No offence Intended - Barbara Seranella Page 3

  They looked up as an orange-Jacketed Cal Trans worker picked up three of their cones so that the police crime lab van could enter. Blackstone greeted Jeff Hagouchi from Firearms as he exited his vehicle.

  "What have we got?" Hagouchi asked.

  "One victim, shot twice, three rounds fired."

  "A level shot would have taken out the back window," Hagouchi said.

  "Yeah," Blackstone answered, "that's what we were thinking, but we wanted an expert's opinion."

  "Then this is your lucky day"

  Hagouchi brought out two long wooden dowels and pushed them carefully through the holes in the windshield until they just touched the corresponding punctures in the back seat. He had the photographers take more pictures of the windshield with the dowels inserted.

  "Find any spent cartridges?" Hagouchi asked.

  "Not yet," Blackstone said, pointing to the uniformed officers traversing the vacant freeway shoulder to shoulder. He took Hagouchi over to the skid marks. One of the bullets had lodged into the asphalt there. Hagouchi drew a circle around it with yellow chalk and then followed Blackstone back to the truck.

  "We've got two scenarios," Hagouchi said. "I'll know more when I examine the projectiles, of course. You got either a long-range shot with a rainbow trajectory. . ."

  "Three times?"

  "Or a passing tall vehicle. Find your spent cartridges and you'll have distance and angle. I'll extract the other bullets once we get the truck back to the station."

  Blackstone showed Hagouchi where the bullets had punctured the steel skin of the cab behind the seat. Hagouchi whistled. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

  "Definitely not hollow points," Blackstone said, knowing that hollow points would have mushroomed on impact. "Full metal Jackets?" he asked, referring to military-type bullets that were designed to take out more than one human target.

  "At least," Hagouchi said. "Possibly APs."

  Blackstone nodded grimly He definitely didn't like the idea of mobile sharpshooters armed with AP rounds. He made a note to himself in his notebook, writing out the words that nobody had said out loud. There was another name for armor-piercing ammunition: cop-killers.

  4

  MAYBE I'T HADN"T been him, Munch thought as she turned onto the Santa Monica westbound freeway After her initial reaction of shock and horror a strange calm had settled around her heart. Surely if it had been Sleaze lying there dead she would feel something more. After all they'd been through together, he wouldn't depart the planet without her instinctively knowing. No, she needed more proof before she mourned him. Until that time, it wasn't real. It didn't happen.

  She focused on the appointment with her probation officer.

  It hadn't taken long after being assigned to Mrs. Scott for Munch to see that the woman was not looking to make any friends with her clients. Her office was plastered with plaques of appreciation from law enforcement groups. She kept a signed picture on her desk of her shaking hands with the chief of police. So much for being in the business of rehabilitation.

  "Fuck 'er if she can't take a joke," Flower George would have said. But he was dead now. His ill advised fatherly advice needed to be buried with him. All that old stinking thinking needed to go. She was trying to stop saying the F word, too. For now she was still caught in the system and she accepted that. The legal system—the judges, the lawyers, the cops—never expected anyone to successfully complete a three-year probation term, but she would surprise them. Probation was just a device they used to keep you on hold—their way of saying, "You can walk for now, but we got you when we want you." The random surprise testing enabled them to gather fuel for future leverage. junkies didn't go straight. That was a well-known fact. It was the recidivism factor.

  Recidivism. She'd learned the word in rehab.

  The statistics were that ninety-seven percent of all junkies went back to the needle.

  That meant three percent didn't.

  With eight months clean and sober, she was looking forward to her first sober Thanksgiving. To celebrate, she planned to go to the California Institute for Women at Corona as part of an AA panel. CIW would have been her next destination if things hadn't changed.

  She'd spent the previous year's Thanksgiving holiday at the county jail, Sybil Brand Institute, awaiting trial for various and sundry drug-related charges. In her old life, everything was drug-related. If she'd been busted for jaywalking, you could bet that she was crossing the street to score some dope, get high, or turn a trick to get some money to buy dope.

