Unfinished Business - Barbara Seranella (10 page)

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, muscles 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?"