The Reluctant Coroner by Paul Austin Ardoin (distant reading txt) 📖

seen that kind of thing before; maybe someone with a police background, or a relative who’s a cop.”

“Or a career criminal who’s had a lot of experience making cars disappear. Or someone like you who watches too much CSI,” Dez teased. “Don’t be blaming cops for this.”

“Sorry.”

Dez finished the last of her coffee. “We should get back.” They both stood up. Fenway drained her cup too, and they started out the door, back to the office.

“Dez, do you think it might have been Lana? Her gun looks like it might have been the right caliber to do it. Not like a .22. Lana had a serious gun.”

“I guess it could have been Lana. A lot more people in this town have guns than you might think, and obviously Lana’s not scared to pull the trigger. But I don’t think it was Lana. What’s her motive?”

“Jeez, Ferris Energy is all over this, aren’t they?” Fenway asked, though it was more like a statement. “Hey, that reminds me, my father is coming in before lunch to talk about the files.”

The door to the office was open when they got back, and Migs had returned. He stood up as they came in.

Migs’ face was full of concern. “How you doing, boss? I heard what happened. That’s all kinds of messed up.”

Fenway smiled weakly. “I’m fine, Migs. Well, honestly, I’m a little shaken up. But I’ll be okay.”

“I was in IT when Scott told us the story. He said you were kind of a bad-ass.”

Fenway laughed uncomfortably.

“You were kind of a bad-ass, Fenway,” Dez said. “Going right up against someone who had a gun trained on you like that?”

“Oh.” Fenway blushed slightly. “Thanks, Dez.”

“So,” Dez said to Migs, “did you find anything out with Rachel’s computer?”

“Yep, I was right—Piper found RAT software on it.”

“I’ve heard of that.” Fenway tapped her forehead and tried to remember where. “It’s like a virus where someone else can remotely take over your computer, right?”

“Yeah. I mean, technically, it’s a Trojan horse, not a virus. But it looks like whoever the hacker is, they could see and listen to everything going on in the office. Whoever was on the other end of Rachel’s camera feed was basically live-streaming everything happening in the office.”

“You find out who it was yet?”

“No, we don’t know definitively who it is yet. Whoever set up the software did a decent job of concealing the recipient’s IP address. But the cybercrimes unit is working on it.”

“You mean Piper is working on it.” Dez elbowed Migs.

Migs’ ears got a little red. “Yeah. She’s the one who does cybercrimes stuff for the sheriff’s office.”

“Does Piper have a timeline for when we’ll have some info back?” Fenway asked.

“She said it might be a day or two. She’s great, though. She can work pretty fast. I’ve heard she got address info out of a spearphishing email in under an hour.”

Fenway nodded. “Okay. I guess we wait and see.”

“There’s something else.”

“Besides the IP address?”

“Yeah. See, we’ve got this IT admin, Bradley Watermeier. Stanford dropout, rich parents; great with computers, though. He’s the admin for all the firewalls, and RAT software like that takes a huge amount of bandwidth. Bradley’s in charge of monitoring that kind of stuff, and he should have seen the huge amount of bandwidth being taken up by the video going through—and it wasn’t just during the day—there was a huge amount of data going through on Friday night, after hours.”

Fenway’s brow knitted. “Could he have missed it?”

“No way.” Migs vehemently shook his head. “First of all, he’s super smart—so he wouldn’t miss it, not if he was even paying the slightest amount of attention. But, second of all, somebody reconfigured the firewall specifically to hide the RAT data in the reports the IT team was getting.”

“You’ve got more than one person looking at all the reports?” she asked.

“We do. Best security practices.”

“So the reports said nothing was wrong?”

“Yep. And Bradley is really the only person who has access to both the firewall and those reports.”

“Bradley was the one who reconfigured the firewall?” she asked.

“Piper thinks so. He’s got the knowledge, and he’s got the access. I guess there are a few other people who might know how to do that—Piper definitely does—but she doesn’t have access to the firewall.”

“Then why does Piper think it’s him?”

