Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [76]
Some of the bodies were clothed, others had had their garments blown off, others burned off. Most in the room had died during bombing raids. Many injuries were visible, but other people seemed alive, lying there, eyes open, not a wound anywhere. Bomb blasts near them had created instant vacuums in their body organs, hemorrhaging brains and spinal cords, and they had collapsed, dead before they were prone, their insides turned to mush.
Dietrich had spent a career examining bodies, but he locked his gaze straight ahead as he made his way to the wide door, wide enough for a gurney. The stench of decay seemed to have removed useful oxygen in the room, and Dietrich panted as he walked. Behind him two workers brought in another corpse, and searched for a spot in the crowded room they might be able to wedge it in. The detective's shoes crackled through dried blood.
As he passed through the door, the scent shifted from rot to formaldehyde. A stainless-steel examining table filled most of the room, white and green institutional tile under it. The table was ringed by a blood gutter, and three buckets of fluid were at one end. Bone cutters, scissors, hemostats, scalpels, forceps, and an oscillating bone saw were arrayed on an implement tray.
A naked corpse lay on the table. Dietrich was embarrassed for it. Blue-white flesh in folds, mouth hanging open, filmy eyes staring dumbly at the ceiling, stripped of its humanness. The only color to the dead man was at his throat, which was open ear to ear, a gaping black and red maw of a wound, with sinews hanging about.
"I knew you couldn't keep away, Otto." Emil Wenck smiled at the detective. Wenck was Berlin's chief medical examiner. He wore rubber gloves and a dappled apron. The doctor's eyes were kindly and bagged, and a horseshoe of white hair was around a bald head. The base of his nose was almost as wide as his mouth. His forehead was half the length of his face. His ears stood out at right angles.
"You could have been a baby doctor, and you chose this instead," Dietrich said. "Shows what you know."
Inspector Dietrich had worked with Wenck for years. In addition to being the city's chief coroner, Wenck held a chair in anatomy at the University of Berlin. He raised one finger to his chest and moved his eyes in an exaggerated way toward the rear door. A warning.
Dietrich dipped his chin. "The bodies have piled up, Emil. You are behind in your work."
"The morgue is full. The cemeteries are full. So when Berliners find a body—and there are many to be found—they often bring it here, thinking the coroner must know what to do with corpses."
"And what do you do with them?"
"Usually they are brought in one door and taken out another, a parade of the dead. These bodies are being taken to a new open pit grave at a farm near Zehlendorf, not too far from here. But our truck has run out of fuel, and there's none to be had, so the cadavers are backing up, just like the plumbing."
Dietrich heard voices from the doorwav behind Wenck. Because paper would quickly become bloodied, a chalkboard was against a wall for the physician to mark down observations. A reflector light hung over the table, and another was on a stand at one end, adjustable by two universal joints. On a wall to Wenck's right were three enlarged photographs of bodies, showing the portion of each body from the breastbone to the nose. The bodies looked remarkably similar. Each wore a Wehrmacht tunic, and each neck was creased with a wide and ghastly wound, and each set of eyes was open and staring, giving each corpse an appearance of modest surprise. Blood was pooled under each dead soldier, obscuring what might have been a Persian rug below the bodies.
Gestapo Müller entered the