Autopsy, p.23
Autopsy, page 23
Outside, Marino’s truck rumbles loudly in a thick mist settling over the dark parking lot. There’s not a breath of wind, the Virginia and U.S. flags wilted on their poles.
“I can see you’re ready for anything, and frankly that’s a good thing under the circumstances,” I announce as I climb into the passenger seat, shutting the door.
Chapter 30
He’s suited up in tactical clothes similar to mine, but under his jacket is a bulletproof vest.
A knit cap covers his bald head, his pistol where I saw it last on the console between us. When I placed my scene case in back, I noticed the extra weapons and ammunition from the night before.
“I’ve got nothing more than a hunch to go on, and I apologize again if it turns out to be a wild goose chase.” Holding my briefcase in my lap, I’m reminded my gun is locked up at home, and this would have been a good time to have it. “Chances are we won’t find anything but that’s not going to change what I’m concluding.”
“You and me both, and I’m surprised that when you were at the scene with August Friday night, he didn’t mention the Ramada case. You were just acres away from where she died.” Marino chews gum like mad. “I realize at a glance the two cases don’t look similar but that’s not why he’s keeping his mouth shut.”
August is afraid for his job, Marino says, and he’s seen this before, especially when it’s the Feds.
“You’re trying to do the right thing, and politicians interfere,” he adds.
“It’s a shame when people are more territorial about a park than a human being,” I reply as he stares out his side window.
“What the hell?” He scowls as my secretary’s old silver Volvo backs out of its parking space, getting way too close to his truck.
“I think she’s letting us know she’s watching.” I catch a glimpse of her staring coldly at us in the glare of headlights as she drives off in a swirl of exhaust. “She told me she was headed home, and that was forty minutes ago. Where has she been? Who’s she been talking to?”
“Since I got here, she’s been sitting in her car where nobody can hear what she’s saying on the phone,” Marino replies, and I remember the look on Maggie’s face when she realized I’d overheard her conversation in the corridor.
“As if she hasn’t caused enough trouble already.” I put on my shoulder harness. “Mark my words, she’d like nothing better than to get me fired. I’ll be lucky if I last an entire month the way things are headed.”
“What does Benton think about all the crap going on?”
“That my office is close to unmanageable. The governor, the attorney general may have wanted me to fix the Virginia medical examiner system, in particular the office here. But it doesn’t seem that’s what anybody else wants, and I’m not sure moving back here was the best plan.”
“They can screw themselves.” Only Marino doesn’t say screw. “We’re not turning tail and running.”
“No, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be invited to leave because I’m a problem.” I envision Maggie threatening me. “What we’re doing right now is a good example.” I remember what she said about me always having to poke a stick at things.
“Does Benton know why we’re headed to the park? Is he thinking the same thing we are?”
“He says what you’ve heard before, that when serial offenders have signatures, patterns, it’s about their highly personalized fantasies,” I reply. “Violent psychopaths often have rituals they repeat unless something interrupts them.”
“Well, one thing I know for sure by now is to pay attention when you get one of your hunches, Doc,” Marino says, and the coast is clear, Maggie gone.
He begins backing up, using his mirrors, craning his neck. Ignoring the parking assist cameras, he muscles his monster truck into a U-turn, and the more keyed up he gets, the more he tends to manhandle. He drives through my nearly empty parking lot, and I can’t get the image of the flattened penny out of my thoughts.
August held it in his gloved hand, shining his light on it, and I literally couldn’t make heads or tails of what I was seeing. Nothing engraved on it was legible including Lincoln’s image or the date until later when the coin was magnified. The silvery zinc was marbled with bright copper plating, the date 2020, not a hint of a brown or green patina.
“It’s hard to say when something’s been run over by a train,” I explain as we stop at the security gate, “but it seems apparent to me the penny hadn’t been out there long. Possibly hours, at the most days, because in wet conditions, the metal would have started tarnishing quickly.”
“Like I said, you’ve always got a reason for your hunches.” Marino eases forward as the security gate arm goes up. “Usually a damn ugly one.” He drives out of the parking lot.
“What I think happened couldn’t be uglier,” I reply, and inside I’m seething. “If I’m right there will be hell to pay even if it costs me my job. The way someone dies isn’t let’s make a damn deal.”
“Take a breath, Doc. We’ll fix it just like we always do. Elvin Reddy’s an incompetent scumbag, and I hate it when people like that get rewarded.”
“We’ll see how rewarded he is by the time this is over.” I unpleasantly envision him drinking coffee at the White House, the back of his bald head shiny like polished stone.
“Imagine the damage he’s caused over all these years,” Marino says as the light turns red at the intersection up ahead, a long line of cars forming. “Like we’re always saying, when you take out one person, you take out everybody. Looking the other way, lying about it means somebody else gets hurt.”
“How are your neighbors holding up? They must be in an uproar. How awful not to feel safe where you live, especially if it’s your dream home.”
“It’s bad,” he says.
“Unfortunately, it seems Dana Diletti is working on a sensational story about the so-called Railway Slayer.” I explain what Faye Hanaday told me in her lab, that it appears the TV journalist may have staged her break-in.
