Autopsy(Kay Scarpetta #25)(84)

“You gotta be kidding me!” Marino growls as she gets closer.

In uniform with her bulletproof vest on, she lowers her big LED flashlight so she doesn’t blind us, her face alive with excitement.

“You’re lucky I didn’t blow your head off!” Marino tucks his gun back into the waistband of his pants. “What are you doing out here? Have you lost your mind? It’s not safe, start with that.”

“And that’s exactly the same thing I’d say to you,” she replies. “I’m happy to be a backup. You know, all you’ve got to do is ask.”

“How did you know where we were?” I ask the obvious question.

“A little bird told me you were headed this way,” Fruge says. “And I have to say I sure am glad somebody’s finally bothering to look into what’s going on around here.”

She paints her light over the train tracks, the Mount Vernon Trail, the dense woods.

“A good place for a stalker to hang out, don’t you think?” she adds.

“You need to be careful about sticking your nose into every thing,” Marino says. “Seriously, sneaking up on us in the dark is a good way to get hurt or worse.”

“What are you looking for?” She shines her light on the spray bottle, the evidence baggies I’m holding.

“Answer my question, and I’ll answer yours,” I reply. “What little bird?”

“Maggie,” Fruge replies. “When I called her a little while ago, looking for you. And by the way, she wouldn’t give me your cell phone number,” directing this at me.

“Instead, she tells you where we are,” I reply ruefully, and my secretary’s going to be the end of me.

“Why would you be looking for us?” Marino asks before I get the chance.

Fruge proudly reports that Gwen Hainey’s dismembered hands and the Star Wars blanket missing from her townhome may have shown up.

“I mean, I say they’re probably hers, but it’s pretty obvious. Also sweatpants, a T-shirt that look like they were cut off her.” She can’t keep the excitement out of her voice. “All of it was inside a plastic garbage bag that a dumpster diver found while digging for aluminum cans and other stuff.”

“Oh boy,” I reply. “If wet bloody items and body parts were stored in a plastic bag since Friday night, they’re going to be in rough shape.”

“Well, it stinks to high heaven, that’s for sure,” she says.

“Which dumpster?” Marino asks.

“One near the Giant Food grocery store just minutes from here.”

“And where’s the bag of goodies now?” he wants to know.

“Everything’s at your place per Rex Bonetta’s instructions,” she says excitedly, looking at me. “I came straight from your office. So, tell me. What are you doing out here?”

“Checking for pennies,” I reply because there’s no point in being coy. “One was found near Gwen’s body Friday night, and I thought it wise to make sure there weren’t more.”

“What’s the spray bottle for?”

I explain it while using a Sharpie to date and initial the baggies of tarnished evidence I place inside my scene case.

“Maggie shouldn’t have told you where we are, and you don’t need to be running your mouth about this,” Marino warns her. “We don’t want the pennies or anything else ending up in the media. And why did she tell you? So you’d narc on us, tell her exactly what we’re doing?”

“Not me,” Fruge says. “I don’t talk to the media, and I don’t answer to her even when she thinks I’m being cooperative. And I hate to be the one to ask such a negative question. But how do you know pennies left out here have anything to do with anything?”

“We don’t,” I reply as doubts continue to nag. “As old as many of them seem, it’s unlikely they’re relevant.”

“I SUSPECT IF YOU started looking you’d probably find them by railroad tracks all over the place,” Fruge says. “Coins or fragments of them that nobody bothers to pick up. Or more likely they shoot out from under the wheels like bullets, ending up who knows where,” she adds as if familiar with the dangerous activity.

“Do you know if that’s a popular thing to do around here?” I ask her as we start walking back to Marino’s truck. “Because I wouldn’t think so. Leaving pennies, other coins, anything on railroad tracks is very dangerous.”

“Not that I know of, and it wouldn’t be encouraged, that’s for sure,” she says. “You’d have to ask August Ryan, the park police. It’s their jurisdiction, they’re quick to remind you. I personally haven’t heard about kids or anyone else coming out here and doing things like that. But it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.”

“Where are you parked?” Marino asks as he unlocks his truck.

“Near the sailing club. I thought it a good idea to walk, get the lay of the land, see what I felt out here,” she says, and I don’t buy it.

She didn’t want us to hear her coming until it was too late, and I think of Maggie tipping her off. Fruge caught me redhanded as I collected what may or may not turn out to be evidence, and it’s impossible knowing who to trust.