“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.
DIGGING IN A POCKET of his coveralls, Marino tosses his key to Fruge.
“Don’t forget to give it back to me before you leave,” he says sternly to her, and never mind how I might get home.
My car is at the office. I didn’t bank on Marino’s uninvited ride being one-way but he and August are going to be a while turning the place inside out. That’s what my new forensic operations specialist says, and it would seem he and the Feds are hitting it off.
“I may have to call someone for a ride,” I let Fruge know as Marino returns to the work area in the living room where August is talking on his phone.
“My car’s out front,” she says as we resume my tour. “I’ve got you covered.”
Beyond the kitchen is the laundry room, the light on. I look inside the washer and dryer, both of them empty, and in a basket are running socks and tights that I assume are dirty. Next is the door leading into the empty garage, and I’m mindful of the tire tracks and dried blackish drops of what looks like blood some ten feet from the doorway.
I know by the roundish shape of the drops that they fell almost perpendicular to the ground, and I envision the lacerations to the back of the murdered woman’s head.
“The kettlebell or whatever she was hit with split her scalp,” I say to Fruge, imagining the victim wrapped up in a blanket and carried into the garage. “She would have bled heavily assuming she was still alive at the time, that she still had a blood pressure, in other words.”