The Reluctant Coroner

by Paul Austin Ardoin

  It started slow at first, the tightness in Fenway’s chest, and then a tear ran down her cheek. And then the tightness released and Fenway was sobbing.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The tears stopped after a few minutes. Fenway took some deep breaths. She dabbed at her eyes and her face with the tissues, which she hoped would get rid of both the spit and tear streaks running down her face. She pulled the compact out of her purse and checked herself in the mirror. She hadn’t had time to put on any makeup or do her hair at three in the morning—and the ball cap could only help so much. Especially with a bullet hole in it. Fenway thought she looked ragged and worn out.

  Fenway thought about how her mother would react to news that she had been shot at. How she would tell her mother to minimize the shock. Then a wave of loneliness cascaded over her like an avalanche and almost knocked the wind out of her. She didn’t have anyone to call here in Estancia. Not that she trusted, not that she wanted to open up too. Maybe McVie.

  She had to wait about fifteen minutes before there was a knock at the door. A female detective came in.

  “Miss Stevenson?”

  “Fenway.”

  “Fenway, I’m Deputy Celeste Salvador. You can call me Celeste.” She was medium height, a few inches shorter than Fenway. She looked to be in her early thirties, with mocha-colored skin, and had her shoulder-length dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. Celeste had a strong chin, and dark brown eyes with heavy lids. She was wearing a black sheriff’s uniform. She offered her hand in greeting.

  “Hi, Celeste.” Fenway shook her hand.

  Celeste glanced at her. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” Then Fenway paused. “No. I’ve never been shot at before.”

  Celeste nodded. “I’ll tell you something. I’ve got ten years in law enforcement, and I’ve never been shot at before either. Not once.”

  “Well, I’ve got less than twenty-four hours in law enforcement, and I’ve already got you beat.”

  Celeste laughed softly. “Listen, Fenway, we need a statement from you, and I need to record it. Are you ready to do that now?” When Fenway responded with a nod, Celeste put a small recorder in the middle of the table and hit the red button.

  “Deputy Celeste Salvador interviewing Dominguez County Coroner Fenway Stevenson. May sixth. The time is 10:23 a.m.”

  Fenway shook her head. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock yet.

  Celeste asked Fenway to describe what happened in detail. She went over it, starting with Dez going out to get coffee because of their busy morning, Fenway starting the Google search on the toxic fumes, and then Lana bursting in, yelling. Celeste didn’t ask questions about what happened before that, and just nodded in a few places.

  “Do you think you might have done something to antagonize Lana?” she finally asked.

  “When?”

  “I was thinking before she spit in your face.”

  “I don’t think so. But Lana didn’t like what I was saying about not knowing anything.”

  “Do you have any idea what Lana was referring to?” Celeste said.

  “Well, I didn’t then.” Fenway rested her elbows on the table. “But afterwards I saw that my search found an L.A. Times article where a man named Carl Cassidy was one of the people killed in that accident. I assume that Lana Cassidy and Carl Cassidy were related? She probably blames my dad for that, and I guess she thinks I’m trying to cover it up. If she had walked in literally thirty seconds later, I would have known why she was so upset. I might have been able to talk her down.”

  Celeste nodded. “Let’s get back to what she did after she spit at you.”

  Fenway relayed the rest of the story. Celeste interrupted when Fenway said she bull-rushed Lana.

  “Why did you go after her like that?”

  “Because I thought she was going to shoot me, and I couldn’t run away. My only option was to try to get the gun away from her.” Fenway ran her hand over her face. “Honestly, I didn’t really think, I just did it. As soon as her attention was off me, and on Dez coming through the door, I just did it.”

  Celeste had a couple of follow-up questions after Fenway’s story was done, but seemed satisfied enough with the answers. They shook hands and Celeste left.

  Fenway stayed in the conference room for a couple minutes more, clearing her head, trying to gain her composure. Once she did leave the room, she saw that the other deputy was just finishing up with Dez. Fenway walked out of the office and into the ladies’ room.

