The Incumbent Coroner Read online

“All right. What did you do once you got here?”

  “I spoke with Mr. Cliburn at the front desk.”

  “That’s the man who’s there now, right?”

  Celeste nodded. “I asked him if he made the 911 call. He answered affirmatively, then walked me to the room and opened the locked door with his key.”

  McVie nodded.

  “I asked him who found the body, and he said one of the housekeeping staff.”

  “Did you get a name?”

  “No, sir. Mr. Cliburn didn’t remember who reported it, and when I got here, most of the housekeeping staff had already left.”

  Dez crossed her arms and shook her head.

  “I asked Mr. Cliburn if anyone had been in the room except the housekeeping staff,” Officer Salvador continued. “He said he didn’t know. Many members of the staff have the key to these rooms.”

  “I see,” said McVie.

  Officer Salvador hesitated. “Sheriff, if I may offer an observation, security is pretty lax here. Keys go missing frequently, and I don’t believe the doors are re-keyed on a regular basis.”

  “Thanks, Celeste,” McVie said. “What did you notice when you entered the room?”

  She took out her notebook and flipped two pages. “First, I swept the room to make sure no one else was here. When I entered, the shades were drawn and the overhead light was off. I drew my weapon, and I turned on the overhead light with my elbow. The bathroom door was open. I also checked under the bed.”

  McVie nodded.

  “Then I performed a visual check on the body. I recognized Mayor Jenkins right away. The victim was clearly deceased due to her open eyes and the, uh.” She cleared her throat and blinked hard.

  McVie’s voice was quiet. “Do you need a minute, Celeste?”

  She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. She cleared her throat again, then opened her eyes. “I’m fine, Sheriff. As I was saying—due to the amount of blood on the bedspread.”

  “Did you check for a pulse?”

  She hesitated. “Not at first, sir. I thought it was clear she was dead. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Probably a minute or so later, when I remembered protocol.”

  “That’s all right, Celeste. What else?”

  Salvador looked down at her notebook. “The room was quite warm, but it didn’t seem unusually so for July. The bathroom fan was on, but that was the only sound I heard.”

  She flipped back a page. “I continued my sweep. I didn’t find any weapons or other hazards. I also didn’t find anything belonging to the victim in the main room, though. No purse, for example. No jewelry. No suitcase. No clothes hung up on the rod on the side there.” She motioned to a lonely-looking wooden curtain rod just outside the bathroom door.

  “Anything on the bathroom counter?”

  “Nothing but a wrapped soap and a plastic cup.”

  “The motel provide those?”

  “I assume so, but I haven’t confirmed it yet.”

  “Okay.”

  “I left the room, leaving the overhead light on. The door locked behind me. Then I used my radio at three forty-seven to contact dispatch.”

  “Wow, you didn’t waste any time,” Fenway said to Dez. “I got the call before four.”

  Dez nodded, thin-lipped. The mayor’s death had sapped her usual snarky, sarcastic mood.

  “Did you call Rachel too?” McVie said.

  “No,” said Celeste, “but I assumed that dispatch would take care of it. Either her or someone else in public relations.”

  “And Rachel didn’t show up?” McVie asked, surprised.

  “If there is a reporter here,” said Dez, “they’re probably renting a room with a hooker or a crack pipe. They’re not here to get a story. Probably a good thing Rachel didn’t show up. Keeps it out of the media another few hours.”

  “No reporter waiting for his big break camped on the police scanner?” asked Fenway.

  “Sometimes we get lucky,” McVie said.

  Celeste continued. “I stood outside the door of the motel room. Mr. Jayakody arrived at, uh, let me see.” She flipped another page in her notebook. “Approximately four forty-five. I didn’t get the exact time of arrival.”

  “You were there the whole time?”

  “That’s right, Sheriff.”

  “No one went in or out?”

  “Not through this door or window. And I don’t see another point of entry to the room.”

  “Okay, thanks, Celeste,” McVie said.

  Kav stuck his head out of the bathroom. “I’m almost done here. The ambulance is on its way, and we’ll get Mayor Jenkins transported to San Miguelito.”

