Autopsy, p.21
Autopsy, page 21
“Yes, he called in with a migraine late last night, said it was so bad he was in bed with the lights out. Which is exactly where he should have been anyway at almost midnight,” Maggie says. “In a nutshell, today has been chaotic.”
“If he continues being this undependable, we may have to let him go,” I reply. “We can’t have security working double shifts, and we don’t force people to eat in their offices, by the way, Maggie. Not ever. Especially if it’s downstairs or anywhere near bodies and other biohazards.” I do my best to keep a check on my indignation.
“I’ve had every reason imaginable to worry about the security of our building with all that’s been going on,” she says presumptuously, and not a day goes by when I don’t miss my former secretary Rose.
I couldn’t have asked for a better aide-de-camp during my Richmond years. She was warm, trustworthy, a force to be reckoned with, and of the district offices I oversaw, she found this one the most difficult. Referring to the staff as “Northern aggressors” and “Beltway snobs,” she’d shake her head if she could see me now.
“I’m sorry to hear things have been chaotic but I’m not surprised,” I say to my secretary who’s certainly not a Rose, more like a sharp thorn in my side.
Rooting around inside the supply closet, I can’t find the premixed Bluestar reagent I know I have, and I ask Maggie about it.
“I’m not sure I know what that is.” She stands nearby, watching me like a hawk.
“When sprayed on nonvisible bloodstains, it causes them to luminesce,” I explain in frustration.
“Oh, yes, the sort of hocus-pocus one sees on CSI.” She all but rolls her eyes. “That must be what Fabian borrowed the other day and promised to replace.”
“I need to know things like that,” I almost snap, and fortunately I have a jar of luminol powder.
It will work fine for my purposes but isn’t as easy to use and has its limitations.
“People can’t just help themselves to my supply closet.” I shouldn’t have to remind her of common courtesy.
“I’ll have a word with Fabian,” Maggie says, and their allegiance couldn’t be more apparent.
“We need to communicate better.” It’s not the first time I’ve said this to her, and likely won’t be the last. “Had I known the office was out of Bluestar or anything else, we could have reordered it ourselves, and I wouldn’t be on my way to a scene without it.”
“What scene?”
“There’s something I need to check.”
“I see. Well, it’s difficult to communicate when I don’t know where you are much of the time, today being a perfect example. You never mentioned you were leaving town until you were already gone.”
She continues to complain as I find a spray bottle, hydrogen peroxide, a liter of distilled water.
“And now you’re headed out into the night, and won’t tell me where or why,” she adds. “You’re making it almost impossible for me to do my job.”
Putting on a pair of exam gloves, a face mask, I measure fifteen grams, about a tablespoon of the luminol powder, sprinkling it into the plastic bottle.
“If I don’t inform you, it’s because I can’t.” I sound like a broken record. “Certainly, it’s never my intention to make things more difficult.” I screw on the spray top.
“I’ve never worked for anyone who marginalizes me the way you do,” she says.
I feel her eyes fastened to me as I pack up my scene case, closing it with louds snaps, and I don’t like her choice of words.
“I’m not marginalizing you or anyone,” I reply, and that’s what I call lawsuit talk. “As a rule, my government responsibilities aren’t open for discussion. Sensitive investigative information isn’t either.” Taking off my mask and gloves, I notice the thick manila file on my desk chair.
“As you requested,” she says as I walk that way. “I also e-mailed the electronic version to you. Why the sudden interest? Is this related to where you’re going tonight? What scene do you need to check? Are you talking about Daingerfield Island?”
“Officer Fruge mentioned the Cammie Ramada case when I was with her last night,” I reply. “And speaking of? Before you leave, I need you to track down a current phone number for her mother, Greta Fruge, the toxicologist. She’s now retired from the state but works for a private lab in Richmond.”
Carrying the case file to the conference table, I add that I worked with Greta years ago, and what a small world.
“Imagine my surprise when I discovered her daughter is an Alexandria police officer,” I add.
“What do you need Greta for?” My secretary’s face is granite. “Why would you want to stir up that hornet’s nest?”
“Which hornet’s nest are we talking about?”
“Exactly. There have been so many. That’s what happens when your ego is as big as the great outdoors.”
“The information I have for Greta probably isn’t good anymore.” I’m learning not to answer Maggie’s impertinent observations and probes. “But I’ll share what I have with you anyway.” As I’m saying this I do it from my phone’s contact list. “Please see if you can track her down.”
I pass along the name of the biotech company Officer Fruge mentioned when we were going through Gwen Hainey’s townhome.
“Why don’t you ask Officer Fruge yourself how to get hold of her mother? That would be the quickest way to get the information,” Maggie suggests as if I’d never think of such a thing on my own.
“I don’t want to discuss the matter with anyone else at the moment.”
“Well, commonsense would dictate that Greta Fruge is best avoided.”
“She’s extremely good at what she does,” I reply. “More to the point, in the private sector she’s going to be familiar with new technologies that labs like ours might not have access to for years.”
