The Candidate Coroner

by Paul Austin Ardoin

  “You know,” Fenway said, “I saw the way you were getting the lay of the land after we found Dr. Tassajera’s body.”

  “I know,” Callahan said. “I was paralyzed. I was shocked. I know it was unprofessional.”

  “That’s not even close to what I was going to say,” said Fenway. “I was going to say I was impressed with some of the things you did. Taking down all the license plate numbers, the make and model of all the vehicles on the street and in the parking lot. That doesn’t just show initiative, it shows a real mind for detective work.”

  “Oh,” Callahan said, surprised. “Uh—thanks, I guess.”

  They started to walk into the sheriff’s office. “I don’t often see people who aren’t working cases thinking through things like that. And the same thing when you overheard my father. You started to piece things together.”

  Fenway looked at Callahan. His ears were getting red.

  “Listen,” Fenway said, “have you ever thought about taking the detective’s exam?”

  “Uh,” Callahan said, “I have. I went down to Santa Barbara about six months ago and took the detective exam down there.”

  “They had an opening?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you pass?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why aren’t you down there?”

  “They promoted from within.”

  “Just like we should do here,” said Fenway. “You know, Mark’s going to be retiring next year.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. Full pension.” Fenway paused. “You should think about applying.”

  “Wouldn’t you be my boss?”

  “Assuming I win this election, which, as you’ve pointed out, is no given.”

  “Wow.”

  “Unless you’ve got a problem reporting to a woman.”

  “No!” Callahan said quickly. “It’s just—I never thought I’d get the chance here. I thought maybe over in San Miguelito County. I’ve heard they’re expanding their robbery and homicide staff.”

  “You know, I think we’re going to have an opening for a detective working identity theft cases.”

  “Oh—I, uh...”

  “Say no more,” Fenway said. “Computer work. I get it.”

  This time, Callahan’s ears turned all the way red.

  They continued walking through the office. Callahan stopped at his desk and bent down to open a file drawer.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I’ve got a bunch of judges’ home and cell numbers in one of these files.” He leafed through the folders.

  “We can look that up on the computer, you know.”

  “I trust paper more. Aha—here it is.”

  “Great. I can make the calls from my office.”

  Fenway and Callahan exited the sheriff’s office building and walked across the empty street, into the building that held the coroner’s office.

  Fenway walked past the door to Suite 150.

  “Where are you going? I thought we were going to do the paperwork for the warrants—and you were going to call those judges.”

  “In a minute,” Fenway said. “I’ve got to go talk to Piper.”

  “It’s Sunday. You think Piper’s in?”

  “If I know her, she is. Before I give her any more names for financials, I need to see where she is on the work she’s already done.”

  Callahan nodded, then put his serious face back on.

  They went through to the information technology suite. There, behind her desk, was the willowy, redheaded Piper.

  “No Migs today trying to distract you?” Fenway said.

  “No,” Piper said brusquely. “But with everything going on, I encouraged him to come. He’s got more important things to do, apparently.”

  Fenway looked at Piper’s face, which was still focused on the screen. Her words had betrayed some anger towards Migs, but her face remained impassive.

  Piper pulled a folder up from her desk and handed it to Fenway. “After seeing all the payment information from Global Advantage Executive Consulting, I started doing some reverse lookups. You’ll be surprised—there are some names of small businesses in there—and the owners are often people we’ve had an interest in lately.”

  Fenway opened the folder. Several sets of papers, separated by binder clips, were in the folder. The name on the first set was Jeremy Kapp.

  “Landscape architecture isn’t exactly the kind of business I think of when I think of money laundering,” Fenway said.

  Piper nodded. “You’d wouldn’t think so, but a lot of the maintenance work they do is cash only. They’ve got a dozen crews working ten residences a day. And, oddly enough, over half of them pay in cash.”

  “Ten residences are a lot for one crew.”

  “Not for a crew their size,” Piper said, “but some of the people who work on the crews—I’m not sure they exist.”

  Callahan let out a low whistle.

  Piper glared at him.

  “Callahan’s on Fenway protection duty,” Fenway explained. “He goes where I go.”

  “Oh,” Piper said.

  “So,” Fenway said, “you think they’ve got cash coming in, they’re laundering it, and they’re paying it out to people who don’t exist as a way of paying—uh, who are they paying?”

  “They make some payments directly to Global Advantage Executive Consulting. These fake names—I’ve been able to trace some of the bank accounts back to Global Advantage too, and in fact, I think it’s all going back there.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Probably so they don’t look so suspicious. You can pay a consulting firm, but only so much before it starts raising red flags.” Piper cleared her throat. “I’ve found records of over a million dollars so far coming in, and at least a half million going out.”

  “Almost like a legitimate business,” Fenway mused.

  “Go to the next set of documents,” Piper said. “This is the one I told you about in my voicemail.”

  “I don’t have my phone,” Fenway said. “I was afraid someone wanted to kill me and they were tracking my movements.”

  “Ah,” Piper said. “That would be why you never returned my call.”

  “And yet here I am,” Fenway deadpanned.

  “Indeed.”

  Fenway turned the page. Her mouth dropped open when she saw the name at the top.

