The Reluctant Coroner

by Paul Austin Ardoin

  She stared at her phone for a while.

  Chapter Eight

  Fenway’s cell phone rang.

  She was asleep. The second ring woke her. The third ring made her realize it was a phone call, not her alarm. She pushed her pillow to the side, reached her hand out to the bedside table and picked up the phone. She looked at the screen before answering. It was 3:26 in the morning.

  “Hello?” she croaked.

  “Hey, Fenway, sorry to wake you up.” Sheriff McVie’s voice was urgent.

  “Craig?” She sat up and tried to shake the sleep out of her head. “I mean, Sheriff? Something wrong?”

  “Yes. You and I have to get to your office right away. There’s been a break-in.”

  “A break-in?”

  “A break-in like I’ve never seen before. I’m on my way to your place, about five minutes away. Throw some clothes on and get down to the parking lot.”

  “Sure.” She got out of bed, perching the phone between her ear and shoulder, and grabbed a bra and a long-sleeve blouse. “I hope I don’t have to match.”

  McVie had already clicked off.

  She quickly shed her pajamas and pulled on her clothes. She looked in the mirror: her hair was crazy, but she didn’t have time to fix it. She grabbed a hat from her closet. It was a Boston Red Sox baseball cap, a gag gift from her clinic co-workers last year. She picked up her keys and purse on her way out the door. She managed to make it downstairs just in time to see McVie pull into the driveway.

  She opened the passenger door and got in.

  McVie pointed to her cap once she got in the car. “Seriously?”

  “Just drive.”

  He floored it once he was on the main road. Fenway glanced over at him; he was wearing a black tee shirt that showed off his muscular arms, flexing slightly as he gripped the wheel. She suddenly remembered fleeting images from the dream that she was having when she woke up: her legs wrapped around his torso, his strong arms around her back, her breaths coming short and fast, his lips on hers. She turned her head and stared at the road, feeling the color rise to her cheeks, trying to push the images out of her mind.

  They made it to the coroner’s office building in about half the time that it had taken the morning before.

  “You really need to get a car,” he said.

  He pulled around to the side of the building. Fenway’s jaw dropped; there was a hole where the window to Walker’s office used to be. Two sheriff cruisers had their lights going, but no sirens sounded. Three uniformed officers were standing a few feet away from the hole in the building.

  “Dammit,” McVie muttered. “Dammit, dammit, dammit.”

  He braked hard to a stop, threw the gear angrily into park, and jumped out of the car without turning it off. “Fenway!” he barked. “See if you can tell if anything’s missing.”

  She got out and walked over to the planter between the driveway and the side of the building. There was a messy tangle of flattened bushes and shrubs where a large vehicle—maybe a big pickup or SUV—had jumped the curb and punched a truck-shaped hole in the side of the building.

  She peered inside the hole. It was dark. She used the light from her phone to get a better look inside. One of the filing cabinets was missing its third drawer from the top.

  “Missing file drawer,” she called.

  McVie was seething. “How the hell did this happen?” he shouted. “Our coroner gets killed, we can’t gather evidence for days, and as soon as we do, the whole crime scene gets compromised!”

  Fenway stood there, not sure what to do.

  “Who knew about this? Who knew you were going to look at those files today?”

  “Besides you?” Her voice was smaller than she wanted it to be.

  “Yes, dammit, besides me!”

  “Um, everyone who was here last night. Dez. Mark. Rachel. Migs. The young officer who was watching over me—I don’t think I ever got his name.”

  “Lana Cassidy?”

  “I don’t know. She knew I was investigating Walker’s office, but I don’t think she knew I was going to look at those files. Whoever was in the evidence room where the keys were, probably. I assume the officer talked to somebody to check out the keys from the evidence room, right?”

  “Who else?” McVie pushed.

  “No one else.”

  “Your dad?”

  “No, I didn’t…” Fenway trailed off.

  His head cocked to the side. “You didn’t what?”

  “I don’t know. My dad called last night, and he asked about the investigation. But I was purposely vague. I told him I had just started and that I wanted to make some headway.”

  “Did you tell him you were going through the files today?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  Fenway shrugged, crossing her arms. “I don’t know, okay?”

  McVie paced back and forth. “Fenway, this is an active investigation. We can’t tell anyone anything that’s going on!”

  “I know.”

  He exhaled loudly. “I know you know intellectually. I know that’s what you read in your textbooks. But out here in the real world, actually keeping your mouth shut about active investigations prevents shit like this from happening.”

  Fenway looked down at the ground.

  “This is a disaster.” McVie ran his hand through his hair. “I have to get a crime scene team in here. Probably from San Miguelito, even though they have a conflict of interest, but I don’t have a choice.”

  He kicked at the ground. “I’m going to have to wake a lot of people up.”

  “I can canvass,” she offered. “See if there’s anyone around who saw anything.”

  “Come on, Fenway. Look at this place. There’s no one around to canvass. There aren’t even homeless people around City Hall. And it’s the middle of the night, in a sleepy little town. No one’s around.”

  “Then I’ll go check the security footage. A truck, or something, plowed into the side of the building, and we’ve got security cameras, so we must have something on tape.”

