by Bill Bernico
For the past two and a half months Gloria and I had had to be discreet about our relationship. We’d meet after hours, either at her house or at a dark restaurant out of town. I didn’t care who else knew about us. I just didn’t want to have to explain myself to Elliott just yet. I knew what his reaction would be. He’d be concerned that this much excitement couldn’t be good for my heart condition. Actually, just the opposite was true. Gloria filled my heart with everything that I could possibly want and I felt thirty again, so how could this be wrong?
I got out of my car and walked around the building toward the pretzel stand. Maybe if I bought Elliott another pretzel, it would keep his mouth too busy to ask any more questions that I wasn’t ready to answer just yet. I bought two pretzels and plucked four mustard packets from a plastic container and brought them back to the office. Elliott was on the phone when I walked in with the pretzels.
I laid one of the pretzels in front of him on a napkin and dropped two mustard packets alongside it. I retreated to my own desk and started in on my second pretzel of the morning. Elliott finished his phone call and looked at the pretzel and then over at me.
“Thanks,” he said, picking up the warm treat and squirting mustard along its rim. “But if you’re thinking that this will keep me quiet, well, it won’t work. As soon as I finish this, how about if we have ourselves a little talk?”
I took a bite from my pretzel, filling my mouth. I waved him off and them pointed at my bulging cheeks and shook my head.
Elliott just looked at me, patient enough to wait for me to swallow before starting in on me with his questions.
“So,” he said, a silly smirk playing on his face. “Who is she? Anyone I might know?”
“Who is who?” I said innocently.
“You know what I’m talking about,” Elliott said. “Don’t play coy with me. Come on, Dad, spill it. I want details.”
“Can’t I keep anything to myself?” I said. “I don’t ask you about your dates, do I?”
“You could,” Elliott said. “And I’d tell you about them if you really wanted to know.”
“Well, that’s your generation,” I said. “My generation doesn’t kiss and tell, so how about if we just let it drop.”
“Are you ever going to tell me about her?” Elliott said. “Or do I have to hire a private eye to tail you?”
I rolled my eyes at my nosy son. “When I’m good and ready,” I said. “And not a minute sooner. Now, who was that on the phone just now?”
Elliott hesitated, hoping I’d open up to him. I remained silent and waited for his response.
“That was Dean,” Elliott said. “He asked if I wanted to come down to the twelfth precinct and take a look at the latest victim. Andy Reynolds has him on his table right now.”
Andy Reynolds was the county medical examiner, who worked out of the same building that housed the twelfth precinct.
“And what did you tell him?” I asked.
“I said I’d be right there,” Elliott said. “Are you coming?”
“Only if you stop grilling me,” I said. “Agreed?”
Elliott nodded. “For now,” he said.
I rode with Elliott to the twelfth precinct and parked in the lot. We found Dean in the front entryway talking to the desk sergeant. When he saw us approaching, he finished his business with the sergeant and turned to me.
“Clay,” Dean said. “How have you been? How’s your heart holding up these days?”
I had to smile. “Never better,” I said.
“Really?” Dean said. “I’m glad to hear that.” He turned to Elliott. “And how are you, Elliott?”
“Frustrated,” Elliott said.
“Oh?” Dean said.
“He’ll get over it,” I said, quickly wanted to change the subject. “You know how kids are these days. So, let’s have a look at that last victim.”
Elliott shot me a knowing glance but didn’t say anything further. The three of us walked down the hall to Andy Reynolds’ office. We found him standing over a table with a body laid out on it. He was dictating into the overhead microphone as he dissected the body and removed the organs. Andy stopped dictating and looked at Dean.
“Find anything unusual?” Dean said, gesturing at the body with his chin.
“Aside from half his head being blown away, he’s perfectly healthy,” Andy said and then looked at the victim’s head, adding, “I mean he was healthy.”
“Did you take his prints?” Dean said.
Andy nodded. “I sent them up to records right after the body came in,” Andy said. “They should have an I.D. on him in just a few minutes.”
“Obviously he didn’t have any I.D. on him when you found him,” I said.
“Not even any clothes,” Dean said.
“Someone stripped him after they shot him?” Elliott said. “That’s odd, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’d say whoever did this used a silencer,” Dean said. “That would have given him time to strip the clothes off him and get away clean.”
I looked at the dead man’s hands. They were missing eight of the ten fingers. All that remained were his two thumbs. “Looks like the killer was trying to make sure you couldn’t identify this guy,” I said. “Probably didn’t have time to cut off all ten before he heard someone coming.”
“That’s the way I figure it,” Dean said. “And it’s a damned good thing he didn’t finish or we might never know this guy’s identity.”
“What about dental records?” Elliott said.
Andy shook his head and grabbed the victim’s jaw, pulling it open. There were no teeth in the head. “I can tell from some of this bruising that this guy had a full set of dentures, uppers and lowers. I think the killer took them as well.”
“Don’t they have face recognition software these days?” Elliott said.
“Yes they do,” Dean said. “But unless his picture is already on file somewhere, we’d have nothing to match it up with. Besides, his face wasn’t in such good condition when we found him.”