  She grabbed a few paper towels and washed her face with water, which got, she hoped, the rest of the tear streaks and spit off her face. She decided against trying to put makeup on now. She gave herself a once-over in the mirror, and decided that she looked all right for someone who had just been assaulted with a deadly weapon. She left the ladies’ room and walked back to the coroner’s office. It looked like the deputy had left, and Dez was sitting at her desk.

  Fenway went over to Dez. “Did you give your statement?”

  “Yep. They told me they had everything they needed. Seems like Lana listened to her Miranda warnings, and is keeping her mouth shut for the time being.”

  “Celeste seemed like a good cop.”

  “One of the best.” Dez sighed. “She needs to get promoted, or go to L.A., or something. She’s too talented to get stuck here.”

  Fenway paused, took a deep breath, and let it out. “Shall we go get another coffee? Somebody dropped ours all over the floor.”

  She laughed. “You’re buying.”

  “I get shot at and I have to buy the coffee? Some morning.”

  They started the short walk down to the coffee shop. “Hey, Dez, did you know that one of the guys who died in the toxic fumes at Ferris Energy was Carl Cassidy?”

  She looked at Fenway. “Yes, of course. Didn’t you?”

  “No, I had no idea. Any relation to Lana?”

  Dez cocked her head to the side. “I forget that you don’t know this town. Yes. Carl and Lana were married. Had been for almost twenty years. Lana didn’t come back to work for about two months after Carl died. She was devastated. They have a son, Shane, who’s just about to graduate high school. Estancia High—the same school Megan McVie goes to.”

  They arrived at Java Jim’s. The morning rush had died down long before, and Dez and Fenway were the only customers at the counter. Dez ordered a drip coffee and Fenway got her large latte, and they sat down on the same overstuffed chairs that Fenway and Rachel had sat in earlier that morning.

  “Estancia High is the only high school in town, right?”

  “Some parents send their kids to Saint Benedictine’s over in Paso Querido. And there’s the continuation high school. But, yeah, just about all the kids in town go to Estancia. I heard that Shane took his dad’s death pretty hard. He struggled this year; almost didn’t graduate. I think he’s got to go to the community college instead of going right to USC now.”

  “And Lana blames my dad for everything—for killing her husband, for her son not going to the college of his choice.”

  Dez shrugged.

  “And that’s why she came after me, after finding out that the Ferris Energy accident file was stolen.”

  “Well, rookie, let’s say that that’s the primary theory of the case, as it stands.”

  Fenway sighed, heavily. “This is so messed up.”

  “It’s just weird, Fenway. I’ve been working in the coroner’s office for about eight years, and I’ve investigated a bunch of deaths. Mostly suicides and drug overdoses, of course, but a few weird accidental deaths, and a handful of homicides every year.” She stood up and stretched. “But I’ve never seen anything like this. There’s never been a homicide of anyone in the office—unless you count the drunk driver who ran over one of our officers a few years ago. The homicides in this county are usually pretty straightforward: a drug deal gone wrong, a husband killing his wife or his wife’s lover, or something like that. Whoever killed Harrison Walker went through a lot
of trouble to hide their motives, and there’s a lot of misdirection here.”

  “So, you don’t think it was Dylan.”

  “No, I don’t. I think Dylan was with McVie’s wife when Walker was murdered.”

  “Me too.” Fenway took another drink of her latte.

  “And I don’t think he would have been smart enough to ditch Walker’s car in a long-term lot at LAX. I think he would have taken it into the forest and abandoned it, or set it on fire, or something.”

  Fenway nodded. “Yeah, good point. Stashing the car at a long-term lot seems like something someone would do who’s seen that kind of thing before; maybe someone with a police background, or a relative who’s a cop.”

  “Or a career criminal who’s had a lot of experience making cars disappear. Or someone like you who watches too much CSI,” Dez teased. “Don’t be blaming cops for this.”

  “Sorry.”

  Dez finished the last of her coffee. “We should get back.” They both stood up. Fenway drained her cup too, and they started out the door, back to the office.

