No offence Intended - Barbara Seranella (9 page)

Across the top of the page of college-lined paper she
wrote INVENTORY. She wrote the date on the top right corner and
stared at it. Boogie's birthday was at the end of the month. She
hadn't seen Deb or her son in a year. Would she and Deb still be able
to read each others minds? Finish each other's sentences? And Boogie.
God. What sort of memories did he carry?

She wrote
ace boon coon
across the middle of
the page and beneath that
Canyonville
, then closed the book.

It was too quiet. She turned on the TV The eleven
o'clock news was on. The newscaster was saying something about a
sniper attack on the freeway She stood in front of the set and
watched the footage of the blue truck being towed away on top of a
flatbed. The scene cut to the Pacific Division Police Station, where
a woman, who was identified as Sergeant Lopez in black subtitles,
read a prepared statement.

"The LAPD is investigating a shooting that
occurred on the southbound San Diego Freeway thats the four-oh-five
freeway this afternoon at approximately three-twenty near the Santa
Monica Freeway interchange. The victim is identified as a male
Caucasian in his late twenties to early thirties. six feet tall,
medium build. The coroner's office will release a photograph of the
man sometime this week if no one comes forward to identify him. We
have no information as yet on the assailants or the motive for this
attack."

The scene switched to the on-scene reporter. The wind
whipped the woman's hair as she stood in front of a parking lot full
of police cars. She held one hand to her ear; the other held a
microphone. She looked directly into the camera. "Police say
this is the third such freeway vigilante-style shooting this year.
What authorities won't say is what is being done to prevent such
attacks in the future. They are asking anyone with any information
about this latest incident to contact the department. If you were
driving on the San Diego southbound freeway near the Santa Monica
Freeway at approximately three-thirty this afternoon and might have
seen something, please call the number appearing on your screen."

A telephone number flashed across the scene.

"This is Sheena Moral live from Culver City Back
to you, Jerry."

"In other news," a gray-haired anchorman
cheerfully reported, "police are investigating the shooting
death of a couple in Venice Beach tonight. The couple was discovered
late this afternoon by a local merchant. Police say that the man and
woman, identified as twenty-one-year-old Cynthia Ruiz and
twenty-two-year-old Jesus Guzman, had probably been killed sometime
this morning."

Munch stared at the TV The scene switched to the
apartment building. The detectives working the case were easy to
spot, with their dark sportcoats and gold shields. One was a tall
good-looking white guy who radiated an air of tacit superiority He
strode past the reporters and onlookers, brushing aside their
questions with unsmiling curtness. She'd met his type before. The
second detective was a plump Hispanic man. He looked like the kind of
cop who would joke around with you. The kind who didn't feel they had
to be a hardass all the time. She thought about Mace St. John, the
homicide cop who had once come after her. Maybe it was time to give
him a call. She turned back to the picture on her TV screen.

It was getting real, she thought, whether she was
ready for it or not.
 
 

8

MUNCH WOKE THE next morning and knew there was no way
she could go shopping. She reached over to the nightstand beside her
bed and grabbed a cigarette. Then she remembered that she wasn't
going to smoke in the bedroom anymore and not first thing. She put
the cigarette back in the pack. She'd had weird dreams all night:
searching for something lost, but not sure what it was that she was
looking for; unable to find her voice; trying to make phone calls but
not being able to dial. She had a good idea what was at the root of
all those uneasy images. She needed to find out for sure if Sleaze
was dead. That was all there was to it.

Surely they would just run the dead man's
fingerprints through their computers. If it was Sleaze, they would
find a match soon enough. She got out of bed, grabbed her smokes, and
went into the kitchen to put on the coffee water. As she passed the
TV she turned it on to Saturday morning cartoons. She paused briefly
to watch Wile E. Coyote fall off another cliff. Then she turned the
sound down and called the Venice police department, asking for Mace
St. John. The woman who answered the phone told her that the
lieutenant was on his vacation and would be out for the rest of the
week. So much for that ace up her sleeve.

She drank two more cups of coffee before she got out
the phone book, turning to the front where county services were
listed.

Under Coroner there were several numbers: one for
regular business hours, another for emergencies, and a third for 5:00
RM. to 8:00 A.M. on weeknights, Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays. She
dialed the last number.

"L.A. County"

"Is this the morgue?"'

"We are not a morgue," a man's voice
informed her. "We are the Coroner's Office of Los Angeles
County"

"Oh," she said, not quite sure what the big
difference was. "I just wanted to check your hours. Are you
open?"

"Not to the public."

Of course, she thought, they wouldn't let just anyone
in there.

"I'm not exactly the public," she said,
stopping short of saying that she was missing a family member. That
wouldn't work. He'd want to know the name of her missing relative,
how long he had been missing, and if she'd filed a missing persons
report. Understandably the coroner might also want to know why she
thought her relative might be dead and at his facility

"Are you with the CSI class that's coming here
this afternoon?" he asked.

She hesitated only a second. "Yeah, when is
that?" It was only a teeny lie, she decided, but one that might
get her inside if it came to that.

"Don't you have your sheet?" he asked.

"No, uh, sorry I don't have it."

"Great. It's today at four. I suppose you've
lost your parking pass as well." She could almost see him
shaking his head.

"If it was with the sheet then I don't have it,"
she said truthfully

"And you want to have a career in law
enforcement?"

"It's my dream," she said.

"Just get here, but you'll have to park in the
public parking lot."

"I don't mind. Will we be viewing bodies?"

"Yeah, we got a full house for you guys."

