Unwanted Company - Barbara Seranella (8 page)

Thirty minutes later, Detective Tiger Cassiletti
pulled up in front of her house. He was driving a Chevy Caprice and
dressed in a gray suit. She'd forgotten how tall he was. He still
ducked his head as he walked.

"
Hi," she greeted him from her doorway.
"Come on in."

Perhaps he scowled because he was looking into the
sun. As he got closer to her, he smiled tentatively, and his eyes lit
with recognition. "I hope I'm not keeping you from anything?

"
It's good to see you again," she said,
smiling. She watched his expression waver, as if trying to choose
between being a cop on a mission or exercising the manners his mother
had taught him.

"Yeah," he said. "How have you been?"

"Just great," she said, leading him into
her house. "I've got over seven years clean and sober. I even
quit smoking." She directed him to take a stool at the kitchen
counter and stood opposite him so that their eyes were at the same
level. "So what's this all about?" she asked.

"
We're just trying to fill in some blanks."
He pulled a slim notebook out of the inside breast pocket of his suit
coat. "How is it that you had the phone number that you called
today? "

"
My customer last night used my mobile phone. I
keep track of the numbers that are called and compare them to my
monthly bill."

"
And your customers are okay with that?" he
asked as he fished out a pen and clicked it open. "You writing
down all the numbers they call?"

She felt her eyes shift from his and cursed herself
for her lack of poise. Cops were trained to look for stuff like that,
even big goofs like Cassiletti. "Yeah, it's never been a
problem." She thought about the hidden microphones. What would
he think of those?

"And are you often in the habit of calling those
numbers?" he asked.

"
No, not at all. I sure didn't expect to hear
Detective St. John's voice. Or should I say Lieutenant?"

"
Detective is right," Cassiletti said. This
time his eyes darted away.

"
I know he got promoted. I used to see him on
the news all the time, giving statements about crimes and
investigations. At least I used to. Did something happen? He didn't
get in any trouble, did he?"

"
He took a downgrade and transferred to Parker
Center. "

"He was demoted? "

"Not by the brass. He took a cut in rank so he
could get back into investigations."

"In other words, you're telling me he didn't
want to be a talking head for the department.  Cassiletti didn't
answer. She watched him wipe the palm of his hand on his pant leg and
decided to press. "You followed him to Parker Center?"

"
We're partners,' he said.

Was that defensiveness in his tone?

"How's Caroline, Mrs. St John, with all this?"

"
You'd have to ask her," he said.

Munch wondered if it would be possible to resume some
kind of relationship with Caroline. It would be easier if Munch could
explain why she had distanced herself in the first place. Her
friendship with Mace and Caroline had been one of the many sacrifices
she had willingly made since Asia came into the picture. Munch had
changed the meetings she attended, made new friends, even moved to a
new apartment. All this to avoid having to explain the sudden
presence in her life of a six-month-old child. A child she was
calling her daughter.

"
Tell her hi from me when you see her,"
Munch said, trying to keep her tone offhand. As if Caroline Rhinehart
St. John hadn't been one of the most important people in her life. As
Munch's former probation officer, Caroline had been the first person
to extend hope. Mace St. John came in a close second by absolving
Munch of her father's murder. But it was Caroline who had seen beyond
Munch's crude bravado and put in a word where it mattered. In this
case, to the detective assigned to a homicide that seemed pretty
open-and-shut. Caroline had shown Mace St. John, a cop who saw the
world in black-and- white, that there were also shades of gray. Her
actions and words had saved Munch a certain future in prison.
Caroline and Mace had gone on to fall in love and then marry.

Last Christmas Munch had considered penning a long
letter to Caroline. In it she would explain how she'd saved the
little girl and took her in as her own. The adoption was without
benefit of a judge's sanction. Munch had done some investigating into
what was involved in a legal adoption. One of the requirements was to
track down other relatives and get them to sign off their rights.
Munch wasn't prepared to take that risk. As far as she was concerned,
any kin of Asia's had relinquished their rights to the kid by not
being aware she was being used to transport dope. No court was going
to tell her different.

The letter had never been sent or written. Not that
she didn't trust Caroline; she just had too much at stake. What if
the right and legal thing to do would be to put Asia in foster care
until the matter was settled formally?

Cassiletti cleared his throat, pen poised over his
open notebook, obviously anxious to get to business. "So why did
you call the number you had today?"

"
I was hoping to reach a customer I did a run
for last night."

"Why?"

"What?" She was afraid he was going to ask
that. "Why did you need to find your customer?" He looked
down at his notepad. "Raleigh Ward?"

"Yeah, that's the one. He told me he was going
to need the car again, but he forgot to reserve the times."

"
So you thought you'd track him down."

"
Yeah," she answered reluctantly. He made
it sound like she was stalking the guy.

"
Have you ever been to Apartment 103 at 1500
North Gower in Hollywood?"

"
Is that the building off Sunset?"

"Yes," he said. He was watching her closely
now. This must be the question that mattered.

"I was at that building last night, but I didn't
go inside any of the apartments. Was that the number I reached you
guys at?"

"
Why were you there?" he asked. There was
an edge to his voice. He had that cop tone that expected, no,
demanded unquestioning submission. Obviously he'd learned a thing or
two in the seven years since they'd last met.

"My client picked up some women there. We
dropped them off later." She let her eyes widen a little."Don't
tell me they were involved in a murder?"

"
I really can't comment."

"C'mon, who am I going to tell?" she said.

His face dropped all expression, and she knew she
wasn't going to budge him. The lines were pretty clear on who was in
the club and who wasn't. Cops only let civilians get so close to
them.

