The Reluctant Coroner

by Paul Austin Ardoin

  Migs turned to Rachel. “But then why did someone from Ferris Energy put spyware on your computer? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “What?” Rachel looked confused.

  “Oh, right, you weren’t here.” Piper started to draw the connections on a blank piece of paper in front of her. “Okay, so Walker was emailing his killer, and, based on the email headers, it’s the same person who installed spyware on your PC. And if someone from Ferris Energy swapped out the ‘conclusions’ in those files, it seems like Ferris Energy is involved in your spyware.”

  Migs interrupted. “But I don’t get it. Why Rachel’s computer? Why not put the spyware on Walker’s machine? Why’d they pick Rachel, if they were planning on killing Walker?”

  Dez glanced at Fenway and set her jaw.

  Fenway looked at the clock on the wall. “All right, everyone. It’s almost six-thirty, and we need to meet Rachel’s dad at the sheriff’s office. We should check whether Bradley has identified who hired him in those mugshot binders. I have a feeling that when we find who hired Bradley, this whole thing will fall into place.”

  “Excellent work, Piper.” Dez walked back over to her desk. “Migs, thanks for bringing this to our attention.”

  Rachel, Dez, and Fenway were out the door and across the street minutes later.

  ◆◆◆

  Once the three of them were inside the sheriff’s office, they went to the door of the interview room. It was still occupied, however; Bradley Watermeier was still going through the photos.

  Dez and Fenway went into the observation room to see how much longer he would be. Rachel waited outside.

  Bradley had obviously been at it for hours since they last saw him, and he looked exhausted. Callahan was sitting with Bradley, who had a stack of three binders on each side of him, and was going through a seventh binder in the middle.

  “Looks like he’s about half done,” Fenway said.

  “Look at you with the big brain, Prom Queen.”

  “All right, Dez.” Fenway lowered her voice. “We need to get Bradley to get a look at Stotsky.”

  “Do you think Stotsky hired Bradley to put the RAT software on Rachel’s computer?”

  “Yes, I do. But we don’t have enough evidence on Stotsky yet. I thought maybe there would be something in that file. And there’s a lot in there that fits—but no direct evidence.”

  “That gun might be his. We might know tomorrow.”

  “I think he’s starting to get suspicious. He could be in Mexico tomorrow. If Bradley identifies him, don’t we have enough to hold him?”

  “Probably,” Dez nodded. “Okay. I can figure something out.”

  They stepped out of the observation room where Rachel was waiting.

  Ferris and Stotsky came around the corner. Ferris gave Fenway a sideways hug. “Hi, sweetie. Are we going in the interview room again?”

  “No, it’s—” Fenway started.

  “Yes,” Dez interrupted. “I think the interview room is free.”

  Dez opened the interview room door. Bradley and Callahan were sitting at the table. Bradley’s head turned—and he saw Stotsky standing behind Dez.

  Stotsky looked back at Bradley.

  “What the hell, Callahan?” Bradley shouted. “Did you just set me up?”

  Fenway moved behind Stotsky. “It was you.”

  In one quick, fluid motion, Stotsky turned and shoved Fenway aside. She tried to keep her balance but slammed against the wall and fell to the floor. Stotsky sprinted out of the room, heading for the front door. He was surprisingly fast.

  Fenway was stunned, but managed to squeak out, “Stop him!” but her voice was too quiet. The officer at the front desk didn’t look up. Stotsky was hurrying past him.

  Dez jumped over Fenway and ran after Stotsky.

  “Stop him!” Fenway yelled, finding her voice and getting to her feet. Stotsky was already out the door. Dez followed, but she was already several seconds behind.

  “Go after him!” she yelled at the officer.

  The officer stood up a little awkwardly, hand on his belt, rushed around the desk, and ran out the door after him.

  Rachel’s eyes were wide. “What just happened?”

  “It was your dad, Rachel. Your dad is the one who hired Bradley. But not to spy on Walker—to spy on you.”

