Violets Are Blue - James Patterson [8]
“Yes, we lifted the marks with fingerprint powder. The casts should be ready in a day or two. We swabbed to gather saliva, of course.”
“Well, good. That’s the right approach, I think. I’m ready to state my piece, my educated guess.”
“That’s excellent, Allen,” Lee said in a soft, very dignified voice. He wore a white coat with the nickname Dragon stitched on one pocket. He was a tall man, probably six-two, and weighed at least two fifty. He carried himself with confidence. “Dr. Pang is a friend I have used before,” Lee told me. “He’s a veterinary dental expert from the Animal Medical Center in Berkeley. Allen is one of the best in the world, and we’re lucky to get him on this case.”
“Thank you for your time, Dr. Pang,” Inspector Hughes said. “This is terrific of you to help.”
“Thank you.” I joined in with the hallelujah chorus of gratitude.
“It’s perfectly all right,” he said. “I’m not exactly sure where to start, other than to say that these two homicides are most interesting to me. The male was severely bitten, and I’m relatively sure the attacker was, well, it was a tiger. The bites on the female were inflicted by two humans. It’s as if the humans and the large cat were running together. Like they were a pack. Extraordinary. And bizarre, to say the least.”
“A tiger?” Jamilla was the one to express the disbelief we were all feeling. “Are you sure? That doesn’t seem possible, Dr. Pang.”
“Allen,” Walter Lee said, “explain, please.”
“Well, as you know, humans are heterodonts; that is, they have teeth of different sizes and shapes, which serve different functions. Most important would be our canines, which are situated between the lateral incisor and the first premolar on each side of each jaw. The canines are used to tear food.”
Walter Lee nodded, and Dr. Pang continued. He was speaking solely to the M.E. at this point. I caught Jamilla’s eye, and she gave me a wink. I liked that she had a sense of humor.
Dr. Pang seemed to be in his own world. “In contrast to humans, some animals are homodents. Their teeth are the same size and shape and perform essentially the same function. This is not true of large cats, however, especially tigers. The teeth of tigers have been adapted for their feeding habits. Each jaw contains six pointed cutting teeth, two very sharp, recurved canines, and molars that have evolved into cutting blades.”
“Is that important in terms of these murders?” Jamilla Hughes asked Dr. Pang. I had a version of the same question.
The smallish man nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, of course. Certainly. The jaw of a tiger is extremely strong, able to clamp down hard enough to crush bone. The jaw can only move up and down, not side to side. This means the tiger can only tear and crush food, not chew or gnaw.” He demonstrated with his own teeth and jaw.
I swallowed hard, and found my head shaking back and forth. A tiger was involved in these murders? How could that possibly be?
Dr. Pang stopped talking. He reached up and scratched his bald pate rather vigorously. Then he said, “What completely baffles me is that someone commanded the tiger away from its prey after it struck — and the tiger obeyed. If that hadn’t happened, the prey would have been eaten.”
“Absolutely amazing,” the medical examiner said, and gave Dr. Pang a pat on the back. Then he looked at Jamilla and me. “What’s the saying — ‘Catch a tiger, if you can?’ A tiger shouldn’t be all that hard to find in San Francisco.”
Chapter 10
THE LARGE white male tiger was making a chuffing sound, a muted, backward whistle. The sucking noise came from deep inside its wide throat. The sound was almost unearthly. Birds took flight from a nearby cypress. Small animals scampered away as fast as they could.
The tiger was eight feet long, muscular, and weighed just over five hundred and eighty pounds. Under ordinary circumstances its prey would have been pigs and piglets, deer, antelope, water buffalo. There were no ordinary circumstances in California. There were lots of humans, though.
The