  Last year's incarceration had been her longest ever—over a month.

  A diesel-powered black-and-white sheriff's bus spewing black smoke pulled in front of her as she took the exit for the Santa Monica Courthouse complex. It reminded her of her many trips from jail to court, her only forays into the world during that long month. They called the bus "The Gray Goose." She didn't know why She only knew that it was dirty inside and partitioned with steel grating. The larger rear portion of the bus—where the seats were arranged like church pews—was where they put the men. The women sat on long bench seats lining the sides in the front. Separate, but equal. The bus always seemed to appear next to her when her thoughts turned down dangerous paths. Another of those eerie coincidences that made her feel like God had taken a personal interest in her case. He used the hulking, black-and-white vehicles like a page mark in her life to remind her that whatever was going on, it could always be worse.

  As she pulled into the parking lot, she thought about the body in the truck, the booted foot, the shattered windshield. If it was Sleaze, what would become of his kid? With Karen dead, Asia was an orphan. Maybe.

  Stay in the moment, she told herself. Park. Turn off the car. Breathe in and out.

  The lot was full of cop cars. Munch didn't lock her car. If it wasn't safe there, then the hell with it. She passed the large rusting sculpture of nautical chains on the lawn in front of the court building. The police station was on the other side of the court building. They kept the prisoners on the first floor. Milk was served with the meals, which Munch preferred to the bitter black coffee offered in Van Nuys. But unlike Van Nuys, Santa Monica had a no smoking rule. That had seemed like cruel and unusual punishment to her during her brief incarcerations here.

  Never again, she thought.

  She entered the court building, pushed through the door to the probation department, and gave her name at the front desk. The woman seated there told her to go right in.

  ‘You know the way?" the woman asked.

  "Yeah," Munch said. "I've been here before." She walked the hallway in her dreams. Some nights, the hallway had no end and she was in the wrong building and running late and if she didn't find the correct cubicle soon her probation would be violated and she would be sent back to Sybil Brand. She'd wake with the sheets twisted around her legs.

  Wiping her hands on her pants, she checked the clock. She was still ten minutes early, she noted, no need to panic. She headed toward her probation officers cubicle.

  Mrs. Scott glanced up as Munch entered. "I'll be right with you," she said as she reached for a rubber Stamp, inked it on a pad of red ink, and brought it down sharply on the papers in front of her. Munch saw that the stamped letters read VIOLATION. The older woman put the stamp and paperwork aside, straightened the lapel of her navy blue blazer, and then opened Munch's file.

  "How are you, Miranda?" she asked. Mrs. Scott was the only one who ever used that name with her.

  'Tm here."

  The thin orange line of the PO's lips turned down at the corners and the crease between her eyes grew deeper.

  "How are you?" Munch asked.

  "Let's stay on track, shall we?" Mrs. Scott said.

  "Are you still working?"

  "I brought my pay stubs," Munch said, reaching into her shirt pocket. Of course she was still working. If any major changes occurred in her life, like changing jobs or moving, she was to notify her PO within twenty-four hours.

  Mrs.
Scott took the papers and handed Munch a mimeographed form. " need you to fill out this personal Financial report." Mrs. Scott went back to the file she had been stamping with her red ink. Under RECOMMENDAIIONS on the last page, Mrs. Scott wrote, "3O days county time," and smiled.

  Munch looked at the paperwork her probation officer handed her. The categories listed were: RENT, UTILITIES, FOOD, GAS, CLOTHING, and ENTERTAINMENT. On the other side of the ledger she was to put what she earned.

  Munch wrote in the numbers and handed the form back. She had left the entertainment column blank.

  "Aren't you saving anything?" Mrs. Scott asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You're making enough to have several hundred dollars left over at the end of the month. What happens to that money?"

  "I don't know. I spend it, I guess."

  "By our next appointment, I want to see some signs of fiscal responsibility"

  "I pay my bills."

  "And is that all you want for yourself? To just get by?"

