The Candidate Coroner

by Paul Austin Ardoin

  “How can you tell?” Officer Young asked.

  Fenway turned the paper so the light shone off the ink. “See the way the ink is adhering to the paper, sort of like it’s sitting right on top?”

  Officer Young nodded.

  “Laser printers do that. Inkjet printers have their ink soak into the paper more—it’s not as shiny, especially on cheap copier paper like this.

  “How do you know?”

  “It was in one of my forensic analysis classes,” she said, a little dismissively.

  “So what does that mean?”

  “Most people have inkjet printers at home,” Fenway said. “Laser printers are usually found at offices. So maybe someone printed this out at work.”

  “What about libraries or schools?”

  “Yeah, there might be laser printers there too.”

  Officer Young leafed through the papers. “These are emails.”

  Across the top of the first page, in a bold sans serif font, was:

  Ferris, Charlotte

  There were pages and pages of love missives between Jeremy Kapp and Charlotte Ferris. The emails from “Jer” were a bit overwrought, but had a poet’s touch for some of the phrasing. It wouldn’t have impressed Fenway, and Fenway didn’t think Charlotte would like it either. But Fenway remembered the bored look on Charlotte’s face the last time she had dinner at their house. She remembered thinking there was trouble in their marriage; maybe Charlotte had been taken with someone, and found his passion made up for a lack of eloquence.

  The love letters spanned part of September and all of October. Fenway scanned the emails. There was a lot of typical hot-and-heavy stuff; some references to Charlotte’s beautiful breasts or the size of Jeremy’s penis; some references to hotel stays, especially at the Belvedere. The emails started with a lot of sexual innuendo, but as the weeks progressed, Jeremy’s communications got more personal and emotional. Charlotte’s remained relatively unchanged from the broad brushstrokes of lust and excitement. Yet something didn’t sit right with Fenway; she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  She read the pages until there were only two emails left, one from Charlotte and one from Jer. The content of the penultimate email from Charlotte:

  Jer,

  I can’t wait until I see you tonight. I can’t wait until my arms are wrapped around you tight and I can feel your manly body next to mine.

  You are so sexy. I know it’s not right for me to cheat on Nathaniel but it feels so good when I’m with you.

  Love,

  Charlotte

  “Not the most articulate of love notes, is it?” Officer Young said.

  Fenway shook her head, and realized what the problem was. “This isn’t right.”

  “What’s not right?”

  “Charlotte majored in English literature. She’d never use such simplistic language as this—not just on this one, but throughout all these emails.”

  “Maybe she didn’t want to intimidate her lover with her massive vocabulary.”

  “Maybe,” Fenway admitted. “But that’s not the only thing.” She pointed to the closing. “The woman who was at the Belvedere Terrace? She and Kapp had pet names for each other—Potemkin and Catherine.”

  “From some old English novel or something?”

  “From actual history,” Fenway said. “Catherine the Great, and her lover, Grigory Potemkin. Potemkin was the name Jeremy Kapp signed in under at the Belvedere Terrace.”

  Officer Young screwed up his face. “Isn’t she the one who—” And then he stopped talking, an embarrassed look on his face.

  Fenway smiled. “There was a rumor with her and a horse, yes. But that’s not the point. The point is, Charlotte would call Kapp ‘Potemkin’ or ‘my dearest Grigory,’ and she’d sign it with ‘your beloved Catherine’ or something equally saccharine.”

  “So you think these emails are fake?”

  She nodded. “I can’t imagine these are real.”

  She turned the page.

  Kapp, Jeremy L.

  My beautiful Charlotte,

  Nothing in this world can compare to you, my dear. When I saw you in the Japanese garden a few nights ago, you were a vision. Your husband doesn’t appreciate you. He doesn’t recognize what a treasure you are.

  I’d hike through a Russian winter for the opportunity to see the perfect face of Charlotte the Great, my darling. I know you’re in an impossible position, and as the queen of this county your discretion is going to be the most important thing to you and your family, but the passion we share is something I’ve never felt before.

