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

thought for a brief second he might use them to soak up the blood on his face, but no.

“Where are your keys?” he growled.

Fenway sprang toward the knife block. Stotsky hesitated, and she grabbed the big chef’s knife—the good one her mother had bought her for her twenty-fifth birthday—and she swiped at him before he could get to the knife block.

She missed, and he jumped back.

“Get out of my house,” Fenway seethed at him.

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Get out!” she screamed.

And then she kept screaming. Fenway wanted everyone in the building to come. She wanted someone to call the cops.

He lunged at Fenway and she thrust the knife at him. But he knocked it out of her hand, and it clattered to the floor.

He grabbed her wrist and spun her around, and suddenly Fenway was in a choke hold.

He squeezed her neck and she couldn’t breathe.

Grabbing at his arm, she scratched him hard.

He grimaced, but tightened his grip.

She couldn’t get air.

The door burst open.

It was Rachel—holding a .22 pistol.

“Let her go.” Rachel’s voice was high-pitched and wavering.

Stotsky spun Fenway around to face her. “Rachel,” he said, “Rachel, listen to me.”

“You’re killing her. Let her go, or I’ll put a bullet in you.”

“Rachel—”

“I’m not kidding, Dad. You know I’m a good shot. You trained me yourself.”

In the distance, faintly, the sound of sirens wafted up through the open door.

“After everything I’ve done for you.” Stotsky’s grip relaxed just enough so Fenway could get a shallow breath.

“You killed my husband.”

“He didn’t love you,” Stotsky spat. “He was cheating on you. You deserve so much better.”

“Maybe so, Dad, but that’s not up to you. And I can’t let you kill anyone else.”

His tone changed, like he was negotiating. “Okay, okay, I won’t. But you’ve got to let me go. I’ll go to Mexico. You won’t have to see me again. Fenway needs to tell me where her car keys are. Then I’ll leave.”

The sirens were getting closer.

“Deal, Fenway?” Rachel said.

She struggled in his grip for a second. “Fine,” Fenway choked out.

“You’ve gotta let Fenway go, Dad.”

“Tell me where the keys are, Fenway.”

She felt she didn’t have a choice. “On the landing. I dropped them on the ground as soon as you opened the door.”

“Good.” Stotsky started to drag Fenway out of the kitchen. He tightened his chokehold on her.

“Dad! What the hell are you doing?”

“Taking what I came for, Rachel. I don’t expect you to understand. I’ve worked all my life for this, and I need Fenway so I can get the money I’m owed.” He coughed, a wet, bloody cough, then swung Fenway in front of him, still in the choke hold, and half-pushed, half-dragged her to the front door, toward Rachel.

The sirens got louder.

“Get away from her.” Rachel tightened her two-hand grip on the .22.

Fenway locked eyes with Rachel. Rachel, barely holding onto her emotions, stared back. Fenway was going to do something crazy—and Rachel knew it. Fenway and Stotsky were only about two feet away from the front door jamb, about five feet in front of Rachel.

“I’m sorry, Rachel, but it’s her or me. I’m going to leave, and you’re not going to stop me.”

Fenway suddenly swung her right foot up, put it against the door jamb, and pushed backward with everything she had.

Stotsky lost his balance, he let go of Fenway’s neck, and they both went down. Fenway fell half on top of him.

He quickly rolled onto his stomach and grabbed the knife on the floor. Fenway scrambled to her feet and Stotsky held the knife out threateningly.

“You’re coming with me, Fenway, and I’ll cut you if I have to.”

Bang.

Stotsky’s right shoulder snapped back. A pop of blood.

Bang.

His upper arm tensed. Another pop of blood.

He screamed and dropped the knife. It clattered away.

Fenway turned her head. Rachel still held the gun with both hands, smoke curling from the barrel. A tear was running down her cheek.

“Goddammit, Daddy!” she screamed. “Don’t make me shoot you again! Get down on the ground!”

“You shot me.” His voice was weak and incredulous.

“Get down on the ground!”

Stotsky, holding his right arm with his left, got down on his knees.

“On your stomach.”

“Rachel—”

“ON YOUR STOMACH!” she screamed.

He grimaced when he put weight on his arm, but he got on his stomach on the kitchen floor.

Rachel kept the gun trained on her father. Her hands were surprisingly still. The sirens were close now.

Fenway leaned against the wall and slumped to the floor. She looked at her hands; they were shaking much more than Rachel’s were.

Dez burst in, followed by Sheriff McVie, with Mark and Celeste right behind him. Fenway kept shaking. Rachel still held the gun trained on her father, on his stomach, bleeding from wounds in his arm, his cheek, his mouth. Mark handcuffed him.

Dez gently took the gun from Rachel’s hands. Rachel put her head on Dez’s shoulder and Dez hugged her. Rachel started to sob; her whole body seemed to give out at once and Dez held her up, stroking the back of her head while she cried.

McVie crouched down in front of Fenway. “Fenway, are you okay?”

She looked McVie in the face, his serious face, with his alabaster skin and his freckles.

Stay with me tonight, she wanted to say, but didn’t.

“No. I’m not okay. I’m not even close to okay.”

He nodded.

“We’re going to need you and Rachel to tell us what happened.”

“He was waiting for me when I got home,” she started. “The building manager reports to him. He obviously had a key. That didn’t even occur to me.”

“It didn’t occur to any of us.”

“Well, then, you’re pretty awful cops.”

McVie smiled. “Yeah.”

“He wanted my car because it doesn’t have plates yet. He wanted to kidnap me so my dad would wire him money in Mexico.”

McVie nodded. “If he kept off the freeway, he might have gotten to the border.”

“I don’t think he would have let me go after he got the money. I think he would have killed me.”

McVie put his hand on her shoulder. “You want to go over what happened?”

She grabbed his hand and put it against her cheek.

“Fenway?”

“Give me a few minutes.”

Rachel was talking, trying to catch her breath. Dez was still holding her.

“…so after I got the take-out,” Rachel said, between sobs, “I got to the apartment complex, and as soon as I opened the car door, I heard Fenway scream. Get out. Get out. She was screaming it over and over. And I left the food in the car, and grabbed the gun from the glove compartment, and ran upstairs. Fenway’s keys were outside the door, and there were noises and yelling inside, and I pushed the door open and pointed the gun at him.”

“Come on.” McVie squeezed Fenway’s hand. “We should move to another room. I can’t have you hearing this before I take your statement.”

He led her into her bedroom and shut the door.

She sat on the bed.

“I’m just taking your statement,” he said, gently but with conviction.

“I know.”

And she told him everything.