A Good Mother by Lara Bazelon (classic books to read .TXT) 📕

“Was that successful?”

“No. The wound was mortal.”

Shauna gives a crisp nod. “You had occasion to examine the wound as part of your autopsy. What did you find?” She clicks back to the picture of the torn and excavated heart. It isn’t any better on the second viewing, and Will feels his empty stomach lurch. He looks over at Luz, who is crying, but silently, tears streaming down her face, a bubble of snot visible in her left nostril. He cuts his eyes to Abby, who starts, then reaches for a tissue from the box on the table and passes it to her.

“The wound was caused by a sharp object, which I later determined to be a steak knife. The hemorrhagic track—that is, the pathway of the knife—extends through the subcutaneous tissue and muscle through the anterior fourth rib, severing it.”

“How much force does it take to drive a steak knife through a rib?”

“A significant amount.” Another click and a new image, this time of a snapped white bone. “As you can see here,” Dr. Bridges says, and indicates with his pointer, “the break is angled, not straight, which indicated that there was some type of twisting or turning of the blade.”

“Did the knife stop there?”

“No, as I said, it went through the pericardial sac into the heart—” Dr. Bridges pauses. “If we could go back to the last slide so I could explain—”

“Certainly.”

Will thinks he would rather be punched in the face than have to look at the gruesome image again—at precisely what it is that Luz has done—but looking away is not an option. Abby is staring stoically, her lips pressed together in a thin line. “The knife penetrated the right ventricle of the heart,” Dr. Bridges says, indicating with the electronic pointer, “which is one of the major blood pumping chambers of the heart.”

“How exactly did Sergeant Hollis die?”

“As I said, the medical term is cardiac tamponade. The stab wound created massive bleeding. The bleeding compressed his heart and prevented it from beating. At that point, his lungs filled with fluid and his brain swelled until he could no longer breathe.”

Shauna clicks to the next slide, which shows two figures drawn three-dimensionally: a tall male and a much smaller female, both with their arms at their sides. The female is holding a knife in one hand.

“What was the trajectory of the wound?”

Dr. Bridges uses the pointer to demonstrate, the red line moving across the man’s chest area as he speaks. “Front to back, left to right, downward and twisting.”

“Downward and twisting,” Shauna repeats. “Meaning that, in your medical opinion, the knife was used in an overhand motion?”

“Correct.”

Shauna clicks on a few buttons and the woman raises her arm over her head, bringing the knife down in an arc-like motion like she is spearing a fish. The man staggers back, then collapses. Shauna replays the image again, this time in slow motion as she intones for the record what the jury is watching.

“Is this animation an accurate depiction of how you believe the wound was inflicted?”

“It is.”

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Ellet?”

Will stands, buttons his suit coat. His hands are shaking: dosed with a double espresso, he feels jittery and febrile. He nods at Abby, who is now tapping away furiously on her laptop. They have their own slideshow.

Another organ appears on the screen, also in a stainless steel dish. A football-shaped hunk, it is a muddy purple, the surface dotted with yellowy, gelatinous blobs. It looks like a side of beef gone bad.

“Dr. Bridges,” Will says, “what are we looking at?”

“The liver of the deceased.”

“Is that a normal-looking liver?”

“Objection.”

Dars’s eyes are fixed on the image. “Overruled.”

“No.”

“What about it isn’t normal?”

Dr. Bridges picks up the electronic pointer and circles the blobs. “These fatty deposits.”

Will takes a quick look at the jurors; he’s got their attention, too. “How old was the deceased?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Measurements?”

“Six feet four inches, 260 pounds.”

“What was his blood alcohol content?”

A slight hesitation, then, “Point two six.”

“We are talking here about an extreme level of intoxication, are we not?”

“Yes.”

“A level that most people never reach, even at their drunkest?”

Dr. Bridges stares back unblinkingly through his rimless glasses, face impassive. “Yes.”

Will looks at the jurors. Most of them are still staring at Travis’s liver. Before he can help himself, he says, “It’s not a pretty picture, is it?”

“Objection.”

“Sustained.” Dars gives Will a hard stare.

Will looks back at Bridges. “How many shots of hard liquor would Sergeant Hollis have had to consume and in what approximate period of time to achieve a .26 blood alcohol level?”

“Objection, calls for speculation.”

“Dr. Bridges is an expert. Under the federal rules of evidence, I’m entitled—”

“There is no need to school me on the federal rules of evidence, Mr. Ellet,” Dars says nastily. “The objection is overruled.”

“How much hard liquor, Dr. Bridges, to get to .26?”

“I would say fifteen, sixteen shots over a period of several hours.”

The stay-at-home moms are wide-eyed, as is the computer programmer. Even the retired nurse—who has probably seen it all—looks disapproving. “Can you explain, please, how the body processes alcohol?”

“Through the liver. The liver breaks down the alcohol into acid aldehyde, then acetic acid, which is then removed from the body.”

“Is processing alcohol the only function of the liver?”

“No. The liver is also responsible for processing the food ingested by the body. That is—should be—the primary job of the liver.”

“Should be?” Will raises his eyebrows, looks over at the jurors. “Why wouldn’t it always be?”

“With individuals who drink chronically and excessively, fibrosis and scarring can develop within the liver. This scarring leads to decreased blood flow through the liver and a reduced capacity to perform its necessary functions. These fatty deposits on the liver’s surface—” Dr. Bridges highlights them again with his pointer “—are a marker of decreased liver function.”

Will nods. “So, when a normal person stops drinking, the liver will remove the fatty deposits and metabolize them. But with someone who drinks an extreme amount over a long period of time, the liver’s whole job becomes