“Because right before I brought Rachel’s machine into IT, Bradley got a text on his cell phone, and he left the office, said he had to deal with a family emergency. Piper told me he actually grabbed a few of his personal items off his desk before he took off. When I came in and told them I thought there was spyware, and the camera was compromised, they tried calling his phone to get access to the firewall, but there was no answer. I mean, it’s pretty suspicious considering whoever was watching us on Rachel’s camera saw we had discovered it, and could have called Bradley to get out of the office.”

Dez nodded.

“And then later, they tried to go into Bradley’s computer, and Bradley’s machine was being wiped.”

“Being wiped?” Dez asked.

“Yeah, there are computer programs that will overwrite the hard drive with random data, to make it hard to retrieve the original files. It was in the middle of its second pass.”

Fenway’s pulse jumped. “Was everything deleted?”

“Everything.”

“Can you get it back?”

“Maybe. I mean, they’re working on it. But Bradley knew how to destroy files—I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

Fenway swore in her head. “Are we thinking he was the one who put the virus on Rachel’s PC?”

“He probably was the one who actually did it, but with the phone call that came in, I’m sure he was doing it for someone else,” Migs said. “I don’t think he had a motive to be the one behind the whole thing. I don’t think Rachel knew Bradley—she knew him enough to say ‘hi’ in the office, but they never hung out, or anything. I guess he could be stalking her. But personally, I think someone wanted to see what was going on in the office, and paid Bradley off.”

Dez leaned forward. “I’ll get a warrant for his financials. What we’ve got should be compelling enough for a judge to sign. Do you know if he bought a new car recently, or anything like that?”

“I don’t know him very well.” Migs shook his head. “I say ‘hi’ to him when I go over there, like Rachel does. That’s it. He’s come over here a couple times to set up computers. He actually set up Rachel’s PC.”

“So he might have set the RAT software up ever since she started here,” Fenway said.

“Yeah, but the thing is, the video feeds only started about two weeks ago. We don’t know how long ago Rachel’s machine was compromised, but before two weeks ago, there was no video.”

Fenway nodded. “That’s when Rachel bought the camera.” She paused, then asked, “What was the hacker getting before? Were they listening to audio?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Piper would know, probably. Or could research it. I could ask her.”

Dez leaned back in her chair, a thoughtful look on her face. “Okay, we know someone was spying on this office through Rachel’s camera for the last two weeks, and probably had access to files or audio for a while before. I think we should look for a motive of why someone would do that.”

“Do you think it might be related to the theft of the file drawer?” Fenway asked.

“It might all be related. But we probably need to go through the rest of those files in Walker’s office to see if anything jumps out at us. By the way, Fenway, the officer who was here yesterday—with the keys to Walker’s office—agreed to meet you at eight, which was over three hours ago. He might still be waiting for you wherever they moved the files.”

Dez’s phone rang.

“Roubideaux.” She paused. Then, covering the mouthpiece, exasperation in her voice: “Oh, calling on behalf of the all-knowing medical examiner, eh?” Another pause. “We’ve been waiting for the results for days. Will we be able to see them? Oh, right after lunch?” She looked at her watch. “Yeah, I guess I can get Fenway there.”

“You can get me where?” Fenway asked, watching Dez hang up.

Dez rolled her eyes. “The San Miguelito M.E.’s office. She wants you to come down and take a look at the body.”

“They want me to look at Walker?”

“Apparently.”

“After lunch?”

“Yeah, it’s eleven thirty, so we can’t get there till—”

“Oh shit!” Fenway exclaimed. “My father was supposed to be meeting me over at the sheriff’s office to discuss the files at eleven thirty. I’ve gotta get over there now.” She grabbed her purse and headed out the door.

“Fenway—we’ve gotta be at the M.E.’s at one,” Dez called after her.

She had no idea if San Miguelito was ten minutes away, or an hour and ten minutes away, but Fenway had to talk to her father. There were too many mysteries about the file: why Harrison Walker wouldn’t share it, why insurance companies wouldn’t pay until they saw it, why a widow had threatened Fenway’s life because of it. Maybe Fenway could use the confrontation with Lana to her advantage