[cafiorello.livejournal.com]

Could have the mom freak out and *ask* the friend to do it instead....

[annathepiper]

We talked about that very option, but kisanthe is seeing this best friend character with at least one sibling as well and figures that the parents would call upon the sibling before they'd call upon a best friend in such a situation.