Autopsy, p.19
Autopsy, page 19
I can’t even say what cases have come in today. Nothing newsworthy, I’m assuming, or someone would have let me know, I should hope. Definitely I’d hear from Marino as he monitors his police scanner around the clock, usually finding out about most fiascos before I do.
“Television news choppers.” Benton looks up at several of them hovering high in the distance, their lights bright in the gathering dusk. “Something’s going on in Pentagon City.”
According to the integrated navigation dash display, there’s police activity ahead, and at the moment that’s all we know. As we wait, busy with texts and e-mails, I send updates to Lucy, Maggie, Marino and others. I inform them that we left D.C. maybe twenty minutes ago, still not mentioning what we were doing there.
All I’m saying is we’re stuck in traffic on the bridge, and they’ll know which one, are well aware how slow it can be crossing the Potomac this time of day. I look out at night falling fast like a dark curtain dropping, counting four helicopters now in high hovers on the other side of the water.
The police must know what’s going on, and I text Marino and Lucy again, asking if they have an idea. While waiting for them to respond, I reach out to toxicology, trace evidence, and the firearms and tool marks labs. There are examiners I need to talk to before the day is done, and not all of them answer when off the clock.
“The problem is not everybody takes calls once they leave the office.” I say to Benton what I’ve said before, frustrated and feeling cornered. “That’s assuming I have their personal cell phone numbers. And I don’t yet for many of them even though crime doesn’t keep banker’s hours.”
“People have lives,” he replies.
“Of course they do, Benton. But for some of the scientists and doctors, the minute they walk out for the day, their time is their own, and it never used to be that way.”
“‘Used to be’s don’t count anymore,’ to quote Neil Diamond,” my secret agent husband sings badly, trying to make me lighten up.
“Well, you can thank Elvin Reddy for the attitudes I’m confronted with daily. But it doesn’t do any good to complain,” I reply, wishing the inside of Benton’s impeccable SUV didn’t smell like fried chicken.
The empty Styrofoam containers are in white plastic bags with big blue presidential seals, and I’m not keeping our takeout trash as a souvenir. It’s on the floor by my feet because we had no convenient place to toss it on the White House grounds. Public trash receptacles are scarce for security reasons, and I thought it rude to ask Tron to dispose of our takeout detritus.
Especially after she was kind enough to let us stay in our privileged parking spot long enough to wolf down a late lunch, and by then we were ravenous. The Mess Hall’s fried fare included biscuits and creamy coleslaw that hit the spot. I’m well fed and hydrated but feel traces of a headache again after our marathon session in the Situation Room.
Then it was alone time inside the Oval Office, the president and vice president asking all sorts of questions about the poisoned wine from Interpol. Tampering like that could happen anywhere including the White House, royal palaces, law enforcement headquarters, and government residences around the world.
Guests are always arriving with gifts that one is unwise to accept, it would seem. But we have to get food and drink from somewhere. We can’t say no to absolutely everything. There’s just too darn much to worry about these days, the president said as we sat on formal furniture inside the oval-shaped room, everything gold and blue.
There were follow-up questions about the double homicide, the first violent deaths in space as best we know. Benton was asked point-blank if he believed that Jared Horton also was involved in Gwen Hainey’s vicious murder. In the private setting of the Oval Office, Benton countered what the FBI, Homeland Security and others had opined earlier.
He logically explained that he saw no useful purpose Gwen’s homicide might have served, especially as sensational as it was. It was the last thing Horton needed, and one can imagine his shock as he quickly calculated how to use her unexpected murder to his advantage.
One evil act deserves another, and he disabled the cameras and radios unbeknownst to his two defenseless crewmates. He did this before helping them suit up for an outing in the vacuum of space that wasn’t going to happen, and the thought is enraging.
“His overriding fear was that his secret life of spying was about to be uncovered during Gwen’s murder investigation,” Benton told the president, the vice president and those assembled behind closed doors. “He went into a controlled free fall, panicking while keeping his wits about him.”
In short order, Jared Horton eliminated his crewmates, and I’m all but certain he shot them. Believing he could pass it off as a bizarre accident or attack in low-Earth orbit, he cleaned out the lab while he was at it before fleeing to Kazakhstan. As Benton and I are talking about this now, I’m looking out at the distant lights on the shore.
The section of railroad tracks where Gwen was found is close to here, not far from the airport. I remember crouching by her crudely posed body in the rainy darkness, listening to the constant roar of jets taking off and landing. I could hear them but not see their lights in the thick clouds.
“I think Horton came prepared for the unexpected,” Benton explains. “And when he feared his spying gig was up, he murdered his crewmates in cold blood. Then he tried to pass off the story that they were hit with debris, somehow managing to return to the airlock. We now know that never happened.”
There was no spacewalk, explaining why Chip didn’t notice the odor that lingers after being outside on one. The fleeting scent of space clings to the suits for a while, and astronauts describe it differently. Some say it’s a burnt metallic odor. Others are reminded of ozone or something electrical.
