Unfinished Business - Barbara Seranella (31 page)

"I need to speak to whoever's in charge,"
she said.

"What is this regarding?" the man asked.

"An ongoing murder investigation," she
said.

"Have you spoken to a detective yet? What is the
name of the victim in the case?"

"The detective is not available," she said.
"I'd like to speak to the guy in charge. The lieutenant or the
captain. Somebody like that. "

"Can I get your name and number?"

"I'm a good friend of Mace St. John," she
said. The door of the lobby opened and the sound of the blaring
alarms filtered into the room. "And this is urgent." To
punctuate her words an ambulance arrived with its siren whooping.
Munch held the phone out in the direction of the noise.

"Please hold."

Munch waited ten seconds and then a man's voice came
on the line. "This is Lieutenant Graziano."

Munch told him her name, where she was, and what had
happened. "Sarnoff made it look like Diane was attacked by
Pauley the rapist you arrested on Saturday. Sarnoff knew enough to
dress Diane in a negligee and to electrocute her. He even knew about
the pictures of the victims. Sounds to me like he had some insider
knowledge of Robin Davies's case. My bet is his source of information
was Pete Owen."

"Where's Sarnoff now?"

"They're taking him to the hospital."

"I want you to stay put," Graziano said.
"I'll make sure an officer is assigned to you."

"What are you going to do about Pete Owen?"

"I'll be having a word with him myself,"
Graziano said. "Don't worry We'll get to the bottom of this."

"I'm sure we all want the same thing,"
Munch said.
 

Epilogue

T
en days after his
admittance to the hospital, St. John was released. Dr. Krueger gave
him strict orders to quit smoking and cut down on stress. Caroline
came to pick him up at ten in the morning. He insisted on driving
home.

"I talked to the lieutenant this morning,"
he said when they came to a traffic light.

"What did he say?"

"Oh, you know, the usual bullshit. Get well
soon. Don't worry."

Caroline nodded, looked out the window.

"I'm not quitting," he told her.

"Cigars or the job?" she asked.

"I can live without the smokes."

"Glad to hear it." She didn't seem
surprised or even disappointed by his announcement. "What else
did you two talk about?"

"The D.A. filed murder one on Sarnoff. Owen
received a reprimand for having a big mouth. I don't think he's
losing any sleep over it."

"So he wasn't involved?"

"Nah, just stupid. I have several witnesses who
confirm that he was revealing details of his cases at the party he
worked for the Bergman Cancer Center. Robin Davies's rape was one of
these. He redeemed himself somewhat. He served a search warrant on
the Bergman Cancer Center and pieced together a scenario that the
D.A.'s happy with. We even located the victim's missing Honda in one
of the permit-only parking structures. Her purse was under the seat
with money still in the wallet."

"What do they believe happened?"

"Sarnoff and Diane Bergman went over to or met
at the Bergman Cancer Center at UCLA on Saturday morning. The
facility is not up and running to full capacity yet, so they would
have had the place to themselves. She confronted him about the
millions of dollars that the foundation trust lost because of the
CARC stock fiasco. It was downstairs, in the diagnostic lab, that he
killed Diane, but not by electrocuting her. The coroner reexamined
the body. We had already ruled out blunt trauma. The tox report came
back clean. Her hyoid arch was intact and there were no petechiae
evident. Both of these would be symptoms usually associated with
strangulation. "

"Petechiae. Those are the small broken veins in
the eyes?"

"Exactly"

"So how was she killed?"

"Sugarman found some bruising around her lips
and nose consistent with a forced closure of her mouth and nose."

"So he smothered her to death."

"Right, he probably used a plastic bag and then
put her body in cold storage until he could carry out the rest of his
plan. She couldn't just disappear. He needed her death confirmed or
her money would be tied up for years. Owen had told Sarnoff about 
the rape he was investigating, how the rapist dressed his victim in a
negligee and used electricity to subdue her. Owen also mentioned the
victim's spread in Penthouse prior to her assault. All of this, it
turned out, inspired Sarnoff to set up his scenario. You see, he'd
been to Sam Bergman's safety deposit box to retrieve the man's burial
instructions and he knew Sam kept the nude Polaroids of his wife
there. It was a setup waiting to happen.

"On Saturday afternoon, Sarnoff went to Diane's
house, brought in her mail, played the messages on her answering
machine, even posted some letters she had ready to go on her desk and
generally made it look like she had been there. Another misdirection
so he could establish an alibi for Sunday. Then very late on Sunday
night, he returned to the still unopened lab. Remember, this place is
also a teaching facility. It even has its own morgue full of study
cadavers. Good place to stash a body while you figure out a way to
dispose of it."

