WITH THE SCALPEL
—Doctor, your car is waiting for you.
I finish my glass of Jerez brandy and see that not a single drop remains at the bottom.
“I’m going,” I reply curtly.
It is sometimes difficult to be the on-call medical examiner and carry out the procedures for removing a body.
As the car moves forward through the fog, I lean back in the
I settled in, feeling the warmth of the liquor in my stomach—the only good thing about the last two hours. Perhaps the victim wouldn’t approve of my behavior. Surely, I repeated to myself several times, until the driver snapped me out of my thoughts. We’ve arrived.
I enter, cutting through the mist like a shadow, to the scene of the crime, knowing that this is and is not my place: strictly speaking, they should have called the judge, not me.
But the judge lies on his back with his throat slit. I don’t need to look at him to know it.
Jesús Jiménez Reinaldo
