Autopsy, p.6
Autopsy, page 6
“Hey, PPE’s not my department,” Fruge replies. “You can complain to the crime scene guys.”
“You good with your overview?” Marino says to August, walking back and forth across the mats in his Tyvek booties. “You gotten a bird’s-eye view, taken photographs and all the rest?”
Otherwise, it really would be a bad idea for either one of us to be here right now.
“We’re good. Maybe take a look in the master bedroom for me,” August replies, and they seem to be getting along fine. “See if anything looks different from what you remember when you were here with Gwen last month.”
Marino leaves us, and Fruge resumes her post by the door as August and I head to the living area. The furniture is disarrayed, the brown leather sofa and reclaimed-barn-door coffee table likely belonging to the owner. They’re out of place as if someone bumped into them hard, and I envision the angry red bruises on the murdered woman’s hips and lower legs.
On the floor is a plastic spoon and a broken Thor Laboratories pottery mug. Pieces of it are in a coagulated puddle of chicken noodle soup that’s consistent with the murder victim’s stomach contents. I suspect she’d begun eating when she was violently interrupted, and the stress of the attack would have shut down her digestion.
Set up in front of a shade-covered window overlooking the river is another card table, this one Gwen’s workstation. On it are two laptop computers, a router and backup drive, the folding chair in front of them on its side. But what grabs my attention are the purple fabric markers, the water-soluble pads of white notepaper.
“I can’t come up with a logical reason for needing water-soluble ink and paper,” I say to August and Fruge. “Unless you’re playing party tricks or games with disappearing writing. Or maybe quilting or embroidering patterns on a backing that vanishes in the wash after you’re finished.”
I see no evidence that Gwen was into arts and crafts, I add. It’s crossing my mind she might have been passing along information that can be destroyed completely and without a trace. In other words, spying.
“Everything about this just gets crazier,” Fruge replies. “So, you could flush a note down the toilet and bye-bye it’s gone forever?”
“Easier than that, you could drop it in a glass of water and drink it,” I reply as Marino emerges from the master bedroom.
“What gets crazier?” he says. “What now?”
“How did things look in there?” August answers him with a question.
“The same as when I was here last month. She definitely had a blanket on the bed. A kid’s blanket with a Star Wars theme. Darth Vader and a flametrooper.”
“Do you recall the colors?” I envision the magnified images of multicolored fibers I recovered from the body.
“Black and orange. And white. Also, some yellow and red,” Marino says.
“Possibly consistent with the fibers I collected,” I reply. “Under the microscope, you can see red, yellow, black and orange pigments on cross section, a polyester blend.”
Obviously, we’re not in possession of whatever she might have been wrapped in, I explain. I wish we were but had it been on the bed, there should be fibers transferred to the linens.
“We’ll see if they match the ones I collected from the body,” I add.
“Hitting her in the head with something at the scene?” August tries to work out what might have gone on. “Using some type of cover he took off her bed if that’s what he did? Doesn’t sound like he showed up with a murder kit.”
“Most violent psychopaths don’t show up with freakin’ murder kits.” Marino isn’t very diplomatic about it. “I’ve seen victims stabbed with screwdrivers, scissors, beaten to death with a clothes iron, a teapot, a laptop computer, a stick or a rock. Whatever’s in reach. They show up with their bare hands and sicko fantasies. It’s part of the thrill.”
“When you did your walk-through with Gwen last month,” I say to him, “did she mention anything about paper and ink that can be dissolved in water like a magic trick? Did you notice anything like that anywhere inside the townhome when you did your security check?”
I can tell by the blank look on Marino’s face that he has no idea what I’m talking about. I show him the fabric markers, the pads of white notepaper on the card table.
“Nope, there was nothing like that here when I walked through.” He leaves out that Lucy was with him. “Nothing I saw, anyway.”
