Cooper By The Gross (All 144 Cooper Stories In One Volume)

by Bill Bernico

  “How’s that?” I said.

  “Well, when Emily didn’t come home, Mom sent me out with the car to look for her,” Eddie explained. “I thought of Chet and thought he might be able to take me to some of her hangouts, you know? Anyway, we drive around town for a couple of hours and he points out some of her favorite places. When we get there, I go out and ask around and he just sits there in the car, waiting for me to come out. He never got out at any of the places we stopped. He didn’t help look for her at all. It was as if he knew I wasn’t going to find her. Man, he was one cold fish.”

  “Thanks, Eddie,” I said. “You’ve been a big help. I’ll let you know if we turn up anything else.”

  As I walked away I heard Eddie over my shoulder, “Get that son-of-a-bitch, Mr. Cooper. I just know he killed my sister.”

  I stopped and turned around to acknowledge him, but he was already walking back inside the dealership.

  Later the next day we asked Chet if he’d take a polygraph test as a way to eliminate him as a suspect. He agreed, so Dean and I drove Chet and his father to the State Crime Lab where they had a polygraph expert waiting for us. The boy was strapped into the chair while my partner and I waited in another room behind a one-way mirror.

  There was a little table in that room where we could take notes. We could observe the test going on. The polygraph expert would ask a question and mark the graph. If the subject was telling the truth, the polygraph administrator would give us the thumbs-up sign from behind his back. If the subject was lying, he’d give us the thumbs-down sign.

  The administrator, Frank Dobbins, started with simple questions. “Is your name Chester McCauley?” he said

  “Yes,” Chet said.

  “Do you live at fifty-six twenty-seven Lexington Avenue?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you own a nineteen eighty-three Chevrolet coupe?”

  After a pause, Chet said, “Yes.”

  Frank made a mark on the polygraph paper and showed us a thumb up behind him.

  “Do you currently attend Hollywood High School?” Dobbins asked.

  “Yes,” Chet answered calmly.

  Again, the thumb up.

  Do you know anything about the disappearance of Emily Jacobs?” Dobbins said. The needle rose on the paper, scratching ink back and forth across the page.

  “Nope,” Chet said.

  A thumb down.

  “Did you kill Emily Jacobs?” Dobbins asked.

  “No!” Chet screamed. He was agitated this time.

  Again the needle swayed off center and again the thumb down.

  In the middle of the test, Chet turned extremely white and slumped forward and started to fall out of the chair. He was quickly unstrapped and the test was halted. We came around from the room we were in and re-entered the polygraph room. Dobbins told us that the suspect was too tired to take the rest of the test.

  Frank Dobbins took Dean and me aside and told us that he believed the suspect to be guilty. He also stated that he wanted to finish the test but that the suspect should get a good night’s sleep so they could resume in the morning. Chet and his father both agreed to come back the next day.

  During the ride home, Dean and I talked extensively to Chet about our suspicions, trying to get him to confess. He would not cooperate. From the look on Chet’s father’s face, he seemed to be on our side at the time, believing that his son was involved in Emily’s death, but not actually wanting to say so.

  The following day we waited at the detective bureau for Chet to return with his father. When they finally did return, they had a lawyer with them. The lawyer informed us that he was now representing the boy and that we couldn’t ask him any more questions. The lawyer was good and Chet kept his mouth shut.

  Frustration had set in. I went back to my private practice and Dean moved on to other cases on his docket. Several months had passed and we were no closer to getting a confession from Chet McCauley than we were when we started. The deer-handled knife never surfaced until late one spring day in May.

  It was the same knife. No doubt about it. The handle matched the carving fork in the Jacobs home. I’d know it anywhere and I recognized it that day when Dean called me to accompany him when he went to investigate a body on the banks of the Los Angeles River that ran past Forest Lawn Cemetery. It was the body of Chet McCauley and the deer-handled knife we’d been looking for was protruding out of his sternum.

