Herbert Lieberman - City of the Dead

11. Scalp opened by intermastoid incision from one ear across to the other. Skullcap removed. The bones difficult to saw through. Six to 8 millimeters thick.

12. Left frontal sinus filled with pulpy matter… dark-red clots, right frontal sinus. Vessels much distended with blood…

“ Come on, Lolly. It’s this way. ”

“ No, it isn’t, Daddy. I’m sure we came the other way. Through that little copse behind the church… ”

…debris in aperture of skull. Much destruction and hemorrhage along the track of the bullet wound.

“ It’s four strokes then raise your head. Four strokes, raise your head. Four strokes —”

“ I know, but I keep getting water in my mouth. ”

“ That’s too damned bad. We’re going to keep right on doing this until… ”

…the head being raised and drawn forward, a .38-caliber deformed lead bullet is recovered from area just below right ear. Brain being removed, its base seen to be infiltrated with blood.

“Compravao, compravi, comprava, compravamo, compravate, compravano.”

“ Good… Now the past absolute. ”

“ But, Daddy, we’re not up to the past absolute .”

“ So what? There’s no law against being a little ahead of the rest. Come on now —comprai, comprasti, compro…”

13. …continuous incision carried from chin to pubic symphysis. Sternum removed.

14. Heart approximately the size of a man’s closed fist. Very rigid… “ Lolly, your mother and I have decided… .” About 40 cubic centimeters dark-red blood small buffy clot escaping from right auricle… “ to separate. Just temporarily, mind you. Sort of a vacation from each other. ”… Mitral ostium so narrowed as to admit only the tip of the ring finger…

The fly buzzes through a shaft of sunlight, circles several times around Konig’s head and lights on his lapel, suddenly quiet there and rubbing its forelegs together. Konig is peering through a gray, shadowy hallway, the place reeks of wet plaster and urine; his eyes move beyond walls and beams to a squalid little cubicle…

15. Large quantities of thick bloody froth escape from left bronchus.

16. Tongue retracted behind jaws, covered with dirty brown coating… some bloody mucus in pharynx.

Lolly on her knees, cowering in the clammy shadows, whimpers softly to herself. A large black figure, moving, sliding, insinuating itself toward the cringing figure …

17. Glottis open. Larynx and air passages filled with thick frothy fluid containing yellowish-brown flakes.

The shadow of a cleaver whooshes sick-eningly through a series of overhead circles above her.

17. Spleen, 120 grams. Splenic pulp—brownish-red. Left kidney, 130 grams. Bladder normally distended. Urine clear, amounting to approximately 80 cubic centimeters.

Lolly whimpers, a small bleating sound, like that of a trapped, wounded animal, knowing it’s to be devoured. Her hands rise above her head as if to protect herself.

18. Liver, 1,500 grams. Gall bladder filled with somewhat ropy but otherwise clear dark-green bile.

“ Oh, Daddy. Daddy. ”

“ Come on, honey, You can do it .”

19. Stomach distended. Contains about 150 cubic centimeters of greenish thick fluid.

Lolly on her knees praying before her executioner.

20. Upper part of duodenum contains a whitish fluid. Greenish-yellow bile flows freely from orifice of common bile. Pancreas pale, normal.

The cleaver reaches the apogee of its climb …

21. Upper part of intestine contains grayish fluid resembling gruel, slightly colored with bile.

… and starts its swift, irreversible descent.

Lowest part of ileum contains quantity of very fluid feces. Large intestine from ileocecal valve full of thick, pulpy feces.

Lolly’s scream rips through the air like a switchblade. A vision of her head drifts before his eyes—disembodied—severed from the torso—eyes open, showing large areas of white, pupils rolled upward beneath the lids… one side of her face bloody and contused.

Konig is on his feet, whirling through the room, caught and turning through the mote-filled shaft of sunlight, as if pursuing some fleeting image. He doesn’t realize he’s been on his feet for several moments, cold, clammy sweat soaking through the armpits of his shirt, and whirling… whirling.

The door swings open. A myopic, dwarfish clerk pokes his head into the room, a little aghast at seeing Konig’s demented pirouetting. Konig halts abruptly and they stare at each other.

“Well, what the hell do you want?”

Still gaping at him through bottle-thick lenses, the clerk gulps. “They’re ready for you now, Chief.”

“That is correct.”

“And you are a duly licensed physician and surgeon?”

“That is correct.”

“In what state?”

“State of New York.”

The dull, mechanical litany of the voir dire drones on. “How long have you been licensed to practice medicine?”

“Since 1935.”

“And you are presently engaged in the practice of your profession?”

“Yes. I am Chief Medical Examiner, City of New York.” Sun streaming through tall, soot-streaked windows into the drowsy, stuporous air of the courtroom. The judge, slouched over the bench, appears to be dozing behind his spectacles. The jurors, bored and distracted, suffocating in the dusty, airless space, dream of home and release. Their gazes seesaw slowly back and forth from witness to attorney, keeping precise time with the cadence of the ensuing dialogue.

A tiny, wizened court reporter, his feet barely touching the floor, taps incessantly on the keys of a small recording machine. Traffic noises throb upward from the street below. From somewhere south and west of them, somewhere in the vicinity of the river, fire engines and police sirens wail out a message of disaster. But here, inside the courtroom, the relentless nasalities of the prosecuting attorney drone on through the waning afternoon.

Q. “So that, in summary, Doctor, it is your carefully considered opinion that the bullets were fired from a hand gun—caliber thirty-eight—situated somewhere to Benjamin Wilton’s left side?”

A. “That is correct.”

Q. “And that there were two points of impact?”

A. “Yes. One over the left breast, which was superficial, grazing. The other bullet struck over the median center of the left eyebrow and lodged below the right ear. That was not superficial.”

Q. “And, Doctor, you have testified, have you not, that the murder weapon was fired at a distance of fifteen to eighteen inches from the victim’s head?”

A. “Ballistics tests and powder burns found at the point of entry suggest such a distance.”

Q. “And that the bullet penetrated the skull at a downward angle of roughly fifty degrees?”

A. “Ballistics tests and the track of the missile within the victim’s brain suggest such an angle.”

Q. “And because of that angle of penetration, and given the victim’s known height of five feet five inches, it is then your carefully considered opinion that the victim’s assailant would have to be a man nearly a whole foot taller?”

A. “That, of course, is somewhat more difficult to fix with any certainty. But if the victim wasn’t sitting at the time of the attack—and since no chair was found in the immediate vicinity of the body, I must conclude that he was standing, or at least on his feet—then the distance at which the gun was fired and the angle of penetration suggest to me the assailant’s height to be somewhere in the neighborhood of six feet three and six feet five inches.”