“I’ll bet Gwen Hainey didn’t say a word, making sure certain items were tucked out of sight,” Fruge replies, and I suspect she’s right.
“I’m glad you noticed because I’m not sure I would have,” August says to me, going out of his way to ignore Fruge. “I’ve never heard of dissolving paper.”
“I’m worried we may be dealing with more than one crime.” I state the obvious. “Espionage could be a possible explanation for what we’re discovering so far. Industrial spying if nothing else. But it could be much more dangerous than that since the companies she’s been involved with do a lot of highly sensitive work for various governments including ours.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Marino agrees. “It might be the real explanation for her sudden change of jobs and living like a fugitive. And believe me, if I’d known any of this when I met her, my antenna would have gone up, all right.”
August is looking at the laptops, his gloved fingers tapping keys.
“Password protected, of course,” he says, and I leave them so I can finish my walk-through.
Fruge bird-dogs me as I reach a door that opens onto the patio. It’s off the dining area, another barren space with more empty picture hooks and wires dangling from an electrical box in the ceiling where a light fixture once hung.
“This door is locked, and was when I got here,” she says. “I walked around outside earlier and didn’t notice anything unusual. Just some furniture, a barbecue, the bird feeders. And the crime scene guys looked around, too.”
“But this is another possible egress, another way to access the house,” I reply. “There’s the front door. The back door off the sunporch. And this one, each with an alarm keypad.”
“Also, the garage. Except it would be trickier leaving that way,” Fruge says. “You can’t close the garage door from the outside. Not unless you have a remote.”
“Have you seen one anywhere?”
“Actually, now that you mention it, I haven’t.” Surprise glints in her eyes, followed by a spark of irritation. “That’s two strikes, Fruge,” she chastises herself, her voice dropping an octave. “First you forget to ask about the rent. Then you don’t notice there’s no garage opener. But Gwen doesn’t have a car.” Talking to me again, her voice back to normal. “Not even a bicycle that I’ve seen.”
Outside the kitchen is a granite countertop, and on it a small unopened FedEx package with the return address of an electronics company. The receipt shows the delivery was this past Friday morning.
“I find it interesting she didn’t get around to opening whatever she’d ordered,” I say to Fruge as I walk into the kitchen.
“Sometimes I leave mail and stuff lying around unopened for days,” she feels compelled to share.
On the windowsill over the empty sink is a terra-cotta bonsai pot of parched cacti, zebra plants, aloe variegata, and African violets. The dish garden is the very sort of thoughtful gift Dorothy would present to a stranger she’s descended upon with friendly suggestions in addition to helpful guidance and histories about the area.
The succulents are dried up, the violets a withered blackish-purple. They’ve not been watered in recent memory, maybe ever, and how disgraceful. Like the absence of so much as a single holiday candle. Like everything I’m seeing.
“Was the kitchen light on when you got here?” I ask. “In fact, were any lights on?”
“Yes, the ones that are now. Here, the living room, master bedroom, and entryway. And the garage, everything is exactly like it was when the manager let me in. I didn’t touch a thing except for going through the knapsack on the table.” She heads that way to show me.
“I’ll get there eventually. One thing at a time,” I let her know, because I won’t be hurried or directed.
I imagine Dorothy appearing at Gwen’s door, welcoming her to the neighborhood with a dish garden. Likely it was my sister who set it on the windowsill with its northern exposure, and it catches my attention that the faux wooden blinds are open. The kitchen lights shine through the glass, dimly illuminating the patio.
I can see the cover on the grill twitching in the wind, the empty bird feeders and suet basket hanging from wrought-iron shepherd hooks, the table and chairs. If a stalker, a killer had gotten into the patio area when she was fixing soup with the blinds open, she would have been visible through the window over the sink.
“Especially after dark.” I point this out to Fruge. “I’m curious why the blinds are open, and find it odd. The drapes are drawn everywhere else I’ve looked so far. Yet she was inside the kitchen late afternoon, early evening, and didn’t close the blinds?”
