Autopsy, p.4
Autopsy, page 4
“She said the only way to be safe from him was to go far away to someplace where he can’t find her,” Marino says. “So she took the job with Thor and moved here. That’s her story. Some of it might be true, a lot of it probably isn’t. Lucy and I didn’t check it out. We didn’t get further involved because Gwen didn’t want us to, wasn’t interested.”
“Then why go along with it to begin with?”
“Dorothy’s not good at taking no for an answer,” he says. “Besides, it would have made Gwen look suspicious if she’s so worried but doesn’t want help.”
“It’s all looking suspicious,” I reply, and we’ve reached Alexandria’s old brick train station.
Crossing Callahan Drive, we bump over the same railroad tracks the murdered woman was found along just north of here. Gwen Hainey, I have no doubt, envisioning the copper coin on a rail, deformed and flattened as thin as paper. It bothered me when August found it, and bothered Benton even more when we talked about it later.
“What if I told you there was a penny on the tracks at the scene?” I say to Marino. “And likely it was run over by the seven p.m. commuter train that stopped when the body was spotted.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” he says, and we’re in the heart of the historic district, shops and restaurants cheek to jowl, mostly empty in this weather.
“It was on top of a rail, close to the body.”
“How close?”
“Barely six feet away.” I envision August taking photographs and measuring the distance.
“It sounds like it was just placed there,” Marino says. “When I was growing up, I used to put pennies on the rails at the railroad crossing near my house, a lot of us kids did. It was a thing in New Jersey because of Hookerman.”
It’s not the first time I’ve heard him tell his spooky tale about a railway worker losing an arm in the past century. His lantern-toting ghost is spotted along the tracks on dark nights, first appearing like a floating lighted orb from afar. Approaching slowly, the levitating light gets bigger and brighter before suddenly vanishing.
“What’s known as ball lighting.” I remind Marino of the scientific explanation. “Granite, quartz, the steel rails, they’re great conductors of electricity.”
“Whatever.” He’s not interested in what the geophysicists have to say. “But going out after dark looking for ghosts along the railroad tracks was really stupid. A good way to get killed, and we never found most of the pennies.”
“I don’t think the one from Friday night had been out there long,” I reply. “It wouldn’t make sense that it’s been run over repeatedly, and somehow was still there. Not to mention, it’s conveniently near a murder victim’s body? That’s too many coincidences.”
“Was it tarnished?”
“No. And you’re wondering the same thing I am. If the killer put it there.”
“Yeah, I’m wondering that. Who else knows besides him, and where’s the penny now?”
“August Ryan found it, as I’ve mentioned, and it’s in the labs,” I reply. “This morning we took a look with scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction.”
“August was there for that?”
“He wasn’t, and what we’ve discovered so far isn’t very helpful. The penny’s composition is copper and zinc, the date two thousand twenty.”
“You can forget DNA and fingerprints if it was run over by a train.” Marino bypasses traffic, cutting through another side street, bumping us over pavers.
“Benton feels it’s probably not random, and likely is symbolic,” I add.
“The penny doesn’t fit with a violent ex-boyfriend,” Marino decides as I look out at my favorite French bakery, dark and closed. “I sure hope August keeps his mouth shut about that and everything else.”
“He’s in charge of the homicide investigation. You’d best get along with him somehow. There’s but so much I can do if he decides to make a big fuss about you.”
The murder is federal jurisdiction because the body was found inside a national park, I spell out. The U.S. Park Police is running the show whether Marino likes it or not.
“And if the victim is Gwen Hainey as we suspect, nothing will change. August is still running the show,” I add, and up ahead blue and red emergency lights are a throbbing nimbus over Colonial Landing, where Marino lives with my sister.
The sliding metal front gate is wide open, the management office to the left lit up. August Ryan’s Dodge Charger is parked in a visitor’s spot next to a Prius that I’ve noticed before. The pricey residential community is directly on the Potomac River, and surrounded by a high wall on three sides, with tall wrought-iron fencing in back.