  “That’s your dad?” Bradley said to Rachel, aghast. “He was using that spyware on you?” He stood up and walked out of the interview room. Callahan followed.

  Rachel reached for a nearby chair and sat down. “Oh my God.”

  Fenway sat down next to Rachel. “He wasn’t looking at that video for the first time at the memorial service,” Fenway said, as gently as she could. “He had already seen it. He saw it the night that it happened.”

  Rachel put her head in her hands. “It wasn’t Dylan who saw the video and killed Mr. Walker to protect me. It was my dad.”

  Fenway turned to her father, who was standing stock-still, looking horrified. “Okay, Dad. Where did Stotsky go?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  Fenway closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “You do know, Dad. You know where Stotsky would go if he were in trouble. And he’s in trouble now. He’s your head of security. Would he go to your office? Would he go home, grab as much stuff as he could, and then take off?”

  Ferris shook his head.

  Callahan had a confused look on his face. “What are you talking about?”

  “That guy—Rachel’s dad—was the one who hired me,” Bradley said. “He hired me to put that spyware on her computer.”

  “Why in the world would he do that?”

  “Because he thinks I’m still a baby,” Rachel snapped. “And he thinks I can’t take care of myself. He wouldn’t let me go to Princeton, he didn’t want me to study a semester abroad, and as soon as I graduated, he set up a bunch of interviews in Estancia so that I’d stay close to home. He wanted me to be an assistant manager in that apartment building you live in, Fenway. With a political science degree!”

  Nathaniel Ferris turned to Rachel, and his eyes were soft. “He loves you. He’s worried, probably more than he should be, sure, but his heart’s always been in the right place.”

  Fenway felt nauseated. “Dad, we traced the spyware on Rachel’s computer. And we traced an email setting up the time and place that Walker was killed. They came from the exact same source—Rob Stotsky.”

  Ferris shuffled his feet. “You’re not saying that Rob killed Harrison Walker, are you?”

  She looked up at her father and nodded. “Yes, Dad. That is exactly what I’m saying.”

  “No. No, no. Fenway, that just can’t be true. I’ve known the guy for years. He’s no murderer.”

  “Come in here with me,” Fenway demanded, grabbing her father’s wrist and pulling him into the interview room, slamming the door behind her. She looked at her father. He looked a little surprised at her forcefulness.

  She gritted her teeth. “You’re telling me, Dad, that this man, who was so overprotective of his adult daughter that he hired someone to install spyware on her work computer, saw Harrison Walker try to rape his daughter and wouldn’t shoot him in the back the first chance he got?”

  Ferris was silent.

  “With a firearm specifically issued to the CHP. You hired him right out of the CHP, didn’t you, Dad?”

  He was still quiet.

  “Has he had any questionable large expenses recently?”

  “Well,” Ferris said, rubbing the back of his neck, “there was a ten-thousand-dollar purchase order for security services two weeks ago. And last week Rob amended it to twenty-five thousand dollars. But he has big expenses all the time for security equipment and monitoring. I didn’t think anything of it.”

  “Do you know where Stotsky was Sunday night?”

  Her father stopped and pressed his lips together. “He and I were going to have dinner and discuss some work stuff. He told me he had some business with the apartments he had to take
care of, and he begged off till later in the week.”

  Fenway nodded, seeing the wires in her dad’s brain finally connecting. “And instead, he was getting revenge on his daughter’s rapist.”

  “Stop using that word, Fenway. That’s an ugly word.”

  “I don’t care if it’s an ‘ugly word,’ Dad!” Fenway yelled. “I saw that footage and I wanted to shoot Harrison Walker in the back. And I barely know Rachel.”

  Ferris went quiet again.

  “Okay, listen, Dad.” She sighed. “Help me find him. Seriously, if you get a couple of overprotective parents on that jury, Stotsky might not serve a day in prison. Not for the murder, anyway.”

  “What do you mean? Is there something else?”

