He asked Rose, who pointed at the slice just above the left knee. ‘Normally I’d say it was just the result of a blade broader at the top than at the bottom. In this case very wide, like an axe, or a hatchet.’
‘Normally?’
‘There’s not a hatchet or axe made accurate enough or with a honed blade sharp enough to do this or the other fellow.’
‘So what was it?’
‘Beats me,’ said Rose. ‘Whatever did it is on a hinge, I can tell you that much. Cut begins at the left and follows through to the right in one stroke.’
‘What kind of hinge?’
‘You remember that movie a few years back? Guy’s on a boat and he gets sprayed by radioactive mist?’
‘The Incredible Shrinking Man.’
‘That’s the one. There’s a scene where he tries to defend himself with a pair of huge scissors. Imagine he cut his legs off instead – that kind of hinge.’
‘Thanks, Doc. I’ll go tell Fritz that my two victims were cut apart by monster scissors and my best suspect is Allison Hayes.’
‘Who?’
‘She was the star of Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman.’
‘You got any useful information inside that big head?’
‘Stretchers to Emergency, please. Outpatients, please leave the corridors immediately. This is a police order. Clear the corridors immediately and proceed to the Emergency area.’
‘For Christ’s sake.’ Rose turned off the water and hung up the hose. He flipped the butt of his cigarette into the sink and stripped off his apron.
‘You’re not going to finish up?’
‘Not until I find out what’s going on up there.’
Tossing his apron onto a hook the medical examiner banged out through the double doors and headed down the ceramic-tiled corridor. Ray slung the camera bag over his shoulder and followed. They went down several more corridors, then up a flight of steps that led them to the Minor Medicine area. The corridor beyond the door was filled with orderlies, patients in wheelchairs and white-uniformed nurses. Rose grabbed an orderly who was parking a man in a wheelchair out of the way.
‘What’s happening?’
Ray stared; the orderly’s face was wet, eyes full of tears. ‘Say the man’s been shot. Governor too.’
‘Man?’
‘President man, don’t you know nothing?’
‘Out of the way.’
Rose cut a path through the milling swarm of patients and personnel, then turned right down the Obstetrics corridor towards the two trauma rooms and the curtained emergency booths. Two nurses at the station on the left were working the telephones. Both of them were in tears like the orderly. President of what and why were they crying?
Ray slowed down. There were two or three empty stretchers up against the walls, some more people in wheelchairs and two very frightened-looking children, both wearing casts. Looking down Ray saw that the chequerboard floor was splattered with brains and blood. He saw something gleaming dully on the floor under one of the wheeled stretchers and with some difficulty bent to pick it up.
It was a bullet. From a rifle by the looks of it and a large calibre. He slipped it into the pocket of his jacket and continued to follow Doc Rose down the hall, losing him in the milling crowd. There were cops everywhere, uniforms, detectives, state troopers and dark-suited Feds. One of the Feds stepped forward and tried to block his way by putting a flat hand on his chest.
‘Nobody gets any farther than this.’
‘Who the fuck are you?’ Ray asked, removing the hand.
The hand went inside the man’s jacket. ‘Who the fuck am I? I’m the fucking Secret Service and you don’t go any farther, farm boy.’
‘Detective Sergeant farm boy, asshole.’ Ray pushed him out of the way, bouncing him off the wall. He took a few steps forward. Left and right there were little curtained booths. Directly in front of him, like a sad terrible dream, sitting on a brown chair on the right, her jacket and her skirt heavy with blood, sat Jackie Kennedy, the President’s wife, a blank, slightly angry look on her face. Directly across from her, also in pink but not as bloody, sat Governor Connally’s wife, Nellie. The two women were staring at each other across the narrow little passage. From behind Mrs Kennedy in the trauma room, Ray could hear low voices and the clatter of equipment. From the other side, Mrs Connally’s side, he could hear the governor groaning in pain.
