Terminal Secret Page 3

  “Anything else in her system?”

  “Toxicology isn’t complete yet, but her BAC was 0.0.”

  “An easy day at the morgue for you. No mystery as to the cause of death.”

  “It was an open-and-shut case, from a purely medical perspective. I can’t speak to suspects, motives, or all the other possibilities the body cannot tell me.”

  “So what’s keeping you up?”

  “Well, this open-and-shut case reopened itself when I got to the woman on the next table.”

  Wallace and Emily turned around and Dr. Lewis took the long way to stand across the table from them. The woman’s figure was gaunt, bones pushing against greyish skin as if trying to escape.

  “This body was pulled out of the canal the same morning the young woman shot through the chest was murdered. Her name is Beth Fluto and she was the driver of a Town and Country minivan. By eyewitness accounts, she drove off the road, over the curb, and then over the short stone wall that runs along the C&O Canal.”

  “Heart attack?” Emily asked.

  “Very good, Detective. That was my initial thought. Or at least at the top of my consideration list. In the good old days, a single car accident was likely the result of a few things. Excessive speed. A sleep-deprived driver. Intoxication. A heart attack.”

  “And then came the proliferation of cell phones,” Emily surmised.

  The ME flashed an impressed look in Detective Wallace’s direction. “Ladies and gentleman, we have a ringer in the room. The new, unwelcome detective is exactly right. Since the proliferation of cell phones, we have seen a massive spike in single car accidents. Texting is climbing the ranks as a major cause of death. People driving with both eyes and thumbs on their phone.”

  “Doesn’t leave much to drive with,” Emily said.

  “No, it does not. Simply using the phone is dangerous enough. People pay more attention to the conversation they’re having than they do to the road. Jabbering their way through the curve, the stoplight, and into the big oak tree on the corner.”

  “What is the case with this young lady?” Wallace asked.

  “None of the above. She drowned.”

  “That would be expected if she were found in the canal.”

  “True, but Beth here is unique. While Beth may have drowned the other morning, she was already dead. Cancer everywhere. Cancer metastasized to her ovaries, liver, lungs, kidneys, stomach. I can’t say for sure, but she likely had months or weeks to live. I imagine she was in pain. Very likely on pain medication. Those could have been contributing factors to her death. They could have very easily impaired her driving skills.”

  Wallace looked at Emily, who seemed to be hoping there was a moral to the story.

  “And… ?” she prodded.

  The ME moved to the foot of the bed and the evidence in the small basin. A pile of dirty clothes, cut from Beth’s body, formed a mound of stench-laden fabric. Dr. Lewis slipped his hand into the corner of the evidence basin and pulled out a single bullet casing.

  “You have my attention,” Wallace responded as the ME held the brass casing in the air.

  “This was found in a pocket of her pants. All of her clothes had been cut off in an attempt to resuscitate. The clothes arrived with the body in an evidence bag.”

  “What is the caliber?”

  “.223.”

  “Are you saying you think this woman killed the woman on the next table?” Wallace asked.

  “No, Detective, I’m not. And it would be impossible to match this casing with the bullet used in the attorney’s murder. We need the weapon to make a match. That said, the wound on the deceased on the next table is consistent with a wound from a .223. Given the fragmented condition of the projectile, however, it would be impossible to say for certain. But what I can say is this: I don’t often have middle-aged white females with brass casings in their belongings, much less one that potentially matches the caliber for a murder victim who arrived the same day from the same zip code, and happens to be lying on the next table.”

  Wallace stared at the body on the table and then looked over at the corpse of the lawyer.

  “What was the time of death on the woman pulled from the canal?”

  “Seven-fifteen in the morning.”

  “That’s pretty exact.”

  “The minivan went into the C&O during rush-hour. There were hundreds of witnesses according to the police report. Over a dozen calls came into 911 immediately after the vehicle entered the water. Her body was found inside the submerged minivan. I assume she didn’t come up for air. There wasn’t much guesswork involved in the timeline.”

