He steps out of the room and she can hear him talking to someone in the corridor. He comes back and sits down and soon after someone drops a file on his desk and leaves. He reviews the sparse-looking file silently, while she watches. She knows there’s not much to it.
‘It looks like there wasn’t much of an investigation,’ he says, echoing her thoughts. He looks up at her, considering. ‘Leave it with me,’ he says.
Once Erica Voss departs, Sheriff Bastedo looks at the file again. Notes the name of the coroner, George Yancik. Yancik has been the coroner in Grant County for almost twenty years. It seems that Yancik and the previous sheriff, Michael Bewdly, quickly agreed that this was simply a tragic accident. On the face of it, that’s certainly what it appeared to be. But Bastedo’s curiosity is aroused, and he’d found the woman who just left to be compelling. She spoke clearly and persuasively, and what she said had the ring of truth.
But is there anything to what she’s saying? It obviously looked like an accident at the time. On the other hand – if it was murder, he’d got away with it. The perfect murder. If you had to get rid of your wife and unborn child, it was an easy way to do it. Brilliant, really.
He picks up the phone and calls George Yancik. When he answers the phone, Bastedo asks, ‘Mind if I pay a visit?’
‘Sure, when?’
‘Now,’ Bastedo says. ‘I’ll be right over.’
He hangs up, grabs the file, goes outside and gets in his black-and-white truck with SHERIFF emblazoned across the door and drives the short distance to the coroner’s office. When he arrives, he’s met by Yancik, and they go to his office. ‘What’s this about?’ Yancik asks when they are seated.
Bastedo places the slim file on the other man’s desk. ‘This case. Nine and a half years ago. A woman died of carbon monoxide poisoning sitting in a running car on Dupont Street while the husband shovelled it out of a snowbank. She was eight months pregnant.’
Yancik’s eyes sharpen. ‘Yes, I remember. It was tragic.’
‘I have some questions.’
‘Okay,’ Yancik says, ‘but it was a very straightforward case.’
‘Tell me what you remember.’
The coroner settles back in his chair. ‘There was a big snowstorm. Record snowfall – everybody was digging out. The ploughs were running. If I remember correctly, they were going on a trip and the wife waited in the running car. She fell asleep. End of story. An autopsy confirmed she died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Very open and shut.’
‘And the husband? No one seems to have investigated him very thoroughly.’
Yancik’s eyes sharpen and he leans forward. ‘Sheriff Bewdly questioned him, and we spoke afterwards. I found, based on what I had before me, that the death was accidental.’ He sits back again in his chair and asks, ‘Why?’
Bastedo tells him about the new information. As he talks, he sees Yancik’s brow cloud over.
‘We didn’t know about any of this at the time,’ the coroner says. ‘Why didn’t this woman say anything then?’
‘She says she was afraid of being implicated,’ Bastedo answers, ‘and that now she wants to do the right thing. In any event,’ he continues, ‘we know about it now. The question is, what do we do about it?’
Yancik sits back in his chair, thinking about the case. He feels uneasy. What the sheriff has just told him is disturbing. If what this woman said was true – if she was having an affair with the husband, if he told her that he wanted out of the marriage, if there was insurance money – they really should take another look. Just to be sure.
It will look bad to bring this up again, as if he hadn’t done his job the first time around. There’s been a lot of flak, recently, about the fact that coroners in Colorado are elected officials. Colorado is one of only sixteen US states that still elect coroners, the others having moved over to a system of qualified medical examiners. This will stir the pot, cause further scrutiny. It’s the coroner’s job to investigate deaths, to determine the cause of death and the manner of death – whether it be from natural causes, suicide, accident or homicide. People will complain that he wasn’t qualified for the job. The press will give him a hounding. He feels a bit indignant. He relied on the Sheriff’s Office to investigate properly. The autopsy itself was performed by a