Unfinished Business - Barbara Seranella Read online

  Chapter 10

  WEDNESDAY

  St. John got to work at six the next morning and went directly downstairs to the roll call room. Stacks of file boxes filled one corner. Bulletin boards displayed mug shots of the top ten predators currently at large in the area.

  He leaned against one of the room's support pillars, near the front, close to the podium. Uniformed cops sat at the rows of tables facing a small stage equipped with video equipment and chalkboard. The scent of strong, black coffee filled the air. He hated going to morning briefings, which were mostly for patrol anyway. Things had changed so much from when he was in uniform. In the sixties and seventies, the seating arrangement had been determined by the hash marks on your sleeve. One for every five years on the force. The old-timers sat in the back row, the rookies in the front. There was one color: blue.

  Then, with this eighties decade, had come the racial polarization. Blacks sitting with their own, Hispanics banding together.

  Memos being handed out almost daily on the correct wording to use. Negro or Neg. was no longer acceptable, nor was Mexican. Latino was okay. Chicano was not. He rolled with it all. Just as long as they got to keep catching bad guys.

  But the newest trend was the most disturbing yet. With the passing of new antidiscrimination laws, the department had lowered its height requirements. This had also paved the way for more women to join the force. In his day a guy was a dwarf if he was only five foot ten. He'd wear built-up boots when he went on patrol. Now everywhere you looked there were, as his less sensitive colleagues referred to them, the C&R's: cunts and runts.

  Truly, there was nothing more ridiculous than some little coppette or midget with a special-order twenty-two-inch-waist Sam Browne utility belt. Barely enough room to cram on all the required gear: Mace, cuffs, ammo, holster, nightstick, Handie-Talkie radio. The proportion of equipment to muscle was at a dangerous ratio and equally ineffective, in his opinion. Like some little kid playing dress-up cop.

  The irony was that it was turning out that women made better patrol cops than men did, especially when the situation called for less than brute force. Coppettes were better problem solvers, more prone to negotiation than intimidation, and they consequently garnered fewer civilian complaints. And, boy, wasn't that the name of the game, especially on the affluent West Side where every citizen seemed to know the mayor and wanted special consideration. Only the diplomats survived here.

  The downside of this new order was that you couldn't get through roll call without singing happy fucking birthday to someone while he or she blew out the candles on a cake. It wasn't a police station, it was a goddamn sorority. Everybody hugging, announcing engagements and babies. He didn't even want to think about Valentine's Day. It was going to be a circus. The watch commander, Sergeant Flutie, brought the meeting to order and called on St. John.

  Mace walked to the front of the room and waited a moment for the scuffling of chairs and clearing of throats to die down. When he had everyone's attention he began. "Yesterday at some time between two and four-thirty RM., a threatening note was pinned to the unattended jacket of a young, female student at St. Teresa's elementary school on the corner of San Vicente and Bundy. There's an alley that runs along the south end of the school that separates the playground from the church and classrooms. I have no description of a vehicle or suspect, but to reach the area where the children store their coats, the suspect would have approached through that alley."

  Sergeant Flutie stepped up next to St. John. "We've promised the principal, Mrs. Frowein, high police visibility for the rest of the week. Stop all suspicious characters. I expect FI cards and photographs."

  "Thank you, Sergeant," St. John said.

  "Any other business?" the sergeant asked. St. John held up the morning paper. The Bergman murder had made the front page, below the fold. There was a photograph of Diane Bergman culled from the paper's society page archive and a brief statement from St. John making all the usual reassurances. St. John wrote the license plate number of Diane's Honda Prelude on the blackboard and asked the patrol units to keep an eye out for the victim's vehicle. Nodding heads responded.

  St. John was halfway up the stairway when he heard a female voice announce a patrol officer's pregnancy. He groaned and took the stairs two at a time until he reached the detective squad room on the second floor. Pete Owen wasn't at his desk so St. John left a note in his box and checked the time. The autopsy of Diane Bergman was scheduled for 7:3o A.M. If he rushed, he would just make it.