"
Can you recall the exact times you were at the
building?" he asked. "I also need the names and
descriptions of everyone in your party"

She picked up a sheet of notepaper and handed it to
him. "I already wrote it all down for you. Mace asked me to."

He took the paper and read it with poorly disguised
surprise. "All right. Uh . . . thanks. This will be a big help."
He folded the paper twice and put it in his suit pocket. "Can I
look at the limo they used last night?"

"
Why?" she asked.

He raised an eyebrow.

She resisted the urge to look out the window. "It's
out on a run with one of my drivers," she said.

"When will it be back?"

"That's hard to say
right now. Why don't you give me one of your cards, and I'll call
you."

* * *

Cassiletti called in his report by land line to Mace
St. John. Police radio frequencies were easily and constantly
monitored by newshounds and thrill seekers. The two men agreed to
meet at the Culver City address Munch had given them. When they got
to Raleigh Ward's apartment, no one answered their knock. A neighbor
who had been home all morning remembered seeing the apartments
occupant leave in a limousine.

"
This guy likes to live right," Cassiletti
commented.

"
I'll meet you back
at the office," Mace replied.

* * *

The afternoon found both men back at the squad room
on the fifth floor of Parker Center. Each concentrated on his
respective chores. Cassiletti perched in front of his typewriter, his
large fingers diligently poking at the keys, filling in all the
spaces on the Preliminary Investigation Report, and the two separate
Death Reports.

Mace sat at one of the scarred empty desks in a
windowless corner of the large, open room. A television connected to
a video player hung from brackets bolted to the acoustical-tiled
ceiling. On it he watched the video footage from the Gower building's
surveillance camera while he ate his sandwich from its cellophane
wrapper and sipped lukewarm coffee. Actually, he was watching a copy.
The original was safely stored in the  evidence locker, away
from anything with a magnetic field like a metal detector—and with
the write-protect tab broken off. All these precautions were the
result of painful lessons. As soon as they'd gotten to the Gower
crime scene, Mace had sent one of the support officers around the
neighborhood to seize any videotapes that might have recorded
evidence. The building's security cameras were on a two-day recycle
schedule. They took eight-second time-lapse photographs but switched
to real time whenever the building's keypad was used.

The officer had also recovered the videotape from a
camera mounted on the roof of a nearby Bank of America. The cop had
correctly noted that the camera's range included the alley running
behind the apartment complex. Mace had had two copies made of each
tape before returning to Parker Center. It was difficult not to play
them immediately, but experience had also taught him that each
playing of a tape degraded it—especially tape from a
surveillance-camera video system that was constantly recycled.

He began with the apartment-building tapes. A series
of stills flashed across the television mounted high in the corner.
The time and date showed in white dot-matrix-style print across the
bottom right corner of the screen. Later the technicians from the
photo lab of the Scientific Investigative Division would develop
individual stills off this copy. Pausing the tape or running it in
slow motion also caused degradation and loss of data. Later he would
have all the time he needed to pore over the individual prints.
Indeed, if this was like the last case, those images would be
imprinted in negative on the insides of his eyelids. Now he reviewed
the footage to make sure nothing that required immediate attention
was missed. Spread before him were several sheets of paper from a
yellow legal pad on which he charted a time line of events, beginning
with when he'd arrived at the scene and working backward. The
anonymous tip had come in at 4:13 A.M. to the Hollywood Division
desk. The caller, who had not used 911, had been put on hold while
the switchboard routed him through to Homicide. The information,
delivered in a whisper, was that there'd been a killing at the
address on Gower. The caller did not stay on the line long enough to
be questioned further.

A black-and-white unit had been the lirst to respond.
The officers had duly recorded the times they received notification
and when they arrived at the scene. Twelve minutes had elapsed. They
found the apartment door open. Two minutes later they discovered the
two victims and called in a report via land line to their watch
sergeant.

The coroner arrived at six-thirty, made small
incisions beneath each of the women's rib cages, and inserted his
chemical thermometer. He determined from the temperature of their
livers and state of rigor that both had died within minutes of each
other and no longer than six hours prior. That fixed the time of
death between midnight and four that morning, pending any unusual
findings when the toxicology reports came in.

What Mace now knew was Munch's limousine had arrived
at the apartment complex on Gower at 6:58 P.M. the previous evening.
The tape showed the driver's arm, Munch's arm, stretched out from the
driver's-side window, reaching for the keypad. The tinted rear window
of the limo was rolled halfway down, but the angle from the camera
didn't capture the face of any occupant.

He fast-forwarded to 11:29 P.M. One of the victims
moved away from the keypad and back inside the limo, which proceeded
through the gate. The camera also caught the detail of the open moon
roof. At 11:36 the limo left. He clicked through rapidly, stopping at
1:33 A.M. A cab had appeared at the front gate. A few minutes later a
bald man was shown letting himself out of the pedestrian gate with a
hand raised to the waiting car. The cab's TCP number was plainly
visible, as was the bald man's face. He even seemed to smile for the
camera. Mace made a note to get a copy of that still to Munch for
identification.

He reached for the phone to call Caroline. She'd be
interested to hear that he'd spoken to Munch. Munch was one of her
great success stories. Caroline had seen something in the little waif
that nobody else had. An addict such as Munch, who had so completely
turned her life around, was just the sort of thing that made
probation officers feel that what they were doing really made a
difference. According to Cassiletti, Munch had continued to thrive:
She was still working as a mechanic, running a limo business on the
side, living in a nicer neighborhood, maintaining her sobriety. Yep,
Caroline would love to hear how she'd made a difference. And besides,
he missed the sound of her voice.