  I count the hours until we’re together again. I’ve told Cricket I’m traveling to a conference. We can spend a few days at the Belvedere, pretending we’re a new political dynasty. You know the name the room will be under.

  Your Grigory

  “Oh, I see. ‘Your Grigory.’ That’s what you’re talking about?”

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” Fenway mused quietly.

  “What?”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” she repeated. “Why does he use it, but she doesn’t? Charlotte would be all over this overwrought role-playing crap.”

  “But he doesn’t call her ‘Catherine,’” Officer Young said. “That’s kind of strange.”

  “Right,” Fenway said. “I still think Charlotte’s emails are fake.”

  “Just Charlotte’s? Do you think Jeremy Kapp’s emails are fake too?” Officer Young asked.

  “No—I think Jeremy Kapp’s are real. Look at this last email. I bet this is the actual email that Jeremy Kapp wrote, just with the names switched out.” She paused and turned the pages over, but they were only printed on one side.

  “What makes you think it’s real?”

  “Okay, first, let’s assume that someone completely fabricated Charlotte’s side of the correspondence, not knowing that Grigory and Catherine were pet names, so they use Jer and Charlotte.”

  “Right.”

  “But in Kapp’s email, look at this name right here.”

  “Oh,” Officer Young said, nodding. “It says ‘Charlotte the Great,’ not ‘Catherine the Great.’”

  “If Kapp sent the emails to a woman named Laurie or Donna, whoever sent them to me would have swapped out ‘Laurie’ or ‘Donna’ for ‘Charlotte,’ right?”

  “Sure.”

  “And if Kapp made a joke about ‘Catherine the Great,’ they would have left it, right? Just like they left ‘Grigory’ in them.”

  “Oh, I get what you’re saying. So the emails must have been addressed to ‘Catherine,’ and they swapped out all the ‘Catherines’ with ‘Charlottes.’ Even when Kapp wrote ‘Catherine the Great.’”

  “Exactly. I mean, it’s not irrefutable proof, but I bet the real name of Kapp’s mistress is ‘Catherine.’”

  Officer Young nodded. “We could get a warrant for the actual emails, right? This would be enough.”

  Fenway nodded. “Probably. But I need to turn these over to Dez and Donnelly. I’m off the case.”

  “Right.” Officer Young paused. “Why would someone send these emails to you?”

  Fenway shrugged. “I don’t know—I guess I’ve gotten a reputation.”

  “A reputation?”

  “Someone who isn’t afraid to go after people close to my father.”

  Officer Young looked thoughtful. “And there’s no one closer to your dad than his wife.”

  Fenway suppressed a laugh. “She’s almost twenty-five years younger than he is,” she said. “She’s only a few years older than I am. I can’t imagine what they have in common.”

  The building manager appeared by Fenway’s side again. “Okay, Miss Stevenson,” he said. “We’ve boarded up the window and cleaned up the broken glass. Doesn’t seem to be any other damage. You can get into your apartment now.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate you coming here on such short notice.”

  “No problem. Tell your dad ‘hi’ from me.”

  “Sure.”


  Fenway turned and looked at Officer Young. “Okay,” she said. “I’ve gotta go pack. You can’t let me out of your sight, right?” She noticed the coquettish tone to her voice and wondered where it came from.

  Officer Young followed her up the stairs and through the dark shadows in front of Apartment 214, where the light bulbs had all been broken. Fenway went in and got a suitcase from her closet, filling it with work outfits and a couple of her more formal ensembles. She looked at her dress with the torn shoulder, and thought about changing, and then thought of her shower, warm and inviting, where she could scrub off the soot and smoke and the memory of Rory.

  “Officer Young, I’m going to be a few more minutes.”

  “What’s the holdup? We’re supposed get in and out.”

  “I—uh—” Fenway hesitated. “Look, I almost got blown up yesterday. I’m still wearing the same dress, and it’s torn. My car has been vandalized, I saw a teenager get blown up, and I smell like the hospital. So I need to take a shower. I need to stand in there for five or ten minutes.”

  “You can’t do that over at Rachel’s?”

