She stared at me with vacant eyes.  I ignored her and continued to work. Letting the camera guide me, I shot my way into the scene. The sycamore leaves above us rattled in the wind. It was cold and I didn't want to be here. Another victim of the drug war, she lay curled on the pavement with a backpack by her side. 

In our business, we must distance ourselves from the dead; it's the only way to survive.  And as cruel as it sounds, while the camera snapped, she was a piece of furniture, another dead prostitute.  I ignored her vacant eyes as she watched me.

Her dirty fingers still clutched the strap of a stained and dusty backpack.  I gently tugged it free. The zipper snagged as I pulled it open. Even as I went through the contents, my mind was elsewhere. I'd done all this before.  With just a touch, I could identify each item even before I pulled it out.  People who live on the streets carry the same things -- a toothbrush, a disposable razor, a dirty hairbrush, a tiny bar of soap wrapped in toilet paper. . .  

None of this interested me. And then I felt it . . .

Inside a plastic shopping bag, inside a plastic bread bag, covered with a blue bandana, was something that made me pause. It had a bit of heft to it. Carefully, I peeled away the wrappings to reveal this Thing that was so precious to her, this Thing that she went to such trouble to protect -- and it humbled me.

As the cloth fell to the pavement, she became a person. No longer a piece of furniture, she was a young woman, a victim of society, a victim of circumstance. I stood over her and for a moment, I stared into her empty eyes. Who was she?  What were her hopes? Her dreams?

The wind whistled through the sycamore leaves as I carefully placed a battered copy of Webster's Dictionary into the evidence bag.