Unfinished Business - Barbara Seranella

by Barbara Seranella

  "Right, the rape of our victim." Munch squirmed in her chair.

  St. John reached over and squeezed her arm. She wasn't sure if this action was meant to reassure her or quiet her. Probably both.

  "Was it rape or sexual assault?" the agent asked.

  "What's the difference?"

  "Rape as defined by our penal code is an act of sexual intercourse accomplished against a person's will by means of force, violence, duress, menace, or fear of immediate and unlawful bodily injury on the person of another. Sexual Assault is a violent crime where sex has been used as a weapon to hurt and humiliate."

  "It was both," Munch said.

  "She was raped," St. John said simultaneously.

  "What I can never understand is how anybody converts the act of sex into an act of violence,"Munch said. She knew it happened, but witnessing—even being a part of certain acts—didn't mean she understood the why. She didn't have a man's equipment and could never fathom having such close personal interaction, joining your body with another's, in hatred. It didn't make any sense to her at all. Especially now, with her new sensibilities, living in a different world, being a different person accustomed to sanity.

  "Well, now," Emily Hogan said, "you've just hit on the number-one myth. Rape is not about passion gone out of control. It's an act of destruction and degradation. It's an act of ultimate power over another."

  Munch's head nodded, seemingly of its own volition. She was acutely aware of St. John's silent presence.

  "I can't give you a why," Emily Hogan continued. "There are many things we'll never understand. What we do here is catalog and, hopefully put these offenders away as soon as possible."

  She pointed to the file cabinets behind her. "Rape is one of the most difficult crimes to prosecute, because we have all the societal prejudices and myths to overcome."

  "I saw the pamphlets," Munch said.

  St. John looked at her with slightly raised eyebrows. She felt exposed and wished she could just get up and leave, forget this whole thing.

  If Emily Hogan was aware of Munch's discomfort, it didn't show in her tone. She went on with what was turning into a lecture. "A little historical note: In the nineteenth century when the crime of rape was finally being pursued in the courts, there was a seven percent conviction rate for successful rapes, twenty-five percent for attempted rape. When I started in law enforcement, it was the seventies. A woman was expected to resist her rapist to her utmost ability. The more injuries she sustained, the more believable her case. I worked in a department where it was standard procedure to polygraph rape victims. If the woman failed her polygraph, the case was not pursued."

  "But not now, right?" Munch asked.

  "No, thank God, not now. But we still fight the wall of shame." She picked up a folder from her desk. "Listen to this. This is the first officer on the scene's evaluation." She read from the report, "'The assailant then made a demand for oral sex.' "

  "Sounds plain enough to me," Munch said.

  "Let me tell you something," Hogan replied. "No rapist ever stood before his victim and said the words, 'I demand oral sex.' "

  She put down the file and addressed them both. "The first cop on the scene is usually a uniform. He's dealing with some poor woman who's just had a terrible, traumatic experience. He wants to get her help, take her to a hospital, hook her up with a rape counselor. The last thing he wants to do is make her relive the experience in explicit detail. But that's exactly what we need."

  She picked up a packet of papers from her desk. They looked like applications. She handed one each to St. John and Munch. It was a questionnaire. "You're going to have to go back to your victim and have her fill this out to the best of her ability."

  Munch started to read the questions.

  "What did the offender call his sex organs?"

  She hated it when guys named their dicks, as if that part of their body had a separate identity and a mind of its own. She'd heard it said more than once that a stiff cock had no conscience, but she didn't buy it. Man or woman, people had to take responsibility for their actions. She also thought it was weird when people named their cars.

  "There's all kinds of rapists," Agent Hogan said.

  Munch stopped reading and asked, "You mean they all have a distinctive MO?"

  "No," St. John interrupted, "that's Hollywood bullshit. There's no such thing as a distinctive MO that lasts much longer than four months. Assholes update their MO constantly."