  “Dez, do you think it might have been Lana? Her gun looks like it might have been the right caliber to do it. Not like a .22. Lana had a serious gun.”

  “I guess it could have been Lana. A lot more people in this town have guns than you might think, and obviously Lana’s not scared to pull the trigger. But I don’t think it was Lana. What’s her motive?”

  “Jeez, Ferris Energy is all over this, aren’t they?” Fenway asked, though it was more like a statement. “Hey, that reminds me, my dad is coming in before lunch to talk about the files.”

  The door to the office was open when they got back, and Migs had returned. He stood up as they came in.

  Migs’ face was full of concern. “How you doing, boss? I heard what happened. That’s all kinds of messed up.”

  Fenway smiled weakly. “I’m fine, Migs. Well, honestly, I’m a little shaken up. But I’ll be okay.”

  “I was in IT when Scott told us the story. He said you were kind of a bad-ass.”

  Fenway laughed. “Well, good.”

  “You were kind of a bad-ass, Fenway,” Dez said. “Going right up against someone who had a gun trained on you like that?”

  “Oh.” Fenway blushed slightly. “Thanks, Dez.”

  “So,” Dez said to Migs, “did you find anything out with Rachel’s computer?”

  “Yep, I was right—Piper found RAT software on it.”

  “I’ve heard of that.” Fenway tapped her forehead and tried to remember where. “That’s like a virus where someone else can remotely take over your computer, right?”

  “Yeah. I mean, technically, it’s a Trojan horse, not a virus. But it looks like whoever the hacker is, they could see and listen to everything that was going on in the office. Whoever was on the other end of Rachel’s camera feed was basically live-streaming everything that happened in the office.”

  “You find out who it was yet?”

  “No, we don’t know definitively who it is yet. Whoever set up the software did a decent job of concealing the recipient’s IP address. But the cybercrimes unit is working on it.”

  “You mean Piper is working on it.” Dez elbowed Migs.

  Migs’ ears got a little red. “Well, yeah. She’s the one who does cybercrimes stuff for the sheriff’s office.”

  “Does Piper have a timeline for when we’ll have some info back?” Fenway asked.

  “She said it might be a day or two. She’s great, though. She can work pretty fast. I’ve heard that she got address info out of a spearphishing email in under an hour.”

  Fenway nodded. “Okay. I guess we wait and see.”

  “There’s something else.”

  “Besides the IP address?”

  “Yeah. See, we’ve got this IT admin, Bradley Watermeier. Stanford dropout, rich parents; great with computers, though. He’s the admin for all the firewalls, and RAT software like that takes a huge amount of bandwidth. Bradley’s in charge of monitoring that kind of stuff, and, well, he should have seen the huge amount of bandwidth being taken up by the video going through—and it wasn’t just during the day—there was a huge amount of data going through on Friday night, after hours.”

  Fenway’s brow knitted. “Could he have just missed it?”

  “No way.” Migs vehemently shook his head. “First of all, he’s super smart—so he wouldn’t miss it, not if he was even paying the slightest amount of attention. But, second of all, somebody reconfigured the firewall specifically to hide the RAT data in the reports that the IT team was getting.”

  “You’ve got more than one person looking at all the reports?” she asked.

  “We do. Best security practices, and all that.”

  “So the reports said nothing was wrong?”

  “Yep. And Bradley is really the only person who has access to both the firewall and those reports.”

  “Bradley was the one who reconfigured the firewall?” she asked.

  “Well, Piper thinks so. He’s got the knowledge, and he’s got the access. I guess there are a few other people who might know how to do that—Piper definitely does—but she doesn’t have access to the firewall.”

  “Then why does Piper think it’s him?”

  “Because right before I brought Rachel’s machine into IT, Bradley got a text on his cellphone, and he left the office, said he had to deal with a family emergency. Piper told me he actually grabbed a few of his personal items off his desk before he took off. When I came in and told them that I thought there was spyware, and that the camera was compromised, they tried calling his phone to get access to the firewall, but there was no answer. I mean, it’s pretty suspicious considering whoever was watching us on Rachel’s camera saw that we had discovered it, and could have called Bradley to get out of the office.”

