Autopsy (Kay Scarpetta, #25)(17)

“I don’t know if this is important but it might be,” I explain to August and Fruge. “Pens with water-soluble ink aren’t something your average person has unless they’re writing on a whiteboard or doing magic tricks.”

“Maybe it was something she uses at work,” he suggests.

“Like on a whiteboard in a lab,” Fruge adds.

“I rather much doubt it,” I reply. “Also, there’s no cover on the bed, and maybe there wasn’t one. But I would expect a blanket, a duvet or something, and we’ll want the linens checked for DNA in addition to fibers and other trace evidence.”





CHAPTER 7


STEPPING OUT OF THE bathroom, I put on a new outer pair of gloves, stuffing the used ones in a pocket of my coveralls.

“If she were attacked, the assailant may have needed something to wrap her in after knocking her unconscious,” I suggest.

I remind August that I collected a lot of synthetic fibers from the murder victim in my cooler. The source is something her body was in contact with, something like a blanket.

“What about her clothing?” Fruge asks. “Whatever she was wearing when she was attacked, where is it? I’ve not seen anything in the house that makes me think it might be what she had on. Nothing on the floor, nothing torn or bloody.”

“If Gwen is the victim from Friday night, I have a feeling the killer stripped the body, did whatever else he was going to do once he got her out of here,” August weighs in.

“Got her out of here how?” I bring them around to the question of the killer’s mode of transportation.

“It was raining Friday night, and it appears to me that someone drove a vehicle in and out of the garage.” Fruge adds a new detail. “You can see the dried tire tracks, and that’s probably important since she doesn’t have a car.”

“Depends on how long the tire tracks have been there,” August replies. “For all we know it’s since before she moved in. As for the blood? We don’t know how long that’s been there, either.”

“What I’m thinking is, after he knocked her unconscious, he might have driven his car inside and shut the door,” Fruge continues, painting a scenario that may very well be what occurred. “Then he has time and privacy to get her body into the trunk or wherever he put it.”

“I’ll look at the garage last.” I don’t want to hear any further scripting or conjecturing. “It would be helpful if you could convince Dana Diletti to stop saying Gwen Hainey’s name over the air.” I direct this at August. “Or at least remind the public the identity hasn’t been verified.”

“She doesn’t care what we say or how much damage she does,” he replies as the front door opens again.

Marino appears swathed in white like an abominable snowman.

“What the hell?” he complains behind his fogged-up plastic face shield. “How am I supposed to see anything? Where are the defog wipes?”

“That we don’t have.” Fruge closes the door.

He takes off his disposable face shield, all of them deposited in the red biohazard trash bag, followed by our soiled gloves.

“That or baby shampoo like you use on dive masks,” he says. “You should always have it on hand.”

“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.