  Munch was used to cop speak. "Asshole" meant criminal. When he said "Asshole," on the other hand, with the emphasis on the second syllable, he was referring to a defense attorney. She'd spent enough time around him, hanging on his every word, to pick up the nuances.

  "That's right," Agent Hogan said. "Modus operandi is learned behavior designed for the safety of the offender to ensure the success of his crime. And with every act the offender perpetrates, he hones his craft a little more. MO evolves with each crime."

  "Constantly," St. John agreed. "Maybe the asshole gets ID'd and caught because he left fingerprints. The next time he wears gloves. Maybe he grabs his victims in a shopping mall. The woman screams and somebody comes to her rescue. The asshole runs off to his little cave, licks his wounds, and plans a way for that not to happen again. So next time he grabs his victim in an underground parking lot with nobody else around."

  "So by looking at how the guy does his crime," Munch said, "the precautions he takes, you can figure how he was caught before. So maybe this guy disguises his voice because he was busted on a voice lineup."

  The look he gave her was of approval. She struggled to conceal her pride.

  "Anything else?" Munch asked Agent Hogan.

  "We need to know exactly what this offender said and how he said it. Some rapists have a fantasy that the act is consensual. He might say to his victim, 'Tell me you love me.' Or he might ask her if it feels good. These offenders we classify as 'the inadequate rapist.' This is the type of guy who is socially withdrawn, who is unable for his various reasons to procure a partner. He generally collects pornography and has a complex fantasy life."

  Munch had a quick mental image of the videotapes in Fahoosy's trunk. Strike two, motherfucker.

  "He might even prefer to rape his victim once she's unconscious. Perhaps passed out from intoxication."

  "You count that, too?" Munch asked.

  Agent Hogan looked at her and blinked once.

  Munch felt her cheeks go hot and wondered if the blush showed. "And the other types of rapists?" she asked quickly to get the conversation rolling again.

  "That's what we need to figure out here," Hogan said. "We need to know how he subdued her. Did he put a knife to her throat? Did he cut her? How did he react to seeing the blood? Once she was complying, did he stop using force? Did he display a sense of entitlement? All this is important.

  "Eighty to eighty-five percent of rapists are known to their victim," she added.

  "I believe it," Munch said, pulling out her own experiences and holding them up to test against this woman's theories.

  "This is true with the inadequate rapist," the agent continued, "or the weenie rapist as I like to call him, as well as the rapist who feels he's entitled."

  "Entitled," Munch said. That would explain that time with Culley.

  "Now we're talking about what makes this guy tick," Emily Hogan said. "What makes him feel good. What he needs to do to satisfy his needs. That's his signature. That's the part that doesn't change. Sexual fantasies are constant throughout your life. You might embellish them, dress them up, refine them. But whatever thing that imprinted you at whatever critical moment in your sexual development is your thing for life."

  Munch studied the form in her hand. The questions came right to the point.

  "What did the offender call the victim's sex organs?"

  "What profanity was used?"

  "Were other objects used for penetration?"

  "And if so, what?"

  A flashlight, Munc
h remembered. Red plastic handle. Later, at the hospital, the doctor extracted several minuscule flecks of chrome from the walls of her vagina. She hadn't wasted any time wondering what sick pleasure that guy got out of sticking this inanimate object up inside her. She also didn't understand why some men wore panty hose under their trousers or wanted you to hurt them. She did know that there were all types out there. Guys like Culley who drove you out to a deserted graveyard and were so mad at you for hooking up with someone else that they demanded sex one more time.

  "This goes in your mouth or in your cunt, " Culley had said. What a choice. She chose the latter, staring at the headliner of his Chevy until he was finished. Then he drove her back to the Flats. And she told on him. Of course she told on him. She wasn't the type to go climbing into a hole and cower. She dealt with things as they happened and then got over them. Sleaze John and a couple of the other guys whipped him good. What she couldn't understand was why he drove her back. Not that he should have killed her or anything, but he could have made her find her own way home and gotten a head start. But then, he never planned to leave. Now she understood. Culley was one of those who believed he was entitled. Did Robin's rapist also now feel a sense of entitlement?

