Unfinished Business - Barbara Seranella

by Barbara Seranella

  "Can you get me the address?" he asked.

  "I'll have to look it up."

  She looked at the picture again, still wondering how such a vibrant woman could become a police statistic. "What's that black stuff on her face?"

  "I can't comment."

  "She was murdered?"

  "I really can't say. "

  Can't or won't? she wondered. As if his being there with a dead woman's photograph and being cagey with information didn't already tell her that foul play was involved. "I'll go get that address."

  She went into the office, leafed through Lou's Rolodex, and removed the Bergman card for St. John. There was no point in hanging on to it now, but she felt a guilty twinge. Deleting a human being from your life shouldn't be this easy.

  "What's going on?" Lou asked.

  "Remember Diane Bergman? Honda Prelude?"

  "The one who just lost her husband?"

  "Yeah, now she's dead, too."

  "How?"

  "I don't know. That was her body they found yesterday morning on the freeway. She must not have had any ID on her."

  Lou spun around in his chair. "What do they think happened?"

  Munch shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. I just know she's dead."

  "Wasn't she always doing all that charity work?"

  "Yeah, she was very active. And really a nice woman, too. Not stuck up at all."

  "It's a goddamn shame," he said, going back to his accounting.

  "Yeah, it really is." She waited a moment, but he said nothing more. What did she expect? Tears? Why wasn't she crying? St. John was studying her diplomas on the wall when she returned to the service desk. She had three certifications from NIASE, the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence, her smog license, and, most recently, the letter of completion from Bosch for the fuel injection course she'd taken.

  "Impressive," he said.

  "Yeah, I figured it would be reassuring to the customers." She straightened one of the frames. "How's Caroline, by the way?" It would be weird if she didn't ask. She loved Caroline, too. Caroline St. John, formerly known to her as Miss Rhinehart, was Munch's onetime probation officer. Now Caroline and Mace were godparents to Asia, and everything was just as neat as could be.

  "We're good," he said. "When are you going to get married?"

  All the good ones are taken, she thought. She didn't dare say it. This too shall pass, she told herself.

  He took the Rolodex card from her and squeezed her shoulder. "Thanks."

  "There's something else," she said. "About Diane. This guy was hassling her at the party Friday. I don't know who he was, but I saw them arguing about something."

  "But you didn't recognize the guy?"

  "No, I never really saw his face. I was in the car and he and Diane were up at the house. He was just your average middle-aged white guy. White hair, stocky build, three-piece suit."

  "What do you consider middle-aged?" St. John asked with a smile.

  "Fifties," she said. "Much older than you."

  "Not that much." He rolled his head from shoulder to shoulder, his eyes never shutting. "Call me if you think of anything else. Otherwise, I'll see you tonight."

  Munch watched him drive away then went back outside to finish removing the radiator from a Ford Torino. It took a half an hour to drain the coolant, then disconnect the hoses and transmission lines and finally the bolts that attached the radiator to the Torino's frame. But even after all that activity her shoulder still felt warm where St. John had rested his hand.

  Inappropriate infatuations. That was the crux of it. Wanting what you couldn't have and having what you couldn't bring yourself to want. Such was the ongoing condition of her love life. She stripped the radiator of fittings and shroud clips and called the radiator shop to pick it up.

  Midday, Lou emerged from his office.

  "Lover boy is here," he said, his lean face expressing his displeasure.

  Chapter 5

  As soon as Munch had given St. John the deceased woman's name and address, he had gone to the house on Chenault, made a cursory search, and posted patrol officers who barricaded the premises with yellow tape. He also arranged for a block on the phone. This would garner him a listing of all calls placed to and from the house starting from today and going back as far as he deemed pertinent. More than twenty-four hours had gone by since the murder, and it was the first twenty-four hours that were so critical in a homicide investigation.

  Two boys looking for aluminum cans on the side of the freeway had discovered the nightgown-clothed body on Monday morning around 7 A.M. Neither of the boys would ever forget such an image. That first real-life glimpse of a fresh murder was like that. The dead woman's legs were spread open, her heels separated by a distance of more than four feet. There were scorch marks along the torso and her eyes had been taped shut with silver duct tape. Pictures had been snapped before and after the tape was removed. It was a later photograph that St. John had shown Munch.

  The coroner sent the victim's fingerprints to the police database when they received the body on Monday. A match was always a long shot. Some day fingerprints might all be put on a computer database, but for now law enforcement personnel mostly had to rely on some poor schmuck sitting in a room with a magnifying glass. His only job all day was to compare ridges and whorls. And St. John thought he had problems. The coroner's primary function was to determine cause and mechanism of death. The duties of the office also included identifying the deceased, protecting that deceased's property, and making arrangements for disposal of the body.

  St. John knew the coroner's office was overworked and perhaps not moved by the same sense of urgency that drove him. And beyond that, nameless toe tags haunted him, especially when attached to women who had been brutalized.

  He had been all set to run the dead woman's picture in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times. He hated soliciting an ID that way. The woman had been wearing a wedding ring. Hell of a way to find out your wife had been murdered—to see her lifeless face on page three of the Metro section. Although, the husband usually already knew, especially when no missing persons report had been filed. One out of three female murder victims is killed by her husband or boyfriend.

