No offence Intended - Barbara Seranella

by Barbara Seranella

  He entered an investigation the same way he approached a chess match. The best way to stay ahead of the game was to consider the board from the opponents viewpoint. This meant figuring out why the guy had made his last move and what his next best possible move should be. Though in order to get into the game plan of the average criminal, Blackstone usually had to adjust himself to think stupid.

  He sketched a profile of the truck and its driver as they must have been just seconds before the shots were fired. Putting himself in the driver's seat, he ran through a series of scenarios. Something wasn't adding up. He didn't believe for a moment that this had been a traffic dispute that escalated to gunfire. There was more to this one. He could smell it.

  The second shot, assuming its accuracy wasn't just luck, was too deliberate. But to commit the act so openly in broad daylight . . . And yet, no witnesses had come forward. Maybe the killers knew exactly what they were doing. The police search of the freeway hadn't turned up any spent cartridges. Quite possibly the shell casings had been picked up in the tread of another vehicles tires and carried away One more lucky break for the bad guys.

  Sergeant Mann chose that moment to emerge from his office and walk over to Blackstone. "What you working on?" he asked.

  "The freeway sniping."

  "Any luck?"

  "Check this out," Blackstone said. He sat up in his chair and put his hands in front of him as if he were holding a steering wheel. "I'm driving on the freeway and I see another vehicle. They cut me off and we have words." He raised his left hand in the one-fingered salute of the freeway "The passenger of the other vehicle pulls out a rifle and aims at me."

  He ducked to the right.

  "So what's your point?"

  "It doesn't work. Our victim scooted down. Why would he scoot down?"

  "What do you think?"

  "I think he recognized the second vehicle before they saw him. He couldn't get off the freeway, so he slowed down and waited for them to pass.

  Only before they passed, they saw him and popped him."

  "That's great," Philip Mann said. "All you need now is a witness, the murder weapon, and the doer to confess. Yep, sounds like you got it dicked."

  "I'm just saying it wasn't random and it wasn't rage." The second thought had come to him as he spoke, but it fit. The kill shot was too right on, too precise. Rage was always so . . . messy "I'm saying I think he recognized his assailants, that's all."

  "Did the coroner ID the victim?"

  "Not yet. The decedent had a phony driver's I license. The truck was stolen." Blackstone opened his notebook. The events were still fresh in his mind, but he made it a habit to never make a statement to a superior officer without having his notes open in front of him. "The deputy coroner pulled a set of prints as soon as he received the body We figure the decedent had to have a record. The print guys say they might have something by next month, sooner if the decedent had been busted locally"

  "Any witnesses?"

  Blackstone thought about what the traffic cop had said about the female in the GTO. "Not really We're putting out a bulletin on the evening news. See if that shakes anything loose. The autopsy's scheduled for tomorrow."

  "Why so quick?"

  "Sugarman has classes on Saturday He wanted to include the freeway Doe, said it was a textbook example of entrance and exit wounds."

  "All right, keep me informed."

  Blackstone noticed that he was leaving out the part about the FBI, keeping Claire Donavon to himself.

  Mann ran his lingers through his hair. "Hopefully the press release will yield some results. Other than that, sounds like we're on hold. Move on. Where's your partner?"

  Blackstone looked down the hallway "Probably in the head. He's going through this sympathy thing with his wife."

  "When is she due?"

  "Next month."

  "What's this, his third?"

  "Yeah, he's got two boys and I wish he'd stop already He's gained ten pounds with each pregnancy" Blackstone tucked in his shirt as he spoke, admiring the feel of his own flat stomach.

  "Is he hoping for a girl?"

  "Don't even get him started on what he wants. He's got all his charts out. He says if Sally can just hold out until after November twenty-first then they won't have to deal with a Scorpio."

  "Anything is good, as long as it's healthy right?"

  "You would think."

