Warning Isabella to stay well back of the body—a directive Isabella complied with immediately—Fenway took her phone out of her purse and called Sergeant Desiree Roubideaux.
“Don’t tell me you and Craig are fighting about moving boxes already,” Dez said as she answered.
“There’s a dead body on the floor of Craig’s storage space,” Fenway said, “so I don’t think we’ll be moving a lot of boxes in today.”
Dez paused.
“You there?”
“A dead body,” Dez repeated. “On the floor of McVie’s storage space?”
“I took possession of it about ninety seconds ago.” She closed her eyes. “The storage space, I mean, not the dead body. The first space McVie got hadn’t been, uh, vacated yet. So I got this one. White male, five foot six, maybe one fifty.”
“Any ID?”
“I’m about to examine the body. You’re my first call.”
“I’ll check missing persons,” Dez said, “and I’ll call Michi.”
“Dr. Yasuda is still working?”
“Michi said she wouldn’t be home till seven. So yeah, I think she’ll still be in the office.”
“Great. I’d like you to head over here and help interview the employees. See if they saw anything.”
“On my way.”
“Bring Mark too. I might need him to help out.”
Dez chuckled. “Making sure the short-timer doesn’t goof off his last week at work?”
“This is a big facility, Dez. And there’s a squatter in one of the units. We’ll get more done with more of us here.”
“You sound like my mama,” Dez said. “Many hands make light work.”
Fenway gave Dez the address of the storage facility before ending the call, then took out a pair of blue nitrile gloves from her purse, snapped them on, then knelt next to the body. Although she knew there wouldn’t be a pulse, she felt for one anyway.
Keeping one eye on Isabella, Fenway walked back to the Highlander before she remembered that her crime scene kit sat in the trunk of her Accord, not McVie’s SUV.
Okay then—she wouldn’t have a liver thermometer. The body had cooled—but just by touch, Fenway couldn’t tell how much. It wasn’t yet at the temperature of the storage space.
She rocked back onto her heels and tried to bend the man’s right elbow. Stiff as a board. She leaned to her left and attempted to bend his right knee. Also stiff. So rigor mortis had fully set in—meaning at least six to eight hours since death. Less than twenty-four.
The body could have been placed here any time during the night. Maybe as late as six or seven this morning. Hopefully, Cahill Warehouse Storage had working cameras. There were three in the spaces between the front buildings. She’d look for cameras on this side of the complex.
She checked the man’s pockets. Empty.
Now for the wound. She lifted the man’s head—more difficult with the neck in rigor—and felt the wound. Odd—the skin was broken in a line, about an inch wide and perhaps an eighth of an inch high. The first thing she thought: his skull had been stabbed, rather than beaten. A single blow.
She felt around a little more. The hole in the skull wasn’t a clean stab wound; the area around the wound indented in a bit, and one side of the wound sank deeper than the other.
She peered at the bloodstain on the Persian rug. Head wounds bled copiously, and there wasn’t enough blood on the rug for this storage space to be the murder location.
Which meant the body had been moved.
She looked at the bloodstains more closely. Fenway stood, took her gloves off, then turned on the flashlight on her phone. Odd pattern for the bloodstain, as if parts of the rug had been pushed against itself.
She stared at the body for a moment, then nodded. Someone had killed this man, then wrapped his body in this rug and transported it here.
Dead between six and twenty-four hours. A wide net. She turned off the flashlight. Maybe she’d find out more after Dr. Yasuda performed the autopsy.
Fenway glanced up at Isabella, still gripping the round key tightly in her hand and pointedly looking at the fence on the other side of the unit, rather than at the dead body. Isabella had turned a light shade of green.
“You can go back to the office,” Fenway said to her gently. “My sergeant will be here soon, and you can give your statement then.”
“I need to make sure I can help customers.”
“We’ll need you to close the office for the rest of the day,” Fenway said.
“I—I can’t. There are still people who need to pick up keys for their spaces.”
“I’m sorry,” Fenway said, “but this facility is a crime scene.”
“But—”
Fenway held up a hand. “We’ll release it as soon as we can, but the medical examiner is on her way. We need to make sure we can secure this site.”
Isabella swallowed hard. “Oh, right. Of course.”
Fenway watched Isabella turn, totter, then right herself and walk toward the office.