Another man in a lab coat entered the room with a small envelope and handed it to Andy. “Records told me to rush this over to you,” the man said and left the room again.
Andy opened the envelope, read it and handed it to Dean. Dean looked it over and then looked at me. “The victim’s name was Edgar Polton, forty-five, from Santa Barbara.” Dean handed me the printout.
“Looks like Edgar’s been a busy boy,” I said, reading his rap sheet. “He did a stretch in the county lockup a while back. His rap sheet includes attempted murder, assault, assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, breaking and entering, battery, burglary and auto theft. Can’t say I feel sorry for poor Edgar. Society’s probably a better place without him.”
“Too bad we don’t get to pick and choose which victims we ignore,” Dean said. “Fact is that we still have a killer out there who needs to pay for this.”
“And what is it that you’d like Elliott and me to do for you on this one, Dean?” I said.
“I only need a couple of days out of you until Anderson comes back from vacation,” Dean said. “You want in on this?”
Without hesitation Elliott and I both nodded. “We’re in,” I said. “And I think we’ll start over in records, if it’s all the same to you. Would you give them a call and tell them we’re coming up?”
“Sure,” Dean said. “Go do whatever it is you do so well.”
Elliott and I turned and left the morgue and headed down the hall toward the elevator. On the second floor we found the records department and asked to see the files on the first two shooting victims as well as this latest one from last night.
“Lieutenant Hollister just called,” the woman behind the counter said. “I have those files for you right here.” She handed over two file folders.”
“Can I also see the latest one from last night?” I said.
“Lieutenant Hollister still has that one,” she told me. “His office is…”
“I know where
it is,” I said. “Thank you for these.” I held the two file folders up. “I’ll get them back to you in an hour or less.”
Elliott and I took the elevator back down to the ground level and ran into Dean just as we stepped off the elevator.
“Your clerk up in records tells me that you still have the file on Edgar Polton in your office,” I said. “Can we take a look at it?”
“Sure,” Dean said. “I have to stop by there anyway on my way out. Come on.”
We followed Dean back to his office. The file folder was still lying on top of his desk.
“I have to go out for a while,” Dean said. “I should be back by three. Feel free to use my office if you like. Either way, those three files can’t leave the building.”
“It won’t take us that long,” I said. “Would you like me to leave the first two here with you, or bring them back upstairs?”
“Just leave them all on my desk,” Dean said. “Gotta run.” Dean closed the door behind him while I sat in Dean’s chair. Elliott pulled up another chair and sat next to me.
“What are we looking for?” Elliott said, opening the folder on the first victim.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “We might know it when we find it, but I don’t really know what that is. Just let me know if anything jumps out at you as unusual.”
I opened the file on the second victim and paged through the forms and pictures in it. Victim number two was a guy by the name of ‘Brick’ Thurman, real name Bradley. He had a rap sheet that rivaled Polton’s but he was just thirty-two. He must have taken the speed course for criminals. He’d been shot in the head as well but had not been stripped of his identification or any of his clothes.
“Who do you have there?” I said, turning to Elliott.
“Guy’s name was Henry Mancini,” Elliott said, raising one eyebrow. “Wait a minute. That can’t be right.” He paged through some more of the forms and found the same name on all of them. “It must be a more common name than I had imagined. It’s Mancini, all right, but obviously not the Moon River Mancini.”
“I wonder how much ribbing he took over his name through the years,” I said.
“I wonder how many people tried to sing Moon River to him,” Elliott added.
“So, what’s this guy’s file look like?” I said.
“He’s got a record,” Elliott said. “But nothing like the first two. Maybe he was just getting started. He was only twenty-three.” Elliott closed the file folder. “Adios, my huckleberry friend.”
I rolled my eyes at Elliott.
“Come on,” Elliott said. “That was a good one. I’ll bet you wish you’d thought of it first.”
I ignored him and said, “So far, it looks like the only things these three victims have in common is that they all have a criminal record. But I’m sure Dean already knows that. They must have some other common link, so let’s keep looking.”
“Do you suppose Dean would mind if I used his computer for a minute?” Elliott said, turning around to look at Dean’s desktop monitor.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said. “That’s got to be private. Besides, why do you need to use it?”
“I just want to get into the circuit court records database,” Elliott said. “They might have something on these guys that didn’t end up in their folders. Hell, it’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”
I checked the clock above Dean’s door. It was only twelve-fifteen and Dean had said that he didn’t think he’d be back before three-thirty.
I got up out of Dean’s chair and let Elliott sit in it. “Make it quick,” I said. “I wouldn’t want anyone else poking their head in here while you’re nosing around on that thing.”
Elliott took the chair I had vacated and spun around, facing the computer. As soon as he moved the mouse, the screen saver disappeared and the computer’s wallpaper sprung onto the screen. Elliott stopped what he was doing and looked at me. Dean’s screen saver was a picture of my father, Matt Cooper standing next to Dean’s father, Dan Hollister. Dad had his right arm around Dan’s shoulder while his left hand held two fishing poles upright next to him. Dan’s right hand was stuck inside the gills of a large fish and he was holding it up, smiling a broad smile.