  Fenway nodded. “I’ll call Dr. Yasuda.”

  She stepped out of the motel room, with its harsh fluorescent light, into the dampening twilight. At almost nine o’clock, the sun had dipped behind the horizon. She drew a deep breath. The motel had accurately earned its horrible reputation. The sheriff’s department constantly responded to incidents at the motel—drug busts, overdoses, prostitution. Cactus Lake itself was gorgeous—and a misnomer, as a cactus couldn’t be seen for miles, but rather pines, ironwoods, and sturdy bushes. A turnoff, five minutes down the winding road from the motel, led to a beautiful state park frequently photographed for travel magazines.

  A woman in a light blue uniform down the corridor watched them with a fearful look in her eye.

  Fenway thought a member of the housekeeping staff had been brave enough to stay. She smiled and waved as non-threateningly as she could. The woman jumped, startled, and disappeared around the corner.

  Fenway followed. She turned the corner and the woman had unlocked a room next to a housekeeping cart.

  “Hello?” Fenway called.

  The woman wouldn’t make eye contact.

  Fenway tried again. “¿Cómo está, señora?” Bits of high school Spanish trickled back into her head. She had read Borges in the original Spanish her senior year, but she had forgotten so much that she doubted she could get a conversation going with this woman, much less ask her what she saw.

  “No quiero ningún problema,” the woman said. Fenway had to translate in her head—the woman didn’t want trouble.

  “No hay problema aquí,” Fenway said. There’s no trouble here.

  The woman looked up and finally met her eyes.

  Fenway struggled with the next sentence. “¿Está usted trabajar aquí el sábado por la noche?” She knew she had butchered the verb tense, but hoped the woman would answer whether or not she had worked Saturday night.

  “¿Anoche?”

  Fenway grimaced. “Sí, anoche.”

  “Sí, cuando la alcaldesa fue asesinada.”

  Alcadesa, alcadesa—Fenway dug through the files in her brain for the translation. What was it?

  “Señora Jenkins,” the woman said.

  It clicked into place—alcadesa meant a female mayor. The housekeeper had been working the previous night, the night of the murder.

  “¿Has visto algo?” Fenway asked, hoping the housekeeper had seen something else.

  The woman stepped out of the room and took a long look down either side, and answered in broken English.

  “I see something,” she said. “A man. He look strong. All black clothes.”

  “He wore all black?”

  “Sí.”

  “Like a suit?”

  The woman looked at her strangely.

  Fenway fought to remember the word, then got it. “¿Un traje? ¿Un traje de negocios?”

  She shook her head. “Not, how do you say, fancy. Clothes for the running.”

  “A running outfit?”

  “Sí.”

  “Long sleeves and long pants?” Fenway mimed this.

  She nodded.

  “Where did you see the man in the running outfit?”

  “At the room.”

  “With Señora Jenkins?”

  “No. Um, ho
w do you say. Outside. Outside the room.”

  “Did you see any blood? ¿Hay sangre?”

  “On the running clothes? No, I don’t know. He had all black clothes.”

  “Can you describe the man?”

  The woman shook her head. “He was no white,” she said. “But I no see his face.”

  Fenway asked two or three additional questions, thinking more and more that she’d be embarrassed if her old Spanish teacher Señora Francisco showed up. But the woman had no more information. Fenway thought about asking her name, but decided against it; she didn’t want to scare her off. Fenway thanked her and let her get back to cleaning.

  She hadn’t known Alice Jenkins very long, but the few interactions they had had were good. Not only had Mayor Jenkins deflected several attacks from Dr. Barry Klein when they had first met, but she also gave Fenway a special commendation for solving the previous coroner’s murder. In Dominguez County, Jenkins was popular with the university liberals because of her stance on inclusivity, and accepted by the rural conservatives because she championed farm assistance and additional resources to fight wildfires.

  A few weeks ago, Celeste had joined Fenway for lunch at Dos Milagros, Rachel’s favorite taqueria on Third Street. They had run into Mayor Jenkins leaving as they were arriving. “Afternoon, Celeste!” the mayor had said, beaming at her as she got in her car. “Good to see you too, Fenway.”

