The Reluctant Coroner, Paul Austin Ardoin [comprehension books TXT] 📗

Fenway blinked hard, catching the tension in McVie’s voice. Her eyes were gummy. “Someone broke into the coroner’s office?”

“I’m on my way to your place right now. 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 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 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 heat 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 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 police 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 father called last night, and he asked about the investigation. But I was purposely vague. I told him I had just started and 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 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 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 it 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 high rate of speed.

“This is him,” Quincy