  Blackstone watched Philip Mann return to his office and thought about the woman in the GTO. She had recognized the truck. She had to know something. Unless she was just one of those cop groupies who always wanted to get involved when they smelled a badge. If that was the case, then he knew a lot of guys who would want to find her anyway Those citizens were usually generous with their private gifts of civic appreciation.

  He started to put away the photographs with the case file he'd begun on the freeway John Doe when something in the picture of the truck's interior caught his eye. A small triangle of white against the dark blue upholstery of the seat. He scratched at the speck with his fingernail and reached for his phone. Maybe the guy at the impound yard could give it a look.

  Sergeant Mann tapped on his glass wall and gestured impatiently Blackstone acknowledged his boss with a wave, slipped the Polaroids back into the still thin folder, and set it on the middle level of his stacking trays. He stood, put on his Jacket and went to see what the sergeant had for him.

  "We've got another shooting," Mann said. "You want it?" He held up the working incident report.

  "Drive-by?"

  "No, residential. Multiple victims."

  "I'm on it," Blackstone said, reaching for the address. Halfway down the hall, he caught Alex coming out of the bathroom. "Come on," he said. "We've got another shooting. Multiple victims."

  "You know your eyes glow when you say that?"

  Alex said, zipping up his pants.

  "Why don't you finish doing that while you're still inside?" Blackstone asked. "Did you even wash your hands?"

  'You know, I have a question about that. Are you supposed to wash them before or after?"

  ‘You're a class act, Perez. Anyone ever tell you that?"

  "You want me to drive, Mother?"

  "No, I know right where this place is. You just finish getting dressed, all right?"

  Alex straightened the strap of his suspender. He'd given up on belts. "By the way I finally got through to that number," he said, pulling on his sports Jacket, but leaving it unbuttoned out of necessity

  "The one we found in the freeway Doe's wallet?"

  "Yeah. It's to a bar in Canyonville, Oregon, called the Snakepit."

  "Charming. Did anyone there know our victim?"

  "The guy I talked to wasn't exactly a model citizen. I called the county sheriff and he gave me the number of the resident deputy guy named Tom Moody. Moody used to be a homicide dick with Beverly Hills PD."

  "Small world."

  "He said he got fed up with being told who he could and couldn't bust. Now, he says, he's the law. I told him I'd mail him a photograph of our freeway Doe. He said he'd ask around when he receives it."

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, Blackstone and Alex arrived at the scene of the shooting. The address they sought was on Hampton Avenue, south of Rose, past a ramshackle collection of fifties stucco and wood houses, most of which sported tin-roofed, non-code additions. The Thomas Guide identified the part of Los Angeles between Washington Boulevard and Rose Avenue and east of the ocean as Venice Beach, but Venice Beach had many subdivisions—demographics known to cops and locals. The single-story whitewashed stucco building in question was located smack on the border between Tortilla Flats and Ghost Town—each of which were patrolled by their own racially segregated gangs. Ghost Town was home to the all-black Shoreline Crips; Tortilla Flats hosted the Chicano V-l3s. It was rumored that the wiser residents of Hampton and Electric avenues slept under their mattresses. At least once, often twice, a week the detectives rolled on a suspicious death call
in the area.

  As they pulled up to the building, there was no mistaking that something catastrophic had gone down. A crowd had gathered on the sidewalk; some had brought their own chairs. There was a sense of festive hysteria in the air. News crews had already positioned spotlights, rendering dusk to daylight, and were conducting interviews with the yellow-taped apartment building as their backdrop.

  The cloying odor of fatty pork assaulted Blackstone's nose. He looked across the street and located its source, a small storefront squeezed between a coin-op Laundromat and an apartment building. Bright white letters on the green and red awning declared LA MEXICANA DELI The windows were protected by wrought-iron burglar bars. Brand names of American beers glowed in neon letters. Behind them, cardboard boxes of canned goods were stacked to the ceiling, doubling as added protection against burglaries and bullets. He turned back to his crime scene.

  A uniformed officer stood guard by the front door. He nodded to Blackstone and Alex as they approached.

  "Where are they?" Blackstone asked.

