Manuel looked at her and nodded slowly.
“The car ran off the road. There was no curve and no skid marks or signs of braking, either on the pavement or in the field. The vehicle ran about one hundred and fifty feet through the open countryside and came to stop against a boundary wall. Your husband was dead. There was a cut on his brow, probably caused when his head hit the steering wheel as the car collided with the wall. The position of the vehicle, the minimal damage from the collision with the wall, and the fact that the airbags didn’t inflate led us to conclude he was unconscious when the car left the pavement and it was no longer under power. I was struck by the fact that the cut above his eyebrow had hardly bled at all, since such facial cuts usually produce a copious flow of blood. I noticed the ashen color of his skin, looked for other injuries, and noted that the lower abdomen seemed swollen. That’s often an indication of internal hemorrhaging. No other obvious injuries, but when we put him on the stretcher, I found a tear in his shirt. It turned out to correspond to the opening of a wound less than an inch wide and probably more than six inches deep. In my judgment, that type of injury was incompatible with the conditions of the accident. I found nothing in the vehicle that might have caused it. No postmortem examination is done when the cause of death of a traffic accident victim is evident; I issue a death certificate and that’s it. I asked them to bring your husband’s body to the forensic medical examiner’s office because I suspected he might have died before his car ran off the road, not afterward. As soon as we identified him as a Mu?iz de Dávila, I knew the news would spread like wildfire. We transferred the body from the emergency room to my work space. I was preparing to do the autopsy when I received instructions to cancel it. The identity of the deceased took priority over procedure. I was told the death was an accident, and I was not to distress the family by performing an autopsy. I objected, of course, but they told me that the ‘request’ came from on high and no appeal was possible.”
Manuel couldn’t believe it. “They told you to stop the autopsy?”
The medical examiner’s mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “They’re a bit more discreet than that. They strongly suggested that I spare the family’s feelings.”
“Against your professional judgment,” Nogueira added.
“Correct.”
“Where did the recommendation come from?” Manuel asked. “Perhaps from the family?”
“I doubt it,” Nogueira interjected. “But there would have been no need. I already tried to explain to you. The Mu?iz de Dávila family has been a power here for centuries, since the days of feudal lords, I guess. Later they ruled as landowners in a region where living conditions haven’t exactly been easy for any except them. Try to understand, there’s a sort of absurd reverence for what they are and what they represent. For centuries those families’ abuses, scandals, excesses, and even minor crimes have been overlooked. They can count on indulgence and don’t have to ask for it. It’s just one of their many privileges, granted without their having to be inconvenienced by the need to ask for special treatment.”
Manuel exhaled in one long slow breath, intertwined his fingers, and tried to take that information onboard. “Doctor, do you believe that álvaro was murdered?”
“I’m certain of it. That type of wound isn’t self-inflicted. He was stabbed with a long narrow blade, something like a stiletto or an ice pick. He got to his car but bled rapidly. The hemorrhaging was internal, so no blood was visible except from the cut on his brow. He passed out, and that’s why he ran off the road. I don’t know where he was going. Perhaps he was aware of the seriousness of his injury and he was looking for help; the regional hospital is another thirty miles away along the same road. Or perhaps he was trying to escape his attacker. We have no way of determining where the attack took place or how long he’d been on the road by the time he lost consciousness.”
Manuel hid his face in his hands. A fever suddenly flared through him and plunged him back into his malaise. He pressed his chilly hands to his eyes in search of momentary relief. He remained in that posture until he felt the physician’s small strong hand on his knee. He dropped his hands to look at her. Her gaze was steady and sympathetic. “Was he in much pain? I mean . . . a wound that deep seems . . . horrible. How was he able to drive after that?”
“It would have caused no more than a momentary pang, an instant of intense pain that went away almost immediately. This type of injury, although almost always fatal, usually isn’t particularly painful. Quite often the injured party isn’t aware of its seriousness until internal bleeding causes him to lapse into weakness and apathy. By then it’s too late. Blunt force traumas of this type don’t bleed outward the way cuts do; the body’s natural posture tends to compress the incision, and the external lesion isn’t much larger than a bad insect bite. The initial pain ceases when the shaft is pulled out, leaving only minor discomfort. These types of wounds have been extensively documented. It’s a type of injury common in prisons. Some prisoners fashion weapons from everyday objects, simply by filing and sharpening them into something like an ice pick. If there’s a fight, someone might get such a stab wound and not realize the seriousness of the injury; hours later he will collapse in his cell and die. All too often such wounds escape detection. But Lieutenant Nogueira came to the same conclusion and initiated a homicide investigation. He was told, however, to drop it. When we heard about you, we thought perhaps you’d want to know the truth.”
“And you believe they ‘recommended’ forgoing an autopsy essentially as an attempt to block the investigation of a murder?”
The physician’s expression was one of disdain. She said nothing for a moment. “To tell the truth, I don’t think so. It’s more likely that we’re all somehow victims of a prevailing attitude of abject submission to authority. It’s more deeply rooted in our society and customs than we’d like to admit, an uncured contagion that suggests some things will never change. Mayors’ sons never receive traffic tickets, do they? I suppose it was like the widespread custom of ignoring the excesses of politicians and high-class celebrities. Someone realized who the man was and took the initiative to stifle suspicions of anything that might besmirch the family’s good name.”
Manuel was astonished. “Even though it might mean letting a murder go unsolved?”
“If it had been obvious, they wouldn’t have dared. But as I said, I had to look hard to detect signs of violence. álvaro was wearing a black shirt, so the cut in the fabric was virtually invisible. There were no signs of external bleeding or obvious injury. The slight swelling of the abdomen that led me to suspect internal bleeding would have escaped a layperson. There were no signs of struggle or self-defense, and he’d run off an open stretch of road. Of course, Lieutenant Nogueira noted something was amiss, but to a less experienced person this would have been an open-and-shut case. A driver falls asleep at the wheel and there’s a faint smell of alcohol, so it’s reasonable to suppose he might have had too much to drink. That’s exactly the sort of scandal people here are more than willing to cover up for families like your husband’s. I hadn’t even begun the autopsy when I heard there was an official version being put around. And I can tell you, few things are harder to stop than an ‘official version’ once it’s gotten started.”