  Dr. Jacob Tassajera.

  “That’s our latest murder victim.”

  “I know,” Piper said. “I heard the police scanner.”

  “How’d you get the warrants signed so fast?”

  Piper shrugged. “I was on a comp volleyball team with Judge Chen’s daughter in high school.”

  Fenway smiled. “Look at you with your initiative.”

  Piper tapped the folder again. “And look at the next set.”

  Fenway pulled the top two sets off the stack and saw the next name.

  Domingo Velásquez.

  “Wait—Velásquez? I was just going to apply for a warrant for his financials.”

  Piper shrugged. “His name came up on a couple of investment accounts in Jeremy Kapp’s portfolio. I recognized the last name of the kid from—you know—and I did a search. Figured I’d pull that in, too.”

  Callahan cleared his throat. “I think that would tend to support my, um, earlier assertion.”

  “What earlier assertion?” asked Piper.

  “That Fenway wasn’t the target of the car bomb.”

  Piper cocked her head to the side. “Hmmm.”

  “You know Domingo Velásquez is missing?” asked Fenway.

  Piper shook her head. “No—I hadn’t heard that. Did someone file a missing persons report?”

  “No,” said Fenway. “My father told me. He went by their house, and his wife said he never came home after work on Friday.”

  “Have you noticed everyone I’ve uncovered who’s been paid by Global Advantage Executive Consulting has either been murdered or i
s missing?”

  “I did notice that.” Fenway tapped her forehead in thought. “Almost like a pattern. The pattern doesn’t include Charlotte.”

  “It might if she or your father are the ones responsible,” Piper said. “I mean, a lot of this has to do with your father’s company. It might be something your stepmother is involved in.”

  “Like what? I can’t see her getting involved in a scheme to get oil from one embargoed country and send it to another embargoed country. The politics would have to be staggering. She loses it when she breaks a nail.”

  “Maybe she’s a good actor,” Callahan broke in.

  Fenway guffawed, thinking of her earlier conversation with Dez.

  “I don’t know, Fenway,” Piper said. “I hate to say this, but if your father was behind this, he’d need at least one other person to assist—even if it’s only with bookkeeping. It’d have to be someone he trusted with the money.”

  Fenway shook her head. “Charlotte spends like crazy. He doesn’t even trust her with an American Express card, never mind millions of dollars in laundered money.”

  Piper narrowed her eyes. “Did she major in accounting or finance in college?”

  “Literature,” Fenway said. “She thought Madame Bovary wasn’t so much a cautionary tale as a how-to manual.”

  Neither Piper nor Callahan laughed. Maybe they hadn’t read it.

  “Listen, Fenway,” Piper said, “if Charlotte is innocent, this is pretty serious. I know you don’t like her, but—”

  “I don’t dislike her enough for her to go to jail for a crime she didn’t commit,” said Fenway.

  “Okay, then,” Piper said, “we need to figure out who’s behind all of this. Because if we find out who’s behind the car bomb, and who’s behind the killing of Dr. Tassajera, we’ll probably find out the same person is the one responsible for the death of Jeremy Kapp.”

  Fenway nodded. “That makes sense.”

  “Something must have happened,” Piper mused.

  Callahan looked at her. “What do you mean?”

  Piper looked thoughtful. “I mean—look, all of this money moving around, this oil going from Latin America to East Timor, people are making a lot of money, and it’s going smoothly. Something must have happened to start getting all these people killed.”

  “And you’re thinking,” Fenway said, “if we can figure out the catalyst for the murders, maybe we find the murderer?”

  “Or at least the motive,” Callahan replied.

  “Right.” Piper nodded. “Either someone got greedy, or a shipment came in short, or someone ratted someone else out. It had to be something like that.”

  “Perhaps,” said Fenway. “There’s no honor among thieves.”

  “Okay,” said Callahan, “I think you’re right, Piper. Something must have predicated this. I’ve seen this before—not on such a grand scale, but maybe the little guys who shoot each other over money aren’t that different from the big guys.”

  “What are you thinking?” asked Fenway.

  “I’ve seen payment terms change, and someone doesn’t like it. I’ve seen something happen in the supply chain—out of everyone’s control—but no one’s making as much money as they used to, and someone decides they want a bigger slice of the pie. Or someone gets scared that there’s a weak link in the chain. A series of murders like this doesn’t spontaneously appear.”

  Fenway nodded. “Oil prices have gone down lately, but not a lot. Maybe five percent—but I don’t think that would be enough to trigger anything.” She crossed her arms. “What if we tracked traffic from the ports? That might give us a clue—some ship moving that breaks a pattern or something.”

  Piper shook her head. “If there’s a rogue ship, it’s not the Jules Verne. I’m tracking that tanker, and it’s pretty much on the other side of the world right now. Or at least it should be.” She pulled out another folder and put it in front of Fenway. “See? The Jules Verne should be a couple of days out from Singapore.”

  “Maybe there’s another ship we don’t know about yet.” Fenway paused. “Piper, did you ever look into the finances of Carl Cassidy and Lewis Fairweather?”

  “I did some preliminary work—Bradley Watermeier took care of the initial inquiry when he was here.”

