Unfinished Business - Barbara Seranella (13 page)

Munch smiled. Her thoughts exactly. People could be
so stupid. "I thought you changed your number," she said.

"l did. Somehow he got the new one." She
picked up an envelope from the coffee table and handed it to St.
John.

"What's this?" he asked.

"My discharge papers from the hospital and a
copy of the police report."

St. John put the envelope in his breast pocket and
asked Robin, "Do you have somewhere you can go? Somewhere else
you can stay? Family? Friends? Preferably out of state"

Robin turned her dull eyes on him. "Won't he
find me wherever I go?"

"No," the detective said firmly "He's
mortal. He can be stopped."
 

Chapter 12

 
M
inutes later,
Munch and St. John were back in the Buick. Munch waited patiently
while St. John looked over the paperwork Robin had given him. When he
finished reading, he rolled down his window and spat.

"Son of a bitch," he said. He lit one of
his thin cigars.

"What?"

"I've never seen such bullshit."

"You mean the rape?"

"No, the fucking investigation. We've got no
vacuuming of the car's interior for trace fibers. After four hours,
eighty percent of fiber evidence is lost. As far as I can tell,
nobody went back to where she was released and looked for other tire
tracks or conducted any interviews." St. John fixed her with a
look that demonstrated the intensity of his anger. Even though it
wasn't directed at her, his expression made her cringe and pray to
God she'd never be on the receiving end of his displeasure. "We've
got no fiber scraping from the nightgown he left her in. In fact, the
nightgown wasn't even taken into evidence."

"Where is it now?"

"The hospital lost it according to Owen's
narrative. Shit," he said, stabbing the offending paperwork with
his forefinger. "No mention of the duct tape over her eyes
during the assault. What the fuck was Owen thinking?"

"What's the significance of the duct tape?"

"Everything is significant at this point."

She watched his jaw work as he gnashed on the white
plastic mouthpiece on the tip of his cigarillo.

"This isn't the first time, is it?" she
asked.

He looked at her a long moment before answering. "No,
there have been others. Robin was luckier than some."

"Define lucky. "

He grunted a laugh.

"How did this guy know to call me?" she
asked. "Robin didn't tell anyone I was going to help her."

"What about you? Who did you tell?"

"Wait a minute," Munch said, seeing a
telephone repair truck.

"Pull this guy over. "

"For what?"

Munch turned the window crank, but by the time she
got her window down the truck had passed. "Turn around. Don't
you have a siren in this thing?"

He pulled to the side of the road and asked, "What
are you thinking?"

"The phone guy will know where the junction box
for the building is. It could save us some time. Maybe our mystery
caller has her phone bugged. Easiest way to do it is at the junction
box, but they keep them padlocked."

"
How do you know that?" he asked.

"You can see the lock."

"No, I mean about tapping into the line."

"That's not really the point right now, is it?"
The truth was that Lou was a Vietnam vet. He had served in the army
the same years as Mace St. John. The detective knew that. What he
might not remember was that Lou's MOS—army talk for Military
Occupational Speciality—was communications. This came in handy at
the gas station. Especially when anyone who might be saying anything
of interest used the pay phone around the corner. The phone block was
conveniently located in the back room of the station. This same
junction block had the pay phones on it in addition to the Texaco
phone lines. Lou clipped on with a telephone repairman's handset when
the need arose. She knew it was illegal as hell and saw no reason to
burden St. John with this information.
 
"Okay,"
he said, raising a hand in mock surrender. "I don't care. But we
can't do it that way. I'll call my connection at the phone company
and have them send a truck out to make sure her line is secure."

"
What else do you want me to do?" She felt
curiously elated. She loved the irony of being on this side of a
police investigation. Besides, it was exciting. Where was it written
that she couldn't enjoy herself while helping someone? St. John
studied her for a moment. When he spoke, there was a warning edge to
his voice. "Are you sure you want to get mixed up any deeper in
this thing?"

"
There's something else, isn't there? Something
you're not telling me."

"When Diane Bergman's body was dumped, she was
also dressed in a nightgown. We also found evidence of electrical
torture."

"So you think it's the same guy?"

"l can't rule that out."

"
So why kill one and not the other?"

"Who knows? You can't put your own logic on
these guys. They're wired different." He stopped speaking. From
the look in his eyes, she knew he had left her. Had gone somewhere
with his thoughts and his secret knowledge where she couldn't follow.
She waited while he pulled his notebook out and wrote something down.
She pushed her head back into the headrest and glanced at the words
he had written: Duct tape to keep eyes from popping out?

She didn't speak again until they had pulled back
into traffic. "If this has to do with what happened to Diane,
then I'm more sure than ever I want to help. Where do we start?"

"We look for whatever else Owen missed. That's
where we fucking start."

When Munch got back to work, she went straight to her
toolbox and grabbed her notebook. St. John stayed in his car to use
his radio. She rejoined him as he was signing off.

"What you got?" he asked.

"Every day I write down the make and model of
the cars I work on." She showed him the columns of license plate
numbers, the customers' names, the service performed, and the amount
charged. She turned back to the day in September that Robin had been
raped, then checked the day before that. There it was. Robin Davies,
Toyota Celica, Tune-up.

Then she pointed to the Peg-Board over the service
desk where they hung the work orders and the keys. "Robin's bill
would have been hanging there all day with her keys on the hook as
well. The work orders have all the customers' information on them,
including addresses and phone numbers."

