“I personally think reaching out to Doctor Fruge is reckless,” she says. “Unless you’re not worried about her talking all over Christendom.”
“I’m far more concerned about people dying from some new potent synthetic drug making the rounds. If you get hold of her, please give her my cell phone number. Ask her to call me as soon as possible,” I reply, and I open the Cammie Ramada file as Maggie returns to her office.
I begin skimming the initial report of investigation, and the medical examiner assigned to the case wasn’t my predecessor. It was one of my assistant chiefs, Doug Schlaefer, a highly competent forensic pathologist I’ve had no complaints about since starting here. But I don’t know him well enough to trust him.
In paperwork I’m reviewing, Elvin Reddy lists himself as a witness to the autopsy. But I don’t believe for a moment he was looking on, much less helping as Doug spent almost five hours at the table, and that’s a long haul. A straightforward external examination and dissection can be done in an hour, maybe two.
But to spend more than double that time tells me that Doug never treated the case as routine. From the start he had his share of concerns and doubts, finding the death complicated, perhaps deeply troubling. Or maybe he figured he’d end up in court for one reason or another and was careful to cover all bases.
Meanwhile his illustrious boss made himself scarce most of the time, passing through the morgue while playing host to the FBI, escorting agents in and out. Not witnessing the autopsy but fraternizing, in other words, based on what Wyatt told me a few minutes ago.
I have a pretty good idea what Elvin Reddy’s agenda was that morning beyond hobnobbing with the Feds or anyone else he might find beneficial. He was protecting his political ass after dropping by Daingerfield Island the night before.
CHAPTER 28
CHIEFS USUALLY DON’T RESPOND in person or involve themselves in investigations beyond lending oversight. Our staffs are supposed to enable us to run our offices appropriately, and it’s a sad fact that advancement in life can be inversely proportional to passion.
Or in the case of Elvin Reddy, some people never cared to begin with. During my Richmond years when I had the misfortune of supervising him, I recognized early on what he was. He had a heart of stone then and still does, never shedding a tear or getting his hands dirty. Yet for some reason he decided to make an appearance on the night of April 10.
Afterward, he passed along the hot potato to Doug Schlaefer, who conducted the postmortem examination. He decided Cammie Ramada’s death was an accidental drowning “due to an exercise-induced seizure due to temporal lobe epilepsy,” he wrote in his provisional report, dated April 12.
According to his detailed handwritten narrative, the fatal event occurred while the young Brazilian woman was jogging along the Mount Vernon Trail. This was something she did at the same time daily, a routine just like Gwen Hainey’s, and there are disturbing similarities in their violent deaths.
Details that should have been followed up on weren’t, and it was deliberate. If what the manager of Colonial Landing and a neighbor said are to be trusted, it was Gwen’s habit to head out for a run at sunrise. She’d warm up for a few minutes, jogging around the development before exiting through the security gate.
Several blocks away, she’d pick up the popular Mount Vernon Trail. As the name implies, it begins south of here at Mount Vernon, the former home of George and Martha Washington. The paved path with its quaint footbridges and breathtaking scenery hugs the Potomac’s shoreline until it reaches Daingerfield Island.
There the trail veers inland to the back of the heavily forested park, and making a right turn, it parallels the railroad tracks. For maybe half a mile the fitness path is in dense woods, and it would be easy for a predator to hide, lurking and watching. Especially in the dark when the two women jogged along this same stretch, picking times early in the morning or late at night when the fewest people would be out.
For Gwen, it was early in the morning. For Cammie it was late at night after the restaurant she managed closed because of COVID-19 and she couldn’t find work. Her father lost his business in S?o Paulo, where he had a chain of clothing stores, all of them shuttered, Doug reports in his neat block print, and I can tell the case bothered him.
He went to a lot of trouble reviewing reports from the police and FBI, putting together a history that’s unfair and tragic. No longer able to afford tuition, Cammie had to drop out of school. As months went by, her student visa expired, and she illegally stayed in the United States, living with two other Brazilian women in low-income housing.