Herbert Lieberman - City of the Dead

“I did. And it’s still ambiguous. Could be either a female or a very small male.”

“What about secondary sex characteristics?”

“Nothing conclusive. There are just too many variables and overlappings in the secondary system. And all that hair and musculature stripped from the body.” McClos-key shrugs again. “I just don’t know.”

Pearsall, followed by the younger man, walks back to the long steel tables where the two reassembled corpses lie supine and oblivious, like sarcophagi figures—ancient kings, newly excavated.

Pearsall begins a casual examination of the corpse called Ferde. First he studies the head and face, or what remains of them. Because the skin has been completely peeled from the skull and face, except for two tiny patches, the hair of neither head nor face remains to give any hint of sex.

“What about the larynx?”

McCloskey smiles wearily. “See for yourself.”

In the next moment, Pearsall, armed with tape and calipers, is measuring the cadaver’s larynx.

When Ferde’s head was severed from the trunk, the larynx had remained attached to the head. The level of decapitation was between the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae. And, although the larynx normally extends down to the sixth cervical vertebra, Ferde’s was so small that it was found almost in situ above the plane of severance, which extended backward from the level of the lower border of the chin.

Pearsall is well aware that the larynx of a man is, on the whole, about one-third larger than that of a woman. The average length of the adult male larynx is nearly two inches. That of the female, about an inch and a half. Ferde’s larynx on Pearsall’s calipers measures 3 centimeters, or less than an inch and a quarter.

“That is a small larynx for a male.” Pearsall shakes his head perplexedly. “Even a very young male. How old did you figure this one?”

“Just based on limbs and skull sutures,” McCloskey stares ceilingward and computes aloud, “oh, I’d say between eighteen and twenty.”

“Odd,” Pearsall ponders aloud. “A larynx of that size in a male of that age.”

“Couldn’t agree with you more.” McCloskey nods. “That’s why I say it’s ambiguous.”

“I wonder where Paul gets the idea this is a male?”

“Beats me. If it is, it’s a very small one.”

“’Lo chaps,” a voice booms cheerily behind the two men. They turn in time to see Carl Strang breeze through the swinging doors and bound energetically up to them. He stops dead in his tracks, seeing the consternation on their faces. “My, my, pitched in gloom, you two. So sober. So earnest.”

Pearsall’s brow furrows. “We’re stuck on the sex of this damned thing.”

“The Chief seems pretty sure it’s a male,” McCloskey says.

“Oh?” Strang’s eyes sweep quickly over the corpse and settle on the paper wrist tag. He tilts his head to read it. “Ferde, ay? Doesn’t look like any Ferde to me.”

Pronounced at once and with such finality as to give it the ring of Holy Writ, both Pearsall and McCloskey are momentarily stunned. Strang continues. “It’s perfectly clear to me this little beauty is a female, and it’s not simply the fancy fingernail polish either. Just look at the stature of the thing—the limbs, the larynx.”

“We’ve just been all through the limbs and larynx,” Pearsall mutters impatiently.

But Strang barges ahead cheerily. “I don’t have to measure the damned thing to see it’s the larynx of a small female—say about nineteen or twenty. And for Chrissake, look at the skull. That’s no male skull. See how delicate it is. How effeminate. Feeble superciliary arches. Thin orbital margins. Vertical slope. Distinct frontal eminences. And just look at those occipital and mastoid regions. Small mastoid process. No muscular markings. My God—you can read it like a book. That’s no male, chaps. That’s a lady. A poor, sweet young thing come to a sticky finish.” Strang’s lecture concludes with a triumphal flourish, a burst of laughter, and patronizing good will for his baffled colleagues. “Now cheer up, the both of you.”

But Strang’s breeziness, his absolutely unhesitating certainty, rather than relieving their doubts, have only pitched them into deeper gloom.

“You make it sound very convincing, Carl.” Pearsall frowns.

“It is convincing because it’s true. You know it’s true. Both of you.” Strang’s manner has gone from good will to that of faintly amused scorn. “Know what’s wrong with you chaps? Not only you two but all of this damned staff around here. You’re all afraid to think for yourselves. To make an independent judgment. And do you know why? I’ll tell you why.” Strang smiles and there’s a spiteful glint in his eyes. “It’s because you’ve all had your balls cut off by the man upstairs. Dr. Big. Lord God Almighty, for whom we labor daily to his greater glory. He sticks a male name tag on the wrist of a stiff and even though all your training, all your experience, tell you that stiff is a female, you can’t get yourself to believe that you’re right and Dr. Big is wrong. What a funk. What a goddamned pitiful funk you’re all in.”

McCloskey stands there frozen speechless. Pearsall’s frown has turned to a glower. A broad swatch of crimson has leaped to his throat and is now beginning to flame up his cheeks. “That’s true, Carl,” his voice chokes. “What you say is perfectly true. We do listen to Paul Konig. Wait for his final reading on a case. What Paul Konig has already forgotten, most of us have yet to learn. He knows more in his little finger than the whole goddamned total of us combined.” He struggles to suppress the tremor in his voice. “Now if Paul Konig has come in here and tagged this cadaver Ferde, it’s because it damned well is a Ferdinand and not a Sally or a Joan. If Paul Konig says this poor battered, chopped-up heap of flesh and bone is a male cadaver, then it damned well is a male cadaver. Konig is the Chief, and when Konig speaks, he knows. He’s proved that time and time again in more cases and throughout more years than I care to remember. He’s got a track record no one else in this business has ever come close to. That’s why, Carl, when Konig speaks, we listen. He’s the Chief and he’s still the best. When you’re the Chief, hopefully we’ll be able to listen to you too.”

“ Sarcoma… myeloid… bone-marrow tumor… metastases… widespread massive invasion… three, four months at best .”

“ Lie .”

“ No lie… true… sorry… sorry… sorry .”

Words, echoes in a locked room. A shuttered house. Dust of old lost summers. Sand blown beneath a door. Shuttered windows. Furniture shrouded in sheets. Cold floors covered with strips of yellowing newspaper. Small black pellets of mouse droppings and the tracks of innumerable small wild things everywhere in evidence. The creatures of dune and moor who have huddled there for winter.

“ How can they be so sure? ”

“ Biopsy. X rays. Three of the biggest radiologists in the country… No mistake. ”

“ What did Brainford say? ”

“ Hopeless .”

“ And Keefer .

“ He said ‘cut.’ ”

“ Then in God’s name why not? ”

Sun flooding through an upstairs window beyond which can be seen a flat gray disk of ocean, timeless and immense, spreading to the sky. So still it seems almost to have been painted there. And from just below the window sounds the quick, purposeful click of garden shears.

“ Because it would be futile. They have to take off a leg. Why put her through the torture? ”

“ But if there’s a chance—any chance—one in a million. Why not? ”