Now for the victim.
No identification. Maybe fingerprints would help determine who the victim was, but as for identifying his killer, still a challenge. Even if the killer hadn’t worn gloves, both Fenway and Isabella had put their hands and fingers all over the lock, the handle, and the roll-up door.
She took a careful walk around the perimeter of the storage unit, looking carefully on the ground for any clues. If this space had been well-cleaned before the body arrived here, anything in the unit might have fallen out of the killer’s pockets or might have been missed by the victim.
There. By the front of the unit, past where the closed door would be. A smudge of blood. Possibly tracked by a shoe—but there wasn’t much of it. And no visible shoe tread.
Fenway shined the flashlight of her phone around some more—and something glinted in the corner. Fenway took a few steps closer and bent down. A screw. A short, hex-head screw, a dark green head; the body of the screw unpainted steel.
She took a step back, then looked at the rails of the roll-up door. No screws were missing.
The gate across from the unit opened, and a silver Ford SUV drove in, turned toward Unit 176, then stopped. Fenway pulled her badge out of her purse and held it up for the driver to see.
A man with deeply tanned skin drove. He sported a mustache and goatee, and had short hair. Late thirties, maybe, although maybe a bit older: his graying temples hadn’t reached his beard yet. The woman in the passenger seat had long black hair and large dark eyes. She looked younger than the driver, though her smile lines made Fenway suspect she was also in her late thirties. Her eyes opened wide when she saw the badge.
Fenway saw movement in the back seat, too, and then the rear door opened.
A figure got out: Tyra Cahill.
She took a step closer. “Hi, Miss Stevenson,” she said, her eyes raking over the scene in front of her. “I—what’s happening?”
“One-twelve wasn’t available,” Fenway said, “so I went back to the office and got one seventy-six.”
“But—” Cahill started, then stared at the open storage door. “What do you mean, one-twelve wasn’t available? I don’t understand—”
“Looks like a squatter stayed in there.”
Cahill set her jaw. “I thought Seth took care of that.”
“You knew about the squatter in one-twelve?”
“We’ve had—uh, people using the storage spaces as residences,” Cahill said, fumbling her words. “Well—not really residences. More like hotel rooms. They’d stay one or two nights, tops. But with the extra cleaning fees, and things like—” She stopped, and her eyes went to the rug—and the body on it.
Fenway followed her gaze. “You have information about this particular unit?”
Cahill’s eyes glazed over, and her jaw went slack, her mind obviously elsewhere.
“Sorry—Ms. Cahill?”
Cahill snapped back to the present. “I’m so sorry. I’m not used to this.”
“I asked if you know about this.”
“About what?”
Fenway gestured. “Why one seventy-six showed up in your system as free, but why it was locked—and why there’s a dead body in it.”
Cahill flinched. “A dead—” She took a few tentative steps closer.
“What did you think?”
“A mannequin, I guess. You see all sorts of weird stuff in storage units.” She squinted. “Oh.”
“What?”
“Those—those are Seth’s shoes.”
Fenway remembered the phone call Cahill had been on when she walked into the office. “Your ex-husband?”
“Yes.” Cahill turned around and walked to the passenger side of the SUV. The woman inside rolled down the window. “I—” She paused and placed a shaky hand between her clavicles, took a deep breath, then continued. “Something happened. We won’t be going to the Harbor Festival after all.”
Fenway couldn’t hear the woman’s response.
“The coroner found a dead body inside that storage unit. I think it’s Seth.”
Another response Fenway couldn’t understand.
“No, no, please don’t wait for me. I’ll be fine. I can’t imagine I’ll be able to get away for at least a few hours.”
“Sorry,” Fenway said, “but if you could ask your friends to pull their car around the front and wait for the police, we’ll want to take their statements.”
The driver of the car leaned over and said something.
“I suppose,” Cahill said doubtfully. “How will I get home otherwise?”
Fenway glanced at the driver and the passenger through the windshield, but the bright sun reflecting off the glass made it hard to see how they reacted. The driver put the SUV into gear, then drove toward the front of the property, turning the corner around the building and out of sight.
“I think we better…” Fenway began, then trailed off.
Cahill had gone back to staring vacantly at the dead body.