“That figures,” Marino says. “But they’ll run the damn Railway Slayer piece anyway.”
“I don’t know when it’s supposed to air but one can expect it to push people over the edge.”
“Well, it’s looking like the title might turn out to be true if your hunch is right about the railroad tracks,” he says. “And a TV news story is going to suck. My neighbors are already scared out of their minds.”
Some are thinking about putting their properties on the market, and already there’s a growing panic about the value going down. Dorothy doesn’t want to be home alone and has been at Benton’s and my place all day, I’m told.
“Meanwhile, Cliff Sallow, the manager, is trying way too hard to be helpful. I don’t have a good feeling about him, Doc,” Marino says.
I tell him about the horror theme I heard on the security gate recording, wondering if August might have played it for him.
“We listened more than once.” Marino constantly checks his mirrors as if someone might be after us. “It’s probably part of some sicko’s fantasy or that’s what we’re supposed to assume,” he adds, and I know who he’s thinking about.
“What does Cliff Sallow have to say about the loud Shock Theater music, and the gates opening and shutting?” I inquire. “What’s his explanation, and was he inside the management office when all that happened? Where was he last Friday night?”
“Watching football, he claims. And he doesn’t have an explanation, said he’s never heard of Shock Theater, isn’t into horror stuff,” Marino says. “But he was full of suggestions such as a boat being used to get on and off the property. That’s why we can’t hear anybody driving through.”
Possibly a rowboat or something with a small motor, Sallow proposed. Except the boat slips at Colonial Landing are covered by cameras, and all of them were working when Gwen was abducted. Only those at the front gates were obstructed for a while, making what the manager said implausible if not impossible.
“Also, the weather was terrible last Friday night,” I point out while we sit at a red light. “A lot like what we’re having now but windy and raining hard off and on. I can’t imagine anyone was on the water, especially after dark.”
“You ask me, he’s trying to steer us in the wrong direction,” Marino says. “Most of all, he’s putting on the big innocent act. He wants to help us catch who did it, meaning he must be a good guy, right?”
“Gwen’s killer had access to a vehicle of some sort.” I return to the subject of how that person came and went.
He had to have a car to transport her body from her townhome to Daingerfield Island. We also don’t know what we might discover when the security recordings are worked on in the labs.
“Maybe the car in question has a quiet engine, and the software can enhance it,” I explain.
“Cliff Sallow has a Prius,” Marino reminds me. “And hybrids are quiet.”
“Have you searched it?”
“He invited us to look at anything we want. Like I said, he’s too helpful.”
“What about getting a swab for DNA?”
“We got that and fingerprints,” he says, and traffic is moving again. “August and I told him that he’s not a suspect, which isn’t true because we’re more suspicious of him than anyone else.”
“Do you think he realizes that?”
“Nope,” Marino says. “He’s too busy trying to impress us. We explained that as the manager of the complex he’d been inside Gwen’s place a number of times, had been handling her packages and who knows what else. We needed DNA, his prints for exclusionary purposes.”
“And that was perfectly okay with him? He didn’t tell you to talk to his lawyer?”
“He was more than okay. It’s like he got off on it.”
Marino explains that he and August went through the Prius with a fine-tooth comb, and there was no sign of anything suspicious. But Sallow is the kind of guy who would have spent a lot of time thinking about what could get him into trouble.
“And we know the killer’s careful about planning in advance, covering the security gate cameras and all the rest,” Marino adds.
“Someone cunning who probably gets enraged when things don’t go according to plan,” I reply. “I can see why the manager would make your antenna go up, and I’d like to know where he was on the night of April tenth when Cammie died not far from where Gwen’s body was found. This was several months after he moved here.” I repeat what Officer Fruge told me. “She doesn’t trust Cliff Sallow either, has her eye on him.”
“I’m aware,” Marino says. “I was there last night when she was going on and on about him. Fruge’s like a dog with a bone, can’t let it go.”
“We both know what that’s like when a case haunts us.”
“Yeah, it sounds like life kicked Cammie to the curb, and she didn’t count.” Cold air rushes inside the truck as he tosses his gum out the window.
“That was a gross miscalculation,” I promise.
On King Street now, we’re retracing our steps from the night before, the fog billowing as if we’re driving through clouds.
“Seriously?” Marino says. “The more I hear, the worse it gets. Who drowns while they’re jogging? What was she doing in that area of the park at night? Why did she leave the running path? I don’t buy that something was wrong with her, and she ended up down by the water because maybe she didn’t know what she was doing.”
“She suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, likely was born with it,” I inform him. “The theory is she had convulsions induced by exercise, lost consciousness on the shore and drowned. And yes, she might have gotten disoriented or confused but that’s not why she’s dead. I believe she had some help.”
“How does her having a seizure fit with someone attacking her?”
“If someone ambushed her, the stress of that alone could have brought on a seizure,” I reply as I imagine her running in terror, trying to get away. “That’s what I think happened, and she started having convulsions. Her attacker was interrupted by something he didn’t expect.”
