Read Unfinished Business - Barbara Seranella for Free Online

just to wind down at night. At forty-two, he was just eight
years shy of middle age, according to Munch. He couldn't remember
when he hadn't answered to a chain of command.
    Oh fuck it, he thought. The next thing he knew he'd
be having an irresistible urge to buy a Porsche or start dyeing his
hair or some crazy shit like that. He turned his attention back to
the matter at hand.
    "I might run over there and see what I can find
out," he told the Rampart dick.
    "Let me know what happens," Rosales said.
The voice sounded young and enthusiastic. "I'd love to catch
this guy."
    They hung up after promising to share all pertinent
information.
    St. John pulled out the murder book he had started
the day before. He made a note, "Boiled blood," and laughed
that one-note expression of amusement and disbelief men use to save
their sanity in morbid situations. He studied photographs of the body
and dump site. Photographs he had taken himself while waiting for the
coroner's wagon to arrive.
    The position of the body had seem staged, with one
leg pointing north, the other pointing west. The killer would most
probably have driven to the site, as it was a freeway underpass. No
tire tracks were distinguishable on the asphalt, but there was an
inch-deep layer of run-off soil where the body had been dropped.
Dropped and positioned, not dragged. He made another note to himself
and then put the pencil between his teeth and bit down. Absently he
checked his shirt pocket for a box of Tiparillos, forgetting he was
out.
    The shoe prints were all around the freeway side of
the body. The muck lining the road was equal parts road oil and dirt
with a high clay composite. It should have recorded excellent
impressions, and yet the shoeprints weren't that distinctive. The
dental-plaster casts he had made of those smeared shoeprints had
picked up some blue fibers. There was something else about those
shoeprints as he studied them now, something strangely familiar about
their fuzzy edges.
 
    Chapter 6
     
M unch didn't
have to turn around to know who Lou had sarcastically referred to as
"lover boy." D.W. Sanders had arrived. She heard the creak
of his van door opening.
    D.W. called himself a contractor, which basically
meant that he owned a set of carpentry tools and did odd jobs around
the neighborhood. He also delivered Meals-On-Wheels every Tuesday.
She had met him when his van was towed in a month earlier needing a
fuel pump.
    D.W. was Lou's height, about two inches shy of six
feet, and closer to forty than thirty. He had a receding hairline and
grew the remaining strands of his black hair long enough to tie back
into a ponytail. Not a bad-looking guy but he would look better if he
lost some of the stoop in his shoulders.
    He made it a habit to stop in most mornings, always
bringing her coffee fixed just the way she liked it. He'd claim to be
on his way to a job. The way he told it he had quite a business. The
big time, he hinted, was right around the corner. He referred to his
customers as "clients" and his helpers as his "crew."
In fact, he had said last week, the way things were going, pretty
soon he was going to need help with the bookkeeping and scheduling.
He wanted to hire somebody who was handicapped to run his office.
From her own experience with the small-business circuit, Munch knew
D.W. had far too much free time to be able to afford office help.
    He always dressed in standard contractor garb: jeans,
long-sleeved cotton shirts, and work boots, which he never tied until
after his first cup of coffee. The untied shoes reminded her of her
daughter, Asia, who also liked to leave her laces dangling. When
Munch pointed it out the other morning, Asia had archly informed her
that "None of the second graders tie their shoes."
    "Well, then," Munch had replied, swallowing
a smile.
    The week after D.W.'s fuel pump went out, he came in
needing rear brakes. Rather than have one of his "crew"
pick him up, he stayed at the shop and watched her work. He