"Wasn't he taking a chance someone might see her
and recognize she wasn't one of the regulars?"

"He stuffed her in a body bag. One of his
mistakes was leaving her in the clothes she died in. Cold storage
retards decomposition, but a certain amount of rigor mortis sets in
immediately We found impressions on the body made from panty hose and
the label of the suit jacket she was wearing at the actual time of
death."

Caroline clucked her tongue in disapproval. St. John
continued. "Sarnoff rigged up some kind of apparatus with the
two-twenty outlet in one of the treatment rooms. There's all kinds of
equipment there including a portable X-ray machine that operates off
two-twenty volts Sarnoff dressed Diane in a negligee and zapped her
corpse with enough voltage to disguise or at least make us not look
for any other cause of death, then dumped her body where it would be
found Monday morning."

"Will they be able to make the case stick?"
she asked.

"Yeah, I think so. SID went over the Cancer
Center morgue and exam room with a fine-tooth comb. We have lots of
physical evidence, and thanks to Munch we've put together motive."

Caroline nodded. Juries loved motives.

St. John chuckled. "Sarnoff's also going to have
a hard time explaining how his fingerprints got on the inside pages
of Diane's gas bill that arrived in Saturday's mail."

"And who thought to fingerprint the mail?"
she asked.

He tipped his head to one side in modest
acknowledgment.

"Owen's running a check now on any lawsuit
Sarnoff might have argued involving electrocution. You know, like a
workmen's comp claim or wrongful death. Something like that. Wouldn't
hurt our case to show he had some in-depth knowledge of the subject
matter. "

"Speaking of priors," Caroline said. She
adjusted the air-conditioning and then turned to face her husband. "I
talked to Munch this morning and told her they were letting you out
today,"

"What did she say?" he asked.

Caroline arched her eyebrows but kept her tone
deceptively light. "Oh, you know, she sent you her love."

St. John wisely made no reply other than to look
straight ahead. Across the seat, their two hands found each other.
 
 

Acknowledgments

First I need to thank a few special friends,
beginning with the incomparable Patrick Millikin of Poisoned Pen Book
Store for his guidance, friendship, and encouragement. Others who
helped me early on in the process were my good friends and skilled
readers Marie Reindorp, Kathleen Tumpane, and mystery buff
extraordinaire Lou Boxer, M.D.

For assistance on the medical details:
Larry
Shore, M.D., my brother the doctor, who walked me through the heart
attack and many other crises; Dr. Joe Cohen, Chief Forensic
Pathologist of Riverside County; Dr. Douglas Lyle for certain gory
details.

Other choice bits of information were provided by
Jack Kemp of Jack Kemp Enterprises, distributor of laryngectomy
patient products; investment specialist Dave Shore; broker and friend
Ken Hansen; and Ken Jonsson for the bit about the 22ov; and Steve
Ricketts, my communications expert.

And on the cop stuff:
Detective
Carl and D.A. Diana Carter for their continued friendship and expert
feedback; Gary Bale, the sweetest cop in Orange County; generous and
charming Paul Bishop, author, LAPD detective; retired LAPD detective
and current private investigator Don Long, who doesn't know how to
give a short answer (writers love this); Special Agent Allen Grimes,
who schooled me on the nature of rapists.

Many thanks to longtime friend and estate attorney
Fred McNair); who hates the part in books and movies where they
gather everybody into one room for the reading of the will. They
never do that, he says.

Thank you, Gordon Crosthwait, owner of the beautiful
La Condesa, for taking me into your world and showing me around.
Thanks also go to Brian Reese, John Clark, Phil Palmari, John
Skinner, and Dave Davies, train enthusiasts aka "foamers."
So named because when you ask them about trains, they tend to foam at
the mouth.

On the writing end of things:
Many
thanks to my writing "families" for making the journey less
lonely: the Orange County Fictionaires and my free-writing, desert
Tuesday group—Doug, Diane, and Sylvia. Two of the smartest groups
of people to ever assemble.

Deepest appreciation to Russ Isabella, for his
honesty in the eleventh hour.

Kudos also to my tenacious, yet gracious, agent,
Sandy Dijkstra, and her exceptional staff.

My phenomenal, hardworking publicists: Jackie Green
and Jim Schneeweis.

My superb editors: Susanne Kirk and George Lucas.

Thanks all. Let's do it again soon.