The waterfront townhomes are on half-acre lots, their slate rooftops and chimneys all that’s visible from outside the compound. It can’t be accessed without physically entering codes on squawk boxes at egresses, each covered by closed-circuit TV cameras. They’re monitored remotely by the resident manager, who I met briefly many months ago.
I’m the one who encouraged Marino and my sister to move here. Finding the listing, I even previewed it for them during one of many trips to Alexandria while discussing my new job situation. It’s very likely that Lucy would have settled into this same development had there been anything else available at the time. Thank God there wasn’t.
Chapter 5
We stop at the entrance, the gate locked in the open position, enabling the police and other responders like me to come and go freely. That also could include the media or anyone else who shouldn’t be allowed inside an enclave that prides itself on security and privacy.
“Sit tight for a second.” Marino opens his door.
He climbs out of his truck, the rain slashing through his headlights shining on the open gate. He directs his flashlight at the hardwired security camera mounted on a pole above the squawk box. Walking around to the exit gate, he checks that camera next.
“They look okay as best I can tell,” he reports when back inside the truck, his face wet, tucking the flashlight into a pocket. “There’s nothing obvious, like they’ve been damaged, the wires cut or whatever.”
“It sounds too good to be true that we might have video.” I hand him the same towel he let me use earlier as we drive through the open gate. “Also, an assailant would have needed a code to enter. How did he manage that?”
“Good question,” Marino says.
Each townhome we pass is redbrick with generous windows, and columned patios and porches. They have big kitchens, attached garages and boat slips, the backyards spacious enough for small swimming pools and gardens. I’ll never forget Marino’s excitement when they bought their place, three bedrooms, a man cave, and a dead-on view of the river.
All his years of living on a cop’s wages, and it’s as if he won the lottery. That’s what he says, and I can see the smudged lights of Christmas trees, the shadows of people moving around behind drawn curtains. A man has stepped out on his porch, staring in the direction of the pulsing police lights as he talks on his phone.
He waves at Marino while the elderly woman next door emerges from her front door, staring at the big strobing truck. Frantically motioning to us, she hurries down her sidewalk, unmindful of the rain and that she’s in slippers and a bathrobe.
“I’m so upset! This is dreadful! Do you know what’s happening?” she calls out to Marino as he lowers his window. “Has there been a burglary?”
“We don’t know what we’re dealing with yet,” he says to her sweetly. “But don’t you worry, we’re going to make sure everybody’s safe.”
“It’s that woman jogger who moved here not so long ago. Not at all friendly, that one. The police are at her place so something must be horribly wrong.” Marino’s neighbor is visibly unnerved, her glasses speckled with rain. “I’ve never talked to her but she runs past my house every morning.”
“When’s the last time you saw her?” he asks.
“Several days ago. I’m not sure exactly. She runs up and down the street a few times, then heads out the gate. Usually at the crack of dawn, and is back an hour or two later.”
“You need to get back inside and out of the rain. I don’t want you getting sick,” Marino says kindly but with authority, and you might think he’s the mayor. “You got my number. I’m just a phone call away.”
Thanking him, she hurries back to her house, and he waits until she’s inside before driving on. He takes in every detail, looking for anything else that might indicate a monster has accessed his cloistered neighborhood.
“Maybe we turn off the strobes.” Finding the switch, I do it for him.
I don’t want it looking like we’re making a grand entrance, and in his badass pickup truck we’re more than a little conspicuous no matter what.
“I’ll get out while you stay put, giving me a chance to explain that you’re with me,” I add. “I’m leaving my scene case, and will ask you to bring it if need be. Hopefully they’ve got PPE.”
We pass the townhome where he lives with Dorothy, and the porch light is on, an American flag over the entrance snapping in the wind. Strands of white and blue LEDs are wound around shrubbery and columns. There are electric candles in the windows, a fresh wreath with a big red bow on the door, everything tastefully complying with residential code.
