Autopsy(Kay Scarpetta #25)(70)

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.

As fate would have it, their apartment was across the parkway from Daingerfield Island, just a few minutes’ jog, and someone like Cammie would have had no status with Elvin Reddy. Her case was an easy one to cover up and shelve. Those closest to her were in South America, having hit hard times like so many. They had no power, no voice, and were unable to travel.

Call sheets inside the file indicate Cammie’s loved ones contacted the OCME many times, wanting to know what happened to her, talking frequently with Doug. The story they were told is the same one he wrote in his report. Their daughter was jogging along the grassy shoreline at around nine P.M. when she started convulsing, ultimately drowning.

Images of MRI scans while she was alive show cortical dysplasia of her left superior temporal gyrus. Her seizure disorder was real, and during the autopsy, a large amount of water and sand were found inside her mouth, nose, airway, stomach and lungs. She was still breathing when her face was in the water, and she didn’t die quickly or easily.

I have no doubt she suffered, drowning where she was found, fully dressed except for a shoe that was some distance from her body. But she also had broken fingernails, multiple bruises on her neck, arms, wrists and hands that just as easily could be associated with a struggle. Her face and scalp were lacerated and abraded, and she broke a tooth and bit her tongue.

When her head struck the ground, it fractured her skull, causing a contrecoup brain injury. There are scalp lacerations, temporal bone fractures with underlying epidural hemorrhages. She suffered at least three separate blows to the head, and I wouldn’t expect that in a seizure. Based on what I’m seeing already, the case couldn’t be more suspicious, her injuries inconsistent with a fall.

Why she left the Mount Vernon Trail to begin with, ending up acres away at the river’s edge, is missing from the story. That should have been the most important question. Yet there was no attempt to answer it, and my deep-seated anger is about to overtorque. Texting Marino, I check on his whereabouts.

Be there in 20, he texts me back a little later as I’m going through the toxicology report, and it’s negative for alcohol and drugs, including anticonvulsants.

Unmedicated, Cammie may have suffered a seizure right before she died but that’s not why she ended up facedown in the Potomac River. She would have been better off if she’d knocked herself unconscious and drowned. It would be far more humane than what I’m envisioning, and if I’m right it won’t be easy to prove depending on what’s left of the evidence.

I’m not the only one who’s questioned how she died and if she might have had some help. That would explain why “UND” was entered into the morgue log in the early hours of April 11. When the manner of death was amended, there should have been a note reflecting that. But I’m not seeing any such thing in the original file as I go through it.

A WEEK AFTER THE autopsy, Elvin Reddy initialed the final autopsy report and death certificate. It was ruled that Cammie was an accidental drowning, a decision that instantly unplugged the investigation, and the FBI halted testing any evidence.

If no criminal offense was committed, there’s no suspect, no victim, no DNA profiles or fingerprints to run through CODIS, IAFIS or any other database. The case was closed in record time, and I’d ask Doug about it if I felt I could confide in anyone who works here. But nothing’s safe when people remain loyal to their former leader.

One I predicted would run the Northern Virginia district office into the ground, and it was a bleak day twenty years ago when I heard about Elvin being hired. Then five years ago he was appointed acting chief of all four districts, and I promised at the time that he’d destroy the entire medical examiner system. Which is what he’s about done.

I wasn’t na?ve when approached earlier this year to consider becoming the new chief. I knew I was being brought in as a forensic fixer, and in short order I’ve gotten a good idea of the damage he’s inflicted through negligence and corruption. All the while Maggie’s been his tireless first lady, a devoted office wife, and I hear her getting off the phone.