“That had to be the fishing trip granddad told me about when I was probably eleven or twelve,” Elliott said. “I remember seeing this picture in a frame at his house.”
“That was August of 1976,” I said, remembering the photo myself. “Gees, dad looked good for sixty-five. Dan was starting to show his age, though.”
“I never got to meet Dan,” Elliott said. “He died before I was born, if I remember correctly.”
“He died four years after that picture was taken,” I said. “I remember thinking how strange that was at the time. You know, Dad died on Dan’s birthday, September fifth, ten years ago on what would have been Dan’s ninety-second birthday.”
“But Dan died relatively young, didn’t he?” Elliott said.
“Yes,” I said. “He was only…”
“Sixty-nine,” Dean said from over our shoulders.
I quickly turned around, startled that Dean had returned so soon.
Elliott stood up and faced Dean. “I’m sorry, Dean,” Elliott said quickly. “I wasn’t trying to be nosy or anything. I just wanted to access the circuit court web site to see if we could come up with any more information on the three victims. I didn’t mean to…”
Dean waved him off. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Go ahead, get to the site. I’d be interested to know if there’s anything else there myself. Did you find anything out of the ordinary in the folders?”
“Only that all three of the victims had criminal records,” I said. “But I suppose you already knew that.”
Dean looked at me. “Uh, yes, I did,” he said. “But I don’t suppose you found any other common thread among the three?”
I shook my head. “Not yet,” I said.
“I think I did,” Elliott said, rolling the office chair away from the computer so Dean could see the results that appeared on the screen. “Look at this. It seems that each of these victims was involved in a major crime of some sort. According to the outcomes here, it looks like two out of the three walked away without any punishment. The verdict in two of the cases was not guilty. I can’t believe both of them could find a loophole to crawl into.”
Dean took an interest in the contents of the screen and then looked at Elliott. “What about the third one?” Dean said.
“Edgar Polton,” Elliott said, “The victim from last night, did a short stretch in San Quentin. He got out a few years ago.”
“Can you print those three screens for me, Elliott?” Dean said, reaching over to turn on his printer.
“Sure,” Elliott said, hitting the Print Screen button. Three sheets slid out of the printer and into the tray beneath it. Elliott retrieved them and handed them to Dean.
“I think I’d better look into these a little further,” Dean said. “Good work, guys.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I said, looking at Dean.
“Vigilante?” Dean said. “The thought had occurred to me, but what are the chances anyone could go undetected for more than a two months now?”
“You saw Death Wish,” I said. “In fact, we saw it together, remember? How long did Charles Bronson’s character get away with it? Hell, yeah, it’s possible a person could go undetected for a month or two, possibly longer. I think what we need to do now is check recent court cases and find out if any more upstanding citizens avoided justice and walked. There might be your next victim.”
The circuit court access site was still up on the screen. Elliott and Dean traded places. Dean sat behind his desk while Elliott and I stood across his desk, looking over his shoulder.
Dean turned and looked up at us. “I’ll probably be a while here,” he said. “Why don’t you two take a break and check back with me tomorrow?”
I gave Dean the two-finger salute. “Good luck,” I
said and turned to leave.
Elliott was right behind me and started to close Dean’s door. He paused, turned to Dean and said, “Dean, do you think I could get a copy of that wallpaper picture of your dad and my grandfather?”
Dean smiled warmly. “I can attach one to an email to you. It’ll be waiting for you by the time you get back to your office.”
“Thanks, Dean,” Elliott said and then left.
“What was that all about?” I said to Elliott.
“Dean’s going to send me a copy of that picture he had on his screen,” Elliott said.
“I’ve got a copy of that picture already,” I said.
“But yours is in a frame,” Elliott said. “I wanted a digital copy for my own screen.”
I placed my hand on Elliott’s shoulder. “Good choice,” I said. “I may just have to do the same with my computer.”
On our way back to the office, I stopped at a corner news stand and picked up a copy of the Los Angeles Times. We had the Tribune delivered to our office, but I wanted to see what The Times had to say about last night’s murder. While I was at the news stand, something else caught my eye on one of the upper shelves. It was a special edition magazine with a picture of Robert Frost on the cover. The fiftieth anniversary of his death in January of 1963 was coming up and I guess this particular magazine wanted to capitalize on the event.
Personally, I wasn’t a huge fan of Frost or any other poet, for that matter, but I knew that Gloria was. She’s talked about him so much that through her, I felt I knew more about the man than most people I knew. And if one magazine makes Gloria happy, then it makes me happy, too. I paid for the magazine and the paper and brought them back to the car, where Elliott waited somewhat impatiently.
“I thought you were just going to grab a copy of the The Times and leave,” Elliott said. “What took you so long?”
I had the magazine folded inside the newspaper. “Nothing,” I said. “I just got a little carried away with the selection they had, that’s all.”
Elliott made a quick grab for the paper on my lap and the magazine fell out onto the floor. He picked it up, gave the cover a quick glance and handed it back to me. “Robert Frost?” he said. “I didn’t know you liked poetry.”