Ordinarily, Fenway wouldn’t ask someone to identify a spouse so soon after discovery, but she couldn’t leave the crime scene, and she didn’t want to send Cahill away to compare stories with her friends in the SUV. “You said those were Seth’s shoes.”
Cahill nodded, almost imperceptibly.
Fenway paused and took a few steps closer to the dead body. “I’m sorry to ask you this, Ms. Cahill, but would you come over here to where you can see the man’s face? I’m afraid we need a positive identification.”
Tyra Cahill blanched.
“I wish I didn’t have to—” Fenway began.
“No, no,” Cahill said quietly. “I understand.”
She walked slowly to the body. She barely glanced at his face but said, “Yes, that’s Seth,” before stepping back away from the corpse.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Fenway said. She studied Tyra’s face. If Tyra was shaken by Seth’s dead body, she didn’t show it. “I know this is sudden, but I need a little information.”
“Fine.” Tyra’s voice, tense but firm. No breaking, no crying, no sobbing.
“Can I ask the last time you saw your ex-husband?”
Cahill swallowed hard. “Last night. He—he came over. I wanted him to get the rest of his stuff.”
Fenway cocked her head. “Did he have many items at your house?”
Cahill hesitated. “He did. He does, still.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Well—he came over last night to take several boxes of his possessions, but he showed up in his sports car.” She pressed her lips together. “His two-seater sports car.”
Ah, Tyra had mentioned the Corvette on the phone. “So he couldn’t take much.”
“Right. He said he planned to borrow a friend’s pickup truck, but he didn’t.”
“Did you argue about it?”
“About the boxes? Or about his girlfriend wrapping him around her finger?”
“Girlfriend?”
Cahill scoffed. “I can’t call her anything else without swearing. She’s been screwing Seth for at least a year. Maybe more.”
Fenway switched tactics. “Is this woman named Miranda?”
Cahill furrowed her brow.
“You mentioned her on the call with your ex-husband’s lawyer. When I was in the office earlier.”
“Oh.” Cahill thrust her chin out and put her hands on her hips. Still no signs of grief. Probably easier to be angry at Seth about cheating than to process his death. The grief might hit Cahill later. “Miranda Duchy. Seth is staying at her place. One of those big Sycorax Hill mini-mansions by the airport.” She gritted her teeth before she spoke again. “Miranda got it from her rich ex. I don’t think she’s worked a day in her life.”
“I believe I heard you mention that Seth drove a Corvette?”
“Right, because of course he’d embrace every stereotype of a mid-life crisis. He bought it brand-new a couple of years ago. Has the speeding tickets to go along with his fragile ego.”
“Did he take any boxes last night?”
“One box. He took a single box.” She swore under her breath.
Fenway softened her voice. “Can you lead me through everything that happened?”
“We talked earlier in the week, and he agreed to come by my place at nine o’clock—” Cahill stopped speaking, furrowed her brow, paced a few steps in each direction, then looked down at the ground.
“Nine o’clock is pretty late to pack a bunch of boxes in a pickup truck,” Fenway prodded.
Cahill crossed her arms. “I won’t answer any more questions. You can talk to my lawyer.”
Fenway took a step back. “I see.”
Cahill lifted her head and glared at Fenway. “Am I free to go?”
“We’d like to establish a timeline, and if you saw him last night, you can help us out.”
“I won’t talk without my lawyer present.” Cahill pursed her lips.
When she’d gotten out of the back seat of the Ford SUV, Tyra Cahill had seemed willing to talk—even after she’d seen her ex-husband’s dead body. Had something changed?
Cahill might have realized her answers would throw suspicion onto herself. How frustrating—yes, Fenway knew the spouse was the killer most often in these types of murders, but Cahill’s reluctance to talk would only delay the investigation.
Still, she would have done the same thing in Tyra Cahill’s shoes.
“We’ll question your friends,” Fenway said, “but you’re free to go.”
Cahill nodded, turned on her heel, and walked across the asphalt to the vehicle gate the Ford SUV had come in. She turned and reached out, a smaller pedestrian gate opening. She stepped outside the property, then disappeared around a hedge.
Fenway took out her phone and texted Patrick.
Fenway had just hit Send when the three telltale dots of a response appeared. A moment later:
Fenway nodded with satisfaction. If they could find the Corvette, maybe they’d find the murder weapon—and get closer to unveiling the killer.