Chapter 25
“Now what?” I ask in gridlock traffic halfway across the dark waters of the Potomac River, the slivered moon slipping in and out of clouds. “He just gets a free pass, is granted sanctuary by the Kremlin? I’m so sick and tired of bad guys winning.”
“We have a partnership in space with the Russians, and while everybody has to safeguard their proprietary technologies, we still have to get along,” Benton says. “My guess is that the Kremlin will deny having anything to do with what Horton’s involved in, and they’ll probably hand him over.”
“Good. Because he shouldn’t get away with it,” I reply, headlights, taillights blazing in the dark, and a text from Lucy lands on my phone.
What a coincidence (not), she writes.
When I click on the file she’s sent, I understand why traffic is at a standstill with news helicopters hovering. A group of anti–police brutality protesters are marching through the wealthy neighborhood of Aurora Highlands just south of Pentagon City.
“There’s maybe a couple hundred people so far,” I inform Benton. “And it would appear this is related to an attempted break-in at Dana Diletti’s house early this morning.” I continue scrolling through news feeds, and what’s flashing in my mind is the timing.
Lucy’s right, what a coincidence. How convenient that someone should try to break into the celebrity TV journalist’s home even as she’s working on a big story about the Railway Slayer. While covering Gwen Hainey’s brutal murder, the reporter herself is being hunted perhaps by the very same psycho killer.
“Or I assume that’s the implication,” I say to Benton.
“That’s what it’s sounding like,” he agrees, and thankfully the traffic is starting to move again. “But it doesn’t mean someone didn’t try to break into her home.”
“Apparently, Aurora Highlands is where she lives.” I’m reading on the Internet. “And her burglar alarm went off around two o’clock this morning.”
“The first I’ve heard of it, and that was more than fourteen hours ago,” Benton says. “Why all the hoopla now? What else has happened?”
“As we speak, she’s holding a press conference in her front yard, the protest obviously organized to coincide with it.” I continue passing on what I’m learning.
The police have responded to contain what’s sounding like a manufactured situation that’s creating havoc for area commuters. I have no doubt it’s intentional, I say to Benton as I continue glancing through the latest accounts while we creep across the bridge.
“The gist seems to be that she’s accusing the police of mistreating her,” I add. “Targeting her because she dares to report the news accurately, to criticize the police and those in power.”
I play a live video clip so we can hear what she’s saying.
“. . . The police came eventually.” Dana Diletti is standing outside in the glare of television lights not far from here. “The two officers were, well, let’s just say they didn’t seem happy to see me, making sure I knew they don’t watch my particular brand of reporting.”
Dressed in jeans, a raincoat, she has little if any makeup on, looking more like a neighbor than a famous journalist, a strikingly tall and beautiful one. Surrounded by her crew, she tells her inflammatory story as dozens of police officers in riot gear keep a wary eye on the growing crowd, many people angrily fist-pumping, carrying flags and signs.
“. . . Let me just say it required considerable effort on my part for them to take the situation seriously,” Dana says earnestly, staring into the camera. “Or worse, as if it didn’t matter what might have happened to me, that maybe I don’t belong in this upscale neighborhood.”
She accuses the police of refusing to request that an investigative unit be summoned to check for evidence. The responding officers saw no need to dust for fingerprints, swab for DNA, take photographs or do anything else, she claims. They left after searching her house, making sure no one was inside it. Or so they explained.
“But that’s not what they were really doing,” she dramatically declares. “Their gloved hands were rifling through my closets, drawers, cupboards and other places that had nothing to do with someone trying to pry open my bedroom window. In the process setting off the alarm, thank God. Because I was right there in the dark, sound asleep in bed.”
She blatantly states that the police searched her place without a warrant, treating her like a suspect, not a victim. Their only interest was prurient details they could gossip about while hoping to find drugs or other contraband, illegal weapons, who knows what? All to discredit and destroy her, she’s adamant.
“Finally, after calling the mayor to complain,” she adds, “five hours after the fact, an investigative unit showed up where I live.”
She looks back at her lovely antique brick house decorated for the holidays, on a generous lot thick with old hardwood and fir trees.
“And they found it necessary to remove the entire window, making it impossible for me to stay here . . .”
Why not invite some thug to break in, just send out an engraved invitation? she says, and that’s rather much what she’s doing on live TV. Next, we’re shown images of the big plyboard-covered window at the back of her house, and I would agree that it’s an unacceptable vulnerability.
She’s right to feel unsafe. Were it me, I’d live elsewhere for a while or at least have someone staying with me. For sure I wouldn’t draw attention to my situation by holding a press conference that not so accidentally is accompanied by protesters marching through my neighborhood.
“What she’s doing is really unfortunate. Reckless, actually,” I remark as the coverage plays on my phone. “And yes, that’s too bad about her window. But it’s a sad fact of life that if you want evidence properly tested, it’s usually not going to be convenient or pretty.”
As much crime as the TV journalist covers, she certainly knows that. I speak my mind to Benton even as Dana speaks hers on camera.
“. . . Meaning some serial killer can come back with a hammer, pull out the nails and let himself in . . . ,” she’s saying.
