“No.”
“What is the last thing you remember?”
“I… There was a plane. I was at the airport. I think I flew from Seattle. After that, nothing.”
Anders was about to continue when Marsha Armstrong rushed into the room. Dr. Sanchez blocked her.
“Please, I’m Doug’s wife.”
The doctor looked at Anders. The detective nodded. Sanchez stepped aside. Marsha walked to Doug’s side. She took his hand and teared up.
“Hey, I’m okay,” he said. “Don’t cry.”
Marsha wiped her eyes. “When I heard Frank was dead and you disappeared, I thought you were dead, too. I was so scared.”
Doug stared at Marsha. “What do you mean, Frank is dead?”
“Oh God, you don’t know?”
Doug looked bewildered. “How could he be dead? What happened?”
Dr. Sanchez stepped forward. “Mrs. Armstrong, you don’t want to excite your husband. This is too much information right now.”
Doug looked desperate. “You can’t just leave it like that. Does Frank’s death have something to do with what happened to me?”
Anders looked at the doctor.
“Go ahead,” Dr. Sanchez said.
“Frank Nylander was killed in his office on Tuesday evening, the night you returned from Seattle,” Carrie said. “We have no idea who killed him. We’re hoping you can help us when your memory returns.”
Doug closed his eyes and let his head sink into his pillow. “How could this happen?” Doug muttered. “It makes no sense.”
“This is enough for now,” Dr. Sanchez said. “I’d like everyone to leave me with Mr. Armstrong.”
“Wait!” Doug said. “I do remember something. Is… Was Blaine Hastings… Is he still in jail?”
“No,” Carrie answered. “There was a problem with some of the evidence in his case, and he was released the day you flew back to Portland from Seattle.”
Doug closed his eyes for a moment. Then he looked at Carrie. “My memories are all jumbled. But I’m sure I told Frank that Hastings was out.” Doug’s brow furrowed and he looked upset. “That’s all,” he said after a moment. “I can’t even be sure it happened.”
“That’s enough for today,” Dr. Sanchez said.
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” Marsha said after casting an anxious look at her husband. When she and Carrie were in the hall, Marsha said, “I’m sorry. I thought Doug knew that Frank was dead.”
“He does now.”
“You don’t think… I didn’t hurt him, did I?”
“No. We had to tell him sometime.”
“What did the doctor tell you? Is Doug going to be okay?”
“Dr. Sanchez says his memory loss is probably temporary. You can see that it’s starting to come back already.”
“But will he remember who killed Frank?”
“I hope so. That would make my job a hell of a lot easier.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Roger Dillon parked in a lot next to the Oregon State Medical Examiner’s office. When Rex Kellerman got out of the car, he put on his game face. He hated attending autopsies, but he couldn’t let Dillon and Anders see that he was afraid of making a fool of himself when the medical examiner started cutting into dead flesh.
Roger Dillon’s phone rang as the detectives and the prosecutor approached the front door. Dillon paused to take the call. He frowned when he disconnected.
“What’s up?” Anders asked.
“Frank Nylander left his car in the economy lot at the airport when he flew to New York. Nylander’s secretary assumed that he drove from the airport to the office on Tuesday afternoon and parked in his reserved space in the building garage. On Friday, she remembered that Nylander’s keys were missing, so she checked the space. The car wasn’t in it. The secretary called Mrs. Nylander. The car wasn’t at their house, and it just turned up in a parking lot, two miles from downtown.”
“This is beginning to look more and more like a robbery gone bad,” Anders said.
“I’m starting to lean that way,” Dillon agreed.
The receptionist told Dr. Sally Grace, the assistant medical examiner, that she had visitors. Moments later, a slender woman with frizzy black hair and sharp blue eyes walked down the hall with a big smile on her face.
“You guys ready to slice and dice?” she asked.
“Always,” Rex lied, hoping that he had successfully disguised the dread he felt at the thought of seeing a corpse disemboweled and its skull sawed open.
Dr. Grace led Kellerman and the detectives to the back of the building, where they put on blue, water-impermeable gowns, masks, goggles, and heavy black rubber aprons. When they entered the autopsy room, Frank Nylander’s naked body lay on one of the two stainless steel autopsy tables that stood on either side of the room. He had been cleaned up, but there was no way to disguise the injuries he’d suffered.
“Mr. Nylander had some interesting things to tell me,” Dr. Grace said.
“Oh?” Anders replied.
“When you were in his office, he was lying facedown, so you only saw the damage to the back of his skull. Those were the blows that caused his death. But he was struck on the front of his face first.”
Dr. Grace pointed to a large gash over the dead lawyer’s left eye, then at his nose, which had been crushed. “Now, look at his knuckles and the bruises on his forearms.”
Kellerman studied Nylander’s hands and forearms and saw the bruises and abrasions to which Dr. Grace was referring.
“I think Mr. Nylander fought with his killer but was stunned by blows to his face inflicted by the stone statute. Based on the blood spatter, I’d guess that the killer drove him to the floor with one or more of the blows to the front of his head, then finished him off while he was facedown on the carpet.”
“Did you find any trace evidence the killer may have transferred to Nylander?” Kellerman asked.
Dr. Grace lifted Nylander’s right hand. “I did scrape a minute sample of blood from one of his fingernails. It may not be enough to work with, but that’s not my job. You’ll have to ask the techs at the crime lab.”
“Anything else—hair, saliva?” Dillon asked.
Dr. Grace shook her head. Then she flipped on her goggles, pulled up her mask, and picked up an electric saw. “Shall we?”
Kellerman felt his gut clench.
“Peter?” Kellerman asked when Peter Okonjo answered his call to the Oregon State Crime Lab.
“Hi, Rex. What can I do for you?”
“I’m calling about Frank Nylander’s case. I just attended the autopsy, and Sally told me she sent over a small sample of blood that was scraped from one of Nylander’s fingernails.”
“She did.”
“Has it told you anything?”
“It was a microscopic amount, Rex. Way too small to work with.”
“And you didn’t find anything else at the crime scene we can use to identify the killer?”
“There were a ton of fingerprints, but they all matched the people who work at the firm.”
“So, no one who didn’t belong?”
“No, but there were no prints on the statue, so the killer may have worn gloves.”
“Okay,” Kellerman said, unable to hide his disappointment. “Let me know if you come up with anything.”
Kellerman was just about to hang up when Okonjo said, “There is something we might try with the blood.”
“Oh?”
“There’s a lab in town that uses low-template DNA analysis to determine genetic probabilities when analyzing minuscule amounts of genetic material that other methods can’t interpret.”
“Okay,” said Kellerman, who had no idea what the forensic expert was talking about.
“I don’t remember the name of the lab offhand, but I can look it up and see if they can do something with it. It’s a long shot.”