  "Just head down the hall"

  The bodies were in the back bedroom. There were two of them, a Hispanic couple. It appeared that they had been shot as they slept. Blackstone checked their ring fingers for wedding bands. The girl wore a single-carat engagement ring.

  He pressed a finger into her throat. The skin blanched and remained indented. "She's been dead about six to eight hours, I'd say"

  There was a small shrine to the Virgin Mary on the dresser. Alex crossed himself before he knelt down and examined the pile of cushions on the floor. "What do you make of this?"

  Blackstone shrugged. "Maybe some relative shared the room."

  "Yeah, that's common enough around here," Alex said.

  Blackstone returned to the bodies.

  "The male took the first hit," he said. "He never saw it coming." He lifted the woman's right hand and showed Alex the defense wound through her palm.

  Blackstone walked outside to speak to the officer who was first on the scene. "Who found them?" he asked.

  "The female victim, Cynthia Ruiz, worked at the market across the street. Her boss came looking for her when she didn't show up for work."

  "What time was that?"

  "Around four-fifteen. Dispatch recorded his call at four-thirty When she didn't answer her door, he came around back and looked through the window."

  "And the other victim?"

  "Her fiancé, Jesus Guzman."

  "Was she into drugs?"

  "No, I knew them both," the cop said. "They were nice kids, no gang affiliations. I think we're looking at totally innocent victims here." He emphasized the words totally innocent.

  Blackstone appreciated what the cop was saying. Not that anyone deserved to be murdered, but he'd seen too many cases not to admit that the victims' actions often contributed to their untimely demise.

  "What do you think?" he asked.

  "Robbery gone bad, probably"

  "Then why didn't they take her ring?" Blackstone asked.

  He looked over the cop's shoulder at the door. The striker plate had been torn from the fiberboard door frame. He had the cop step aside while he took pictures of the damage. The brass 6 hung crookedly below the peephole. He moved in closer and saw an empty nail hole inches above the skewed house number. With one finger he twirled the number around and found that the nail hole in the door aligned perfectly with the drilled hole in what now appeared to be the number 9. He took a picture of this as well.

  "Alex," he called.

  Alex emerged from the house. "What's up?"

  He showed him the house number. "Let's take a walk."

  The apartment next door had no house number, but the one beyond was labeled 7. They rounded the corner. The door of the unit on the east side of the building was also unmarked. Blackstone knocked, but there was no answer.

  Alex peered through one of the small dirty windows flanking the door and said, "It's too dark to see anything." He went back to their unit and returned with a flashlight.

  Blackstone panned the room the best he could but saw nothing amiss. "See if you can locate the manager and End out who rents this unit," he said.

  "I'm going over to the market and talk to the guy"

  "Hey Jigsaw, while you're over there, pick me up some churros. You know, those long doughnut things. The crunchy ones."

  "You're not eating those in my car."

  "Yeah, yeah."

  The witness repeated his story for Blackstone. How he had seen the bodies through the back bedroom window, how there was nothing to be done.

  "Did anyone enter the apartment?" Blackstone asked. .

  "Maybe the gavacha."

  "What white girl?"

  "Aiy" he said. "The one with the baby I should have said something before. I have been so upset. Never in my life I have seen such a terrible thing."

  "Where is this woman now? Do you know her?"

  "No sé," he said.

  Blackstone took his notes, bought Alex two churros, and returned to the crime scene. They spent the next twenty minutes interviewing neighbors and local merchants. Typically no one had seen or heard anything.

  Through a ten-year-old interpreter—Alex's Spanish was sketchy—Blackstone learned that the building had no manager. The child explained that rent was paid to a realty office in Mar Vista. Blackstone called that office and was given the brokers home phone number. The broker in Mar Vista said she forwarded the checks on the owner. After much grumbling, she finally came up with the name and telephone number of a retired doctor living in Palm Springs. When Blackstone dialed the Riverside County exchange, he got the doctor's maid, who informed Blackstone that Meester Doctor would be back on Monday night late. He left his name and number, then carefully printed all this information in his notebook.

