Herbert Lieberman - City of the Dead

“Hello, Fergie.”

“Hello, Paul.”

“How’s business?”

“Lousy. I trust things are the same with you.”

“I got your buggies here,” Ferguson Dell, Chief Curator, Department of Entomology, Museum of Natural History, wheezes into the phone. “Where’d you get these little beauties? No—don’t tell me. It’s probably something disgusting.”

“ Calliphora, aren’t they?” Konig asks, doodling on a pad.

“Unquestionably.”

“How old?”

“All depends.” With a great gargle of sputum, Dell clears his throat. “Report here says the stuff they were found on had been submerged.”

“That’s right. I can’t tell you how long it had been submerged, but the stuff wasn’t down very far. A foot, maybe eighteen inches at the most. Lot of it probably washed up recently.”

“Well, you’ve got to take that into account.”

“I already have.” Konig doodles furiously. “So what’ve you got for me?”

“Well, let’s see,” Dell says. “These little guys generally lay eggs on meat when it’s fresh, less commonly when it’s decayed.”

“Putrefaction on this stuff was not too advanced.”

“So you figure this thing took place pretty recently?”

“I didn’t say that,” Konig snaps. “I said that to my mind the putrefaction on this stuff wasn’t too far advanced. He can hear Dell’s puzzlement at the other end of the wire. “All I’m saying, Fergie, is that the normal factors that generally control the rate of putrefaction just don’t apply here. Very little blood left in the bodies. Only partial viscera recovered, therefore hardly any gastrointestinal microorganisms to feed on and start to break down the tissue. So the whole process of decomposition is delayed. And the thing is further complicated because of the submersion of the stuff—temperature, excessive moisture. I’m trying to put the time picture together, but it’s not easy. So I’m falling back on the maggots. What can you tell me?”

“Nothing’s ever easy with you, is it, Paul?” Dell sighs wearily. “Well, this variety of maggot deposits its eggs in groups of about one hundred and fifty. Depending on the temperature of the environment, they hatch in—oh, say—from eight to fourteen hours. Cold weather delays the hatching.”

“It’s been pretty warm all month.”

“Right. Unseasonably. Too goddamn warm for me. How I dread the summer.”

“Skip the meteorology, will you, Fergie? Just get on with it.”

“Okay—okay. All I’m saying is that in all probability that first hatching wasn’t delayed by climatic conditions. So we can figure the eggs hatched in, say, eight to fourteen hours after they were deposited on the meat. And they were deposited not during the time of submersion but only after the stuff washed up.”

“Okay,” Konig grumbles. “Go on. Go on.”

“I am, for Chrissake. What the hell’s the matter with you, Paul? You all right?”

“Sure—I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine. You sound—”

“I’m fine. Fine. Never mind me. Let’s get on with it.” Konig scribbles large, intertwining circles on his pad.

A pause of consternation follows, then Dell continues. “Well, as I was saying, that first larval instar persists for eight to fourteen hours. Then the skin of that larva is shed and you get a second instar, similar to the first, but larger. These little guys hang around for two,’ three days. Do you follow so far?”

“I’m right with you, Fergie.” Konig’s face trembles and a large throbbing has begun to pound mercilessly at the back of his head.

“Then the third instar is your typical maggot. Typical little bluebottle Calliphoras —like those you’ve got here.”

“How long do they feed?”

“They feed like pigs for six days,” Dell goes on with mounting zest.

“How old are the ones I sent you?”

“Well, I’m looking right now at one of the largest you sent over, and I can tell you right now that the total life of this little bruiser could not have exceeded twelve days.”

“Twelve at the outside,” Konig mumbles and scribbles on his pad.

“But was probably less,” Dell continues, “since from everything you tell me, it’s highly unlikely that these eggs had been laid more than a day or two after the deposit of the remains in the river.”

“I’m figuring two days for the tidal wash to have uncovered the remains.”

“So,” Dell continues, “put the age of the biggest larvae at ten days and that makes a period of twelve days from the time the body was deposited to the time you recovered these maggots. How does that jibe with your thinking?”

“Beautiful.” Konig feels the surge of exhilaration that always comes when his own carefully thought out hypotheses have been confirmed. “Just from the state of the remains, I’d already jotted down in my notes a figure of ten to twelve days. That’s perfect, Fergie. I’m very grateful to you and your buggies.”

“How many bodies you find down there, anyway?”

“Two—I’m reasonably certain of that now.”

“When did you find the stuff?”

“April twelfth.”

“That means the poor beggars probably got it around April first.”

“That’s right.” Konig’s laugh is a snarl. “April Fool’s Day.”

No sooner had he hung up than the door bursts open and he stares at the short, burly figure of Detective Edward Flynn bulling his way through the door with plucky little Carver, yipping fiercely, like an enraged puppy, at his heels.

“What in God’s—” Konig lumbers half out of his seat. “He just come bustin’ through, Doctor.” Carver waves her arms wildly through the air. “I told him to wait.”

“I ain’t waitin’ around here all day,” Flynn blusters. “I got business too.”

“I told him to wait, Doctor. He just come bustin’ right on past me.”

“That’s all right, Carver. You can go now. Sit down, Flynn.”

“I don’t wanna sit,” Flynn snaps. “I wanna stand.”

“Stand then.” Konig flings up his arms in exasperation. “Stand on your head if you like.”

“Who’s he to come bustin’ in like that?” Carver mutters, deeply aggrieved. He ain’t nobody.”

“All right, Marion.” Konig, on his feet now, grips her under the elbow and steers her toward the door. “That’s all right. You can go now, I said. I’ll take care of this myself.”

She’s still muttering when the door closes behind her, and Konig turns back to the detective. “Now what the hell is all this about?”

“I’ll tell you what the hell it’s all—”

“First of all, stop your goddamn hollering. This isn’t a bowling alley. It’s a mortuary. There are mourners here. And the dead. Show some respect.”

The argument works. A devout man, Flynn is mortified at his own unseemly behavior.

“Now sit down, Ed,” Konig says assuagingly, grasping the fact that the detective’s nose is still out of joint from their last phone conversation. In the next moment he thrusts a humidor at him. “Have a cigar.”

Red-faced and puffing, a look of puzzlement in his eyes, Flynn reaches for one of the Chief’s better cigars. But his hand stops in midair as if invisible forces held it there and something like suspicion creeps into his eyes. “I ain’t forgettin’ how you talked to me yesterday.”

“Sorry about that.” Konig’s voice melts with a vaguely bogus contrition. “I had to get those heads. They meant everything to me just then. The difference between identifying and not identifying those poor bastards you dug up the other night.”

“Don’t tell me you got ID’s on them already?”