Autopsy (Kay Scarpetta, #25)(21)

DIGGING IN A POCKET of his coveralls, Marino tosses his key to Fruge.

“Don’t forget to give it back to me before you leave,” he says sternly to her, and never mind how I might get home.

My car is at the office. I didn’t bank on Marino’s uninvited ride being one-way but he and August are going to be a while turning the place inside out. That’s what my new forensic operations specialist says, and it would seem he and the Feds are hitting it off.

“I may have to call someone for a ride,” I let Fruge know as Marino returns to the work area in the living room where August is talking on his phone.

“My car’s out front,” she says as we resume my tour. “I’ve got you covered.”

Beyond the kitchen is the laundry room, the light on. I look inside the washer and dryer, both of them empty, and in a basket are running socks and tights that I assume are dirty. Next is the door leading into the empty garage, and I’m mindful of the tire tracks and dried blackish drops of what looks like blood some ten feet from the doorway.

I know by the roundish shape of the drops that they fell almost perpendicular to the ground, and I envision the lacerations to the back of the murdered woman’s head.

“The kettlebell or whatever she was hit with split her scalp,” I say to Fruge, imagining the victim wrapped up in a blanket and carried into the garage. “She would have bled heavily assuming she was still alive at the time, that she still had a blood pressure, in other words.”

“The killer must be pretty strong if he carried her.”

“So far, I’m not seeing any sign that she was dragged,” I reply.

“The blood is where the trunk might be if the vehicle was backed in.”

“And this is what it was like when you first got here?” I ask. “The light was on?”

“It was.”

“And the door you just opened was shut and locked?”

“It was shut but unlocked.”

“The garage door was down?” Using my phone, I take pictures of the tire tracks, the bloodlike drops in a gory blackish-red constellation on the concrete.

“Yes, and I don’t know how he did that from here unless he had a garage opener,” she says. “You can’t push the button on the wall and run through while it’s shutting. The safety mechanism won’t allow that.”

“What would you have done?” I always like to ask what others might come up with to solve a problem.

No need to be criminal, just human. Because at the end of the day, our nature is what it is, and we don’t have to be a monster to imagine one.

“I would have put the body in the trunk, and driven the car out,” Fruge says as we stand inside the lighted garage, looking around.

“Gwen doesn’t have a car. And if her killer stalked her, he would have known that.”

“If it was me, I’d have some type of vehicle parked off the property but close by.” Fruge plays it out.

She’d tuck it inside the garage, closing the door behind her. After she loaded the body inside the trunk, she’d drive out.

“Then I’d shut the garage door from inside,” she says. “And I’d exit through the house.”

“How would you do that?”

“Probably through the same door I’d used earlier when I first got there,” she says.

I strongly suspect it was the one off the dining room that leads to the patio, I tell her. It might explain why the blinds over the sink were open while the kitchen light was on after dark.

“She might have looked out to see who was on her patio, possibly knocking on the door,” I add as we return to the kitchen.

“And it seems she let the person in. What does that tell you?”

“That she wasn’t afraid at first,” I reply. “Possibly, they were familiar with each other.”

We walk back through the living room, and there’s no sign of Marino, August or anyone else. Taking off our PPE, we leave the townhome, walking past the pup tent and police cars. The storm has retreated, soon to be followed by another one, and wet dead leaves litter pavement and bricks like soggy bits of cardboard.

“I’m always running out of everything important.” Fruge insists on carrying my scene case, deciding she should keep something similar in her police car. “I’m constantly going through stuff like Purell, Lysol. Not to mention Narcan.”

Referring to the nasal spray naloxone hydrochloride that reverses the effects of opioids, she says that the last drug overdose she worked was in an alleyway this past Friday. She went through the Narcan she had in the trunk.

“Both victims had gotten hooked on pain meds, and now are hard-core heroin addicts who’ve had to be revived several times before,” she explains. “Whatever they got hold of was really bad stuff. You’ve got to be desperate to trust what you buy off the street, and they’ll O.D. again if something else doesn’t get them first.”

“I’m happy to share,” I reply.

I let her know that I insist my medical examiners and investigators are well stocked in Narcan, also EpiPens. You never know when you might be able to save someone, including saving yourself.

“Nice ride.” Reaching Marino’s stealthy Raptor truck, Fruge gives it a once-over. “Your sister must do pretty well with her books. It must be kind of weird though, him being married to her.”