Dazed, not quite sure of what he was witnessing, Ray stepped aside as two priests appeared, one older, one younger. The older man was carrying a small black bag. Mrs Kennedy stood up and went into the trauma room and the two priests followed her. The door closed softly behind them. Doc Rose had disappeared.
‘The poor woman,’ whispered Governor Connally’s wife.
‘The President was shot?’
The dark-haired woman plucked at something on her jacket and dropped it onto the floor. ‘His brains were blown out of his head. I watched as the top of his skull came off.’
The conversation was inconceivable, the information being offered like something insane. ‘And the governor, ma’am?’
The woman smiled faintly. ‘The doctors say he’ll be all right.’
‘That’s a good thing, ma’am.’ What else did you say to the governor’s wife when you met her bloody in a hospital corridor? ‘That’s a good thing.’
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ She paused and the smile flickered again. ‘This means Lyndon’s president now.’
‘Yes, ma’am, I suppose it does.’
The door behind Ray opened and he turned. The two priests came out and behind them Ray saw Jackie bent over the sheet-covered body of her husband, as though she was kissing him. Two Secret Service men came out of nowhere and one of them took the elder priest by the elbow.
‘You don’t know anything, understand?’
‘Yes,’ said the priest and the two men in their vestments walked slowly away. The Secret Service man who’d spoken to the priest turned to Ray just as Mrs Kennedy reappeared.
‘This is a restricted area.’
‘I’m waiting for Dr Rose.’
‘I don’t know about any Dr Rose. Was he working on the President?’
‘He’s the chief medical examiner for the county,’ Ray answered. ‘If the President was shot and killed that makes it a homicide. I’m a homicide detective and every murder in Dallas requires that the victim be autopsied by the medical examiner’s office.’
The Secret Service man glanced at Mrs Kennedy, then grabbed Ray by the arm and led him down the hallway a few steps. ‘Not this time, pal. No crackerjack county coroner is touching President Kennedy. He’s going back to Washington now. Understand?’
‘Tell that to Doc Rose.’ Ray thought about the bullet he’d found and wondered about giving it up to the arrogant Secret Service agent. He kept it in his pocket. A last pair of doctors left the trauma room where the President was lying. As the door swung closed again Ray saw that he was being tended to by a single nurse now.
Ray stood in the corridor and let it all whirl around him like some mad dream. It was as though the air itself had cleared to something almost crystalline and each sound was clear and bright and painful in his ears. A black man in some sort of purple churchlike robe appeared and was turned away by the two Secret Service men standing by the door to Trauma Room One. The door to Trauma Room Two opened and a stretcher and several doctors appeared, turning left and then right, headed for surgery, with Nellie Connally running to keep up.
A moment later a huge bronze casket was wheeled down the corridor by two more Secret Service men. They had a hard time manoeuvring it into Trauma Room One. Jackie tried to follow it into the room but she was stopped by the man who appeared to be the senior Secret Service agent.
A nurse appeared and went to a supply cupboard nearby. Ray watched as she rummaged around in the cupboard and came up with a folded plastic sheet. He figured it out quickly enough and so did Mrs Kennedy, who went a little paler, if that was possible. Ray had seen brains on the f
loor and the nurse was probably going to use the plastic sheet to wrap around Kennedy’s head to keep more from spilling out onto the satin liner of the casket.
Finally Doc Rose appeared, elbowing his way through the crowd of doctors, cops and Secret Service people crowding the main corridor and the short passage down to the trauma rooms. Rose stopped and looked at Ray.
‘Who are these two?’ he asked, pointing at the men on either side of the door to Trauma Room One. Jackie Kennedy gave the medical examiner a short look, then stood and went into the room where her husband was being lowered into the casket. From where he was standing Ray could see that the body was naked, wrapped in sheets and, as he’d thought, the head was wrapped in plastic that was already smeared on the inside with blood and grey matter, obscuring the face of the dead man. The door closed.
Doc Rose stepped up to the taller of the two Secret Service agents. ‘My name is Dr Earl Rose. I’m the medical examiner for Dallas County.’
‘Roy Kellerman, Secret Service.’