Two properties down from them is where Gwen Hainey had been living for the past six weeks, and it’s undecorated, not so much as a hint of the holidays. The last townhome in the row of them, it’s on a cul-de-sac, a wall in front, another one on the right side, and the tall wrought-iron fencing in back along the water.
There are no eyes or ears except for the neighbor on the left, some CEO who spends the winters in Florida, Marino says. Gwen’s place is the most remote one, and that was helpful to whoever targeted her.
“It makes me wonder if the location is a factor,” I comment as we park behind Alexandria P.D. cruisers and a crime scene van, their light bars going full tilt. “It’s pretty desolate back here in this corner.”
“Even more so this past Friday night,” Marino says. “A lot of people were gone for Thanksgiving.”
“I guess I’d better leave this here.” I take off my coat.
There will be no good place to put it or my briefcase once I’m at the scene, and I place them on the seat. I climb out of Marino’s truck, the rain steady but not nearly as hard.
I notice the TV news truck ahead, and that’s just my luck. Shutting the door, already I’m getting wet, the rain cold on top of my bare head. I can feel the eyes of the cops inside their cruisers, their engines rumbling as I trot past coatless and in a chilly hurry.
Bright yellow crime scene tape flutters in the wind, and I recognize the local TV news crew up ahead, the same one I was confronted by three nights ago. Their camera lights flare on at my approach.
“This is Dana Diletti, live from Colonial Landing on Old Town’s waterfront,” she says into her microphone.
Great Dana, as she’s been nicknamed, is six feet tall, a former college basketball player, and now a celebrity news anchor who has her own show. Dressed in rain gear, she’s appropriately somber as her crew holds up umbrellas, tending to her every need, the cameras running constantly and with no regard for decorum.
“. . . We’re here live at the scene where a woman recently employed by Thor Laboratories has gone missing,” she says to my dismay, and so much for verifying the victim’s identity. “Approaching now is the chief medical examiner . . . ,” she adds.
It’s the same thing I put up with Friday night when they showed up at the train tracks on Daingerfield Island. I didn’t want to be on TV then, and don’t want to be on it now. Walking with purpose, I avert my rain-slick face from them.
“Doctor Scarpetta, can you tell us why you’ve been called to this townhome in the heart of Old Town’s waterfront?” Dana says into her microphone.
She and her umbrella-holding crew are in pursuit.
“Is it connected to the murder from Friday night? Is the victim Gwen Hainey? The thirty-three-year-old scientist who recently moved here from Boston . . . ?”
My answer is to duck under the yellow-tape perimeter, disgusted by what just happened on live television. I hope that Gwen’s family, friends, her allegedly abusive ex don’t find out in such a callous fashion. But there’s nothing I can do, and I follow the walkway past police in rain gear setting up a pup tent.
“Hey, stop right there!” an officer shouts, and then he’s next to me, an Alexandria crime scene investigator probably half my age. “Who are you?”
I pull out my badge-wallet, showing him my credentials. He looks embarrassed, apologizing, all of it caught on camera.
“Investigator Ryan asked that I come.” I explain why I’m here.
“I believe he’s in the manager’s office right now. They’re reviewing security videos.”
“Are we good for me to go inside?” I inquire.
“Everything’s been photographed. We’re just waiting for you guys to do your thing,” the officer says as I head to the door.
It’s slightly ajar, a female officer standing guard on the other side. The name on her uniform is b. fruge, and she directs me to step onto the white sticky mats covering most of the entryway, and that was smart. The police are making sure nothing is tracked inside.
In addition, any trace evidence already on the floor such as hairs or fibers will stick to the adhesive. All will go to the labs, and hopefully nothing will be lost.
“Kay Scarpetta, the new chief M.E.,” I introduce myself.
Showing her my creds, I push my rain-dampened hair out of my face, no doubt looking like something the cat dragged in. At least there’s plenty of PPE, and a 3-D scanner has been set up on a tripod, a box of evidence markers and scene cases nearby.
