Free The Associate by Phillip Margolin Page B

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.
     
     
     

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