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

by Bill Bernico

  “Looks like it passed,” she said, peeling her blankets aside and crawling out from under.

  Clay also pulled his blankets aside and stood, extending his hand to Bonnie, who took it and stood next to him. Clay held her hand and guided her toward the two hanging blankets that had formed one wall. In the other part of the plane, snow had blown in, almost covering the six dead passengers in a blanket of white. Clay couldn’t see outside. The two openings that had been created when the wing was torn off were both drifted shut.

  Bonnie gripped Clay’s arm tighter and leaned into him. “Will we be able to get out of here?” she said, a bit of panic in her voice now.

  “Sure,” Clay assured her. “In fact, this is probably better for us in the long run. Now we can just dig a smaller hole to come and go from here and it’ll keep the wind out better than before, almost like the opening of an igloo.”

  “How long will it take to dig through to the outside?” Bonnie said. “I’m feeling a little claustrophobic.”

  “Well,” Clay said, “I’ll need something to dig with.”

  Bonnie stepped behind the blankets again and returned with the makeshift pot Clay had pounded into a round vessel. She handed it to him. “This should work,” she said.

  Clay scooped snow out of one area and tossed it over the other occupied seats, burying the occupants even more. Within fifteen minutes he’d broken a small hole to the outside and sunlight was streaming in through it. After a couple more scoops, he was able to stick his head out through the hole and look at his surroundings. He pulled his head back inside and looked at Bonnie.

  “See,” he said, smiling, “what did I tell you. There’s just three feet of snow covering the opening.”

  “That’s good,” Bonnie said, “because I really have to go.”

  “Go?” Clay said. “Go where?” As soon as the words left his mouth he felt stupid. “Oh, yeah. Go ahead, I’ll wait here.”

  Clay used this time to widen the hole on the inside, leaving the outside diameter the same. It would be easier to come and go if they could ease back in down a small slope of snow. When Bonnie returned a few minutes later, Clay slipped outside and relieved himself as well, kicking snow over the small yellow hole he’d made in the snow. He looked at his surroundings, trying to find something that would burn. The ground had been blanketed with at least a foot of new snow, covering whatever dead branches might have been there for the taking.

  Clay thought about burning green branches but wondered if they might be too green and too wet to ignite. Off in the distance, perhaps thirty yards to the northeast, Clay saw one pine tree that was almost totally brown with dead branches. The entire tree looked like it had been infested with some sort of parasite that had killed it. Now those branches would burn, he thought.

  He crawled back through the hole and found Bonnie chewing on something. The fancy chocolate box lay open next to her and he reached down and found a fat, square piece for himself. It wasn’t exactly bacon and eggs, but it would do for now. Before he replaced the cover, he held the box out to Bonnie. “Want another one?” he said.

  Bonnie patted her stomach. “Thanks,” she said, “but I have to watch my girlish figure.”

  Clay and Bonnie exchanged glances and then broke out laughing at the absurdity of the situation. “One’s my limit, too,” Clay said before replacing the cover on the box and setting it aside. “I saw a dead pine tree about thirty yards away,” Clay told her. “I think if I can get some branches off of it, that I could make us a fire. We need to melt some more snow and the coffee won’t last much longer anyway. Did you notice if any of these passengers had packed any gloves in their luggage?”

  “I didn’t see any,” Bonnie said, “but then I wasn’t looking for any the first time around. There might be some. Do you want me to check?”

  “It would take some digging,” Clay said. “The bags are all covered with snow now. It might be a good idea to gather all the bags back behind the blankets with us. There may be a lot more useful items in them. Come on, I’ll help you.”

  The two of them dug through the snow-covered floor, looking for luggage. After a few minutes of digging, Bonnie stopped and looked at Clay. “What if we dug a ventilation hole on the other side of the plane where the left wing used to be? Then we could start a small fire in here and melt away a lot of this snow. It could be just what we need to heat this place up a little.”