‘There’s been a homicide here. You won’t be able to remove the body. We’ll be taking it down to the morgue for an autopsy.’
Ray thought about that for a moment, visualising the naked body of the President of the United States: his head blown off, lying beside the dismembered corpse of the unknown victim. Both just as dead.
‘Nobody touches the body,’ said Kellerman. ‘It goes back to Washington.’
‘We have a law here,’ Rose answered. He pushed his glasses farther back up his nose. ‘And you have to comply with it, president or no president.’
A balding man a little older than Ray and wearing a dark suit and horn-rims appeared, striding purposefully down the narrow corridor. He stopped in front of Kellerman. ‘What’s going on?’
‘This man is from some health unit in town, Doctor. He tells me we can’t remove the body.’ Kellerman almost smirked when he said it.
The doctor in the dark suit raised his voice, spittle flying in Doc Rose’s direction. ‘We are removing the body.’
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said who the fuck are you? I’m Earl Rose, Chief Medical Examiner for the County and City of Dallas. Who the fuck are you?’
‘Dr George Burkley, the President’s personal physician.’
‘No, you’re not. President Kennedy is dead. You’re not his doctor any more. I am, by law.’
Burkley sputtered, ‘But this is the President of the United States.’
‘Was,’ Doc Rose answered.
Kellerman spoke up. ‘We’re taking the body, sir, whether you like it or not. I’m not leaving Mrs Kennedy in there with a coffin with her husband in it just because of some stupid city ordinance you have.’
‘This happened in Dallas County. A homicide. A homicide in Dallas County requires an autopsy by my office.’
‘I’m going to need someone bigger than you to tell me that,’ Kellerman answered.
‘Then I’ll get somebody bigger,’ Rose answered. He stomped away. As soon as he turned out of sight Kellerman gestured to the Secret Service men strung down the corridor. He turned to Bill Greer, the Secret Service man who had driven the President’s limousine. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
Ray turned away knowing that, no matter what Doc Rose tried with these people, the body in the casket was going back to Washington one way or the other and sooner rather than later. He walked down the corridor, heading towards the Emergency entrance and the ambulance bays. Just before he reached the doors he saw another swarm of Secret Service agents hustling a tall, long-nosed figure out of a room on the left. Lyndon Johnson, the new president. Following the group Ray went out through the swing doors and blinked in the sudden splash of bright sunlight.
He’d never seen anything even approaching it. There were cars and ambulances and limousines littered everywhere and on the grass and the pavement, standing alone or in little clusters, there were hundreds of people, almost all of them crying except for the news reporters and their cameramen, who were filming the people crying. Two Secret Service men were putting a clear plastic bubble top on the big Lincoln limousine that was parked, slewed by the Emergency doors a few feet away. And what was Jack Ruby doing, talking to a uniformed cop at the edge of the parking lot? The two Secret Service men snapped down the clips on the bubble top, securing it, and all Ray could think about was barn doors closing after the horse ran off.
Ray felt no grief; perhaps because he was in shock, but more likely because he was so close to death himself. And he suddenly realised what he was observing, this first tear of sorrow that would ripple out until the anguish and the pain took over the entire nation, if only for a few days, or perhaps weeks, but long enough to ensure that there would be no equality for the little black girl who lay forgotten on the cold steel table in the basement behind him, her death overwhelmed by another, the chances of discovering her killer fading with each passing hour. No justice for all those other little girls, so many years ago.
‘Well, to hell with that,’ he said under his breath and went to find his car.
Chapter Thirteen
Ray left Parkland, threading his way through the litter of station wagons and panel trucks from the TV stations that were strewn around the Emergency entrance, then made his way onto Stemmons Freeway and headed back into town. He took the cloverleaf at the triple underpass but Dealey Plaza was closed off with sawhorse barricades so he had to zigzag his way back to the Police and Courts Building using half a dozen side streets. It was another dream; wandering, scattered crowds of people on the sidewalks, looking dazed, or crying, or simply standing still, staring into space, moving traffic almost non-existent, cars double-parked or stopped at intersections, drivers and passengers bent over dashboards, straining to hear their radios. An empty Marsalis Street bus, abandoned, the driver staring into the window of a TV store watching a dozen blinking, shifting screens. Not a single honking horn. The end of the world, like that movie he’d seen a year or so ago at the Texas.
