The Candidate Coroner

by Paul Austin Ardoin

  “They what?”

  “And then they blew up the car I was borrowing.”

  Fenway heard her father gasp. “They blew up your car?”

  “Yes. It’s all over the news. You haven’t seen anything?”

  “I’ve been trying to figure out how to get your—how to get Charlotte out of jail. I’ve been trying to reach my lawyers. You’d think that for the price I pay them, they’d return my calls on a Saturday. Where are you now?”

  “I just got out of the hospital.”

  “You were in the hospital and you didn’t tell me?”

  “They had me there for observation. They thought I might have a concussion.”

  Ferris paused. “But you’re okay?”

  “Yes, Dad, I’m okay.”

  “Oh.” There was silence for a few seconds. “Was anyone else hurt?”

  Fenway took a deep breath. “Yes. The kid who lent me his father’s minivan was killed. His dad took the graffiti off my car.”

  “What—not the guy who owns Central Auto Body?”

  Fenway clicked her tongue. “Yeah. The owner’s kid. Nice boy. I was—” Fenway stopped, a hitch in her throat preventing her from going on.

  “Oh, no,” Ferris said, his voice dropping even lower. “I’ve known Domingo for years. We get our car fleet repaired there if they’ve been in an accident.” He paused. “Which kid was it?”

  “Rory.”

  “Oh no. He was a nice kid. Smart.”

  “Maybe you want to call Domingo up and pay your respects,” Fenway said. “Come to think of it, I should too.”

  They were both silent for a moment, thinking about Domingo Velásquez and his fallen son.

  “Listen,” Ferris said, “I know you and I aren’t getting along right now, and maybe I didn’t come across the right way. But you’re intelligent. And I notice you’re pretty tenacious at getting the truth.”

  Fenway shifted uncomfortably. “Thanks.”

  “So even if you’re off this case officially,” Ferris continued, “you can still nose around the edges, right? Follow up on a lead or two no one else is looking at? Maybe the D.A. is so convinced Charlotte is guilty, they’re not looking for things anymore.”

  “Even if I find something, Dad, I’m not going to be able to bring it forward.”

  Ferris sighed, exasperated. “I’m not as smart as you are, Fenway, but even I know there are ways around it. I know you can give it to someone else on your team, or give them an anonymous tip. It’s not brain surgery.” He paused. “And even if it were brain surgery, you could get it done.”

  “Oh, you’ve resorted to flattery.”

  “Well—yes. I guess I have. Look, Charlotte was here with me on Thursday night. That’s when the murder happened, right? We had dinner in, and then we watched a movie, and we went to bed a little after midnight. There’s no way she could have left in time.”

  “Don’t you have cameras all around? Can’t you give them the footage showing Charlotte arriving, and then, like, what ten hours of footage of her not leaving?”

  “The sheriff’s office has the footage now,” Ferris said.

  “If the video footage exonerates Charlotte, they’ll let her go, Dad.”

  “I don’t know,” Ferris said. “My name doesn’t mean what it used to. There are some people in the department who are out to get me.”

  Fenway rolled her eyes. “Come on, Dad. Do you know how paranoid that sounds?”

  “You say that now, Fenway, but you should take a look at some of the things that are happening. They’ve put me on notice.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, Dad. All right—I’m going to be heading out.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  Fenway paused. “You know, Dad, I don’t trust this line. I’ll let you know later.”

  “Oh—who sounds paranoid now?”

  Fenway snapped. “I was almost blown up yesterday afternoon, Dad. A teenager lost his life over it. I’m not being paranoid, I’m being careful. If you have one of your cars blown up when you’re about to get in it, then I’ll gladly support your paranoia. Until then, shut the hell up.”

  Ferris was quiet.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Daddy Dearest, I’ve got some important details to attend to.” And she hung up before he had a chance to say goodbye.