  “You might have something there, Bonnie,” Clay said, feeling around on the left side of the plane for the soft spot of the opening. He managed to make a small hole a little larger than the diameter of his fist that led to the outside. He turned to Bonnie. “I’ll see if I can’t break a few of those dead branches off that brown tree and drag them back here. Sit tight until I get back.”

  Clay slowly stomped through the foot-high snow toward the dead pine tree. There was just one three-foot square spot on the tree that had any green on it at all. The rest of the tree was brown. As Clay grabbed one of the overhanging branches and shook it, brown needles fell to the ground, blanketing the snow like a smattering of sesame seeds. He pulled down on the branch itself and it snapped off in his hand. The rest of the brown branches around the perimeter of the tree did the same thing when he pulled on them. Clay was able to walk back to the plane dragging more than half a dozen three to four foot branches. He piled them up outside the plane and began breaking the branches into manageable campfire-size pieces.

  Clay started stacking the smaller pieces in a tic-tac-toe pattern about six inches tall on the floor of the plane where Bonnie had managed to move most of the snow further forward. Clay crumpled up another double page from the newspaper and lit it with the disposable lighter. Soon the branches caught fire and the crackling sound was music to his ears. The fist-size hole he’d dug into the left side of the plane drew the flames toward it like a vacuum. The interior of the plane was beginning to warm up and the surrounding snow was melting.

  The six dead passengers under that snow began to show again and Clay started to think about taking the bodies outside and burying them in the snow drifts. He turned to Bonnie. “You know,” Clay said, “seeing the bodies again made me think that we’d better move them outside or this whole plane carcass will start to stink.”

  “Oh, I don’t know if I can touch them,” Bonnie said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Clay told her. “I can get them out of here and maybe we can use that space for something else. It also got me thinking about the passenger with the leather bag full of cocaine. I really have to get his body far away from the plane and cover it with snow in case his buddies come looking for him and his bag. We can always claim that there were only seven passengers. We’ll have to bury that bag, too.”

  “You really think some of his friends will come all the way out here looking for him?” Bonnie said. “I mean, can that junk be worth all that much for them to make the trip in this weather?”

  “Well,” Clay said, “I counted thirty keys of coke in that bag and at twenty to thirty-five grand a key, we’re looking at anywhere from six hundred thousand to just over a million dollars in street value. Yeah, I’d say that would make it worth the trip. As soon as these guys realize that the plane never made it to Denver they’ll come looking for it. And if these guys have that kind of money at their disposal, they either own a helicopter or can get one on short notice. I want to be ready for anything.”

  “You’re scaring me, Clay,” Bonnie said.

  “I’m scaring myself,” Clay said, slapping himself in the chest with his hand for emphasis. His hand hit on something hard and suddenly he realized that he was carrying his cell phone in his shirt pocket. He pulled it out and stared at it. “I suppose it would be hoping for too much to expect this thing to work out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  Bonnie dashed back behind the blankets and found her purse. She returned with her cell phone as well. She had her fingers crossed as she flipped it open and looked at the display. “Damn,” she said when she saw
the message on the screen that said, ‘no service.’

  Clay flipped his open and got the same message. He closed his phone and dropped it back into his pocket. “I didn’t think we’d be that lucky,” he said. “We’re probably sitting down in some pocket of the mountains. But you know, I just thought of something. What about the plane’s transponder? If that survived the crash it should still be sending out a signal. I have to get up front and see if I can find it, but first we have to keep this fire going and melt this snow out of the way so I can move all these bodies outside.”

  Clay continued to feed wood to the fire and the snow continued to melt, including the exhaust hole he’d made. By now it was more than a foot in diameter. At this rate, the entire left side of the plane would be wide open to the elements. The right side would also turn into a gaping hole. Clay figured when he was finished with everything that he could pile the snow back up on the outside to keep the wind out.

  After an hour the dead passengers were complete exposed. Both sides of the plane were wide open again as the snow melted. One by one Clay unbuckled them and dragged their bodies out of the plane and laid them up near the crumpled nose of the plane.

