Even without this coup de grace, the subject, he concluded, was unlikely to have survived long. His seventh cervical vertebra had been shattered by a bullet that had torn through the spinal cord and exited from the right ventral surface of the neck, and there were two wounds in the left arm and six in the torso, the latter doing massive damage to the lungs and other internal organs. Dr. Mochtar dropped the last of these torso bullets into a kidney dish and handed it to the detective standing there. Detective Rivera bagged them in individual bags, sealed the bags, signed his initials and badge number over the seals, and had Mochtar sign them, too.

"So, tell me, Doc," said Detective Rivera, "you traced the path of these bullets, right?"

"Oh, yes. These and two others that I have not got here. They exit to outside, you know?"

"Uh-huh. And they came from the front, the back, what?"

"Oh, definitely all from back, posterior as we say. And perhaps, you see, a little to the side in these cases." The body was facedown. He indicated a wire sticking out of the skull wound, and another emerging from a black hole slightly to the left of the posterior midline of the neck. "The others are all directly from the rearward, except the shoulder wound, here at the left side. But this one to the skull is from the right, a fatal wound, do you see?"

"Right, got it."

Rivera left. Dr. Mochtar and a diener turned the body over, and Dr. Mochtar began to stitch up the corpse. The man had run from the police and had, most properly, been shot down. Dr. Mochtar did not think that a corpse shot in the back by police was worthy of much comment. Certainly he did not bring it to the attention of his superiors.

Some short time after the completion of the homicide detectives' report, at eight-forty the following morning, and its delivery up the chain of command, the police department notified the district attorney's office that a police officer had killed someone.