"So anyone who works here would have access,"
St. John said.

"Any customer as well," she said.

She looked back at her ledger and saw that the day
Robin had her car serviced was also the day Fahoosy had his tires
replaced. Could he have been the one? Copied down her phone number
when no one was watching? Or did Munch just have it in for the guy?
Like people who watch the FBI's Most Wanted list and see how closely
their troublesome neighbor resembles an ax murderer from Detroit.

"C'mon," she told St. John. "I want to
check something out."

She took him into the office.

Lou was watching the financial channel on his little
television.

"What's up?" he asked.

"I need to look through the old bills." She
knelt down and sifted through the box that held the last few months'
work orders. She went through them until she found the September
invoices. St. John waited until she located copies of Fahoosy's and
Robin's work orders. She handed them over saying, "Check this
out."

Fahoosy also lived at Barrington Plaza Gardens. St.
John copied down the phone number and address. When he was finished,
Munch took the invoices back. She started to return them to the box
and then stopped.

"This might be something," she said, taking
out the next work order in the stack. "We put these in here in
the order they were paid." She showed him an invoice with Diane
Bergman's name on it. It was dated the day before Fahoosy's and
Robin's invoices. "This is the last work I did on her car. I
replaced her brakes. See, those are my initials in the corner."
She scanned down the right-hand column. "She also had the car
washed. That's the twelve-fifty charge under miscellaneous. She must
have picked up her car a day after the work was completed."

"Or at least paid for it the next day right?"
St. John said. She nodded, appreciating the way his head worked. He
kept his mind clear of assumptions and crawled to his conclusions.

"Who worked on Robin's car last?"

"Me. She wanted only me to touch her car. Said
she didn't trust the other guys."

"Feel like taking a little ride?" he asked.

"Sure. How little?"

"I've got a meeting with a woman at the DOJ."

"The what?"

"Department of Justice. Actually she's with the
California Bureau of Investigation, sex crimes unit."

"How long will it take?"

"She's just over on Federal. Not more than an
hour. "

"Lou?"

"Might as well," he said, sighing loudly
"It's only money right?"

She knew he had to act like his balls were being
busted. The truth was he was probably a little relieved to have one
less restless mechanic on his hands. Slow days brought out jealousy
and backbiting. Especially with Stefano, who stomped around the shop
when Munch had jobs lined up with her own customers. Like it was her
fault she had developed a loyal following.

St. John took her over to Westwood, to the offices of
the California Bureau of Investigation, sex crimes unit. Once they
were alone in the car he said, "We can't overlook the fact that
three out of four victims and potential victims of this guy are
connected to your station. You got any bad feelings about any of your
coworkers?"

"
Oh, you know how it is," she said,
suddenly uncomfortable about fingering anybody specific. It was one
thing to complain to a friend. Another feeling entirely when that
friend was a cop.

"Tell me anyway" he said.

"Lou named me as manager when he isn't there.
That didn't sit well with some of the guys."

"Give me an example."

"Okay. There's this one guy Stefano. He's from
Yugoslavia or somewhere. Anyhow, he thinks he's really something. Lou
hired him two months ago because he said he knew how to fix cruise
controls and automatic transmissions. Come to find out, Stefano talks
a good show but lacks a little in execution. Last month he worked on
this guy's cruise control. Big Lincoln Town Car. Next day the guy
comes in and says that it still doesn't work right. Stefano sticks
out his chest and tells the customer that he doesn't know how to
operate his own car. The customer says, 'I might not be a mechanical
genius, but I know when I step on the brake that the cruise control
should shut off.' I heard that and told Lou to give the guy his money
back. Stefano's been shooting daggers at me ever since."

"
You got a last name for this guy?"

"Barnevik." She tried to think. Did her
caller have a slight accent? The electronic modification might be his
way of disguising it.

"Write it down for me. Who else? What about your
limo drivers?"

"I can give you a list of ex-drivers, but
honestly I don't see any of them having the ambition to stalk me."

"
Just humor me. Have you fired anyone recently?"

"I fire a driver at least once a month, butl
don't make a big deal out of it. I just take them off the insurance
policy and let 'em figure it out for themselves that I'm not calling
anymore."

"Who else?"

"I've got a list of people I don't call
anymore."

"Anybody who would dislike you enough to want to
hurt you?"

Munch rubbed her forehead, feeling the beginning of a
headache. It was a horrible thing to have to consider. "You mean
like someone who seems sort of off?"

"You never know," he said.

And with that comforting
thought, they arrived at their destination.

* * *

While waiting for their appointment, Munch picked
through the brochures on the credenza. The first pamphlet listed
myths about rape that needed to be dispelled. "First and
foremost," it read, "you have to know and understand that
it is not your fault—you didn't ask for it in any way—you did not
provoke the incident by the way you act, dress, or carry yourself."

Not now I don't, Munch thought.

She turned to a second brochure about something
called Rape Trauma Syndrome. The physical symptoms were loss of
appetite, sleep disturbances, nightmares, difficulty functioning at
normal everyday tasks, not wanting to leave the safety of your home
alone. Everything cataloged fit with what Robin was experiencing.

There was also a list of emotional reactions broken
into two categories: those expressed and those suppressed. Expressed
emotions were feelings of fear, anger, and anxiety. A person
suppressing emotions might display a calm, composed outward
appearance but was probably not doing as well as someone who could
express feelings outwardly.