Unfinished Business - Barbara Seranella (4 page)

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

 
A
s 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
the $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?"