“Why are you making a big deal out of a dead plant?” She watches curiously as I use my phone to take pictures of the dish garden. “What’s so important about it?”
“I’m making sure we have a record of what it looked like before it was moved.” I pick it up. “And tampered with.” I dribble in tap water from the sink.
About a fourth of a cup should be enough, and I set the ceramic pot in the dish rack to drain, feeling increasingly uncharitable about the person to blame.
“How hard is it to take care of something that needs minimal sunlight and watering only once a week?” I can’t help but remark.
“By all appearances, Gwen Hainey didn’t seem to have much respect for anything,” Fruge agrees. “Probably selfish as heck, like a lot of these people who grew up on social media.”
“Except from what I’ve been told she has no presence on it,” I reply. “It would seem she was skilled at staying off the radar.”
My next stop is the kitchen table, what’s actually a butcher block that no doubt belongs to the house. On top of it is a green leather knapsack, a wallet. Gwen’s driver’s license is near a set of keys simply labeled #14, an abbreviation for the address of the rented townhome.
“When I first got here there was nothing else on the table except the knapsack I went through,” Fruge says. “I was looking for a picture ID and for her phone, which still hasn’t turned up. I don’t think it’s here anywhere, and I’m thinking the killer took it.”
The wallet and knapsack are an expensive designer brand. There’s a large amount of cash inside, and I run my thumb through the crisp hundred-dollar bills. What must be thousands of dollars, and it’s consistent with the story of Gwen’s paying three months’ rent in cash.
“Where’s she getting all her money?” Fruge wants to know. “I didn’t count what’s in there when I looked for her license but obviously it’s a lot. Who walks around with that much cash? What does she make as a scientist? Because my mom’s sure not gotten rich from being one.”
“We don’t know what Gwen was earning,” I reply. “I doubt it’s a fortune, and paying cash for most things certainly raises questions.”
“Well, it looks like she was getting mail-order food, and you can’t pay cash when you’re ordering off the Internet.”
“She doesn’t have much in the way of credit cards.” I return the wallet to the table. “Amex, a debit card, assuming nothing’s missing. She might have resorted to an online payment service if the point was to stay below the radar. Like PayPal, Google Pay, there’s a number of them.”
“It’s obvious that she’s involved in some sort of dirty business. Maybe spying like you said.”
“What’s apparent is robbery wasn’t a motive for whoever targeted her,” I reply. “Her money, her laptops weren’t taken. It would seem they were of no interest.”
Chapter 8
Her driver’s license was renewed four years ago, apparently while she was living in Boston, based on the address. In the photo, she’s heavier, her short hair dyed platinum blond, exactly as August described when he called me earlier.
At a glance she’s not recognizable as the murdered woman. Although on closer inspection there are similarities in bone structure, the shapes of the ears, the slope of the nose. Their heights aren’t the same, the Department of Motor Vehicles listing Gwen Hainey as five-foot-five.
I happen to know from measuring the body that she was an inch shorter than that, assuming the victim in my cooler is who I believe she is. The inconsistencies don’t necessarily mean much. I’m used to lies about personal details such as dental work, plastic surgery, health habits, various implants, and all sorts of secret vices.
The truth comes out if your last visit to the doctor is with a medical examiner, and I ask Fruge if it’s all right to check what’s inside the kitchen cupboards.
“Help yourself.”
Shelves are bare except for two Thor Laboratory coffee mugs like the broken one in the living room, and a box of surgical masks. Unopened, they’re the same brand we use at home, and Dorothy enters my thoughts again. Since the pandemic, she hands out masks to anybody who thinks it’s fine not to wear one under any circumstances.
I check the pantry next, and there are plenty of paper plates, napkins, aluminum foil, paper towels, baggies, plastic silverware. Gwen was well stocked with cans of soup, energy bars, and there are bottles of water in the refrigerator, and protein smoothies. Also, ketchup, mustard, and what looks like chicken noodle soup in a lid-covered pot.