He came up Commerce Street, turned down the ramp then swung right into the parking garage. There was a crowd of people around the desk in front of the jail elevator, most of them with microphones or notepads in their hands, badgering Sid Able, one of the jail clerks manning the intake desk. More reporters. Ray parked, then switched off the engine. He reached for the Salems on the dashboard then drew back his hand. He leaned against the vinyl and closed his eyes. The end of the world, fucking Nikita with his finger on the button, a thousand times worse than Castro and his missiles, and here he was worrying about a death that meant nothing to anybody. Except him.
Ray roused himself and climbed out of the car, wondering if the wave of dizziness that made him pause in the darkness was his ailing heart or just the last hour catching up with him at last. He blinked, seeing the rusty stain across the thigh of the First Lady’s nubby pink suit again, wondering if she’d try and wash it out, stifling a crazy laugh when he realised she’d be destroying evidence in a homicide. As if she’d ever want to wear that outfit again. He pushed himself away from the side of the car, his legs as heavy as tree trunks. Doc Rose really was going to be pissed.
There were a few more reporters on the third floor but the squad room was empty except for Len Graves, one of the eight-to-four-shift detectives, and Ewell, the captain’s secretary. Graves was on the phone and so was Ewell. There were other extensions ringing but no one to answer them. Graves gave Ray a nod, then hung up his phone. He ignored the blinking buttons below the dial.
‘It’s bad, Ray. Really bad,’ said Graves. He rubbed his forehead. ‘We killed him. We killed the G.D. President of the United States.’ His voice was hollow and there was a sheen of sweat on his face even though the office was air conditioned. The detective looked as dazed as the people Ray had seen driving into downtown.
‘We?’ Ray eased himself down into a chair.
‘Big D.’ Graves shook his head. ‘It happened here. You think that doesn�
�t mean something?’
‘I was at Parkland,’ Ray answered, looking for something to say.
‘It’s going to take a hundred years before anybody forgets it happened here. Maybe never.’
‘Where’s the crew?’ Ray asked, looking around the empty room.
‘Fritz called in all three shifts. Everybody’s down at the Plaza.’
‘I guess that’s where it happened.’
Graves looked at him as though he was insane. ‘You don’t know?’
‘I told you, I was at Parkland. An autopsy.’
‘It was the Book Depository.’
‘The Hertz Building?’
‘What?’ Graves looked confused.
‘The place with the big Hertz billboard on the roof? The one gives you the time?’
‘Yeah, yeah, that’s the place.’
‘What about it?’
‘They say that’s where the shots came from. Maybe from somewhere in the rail yards back there. No one knows anything much yet.’
‘How many shots?’ asked Ray, suddenly remembering the bullet in his pocket. He didn’t mention it to Graves. ‘Nobody knows that either. Three, four.’
‘They hit the governor.’
‘Christ! He’s dead too?’
‘No. I talked to his wife. He’s going to be all right. That’s what the doctors told her anyway.’
‘Connally’s wife?’
‘Umm,’ said Ray. ‘They were across from each other. Mrs Kennedy and the governor’s wife.’
‘You saw Mrs Kennedy?’ Like she was a movie star.
‘She had blood all over her suit.’
‘Christ!’
The two men sat silently together for a moment, surrounded by the ringing telephones. Ewell finished his conversation and hung up. He looked over at Graves and Ray and then looked away. There were tears staining his cheeks. He got up quickly and left the squad room. Ray swung around in the swivel chair and stared up at the big clicking IBM clock on the wall. It was two o’clock; the whole world turned upside down in ninety minutes. He levered himself up out of the chair and left Graves by himself in the squad room.
Wisdom of the Bones Page 16