Because of our prior relationship, I’m hoping Greta might help me out, especially since we’re in the midst of an ongoing opioid crisis that the public seems to have forgotten about during the pandemic. She’s also not naïve about the potential for drugs being weaponized, and I remind Maggie that we’re having an uptick in overdoses that come up negative in toxicology testing.
“The fear is some new designer drug might be in the area.” I’m reminded unpleasantly that we don’t know what was laced into the Bordeaux I tasted.
My toxicology screen would have been negative had my blood been tested after I was poisoned last night. I could have been the fourth pending overdose of the day, one of those pouched dead bodies headed to a funeral home or crematorium.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to run back to things that didn’t serve you well.” Maggie means more than one thing.
She was by Elvin Reddy’s side for twenty years, and it must have devastated her when he resigned. I suspect she was just as upset when I took his place.
“I personally think reaching out to Doctor Fruge is reckless,” she says. “Unless you’re not worried about her talking all over Christendom.”
“I’m far more concerned about people dying from some new potent synthetic drug making the rounds. If you get hold of her, please give her my cell phone number. Ask her to call me as soon as possible,” I reply, and I open the Cammie Ramada file as Maggie returns to her office.
I begin skimming the initial report of investigation, and the medical examiner assigned to the case wasn’t my predecessor. It was one of my assistant chiefs, Doug Schlaefer, a highly competent forensic pathologist I’ve had no complaints about since starting here. But I don’t know him well enough to trust him.
In paperwork I’m reviewing, Elvin Reddy lists himself as a witness to the autopsy. But I don’t believe for a moment he was looking on, much less helping as Doug spent almost five hours at the table, and that’s a long haul. A straightforward external examination and dissection can be done in an hour, maybe two.
But to spend more than double that time tells me that Doug never treated the case as routine. From the start he had his share of concerns and doubts, finding the death complicated, perhaps deeply troubling. Or maybe he figured he’d end up in court for one reason or another and was careful to cover all bases.
Meanwhile his illustrious boss made himself scarce most of the time, passing through the morgue while playing host to the FBI, escorting agents in and out. Not witnessing the autopsy but fraternizing, in other words, based on what Wyatt told me a few minutes ago.
I have a pretty good idea what Elvin Reddy’s agenda was that morning beyond hobnobbing with the Feds or anyone else he might find beneficial. He was protecting his political ass after dropping by Daingerfield Island the night before.
Chapter 28
Chiefs usually don’t respond in person or involve themselves in investigations beyond lending oversight. Our staffs are supposed to enable us to run our offices appropriately, and it’s a sad fact that advancement in life can be inversely proportional to passion.
Or in the case of Elvin Reddy, some people never cared to begin with. During my Richmond years when I had the misfortune of supervising him, I recognized early on what he was. He had a heart of stone then and still does, never shedding a tear or getting his hands dirty. Yet for some reason he decided to make an appearance on the night of April 10.
Afterward, he passed along the hot potato to Doug Schlaefer, who conducted the postmortem examination. He decided Cammie Ramada’s death was an accidental drowning “due to an exercise-induced seizure due to temporal lobe epilepsy,” he wrote in his provisional report, dated April 12.
According to his detailed handwritten narrative, the fatal event occurred while the young Brazilian woman was jogging along the Mount Vernon Trail. This was something she did at the same time daily, a routine just like Gwen Hainey’s, and there are disturbing similarities in their violent deaths.
Details that should have been followed up on weren’t, and it was deliberate. If what the manager of Colonial Landing and a neighbor said are to be trusted, it was Gwen’s habit to head out for a run at sunrise. She’d warm up for a few minutes, jogging around the development before exiting through the security gate.
Several blocks away, she’d pick up the popular Mount Vernon Trail. As the name implies, it begins south of here at Mount Vernon, the former home of George and Martha Washington. The paved path with its quaint footbridges and breathtaking scenery hugs the Potomac’s shoreline until it reaches Daingerfield Island.
There the trail veers inland to the back of the heavily forested park, and making a right turn, it parallels the railroad tracks. For maybe half a mile the fitness path is in dense woods, and it would be easy for a predator to hide, lurking and watching. Especially in the dark when the two women jogged along this same stretch, picking times early in the morning or late at night when the fewest people would be out.
For Gwen, it was early in the morning. For Cammie it was late at night after the restaurant she managed closed because of COVID-19 and she couldn’t find work. Her father lost his business in São Paulo, where he had a chain of clothing stores, all of them shuttered, Doug reports in his neat block print, and I can tell the case bothered him.
He went to a lot of trouble reviewing reports from the police and FBI, putting together a history that’s unfair and tragic. No longer able to afford tuition, Cammie had to drop out of school. As months went by, her student visa expired, and she illegally stayed in the United States, living with two other Brazilian women in low-income housing.
As fate would have it, their apartment was across the parkway from Daingerfield Island, just a few minutes’ jog, and someone like Cammie would have had no status with Elvin Reddy. Her case was an easy one to cover up and shelve. Those closest to her were in South America, having hit hard times like so many. They had no power, no voice, and were unable to travel.
Call sheets inside the file indicate Cammie’s loved ones contacted the OCME many times, wanting to know what happened to her, talking frequently with Doug. The story they were told is the same one he wrote in his report. Their daughter was jogging along the grassy shoreline at around nine p.m. when she started convulsing, ultimately drowning.