  “What part of Canal Road did she go in?”

  “Not too far outside Georgetown.”

  “That part of Canal Road is one-way during the morning rush hour.”

  “One-way coming into the city in the morning. One-way leaving the city in the evening. Why does that matter?”

  “Just thinking out loud,” Wallace said. “Anything in the police report on a weapon in the minivan? If we assume our girl here shot the lawyer on the next table, then she probably didn’t do it with a slingshot.”

  “There was nothing in the report I received, but it may be worth double checking.”

  “What about a cell phone?”

  “Nothing mentioned in the paperwork.”

  Emily moved closer to the table and looked down at the woman pulled from the minivan. “You sure about the cancer?”

  “Yes, Detective. Her prognosis couldn’t have been good.”

  Wallace alternated glances between both female corpses. “It doesn’t look like it was good for either of them.”

  *

  Wallace spent ten minutes on the phone while pacing the lobby of the first floor of the hospital. When finished, he hung up the phone, nodded his head in the direction of the exit, and Emily followed him out the automatic doors.

  “What did you learn?” Emily asked.

  “There was no weapon found in the vehicle. And no phone,” Wallace said. “Between you and me, without a weapon, I’m going to have a hard time believing a woman with cancer in a minivan shot a tree-hugging lawyer on her doorstep. I’ve seen a lot of things in my time on the force, but that would be a first.”

  “I would think so.”

  “And on top of having no weapon, we have a small gap in our timeline for the suspect.”

  “How’s that?”

  “The dead lawyer was shot on her doorstep around six a.m. According to the ME and the accident report, the minivan went in the water around seven fifteen. That is a gap of an hour and fifteen minutes.”

  “Maybe she was driving around.”

  “The woman with cancer wasn’t even from DC. She was from Virginia. I just don’t see her coming to DC to shoot a woman on her doorstep and then driving around the neighborhood for an hour. Most people who shoot someone don’t stick around.”

  “So what do we do with the shell casing that the ME found? Ignore it?”

  “This is DC. There are a lot of military families in this area. Within a couple of hours of here we have what, a dozen military bases? The Army has Fort Meade, Belvoir, Detrick. The Air Force has Andrews. The Marines have Quantico down Route 95 and the Marine Barracks on the other side of town. The US Naval Academy is thirty minutes away in Annapolis. And of course the Pentagon is the mother of all military installations. Hundreds of thousands of military personnel. Millions of rounds of ammo.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The .223 is a common ammo type for the military. That casing found on the woman could be anything. It could be souvenir, a good luck charm. Something to remember a boyfriend, a husband. And that assumes it was a .223 that killed the lawyer. The ME just said it was consistent with a .223. Tough to prove without a weapon.”

  Wallace paused and looked out the window before continuing. “But for the sake of being thorough, let’s poke around on our dead girl with the bullet in her pocket—see if there’s any connection between her and
the dead lawyer. Let’s also see if we can figure out where she was going when she crashed, and get a look at the minivan for ourselves.”

  Emily jotted notes in her notebook. “Where do we start?”

  “We start with the Duke of Junk.”

  Chapter 5

  Wallace parked the unmarked cruiser next to the trailer at the entrance to Buzzard Point Salvage Yard. Emily joined him in front of the vehicle, looking out over the rows of cars in various states of ill repair. The right hand side of the lot displayed the skeletal remains of automobiles that had been picked through, the organs of the cars ripped out piece by piece and used as transplants for healthier vehicles. The back of the salvage yard sported columns of semi-crushed cars, four vehicles high. Barbed wire ran around the fence, enclosing the three-acre establishment.

  “It’s like a thrift store for wounded vehicles,” Emily observed.

  “A combination of store, pawn shop, and auction,” Wallace retorted.

  A sign on the front of the trailer explained the rules of the salvage yard. It cost twenty dollars to look around. If a customer found something they wanted to purchase, the twenty bucks would be applied to the negotiated purchase price of the item, if a price could be agreed upon.

