Unfinished Business - Barbara Seranella Read Online Free PDF Page A

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