  Diane Bergman had been a widow, so there would be no bereaved husband to console and investigate. St. John's next task was to contact the victim's relatives. Actually this was also the domain of the coroner, but in cases of violent and wrongful death, St. John knew he needed to be there when the news was delivered. It was important to clock the reactions when the loved ones heard about the death.

  The Scientific Investigation Division criminalists arrived at the Bergman house at nine-thirty. While waiting for them, St. John contacted the coroner's office and let them know the probable identity of the deceased. They would call Sacramento and request a copy of her driver's license photograph. More scientific methods of identification would be used in the coming days: comparisons of ante- and postmortem X rays, dental records, fingerprints. The autopsy the coroner's office told him, was scheduled for the following morning. Deputy Coroner Frank Shue had been assigned to the field investigative portion of the case and met St. John at the address on Chenault. Even if the house turned out not to be the murder scene, it could very well hold clues that would assist both men in their jobs. St. John always arranged to meet the coroner's office personnel at the scene. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck in a car all day with one of those guys. The detective had worked with Frank Shue on at least a dozen occasions. No matter what hour of the day the man always looked as if he were emerging from a three-day binge. Today was no exception. Shue's upper torso was clothed in the incongruous mix of a tweed jacket and a plaid flannel shirt. He had also managed to find a color of slacks that didn't match or complement a single hue in either shirt or coat. His two-tone saddle shoes hardly pulled the outfit together.

  The two men had spent the remainder of the morning at the Bergman house. It was a modest home for the area, which put it in t
he $900,000 price range. There was no sign of forced entry The double garage had one car parked inside, a Mercedes. The Sunday paper lay on the driveway.

  "This is the biggest goddamn kitchen I've ever seen," St. John told Shue as he stood at one end and looked across the expanse of endless counters and brand-new appliances.

  "My wife would love this," Shue said, scratching his two-day growth of beard. "And technically what you got here is two rooms. This part here with the table and atrium is a breakfast nook."

  "You've got a wife?" St. John asked.

  "Yeah, why?"

  "She lets you leave the house dressed like that?"

  "Like what?"

  "Never mind." St. John opened a shuttered door that still smelled of fresh paint. He'd been expecting to find a pantry or a laundry room. Instead, he discovered a desk and hutch. "Here we go," he said. Her checkbook rested atop a stack of bills. The most recent postmark was October 5, 1984. The envelopes had been opened and the invoices spread flat. The body had been found Monday morning, the eighth, so this mail must have arrived on Saturday. It had most certainly been the last bit of mail she'd ever picked up.

  He also found her appointment calendar, an address book, and a stack of credit card receipts. He collected the trash from the wastebasket under her desk, knowing how critical those miscellaneous scraps could be, especially when attempting to re-create the last few days of a person's life. Among the trash was an unopened announcement of a sweepstakes winning and an advertisement from a dating service called Great Expectations. Must be nice, he thought, not to be in search of love or money. He filled a cardboard box with all the various paperwork and had the photographers chronicle the unmade bed in the master bedroom. A lot of people who lived alone didn't bother to make their beds, but considering the immaculate condition of the rest of the house, and the fact that the vic was wearing only a nightgown when her body was discovered, the bed might be important. He also ordered fingerprints collected off all amenable surfaces.

  Photographs in expensive frames crowded small, circular antique-looking wooden tables in the living room. Several of the pictures showed the victim coupled with an elderly man, his arm draped over Diane Bergman's shoulder in a proprietary manner. The man seemed to be doing all the smiling.

  While St. John searched inside the house, three two-man teams of uniformed cops and two pairs of major crime detectives from the West Los Angeles station knocked on the neighbors' doors, asking if anyone had heard or seen anything suspicious in the last couple of nights.

  Not only had the neighbors noticed nothing suspicious, the investigators reported, no one could even remember setting eyes on Diane before Wednesday.

  "That's a big help," St. John said, dissatisfied. "I need to know what happened after Friday night."

  The cops looked down at their notebooks but could add nothing more. St. John understood the problem. The driveway was shrouded by drooping eucalyptus trees that provided the ultimate in privacy.

  At eleven-fifteen, St. John sealed the front door and made certain that the officer guarding the entrance would let no one inside without St. John's authorization.

  "I need to check back at work and then we'll notify next of kin," St. John told Shue.

  "Sounds good to me," Shue said, tucking in only half his shirt. "I'll follow you."

  The drive back to the windowless two-story bunker that the West Los Angeles PD called home took fifteen minutes. St. John found several messages in his box. He had put out a Crime Alert bulletin to other homicide departments yesterday, describing the corpse with its odd burn marks on the ankles, abdomen, and breasts. He also described the negligee she had been wearing, and that her eyes had been bound shut. He withheld only that duct tape had been used. The first call he decided to return was to the major crimes target team of the Rampart Division.

  "Investigations," a man's voice answered.

  "Yeah, I'm looking for Rosales."

  "You got him."

  "Mace St. John, West L.A. Homicide. You rang?"