  Emily read the sign and then saw the face of a man peering out between the venetian blinds in the window of the trailer. “You know this guy?” Emily asked.

  “Yeah. He handles a lot of the cars for the city of DC. A lot of the police impound vehicles end up here as their final clearing stage.”

  “If you see something you need to buy, let me negotiate,” Emily said. “I have an uncle who has been running flea markets in Winchester since I was a little girl.”

  The Duke opened the door of the trailer and his eyes immediately danced towards the female detective. The Duke quickly ran his fingers through his graying brown hair and brushed powder sugar off the front of his denim work shirt.

  Wallace stepped between the gawking junkyard owner and his new partner. “Good morning, Duke.”

  “Good morning, Detective. And good morning to your pretty acquaintance.”

  Emily flashed her newly minted DC detective badge and squelched the Duke’s enthusiasm. “You can also refer to me as ‘Detective.’”

  The Duke acknowledged the badge with a nod. “Come on in,” he said, holding open the front door to the trailer. Emily followed Wallace into the small office and the Duke’s eyes fell to the back of Emily’s slacks as she walked past. The Duke of Junk pulled the door shut and stepped to the desk at the far end of the office trailer.

  Wallace and Emily looked around the dimly lit office. An exceptionally large jar of change—mostly quarters, dimes, and nickels—sat in the corner. Filing cabinets ran along two walls. A window air-conditioning unit protruded from a self-made hole in the wall of the trailer. The venetian blinds the Duke had been peeking through moments before, hung unevenly.

  “How’s business, Duke?” Wallace asked.

  “Real good. Counting the days to retirement. I guess you heard the city is buying this place. Yes sir, the development money finally made it to Buzzard Point. They’re going to build a soccer stadium here.”

  “The first thing they need to do is change the name. Buzzard Point just doesn’t have a commercial ring to it.”

  “They can call it anything they want as long as the check clears the bank. You know, I don’t understand people who say they’ll never sell out to development. I say, when the price is right, take the money and run. They’re going to develop with or without you.”

  “Duke, we’re looking for a minivan that was brought in the other day. It was pulled out of the canal.”

  “I know the one. Stinks to high heaven. Stagnant canal water isn’t good for a vehicle. From what I understand, the car was pulled out pretty quickly. But the smell, well, that’s going to be there forever.”

  “Has anyone picked through the vehicle?”

  “We don’t let people pick through flooded cars. We remove the tires. Pluck out the windshield and mirrors. That’s about it. The rest is scrap metal. I can’t sell anything on the interior. Can’t sell the engine. I mean, the car was submerged. It’s not like someone left the moonroof open during an afternoon sprinkle. Flooded vehicles are trouble. All kinds of trouble. Tightly regulated. The insurance guy was out here last evening. We processed the paperwork for a totaled vehicle. The VIN was entered into the system. If that vehicle or its engine were ever found on the road, someone would have some explaining to do.”

  “And you would be the first person to answer questions.”

  “Which is why I don’t play around with flooded vehicles. Who needs the hassle?”

  “Can we see the vehicle?”

  “Just a second,” the Duke replied. He grabbed the walkie-talkie off the corner of his desk and pressed the button to talk. Deafening machinery roared from the walkie-talkie, drowning out a muffled reply from the person on the other end. The Duke clicked the walk-talkie off and stood from his chair. “Let’s take a walk. That car is in the crunch line and the machine is running.”

  Wallace followed one pace behind and listened to Emily and the Duke chew the fat over the rhythmic pounding of heavy machinery. Emily looked over and pointed at the rusted remains of an automobile. “That’s an awesome ’59 Cadillac. My uncle had one of those. Too bad it’s missing the fins on the back.”

  The Duke responded. “People are taking the back ends off these cars and turning them into sofas. They put a big frame in the middle and use the fins as the arms of the couch. Some guy showed how to do it on TV. One of those picker shows. The next week I had a line of new clientele full of ideas for turning old cars into furniture.”

