Autopsy, p.22
Autopsy, page 22
“I’m well aware the park is federal property,” I reply. “But if you have the shock of stumbling upon a dead body, you’re going to panic. When panicky people call nine-one-one they don’t care whose jurisdiction it is. And you can’t expect the local cops or anyone else to wait until the FBI shows up.”
“Officer Fruge is a boundary crasher. She may be something worse than that,” Maggie warns.
“You and I both know that Elvin Reddy typically won’t respond to anything if it doesn’t involve prominent, powerful people. If there’s nothing in it for him, he’s not interested.” I don’t pull any punches. “Why did he decide to show up at this particular scene at Daingerfield Island?”
I demand answers through the cracked door, sitting on the closed toilet lid, putting on my boots. What was his motivation? What was so important that it merited interrupting him after hours?
“Well, that case was a while ago,” she says as if we’re talking decades instead of months.
“What do you remember?”
“Let’s see, I recall they were headed back from dinner at their favorite place in Arlington. I can’t think of the name of it at the moment,” she says, and I don’t believe her.
“Who do you mean by they?”
“His wife was with him,” Maggie says, the story getting only weirder.
Coincidentally, they were just minutes from the scene when the medical examiner’s office was notified about a dead body discovered on Daingerfield Island. Maggie claims Elvin was driving his personal Mercedes along I-395 and headed in that general direction.
But what she doesn’t attempt to address is why he was contacted about the death to begin with. Especially after hours when he was headed home from dinner with his wife, and I wonder why Fruge didn’t mention that detail to me. When she talked about him showing up at the scene, I assumed he was alone.
“Okay, he was notified for some reason,” I say to Maggie. “Then what?”
There’s no way Elvin keeps a scene case in his car. I doubt he owns one. I can’t imagine he had PPE with him either when he and his wife supposedly were on their way home from a favorite restaurant that likely required a reservation. Which would have been made by Maggie, who suddenly has amnesia.
“He said he’d swing by to see what was going on,” she says.
“I wouldn’t expect that. Especially with his wife in the car.”
“I’m quite sure she didn’t get out,” she says, and I don’t see how she can be sure of any such thing if she wasn’t there.
“Who notified him about the case to begin with and why?”
“As I’ve mentioned, we got the call,” my secretary says, and I know the answer.
She notified Elvin Reddy, and I ask her why. She answers by putting on her coat, looping the strap of her pocketbook over her shoulder, moving closer to the door that opens onto the hallway.
“You alerted him about the body on Daingerfield Island,” I outright accuse her, and she doesn’t admit or deny it.
Instead she says that she advised him just as she always had, and my thoughts keep circling back to August Ryan.
“What caused you to single out this particular case?” I ask.
“I don’t know what you think it is you’re trying to accomplish but it won’t change anything except to make your life more difficult here,” she says, and now she’s threatening me.
“Why did you interrupt him while he was out to dinner with his wife? I need answers, Maggie.” I’m not going to give her a pass. “As long as you’d worked for him, you certainly knew what he would think is important. And you’re well aware that he doesn’t show up at scenes. He’ll barely touch a scalpel.”
“I should think it’s obvious.” Anger flashes in her eyes. “I wanted to be sure he was aware there was a death in a public park that might cause potential complications and problems.” She explains what’s probably getting close to the truth. “He agreed it was important to drop by, to see what was going on.”
“To show the flag while making sure he controlled the narrative.” I’m not going to sugarcoat it. “That’s why he really showed up, now isn’t it? To nip any potential problems in the bud. A murder in a popular national park would be most inconvenient. Thank goodness it was an illegal,” I add with a bite. “Somebody unimportant that maybe nobody would ask questions about . . .”
“Why must you insist on poking a stick at things that are best left alone?” Maggie glares at me. “That was your reputation when you were getting started, always making a mountain out of a molehill. And here we go again when the news is bad enough as is. Why must you throw petrol on the fire?”
Chapter 29
She complains that the media has been ringing the phone off the hook about Gwen Hainey, and God only knows what will show up next in the news. Today has been a train wreck, and much of it is my fault since I was missing in action.
To hear Maggie talk, I was a no-show. I had bigger fish to fry, was too busy hobnobbing with important people, and I keep thinking about the White House takeout trash I tossed inside the bay. It wouldn’t surprise me if Fabian informed her where I might have been today. Assuming Elvin Reddy didn’t do it first, and it turns my stomach as I envision him sitting inside the Mess Hall.
“And now you’re going to remind us of another disturbing death as if you’re connecting them,” Maggie is saying. “No doubt the next big serial murder case that splashes you all over the news again just like back in your Richmond days. That was a lovely historic city too until you came along and ruined it.”
We don’t want the public thinking it’s unsafe living in Old Town, she goes on and on, sounding like a politician. How unfortunate if it’s no longer recommended that people stay in Alexandria while on business in the greater Washington, D.C., area. The value of real estate would go down. Everything would, she continues painting the picture.
“Tourism isn’t something this office takes into account when trying to find out what killed someone,” is my response.
“You’re making a big mistake,” she says before walking out for the night, shutting the door behind her.
