Part of a shape won't delete out
I'm having a weird issue with deleting some text out of a shape in Illustrator.
I didn't create this and I'm not sure how it was built and can even find an easy enough work around but I'm curious about why this is happening.

I have a some pretty standard vector text over a shape.


You can see all the expected paths are there.
But what I go to delete the blue parts out of the black shape I encounter the issue.

Close up:

I can't get rid of that part in the R I N!
I've tried using merge, flatten transparency, expand, etc. but nothing seems to do it. Illustrator doesn't identify it as a path. It looks raster but there's no raster graphics in the file. Anyone know what could be going on here?