  From the looks of the body, he’d been in the water for a couple of days. The official report listed the cause of death as an accident, but only after input from several so-called experts that owed us favors. It was theoretically possible for a person to trip and fall on a knife at the river’s edge and float away undetected for two days. We also put in our report that Chet McCauley must have returned to the spot where he’d thrown the knife that night he’d killed Emily Jacobs. He obviously tripped on a rock on the riverbank and fell directly onto the knife. Case closed.

  That’s the official report. Unofficially, we suspected that Eddie Jacobs had been keeping Chet under surveillance for quite some time. And when he followed him to the river’s edge and saw him recover the murder weapon, Eddie Jacobs decided not to let Chet fall through the cracks again and administered his own brand of justice.

  At least that’s what we guessed. We never investigated further or pressed the matter and to tell you the truth, my conscience never bothered me one little bit.

  When I got back to the office, I laid it all out for Gloria, ending with the discovery of Chet McCauley’s body in the river.

  “Sounds like he got what he deserved,” Gloria said.

  “Sometimes things just work out perfectly,” I said. “It makes up for the cases that go unsolved and drive a person nuts.”

  Gloria smiled. “In some cases, that’s a short drive.”

  49 - Two For One

  It’s funny how it all worked out. I wasn’t even supposed to be here, not really. This was just supposed to be something to do to fill my lunch hour. Luckily I was self-employed and didn’t need to call any boss with some lame excuse as to why I wasn’t back to work yet. Sitting in the balcony of the county courthouse became a lot more interesting than I had anticipated and I decided to stay a while longer to catch the outcome. The entire spectator area was filled to capacity, most of the people fanning themselves with whatever they could find. The temperature inside this building had climbed into the upper eighties and the courthouse air conditioning system had picked this particular day to break down. William Knight, the District Attorney and his adversary, a slick lawyer by the name of Leo Tucker, were trying their cases without their suit jackets. Their shirts stuck to their wet backs as they spoke.

  On the floor below I watched with fascination the proceedings of a murder trial. The victim had been a thirteen-year-old girl named Sally Feldman. The accused was a thirty-eight-year-old man, who sat alongside his attorney, making notes and doodles on his yellow legal pad as both sides presented their cases to the jury of eight men and four women. I could almost read the faces of the four women jurors as they glanced over at the accused, Rudy Carver. I imagined them putting themselves in the young victim’s place during the last few moments of her life at the hands of this man.

  The District Attorney called Officer Mike Gannon to the stand. Gannon was sworn in and took his seat, adjusting the microphone in front of him.

  “Would you state your name and occupation for the record, please,” Knight said.

  “Michael Gannon,” The officer said in a loud and clear voice. I’m a police officer in and for the country of Los Angeles.”

  Knight continued speaking to Officer Gannon but was now looking into the faces of the jurors. “Officer Gannon, would you please tell the court about the arrest you made on the evening of May the twenty-ninth of this year?”

  Gannon leaned into the microphone and said, “My partner, Ronald Schaefer and I were patrolling on Franklin Street during our regular shift. A woman on the corner of Franklin and
Vine had flagged us down. She’d told us that she’d heard what sounded like screaming coming from an alley half a block away. She pointed to the alley in question and my partner and I immediately drove over to investigate.”

  “And what did you find, Officer Gannon,” Knight said, still looking into the faces in the jury box.

  “We found the accused, Rudy Carver, with his hands around the victim’s neck,” Gannon said. “We yelled for him to halt and that’s when he dropped the girl and ran up the alley.”

  “Objection,” Attorney Tucker said, raising one finger in the air. “At that particular moment there was no way Officer Gannon could have identified my client in the dark.”

  “Sustained,” Judge Parker said with a flat affect in his voice.

  “Let me rephrase the question,” Knight said. “Officer Gannon, when you yelled at the man in the alley to halt, what happened?”

  Officer Gannon looked at the jurors this time. “The man we saw dropped the girl to the pavement and ran up the alley.”

  “And what did you do then?” Knight said.