  At the end of the row of cars, the pounding sound of machinery became even louder.

  “Here we are,” the Duke said, standing among crushed cars, cubes no bigger than the size of large washing machines. He looked down the row of square metal blocks and uttered, “Uh-oh.” He stepped forward and ran his hand across the third block of metal on the right. “This is it.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “After a few years, you get pretty good at figuring what’s what.”

  “It’s already crushed,” she stated.

  “Yeah, sorry about that. Didn’t think it would have been converted quite yet.”

  “You usually crush cars this quickly?” she asked.

  “Once the insurance has been settled, we can crush them. I can put forty cars on a truck ‘boxed up,’ as we call it. I can fit twelve whole cars. Economics. Cheaper for me to crush them. And we’re trying to thin the herd in here. Everything in this yard has to go by summer, before the developers arrive.”

  “Was there anything in the vehicle?”

  The Duke seemed bothered by the question and both detectives picked up on his discomfort.

  “A few things. There was as a baby stroller. Ruined. Some children toys and books. A blanket. There was an empty backpack. A damaged bike rack off the rear. A GPS that was disconnected.”

  “A GPS?”

  “Yeah. One of those aftermarket jobs that sticks to the dash or the windshield. Not many people using them these days.”

  “Do you still have it?”

  “Nope. It was ruined. Tried to plug it in and got nothing. Went in the trash.”

  “Anything else? Anyone see a cell phone?”

  “No phone. There were a couple of miscellaneous items like the owner’s manual in the glove box. Some loose change in the ashtray.”

  “Is that it?”

  The Duke of Junk could feel the detectives fishing for a particular answer. “What were you looking for?”

  “A weapon.”

  “What kind of weapon?”

  Wallace looked at his partner and she nodded in approval.

  “A rifle.”

  “No. No gun. Hell, I return weapons to the police. Check my records. Check my history. I have returned all kinds of unpleasant finds in the past. Even had a live grenade in
the back of a crashed limo once.”

  “What about any of your employees? Any chance they had their hands in the vehicle?”

  “Not this vehicle. I was here when it came in. I handled it. I didn’t find a weapon.”

  Wallace glanced over his shoulder as the top of the crusher fell on the roof of a vehicle in the corner of the yard. The sides of the crusher began to move in and the sound of bending metal overtook the conversation.

  The trio backtracked along the same path they had come in on and stopped near the steps of the trailer.

  “Sorry I couldn’t help you out,” the Duke said, speaking in the direction of Wallace while stealing glances at Emily.

  Wallace reached into his pocket and removed a business card. He handed the card to the Duke and said, “Let me know if you or your employees think of anything we need to know.”

  “Yes, sir, Detective.”

  Wallace turned around and walked in the direction of the squad car. He spoke over his shoulder as he opened the driver’s side door. “Keep it clean, Duke.”

  “Do you believe him?” Emily asked, sliding into the passenger seat and pulling the door closed.

  “Yes and no. I don’t think he found a gun and I do think he would turn over a weapon if he found one. The juice is not worth the squeeze when it comes to weapons. Not in DC. But I also think he keeps other items of value. Jewelry, cash. Did you notice the large jar of coins in the trailer in the corner?”

  “I did. Looked like one of those five-gallon water bottles. Big jar. It’s probably too heavy to move by himself.”

  “If I had to guess, I would say most of that jar is loose change from the vehicles he gets. I would also guess he even finds some drugs on occasion. Probably keeps that or sells it. But he’s hiding something. Junkyard owners aren’t the most ethical guys in the world. It’s possible he stripped that minivan down and sold the engine, or maybe even the whole car, regardless of what he says about the trouble he could get in with a flooded vehicle. I mean, what are the chances anything will happen to him if he’s retiring next summer? It’s not hard to remove the VIN number from some parts and resell the engine for a couple hundred bucks.”