  * * *

  Dr. Sugarman was all business when St. John met him over the autopsy table. Diane Bergman's nude body lay before them. The tape had been dusted for fingerprints and then carefully peeled from her face on Monday. A light dusting of black powder still streaked the dead woman's cheek. St. John had not told Munch what the black residue was, because the tape had been the crime scene information he had chosen to withhold.

  The negligee Diane Bergman had been wearing when her body was discovered had since been carefully removed, all loose particles shaken loose over clean white paper, and stored in an evidence locker. The flimsy negligee was described poetically on the coroner's inventory as robin's-egg blue. It was further described as rayon, size small, manufactured by Wacoal. Also listed on the property sheet were one diamond ring and one gold wedding band.

  The medical examiner began his examination with a thorough visual inspection of the dead woman. He noted several hairline scars running the length of her face anterior to each ear and along the cephalic ridge of her forehead, the texture of her skin, and state of nourishment.

  "Face-lift," he told St. John. "Looks like some liposuction, too."

  He spent a full minute on each of the burn sites, using a high-powered magnifying glass.

  "The cop at Rampart was correct," Sugarman said, without looking up. He pointed to the damage on the victim's left breast. "You see the center of the wound is pale and how the peripheral zone is bright red. This is typical of electrical injuries. The heat generated by the electrical charge pushes the blood out into the capillaries. In essence, it boils." Sugarman directed St. John's attention to a second similar wound, this one on the victim's right shin. "This one will be the exit path of the current. You'll notice it's a larger wound." He placed a plastic ruler against the burn and announced its diameter in centimeters. It was larger than the other burn by sixteen millimeters. An assistant chronicled that fact with a camera.

  Sugarman took a scraping of the white soot that peppered the corpse's torso and then swabbed the different orifices of the body for traces of seminal fluid, blood, or skin cells not her own.

  "I don't see any signs of sexual penetration," he said. He pried open the corpse's mouth and looked inside. "Hmm."

  "What?"

  "The tongue isn't bitten through. That, too, might be a pertinent negative," Sugarman said into the microphone dangling above the body. The coroner and his assistant rolled the body over. St. John's eyes were drawn to the puncture wound created by the coroner's liver thermometer. The small opening had been circled, initialed, and dated with black ink to indicate origin. A rippled crease about a quarter inch thick encircled the dead woman's waist.

  St. John pointed to it and asked, "Ligature mark?"

  Sugarman glanced over. "You could say that. It's a panty hose line." He moved his magnifying glass up her spine. "Let's get a picture of this," he said, pointing to a rectangular indentation in the skin at the base of the neck.

  "Label?" St. John asked, bending in for a closer look.

  "Probably" Sugarman said, laying down his ruler beside the impression. "As I'm sure you know." Sugarman began. He often started sentences this way. In his desire to be thorough, he was often redundant. He took extreme care to do his job correctly. St. John had long ago discovered that the only way to get Sugarman to arrive at his ultimate diagnosis was to wade through his personal flowchart of steps. One at a time.

  "In death," Sugarman continued, "blood stagnates within vessels, mu
scles lose their tone, skin its elasticity, circulation ceases. The outer layers of the body take on doughlike qualities. Objects pressed against dead skin before full rigor and subsequent to fixed lividity create clear and lasting impressions."

  He stepped back to allow the photographer in to chronicle the imprint on the back of Diane Bergman's neck. Then he turned to his assistant. "Bring back the article of clothing this woman was discovered in. I want to photograph that label side by side with this mark."

  St. John exhaled through his nose and sneaked a look at the wall clock.

  It was almost forty-five minutes later when Sugarman made the Y-cut and laid the body open, reflecting back the layers of fat and tissue as if he were unwrapping a macabre present. "See this?" he asked, poking at the heart muscle. "You see how swollen and hard all the muscles and deep tissue are? The body conducts electricity through veins and bone." He traced the path of the current with a gloved finger. The line of muscle and tissue between entry and exit wounds had a brownish tint.