  He walked back into the house for a final look—over before the coroner removed the bodies. Something cracked under his foot on the bedroom carpet—a teething ring. He picked it up and slid it into an evidence bag, being careful not to touch the surface and destroy any identifying evidence. Even babies had fingerprints.

  7

  MUNCH RETURNED TO her ground-floor apartment in Reseda. She kept the tiny one-bedroom apartment spotless, cleaning the floors on her hands and knees and polishing all the chrome fixtures until they sparkled. When she had first moved in she had regrouted and recaulked the bathroom. She had also found that when she watered the little patch of brown grass in front of her door, it came to life. Now her unit boasted a luxurious green lawn, even if it was no bigger than a three-by-five throw rug. The bush of blue hydrangea under her living room window had also responded well to a little care and encouragement.

  It was a far cry from the house in Venice she had grown up in, where cockroaches scattered when she turned on the light in the kitchen. She used to hate the sight of the large bugs scurrying across the countertops, but there seemed to be no getting around it. Leaving the lights on didn't work. They would still be waiting for her when she returned, and without the sudden intrusion of 150 watts, they wouldn't even have the decency to hide.

  On her way home, she had stopped at the market to pick up cookies for the meeting. She showered and changed, then waited out front for her friend Danielle to pick her up. Ruby was the one who suggested the arrangement. She said Danielle needed the responsibility and Munch needed to learn to depend on someone else.

  Danielle finally pulled up at eight-fifteen. "Been waiting long?" she asked as she leaned over the seat of her Datsun to open the passenger door. Her large lips were painted a bright shade of red. "You wouldn't believe the afternoon I had."

  Munch almost smiled. "We'll make it in time."

  Danielle was always late and she was always sorry.

  "You should let me fix this door," Munch said.

  "I still owe you for all the other work you've done."

  "Don't worry about it," Munch said, meaning it. She'd much rather people be in debt to her than the other way around.
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br />   When they arrived at the clubhouse, they found Ruby already inside arranging literature on the table next to the coffee urn.

  'We have a little time left before the meeting starts," Ruby said, reaching for a doughnut. "If you wanted to talk."

  "I saw an old friend today" Munch began, rubbing the ball of her foot into the parquet floor of the meeting hall.

  "Is this someone you used with? You know how I feel about that."

  "Right, end of story." The matter was an ongoing battle between the two of them. She had tried to explain to Ruby once that not all her old friends had been terrible. Deb, for instance, had always been a good influence. Deb didn't use a needle. When Munch partied with Deb, they usually only drank. Another lower companion, Ruby had said, with a finality that got Munch's back up. Her sponsor didn't know everything about everything. Munch had even said as much. Ruby agreed that she didn't know everything, but about some things she was pretty damn sure. Munch decided not to tell her sponsor about the Snakepit.

  "Why do I get the sense that this isn't the end of it?" Ruby asked.

  'Well, it's not like the guy is the Antichrist. Maybe I should have tried to carry the message to him or something. Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing?"

  "Honey he's not your responsibility He's in the hands of that Old Boy upstairs," Ruby said.

  Munch didn't want to say anything, but there were many times when she suspected that that same old boy had gone fishing. Like try the decade of her own teen years.

  "Yeah, I guess you're right," she said, stubbing out her cigarette as she exhaled the last of the smoke from her lungs. " better go grab a seat."

  "Call me."

  "Sure."

  "You say that and then I don't hear from you."

  "I'll call you. Promise."

  "Are you sure you're okay?"

  Munch cracked her little lopsided grin. "There are no big deals, remember?"

  Ruby pushed her shoulder. "Get out of here."

  Munch feinted left and raised her fists into a pugilistic pose. She left Ruby laughing and shaking her head. As she crossed the room, she kept her eyes averted from the crowds by pretending concern over spilling her coffee. Once upon a time, she had been bold—not afraid of going head to head with anyone, anytime. Sobriety had mined that—another of the side effects of getting well.