I decide to wait a few minutes, giving her a head start, and by now I’ve had quite enough of Maggie Cutbush. I don’t know how I’m supposed to work with someone so haughty and stubborn, and I call Marino.
“Was just about to send you a text,” he answers grumpily without saying hello, and I can tell he’s driving. “I’ve got to check the air in my tires, pretty sure it’s just a bad sensor. Another one, and this is getting old.”
He’s headed to a service station, and should be here in thirty minutes depending on traffic. I give him the upshot of what we need to do, realizing it’s likely a futile scavenger hunt, apologizing upfront.
“But if I don’t look, I’ll have no peace of mind.” I pick up my briefcase, my coat.
“Look with what? A metal detector?” His voice is skeptical. “Because it’s going to ping on the iron rails and put your ears out.”
“I have another idea.” I explain what it is.
“Sure, it’s worth a try,” he says. “We should look around anyway, see what we notice after dark when there’s no one around.”
We end the call, and I have just enough time to have a chat with firearms examiner Faye Hanaday if I can find her. Locking up, I roll my scene case along the corridor, saying good night to people waiting for the elevator. I take the stairs, heading up instead of down, and Faye usually works late but no point in calling to check. It’s not her habit to answer the phone.
On the second floor, I roll my scene case, greeting scientists I pass. Many I’ve yet to introduce myself to, and I don’t know when I’ve ever hated being new on the job as much as I do right now. It’s always been routine for me to make evidence rounds, stopping in at various labs, checking on my cases. But I’ve not been doing that much my first frenetic month as the new chief.
The corridor dead-ends at the tool marks and firearms suite of labs, and the light is green outside the firing range’s thick steel door. I don’t hear the muffled thud of rounds being test-fired inside a long narrow space of thick concrete. There’s a steel bullet trap in back, and the floor is capable of bearing the weight of the water recovery tank.
No one’s home on the range, Faye’s colleagues gone for the day, and I find her alone at her workstation, staring through the binocular lenses of a comparison microscope. She has on a lab coat over her sweater and jeans, and her usual high-tops and loud socks. Her pink and purple highlighted hair is pushed back with a beaded headband, bringing to mind Cyndi Lauper.
Leaving my scene case by the door, I walk through a vast space of black countertops, and microscopes synced with video screens. Walls are crowded with poster-size photographic court displays of lands and grooves, and the marks left by firing pins. On shelves and tables are small scales for testing the pounds of pressure required to pull a trigger. Also calipers and other measuring devices for determining a bullet’s weight and caliber.
There are stacks of bullet-riddled targets used in distance testing. Piled about are tire tracks and footwear impressions cast in dental stone and silicone, and the ATM parked in a corner was brazenly stolen from a kiosk. The quadcopter drone inside a cardboard box leaning against a wall is rigged with a pistol that one angry neighbor fired remotely at another, blowing a hole in the screen door.
Wherever I look I see the ingenuity of modern inventions that can be customized to destroy and kill. Spread over a tabletop are an assortment of 3-D-printed knives, guns, bullets, shotgun slugs, assault rifle parts, and suppressors. Soon enough there won’t be much people can’t print at home, spinning whatever they like from a range of media such as plastics, carbon fiber, resin, Kevlar, and metals like steel and titanium.
“Knock knock.” I announce myself as I approach, not wishing to startle Faye, and she looks up, blinking several times. “I tried to reach you earlier.” It’s my diplomatic way of saying it would be nice if she’d call me back for once.
“Hi, sorry about that.” She leans back in her chair, putting on her glasses. “As you can imagine, I’ve been tied up with that attempted break-in at Dana Diletti’s house earlier today.”
“I was hearing about that while stuck in bad traffic, listening to her press conference,” I reply. Faye and I have worked several cases together since I took over as chief, most recently a suicide committed with an antique rifle.
Ironically, she isn’t into guns even if she’s a savant with them and almost any weapon you can think of. They’re simply what she works with for a living. When she relentlessly visits gun shows and stores, it’s not because she’s an enthusiast or a collector.
Her passion is the prizewinning cakes she bakes, and around her workstation are framed photographs of her imaginatively decorated confections. A mint and chocolate jungle with dinosaurs, rocks and caves. A butterscotch moonscape with astronaut footprints, a flag, a lunar lander. Children ice-skating on a blue candy pond in a winter wonderland of marshmallow snowmen.
I don’t know much about her, only that she’s in her late thirties, single, no pets, just a saltwater aquarium. But I have the sneaking suspicion she and Fabian might have something going. Now and then they arrive at work together, and the other day I noticed them in the parking lot squabbling inside his vintage El Camino.
“A big stink is what we’re talking about.” Faye sums up the alleged break-in. “Hold on to your hat because it’s coming.”
“It’s already a big stink. There’s a protest in her neighborhood.” I take a close look at the large window, the screen draped in torn brown paper propped against a countertop.
I can see black smudges left from fingerprint powder, also the tube of polyvinyl siloxane used for making dental impressions, and there are several cameras nearby. I imagine Faye’s been swamped ever since the evidence was brought in, taking photographs and making casts in red orthodontic wax of any defects that need to be magnified.