  “Bradley Watermeier.” Fenway tapped her temple. “I know that name.”

  “He was the firewall admin when you started here.”

  “Oh,” Fenway chuckled. “Before he was arrested, you mean.”

  Piper paused. “I guess I should go back and double-check his work.”

  Fenway nodded. “And you’ve uncovered all the payments from that consulting firm with the boring name?”

  “Global Advantage Executive Consulting.”

  “Right. But Bradley probably wasn’t looking for those sorts of payments.”

  “No, he probably wasn’t. Unless he was on the take from them too.”

  Fenway shrugged. “He sure doesn’t fit the profile of the other people on the take. He didn’t own his own business, for one.”

  “And he’s still alive,” Piper said drily. “I can still look into it.”

  “Sure. But I don’t think Bradley had any knowledge of the existence of Global Advantage. Not unless he found something in Carl Cassidy’s finances. And even if he found it, he might not have known what it was.”

  Piper nodded.

  Fenway started scanning the three sets of financial papers. “Very similar payment schedules with all three of these companies,” she muttered. “And all of them are claiming a ton of cash transactions.”

  “Auto repair for Domingo Velásquez, and something called ‘independent counseling’ for Dr. Tassajera.” Piper shook her head. “You ever heard of people paying for family counseling in cash?”

  “Of course I have. People pay out of pocket all the time—especially if their cheap-ass health insurance won’t cover it.”

  “People who pay out of pocket usually pay with checks or credit cards, don’t they? I’m actually talking cash.”

  Fenway shrugged. “I’m sure some people do it.” She raised herself up on her toes and stretched. Her body was still sore from the explosion, but stretching felt good.

  Piper shook her head. “Not as much cash as Dr. Tassajera was taking in. I think this is a red flag.”

  Fenway closed her eyes and breathed in. She felt alive in the middle of a murder investigation. Stressed out, perhaps, and in need of some coffee. And since Piper and Callahan had suggested she wasn’t the target after all, she felt lighter, she felt like she could be a real person again and go back to her apartment and her car and her phone and her life.

  When she opened her eyes, Piper was staring at her, looking worried.

  “What is it, Piper?”

  “Fenway,” she said haltingly, “I—uh, I think this goes pretty deep.”

  “Yeah, I think it does.”

  Piper nodded. “It looks like a huge operation. Phantom oil tankers going in and out of the Ferris Energy port. A massive amount of money being laundered. And it’s not in traditional money laundering businesses like car washes or dry cleaners—it’s a landscape architecture firm, an auto mechanic, and a therapist. And that’s only what we know about.”

  “Everybody has a price.”

  “I know.”

  “And those types of businesses can launder more money than a laser tag center or a car wash. They’ve got more high-value services. They can launder, what, twenty grand a day? Maybe more? A car wash would be lucky to do half that.”

  Piper nodded. “Right—but that’s why money launderers stick to traditional businesses. Because the types of companies we’ve uncovered are ones where people usually pay by credit card or check or something. Paying by cash can get red-flagged in other businesses. But they haven’t been flagged by anyone.”

  “How do you know they haven’t?”

  “I checked the IMoLIN database.”

  “The what?”

  “It’s an internati
onal database. Has a whole list of suspected money-laundering operations and links to terrorist networks.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that whoever should be red-flagging these financial transactions isn’t doing their job.”

  “You think someone in financial crimes is in on it? Maybe even the D.A.?”

  “Maybe it goes even higher,” whispered Piper.

  “I’m not sure I believe that,” Fenway said. “Remember what Ben Franklin said about secrets.”

  “Which was?”

  “He said, ‘three can keep a secret if two are dead.’”

  Piper set her jaw and held up the financial statements from Jeremy Kapp and Dr. Jacob Tassajera. “Well, Fenway, here are the two who are dead.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  FENWAY AND CALLAHAN went back to the coroner’s office suite. Her head was awash in the ramifications of what Piper just said, and how deep the conspiracy might go. The office was locked; it was, after all, a Sunday, Dez was in the field on the job, and Piper said Migs hadn’t come into the office with her. Fenway thought they might be having a fight.

  Getting her keys from her purse, she unlocked the door.

  A manila envelope lay on the floor; it looked like it had been pushed through the crack under the door. Fenway Stevenson was printed neatly on the front of the envelope. It was the same type of envelope and the same handwriting as the envelope left at Fenway’s apartment the night before.

  “Another envelope,” said Fenway.

  “Don’t touch it,” said Callahan. “It could be something dangerous.”

  “The last one wasn’t,” Fenway said. “And I’m more concerned with getting the fingerprints off this one than anything.” She carefully stepped around the envelope and picked out a pair of gloves and a large evidence bag.

  “The last one?”

  “Didn’t Officer Young tell you about the other envelope at my apartment?”

  “When was this?”

  “The envelope was left there when the brick was thrown through my window.”

  Callahan shook his head. “You mean the night you tackled the white supremacist we thought was going to kill you? The day after the car bomb went off?”

  “Uh...”

  “Yeah, I can’t imagine why an envelope left for you would have slipped Todd’s mind.”