  “I don’t know, probably an obstruction of justice charge.” She put her hands on her hips. “Because someone replaced Walker’s original file—the original file said that Ferris Energy was at fault for the accident that killed Carl Cassidy and Lewis Fairweather—with falsified documents. The falsified documents said that Carl Cassidy’s wife was having sex with Dylan Richards—trying to shift blame off your company for the accident.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Well, we don’t have anything that directly implicates you, Dad. And our evidence that someone from your company did it is mostly circumstantial.” She tapped him on the chest. “But when we get a warrant for Rob Stotsky’s computer, we should be able to prove that he’s the one who sent the email to Walker discussing a bribe. That he’s the one who sent instructions to Walker on where to meet him Sunday night—the same spot where we found Walker’s body. We’re going to have the Ferris Energy head of security dead to rights.” She gave him a pointed look. “And that might be far worse for your company than a Sacramento lobbyist who has to spend the night in jail for punching a peace officer.”

  Ferris suddenly got angry. “Goddammit, Fenway, this is not what I had in mind when I suggested that Craig appoint you! You weren’t supposed to rock the boat!”

  Fenway got in her father’s face and yelled back. “Did you think Stotsky covered his tracks so well that none of the investigators here would find anything? Or maybe you think I’m too stupid to do this job competently!”

  “No, no,” he sputtered, “no, Fenway, that’s not what I meant to say.”

  “Listen, Dad, it was your head of security who bribed one of our employees to put malware on Rachel’s computer.”

  “If you think you can take that trust-fund kid’s word over—”

  “Dad! That’s not up for discussion. Bradley identified Stotsky. Stotsky ran. I don’t care what we can prove in court. I know it, you know it. And I’m telling you, daughter to father, that this looks really bad for your company, and it looks really bad for you.”

  Ferris set his jaw but didn’t say anything.

  “Stotsky bribed Bradley. Stotsky was illegally spying on one of our employees. And your buddy—Harrison Walker—sexually assaulted Stotsky’s daughter in our office. This whole situation was set in motion by the people you hired, people you put in power.”

  “Harrison’s not my buddy.”

  “Well, you bankrolled his first campaign for coroner, so it’s not like you just wave hello at the grocery store.” Fenway folded her arms. “And, by the way, your head of security was trying to bribe Walker to change the findings in that file so Ferris Energy wouldn’t be held responsible. If your political enemies find that out, they’ll make it look like you knew. I bet Barry Klein would take out a full-page ad in every newspaper in California.” She put her hands on the table. “In fact, not only would he make it look like you knew, he’ll make it look like you planned the whole thing. He’ll say your refinery is unsafe. He’ll say you can’t pass safety inspections. He’ll say you killed two employees and tried to cover it up. And you will lose everything.”

  “I didn’t know.” Nathaniel Ferris’s voice was quiet. “I didn’t know about any of this.”

  “Are you sure?” Fenway leaned on the table and looked in his eyes. “Are you sure you didn’t know about any of this?”

  He stared at her, then broke her gaze and looked down.

  “I knew that the accident was probably due to our negligence,” he admitted. “Our internal people said as much. And we reached out to the families to try to make it right, but the Cassidys wouldn’t take our offer. They already had a lawyer involved. I asked some people on my staff to come up with solutions.”

  “Was Rob Stotsky one of those people?”

  “I never told anyone to break the law.”

  She nodded. “And bribing Harrison Walker?”

  “I didn’t know about that. I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “You just turned a blind eye to twenty-five thousand dollars for unspecified security expenses.”

  “I trust the guy, Fenway.”

  “And breaking through the wall to steal the files in Walker’s office?”

  He hesitated.

  “Okay, Fenway, I’m not proud of it. A couple of weeks ago, Rob and I were at the steakhouse. We were moaning about the fact that this file wasn’t going to be good for us, and that the Cassidys could use it if they decided to sue us, which I think they would, and they might be successful with this information.” He sighed. “I might have mentioned that it would be great if someone broke down the wall and just took the file. But it wasn’t serious; I think I made a joke about the Kool-Aid man.”