“I know who you are.” Officer Fruge shuts the front door.
Every sound is amplified by the emptiness, and from where I stand I don’t see a stick of furniture. There are no rugs or wall-to-wall carpet, nothing to absorb noise except for velvet draperies that likely were here when Gwen moved in.
“I for one am glad you’re back,” Officer Fruge adds, as if there are plenty of people who aren’t.
“Thank you, and I may have worked with your mother years ago. Greta Fruge?” My wet boots leave dirty tread-prints on the mats as I walk back and forth.
“Yep, I heard about it enough when I was coming along, that’s for sure. You two worked that big case on Tangier Island, the crazy scientist who tried to poison everyone with free samples they got in the mail.”
“I remember your mother very well.” The last thing I’m interested in at the moment is strolling down her morbid memory lane.
“I’m Blaise, but if you call me that nobody will know who you’re talking about,” she says, and I’m guessing she’s Lucy’s age, short and strongly built, with spiky hair and plenty of attitude. “Everybody just calls me Fruge.”
She goes on to inform me that her mother is retired from the state. She now works in the private industry, and Fruge tells me the name of the biotech company in Richmond.
“It’s perfect because she can do a lot of the work in her lab at home.” She continues filling me in about someone I’ve had my share of problems with in the past. “Which gives her more time for her horses, all her crazy hobbies. I don’t know if you heard that she moved to an old farm in Goochland County.”
“Sounds like a good place to be during a pandemic. Please give her my best,” I reply from a sticky mat, looking around, getting my bearings.
“Funny what happens in life.” Fruge’s dark eyes are riveted to me. “Mom worked with you when you were the brand-new chief. Now here you are back in Virginia and starting all over again, only with me this time. Talk about going full circle.”
“The media knows that the missing person is Gwen Hainey.” I stay focused on the grim business before us. “Dana Diletti just announced it on the air.”
“I was waiting for that. I’m willing to bet she got it from the manager. The guy who unlocked the door for me is a real chatterbox and way too curious,” she says as if she’s not. “First name is Cliff, last name Sallow. I had to tell him to stay clear of this place.”
“When he unlocked the door for you, did he come inside?” I’m making notes.
“He wanted to badly enough, had his phone out ready to take pictures if you can believe that. No way I was letting him,” she says. “He drives a red Prius, so be on high alert if you see it because he wants to know what’s going on something awful. And I can sure as heck see why.”
What’s happened on Cliff Sallow’s watch won’t be good for his career, Fruge predicts. He could end up fired.
“When’s the last time he saw Gwen or heard from her? Did he say?” I ask from my sticky mat.
“The day after Thanksgiving. He told me he saw her jogging early Friday morning, that she usually was out the door at sunrise. Apparently, she was a big runner, and would pick up the Mount Vernon Trail and go for miles.”
“How might he have known her running habits?”
“I guess she must have mentioned it to him. And he usually knew when she was back because she’d enter her code at the gate.” Fruge says the same thing Marino’s upset neighbor did. “The media must have gotten their information from him. How else could it have happened when her name isn’t connected to this property?”
Apparently, if you look up Gwen’s townhome, it’s in the name of the owner who lives in New York, Fruge says.
On another sticky mat is the field case of PPE. Squatting by it, she begins picking out what she decides I need, looking me up and down, checking on sizes.
“What about the cameras at the security gate?” I ask. “I’m wondering what they might have picked up the Friday afternoon or evening of the murder.”
“You and me both. I’m dying to know,” she says.
Handing me size small Tyvek coveralls and other protective gear, she tells me to suit up as if she’s in charge.
“To give you a quick road map, there’s very little in the way of furniture and stuff as you’re probably already noticing,” she says. “Nothing on the second floor at all. You can go up there if you want but it’s just a big empty bonus room with piles of construction crap covered by plastic tarps. The door is shut, the heat turned down low.”
