“Ah.” Konig muses thoughtfully as he watches a tall, brisk, fortyish chap shamble up the aisle toward them. “Morning.”
“Morning,” Carslin’s and Konig’s voices collide in quiet response. Carslin, all solemn and professional, makes introductions.
“Dr. Schroder—Dr. Konig.”
“Hello.”
“How do you do.”
“Konig? Not Paul Konig of the New York ME?”
“Yes, sir.” Konig straightens. “That’s me.”
“Oh.” Schroder beams. “This is an honor. I cut my forensic teeth on your book. Something of a bible around our office.”
“Very kind of you.” Konig glows, obviously pleased. “Not at all. It’s simply a fact. It’s one of those seminal works. All of our professional lives have been touched by it. Wouldn’t you say so, Charles?”
“Absolutely,” Carslin replies so acidly that Schroder is momentarily shocked. It’s an awkward moment and for a while the three of them turn to the hole where the two Italian workmen, now hip-deep, continue to pitch spadefuls of thudding dirt upward onto a small slope of tumbling earth.
“Well—who are we waiting for now?” Konig inquires, trying to fill the void.”
“Deputy Mayor,” Carslin mumbles brusquely.
Just then a state troopers’ wagon turns into the auto path followed by a large black limousine.
“Ah,” Schroder sighs. “This should be him now.”
There’s a great deal of bustling and small chatter while introductions are made, greetings exchanged. Deputy Mayor Maurice Benjamin has a curt, hasty manner. A no-nonsense, take-charge sort of chap, intolerant of laxity, uneasy during a pause. But as he gets around to Konig, something almost shy and evasive comes over that superbly arrogant manner.
“Morning, Maury.”
“Morning, Paul. How are you?” Konig’s glance is so piercing that even the Deputy Mayor cannot confront him squarely. Instead, he veers sharply, moves on to shake other hands.
It’s a curious sight, this highest emissary of the Mayor’s office, glittering in an expensive hand-tailored suit, all puffing and swelling with self-importance having just alighted from a shiny black limousine bearing the large, imposing shield of the City of New York on its bumper, having to give quarter to a shabby, rumpled figure with tousled hair and the look of a demented Old Testament prophet.
“Well,” the Deputy Mayor blusters, “let’s get on with it.”
Carslin nods’ at the mound of fresh earth and the narrow trench with the two men, chest-high, grunting in it. At a loss for further conversation, the four men saunter back to the grave while the two state troopers lounge against the limousine.
“Ashes to ashes,” a voice chants softly inside Konig’s head as he peers downward into the freshly dug grave. “Ida Bayles Konig. Beloved wife of Paul. Endeared mother of—”
The sharp chinking sound of metal impacting on metal. Then suddenly brass and wood coming into view.
“Ah—there we are,” says Schroder.
Ropes are quickly produced, and shortly, with more grunting, the coffin, rising, teetering slightly, is hoisted out of the damp rectangle of earth and edged to one side of the grave.
Carslin and Schroder move quickly to the box. Kneeling, Carslin dusts a few crumbs of still-clinging earth from the brass plate and reads:
LINNEL GAINES ROBINSON
May 6, 1954, March 7, 1974
Benjamin moves up quickly beside Dr. Schroder. “You officially acknowledge this to be—”
“I do,” Schroder murmurs, peering over Carslin’s shoulder.
“We’ve set up a small lab and a microscope over in the rectory,” says Carslin.
“Where’s that?” Benjamin asks.
“Just a couple of hundred yards back down the road,” one of the troopers calls from the limousine.
“Okay,” says the Deputy Mayor with the finality of a judge gaveling a portentous decision. “Let’s get on with it.”
Konig shuffles forward. “Before you do, I suggest you open the lid slightly.”
Benjamin glances queasily at Carslin.
“To release the gases,” Konig goes on.
“By all means,” Carslin replies, not to Konig but to the Deputy Mayor.
In the next moment the two Italian diggers have released thumbscrews and prized the lid slightly. There is a long, high hiss like the sound of a hermetically sealed jar of coffee being suddenly opened.
Moments later the box is hoisted onto the shoulders of the diggers and the two troopers. Carslin, Schroder, and the Deputy Mayor move out quickly behind the coffin.
“Aren’t you coming?” Benjamin turns and calls back to Konig.
“No,” says Konig, still hovering above the freshly dug grave. “I think I’ll wait here.”
Then, in a moment or so, watching the swaying procession wind its way down the auto path, he is alone there amid the chugging blackbirds, the chirruping of spring crickets, the long, neat aisles of placid stones.
“When did you ever—” the fierce, condemnatory voice cries again. “When have we ever been able to—”
The figure of a small girl, bangs, laughing eyes, dressed in kilt and knee socks, wheels toward him on a tricycle through the cluttered labyrinth of headstones.