  Over their tacos, Fenway asked how long Celeste had known the mayor.

  “Since the first day I got to town,” Celeste had said. “She got me through my initial interview. The sheriff before McVie didn’t really like, uh, people of color. He kept calling me Mexican.”

  Fenway had nodded through her own mouthful of pollo asado. She knew the feeling.

  “The mayor is one of the good ones,” Celeste had said. “And she talks to people about her ideas in a way that the people who originally disagree end up thinking it’s their idea.”

  “My mom was like that too,” Fenway said. “I bet the two of them would have totally gotten along.”

  And now both of those strong, outspoken African-American women were gone. Fenway came back to the present, shook her head, and walked toward Dez’s Impala.

  She took her phone out of her purse and called the medical examiner’s office. Dr. Yasuda picked up. She, too, seemed uncharacteristically distraught by the news of Mayor Jenkins’ death. They agreed to meet for the autopsy the next morning.

  This hadn’t been a good day, and it didn’t seem like it would get any better. Fenway looked up and saw the ambulance from San Miguelito turn off the mountain highway. The body of Mayor Jenkins would soon disappear from the motel room.

  Chapter Four

  When Fenway and Dez got back into the Impala, the light had completely gone from the sky, giving the motel a dreamy, dreary look. All the way down the mountain highway, Dez stayed quiet; she didn’t crack any jokes, she didn’t tell Fenway anything that she had done wrong at the crime scene.

  Finally, as they turned onto the freeway, she spoke. “I just can’t believe it, Fenway. I can’t believe she’s gone. The mayor! Just gone. And I can’t imagine why she went to that motel.”

  “She wouldn’t stay there, I don’t think,” Fenway said. “No purse, no suitcase, no cosmetics bag.”

  “Could have been taken,” Dez said through gritted teeth. “Whoever did it could have taken them.”

  They drove for a minute in silence.

  “Hey, Dez, would you mind stopping at Rachel’s apartment on our way?”

  “Rachel’s apartment?”

  “Yeah,” Fenway said. “I finally gave in a couple of weeks ago and bought a few houseplants. Rachel said she’d water them for me when I went to Seattle. Now that I’m back, I can get my extra key from her.”

  “You can’t get the key later?”

  “Well,” said Fenway, “I kind of want to see how she’s doing.”

  “Ah, okay. Not a problem.” Dez turned off at the Broadway exit and went the opposite direction from Fenway’s apartment. “I wouldn’t mind seeing her too. Her dad goes in front of the grand jury in a week or two. Can’t be easy for her.”

  “Has she been holding up okay since I left?”

  “She called me late Thursday. Having a rough night.”

  “I guess I’m not that surprised.”

  “Yeah. Mostly I think she’s doing better, but she’s still not sleeping. You know, bad dreams, can’t get back to sleep, that kind of stuff.”

  “She told me she was getting better.” Fenway paused. “Has she said what bothers her the most? Her father killing Dylan? Shooting her father to save me?”

  Dez clicked her tongue. “Now, Fenway, you’re not getting all guilty over that again, are you?”

  “I know I shouldn’t,” Fenway said. “I mean, in my head I know I shouldn’t feel guilty. It’s just my emotions don’t always follow logic.”

  Dez nodded. “Yeah, I get that.”

  “She’s still going to counseling, right?”

  “Yeah, and I can see the difference. But I’d be lying if I said she didn’t still have a long ways to go. Yesterday was pretty good even though she hadn’t slept too well. She seemed upbeat, kinda enthusiastic. And you know what I think it is?”

  “Besides the counseling?”

  “Yeah. It’s that promotion. She jumped into that new job with both feet. And I’m glad for her. I’m glad she has something to take her mind off everything. She was so depressed.”

  They pulled into the parking lot of Rachel’s apartment complex.

  “Looks like the girl’s in,” Dez said. She pointed to the BMW parked in space 19, right in front of Rachel’s townhouse.

  “Saturday night and she’s spending it at home,” Fenway said.