  Dez nodded.

  “And then later, they tried to go into Bradley’s computer, and Bradley’s machine was being wiped.”

  “Being wiped?” Dez asked.

  “Yeah, there are computer programs that will overwrite the hard drive with random data, to make it hard to retrieve the original files. It was in the middle of its second pass.”

  Fenway’s pulse jumped. “Was everything deleted?”

  “Everything.”

  “Can you get it back?”

  “Maybe. I mean, they’re working on it. But that guy knew how to destroy files—I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

  Fenway swore in her head. “Are we thinking that Bradley was the one who put the virus on Rachel’s PC?”

  “Well, he probably was the one who actually did it, but with the phone call that came in, I’m sure he was doing it for someone else,” Migs said. “I just don’t think he had a motive to be the one behind the whole thing. I don’t think Rachel knew Bradley—she knew him enough to say ‘hi’ in the office, but they never hung out, or anything. I guess he could be stalking her. But personally, I think that someone wanted to see what was going on in the office, and paid Bradley off.”

  Dez leaned forward. “I’ll get a warrant for his financials. What we’ve got should be compelling enough for a judge to sign. Do you know if he bought a new car recently, or anything like that?”

  “I don’t know him very well.” Migs shook his head. “I say ‘hi’ to him when I go over there, like Rachel does. That’s it. He’s come over here a couple times to set up computers. He actually set up Rachel’s PC.”

  “That means he might have set the RAT software up ever since she started here,” Fenway said.

  “Well, yeah, but the thing is, the video feeds only started about two weeks ago. We don’t know how long ago Rachel’s machine was compromised, but before two weeks ago, there was no video.”

  Fenway nodded. “That’s when Rachel bought the camera.” She paused, then asked, “What was the hacker getting before that? Were they listening to audio?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ask that. Piper would know, probably. Or could research it. I could ask her.�
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  Dez leaned back in her chair, a thoughtful look on her face. “Okay, we know someone was spying on this office through Rachel’s camera for the last two weeks, and probably had access to files or audio for a while before that. I think we should look for a motive of why someone would do that.”

  “Do you think it might be related to the theft of the file drawer?” Fenway asked.

  “It might all be related. But we probably need to go through the rest of those files that were in Walker’s office to see if anything jumps out at us. By the way, Fenway, the officer who was here yesterday—with the keys to Walker’s office—agreed to meet you at eight, which was over three hours ago. He might still be waiting for you wherever they moved the files.”

  Dez’s phone rang.

  “Roubideaux.” She paused. Then, covering the mouthpiece, exasperation in her voice: “Oh, calling on behalf of the all-knowing medical examiner, eh?” Another pause. “We’ve been waiting for the results for days. Will we be able to see them? Oh, right after lunch?” She looked at her watch. “Yeah, I guess I can get Fenway there.”

  “You can get me where?” Fenway asked, watching Dez hang up.

  Dez rolled her eyes. “That was the San Miguelito M.E.’s office. She wants you to come down and take a look at the body.”

  “They want me to look at Walker?”

  “Apparently.”

  “After lunch?”

  “Yeah, it’s just past eleven-thirty now, so we can’t get there till—”

  “Oh shit!” Fenway exclaimed. “My dad was supposed to be meeting me over at the sheriff’s office to discuss the files at 11:30. I’ve gotta get over there now.” She grabbed her purse and headed out the door.

  “Fenway—we’ve gotta be at the M.E.’s at one,” Dez called after her.

  She had no idea if San Miguelito was ten minutes away, or an hour and ten minutes away, but Fenway had to talk to her father. There were too many mysteries about the file: why Harrison Walker wouldn’t share it, why insurance companies wouldn’t pay until they saw it, why a widow had just threatened Fenway’s life because of it. Maybe Fenway could use the confrontation with Lana to her advantage in her talk with her father; his only daughter almost got killed because he had information he didn’t give up.