Autopsy (Kay Scarpetta, #25)(20)

The truth comes out if your last visit to the doctor is with a medical examiner, and I ask Fruge if it’s all right to check what’s inside the kitchen cupboards.

“Help yourself.”

Shelves are bare except for two Thor Laboratory coffee mugs like the broken one in the living room, and a box of surgical masks. Unopened, they’re the same brand we use at home, and Dorothy enters my thoughts again. Since the pandemic, she hands out masks to anybody who thinks it’s fine not to wear one under any circumstances.

I check the pantry next, and there are plenty of paper plates, napkins, aluminum foil, paper towels, baggies, plastic silverware. Gwen was well stocked with cans of soup, energy bars, and there are bottles of water in the refrigerator, and protein smoothies. Also, ketchup, mustard, and what looks like chicken noodle soup in a lid-covered pot.

Inside the dishwasher, I find the spoon used to stir it, and she must have poured what she wanted into the mug now shattered inside the living room. The rest of the soup she placed inside the refrigerator, not bothering to transfer it into a proper container.

Sliding the trash out from under the sink, I find it full of paper napkins and plates, soup cans, prepared food wrappers. There are plastic water and protein smoothie bottles that should be recycled, I add to the list of infractions.

“The garbage hasn’t been emptied in several days at least.” I’m reminded of the wastepaper basket spilling over in the master bathroom. “The freezer is full of prepared foods one can order off the Internet. Fried chicken tenders, pizza, burgers.”

“Sounds like she should have been getting a fair number of packages on a regular basis,” Fruge decides. “In other words, she’s been living the way a lot of people are ever since the start of the pandemic. I still avoid going to the store, and get a lot of stuff shipped to me.”

“I don’t think the way she’s been living is because of the pandemic,” I reply. “And I assume whatever she’s been ordering has been delivered directly to the manager’s office.”

“He sure has his nose in everything around here. I’d be looking into him pretty carefully if it was up to me,” Fruge says. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence but he’s been in Old Town not even a year. And not long after he moved into the management office, that woman jogger turned up dead on Daingerfield Island.”

“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.