"Yeah, right, but we're not talking about the magic bullet now. We know the magic bullet is garbage, not so much because it couldn't do the things you said, or because the shot trajectories are doubtful, but because we have no damn idea what the bullet really is. All we know about it for sure is that it was fired from Oswald's rifle. It was found on a stretcher at Parkland? What stretcher? Who found it? Who handled it? If it was pulled from Connally's body and popped into an evidence bag in the operating room, then fine, we'd have to deal with it seriously, but since it wasn't-well, I wasn't brought up to consider crap like that real evidence."
Wendt seemed taken aback at this, since he had devoted years to criticizing the magic bullet's anomalously pristine appearance. Karp continued, "No, what we're about today is the shot or shots that killed Kennedy, the head shots. Specifically, what're the possibilities of a head shot from the front?"
Wendt pursed his lips, as if loath to let a speculative remark pass through them. "As to that, I would allow the possibility of an explosive or fragmenting bullet arriving from that direction, simultaneously, or nearly simultaneously, with the shot from the rear. But since we do not have the brain correctly preserved in formalin, nor any sections that might have been made from the brain, we can never arrive at a definitive conclusion on this point."
"But you do have something to work with," Karp pressed. "I mean we do have an autopsy panel under way."
Karp had been hearing odd things from the autopsy panel. Murray Selig had been uncharacteristically oblique on the few occasions that Karp had reached him by phone, and so he had invited Wendt, the maverick, and famous for his critique of the Warren procedures, for an informal consultation to try and get some straight answers. Which, in the event, he was finding hard to extract.
A smile suggested itself on Wendt's thin lips. "Yes, assuredly, but an autopsy panel without a corpse to work on is more of a debating society than a panel of scientists. Essentially, we are limited to perusing secondhand evidence and with photographic material only, the Parkland and the autopsy photos and X rays. I have suggested, without much success, a program of-"
"The photos are faked," said Phelps, loudly and confidently. "So are the skull X rays."
He had their attention.
Without another word he pulled a packet of eight-by-ten glossies out of one of the envelopes and spread them across the desk.
"This is supposed to be the back of Kennedy's head," Phelps said, "with the entry wound of the head shot near the cowlick." He indicated a photograph of the back of the dead man's head, the hair damp and matted, a rubber-gloved hand holding it in position by a lock of hair. "This is an obvious composite forgery. You can see the matte lines where it was pieced together. That was done, of course, to hide the huge exit wound in the back of the skull."
Karp stared at the photograph while Phelps traced the supposed join with a pencil. Karp shrugged and said "Okay, let's say I take your word for it-"
"You don't have to take my word for it. I spoke to Floyd Riebe, the photographer who took the photograph at Bethesda. He said there was a huge hole in the back of Kennedy's head. The Parkland doctors said the same thing originally too. Also, look at this blowup of frame 335 of Zapruder." He dealt a color eight-by-ten from the stack. "The top of his head is obviously missing." They all stared at the blurry horror. Karp turned to Wendt. "Doc, what do you think?"
Wendt paused judiciously, then responded, "This is obviously inconsistent with the X rays we have been given."
Phelps had an answer to that too. He pulled out a positive print of an X ray and placed it next to a different glossy, the most gruesome picture yet. It showed a three-quarter right-side view of the corpse's face, with the brains bubbling up out of the skull like a party hat. "This is supposed to be a right-side lateral X ray. It shows massive damage to the right front side of the face. But no damage to that side of the face was ever described by any witness, either at Parkland or at Bethesda. And obviously, from this photograph, there's no such damage."
"Did the Warren people see this stuff?" asked V.T.
"Justice Earl Warren saw them," replied Phelps in a sneering tone. "The story is, he was so shocked by them that he refused to allow them to be made public, and they were never shown to the commission."
While they thought about this, Phelps brought out some more pictures and added them to his gallery on the wooden desk. "This is a picture of the top of the head. See this line? It's surgery. And nobody ever mentioned a surgical procedure on the top of the head. The Bethesda autopsy team said that the skull was so shattered that they were able to lift the brain out without any further cutting of the skull."
"What are you saying?" asked Karp uneasily.
"I'm saying that between Parkland and Bethesda, somebody worked on the body. They cut out the brain and modified the skull to make the single-shot-from-the-rear theory plausible." This was said with profound assurance, as if anyone with eyes could plainly see it.
Karp snapped a lidded-eye look toward V.T., who kept his face blank. It was Wendt who responded first, and with some vigor:
"There is absolutely no evidence for any such interference. None. Nor would any such alterations be feasible in the time allowed, even if we assume that the president's body was so poorly guarded that it could have been removed from its coffin on the presidential airplane and spirited away to a secret dissecting room before being delivered to Bethesda."
"What about this photograph?" snapped Phelps "There is clearly evidence of surgery and-"
"So you say," replied Wendt, "but I see a badly shattered calvarium from which nearly anything could be construed. I am not a photographic expert, of course, but I believe that interpreting autopsy photographs as to forensic content is well within my professional purview. You say the X rays and some of the prints are faked. It may well be so, but until I and the other members of the forensic pathology panel are so informed officially, we will continue to base our findings on them."
"What, on faked evidence?" Phelps retorted. "What's the goddamn point of that!" He addressed Karp, his eyes sparking. "This is big, damn it. This is evidence of conscious treason by a huge conspiracy involving people close to the top of the government. How else could they have-"
"Stop!" said Karp, holding up his big hand like a traffic cop. Dueling experts, the prosecutor's nightmare, and he was sick of it. "First of all," he said sharply, "treason is not a word I want to hear around this office. We're not investigating treason, we're investigating, if that's still the right word, a homicide."
"But, it's the president…," Phelps began.
"Assassinating the president is not treason," said Karp forcefully. "Even a coup is not treason. Treason shall consist in levying war against the United States and giving aid and comfort to its enemies. It's in the Constitution, the only crime defined in the Constitution. So forget treason. Conspiracy to commit murder, interfering with an investigation, tampering with and withholding evidence-that's different, and we may have found evidence of all of that. It's enough." He shot the famous stare around the table. Nobody spoke, and he resumed. "Now, as to these photos: Jim, write your report. We'll get some independent source to confirm or reject your findings and then we'll see. Dr. Wendt-I'll try to get funds for the sort of experimental testing you're interested in, if you'll give me an outline of the sort of stuff you want to do."