  "Would household current be enough to do this?" St. John asked.

  "Two-twenty perhaps. As you probably know, regular one-ten household current is relatively low voltage. It can be fatal, but this is due to ventricular fibrillation, an interruption of the heart-beat. The damage I'm seeing here is much more brutal. The heart in this woman is virtually cooked."

  "What else would produce this sort of damage?"

  "High voltage, such as lightning, a transformer, high-tension power lines."

  "Is there any way this application of voltage wouldn't be fatal?" St. John asked.

  "Certainly. If it had been applied for a shorter duration or hadn't been directed through vital organs."

  "What do you mean?"

  "If the electrodes had been attached to either leg, the current would have followed femur to pelvis, never going through any vital organs. Current always seeks ground through the path of least resistance."

  "Can it be directed?"

  "Sure," Sugarman said. "That's the whole principle of the electric chair. Electrode plates are attached to the condemned prisoner's head and ankles so that the body becomes part of the circuit. Whoever did this left nothing to chance." Sugarman lifted out the intestines. "You want anything special besides tox and stomach contents?"

  "Whatever you think," St. John said. "Give me the works."

  * * *

  By seven-thirty, Munch was already on her third cup of coffee. Asia was in Lou's office, watching cartoons on the small television he kept in there. Usually it was tuned to the financial channel. Their routine never varied, Munch realized. A psychopath could set his watch by it. Monday through Friday during the school year, Asia rode with Munch to work. At eight-fifteen, one of the school vans arrived to collect her. At four-thirty on those same days, Munch picked Asia up at the school and went directly home. The weekends were another steady schedule of dance classes and ball games at the park. Saturday night was Munch's and Garret's date night, or as Munch had come to think of it privately, sex night.

  She felt a pang of something resembling guilt when she realized her relationship with Garret was the last thing she thought of when she inventoried her daily life. She hadn't even considered calling him last night to tell him of the phone call and the threat to Asia. He got so pissy when she mentioned Mace St. John, and the cop's name would have surely come up.

  A picture of Garret's bearded face came to mind with that sappy expression he wore when he looked at her. The knowledge of what he was feeling and what she could not feel irritated her. Life would be much simpler if their feelings for each other were more in balance. Maybe that was too much to hope for in any relationship.

  They'd been going out for a few months, since the end of summer. He was such a great package. Sexually, they were more than compatible. He was the right age, had a good job, he didn't drink because he didn't care to, not because he couldn't. He even laughed at her jokes. What was it going to take? And why did the sound of his laughter have to grate on her ears?

  She also hadn't called her A.A. sponsor, Ruby. Their relationship had been strained since August when Ruby suggested that Munch might want to go out with her son, Eddie. Yeah, right, she had thought as soon as Ruby said it. It would be a great deal for Eddie, wouldn't it? All three hundred pounds of him. Eddie lived in a room his mother fixed up for him in the garage. Eddie also had every ailment known to obese drunks including eczema and dandruff and high blood pressure. The last was evidenced by bulging eyes and his crimson, perpetually sweating face. And here was Ruby, the proud mother, Munch's sponsor, suggesting Munch give the boy a whirl. If Munch had presented such a catch in the form of another guy not related to Ruby her sponsor and supposed friend would have wasted no time illuminating his many drawbacks. She'd be the first to point out that the guy wasn't self-supporting and at thirty didn't have any prospects. Much less that the most sobriety he seemed capable of stringing together was thirty days. But Ruby loved the big tub and felt responsible for his failed life. So much so that on top of enabling him she was willing to sacrifice Munch to him. Of course, Munch hadn't voiced any of these sentiments out loud.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the ringing phone and Lou's announcement over the loudspeaker that she had a call. It was Robin.

  "Did that cop ever call back?" Munch asked after they dispensed with the hi's and how-are-you's.

  "No, and I left him another message."