  And there was that redheaded guy they all called Gypsy. He was a strange one, even by their standards. That incident happened even before the thing with Culley. Gypsy climbed into bed with her one night. Woke her up from a sound sleep with a knife under her chin. He was stoned on something. Reds most likely He didn't smell like he was out-of-his-mind drunk. He told her things, told her how much he wanted her, wanted to make love to her. All this with the blade of his hunting knife resting on her throat. She had gotten mad, pinned as she was under the covers with his weight on top of her, his breath in her face. She heard her next-door neighbor, Brian, through the thin wall. He was strumming his guitar. He stopped playing when she said in a loud voice, "Well, then, you may as well kill me, Gypsy, instead of just showing me your goddamn knife." Brian had not kicked in the door as she had hoped he might. Instead, Gypsy had put away his knife, mumbled something that was halfway between an excuse and an apology, and staggered away. Brian, a big, tall, strapping guy told him he wasn't being cool. He said this from the doorway as Gypsy stumbled down the street never to be seen again. They were both weenies.

  "Man," she said, her fist clenched. Nothing like anger arriving ten years after the fact.

  "What?" St. John asked.

  "Oh, um, I was just wondering about this last question. 'What was the order of sexual encounters?' " she read out loud. Emily Hogan looked at her. "Fellatio, oral sex, followed by anal penetration is a much different assault when carried out in the reverse order."

  "I get it," Munch said, almost sorry she had asked for clarification. She folded the questionnaire and put it in her purse, next to all the other disturbing literature.

  "And this brings us to the third classification of rapists, the sadists. Fortunately this is a very small group. These are the kinds of guys who should have been drowned as pups. As the name implies, their pleasure comes from another's pain. You'd be looking for a man who is probably in his mid-thirties; it seems to take these guys that long to work themselves up to the point where they act out. And with most of your rapists, like serial killers, you're going to be looking for someone from the same racial background as his or her victims."

  St. John told Emily Hogan about the electrical torture, the disguised voice, the use of duct tape over the eyes, and how the guy had dumped two of the women on the freeway when he was done with them, one of them dead and one alive, but had taken a third, Robin, back to her car.

  "And now our offender has been making follow-up phone calls to that victim, Robin Davies." He read Emily Hogan the transcript of the calls. Then he put a hand on Munch's arm. "Munch is starting to receive calls and we have good reason to believe it's the same guy."

  Hogan nodded and fixed Munch with a sympathetic expression. "Sounds like this guy believes he's in love with Robin and he perceives that you're trying to come between them."

  "Tell me what I can do to help you all catch this guy" Munch said.

  "We'll set up both you and Ms. Davies with tape recorders," the agent said. "Turn the recorder on with every incoming call until you see who it is. Sometimes these creeps have a friend or even a stranger start the call so that the intended recipient is caught off guard. This way we ensure that we don't miss anything at the beginning of the call. We'll give you enough tapes to make certain that you don't run out. Don't erase the beginnings of the calls that turn out not to be from the bad guy/'

  "Why?"

  "Two reasons. First, to show that nothing was erased, and second, in case the creep has someone else call and then chickens out."

  "I know," Munch said. "Think weenie."

  Hogan smiled. "Now, when he does call, see what you can learn about him. Give him open-ended questions. We don't want yes-or-no answers, but something that will get him to launch into free narrative."

  "Like what?"

  "Like: 'Why are you doing this? What will it take to make you stop?' "

  "So you want to get into his head?"

  "I want anything he'll give us," Hogan said. She reached under her desk and pulled out two tape recorders. From her drawer she retrieved two unopened six-packs of cassette tapes. She gave Munch quick directions on how to attach the machine's microphone to her handset at home. She also instructed Munch to keep a log of the time of the calls.