  She watched television for another hour and a half, not paying attention to it, letting her mind wander, going over the evidence she had found, and trying to remember details of the parking garage. Had she seen anything out of the corner of her eye? Were there any cars parked on the street with a driver who was simply waiting?

  Fenway started to get a headache and cursed under her breath. She didn’t want the hospital to keep her another day. Her stomach rumbled. She needed lunch, but not here.

  Finally, at about twelve-thirty, the nurse came in with her release paperwork, and she was wheeled out of the hospital a few minutes before one o’clock. There was a cruiser at the curb. Officer Sandoval was in the driver’s seat. She saw Fenway and got out.

  “You’ve been released?” Sandoval asked.

  “Yeah. I guess I don’t have a car.”

  “You need a police detail anyway,” Sandoval said. “We’re getting one put together. You’ll have a few officers assigned to you in about an hour.” Sandoval looked closely at Fenway’s face. “You okay?”

  Fenway closed her eyes. “Do you get along with your father?”

  The officer shrugged. “Most of the time, I guess.”

  “You ever want to pound his face in?”

  Sandoval put her hand on Fenway’s shoulder. “The police detail isn’t going to be ready to take you for another hour or so. Why don’t we go get some coffee or something?”

  “Let’s go for the ‘or something,’” Fenway said. “Something like tequila.”

  Chapter Eleven

  AS SANDOVAL TURNED the ignition, however, Fenway heard the voice of her opponent in the coroner’s race, Dr. Richard Ivanovich, on the radio. Fenway turned the volume up.

  “It doesn’t behoove Miss Stevenson right now to pull the race card like this,” Ivanovich said. “Honestly, I question her judgement if she wants to make this about race. The racial slur on her car isn’t something representative of our town or this county, and I wonder if one of Miss Stevenson’s black friends spray-painted it on there in order to make her white opponent look bad.”

  Fenway’s jaw dropped.

  “There isn’t anything about this explosion that isn’t tragic,” Ivanovich continued, “but blaming race relations for this tragedy is simply irresponsible. Of course, I don’t like that my opponent was injured, but if she decides this race is too intense for her, or if her fear will prevent her from fulfilling the duties of coroner, I think that’s the real tragedy.”

  A reporter said something in the background Fenway couldn’t hear.

  “No, no, I certainly do care about this young man’s death,” Ivanovich said. “Indeed, if I were coroner, it would be the first priority for me to solve his murder. But, of course, if I were coroner, these racially motivated incidents against the city’s leadership would be much less likely to happen.”

  Fenway felt her blood boil.

  “Who knew about the, uh, n-word on your car?” Sandoval asked Fenway quietly, turning the radio down.

  “Anyone who was driving by the ten or twenty minutes I was there would have been able to see my car,” Fenway responded. “Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ivanovich—or someone sent by Barry Klein, for that matter—was following me around. That’s one reason—” And Fenway stopped herself; she was about to say that was why Fenway and McVie had decided not to go out on a date, but she caught herself.

  “One reason what?”

  “Nothing,” Fenway said, shaking her head. “But holding a press conference and saying I’m playing the race card—when I haven’t said anything about it—is a low blow.”

  “He can’t think this will help him get votes.”
<
br />   “I don’t know. There are plenty of—”

  Sandoval looked over at Fenway.

  “Plenty of what?”

  “Never mind. I think I’m just being a pessimist. Maybe.”

  “I think you’re underestimating this county’s voters.”

  “I sure hope you’re right.” Fenway sighed. “Okay, slight change of plans. Let me go to my office and call my campaign manager and see if she wants me to do anything.”

  “If you’re being followed by Barry Klein, you probably shouldn’t go slam tequila, either.”

  “Let me talk to Millicent first.”

  They drove out of the parking lot of St. Vincent’s and drove downtown.

  The street was eerily quiet, the parking structure closed down, the faint smell of ash still wafting down the main street. Fenway tried not to think about what had happened.

