No offence Intended - Barbara Seranella Read Online Free Page B

their cones so that the police crime lab van could
enter. Blackstone greeted Jeff Hagouchi from Firearms as he exited
his vehicle.
    "What have we got?" Hagouchi asked.
    "One victim, shot twice, three rounds fired."
    "A level shot would have taken out the back
window," Hagouchi said.
    "Yeah," Blackstone answered, "that's
what we were thinking, but we wanted an expert's opinion."
    "Then this is your lucky day"
    Hagouchi brought out two long wooden dowels and
pushed them carefully through the holes in the windshield until they
just touched the corresponding punctures in the back seat. He had the
photographers take more pictures of the windshield with the dowels
inserted.
    "Find any spent cartridges?" Hagouchi
asked.
    "Not yet," Blackstone said, pointing to the
uniformed officers traversing the vacant freeway shoulder to
shoulder. He took Hagouchi over to the skid marks. One of the bullets
had lodged into the asphalt there. Hagouchi drew a circle around it
with yellow chalk and then followed Blackstone back to the truck.
    "We've got two scenarios," Hagouchi said.
"I'll know more when I examine the projectiles, of course. You
got either a long-range shot with a rainbow trajectory. . ."
    "Three times?"
    "Or a passing tall vehicle. Find your spent
cartridges and you'll have distance and angle. I'll extract the other
bullets once we get the truck back to the station."
    Blackstone showed Hagouchi where the bullets had
punctured the steel skin of the cab behind the seat. Hagouchi
whistled. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"
    "Definitely not hollow points," Blackstone
said, knowing that hollow points would have mushroomed on impact.
"Full metal Jackets?" he asked, referring to military-type
bullets that were designed to take out more than one human target.
    "At least," Hagouchi said. "Possibly
APs."
    Blackstone nodded grimly He definitely didn't like
the idea of mobile sharpshooters armed with AP rounds. He made a note
to himself in his notebook, writing out the words that nobody had
said out loud. There was another name for armor-piercing ammunition:
cop-killers.
 
 
    4
    MAYBE I'T HADN"T been him, Munch thought as she
turned onto the Santa Monica westbound freeway After her initial
reaction of shock and horror a strange calm had settled around her
heart. Surely if it had been Sleaze lying there dead she would feel
something more. After all they'd been through together, he wouldn't
depart the planet without her instinctively knowing. No, she needed
more proof before she mourned him. Until that time, it wasn't real.
It didn't happen.
    She focused on the appointment with her probation
officer.
    It hadn't taken long after being assigned to Mrs.
Scott for Munch to see that the woman was not looking to make any
friends with her clients. Her office was plastered with plaques of
appreciation from law enforcement groups. She kept a signed picture
on her desk of her shaking hands with the chief of police. So much
for being in the business of rehabilitation.
    "Fuck 'er if she can't take a joke," Flower
George would have said. But he was dead now. His ill advised fatherly
advice needed to be buried with him. All that old stinking thinking
needed to go. She was trying to stop saying the F word, too. For now
she was still caught in the system and she accepted that. The legal
system—the judges, the lawyers, the cops—never expected anyone to
successfully complete a three-year probation term, but she would
surprise them. Probation was just a device they used to keep you on
hold—their way of saying, "You can walk for now, but we got
you when we want you." The random surprise testing enabled them
to gather fuel for future leverage. junkies didn't go straight. That
was a well-known fact. It was the recidivism factor.
    Recidivism. She'd learned the word in rehab.
    The statistics were that ninety-seven percent of all
junkies went back to the needle.
    That meant three percent didn't.
    With eight months clean and sober, she was looking
forward to her