"I'll pass," Forbus said, stifling a yawn.
Billie wasn't surprised that the bizarre crime scene bored her partner. He was a good old boy hanging on long enough to collect his pension so he could fish 365 days a year. The only time she'd seen him show any interest in a case was last week when they'd investigated a murder at a strip joint. Billie, on the other hand, was fascinated by anything out of the ordinary, and this crime scene was the most unusual she'd encountered in some time.
Billie wandered down the hall. The doors to the monkey rooms were open and Billie stood quietly, surveying the scene. The monkeys had died hard and she pitied the poor bastards. Death by fire was the worst way to go. She shivered and turned away.
Chapter Twelve.
The offices of the Oregon State Medical Examiner were on Knott Street in a two-story, red-brick building that had once been a Scandinavian funeral home. Arbor vitae, split-leaf maples, and a variety of other shrubs partially hid a front porch whose overhang was supported by white pillars. Kate parked in the adjacent lot and walked up the front steps to the porch. Billie Brewster was waiting for her in the reception area.
"Thanks for letting me come," Kate said.
"You're lucky Zeke is still in court. There's no way I could swing this if he was here."
"Like I said, thanks."
Kate followed Billie toward the back of the building. When they entered the autopsy room they found Dr. Sally Grace, an assistant ME, and Dr. Jack Forester, a forensic anthropologist, standing on either side of a gurney that had been wheeled between the two stainless-steel autopsy tables that stood on either side of the room. The body from the primate lab lay on top of the gurney. Just before Billie had left the crime scene, the deputy medical examiner and several firefighters wearing latex gloves had used the few scraps of clothing that had escaped destruction to lift up the corpse and place it in a body bag. The area around the body had been searched for skull fragments and they had been taken to the ME's office along with the body. The corpse of the monkey found in the room with the human remains had also been brought to the ME's office, along with skull fragments found near it. The monkey's corpse was lying on a second gurney.
"Hi, Billie," Dr. Grace said. "You're a little late. We're almost done."
"Sorry, I was tied up in court."
"Who's your friend?" the coroner asked.
Billie made the introductions. "Kate's ex-PPB and an investigator with the Reed, Briggs law firm. The dead man may have been an important witness in a civil case her firm is defending. She's been very helpful."
"Well, the more the merrier," Dr. Grace said cheerfully as she turned back to the corpse.
Forester and Grace were wearing blue, water-impermeable gowns, masks, goggles, and heavy, black rubber aprons. Kate and Brewster donned similar outfits before joining them at the gurney.
"We found out some interesting stuff," Forester said. "The monkey is a rhesus. Most research labs use them. We found some blood and flesh on its teeth and we're going to do a DNA match with the other corpse to see if that's where it came from. The surprise is the way the monkey died."
"Which was?"
"Gunshot," Dr. Grace answered. "We found a shell for a forty-five at the crime scene and the skull reconstruction shows an exit wound."
"Is that how this one got it?" Billie asked, motioning toward the remains on the gurney.
"That was my first thought, what with the skull blown out and all," Dr. Grace answered, "but we have a different cause of death with John Doe."
"Then it's a man?" Kate asked.
"We doped that out pretty easily," Dr. Grace said.
"Men's bones are larger because of the greater muscle attachment," Forester said, "so we either had an average- to below-average size male or a woman who pumped iron."
Forester pointed at the skeleton's crotch. All of the flesh had been burned from the bones in this area.
"The human pelvis provides the most reliable means of determining the sex of skeletal remains. The female pelvis is designed to offer optimal space for the birth canal and has a notch in it. A male pelvis is curved. This is definitely the pelvis of a male."
"And there were no ovaries and no uterus," Dr. Grace added with a smile. "That was a big clue."
Billie laughed. "So, how was John Doe killed?"
"First, you need to know that he was dead before he was set on fire," the ME said. "There was still some blood in his heart. It was deep purple instead of red or pink, so I guessed that carbon monoxide was not present. The test confirmed my guess. If he was alive when he burned I would have found carbon monoxide in his blood.
"His airways were also free of soot, which he would have breathed in if he was breathing when the fire started."
Dr. Grace bent over the corpse. "See these marks?" she asked, pointing to several notches that scarred one of the ribs. "They were made by a knife. The rib is in close proximity to the heart. Luckily, he was lying on a concrete floor, so his front was protected to a certain degree and the heart was preserved. It showed stab wounds and there was blood in the left chest and pericardial sac, which you'd expect with a stabbing."
"What about the skull? The monkey was shot. It looks like Doe's skull was blown out the same way," Billie said.
"Come over here," Dr. Grace said as she led the group over to a table covered by a white sheet that stood in front of a stainless-steel counter and sink. On the sheet were the fragments of Doe's skull that had been gathered at the crime scene. They had been painstakingly pieced together.
"Gunshots cause linear fractures that radiate out from the hole caused by the exit or entrance of the bullet. We didn't find linear fractures and you can see that there's no hole formed by the skull fragments.
"If the skull had been fractured by blunt force trauma from a club or baseball bat or something like that, we would have found sections of bone showing a depression from the blow."
"So what's the explanation?" Billie asked.
"The brain is blood-intensive. When the fire heated the blood it generated steam that blew out the back of John Doe's skull."
The detective grimaced.
"Was he stabbed to death at the lab?" Kate asked.
"I can't tell you that. We did find some fibers that were crushed into the fabric of his clothing and survived the fire. I'm having the lab test them. If they're the type of fibers you find in a car trunk, we can guess that he was transported to the lab, but that would only be a guess."
"What about time of death?" Billie asked. "Can you tell how many days he's been dead?"
"I can't do much for you there." Dr. Grace pointed to a sieve resting in a metal pot on one of the autopsy tables. "That's his last meal," she said, indicating pieces of steak, baked potato skin, lettuce, and tomato. "He was killed within an hour of eating, but how long ago I can't say."
Billie turned to Jack Forester. "Can you tell me enough about him for me to match him with a missing person report?"
"Well, we've got the teeth, of course. The guy has had dental work done. Brubaker's out of town," Forester said, referring to Dr. Harry Brubaker, the forensic dentist who was normally present at autopsies. "We'll get these over to him when he comes back from vacation. But he won't be much help until we have someone to whom he can match the dental work."
"Can you tell anything from the teeth?" asked Kate, who had read a few books in Forester's field.
"They do give us some idea of Doe's age," he answered. "We know a person is eighteen or younger if his wisdom teeth have not erupted, so this guy is definitely over eighteen. The degeneration of the skeleton also helps us with his age. Now this is very subjective, but the changes in this guy's spine tell me that he's probably older than thirty.