  “It’s not my shower there. Plus, Terrance Ivanovich already screwed up your schedule, right? Fifteen more minutes is going to make a difference?”

  Officer Young shifted his weight. “I guess it’s not a problem. But fifteen minutes, okay? Don’t say that and then stay in there for an hour.”

  “Gotcha.”

  She grabbed a change of clothes—a pair of gray sweatpants, a black ribbed tank top, and a zip-up burgundy hooded sweatshirt—and went into the bathroom, closed the door, and turned the water on.

  She thought about wrapping her hair before she got in, but her hair was dusty, and even though she’d have to spend the better part of an hour on it so it wouldn’t frizz, she had to wash it out. She hesitated a moment, and then locked the bathroom door.

  When she got in, the hot water felt good, and she could feel the light layer of dust come off like wet chalk, at first making a light paste on her skin but then getting overwhelmed by the hot water and sloughing off. She cried for Rory, too, putting her face under the hot spray, and then her whole head. Her crying was mostly silent, and she was sure her catches of breath and light sobs wouldn’t be heard by Officer Young. She felt an emptiness in the pit of her stomach for him, and especially for his family.

  She wondered if it was like what her father felt when he came home from work that day twenty years before, and discovered his wife and daughter gone—with all their clothes and much of their furniture. She wondered how it affected her father, and how it might be different than what Rory’s father was going through right now. With Fenway’s disappearance, the possibility of reuniting one day was always out there—in fact, it was exactly what had happened, although Fenway had been a grown woman when she came back into town six months ago. But with Rory, there was no hope for him coming back, no hope for escape, no hope for anything but a long silence that would stretch forever forward.

  She cried herself out after a few minutes and washed and treated her hair. She soaped up, rinsed, then turned the water off. She listened to ghostly spaces of silence between the water running down the drain and the final drops from the shower head. The echo chamber of the shower created sonic bounces and settling air currents.

  She pulled open the shower curtain and grabbed her towel and stepped onto the bathmat. She dried herself off slowly and deliberately, taking a hairwrap and some avocado oil and shea butter and doing a quick hair treatment. Officer Young had said fifteen minutes, but surely he must know the time a hair treatment would take—he must have had sisters, or at least a mother, who took the time for treatments. Stop worrying about it, she chided herself.

  She wrapped her hair, got dressed, and opened the door, letting out the steam from the bathroom. Officer Young was sitting on the sofa, leafing through one of Fenway’s coffee table books—the book about the history of the Space Needle. She looked at his face; he appeared to be a little miffed, probably because she had promised fifteen minutes and she took forty-five.

  “You ready?” he said. It was obvious he was eager to leave and go to Rachel’s apartment, but she could see him trying not to let it show and failing.

  “I’ll be a few more minutes,” she said, as apologetically as she could. “I just have to grab my shoes and toiletries. I’ll finish my hair over at Rachel’s.”

  “Take your time,” Officer Young said, although Fenway knew he didn’t mean it.

  FENWAY DIDN’T FEEL like talking as Officer Young drove her to Rachel’s apartment, with the second cruiser following closely behind. He stared straight ahead, and Fenway closed her eyes. She flashed on a picture in her head of her with Officer Young, with him alert and watchful, and Fenway curled up in his arms like a kitten.

  When they arrived at Rachel’s, Fenway let herself in with the key. It was almost nine o’clock, but Rachel still wasn’t home. The warm, stuffy apartment felt sterile. Fenway, her stomach growling, unzipped her hoodie and wondered if she had a message on her cellphone.

  “Does Rachel know I’m spending the night in her apartment?” Officer Young asked.

  Fenway shook her head. “Remember, I don’t have my phone with me. I didn’t have any way to tell her.”

  Officer Young nodded. “I hope the sheriff—or someone from the office—let her know. I’d hate to have her walk in and find a strange black guy on her couch.”

  Fenway smiled, but a little sadly. “Do you have a phone? I can call her.”

  Officer Young pulled his phone out. Fenway took it and dialed. She had to hold it to her left ear because her right ear was still ringing.

  “This is Rachel Richards.”

  “Hi, Rachel, it’s Fenway.”