A police cruiser arrived a few minutes later, parking in front of the open door. The window rolled down; a trim white man with salt-and-pepper hair and a short beard stuck his head out: Sergeant Mark Trevino, Fenway’s other detective.
“Thanks for coming, Mark,” Fenway said. “Can you secure the scene?”
“Of course.” He glanced at the open door of the storage unit. “Not the way you wanted to spend your afternoon, huh, Coroner?”
Fenway smiled. “At least I’m not schlepping McVie’s boxes back and forth.” She indicated the body of Seth Cahill, still partially wrapped in the rug. “What’s your take?”
Mark got out of the car, roll of police tape in hand, and stood next to Fenway, outside the storage unit, and studied the body.
“Looks like homicide. Bloodstains on the rug, but not as much as I’d expect.” Mark pointed at the pattern of the blood next to Seth Cahill’s head. “You thinking he died somewhere else?”
Fenway nodded. “Wrapped up in the carpet and brought here.”
“The ex-wife’s friends are in the office,” Mark said. “Did you want to talk with them?”
“The ex lawyered up,” Fenway said. “So I’m not sure how helpful her friends will be.”
“Only one way to find out.” Mark stepped next to the edge of the entrance to the storage unit, affixing the police tape to a horizontal wooden slat on the interior wall.
“Body’s in rigor,” Fenway said. “So at least six or eight hours, but not more than twenty-four.”
“Still a wide range,” Mark said.
“I don’t have my kit.”
Mark walked to the other side of the entrance with the roll of police tape. “De la Garza should be here in about fifteen minutes. She’ll have the right tools.”
Fenway pointed at the asphalt area in front of the storage unit. “If the killer dumped the body here,” she said, “maybe we need to cordon this area off too. Get tire tracks or something.”
Mark looked skeptical, pointing to McVie’s Highlander. “You’re talking about this area here?”
“Well, yes.” Fenway stared at the Highlander for a moment. “I’m sure several cars have driven over this asphalt. But the murder happened in the last day, and even if we get ten sets of tire prints, it’ll narrow down the vehicles that were here.”
“Even with the drizzle overnight?”
Fenway frowned; she wasn’t aware of the drizzle. “I suppose that would complicate things.” She paused.
“Kav is good at finding tire tracks. I hope Melissa is bringing him.” Mark’s eyes focused on the asphalt in front of the door, and he pointed. “Are those fibers?”
Fenway stepped forward, then crouched. Several gold and wine-colored fibers. “Looks like they match the Persian rug.”
“The killer might have set the body down here before opening the storage unit door.” Mark reached down with a small evidence baggie and nudged the fibers into the bag.
Fenway ducked under the tape and knelt by the body, pointing at the back of the head. “Blunt force trauma, but I haven’t seen this kind of wound before. A little over an inch long, but only about an eighth of an inch high.”
Mark frowned as he tore off the police tape and tied it to an anchor on the opposite wall. “Like a putty knife?”
“Or the edge of a crowbar if you used a stabbing motion instead of swinging it over your head.”
“What if you turned it ninety degrees? So it’s tall and narrow?”
Fenway furrowed her brow. Mark walked over and stood next to Fenway, then crouched. Fenway put on a new pair of gloves, then knelt and gently lifted Seth Cahill’s head to better see the wound.
Fenway exhaled. “Oh, of course.”
“What?”
“The claw end of a hammer. That would explain these marks here.”
Mark nodded. “That would do it. We’ll see what the M.E. says, but it makes sense to me.”
Fenway stood. “You sticking around the storage facility, short-timer?”
He smiled. “Only to make sure no one messes with the crime scene. Can’t have me getting involved in a case now.”
“You won’t know what to do with yourself after Friday.” She elbowed Mark lightly. “Oh, of course, you’ll join Randy onstage this season.”
Mark’s face fell. “I love my husband, but that would be my ninth circle of Hell.” Then he grinned. “However, I will be using my carpentry skills.”
“Really?”
“Building sets.”
“That’s great.” Fenway turned. “See you back in the office.”
“Sarah said you still haven’t RSVP'd for tomorrow night.”