“Lolly.”
“You killed her.”
“Lolly.”
“You killed her.”
“I—”
“Yes, you did. You killed her—with that stupid, unfeeling arrogance of yours.”
It is to the figure of the child he talks, but the fierce, strident voice that answers him is that of a young woman. “Lolly—Mother was very sick.”
“Never mind. You—”
“Incurably sick.”
“—rode all over her. You killed her just as surely as if—”
He has no words for her grief. He can barely shoulder his own. “Lolly—/—” His voice trails off even as the tiny kilted figure on the tricycle dematerializes. “Lolly—” he murmurs again but he is staring down into the hollow, gaping fissure of newly opened earth.
A short time later he sees the two troopers moving back up toward the limousine. They’re followed by Carslin and the Deputy Mayor, chatting solemnly. Schroder trails a few paces behind.
Something in the picture, something in the slope of their shoulders and the way they walk and chat quietly now beside the limousine, the Deputy Mayor’s head lowered, Carslin’s head tilted slightly toward him, lips moving as if they whispered words, tells Konig all he needs to know. Besides which, Maury Benjamin’s characteristically restive, ever-seeking eyes now appear to be assiduously shunning him.
Schroder, hands thrust deep in pockets, shoulders slightly hunched, comes shambling toward him. Their eyes meet. Konig feels a sickness in the pit of his stomach, but he is smiling broadly. “Well?”
“Leukocytic infiltration.”
“Ah?” Konig says, feigning surprise, but he’d known it all along.
“Quite pronounced,” Schroder offers sympathetically. “Want to see the slides?”
“No.” Konig shrugs wearily. “No need.”
The doors of the limousine and the troopers’ wagon swing open, bang shut, and without so much as a goodbye nod, the Deputy Mayor, preceded by the trooper escort, rolls imperiously past the place where Konig stands and down the auto path toward the exits.
Shortly after, Schroder too drives off, and Konig is left alone with Carslin, while about the open grave the two workmen, laughing and chattering in Italian, gather up their tools.
“Well, Charley,” says Konig with a burst of feeble cheer.
“Well?”
“What next?”
“Well,” Carslin sighs, somewhat ruffled, his eyes evading those of his old teacher, “I’ll have to file a complete report with the DA. Then I suppose—”
“A hearing,” Konig says, completing the sentence for him.
“No doubt.” Carslin’s eyes scan up and down the cluttered aisles of sto
nes as if they were searching for something there. “Look here, Paul. You have to understand. There’s nothing—personal. It’s simply a straightforward matter of—”
Konig waves him to silence. “Spare me the lecture on ethics. No recitations of the Hippocratic oath, please.”
“I had no intention of—” Miffed, Carslin gazes into Konig’s haggard face, transfixed by something strange and awful that he sees there. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m fine. Why?”
“I don’t know.” Carslin seems embarrassed. “Something about the way you were looking at me just then.”
“Oh?”
“I thought for a moment—”
“Yes?”
“I thought for a moment,” Carslin murmurs, obviously having a difficult time, “you were going to ask me to do something I couldn’t do.”
Konig smiles. “I was—but only for a moment. You know, Charley, I’d never ask one of my old students to compromise himself to save my neck. I’d be awfully pissed off with you if you did. Goodbye, Charley.” He thumps the younger man on the back, and as he weaves his way through the maze of headstones to his car, conscious of Carslin’s eyes still burning on his back, his knees momentarily buckle. He totters, slips, and very nearly goes down. Hearing a rush of movement at his back, coming toward him, he recoveres his balance, thrusts his shoulders back, stiffens his carriage, kicks out smartly with his aching leg, and with a million confluent streams roaring in his head with something like the sound of rushing water, his eyes swimming before him, he lurches blindly to his car.
»32«
“Hello, Fergie.”
“Hello, Paul.”
“How’s business?”
“Lousy. I trust things are the same with you.”
11:30 A.M. OFFICE OF CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER.
“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 ri
ght, 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?”
“Not yet, but I’m getting there. Still, I had no business popping off at you like that. I’m sorry. Here—let me light that cigar for you.” Konig whisks the Bunsen burner under Flynn’s cigar and holds it there while the detective, perplexed and utterly buffaloed, sucks noisily while lighting it. Then, somewhat appeased, he leans back in his chair and puffs contentedly.
“Well, I had no business bustin’ in like that either,” he says. “Guess I was still just steamin’ from that call.”
“Okay,” the Chief says abruptly. “We’re even now. What can I do for you?”
“I just come to tell you that them swatches of skin you sent over to the lab the other day—”
“What about them?”
“We were able to lift a couple of prints off them. Left index, ring, and thumb.”
City of the Dead Page 20