  “Did you joke about anything else? Like shooting Walker, or killing Rachel’s husband in his cell? Because, as coroner, the dead bodies are really what I’m most concerned about.”

  “No!” He lifted his head, defiant. “I had no idea!”

  She nodded. “Okay, Dad. This might still be a salvageable situation for you and your precious energy company.”

  “Don’t say it like that, Fenway.”

  She ignored him and pressed on. “If the story that comes out is that an overprotective father went blind with rage at his daughter’s attacker and murdered him, that’s a story that a lot of people can relate to. If that comes across powerfully enough in the media, you might be able to avoid the firestorm. Even if someone says, ‘What about the accident? What about the files?’ that’s more boring. People in the media have the attention spans of goldfish. They’ll glom onto the daddy-gets-revenge story.”

  He was quiet.

  “But it’s not just Walker. You’ve got one more dead body to deal with. And so does Stotsky. If it were just Walker, I could see the right jury finding him not guilty. But he killed Rachel’s husband too, and even if a jury lets him off for the Walker murder, there’s no way they’re going to let him off for killing the guy he was trying to pin the Walker murder on.”

  “I don’t know anything about him killing Rachel’s husband.”

  “Stotsky knew how to bribe Bradley Watermeier. I bet he knew how to bribe one of the guards at the jail too,” she said. “You know what I mean. Someone to just let Stotsky go in for a few minutes to ‘talk to him.’ The M.E. says that Dylan was killed by a really strong guy; they were thinking that the sheriff could have done it. Bribing the guard probably cost a lot less than the twenty-five thousand dollars Walker was asking for to swap notes in the refinery accident file.”

  “I never—” Ferris started, and then stopped.

  “You never what? You never authorized twenty-five grand as a payout? You never knew that Walker had upped his price?” Fenway put her hands on her hips. “You want to rethink your answer on ‘non-specific security expenses’?”

  Her father wouldn’t look at her.

  “Dad, it’s tough to say you’re not in this up to your eyeballs. I’ve heard how powerful you are in this county, and how just about everyone kisses your ass around here. Well, Dad, I may think that you never crossed the line from bribery and negligence into murder, but, boy, your reputation is going to take a big hit.”

  He pursed his lips and put a hand over his eyes.

  “I gues
s we can see how this goes,” she continued, “but the faster we find Stotsky, the better.”

  “I know how this goes, Fenway. Barry Klein will talk to the D.A. and insist on giving Stotsky a deal to roll over on me. And, quite frankly, it won’t matter if I’ve crossed the line into bribery or murder—or even jaywalking. There are people in this county that want to see me taken down. They’ll say whatever they can to get me out of power.”

  “Oh, come on, Dad, you’d be able to get out of that. You must have good lawyers,” she said.

  “Not good enough for the court of public opinion. Listen, there are lines that I’ve crossed, I’m sure. I’m a ruthless negotiator. I definitely don’t want Carl Cassidy in the news, and I’m willing to pay his family a lot of money to keep that out of the media. Do I feel bad about what happened to Cassidy and Fairweather? Absolutely. Do I think I deserve to be out of business because of it? I do not.” He slammed his hand down on the desk. “So, am I going to help you locate Stotsky? I don’t think so. In fact, I hope he makes it out of the country before you catch him.”

  Nathaniel Ferris straightened his suit jacket. “Now, it’s getting late. I’m getting hungry. And I think I have more important things to do than give my statement on a grieving brother who got a little too emotional at a funeral. I’m heading home.”

  He stomped out of the interview room. Fenway started to follow him, but he slammed the door after he walked out.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Fenway took a deep breath and opened the door. Her father’s figure was disappearing down the hallway and out the front door. She stood there and watched him walk away angrily.

  “Is he gone?”

  She jumped. Dez had poked her head out of the observation room door.

  “Sorry. We heard everything.”

  “We?” Fenway asked.

  “Mark’s in there, too. He was observing Bradley during the binder review.”

  “Where’s Rachel?”

  “We sent her home,” Dez answered. “On top of everything she’s been through this week, she just found out her dad is a murderer.”