  "All right. Forget him for now. My friend Mace St. John and I will stop by later to discuss your, ah, assault." She realized she was dancing around using the rape word. And again she wished that there was one person in her life with whom she could be unswervingly honest. More and more she was noticing that the path to happy destiny was strewn with countless eggshells.

  "I'll call the gate and let them know you're coming," Robin said.

  "Don't expect us before mid-morning," Munch told her.

  "I'm not going anywhere." She made a short bark of a laugh that turned into a coughing jag.

  Munch chewed her lip, and then decided against telling Robin about the note or the phone call—at least for the moment. It was still only a possibility that those two things had any relation to Robin, yet she couldn't ignore the timing of the two incidents. "Robin, after we talked yesterday, did you tell anyone about it? "

  "No, why?"

  "How about when you called Detective Owen? What did you say in the message you left?"

  "I just asked him to call me and gave him my number. Why?"

  "I like to keep track of who knows what."

  After hanging up with Robin, she paged Mace St. John. He called back within minutes and told her that he had made the morning shift aware of the situation and they were adding the alley behind the school to their patrol route. With luck, the police presence would be enough to deter any wrongdoer. She told him about the most recent call.

  "You make a report?" he asked.

  "I'm telling you."

  "l'm not at the station," he said. "You need to document all of this, get the wheels of justice turning. When I get back to my desk, I'll call the phone company have them put a trap on your line. One at the gas station, too. Don't tell anyone about it."

  "Not even Lou?"

  "Nobody."

  "What should I do if he calls again?" she asked. "Do I need to keep him talking for any length of time?"

  "No, it only takes a few seconds to trap the call. Let me know when and if it happens, and I'll handle it from there."

  "Fine. I really don't want to give this guy any more power than I have to. I don't even want to think about it anymore. Last night, I scared the shit out of Asia. Every time the phone rings now, my heart races. But what really pisses me off is that rattling me is more than likely just what he wants."

  "You're probably right. It doesn't hurt to take precautions."

  "I am, I have, and believe me, I will."

  When the school van arrived, Munch walked Asia to its door. How many times had she just let the k
id run out there? And how many times when she was busy with a customer or on the phone had she scarcely given the driver or the van a second look? After Asia climbed in back and strapped herself in, Munch came around to the driver's window. The driver was Mr. Mars, an affable black man with gold in his front teeth and a ready laugh.

  "How you doing today?" Munch asked.

  "Fine. Fine," he said. "Yourself?"

  "Not so good." She lowered her voice so that Asia wouldn't overhear and then recounted the events of yesterday, beginning with the note found on Asia's jacket, and culminating with the threatening call.

  Mr. Mars seemed to age a bit, with some of the light going out in his eyes, his usual smile fading.

  "I tell you what I'm going to do," he said. "I'm gonna bring these children to school today and wait. I won't leave until each and every one of them is safely back in the arms of their parents."

  Munch squeezed his arm, choked out a thanks. He patted her hand and told her to try not to worry

  At eight-thirty she went on a test drive in a Chrysler New Yorker that had a noise in the rear end that worried the customer. The noise turned out to be a bad tire. The tread had separated, making a thump. There was also a bad shimmy at forty. It never ceased to amaze her what vehicle owners failed to notice.

  A familiar black Mercedes was pulling into the station when she returned. She hoped it was there for gas only but that wasn't going to be the case.

  The Mercedes drove past the pumps and headed for the lube bay. She gave the Chrysler tire job to Carlos, who was happy enough to make the ten bucks. Not like Stefano, who felt changing oil and mounting tires were beneath his dignity

  Her first impulse was to duck into the storeroom and wait out the guy in the Mercedes. But, of course, she wasn't going to do that. She hated it when the other mechanics sat on their asses, putting out the thousand-yard stare when undesirable customers pulled in for service. Not dealing with a problem was the coward's way of making it go away and didn't always work. Besides, Lou had named her service manager and would expect her to handle this guy.