“Then what do you think he did?”
“I think he slammed her head against the ground at least three times and drowned her. She had a broken tooth, a fractured skull, and three discrete brain injuries accompanied by hemorrhages. Also, what look like fingertip bruises on her neck, wrists, upper arms, and broken fingernails,” I recall, “and her knees were contused.”
“None of it was old I don’t guess,” he says.
“Based on what I saw in her photographs, the bruises were bright red, probably occurring at or around the time of death.”
“Crap.”
“I also don’t believe for a minute that her head injuries were due to a seizure. That would be most unusual.”
“I didn’t know the part about her having epilepsy but I assume that’s the medical problem I’ve heard mentioned,” Marino says. “I’ve not been able to find much about her case in the news, and Lucy hasn’t, either, not even on social media. It’s like there was almost no interest in the case.”
“I’m afraid that was by design. Elvin Reddy wanted it to be ignored, to go away, and it might have stayed that way had Officer Fruge not continued to talk about it.”
“Yeah, well, that’s how I heard about it back in July, from the local town crier. Fruge’s out patrolling Old Town pretty regularly, and likes to talk, as you know. We got acquainted,” Marino says, and I can envision it easily.
“Let me guess, she introduced herself to you,” I reply as I check my phone for messages.
Dorothy has sent one, wondering where I might have hidden the jalapeño peppers. She and Lucy are making chili, and I realize how hungry I am.
“I was gassing up my Harley at the Shell station,” Marino says while I try not to think about food. “Fruge knew who I was and pulled in behind me, welcoming me to the neighborhood. She said she was glad there was a new sheriff in town.”
He peels open more sticks of retro gum, Teaberry this time, and my stomach growls.
“She knew we were coming,” he says.
I politely decline the pack he offers while I text my sister that as far as I know we’re out of jalapeños. She used them up while making nachos last week and promised to pick up a few jars. I guess she forgot, and now isn’t a good time to pester me about it.
None in the cellar pantry? Dorothy again, and what she’s referring to are shelves in the basement where I keep an overflow of various canned goods and supplies.
You can check but pretty sure not, and as I’m writing this, I think about Marino and Dorothy moving into their new place at Colonial Landing last summer.
“You’d been living here in Old Town several months before the rest of us arrived,” I explain. “I would expect Fruge to be well aware of people new to the area even if they haven’t moved in yet.”
She’s a cop, and a tenacious one at that, reminding me of Marino in the old days when we first met. If sufficiently motivated, they’re the type to access whatever they want by any means they deem necessary. Also, people talk, and Alexandria may be a decent-size city but its historic district has a population of fewer than ten thousand.
“It wouldn’t be hard to figure out who’s buying real estate in Old Town,” I explain as we drive past Ivy Hill Cemetery.
It’s so socked in by the fog, I can’t make out the big trees and monuments uprooted by last night’s storm.
“There are any number of ways Fruge could have discovered that we planned to relocate here,” I remind Marino. “I’m sure she was waiting for us with bells on.”
“She knows about me from my Richmond days when I was the head of homicide,” he replies. “She remembers both of us, and everyone around us who matters including Lucy and Benton. She even asked about Doris and Rocky, snooping into what happened to them, asking questions.”
Chapter 31
Doris was Marino’s first wife and childhood sweetheart. I never thought he’d get over her after she ran off with the car salesman.
Their only child, Rocky, grew up to be a ruthless criminal, dying violently after trying to take out his own father. It sounds like Fruge had been busy excavating information, and it’s no different from what we do when someone new enters our airspace.
“I don’t blame her for checking us out,” I say to Marino. “She’d be foolish not to, and I also think she’s lonely, with a lot to prove.”
That might be what fuels her intensity, driving her behavior, I explain. Her late father was a Presbyterian minister, and from what I recall, he wasn’t easy.
“You know what her mother’s like, consumed with her career and notoriety, and she lives several hours from here,” I add. “I doubt they see each other much.”
“I don’t think Fruge’s got anybody special in her life, either,” Marino says. “Apparently, she hangs out alone at A League of Her Own, and I’m not talking about the movie.”
He means the lesbian sports bar in D.C. where Fruge likes the baseball videos and dancing, he says. This is where she ran into Lucy and Janet a couple years ago, he continues, relaying what he’s learned.
“When was she saying all this?” I ask.
“After she dropped you off last night, she came back to Gwen’s place, shadowing August and me, talking nonstop,” he replies. “She said Elvin Reddy is an idiot, that everybody was terrified of him while he ran the OCME, and still is now that he’s the health commissioner. That’s why there’s such a code of silence.”
“He’s not an idiot,” I reply. “It would be easier if he were.”
“Sounds to me like he didn’t want Cammie Ramada to be a homicide, end of story.”
“Only the story doesn’t end. Here we are after another victim has turned up in the same park,” I reply. “This one with her throat slashed and hands cut off, brazenly dumped by the railroad tracks. A homicide that perhaps could have been prevented had anybody been looking for a violent offender.”