All to intimidate her into silence or get her murdered, she goes on convincingly until I can’t listen anymore.
“Talk about giving someone ideas.” I end the video file. “And making everything about herself, I’m sorry to say.”
“Just what nobody needs right about now,” Benton agrees.
Following the George Washington Memorial Parkway along the river, we’ve avoided Dana Diletti’s neighborhood and the problems that go with it.
We’re just south of the airport, not far from Daingerfield Island, and I text Maggie to e-mail me the Cammie Ramada case. I also want the hard copy waiting on my desk when I get there.
Why, is there a new development? My secretary answers with an outrageous question.
Just do it, please, I text her back, adding that hopefully she’ll still be there by the time I arrive, and it’s more an order than a hope.
“How far out are we?” I ask Benton.
“Ten minutes, knock on wood.”
I pass this along to my overreaching secretary as Rex Bonetta texts me back, and I call him. Right away my chief toxicologist lets me know that we can’t yet identify the presumed opioid that could have killed a lot of people including me. They’ve screened for everything they can to no avail.
“In other words, I’m frustrated,” he says over speakerphone. “And I’m not feeling terribly optimistic, Kay. The testing could take a very long time when there’s no clue what we might be looking for. Or if it’s some new drug we don’t have an assay for, and that’s what I suspect.”
The possibilities for synthetic opioids are as endless as the number pi, as limitless as a chemist’s imagination. All that’s required is changing a single molecule, and fentanyl isn’t fentanyl anymore. The same with carfentanil, methadone and other drugs created primarily for pain relief.
“You lose or gain a hydrogen, a carbon, a nitrogen molecule,” Rex is saying. “Or add an extra bang for the user’s buck like designer benzodiazepines, and the drug screen’s going to miss it.”
That makes continued testing extremely difficult. At times it’s more like a crapshoot as toxicologists try to keep up with the latest potentially deadly spinoff.
“I’m worried that whatever we’re dealing with may have hit in the U.S. and is in the Northern Virginia area,” Rex says. “Possibly the greater D.C. area.”
Three deaths came in today that he’s pretty sure are opioid-related, and this is the first I’ve heard of them. But the drug screen in each was negative except for methadone in one case.
“A recovering heroin addict found dead in an alleyway near a methadone clinic in west Alexandria,” he explains. “I’m wondering if what we’re up against might be the same thing your wine was laced with. A new derivative of something like fentanyl that comes up negative.”
“That’s a disturbing thought,” I reply as Benton turns us inland toward my headquarters, picking up U.S. 1.
“It sure is if your bottle of Bordeaux was tampered with in Europe”—Rex’s voice over speakerphone—“and the same drug has followed you home to Virginia.”
“Or if the tampering was done here to begin with,” I add, a far worse thought for me personally as I wonder how that might have happened. “Some new deadly designer drug.”
I think of what Officer Fruge told me about being at a scene last week, using up all her Narcan reviving multiple people who had overdosed.
“Check back with me tomorrow,” Rex says.
He plans to spend time in the trace evidence lab looking at samples of residue found in the wine, seeing what might turn up on the scanning electron microscope. In the meantime, he’ll let me know if there are new developments, and I end the call, the lights of my building up ahead. I look over at Benton, feeling guilty before saying it.
“It may be rather late by the time I get home.” I tell him what he already knows. “Having been out the entire day with all that’s going on? There’s lasagna and extra sauce in the freezer, also the makings for salad.”
“Don’t worry about me.” He reaches for my hand, lacing his fingers through mine. “I have a feeling I’ll be pretty tied up with Lucy, following up on Jared Horton and everything else. Her data mining might be useful now that we’re getting a better idea what he and Gwen were up to.”
He’ll throw together something for a late supper, have it ready when I get there, he promises, always this thoughtful.
“For sure I’ve got to check in with Maggie, get up to speed on what I’ve missed.” I feel overwhelmed as I go down the list, this day a washout. “And Marino and I need to take a look at Daingerfield Island, at the areas where Gwen Hainey’s and Cammie Ramada’s bodies were found.”
“I understand but it’s already dark. I don’t suppose it can wait until tomorrow?”
“Since we don’t know who’s killing whom, it doesn’t seem anything can wait, Benton. I need to look around in the dark. It’s better for what I have in mind.”
“I prefer you’d get home at a decent hour tonight, that’s all.” He sounds like an overprotective husband, and I know when he’s unsettled.
“I wish I could,” I reply, my parking lot in the next block, an unbroken line of bright red taillights leading to it.
“Considering what the last twenty-four hours have been like, it would be good if you could get some rest, Kay,” he says, and by now if nothing else, we know how to negotiate.
“I have a thought.” I dig my keys out of my briefcase, mindful of the empty gun compartment.
Maybe my husband can pack a pistol on the White House grounds but people like me certainly can’t. The Sig Sauer is tucked in my bedside drawer, the trigger lock on.
“We’ll make a deal,” I suggest.
Instead of meeting Marino at Daingerfield Island or having him follow me there, I’ll ask him to pick me up here at the office. As I’m saying it, I’m sending him a text to that effect.