  Officer Sandoval parked across the street from the building that housed the coroner’s office. They got out and walked briskly toward the building. Fenway caught Sandoval stealing glances at her out of the corner of her eye, and tried to appear as confident and as calm as possible, although she felt anything but.

  Entering the building, they went into Suite 150, where Migs was at his desk, and Piper handed him a stack of papers in a folder. Piper and Migs turned to look at Fenway as she walked in through the door.

  “Fenway!” Migs said. “I heard what happened. Are you okay?”

  “Your dress is torn,” said Piper.

  Fenway shrugged. “I just came from the hospital. Haven’t had a chance to change yet. Ringing in my ears. A little bruising where I was thrown into the car. Nothing too serious.”

  Piper’s mouth was screwed up in concern and a bit of emotion. “Jeez, you could have been—”

  Migs nudged her with his knee.

  “Anyway,” Fenway said, “I only stopped in here to make a phone call. Celeste and I are going to lunch at Dos Milagros. It’s been a long couple of days.”

  “Uh,” Migs said, “I think there are some things about the investigation you’re going to need to look at first.”

  “They’re not bringing the FBI in, are they?”

  “No,” Migs said. “They’ve made the determination it’s likely not a terrorist attack. No claims of responsibility, and the M.O. doesn’t match any known groups either.”

  “I’m pretty sure this is an attempted murder, not a terrorist attack,” Fenway said. “Whoever did this targeted me.”

  Migs and Piper both looked at each other with worry in their eyes.

  Officer Sandoval cleared her throat. “That’s the way the sheriff wants to proceed, anyway,” she said gently. “And of course, that’s one of the more likely scenarios.”

  “But I’ve found out some information as I’ve done some digging,” Piper said. “I was going to hand these files off to Migs, but now that you’re here, I’ll tell you.” She pulled the folders out of Migs’s hands.

  Fenway sighed and looked at Sandoval. “I guess I shouldn’t leave without my official police detail anyway,” she said. “Maybe take a rain check on Dos Milagros?”

  “Sure,” Sandoval said. “You know my number if you need anything.”

  Sandoval put a hand on Fenway’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You’ll get through this.”

  “I know,” Fenway said. “The psycho who did this to me won’t, though.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Officer Sandoval said drily. She left the outer office, leaving Fenway with Migs, Piper, and the big stack of folders.

  Fenway stared at the stack of papers. “I guess we better get started. Do you want me to go over to your desk?”

  “And waste all these printouts?”

  “Can’t have those trees die in vain,” Fenway said.

  She walked into her private office. Piper followed her, and Fenway shut the door behind her.

  “So,” Fenway said, opening her desk drawer and putting her phone and SIM card in it, “I’m not sure what you have for me. You know I was kicked off the Jeremy Kapp case, right?”

  Piper nodded. “But this is about the Carl Cassidy case you asked about the day before yesterday.”

  “Oh,” Fenway said, “right. I didn’t think you were prioritizing it.”

  “Well, honestly, I wasn’t,” Piper said, “but I was waiting for a report to come back, and I started digging, and it was—interesting.”

  “Interesting?”

  “Yeah,” Piper said. “So, you remember you told me about your conversation with Lana—how Carl had gotten suspicious of the two holding tanks that were supposedly taken offline for maintenance, but he saw activity around it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I figured, if there’s activity around holding tanks, it means there’s oil coming in, right?”

  “The tanks were taken offline for maintenance, right? So the activity was probably a maintenance crew.”

  Piper shook her head. “Carl Cassidy would know if it had been a maintenance crew. But he was suspicious. I think it was because there was a shipment—either going out or coming in. Or maybe both.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t think it could have been anything else.” Piper held up a folder. “Ferris Energy is a public company, and I dug through all of their shipments. Crude in, refined oil and petroleum products out. Gasoline, diesel, all kinds of stuff.”

  “Did you find anything unusual?”

  Piper rifled through the papers and pulled one out; it was a spreadsheet with five sets of two-line highlights.