"Great. I'll be there."

She hung up the phone and remembered to breathe. Then
she made a third call.

When Danielle answered, Munch told her that her
errand was going to keep her tied up for most of the morning and
possibly the afternoon.

"Are you all right?" Danielle asked. 'You
sound funny"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she said and cleared her
throat as if that would diminish the weight of the unsaid words
there.

They said their goodbyes and hung up. Munch went to
her closet and looked over her limited wardrobe. What was the
well-dressed student criminalist wearing these days? She picked out a
pair of camel-colored slacks and a flowered blouse and draped them
over a chair in her bedroom.

She spent the rest of the morning doing busy-work
around her apartment. At two-thirty she put away her tools and
changed her clothes.

Her hair was straight again after last evenings bath;
she pulled the top half back into a ponytail, letting the rest fall
softly around her ears. Danielle had had Munch buy all sorts of
makeup, most of which sat in her drawer unopened. The lipstick that
Danielle had picked out for her had felt too conspicuous when Munch
had put it on alone in her bathroom. Without Danielle's brazenness
for encouragement, she had been unable to leave her house until she
wiped all of it off. Now she applied it carefully as well as the eye
shadow, blush, and blue mascara.

She found a pair of pumps that almost matched the
pants. But her hands, she realized, definitely didn't go with the
outfit. If she was wearing her work coveralls, they'd be fine, but
now they just looked dirty She dug out a pair of soft leather driving
gloves from her dresser and slipped them on, wincing as they chafed
against her numerous cuts and split cuticles. Before she left the
house, she grabbed her notebook off the kitchen table, thinking that
this added prop would make her look more scholarly

The building that housed the Coroner's Office of Los
Angeles County was on the eastern fringe of downtown Los Angeles. The
entrance of the building was at the top of a small hill, and as Munch
stood in the lobby reading the directory by the elevator, she
realized she was on the third floor.

"Can I help you?" the security guard asked.

"Oh," she said, startled. For a moment, the
presence of a uniform shook her nerve. How illegal was it, she
wondered, to sneak into a morgue? " was looking for the CSI
class," she said.

"You're late," he said. "They've
already gone down."

"Down?"

"To the autopsy suite," he said.

"Yes, yes, of course." She pushed the
button on the elevator. "I'll just catch up to them."

"It's not that easy" the rent-a-cop said.
"We have security measures here."

Munch's stomach lurched and her resolve wavered once
more. It wasn't too late to just turn around and go. What had she
done so far? Just said that she was looking for the CSI class, not
even a lie really Then she got angry with herself. The whiny voice
inside her head disgusted her. It was time to get off the goddamn
fence.

"You need a special key to get off at that
floor," he said, looking her up and down. "Kinda warm for
gloves, isn't it?"

She smiled her best Danielle-smile at the guard. "You
know what they say: Cold hands, but a warm heart."

The guard took a breath that puffed out his chest. "
think we can let you slide this one time."

She hoped she wasn't laying it on too thick as she
ran her hand through her hair and said, "Well, aren't you just
the nicest thing?" The last was a patented Deb line, some of
that Southern sugar she dispensed to bend men to her will.

They rode down to the next floor in silence. She was
conscious of his eyes and grateful that the majority of his attention
was not directed at her face. He used his key to open the elevator
door. She gave his arm a squeeze on her way out.

"Thanks again."

"Good luck," he said and pointed down the
hallway indicating where she should go. The hallway took her past
several closed office doors, then opened to become what appeared to
be a waiting room. Several vinyl chairs lined the wall; worn issues
of Good Housekeeping magazine were fanned across a small coffee
table.

She passed a wax mannequin covered with a plastic
sheet and laid out on a steel gurney Only the yellowish feet of the
mannequin showed. She supposed the dummy was used as some sort of
teaching aid, like one of those visible V-8's they had at the trade
school. A man in a white smock came along and whipped off the tarp
with a magicians flourish. She saw that the figure on the table was
female and very detailed, right down to her pubic hair.

"Oh," she said.

"What?" asked the man.

"She's real, isn't she?"

He chuckled and made a notation on his clipboard.
Munch realized the dead woman was on a scale. The corpse weighed
ninety-eight pounds. She looked at the cadaver's face and asked,
"How'd she die?"

The man consulted his clipboard. "Overdosed on
booze and Methaqualone. See how emaciated she is? Thats how these
alcoholics get. They stop eating and do nothing but drink."

"Terrible," Munch agreed.

"You here with the class?" he asked.

"The guard said I'd find everybody down here,"
she said.

He indicated a doorway

"Thanks."

He nodded and went back to his work.

She pushed through the thick rubber flaps and they
shut automatically after her. The room in which she found herself
hummed with a subdued energy She had expected it to be colder. The
smell of blood and raw meat was overpowering. She had no association
to match the odor to, but she was sure she would never forget it. She
made her way over to the group of men who surrounded a fixed steel
table. They glanced up at her as she approached, then turned their
attention back to what they had been observing.

There was a cracking noise and then she saw another
man in a white smock with the words MEDICAL EXAMINER stenciled across
the back manipulating the handles of a pair of large garden loppers.
The clippers reminded her of the ones Jack used to trim the trees
around the shop. She stepped in closer to see what he was doing. A
man in a green shirt moved aside, making room for her. She discovered
that the man in the white smock was snipping through the rib cage of
a large black man. The skin of the dead man's torso had been cut from
his throat to his pubis and pulled to the side, exposing his rib cage
and stomach cavity