No offence Intended - Barbara Seranella (7 page)

"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.