Fenway grimaced. Sarah Summerhill had only been hired as Fenway’s assistant around the holidays, yet she had knowledge and co-worker rapport like someone who’d been in the position for years. “Sorry, things with Craig have been crazy. Of course I’ll be there.” She had to remember a retirement present, too. Maybe a gift card to a home improvement store, now that she knew he’d be building community theater sets. A little impersonal, but useful. “Why aren’t you having your retirement party on your actual last day?”
“Randy’s the lead in The Paper Sky. Friday’s opening night, and I’ve got front row tickets.”
“Of course. I should go too.”
Mark raised his index finger. “One more thing before you leave…”
Fenway raised her eyebrows.
“I gave you plenty of notice so you could replace me,” Mark said. “But I don’t think you’ve hired anyone yet.”
“Three interviews a couple weeks ago,” Fenway replied. “And a front-runner.” Deputy Celeste Salvador, in fact. She and another deputy, Brian Callahan, had both passed their detective exams, and she’d interviewed them both—along with another candidate from the neighboring county.
“Fantastic. I wanted to give them more than a day or two of on-the-job training, but anything is better than nothing.”
“The hiring process must be held up in HR.” Why was replacing Mark like pulling teeth? Fenway had been in this job for a little over a year now, and so much had changed: Rachel’s career change from coroner’s assistant to public relations director; two mayors had been murdered; Migs passing the bar exam and his imminent departure; McVie losing the election for mayor. She didn’t want Mark to leave, either, though she’d been much closer with Dez since becoming coroner.
But the county needed two sergeants reporting to Fenway. Not only had the county had more murders in the past year than the previous decade combined, but the influx of morpheranyl, opioids, and methamphetamines had significantly impacted the community. Overdoses and violent crime had gone up. Fenway might be a popular local figure, with a stellar solve rate on homicides, but her popularity didn’t extend to McVie’s replacement, Sheriff Gretchen Donnelly, who hadn’t been in office at the beginning of the opioid crisis but caught flak for its effects.
Fortunately, this wasn’t her first new hire. After Rachel’s promotion, Fenway had figured most of the delay in hiring Sarah had been because of the mayor. And Sarah was a fantastic employee. Fenway felt like she knew the hiring system better now: she’d been confident when submitting the job requisition, filling out the online forms, approving the job requirements. It had taken a while, but she’d done it. But Dominguez County’s hiring process obviously moved at a glacial pace.
“Oh, and Mark, get a couple of uniforms to sit on one-twelve.”
“One-twelve?”
“McVie’s original storage unit. Someone stayed in there last night. Or the night before.”
“They’re not there now?”
“No. But I saw a striped sleeping bag, a camp stove, a portable toilet. Ms. Cahill said that Seth would take care of the squatters they had.”
“You’re thinking they had a confrontation with Mr. Cahill and killed him?”
“Maybe.” Fenway set her mouth in a line. “We’d be remiss if we didn’t follow up,” she said. “But I don’t have any evidence either way.”
“Why wouldn’t the squatter be a prime suspect?”
“Because that”—Fenway pointed at the rug the dead body lay on—“looks like an expensive rug. I don’t expect they’d have wrapped the body up in a twenty-thousand-dollar rug only to dump it in another storage unit.”
Mark tilted his head. “This is a storage facility. There must be dozens of rugs in these units. If they killed him, maybe they took his keys, opened one of the other units, grabbed the first thing they saw to wrap a body in—”
“It’s a possibility.”
“I’ll get a couple uniforms here,” Mark said. “But if that’s what happened, it follows that they took off and left all their stuff behind.”
“Probably,” Fenway said, “but still—”
“Right. Due diligence.” Mark tilted his head. “You know we’re a little short-staffed today.”
“Call in some uniforms from the Paso Querido station.”
Mark nodded. “After the P.Q. uniforms get here, you want me back at the office?”
“Oh.” Fenway thought a moment. “Our victim was living at his girlfriend’s house. Her name is Miranda Duchy. Interview her. Ask if she knows if Seth had enemies, if he’s been acting strange.”
“And where she was last night.”
“Right.” Fenway smiled at Mark, then turned and walked around Building C toward the office, removing her blue nitrile gloves.
Dez stood inside. The driver and passenger of the Ford SUV sat on plastic chairs, with Isabella behind the counter, standing next to a young white man in coveralls with stitching on the left chest that read Mathis.
“There she is,” Isabella said, pointing at Fenway. “Ask her.”