Inside the dishwasher, I find the spoon used to stir it, and she must have poured what she wanted into the mug now shattered inside the living room. The rest of the soup she placed inside the refrigerator, not bothering to transfer it into a proper container.
Sliding the trash out from under the sink, I find it full of paper napkins and plates, soup cans, prepared food wrappers. There are plastic water and protein smoothie bottles that should be recycled, I add to the list of infractions.
“The garbage hasn’t been emptied in several days at least.” I’m reminded of the wastepaper basket spilling over in the master bathroom. “The freezer is full of prepared foods one can order off the Internet. Fried chicken tenders, pizza, burgers.”
“Sounds like she should have been getting a fair number of packages on a regular basis,” Fruge decides. “In other words, she’s been living the way a lot of people are ever since the start of the pandemic. I still avoid going to the store, and get a lot of stuff shipped to me.”
“I don’t think the way she’s been living is because of the pandemic,” I reply. “And I assume whatever she’s been ordering has been delivered directly to the manager’s office.”
“He sure has his nose in everything around here. I’d be looking into him pretty carefully if it was up to me,” Fruge says. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence but he’s been in Old Town not even a year. And not long after he moved into the management office, that woman jogger turned up dead on Daingerfield Island.”
“I don’t know what case you’re talking about,” I reply with dismay. “The first I’ve heard of another death on Daingerfield Island.”
What else has my predecessor screwed up? What else am I about to find out?
“The night of last April tenth. Cammie Ramada,” Fruge informs me.
For some reason, the manner of death was ruled accidental, she says. How did that supposedly happen? The victim had some kind of health problem and took a stumble while running along the Mount Vernon Trail?
“Which isn’t all that close to the water, by the way,” she continues filling me in. “Yet somehow, she ends up on the shore with her face in the river?”
“Was there any evidence of violence?” I ask.
“One of her running shoes was maybe twenty feet from the body. And she looked pretty banged up. But your office decided it was an accident without a doubt, and without testing evidence, I might add.”
“It wasn’t my office then.” I’m quick to remind her I hadn’t moved here yet. “Obviously, you were at the scene.”
“I was on evening shift, and heard the call around nine-fifteen p.m. A not-so-nice night to be out for a jog, it was chilly, raining on and off,” Fruge recalls, and it’s uncanny how she gets around. “To be honest, it creeped me out when I pulled up before other cops got there.”
It was very dark, and a train was going by at the back of the park, the couple who found the body totally freaked out, she describes. Approximately half an hour after she arrived, U.S. Park Police Investigator August Ryan showed up.
“He didn’t mention the case when I was with him Friday night,” I reply. “That surprises me a little.”
“Not me. Nobody cared,” Fruge says. “And the less attention drawn to the situation, the better. It was the beginning of tourist season, need I say more?”
“I hope that’s not what was going on.”
“Alexandria has almost a thousand acres of public parks. Tourism’s big here. And this close to D.C.? Let’s just put it this way. About the same time the park police’s ace investigator August Ryan got there, so did Doctor Reddy,” she adds to my surprise and growing unsettledness.
For my predecessor to show up is completely out of character, and I keep thinking about my earlier phone call with August. I recall the hours we were together Friday night, and it seems there’s important information he’s not sharing.
“Had you ever known Elvin Reddy to show up at a scene before?” I ask.
“Are you kidding? Not even once,” Fruge says as I detect the papery sound of approaching Tyvek. “The unspoken rule has always been that you don’t contact him directly, and he’s not to be bothered after hours. Rumor has it that he likes his martinis.”
“I’m going to be a while, Doc.” Marino walks into the kitchen, his face flushed and sweaty. “Sorry about that but I doubt you’ll want to hang around.”
“I’m almost finished up.” I remind him I need my belongings out of his truck.