  Obviously the woman wasn't going to be satisfied unless she found something that needed correcting.

  "I'll work on it."

  Mrs. Scott gave Munch a waxy look. "I guess we'll see." She picked up a plastic cup. "Are you ready?"

  "Yep." Munch stood and made for the bathroom with Mrs. Scott close behind. The hallway had a bleachy smell that always reminded Munch of cocaine. She kept the observation to herself. The clicking of Mrs. Scott's heels on the linoleum echoed off the walls.

  They pushed into the women's room and Munch was relieved to see that they had the place to themselves.

  She unzipped her pants and positioned the cup under herself in such a way as not to cut off Mrs. Scott's view. Mrs. Scott believed you couldn't trust a dope fiend not to bring along someone else's sample and try to pass it off as her own. Munch didn't have to do that. Her test would be clean. She used to feel proud of the stream of drug-free urine that flowed from her body Lately it was beginning to feel humiliating to have Mrs. Scott there in the stall with her. The pee overflowed the tiny container and ran down her fingers. She poured half out, carefully wiped the sides, put on the lid, and handed it to her PO. "Anything else you want to tell me?" the woman asked before they parted in the hallway "Any problems?"

  "No, everything's fine." She blinked back the images of the blood dripping from the boot. Was he dead? Really forever gone? She felt the weight of his key in her pocket as she walked away Why hadn't she treated him better? Why hadn't she agreed to go see his kid? Why couldn't she at least have had lunch with him? The extra half-hour might have altered the course of events—but no, she had been too caught up in herself and her own needs.

  Stop it, she thought. You don't even know hes really dead. Obviously there would be no peace for her until she found out for sure.

  5

  SHE LEFT THE CLUSTER of court buildings and headed south. As she neared the familiar streets of Venice, her mind flooded with images from her childhood—the early years when her mother was still alive. The Venice Beach she knew then had been a magical place peopled by beatniks and jazz musicians who treated her like an equal. Mama filled her young ears with promises of castles and ponies, singing her to sleep with Joni Mitchell lullabies.

  Munch had believed it all—even when they "camped out" in different people's living rooms and garages and washed their hair in the Laundromat sink. She'd been such a dumb kid. She didn't wise up until she was ten, and that was almost a full year after Mama died. It had taken that long for the reality to sink in. Months and months before she finally noticed that as great and wonderful as heaven was reported to be, it was a place nobody returned from. So who really knew if it was nice at all? Thats when she had learned to pay more attention to what people did than to what they said.

  She lit her cigarette with the car's lighter. The smell of a match's sulphur still reminded her too much of dope, and she didn't need the sensory memory in such already dangerous territory Venice, god. It felt weird to be there again, like she'd been away for years instead of just months. She briefly considered stopping in and seeing her old boss, Wizard, but decided that she was better off sticking to what she came for and leaving the social calls for another day

  Instead of turning left on Rose Avenue, she cut through side streets until she arrived at the alley running parallel to Hampton. The building where she had once lived with Sleaze was a horseshoe-shaped collection of single and one-bedroom apartments. Sleaze liked Number 6 because it was a corner unit. The front door faced an overgrown hedge of oleander instead of the street. On the other side of the hedge and sharing the same alley was the abandoned Jewish Center. A morning glory vine, flush with large purple blooms, had taken over the Centers back fence and formed a web between two palm trees. She parked in the alley behind a gold Impala balanced on Jack stands and stripped of its wheels, rear bumper; and differential.

  Ducking between the two buildings, she picked her way over trash, following the ten-foot-tall shrubbery separating the two buildings. Halfway to the street, she crouched. The same opening—their secret route—still existed. She slipped through it, pushing aside damp white sheets that had been stretched across the bushes to dry.

  When she got to Sleaze's apartment, she knocked first—softly' No one answered. She slipped the key in the lock and opened the door. The apartment was small and dark, but she didn't reach for the light switch. She stood very still. Her ears filled with the sound of her own heart. She took deep breaths to calm herself.

  Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the lord my soul to keep.