  “My partner, Officer Schaefer, stayed with the girl and I chased the suspect up the alley,” Gannon explained. “The suspect ran through a gate, into an apartment building and up one flight of stairs. I followed but by the time I got to the doorway the suspect was gone. I climbed the stairs and found two doors opposite each other.”

  “Go on, Officer Gannon,” Knight said.

  “I stopped and listened at each door,” Gannon said. “I didn’t hear anything on the other side of the west door, but I did hear sounds coming from the other side of the east door. I kicked it in and found the defendant running toward the kitchen. I ordered him to stop and he didn’t. Instead he slid open a drawer and pulled out a large knife and came at me with it.”

  “And what did you do, Officer Gannon?” Knight said.

  “I ordered him to drop the knife,” Gannon said. “When he didn’t, I shot him. I could hear a siren in the distance so I knew backup was on the way, but before they arrived, the suspect looked up at me and told me that he’d killed the victim because she screamed when he stopped to talk to her.”

  “No further questions, your honor,” Knight said, returning to his table.

  “Mr. Tucker,” Judge Parker said. “Your witness.”

  Tucker stepped up to the witness stand and looked Gannon in the eye before swiveling on his toes and facing the jury. “Officer Gannon,” Tucker said. “Isn’t it just possible that when you came upon the man in the alley, that he was trying to help the girl he’d found lying there?”

  “There was no one else in the area,” Gannon said. “It had to be him.”

  “It had to be him,” Tucker repeated. “Is that your idea of professional investigation techniques?”

  Gannon said nothing.

  Tucker continued his questioning. “When you kicked in Mr. Carver’ door, did you announce to him that you were a policeman?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Gannon said.

  Tucker continued his cross-examination and said, “Did you call an ambulance for Mr. Carver after you shot him?”

  “I didn’t call anyone,” Gannon said. “There was no phone in the suspect’s apartment.”

  Tucker pressed on. “And how long was it before backup arrived on the scene?”

  Gannon shrugged. “I’d guess three or four minutes.”

  “And during those three or four minutes,” Tucker said, “What did you do as far as attending to Mr. Carver’ wounds?”

  “After I cuffed the suspect,” Gannon said, “I grabbed a kitchen towel and wrapped it around the suspect’s upper arm where the bullet had hit him.”

  Tucker turned from the jury back to Gannon and said, “And at what point did you read Mr. Carver his rights?”

  Gannon quickly glanced at Knight, who was leafing through his papers, looking for any reference to the Miranda Rights part of Officer Gannon’s arrest. He found nothing.

  “I’ll ask you again, Officer Gannon. “At what point did you read Mr. Carver his rights?”

  “He’d already confessed,” Officer Gannon explained.

  “After you shot him, isn’t that correct, Officer Gannon?” Tucker said.

  “Yes, but…”

  “And isn’t it true that when you got to the top of the stairs that you had no reason at all to kick in Mr. Carver’ door?” Tucker said.

  “I suspected…”

  “You suspected,” Tucker said. “But you didn’t know for sure that anyone on the other side of that door had done anything wrong. In fact, the real murderer could have been silently waiting on the other side of the west door, isn’t that right, Officer Gannon?”

  “I didn’t think…”

  “That’s right, Officer Gannon,” Tucker said. “You didn’t think. You just acted on a hunch. Call it policeman’s intuition, if you will. When you burst into Mr. Carver’ apartment he panicked, not knowing right away that you were a police officer.”

  Judge Parker turned to Gannon. “Is this true, Officer Gannon? Did you neglect to read Mr. Carver his Miranda Rights? And did he confess only after you shot him once?”

  “Yes, your honor,” Gannon said. “But I…”

  The judge turned to Knight. “The law is very clear here,” Judge Parker said.

  At this point attorney Tucker turned to the judge and said, “Your honor, I’d like to make a motion that the charges against my client, Rudy Carver be dismissed for lack of evidence. Without a positive I.D. at the scene of the crime and without knocking and announcing that he was a policeman, my client thought that his home was being invaded unlawfully and he was frightened. As for the coerced confession, I move that it be thrown out as well, since my client’s rights were not explained to him at the time and that he feared for his life.”