  "As soon as you hear from him, call me," St. John added.

  "Should I try to set up a meet?"

  "Only if he suggests it. If you bring it up first he'll probably suspect a trap."

  * * *

  On the way home, they stopped at Robin's. The gate guard didn't want to let them in, but St. John flashed his badge again and told the guy to open up. Minutes later, they knocked on Robin's door.

  "Yes?" she called from inside.

  "Robin, it's Munch and Mace St. John. Can we come in?"

  She opened the door a little more quickly than she had before. Progress measured in inches.

  They gave her the questionnaire and explained that they needed the answers filled out in detail. While Robin looked the questions over, St. John hooked up the tape recorder and instructed her on how and when to use it.

  "I brought you some brochures," Munch said.

  Robin reached out for them but then grabbed Munch's hand.

  "I never wanted to end up like this," she said.

  "You won't. You haven't. It's not over."

  Robin held up the list of questions she was to answer. "I'll have these for you tomorrow. "

  "Call me when you do," Munch said. To seal the deal she gave Robin a hug. The woman had the body mass of a child. "Meanwhile, eat something. We are not going to let this bastard win."

  Chapter 13

  Munch returned with St. John to the Texaco station in time to see the mailman hiking up the sidewalk.

  "Hey Phil," she said. "Anything for me?"

  "As a matter of fact . . ." His voice trailed off as he sifted through the bundle in his hand. "Here you go," he said finally handing her a white envelope. The return address was the Bergman Cancer Center. Munch felt a sudden weight around her heart when she recognized Diane Bergman's handwriting.

  "Mind if I use your phone?" St. John asked.

  "Go ahead," she said, ripping open the envelope. Inside were several pages of paper, folded in thirds. A Post-it note stuck to the center read, "As promised. Good luck. Hope this does you some good

  and thanks again. D. "

  Munch didn't fight the tears. In fact, she welcomed the relief of them. She unfolded the papers and saw that they were a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers printed on Bergman Cancer Center stationery. The top center of the papers still bore indentations from a clipboard, most of the names had small check marks next to them, and there was some scribbling in the margins, numbers and letters written in pencil: 1oo,ooos CARC 35% -23 f
ollowed by the date 1o/1/84.

  St. John noticed and looked at her questioningly He started to say something but then spoke into the phone, "This is Detective St. John with the LAPD. Is Mr. Sarnoff in?" He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. "I'm on hold. What is this?"

  "The guest list from last Friday night. Diane sent it to me."

  "Tell the mailman to wait."

  She ran after Phil. "We need to ask you a few questions."

  Phil put the mailbag pull cart in an upright position. "What's up?"

  She looked back at St. John, who was finishing his call. He held up a finger, said his good-byes into the phone, and walked over to them.

  Munch made introductions

  "How can I help you, Detective?" the mailman asked.

  "Can you tell me where and when this letter was mailed?"

  Phil looked at the envelope. "It's got a return address."

  "How about the cancellation stamp?" St. John said. "What does that tell you?"

  "It's stamped with yesterday's date and the local zip code. That means it came through the Brentwood substation. It was probably posted sometime yesterday. "

  "How about if it was mailed from a residence"

  "You mean someone's personal mailbox? Depends on when the delivery truck got it."

  St. John consulted his notebook and read off Diane Bergman's street address.

  Mailman Phil thought a moment. "They get their mail midday, around noon or one."

  "Even on Saturday?"

  "Even earlier on Saturday" Phil said.

  "So if the postman picked up outgoing mail on Saturday, when would it be processed?"

  "Monday."

  "So if this letter was mailed from the house on Chenault, it was probably put in the homeowner's mailbox after the mail had already arrived on Saturday morning, picked up on Monday and processed Tuesday."

  "Yep, or mailed at a curbside box or at the post office on Tuesday."

  St. John took out his notebook and wrote down Phil's name and number. "Thanks for your help."