  “Oh! I didn’t recognize the number.”

  “I’m using Officer Young’s phone,” she said, taking the sweatshirt off and draping it over the back of a kitchen chair.

  “He’s with you?”

  “Yes.” Fenway paused. “Um—I don’t know if I told you or not, but I’m under police protection tonight. For the foreseeable future, in fact.”

  “That’s what you told me when you called. But I didn’t know if it was still on—I thought they caught the guy.”

  “They caught a guy,” Fenway said carefully. “But it was the guy who vandalized my car. I don’t think he was the same one who blew up the minivan.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Right. So there are going to be two officers outside tonight, making sure the complex is safe, and then Officer Young is going to be inside tonight. I guess he’ll sleep on the couch or something.”

  “I’m not going to be sleeping,” he said.

  “Oh. Right, I guess I didn’t think of that.”

  “Wait,” Rachel said, “inside the apartment?”

  “Yes. Is that going to be a problem?”

  Rachel paused for a moment. “I guess not,” she finally said. “Weird—he’ll be the first guy to spend the night in my apartment since Dylan... died.”

  Fenway winced. “If this is too weird for you, they can put me up in a hotel.”

  Rachel scoffed. “No way. I’ve seen the hotel they use. I might not be the world’s best housekeeper, but my guest room is a lot better than anything you’ll get out of the sheriff’s office.”

  Fenway nodded, even though Rachel couldn’t see her. “Right. Thanks. I’m afraid I’m imposing a whole lot on you.”

  “After everything you’ve done for me?” Rachel said. “No way, sister. You’re staying over until they catch whoever did this. And that’s final.”

  “Thanks, Rachel.” Fenway cleared her throat. “You coming home any time soon?”

  “I’m going to have to.” Rachel clicked her tongue. “There’s a lot to do here, still, but I’m running on fumes. I’m not going to make it much past ten. I’ve got a couple of reporters working on stories, I’ve given quotes to the L.A. Times and the Courier, and I’ve gotten a press release written and started implement
ing the communication plan.”

  “I’m sorry,” Fenway said.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Fenway, it’s not your fault someone tried to blow you up yesterday afternoon.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Listen—I’ve got to wrap up a few more things here. Will you be awake when I get home?”

  “Uh...”

  “Never mind. I’m sure you didn’t sleep well in the hospital last night. We’ll talk tomorrow. Maybe I’ll take you to breakfast. Help yourself to anything in the fridge. I have some bourbon on the top shelf of the pantry, too. I’ve been meaning to have you get it for me when you come over anyway.”

  “Get it for you?”

  “Yes, Miss Five-Ten, get it for me. Some of us barely clear five feet.”

  “You don’t have a stool or a stepladder or anything?”

  “Do you want the bourbon or not?”

  Fenway smirked. “Yes. After today, definitely yes.”

  They said their goodbyes and Fenway gave the phone back to Officer Young.

  “She coming back soon?”

  “Yes. About an hour. Of course, knowing her, that means two.”

  Fenway walked into the kitchen and opened the pantry. There, on the top shelf, was a bottle of Maker’s Mark.

  “Not bad,” Fenway muttered to herself. She reached up to get it and had to stand on her tiptoes, but got her hand around it and pulled it down.

  She found a highball glass in one of the cabinets, got four ice cubes out of one of the trays in the freezer, and poured two fingers of bourbon into the glass.

  “You want one? Oh—never mind, you’re on duty.” Fenway opened the refrigerator. “Rachel’s got Dr. Pepper and some banana-orange juice thing.”

  Officer Young smiled. “Been a while since I had any soda,” he said. “I guess a can won’t hurt.” He reached around Fenway to get a can and brushed against her bare arm. Fenway felt a jolt of electricity with his touch, and suddenly realized the tank top she was going to wear to bed wasn’t exactly modest. Although maybe she was overthinking it; the sweatpants didn’t flatter her figure, and she didn’t have any makeup on.

  And here I am drinking a bourbon with a man I just met, she thought, on a day where I feel vulnerable. What could possibly go wrong?