  The last body to be removed was the owner of the leather bag full of cocaine. Clay pulled it through the opening and laid it just outside the plane. “I’m going to need some help dragging him and his bag away from the plane,” Clay told Bonnie. “We need to get him and his coke far enough away so that anyone who shows up looking for him won’t know he was ever on this plane.”

  “Which direction do you want to take him?” Bonnie said, grabbing the man’s ankles.

  “The wings are back behind us,” Clay said. “Someone might want to look back there. I say we drag him off to the left of the plane at least a hundred yards. We’ll cover him with branches and snow and hope no one looks in that direction.”

  Clay grabbed under the man’s armpits, lifted and began walking backwards as Bonnie held onto the legs. After only a few yards, Bonnie dropped her end of the body and began breathing heavily. “Wouldn’t it be easier to drag him?” Bonnie said.

  “Not unless we had some sort of sled,” Clay said. “Otherwise his feet would get bogged down in all this snow.” He looked around him but couldn’t see anything that could serve as a sled. “We’ll just have to keep going like we are. It may take a while, but it may be worth it in the end.”

  Bonnie picked up the man’s ankles again and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s get him out of here.”

  They stopped every fifty feet or so to rest but within twenty minutes Clay figured that they were far enough from the plane and announced, “This is good enough.”

  Bonnie dropped the ankles again and breathed deeply several times. Clay looked at her. “Why don’t you start clearing away the snow and I’ll round up some branches?” he said.

  Bonnie bent down and began brushing snow out of a two foot by six foot swatch. Clay found several pine trees with branches that reached to the forest floor and reached into the interior of the tree to snap off some of the smaller branches. He didn’t want to break them off out where it would show. He visited several trees to get interior branches and carried his haul back over to where Bonnie was still clearing snow away. Clay dropped the branches at his feet and helped Bonnie with the last of the snow clearing. He gave them both time to catch their breath before gesturing at the body and asking Bonnie if she was ready.

  “Let’s do it,” Bonnie said, grabbing the ankles for the last time.

  Clay grabbed under the man’s armpits and together he and Bonnie laid him onto the cleared spot. Clay picked up the branches and carefully laid them on top of the body, one at a time. When he had just one branch left, he began scooping snow on top of the branches. Bonnie joined in and soon the cleared snow was all put back on the pile. She looked at the last branch and said, “Did you forget that one?”

  “No,” Clay said. “I’ll use that one to sweep this area and cover our tracks on the way back. Hopefully, between this and the wind, I’m hoping it’ll look like no one’s been here.” The two of them walked back toward the plane. When they got back inside Clay said, “Try to keep this fire going until I get back.”

  “Where are you going?” Bonnie said.

  Clay grabbed the leather bag of cocaine and said, “We forgot this,” he said. “I have to get rid of it.”

  “You’re not going back to where we covered the body are you?” she said.

  “No,” Clay said. “I’ll take it in another direction and stash it out of sight somewhere.”

  “Please hurry,” Bonnie said. “This place is giving me the Willies and those five bodies outside aren’t helping things any.”

  Clay slung the bag over his shoulder and grabbed the pine branch to cover his tracks on the way back to the plane. He was only gone fifteen minutes and returned out of breath.

  “What did you do, run?” Bonnie said.

  Clay nodded and took a deep breath. He sat in the seat he had occupied during the flight.

  “What is it, Clay?” Bonnie said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I don’t know,” Clay said. “I just thought I saw something moving out there. I couldn’t make out what it was. Might have been a wolf.”

  Bonnie quickly looked around her and out through the opening. “I don’t see anything,” she said.

  “Maybe I imagined it,” Clay said. “I hope I just imagined it.”

  *****

  The phone on my desk rang and I grabbed it before it had a chance to ring again. “Cooper,” I said.

  “Mr. Cooper,” a woman’s voice on the other end said. “This is Maxine Foster at Denver International Airport.”

  “Yes?” I said. “Have you heard anything about the missing plane?”