“I’ve been making comparisons,” she says. “And there’s no question someone tried to pry open her window.”
“Comparisons?” I puzzle. “Comparing the tool marks to what? I wasn’t aware there was a suspect.”
“The tools the investigators brought in for me to examine are from Dana Diletti’s own house I’m sorry to say because I’m a fan,” Faye explains as I look at the screen, the window still in its white-painted frame.
On a paper-covered countertop are a variety of tools including screwdrivers, a hammer and a pry bar, all tagged as evidence.
“I can tell you already that one of the screwdrivers looks like it might have been used,” Faye lets me know. “In fact, I’m pretty close to calling it a match.”
Opening files on the computer display synced to her comparison microscope, she shows me images of defects on the flat steel blade that were transferred to the window’s bent metal latch.
“This screwdriver definitely was found inside her house?” I ask, and Dana Diletti’s got real trouble on her hands.
“That’s the story,” Faye says. “Not that it’s up to me but it’s looking like she intended to give the appearance that someone was out to get her. In other words, she staged everything, and talk about fake news.”
“If that’s what happened, she’s going to find she’s created quite a problem for herself.” I think of the helicopters hovering overhead while Benton and I were stuck in traffic. “Falsifying reports and evidence are criminal offenses.” Then I bring up the real reason for my impromptu visit. “I’ve been consulted about another matter that I can address only in generalities, and I could use your help, Faye.”
“What’s going on?”
“The case involves two victims shot in a confined area, and the fragmented projectiles recovered from their bodies aren’t something one sees very often,” I begin to describe.
I apologize that I can’t share most details or any images. I’ve just come from a confidential discussion, and don’t have such things in my possession, I explain somewhat truthfully. But I’d like Faye’s expert opinion about a type of ammunition the average person doesn’t know about.
“I’ve not come across Glaser Safety Slugs in a long time, and I believe that’s what we’re dealing with,” I let her know. “But I have to be sure before I pass that along to the parties involved.” I imagine her surprise if she knew this included the president of the United States.
“It’s tougher without photographs,” she says with a sigh.
“I don’t need them to describe what I saw on a live video feed as the scene was being worked.”
“I can understand Glasers being used in tight quarters, that makes sense,” she says, having no clue that we’re talking about a spacecraft.
“Yes,” I agree. “The sort of ammunition you’d pick for self-defense if you anticipate having to shoot someone inside an apartment, a vehicle. You want to disable or kill but not have the pellet or projectile exit the body or ricochet, hurting someone else, causing other damage.”
“Correct. Which is why Glasers were created. To deal with skyjackers back in the day.”
“And there’s no new round out there that might be similar?”
“Not that I know of,” she says, scrolling through images of fragmented ammunition. “But picking something that uncommon requires forethought. Whoever we’re talking about was very deliberate about arming himself.”
Astronauts aren’t known to carry weapons into orbit, the exception being the Russians based on what I’ve learned during various Doomsday Commission briefings. Cosmonauts used to pack a particularly nasty triple-barreled “survival” pistol that includes a machete. That’s not what was used in this case, not even close.
But I can’t mention any of this to Faye. She may find out from the news what’s happened three hundred miles above the planet but she won’t hear it from me.
“Look familiar?” She shows me photographs on the video display.
The fragments of spent rounds look almost identical to what was removed from the Thor scientists’ bodies.
“Yes,” I reply.
“What are you thinking about the caliber?”
“Nine-millimeter.”
“If it was a pistol as opposed to a revolver,” she says, “it would have auto-ejected the spent cartridge cases.”
“I’m going to venture a guess that the perpetrator would have collected anything like that before leaving the scene.” I imagine them floating around inside the orbiter.
Jared Horton would have looked until he found them. He would have left with them and the gun. But I don’t need the cartridge cases or the weapon to know what I saw.
“Number six lead shot, copper jacketed with a silver-tipped polymer nose,” I tell Faye.
The ammunition’s prefragmented lead projectile is designed to begin separating on impact. There’s little risk of the pellets exiting the target, and perhaps hitting someone else or causing other catastrophic damage.
“The silver ball tip is the dead giveaway.” Faye doesn’t realize the pun. “Glasers come in blue tip and silver, and the silver has more penetrating power because it’s six shot instead of twelve, exactly what you’re describing.”
A winter round of sorts, it’s what you’d use if you needed to penetrate heavy clothing, and that could include a spacesuit. Jared Horton knew what he was doing in advance, I’m thinking. He may not have planned to murder his crewmates but he was prepared for that eventuality.
“How much longer are you going to be here?” I ask Faye, and Marino has let me know he’s waiting in the parking lot.
“I don’t know, for a while. This case will keep me burning the midnight oil.” She’s in no hurry to go home.
Not to see her fish or get back to her baking, and I might know the reason why, and it’s not merely because of her caseload. Fabian is working the evening shift this week, and I’m betting that may have something to do with the long hours Faye’s keeping.
I don’t see him moments later as I walk through the intake area. No sign of Wyatt either, his office empty, and no one is inside the bay when I walk through. Probably they’re hanging out in our comfortable, clean breakroom, watching me on the security cameras, and I can’t help but smile.
