An Unacceptable Death - Barbara Seranella Read Online Free Page B

can do for them." She picked up the TO DO list she
had begun, but had difficulty reading it. Her letters were misshapen
and most of the words had been left unfinished. She took a deep
breath. The pain was still there. Maybe it was a part of her now.
"How does this work?"
    " What do you mean?"
    She blinked back tears. "Does the department
arrange the funeral? Should I call the coroner's office? I'd like to
make it as easy on the family as I can."
    St. John seemed to know what she needed and what she
didn't. A word of sympathy right now would completely unwind her.
    " I'll let you know the timetable as soon as all
that is decided," he said. "We usually do a showy funeral
for the troops and PR. The hypocrisy is painful at best."
    " Usually?" she asked, again picking up on
some reluctance in his voice and body language. "When haven't
they?"
    " The only cop funerals I've seen go ignored and
unannounced were suicides and bad off-duty situations."
    " It wasn't either of those," Munch said
firmly. "Especially not suicide. He was Catholic. A good
Catholic."
    " Of course he was," St. John said. "To
the best of my knowledge, it wasn't anything like suicide. He died
fighting."
    Several hours later, Munch had to get out of the
house. She walked to the market and bought a quart of milk. Caroline
St. John took Asia to school at 8:30 A.M. They had decided not to
tell Asia until after school. Let the kid have a few more hours of
blissful ignorance. This also gave Munch a little more time to come
to terms with it all before having to explain the unexplainable to
her daughter.
    Remember the Challenger, honey, and how that
schoolteacher died? This is much worse .
    The world had changed. People conducted their
business, gave up their money for services and products, grew
impatient with traffic, cared about the color of their houses and how
much water the neighbor used to water his lawn.
    Munch had a secret. None of that shit mattered. It
was oddly freeing. She even felt superior, maybe enlightened was more
like it. The problem with this newfound wisdom was that when nothing
mattered, nothing mattered.
    When she got back from the store, Munch changed out
of her Texaco uniform to go visit Rico's father. She put on a pair of
Levi's, T-shirt, and tennis shoes.
    Fernando Chacón had a small house in Lawndale. He
lived there with his son Cruz. Cruz was thirty-three, but would
always need help for the simplest of life functions. His fingers and
toes curled spastically inward and he moved in lurching steps. He had
the mental capacity of a toddler and spoke in a minimal language only
understood by his immediate family. An older Mexican woman came in
five days a week to cook and clean for the two men since Rico's
mother had died.
    Like a toddler, Cruz needed constant supervision.
When the family had lived in San Ysidro, the border town in
California opposite Tijuana, Cruz had once gotten out of the house
and walked across the footbridge connecting the two countries.
    Rico and his mother had had to use connections and
bribes to locate the missing man in a Tijuana jail and negotiate his
release. Rico had hated the way they did business in his country of
birth, but knew how to operate within its corrupt system.
    Fernando was sitting in his garage when Munch pulled
up. He was wearing lace-up boots, thick canvas pants, and a matching
long-sleeved shirt. A dark oval of unbleached fabric over the pocket
remained where a name tag had once been stitched. He, like Munch, had
opted for clothes that gave him maximum mobility.
    Soon, she knew, he would be breaking out his black
suit and dusting off his lone pair of shiny black loafers.
    Fernando kept a card table set up in his garage with
several folding chairs. A heavy bag hung in one corner and the big
round plastic dial of a chocolate-brown Admiral radio was tuned to a
Spanish-language talk station. Rico used to call the setup his dad's
fort. When Rico's mom was alive, Fernando purposely smoked big smelly
cigars to