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

McVie took Fenway’s statement and left her bedroom. Mark came in and asked how she was doing. She nodded, not looking directly at him. He put his hand on her shoulder; she grabbed it and held on for a minute. He squeezed back before letting go and quietly leaving the room.

Dez found Stotsky’s “go bag” behind the chair in the living room. It had a fake passport, and about five hundred dollars in cash. There were a couple of changes of clothes too.

The police stayed for over an hour. Rachel went down with the police, and came back with the two orders of penne arrabiata from her car.

Rachel and Fenway didn’t eat the penne that night. Their stomachs were all knotted up. Neither of them wanted to be alone. Rachel cried a few more times. They talked about Dylan. They talked about what Rachel could do about the logistics of his memorial, his burial; letting his parents be involved. They talked about Amy and Dylan’s affair. They talked about what he ever saw in her, and Fenway let Rachel insult Amy and call her old. Rachel cried some more.

At about eleven thirty, Rachel helped Fenway clean the blood off the kitchen floor. They talked a little more. Fenway told Rachel to see a therapist, and she nodded. Exhaustion was taking over, and Rachel wound up crashing on the sofa. The pasta stayed in the fridge.

Fenway got a blanket and put it over Rachel. She started to walk away, but then stepped back and tucked the blanket gently in under the sofa cushions. She watched Rachel sleep for a minute, then went to her room.

Fenway slept through some disturbing dreams, but didn’t wake up until almost noon. She woke up disoriented and saw Rachel had left a note saying she had gone home to call her mother-in-law and figure out how to deal with Dylan’s death.

Fenway decided to go for a walk. She grabbed some water, and put her trail running shoes on, which felt like heaven after spending the day before in the high heels—those beautiful, sexy, life-saving heels.

She walked down past the complex to the dead end, to the short, white, wooden fence with the reflectors. She turned on the well-worn dirt path and walked out into the trees. Past the first grove of trees, she got to the small clearing, and then she walked to the second grove of trees. She heard a sound that wasn’t quite a rustling; it sounded like rapid but muted clicking. She looked up into the trees and there were thousands upon thousands of monarch butterflies. They were on their way north, and the trees were so full of orange it looked like autumn.

Fenway watched the butterflies for about ten minutes, then she walked through the second grove of trees, up the grassy area, and she sat at the short drop off, looking out over the sandy beach and the Pacific a few hundred feet beyond.

She thought of her mother’s painting and promised herself she would go to Seattle and get it out of storage the first chance she got. She thought she might put it on the wall across from her bed, so it would be the first thing she saw every day.

Fenway stopped at the Coffee Bean on the way back. She had already ordered her latte when she saw Sheriff McVie and his wife—Craig and Amy. They were sitting down together; Amy was leaning forward, elbows on the table; Craig was leaning back, frowning; his arms were folded. Craig saw her and immediately brightened as he waved her over. Fenway wanted to pretend she didn’t see them, but it was obvious she had. She said hi, and she smiled and told them she had gone on a walk down to the ocean, and it cleared her head, and yes, it was a little weird still being in the apartment where it all happened, but she thought she was doing okay.

The television mounted on the wall behind Amy was tuned to an entertainment channel, and there were movie stars on the red carpet.

“Hey, look,” Craig said. “Isn’t that your dad behind the interviewer?”

Fenway looked, and sure enough it was. Her father was in a black-on-black tuxedo, looking pleased with himself, and Charlotte looked nauseatingly gorgeous in a shimmery silver dress with a plunging neckline.

“Stotsky’s going in front of the district attorney on Monday,” Craig said. “Doesn’t look like your dad is too worried about him cutting a plea deal.”

They chatted a little longer. Fenway got the sense Amy didn’t want her to stay, so she said goodbye and walked out of the coffee shop with most of her dignity.

She got home and took a shower. As she finished drying off, it hit her again, like a train, that her mother was gone. She wished she had her mother there the night before to hold her the way Dez had been holding Rachel.

She sat down on the sofa and put her feet up. She knew she should be starting her reading for her final forensics class, but she wanted to let the memory of the last few days wash over her. She hadn’t even gotten her first paycheck yet—it would come the next Friday—but she liked her job. She didn’t like getting shot at, or getting put in a choke hold, but she liked going through those files, seeing the bullet casings, talking theories of the crime with Dez and Dr. Yasuda, researching the gunshot residue—and she especially liked when she found out Stotsky was Rachel’s father, and seeing all the puzzle pieces fit together almost perfectly in her head.

She sighed. Although this coroner position was temporary, maybe after she finished her forensics program, she’d look into some other options besides nursing; maybe a crime-scene analyst, or even a job in Dr. Yasuda’s office.

Fenway called Rachel, who had gotten back from seeing Dylan’s mother. She told Fenway the two of them had cried together and made phone calls and set up the memorial and the cremation.

Rachel didn’t want to be in the apartment she shared with Dylan—she couldn’t bring herself to put anything away yet, she said. His clothes were still in the closet, his toothbrush was still on the bathroom counter, and everything made her both sad for his death and angry at his betrayal.

“I called my friend Jordan to see if she wanted to go to a movie tonight,” Rachel said, “but she was weird. It’s like she didn’t know what to say to me.”

They made plans for Rachel to come over to Fenway’s at eight o’clock that night, watch a stupid romantic comedy, and eat the penne from the night before.

“Is this what my life is going to be like from now on?” Rachel asked.

“I don’t know,” Fenway said. “I really don’t know.”