  “Knock yourself out,” McVie said, his tone softer, almost defeated. “I’ll be waking up a CSI team in the next county.”

  Fenway skulked around to the front of the building. She swiped the temporary card next to the reader at the door. It beeped, but flashed red. She tried it two more times with the same result. She swore softly and walked back around to the side where McVie was still muttering under his breath.

  It was clear to Fenway that McVie was incensed about the entire situation. He looked tired. Fenway thought he might have been angry that he wasn’t at home in bed with his wife.

  “My keycard doesn’t work.”

  McVie didn’t respond.

  Fenway waited a few awkward seconds and then spoke again. “I think it might be because it’s a temporary keycard, and it might not let you in after hours.”

  “Imagine that, a security protocol we’ve actually followed correctly,” he mumbled.

  “Look, Sheriff, I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t know if I messed up by saying something to my father. But last night, there were, I don’t know, like, ten people who knew I was going through the files tomorrow—I mean, today—and it wasn’t a secret. No one thought we should keep that under wraps.” She put her hands on her hips. “So, let’s try to figure out who stole the files, and not play the blame game.”

  “Just let me be pissed off for a little while, Fenway. Just let me be for a little bit.”

  Fenway didn’t say anything.

  McVie grabbed his keycard off his belt and handed it to her. “Go ahead. Go review the footage.”

  “I’ll go with you,” one of the uniforms said to her. “I was the security guard in the video room when the truck hit the building.”

  “You were?” McVie was surprised. “Fine then, give me back my keycard.”

  The officer took the card back from Fenway and gave it to McVie. “I’m Quincy.�
�� He held out his hand to her. Quincy was about two inches shorter and his skin was a couple of shades darker than Fenway. He was trim, and his uniform looked clean and neat, even after the drama of the early morning.

  “Fenway.” She took his hand and shook it firmly. “New coroner.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay, Quincy, lead the way. Let’s go see what kind of truck or SUV this was.”

  They went inside, past the stairs, and through a doorway on the right. It went through a short corridor which led to a dark, nondescript door. Quincy scanned his card again, and it beeped before the door opened into the video suite.

  “Okay,” she said. “The cameras were all recording, right? No one messed with them?”

  “Right. A few years ago, someone tried to break in, and they spray painted the lenses on a couple of the cameras. We replaced them with cameras that don’t look like cameras, and moved them up higher, way out of reach of someone standing on the ground underneath.” He pushed a few buttons and dialed a few knobs. “Okay, this is footage from about an hour ago, from the camera mounted on the wall closest to the impact.”

  They saw an empty parking lot. Quincy fast-forwarded the video a bit. With the time on the video reading 3:03, they watched a large, black pickup truck come into the frame from the left at a very high rate of speed.

  “This is him,” Quincy said.

  “What is that? Is that a Ford?”

  “Yeah, looks like an F-250 to me.” The truck turned away from the building for a second. “Duallies.”

  She pointed to bars covering the back of the pickup. “What are those?” The bars were also blocking most of the license plate. Fenway could make out two of the numbers and she could tell they were California plates.

  “Bull bars, looks like.”

  She didn’t ask for details. “Those look weird.”

  “Well, they usually go on the front. They must have jerry-rigged it to go on the back.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  The pickup accelerated in reverse, very fast, into the bushes between the parking lot and the building. The rear of the truck disappeared out of the frame, as did most of the rest of the truck. When the truck hit the building, they could see the dust come up into the frame.

  Quincy squinted. “So they could back into the building like that and not have the airbags go off.”

  “Okay. Let’s see who this guy is.”

  But they could only see part of the door. It obviously opened and shut, but they couldn’t see who got out—or even if anyone did.

  “Could you see the driver at all?”

  “The driver? No. I couldn’t even see if he got out.”

  Fenway nodded. “And it isn’t necessarily a man.”

  Quincy rubbed his eyes. “Let’s see if we can see him when he comes back.”

  About forty-five seconds later, the door opened and closed again, and the truck surged forward quickly. Quincy paused it, trying to make something out from the shadowy figure in the driver’s seat, but the reflections off the window, the low light, and the low quality of the camera made it impossible. There wasn’t anything in the video that provided a clue as to the identity of the driver.

  The truck got out of the planter and back onto the asphalt of the parking lot. Then it peeled out, just as Quincy came into the frame, gun drawn. The bull bars were hanging off the back of the truck awkwardly, and the bumper and gate were smashed.

  “I’m surprised it could still be driven,” Fenway said.

  “Yeah. The truck pretty much went through the outside wall below the window, though. Really hit half-wall and half-window. The outside wall is weaker at the window there, and the glass and a two-foot high wall is a lot easier to go through than a reinforced eight-foot wall. And those bull bars helped.”

  “I guess. Still seems pretty lucky.”

  The camera saw Quincy briefly assess the damage, then run out of the frame.

  “Did you fire your gun?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not supposed to fire,” Quincy said. “This is property damage and theft, not a murder, or an assault, or anything. You’ve been watching too many cop shows.”

  “I bet those bull bars fell off before they got very far.”