  “There’s a ship out of Liberia,” Piper said, “the Jules Verne. It’s a class L tanker. Look, I found a picture of it online.” She pulled out another paper, this one with a printed picture of an oil tanker, black with red markings, and Jules Verne clearly painted on the side.

  “So,” Piper continued, “according to the manifest, this ship arrived empty in the Estancia port six times over the last year. I haven’t gone further back—but I can, if you need it.”

  “Okay,” Fenway said. “Is that weird?”

  “Not in and of itself,” Piper conceded. “Then it leaves the port full of gasoline—in November, March, and May; or diesel—in January, July, and about six weeks ago, near the end of September. That’s not weird either.”

  “Okay.”

  “So then it travels to Singapore to unload. But, here’s the thing. The trip takes two days longer than it should.”

  “That’s unusual?”

  “Maybe not once—they run into bad weather, or a crew member gets sick and they have to make an unscheduled stop. But two days every time?”

  Fenway nodded. “Did they consistently underestimate the time? Maybe the engine is listed wrong or something?”

  “No, I don’t think that’s it. The estimated times are accurate on some of the Jules Verne’s other trips.”

  “So—what then?”

  “I think it’s making an unscheduled stop. I think it’s going somewhere between California and Singapore, unloading its cargo, and then going on.”

  Fenway paused. “They’re crossing the international date line.”

  Piper shook her head. “No, I accounted for that. Something else caught my eye.” She pulled out a different spreadsheet. “Look, the records in Singapore say they’re unloading gasoline on the November trip, then diesel in January, then gasoline in March, then diesel in May, then gasoline in July—”

  “Wait.”

  Piper looked up, an eager glint in her eye. “You see it too, right?”

  “Yes. The manifests’ cargo doesn’t match. The Estancia manifest has gasoline in May and diesel in July.”

  “Right. It’s like someone was expecting a pattern, and didn’t know an exception had been made.”

  Fenway nodded. “So, what does that mean? The manifests don’t match. An empty ship comes to Estancia and leaves with cargo arriving two days after it should.”

  “I have an idea,” Piper said.

  “Yeah?”

&n
bsp; “You listen to NPR?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I do too. And I remembered a couple of stories I heard on their world report.”

  Fenway nodded, although she didn’t listen to the world report.

  “They had a pretty extensive article on the rebels in Indonesia a few weeks ago. And maybe six months ago, they had one on the president of La Mitad dissolving parliament.”

  “You’re saying those two stories are related to our oil tankers?”

  Piper pulled out a news article dated in June from the Los Angeles Times. “Read the seventh paragraph,” she said, pointing to an article titled “No End In Sight for East Timor Conflict.”

  Puzzling to international experts is where the fuel is coming from to power the rebels’ vehicles, tanks, and generators. “There is an international ban on supplying the rebels with gasoline, diesel, propane, and other fuels,” said United Nations official Margerite L’Overture. “We don’t seem to be getting shipments out of Sudan or Iran—all the usual suspects in a conflict like this.”

  Energy officials in the area are looking for rogue organizations from other countries. While there is talk from the Indonesian government of setting up a blockade, the ruling party in Jakarta has no official timetable.

  “The rebels in East Timor,” Fenway said.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s an armed conflict against one of our allies.”

  Piper nodded. “And one of the more stable governments in the area. The ruling party is pretty pro-American right now.”

  “We don’t sell fuel to the rebels.”

  “We’re not supposed to. But that’s exactly what I think Ferris Energy is doing.”

  Fenway paused. “That’s crazy. Where did they get the crude oil from? That’s not something you can just hide, is it?”

  Piper pulled out yet another ship manifest and yet another set of photos. “This is a photograph taken by a Salvadoran couple on vacation in La Mitad. Do you see the background, in the ocean behind them?”

  “The oil tanker.”

  “Yes.”

  Fenway looked at the ship manifest. It was a Dutch oil tanker named Julius Werner.

  “Easy name to fake, if you’ve already got a Jules Verne,” said Piper.