  “Mr. Cooper,” Maxine said, “Our sources tell us that the plane your father was on earlier was tracked as far as the southwest section of the state before it disappeared from radar. We think it went down in an area west of Crystal Creek, near Henry Mountain. That’s a heavily wooded area and it would be very difficult to land a helicopter close to them. The Forest Service is sending a team in from the east on horseback and another team from the south in Jeeps. We’ll know more in a couple of hours but it could be slow going. We had a storm last night that may have covered the plane with snow so spotting it from the air could be tricky.”

  “Wasn’t the plane equipped with a transponder?” I said. By now Gloria was sitting on the edge of my desk, leaning in, trying to hear.

  “It was, Mr. Cooper,” Maxine said, “But we’re not picking up anything from it. It could have been damaged upon landing.”

  “Thank you, Maxine,” I said. “If you need to call back, try my cell number. We won’t be in the office for the rest of the day.”

  I hung up and looked at Gloria. “I’ve got to get to Denver,” I said. “Dad’s in trouble. His plane went down in the mountains of Colorado and they’re sending out search parties in Jeeps and on horseback.”

  “You can do more good staying put right here,” Gloria said. “If you’re thinking of flying to Denver and joining in on the search, think about it for a minute. You won’t be able to get a flight out of LAX on any commercial jet. That airline is on strike. You’d end up in a small plane like Clay did and it would take you forever just to make it to Denver. And by the time you find a Jeep or a horse, they could have already found them and then I’d have to worry about them finding you. I need you here, Elliott. Matt needs you here, too. I know you must be feeling pretty helpless in this situation, but doing what you’re thinking of doing won’t help things along. It’ll just make me worry twice as much.”

  I went limp in my chair and sighed. “I suppose you’re right,” I said. “I just wish I knew if he was okay out there in the wilderness.”

  *****

  Clay instinctively reached under his arm for the .38 and checked to make sure it was fully loaded before he snapped the cylinder back into place again and slipped it back
into the holster. Bonnie sat in her old seat and stared across the aisle at Clay.

  “Weren’t you going to check for the transponder?” Bonnie said.

  “Oh yeah,” Clay said. “And I’m going to have to get the pilot out of his seat, too. Man, I’m not looking forward to that task. I don’t even know where his head ended up.”

  Bonnie held her hand over her stomach. “Stop, Clay,” she complained. “Or I’m going to puke, I swear.”

  “Oh, sorry, Bonnie,” Clay said and got up out of his seat. He turned to Bonnie. “Maybe you’d better go back behind the blankets until I get him out of the plane.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” Bonnie said, retreating to the sleeping area and pulling the hanging blankets closed.

  Clay began breaking off bits of the branches that had broken through the windshield. As he removed them, he tossed them onto the small fire. After thirty minutes of clearing branches and debris from the cockpit, Clay was able to unbuckle the pilot’s seatbelt and pull him out of the seat. The body fell to the floor with a thud and Clay dragged it out through the opening in the plane’s body and laid it next to the other five bodies.

  Behind the captain’s seat, Clay found the missing head. It was crushed into an unrecognizable pulpy mass with hair. Clay turned back toward the coach area and threw up whatever was left in his stomach. He wiped his chin and reached for the head without looking at it. He managed to grab it by the hair and lift it over the seat. Five or six steps later he was outside of the plane and laid the head onto the captain’s bloody shoulders, about where it belonged. Somehow seeing it where it belonged helped minimize the impact on Clay, at least in Clay’s mind. Now it looked like the captain had suffered fatal head trauma instead of a gruesome decapitation.

  Clay returned to the cockpit and began searching the instrument panel for anything labeled ‘transponder’. Most of the instrument dials had been smashed, their glass covers broken and jagged. The radio microphone lay on the floor, still connected to the coiled black wire. There were still a few branches obscuring some of the instruments. Clay slowly cleared a few more of the branches out of the way and finally uncovered a red light on the instrument panel. The nameplate below it identified it as the transponder, but the red light was not lit. Clay thumped the light with his finger and then with the butt of his palm. The red light still did not light up. Clay’s hopes diminished with the discovery of the broken transponder.