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

>Ferris shuffled his feet. “You’re not saying 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 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, 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 father’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 the 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 Ferris Energy was at fault for the accident that killed Carl Cassidy and Lewis Fairweather—with falsified documents. The falsified documents said 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.”

“We don’t have anything directly implicating 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 he’s the one who sent the email to Walker discussing a bribe. 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 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 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! It’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, 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.”

“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 the 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 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 it.”

“You 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 it would be great if someone broke down the wall and 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 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 it 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 let Stotsky go in for a few minutes to ‘talk to him.’ The M.E. says Dylan was killed by a really strong guy; they were thinking 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 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 everyone kisses your ass around here. I may think 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 guess 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