  Judge Parker looked at D.A. Knight and slowly shook his head. “As much as it pains me to see this man set free in this case, I have no other choice than to grant Attorney Tucker’s motion. This case is dismissed.” He banged his gavel once and stepped down off the bench, retreating to his chambers.

  Rudy Carver stood, his right arm still hanging in a sling, and extended his left hand to his attorney. “Thanks, Leo,” Carver said. “Send me your bill.” He left the courthouse without further comment.

  The entire courtroom exploded in conversation and comments. Police held the throngs of angry people back as Carver exited the room. I could feel the blood in my veins pulsing with my own sense of anger and injustice. I had no personal stake in this case. I didn’t know any of the participants, but I knew that I couldn’t just let it go. This would be one big loose end as long as Rudy Carver walked free. And that slime ball of a lawyer that defended Carver had to have known that his client was guilty. How could he live with himself after allowing Carver to go free?

  I drove back to my office, my mind racing with the recent events in the courtroom. I threw my keys on my desk and plopped down in my chair. I wondered what Rudy Carver was doing at this very moment. Perhaps he was sitting in some sleazy bar bragging to the other lowlifes how he’d manipulated the system and beat the rap. His friends were probably slapping him on the back and buying him drinks. The whole thing made me sick.

  I sat there fuming a while longer when my office door opened and Gloria came in carrying several bags. She looked at me, set he bags down and said, “Something eating you today, Elliott?”

  I shook my head slowly. “I just came from the courthouse,” I said. “Rudy Carver just got away with murder.”

  “What?” Gloria almost shouted. “That was a slam dunk. For crying out loud, they caught him in the act. How could he possibly have wiggled out of that one?”

  I explained the loopholes that Carver’s attorney used to get his client off. “And Carver just walked out of that courtroom with a smug look. I tell you, if I’d been standing anywhere near him at the time, I’d have slapped that smirk right off his face.”

  “Well,” Gloria said. “It’s over and there’s nothing e
ither of us can do about it, so try not to let it spoil your day.”

  “I guess you’re right,” I said. “But the injustice of it all just makes me want to…”

  Gloria held up one finger and shook it. “Uh uh,” she said. “You’ll pop that vein in your forehead and then what’ll I do for a job?” She turned her head slightly and gave me a smile.

  I couldn’t help but smile back. She had a way of calming me down under the worst of circumstances.

  “I suppose so,” I said. I looked at the packages she’d set on the leather couch against the east wall and said, “What’s in the bags?”

  “Ooh,” Gloria said. “Wait ‘til I show you.” She reached into one of the bags and withdrew a pair of sheer curtains and an expandable curtain rod. She held the curtains up to my one and only window and stood aside, letting me get the affect.

  “You’re putting these in your apartment?” I said. “And you’re holding them up so you can see what they look like with light coming through them, right?”

  Gloria frowned. “No, silly,” she said. “These would look fabulous right here on this window.”

  I held up both palms, waving them back and forth like someone waving to a passing dignitary in a convertible. “Oh, no,” I said. “Not in this office. This is a private investigator’s office, not some ladies auxiliary meeting room. No, no curtains in here. That’s not the image I want for us.”

  “Us?” Gloria said. “You think this room is decorated with us in mind? This place looks like some good ol’ boys’ locker room and sometimes it smells just as bad.”

  “Now how would you know what a good ol’ boys’ locker room smells like?” I said. “Besides, if dad ever sees those hanging there, he’ll rip ‘em down and throw ‘em away. And grandpa? Well, don’t get me started.”

  Gloria reached into the other bag and pulled out two lace doilies, laying them on the backrest part of my leather couch. “So I suppose you won’t want these, either,” she said.

  I folded my arms across my chest and shook my head. “Any other surprises?” I said.