Images of MRI scans while she was alive show cortical dysplasia of her left superior temporal gyrus. Her seizure disorder was real, and during the autopsy, a large amount of water and sand were found inside her mouth, nose, airway, stomach and lungs. She was still breathing when her face was in the water, and she didn’t die quickly or easily.
I have no doubt she suffered, drowning where she was found, fully dressed except for a shoe that was some distance from her body. But she also had broken fingernails, multiple bruises on her neck, arms, wrists and hands that just as easily could be associated with a struggle. Her face and scalp were lacerated and abraded, and she broke a tooth and bit her tongue.
When her head struck the ground, it fractured her skull, causing a contrecoup brain injury. There are scalp lacerations, temporal bone fractures with underlying epidural hemorrhages. She suffered at least three separate blows to the head, and I wouldn’t expect that in a seizure. Based on what I’m seeing already, the case couldn’t be more suspicious, her injuries inconsistent with a fall.
Why she left the Mount Vernon Trail to begin with, ending up acres away at the river’s edge, is missing from the story. That should have been the most important question. Yet there was no attempt to answer it, and my deep-seated anger is about to overtorque. Texting Marino, I check on his whereabouts.
Be there in 20, he texts me back a little later as I’m going through the toxicology report, and it’s negative for alcohol and drugs, including anticonvulsants.
Unmedicated, Cammie may have suffered a seizure right before she died but that’s not why she ended up facedown in the Potomac River. She would have been better off if she’d knocked herself unconscious and drowned. It would be far more humane than what I’m envisioning, and if I’m right it won’t be easy to prove depending on what’s left of the evidence.
I’m not the only one who’s questioned how she died and if she might have had some help. That would explain why “UND” was entered into the morgue log in the early hours of April 11. When the manner of death was amended, there should have been a note reflecting that. But I’m not seeing any such thing in the original file as I go through it.
A week after the autopsy, Elvin Reddy initialed the final autopsy report and death certificate. It was ruled that Cammie was an accidental drowning, a decision that instantly unplugged the investigation, and the FBI halted testing any evidence.
If no criminal offense was committed, there’s no suspect, no victim, no DNA profiles or fingerprints to run through CODIS, IAFIS or any other database. The case was closed in record time, and I’d ask Doug about it if I felt I could confide in anyone who works here. But nothing’s safe when people remain loyal to their former leader.
One I predicted would run the Northern Virginia district office into the ground, and it was a bleak day twenty years ago when I heard about Elvin being hired. Then five years ago he was appointed acting chief of all four districts, and I promised at the time that he’d destroy the entire medical examiner system. Which is what he’s about done.
I wasn’t naïve when approached earlier this year to consider becoming the new chief. I knew I was being brought in as a forensic fixer, and in short order I’ve gotten a good idea of the damage he’s inflicted through negligence and corruption. All the while Maggie’s been his tireless first lady, a devoted office wife, and I hear her getting off the phone.
Then she’s breezing through our shared doorway, her coat and pocketbook in hand. Ready to leave for the day, she places a stack of autopsy protocols and death certificates on my desk.
“Sorry but no luck,” she says, and I’m where she left me earlier, standing by my conference table, going through the case file.
My shoes are off, my suit jacket draped over a chair. I’m not in a state of undress but getting there, and I pad in my stocking feet toward the bathroom.
“Doctor Fruge didn’t answer but I left a message for her to call you.” Maggie eyes me suspiciously. “Why are you changing your clothes? What are you planning to do during your so-called scene visit?”
“Thanks for trying Greta.” I ignore my pushy secretary’s questions. “And speaking of, I spent a good bit of time with her daughter last night. Apparently, Officer Fruge lives near you. She says she sees you out walking Emma.” I happen to know the name of Maggie’s Corgi.
“Yes, Officer Fruge indeed, driving around in her police SUV with too much time on her hands,” Maggie says snidely. “One of these pointless people who can talk the paint off a wall, needing to be in everybody’s business.”
“It just so happened she was at Daingerfield Island when Doctor Reddy showed up at the scene.” I let that sink in for a moment, flipping on the bathroom light, setting Cammie’s open file on the countertop.
“Well, there you have it, showing up where she doesn’t belong,” Maggie answers through the partially opened door, evading the topic of her former boss. “That’s precisely what I mean about her.”
Inside my locker are more tactical shirts and cargo pants neatly folded, and I pick what I need. I sense I’ve knocked Maggie off-balance. She didn’t expect me to know that Fruge was at the scene last April.
“I’m sure you’re aware that Cammie Ramada may have died in Alexandria but it’s not the Alexandria Police Department’s jurisdiction,” Maggie informs me. “Officer Fruge shouldn’t have shown up at all. But she heard it over the radio, and some people just don’t seem to know when to mind their own business.”
I wonder how she would know what Fruge heard on the radio, and if the two of them might be better acquainted than I thought. Both of them live alone in the same neighborhood and may have gotten friendly. I could see that happening. It would be just like my charming secretary to bleed Fruge for information, to manipulate her, all the while looking down her nose at her.