  "Yeah, I got your twenty-four-hour Crime Alert report today.

  You got a DB in a nightgown?" DB being cop speak for Dead Body "Scorch marks on the torso?"

  "That's right. Sound familiar?"

  "We've got a case that might interest you. A rape call, two months ago. White female dumped on the shoulder of the freeway. Wearing only a 'baby doll' style nightgown. Vic's name was Veronica Parker. She dances at a titty bar out by the airport under the name Ginger Root. Place called Century Entertainment. That's where the suspect, ah, abducted her."

  "Did your vic give you a description?"

  "No, the suspect taped her eyes shut."

  "Duct tape?"

  "You got it. The suspect provided the nightgown and used a condom. Was your victim electrocuted?"

  "I don't have the post in yet. Why?"

  "Our guy used some kind of modified stun gun to control his victim. He also told her he could do worse. Who's the ME?"

  "Sugarman probably. "

  "Tell him to look for boiled blood."

  St. John made a note on his desk blotter. "What else?"

  "He disguised his voice with an electrolarynx, one of those speech aids that people who don't have vocal cords use. We took a ride out to the club, but didn't get much help from the other employees or management. Shit, the manager didn't even want to give up his name. Had to damn near beat it out of him." St. John didn't ask if the guy was speaking figuratively. "What was it?"

  "Joey Polk."

  "Joey Polk?"

  "Yeah, you know him?"

  "Yeah, he has a long pedigree around these parts. I busted the father a few times." The realization that he was on the second generation of yet another family of bad guys made St. John feel old. He didn't need to count his years on the job. Every cop he knew kept a running tally happy to boast on a moment's notice the number of days until retirement.

  St. John didn't consider himself decrepit, but he wasn't the same young buck who had left the army in '64 and gone straight into the academy. Twenty years had gone by fast. Although he still felt too young to have been doing the same job for two decades. Perhaps the fact that he'd worked in different locations helped. He sure didn't regret his most recent transfer from Parker Center's Robbery/Homicide to the West Los Angeles Division. That long drive downtown every day to Parker Center had added stress to an already pressure-filled existence—what with the 3 A.M. calls to murder scenes, and the twenty-three-minute code sevens that allowed only enough time to choke down a Big Mac and fries before hitting the streets again. Add to that the drinking that so often seemed necessary just to wind down at night. At forty-two, he was just eight years shy of middle age, according to Munch. He couldn't remember when he hadn't answered to a chain of command.

  Oh fuck it, he thought. The next thing he knew he'd be having an irresistible urge to buy a Porsche or start dyeing his hair or some crazy shit like that. He turned his attention back to the matter at hand.

  "I might run over there and see what I can find out," he told the Rampart dick.

  "Let me know what happens," Rosales said. The voice sounded young and enthusiastic. "I'd love to catch this guy."

  They hung up after promising to share all pertinent information.

  St. John pulled out the murder book he had started the day before. He made a note, "Boiled blood," and laughed that one-note expression of amusement and disbelief men use to save their sanity in morbid situations. He studied photographs of the body and dump site. Photographs he had taken himself while waiting for the coroner's wagon to arrive.

  The position of the body had seem staged, with one leg pointing north, the other pointing west. The killer would most probably have driven to the site, as it was a freeway underpass. No tire tracks were distinguishable on the asphalt, but there was an inch-deep layer of run-off soil where the body had been dropped. Dropped and positioned, not dragged. He made another note to himself and then put the pencil between his teeth and bit down. Absently he c
hecked his shirt pocket for a box of Tiparillos, forgetting he was out.

  The shoe prints were all around the freeway side of the body. The muck lining the road was equal parts road oil and dirt with a high clay composite. It should have recorded excellent impressions, and yet the shoeprints weren't that distinctive. The dental-plaster casts he had made of those smeared shoeprints had picked up some blue fibers. There was something else about those shoeprints as he studied them now, something strangely familiar about their fuzzy edges.

  Chapter 6

  Munch didn't have to turn around to know who Lou had sarcastically referred to as "lover boy." D.W. Sanders had arrived. She heard the creak of his van door opening.

  D.W. called himself a contractor, which basically meant that he owned a set of carpentry tools and did odd jobs around the neighborhood. He also delivered Meals-On-Wheels every Tuesday. She had met him when his van was towed in a month earlier needing a fuel pump.

  D.W. was Lou's height, about two inches shy of six feet, and closer to forty than thirty. He had a receding hairline and grew the remaining strands of his black hair long enough to tie back into a ponytail. Not a bad-looking guy but he would look better if he lost some of the stoop in his shoulders.

  He made it a habit to stop in most mornings, always bringing her coffee fixed just the way she liked it. He'd claim to be on his way to a job. The way he told it he had quite a business. The big time, he hinted, was right around the corner. He referred to his customers as "clients" and his helpers as his "crew." In fact, he had said last week, the way things were going, pretty soon he was going to need help with the bookkeeping and scheduling. He wanted to hire somebody who was handicapped to run his office. From her own experience with the small-business circuit, Munch knew D.W. had far too much free time to be able to afford office help.