  “They might have. I watched the truck go down First Street and then make a right on Broadway. Toward the freeway.”

  “They could be halfway to Mexico by now,” she said. “Anything else on the cameras?”

  “I don’t know yet, but from where the truck came from, we should get the pickup truck coming into the lot with Camera 6. If we’re lucky, we could get the front plate.”

  “If they were that stupid.”

  “I’ve seen stupider. And this was pretty brazen. A smash-and-grab really close to the sheriff’s office, in the middle of a murder investigation? That’s just crazy. I guess they got some important files.”

  “I don’t know how important they were. I didn’t have a chance to see them. I was going to look at them tomorrow.”

  “Well, I guess you won’t find out now.” Quincy drummed his fingers on the table. “Not unless we can stop the truck before it gets to where it’s going.”

  “Let’s at least try,” she said. “See if you can get the license plate from Camera 6.”

  Quincy clicked a couple of buttons, and sure enough, the truck’s license plate was visible. Fenway called the sheriff.

  “McVie,” he answered, curtly.

  “Sheriff, we have a plate number. Dually Black Ford F-250.” She gave him the plate.

  “Okay. I’ll put out an APB.”

  She hung up and turned back to Quincy.

  “I don’t think anything else is going to come up, at least not for the smash-and-grab,” Quincy said. “I’ll let you know if I see anyone who might have been casing the place, somebody who might have been seeing if that wall was as vulnerable as it was, anything like that.”

  “Yeah, that’s just weird. Oddly specific, right? That particular office, that particular drawer?” She tapped her chin in thought.

  “Do you think that the driver of the truck might be the person who murdered Mr. Walker Sunday night?”

  “Well, that’s the logical place to start,” Fenway said, “but plenty of people were in Walker’s file cabinet. Someone might have seen this as an opportunity to expunge their record, or make sure they weren’t—” She stopped.

  “What is it?”

  She hesitated. “Well…what have you heard about Harrison Walker?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well—like, have you heard any rumors about him at work?”

  Quincy folded his arms. “I’ve heard he’s a creep. Saying stuff to the women who work here, making them uncomfortable. If you ask me, he’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that, too.”

  “You? You’ve only been in town a couple of days.”

  “I know, right? So, it must be pretty bad if I’ve heard it already. But here’s the thing: stuff like sexual harassment usually doesn’t stop at sexual harassment. Usually, those assholes feel entitled to money, favors, equipment, that sort of thing.” She shuffled her feet.

  “Okay. So, what do you think Walker did?”

  “Maybe nothing.” She leaned on the wall. “But probably something. Skimming off the top. Extortion. Taking a bribe. Something. And maybe it has to do with why someone drove a truck through the building and stole a drawerful of files, or maybe it has to do with why he was killed, or maybe both.”

  There was a knock at the door. Quincy opened it.

  It was the sheriff. “Plate came back. Pickup belongs to Dylan Richards.”

  “All right,” Fenway said. “I wasn’t really expecting a hit on the plate that fast. Reported stolen or anything like that?”

  “Nope.” McVie hesitated.

  “What is it?”

  “You know Rachel?”

  “In the coroner’s offi
ce? Yeah, of course.”

  “Dylan’s her husband.”

  “Oh.” She covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Yeah. Fenway, this isn’t good. It’s not good for Dylan, and it’s not good for Rachel either.”

  “No, it’s not. And we can’t tell if the driver is a man or woman. It could have been Rachel.”

  “I know Rachel in the coroner’s office,” Quincy said. “It’s not her. She’s definitely too short to be the driver. And too petite. And she doesn’t carry herself like that.”

  “But it could be Dylan?” Fenway asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I know Dylan.”

  “Do you want to come with me to the Richards’ apartment?” McVie asked.

  She hesitated. “Yes, I do, but yesterday you and I weren’t supposed to have any contact with each other. Are you sure you want me coming with you?”

  “I think a pickup truck smashing through the side of the coroner’s office has changed the rules,” McVie said. “It’s given the case urgency. We can’t wait anymore. It’s all hands on deck.”

  Quincy promised to keep them informed if anyone was seen on video casing the building. McVie and Fenway walked out toward his car.

  “Truck had bull bars on the back to make it easier to smash through the wall,” she said. “Quincy thinks they jerry-rigged the bull bars to the back so that when they smashed through the wall, the airbags wouldn’t go off. When we saw the bull bars in the video afterward, they looked like they were about to fall off the truck. We should see if anyone can find bull bars on the side of the road between here and the freeway, or on the freeway. One or two good turns might be all it needed.”

  “If it’s Dylan’s truck, this might be a pretty fast investigation.”

  “It might be. Still, no stone unturned, right?”

  McVie laughed a little uneasily. “I guess.”

  They got to the car and he unlocked the door. “Hey, before we get in, I just want to say sorry. I snapped at you for telling your dad. I’m tired, and I’m frustrated.”

  “No, you were right,” Fenway conceded. “I’ve got to keep that closer to the vest.”

  They got in McVie’s car, and drove to the townhouse complex where Fenway had driven Rachel two nights before.