  “Oh, Fenway, she’s still grieving. Leave her be.”

  Dez parked the car. They said nothing as they approached the door. Fenway rang the bell, stepped back, and waited. Fifteen or twenty seconds passed.

  Dez stepped forward and knocked soundly. “Rachel, it’s Dez and Fenway, girl! Come on down here! Let’s go get some burgers!” She knocked again. “Or whiskey!”

  Still nothing.

  “Maybe she’s in the bathroom,” Fenway suggested.

  Dez squinted. “Or maybe she’s out with her friends.”

  Fenway looked sideways at Dez. “Maybe. But you know her friends are all weird around her. Especially that one girl Jordan. She’s supposed to be her best friend, but hasn’t even seen Rachel since all of this happened.”

  “Ring the bell again,” Dez said, a note of urgency in her voice.

  Fenway did. Thirty seconds passed. Fenway and Dez looked at each other.

  “I don’t like this,” Fenway said. “It doesn’t feel like she’s just in the bathroom. It’s too quiet.”

  Dez began to pound on the door. “Rachel!” she called.

  There was no response.

  Dez opened her purse and dug around in it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Got a key,” she said.

  “How come you have a key?”

  “Because Rachel was a complete mess a couple months ago. I came over here every day, bringing her dinner, making sure she got her ass out of bed, you know, that kind of stuff.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Fenway felt a little pang of jealousy.

  “Unlike some people I know, I don’t broadcast everything I feel all the time.”

  Ah, Fenway thought, there’s the Dez I know and love.

  “There you are, you little shit,” Dez muttered, pulling a small keychain out of her purse. She unlocked the door and swung it open. “Rachel?” she called. “Rachel, it’s Dez. Are you okay?” She stepped in, Fenway following closely behind her.

  “Rachel?” Fenway called out. The dread nipping softly behind her brain suddenly screamed for attention. Fenway bounded up the stairs, her long legs taking three steps at a time.

/>   At the top of the stairs, she threw open the bedroom door.

  Rachel’s petite frame lay on top of the covers, not moving. Fenway didn’t see any blood.

  “Dez! Up here!”

  Fenway dropped her purse on the floor and grabbed Rachel’s wrist and felt for a pulse. She felt it—weak, but she felt it. She pulled up Rachel’s left eyelid, revealing a dilated pupil. Rachel, taking shallow breaths, didn’t respond.

  “Call 911!” Fenway yelled. “We need an ambulance!”

  Dez appeared in the door, a look of horror on her face. “No ambulance. Get her in my car.”

  Fenway, running on adrenaline, bent over and picked up the five-foot-nothing Rachel and put her over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

  “Get your car open,” she gasped. She hoped she could carry Rachel all the way to Dez’s car. She was glad she had decided to wear the white sneakers that morning instead of heels.

  Dez sprinted down ahead of her. Fenway took the steps cautiously at first with Rachel over her shoulder, then a little faster as she leaned against the wall for balance and gained confidence in her footing. She hit the ground floor and ran out the door. Dez pulled up on the sidewalk. Fenway got the rear door open and laid Rachel in the backseat, trying not to do it too harshly.

  “Turn her head,” Dez barked. “If she throws up, she’s gonna choke otherwise.” Fenway turned Rachel’s head to the side and closed the door.

  “Lock it up and meet me at St. Vincent’s,” Dez shouted to Fenway, tossing her Rachel’s keys. Fenway caught them in midair, and Dez threw the car into reverse as she put a globe light on her dashboard, spun around, and drove off.

  Fenway hadn’t even been home yet.

  She turned around and went back into the townhouse, walking upstairs. She went into Rachel’s bedroom and bent down to get her purse from the floor.

  She saw a pill bottle lying next to the nightstand. She picked up her purse, then walked over to the pill bottle and picked that up too. She turned it around in her hand. Buprenodone Hydrochloride Tablets, USP, 150mg. There was no label on the bottle, no patient or doctor information. Fenway shook the bottle. Empty.

  She pulled her phone out of her purse and called Dez.

  “Kinda busy now, Fenway,” Dez said, picking up.