The Warehouse Coroner by Paul Austin Ardoin

Author:Paul Austin Ardoin [Ardoin, Paul Austin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pax Ardsen

Chapter Fourteen

Fenway opened the door of the coroner’s office and Sarah Summerhill’s face popped up from behind her monitor.

“Oh, I didn’t expect you back for another couple of hours.” Sarah tilted her head. “Wasn’t Mark serving a warrant?”

“Yeah. Dez and Mark are there. No sense in all of us taking up space.” Fenway hadn’t waited for Mark’s arrival, instead taking a FlashRide from the Duchy house down to the Puerto Avila beach parking lot to pick up her Accord.

On the way to the beach, she’d peppered the driver with questions about how the company tracks riders and trips—until he turned up the radio and made it clear he didn’t want any more conversation. Fenway put her elbows on the counter, about three feet from Sarah’s workstation. “Can you do some research for me?”

“Sure.”

“Check with the rideshare companies. See if anyone got picked up or dropped off at the storage place—or anywhere in, say, a two- or three-block radius—on Monday night or early Tuesday.”

“Sure.” Sarah clicked the mouse, then looked at Fenway. “Taxis too?”

“Yes. They take cash, so that might be a way our killer hid their trip.”

Fenway walked into her office and dropped her purse on the desk, then turned and took a few steps toward Sarah’s workstation. “Also, I discovered that Tyra Cahill, the ex-wife of our murder victim, identified a body from a drug overdose death in November.”

Sarah blinked. “Coincidence?”

“Maybe not. Our murder victim stored that same drug at his storage facility.”

Sarah nodded. “And that’s too much of a coincidence.”

Fenway hesitated. “Murder weapon found at our victim’s girlfriend’s house. The girlfriend doesn’t have an alibi, and they were fighting a few hours before the murder. But even so, Tyra identifying the body of someone who died from the same drug her ex stored? Yeah, too much of a coincidence for me.”

“What does Dez think?”

“Dez rightly pointed out that we have no evidence implicating anyone but the girlfriend.”

Sarah chuckled. “But you’re not buying it.”

“Maybe I’m a natural skeptic,” Fenway said. “Tyra Cahill identified the body of Scott Behrens. Why did she identify his body?”

“Uh—I have access to the files. I can look.”

“Please.” Fenway approached the desk and started pacing in front of it.

“You have access to these records on your laptop, too.”

“Humor me?” Fenway looked at Sarah. “She’d have to be a relative, right?”

“Most of the time, yes.” Sarah started clicking the mouse, then typed on her keyboard. “Okay, Scott Behrens—twenty-one years old.”

Fenway squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remember the backgrounder she’d been sent. “Tyra is—um, let’s see, thirty-seven. That would have made her…”

“Sixteen at Scott’s birth.”

Fenway nodded. “And Scott Behrens⁠—”

“Adopted,” Sarah said, not taking her eyes off the monitor. “By Rebecca and James Behrens. Oh—they both died in an auto accident fifteen years ago.”

“When Scott was eight?”

“Looks like it. Hold on.”

That would explain the teeth, the foster system. Scott Behrens had fallen through the cracks. “So Tyra Cahill is Scott Behrens’ birth mother? Or an older sister? Or maybe a long-lost cousin or something.”

Sarah shrugged. “I don’t have access to the adoption files—or, if I do, I need to figure out where to find them.

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