  The tiny kitchen, consisting of a sink, stove, and battered refrigerator, stood at the other end of the room. The closet-size bathroom lay to her right. She could hear the steady drip of a leaking faucet from behind the room's closed door.

  She righted a baby's car seat lying on its side and picked up a rattle. The words DADDY'S GIRL were written on the pink plastic face. She stuck the toy in her pocket and stepped closer to the bathroom door. "Sleaze?" she called in an urgent whisper, willing him to appear and aggravate her with that grin of his.

  No answer.

  "John?" Please. Please be all right.

  She didn't want to open the door, but just standing there wasn't the answer, either. She put her ear to the door The dripping was louder, maddeningly rhythmic, like Chinese water torture. She imagined all sorts of horrors: slit veins and throats; open mouths; a lifeless face staring up at her through inches of tub water.

  Shaking her head, she took a deep breath and reached for the door handle.

  And if I die before . . . Stupid prayer

  She put her hand on the knob. It twisted in her hand.

  "Oh, fuck it," she said through clenched teeth and pushed the door inward.

  No one was in there, dead or alive. She laughed out loud, relieved, embarrassed. The medicine cabinet hung open. It was empty save for a box of Band-Aids and a jar of Vaseline. A box of dried-out baby butt wipes lay open on the top of the toilet tank lid. Inside the bathtub was a collection of infant float toys and a bottle of Johnson No More Tears baby shampoo. The drains steel seat was eroded from the constant drip of the leaking shower faucet. She touched the side of the tub where perhaps he had leaned kneeling as he washed his baby

  But where was he now? And where was the baby? Which neighbor?

  She gathered Asia's car seat and the float toys and took them out to her car. Returning to the building, she started knocking on doors. The man who answered at Number 7 was dressed only in a stained, threadbare white T-shirt and sagging briefs.

  "I'm looking for a baby" she said. "Someone around here is watching her for my friend."

  He scratched himself and adjusted his balls before he answered. "Huh?" He squinted, perhaps trying to remember how to speak. ", uh . . . Whatcha doing here?"

  "Never mind." She waved him back. "Sorry to disturb you."

  Grumbling, the man closed his door. No one answered her knock at the next apartment over. She put her ear t
o the door. The unit appeared to be unoccupied. When she knocked on the third door, it rattled. She looked down and saw that the wood around the doorknob was freshly splintered. Then she heard a baby crying.

  She nudged the door open with her knee and stared down the dark hallway where the crying seemed to be coming from. "Hello?" She stepped inside. "Are you all right in there?"

  The baby screamed. Something about its tone alerted her on some primal level. She rushed down the hall. Another scream. The bedroom door hung half open and she knocked it out of her way

  The naked couple on the bed were definitely dead. Part of the man's skull was missing and most of the woman's nose. There was nothing to be done for either of them.

  The baby was lying in the corner, hemmed in by a makeshift barrier of couch cushions and clutching an empty bottle. Munch gathered the infant in her arms and saw that she was wearing one of those baby ID bracelets on her wrist, the kind made up of tiny blocks with letters on them. They spelled out "Garillo."

  Asia stopped crying and stared at Munch. Munch stared back, feeling a jolt of recognition as she gazed into the baby's clear brown eyes—Sleaze's eyes. This could have been my baby she thought, reeling. Asia blinked, then gathered her breath for another howl.

  "Shhh," Munch said. 'You're okay" Asia smelled liked she needed changing. The front of her dress was wet with drool.

  "Let's get you out of here." She glanced down at the dead couple and shook her head. This was not the time to worry about them. She picked up the empty baby bottle and jammed it into a large pink cloth bag full of other baby accessories that she found on the floor. Clutching the baby to her chest, she ran back out front, almost knocking down a Hispanic man. At first she thought he was drunk, and then she realized that he was just terribly upset.

  "I call the police," he said in heavily accented English. A thin string of mucus dribbled unchecked from his nose. "I cannot believe somebody would do this thing." He buried his face in his hands and wept.