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

by Bill Bernico

  “Just one more lobe left and you’re free to go, Wezzle,” Norman says sarcastically.

  Before he tugs at the right earlobe, Norman touches Weasel’s left earlobe with the cauterizing iron, sealing the leak. Weasel screams again and tries to shake off the pain by shaking his head violently back and forth. He starts to cry again, as much in frustration as in pain.

  Norman grabs the right earlobe and without further ceremony, snips it off and hangs it in the same nail as the first one. He turns back to Weasel again and sighs. “All done,” he says, sealing the wound with the hot iron. He reaches for the shears to snip the restraints from Weasel’s wrists. At the last second, he stops and stands upright again. Norman lays the shears on his work bench again and stands in front of Weasel, his arms folded over his chest.

  “You know, Wezzle,” Norman says. “Funny I hadn’t noticed this before, but you have another whole arm full of tattoos. What are we going to do about that? Let’s see, what’s left? Current events, reading, literature, art, music…”

  Weasel’s eyes go wide again and he starts screaming uncontrollably, his head flailing from side to side. “No! No, no, no…”

  “Okay, okay,” Norman says. “Calm down, I was just kidding. There won’t be any more tests.” He walks around behind Weasel and pulls a large serrated knife from a shelf Weasel couldn’t see. With his left hand he grabs Weasel by the hair and jerks his head back. With a single slice of the knife in his right hand, he severs Weasel’s carotid artery and then quickly steps around in front of the man again. “I told you, I’m a man of my word. No more tattoo removals.”

  Time for another trip to the dump, Norman thinks as he snips Weasel’s hands and feet from the bindings and rolls him up in the plastic.

  *****

  Lieutenant Eric Anderson gets the call at eight-fifteen. A man from Burbank, Herbert Simmons, was dropping off an old sofa at the dump when he noticed a strange smell coming from the burning pile of debris. Simmons poked at the edge of the fire and recoiled when a charred, bony hand flopped over in the ashes. He rushed away from the dump and called the police. Anderson and the county medical examiner, Andy Reynolds converged on the dump, accompanied by two black and white units.

  The four uniformed officers found various articles in the trash pile that they could use to push away the burning part of the trash heap. When they had exposed enough of the debris underneath, the officers donned gloves and pulled the plastic-wrapped bundle out from under the rest of the garbage. They dragged it away from the fire and stood back as the coroner carefully unwrapped the plastic, exposing more of the young girl’s body.

  “Careful with that plastic,” Anderson said. “We may get lucky with prints, but I’m not going to hold my breath.”

  Andy pulled back the last of the plastic, revealing an image straight out of a horror movie. Even with all his experience, Andy Reynolds had to look away and catch his breath. “What kind of animal could do this to another human being?” he said, turning the victim’s head to the side to get a better look at the damage to her ear. “This poor girl must have suffered eight kinds of hell before she died. And unless I’m mistaken, someone poured liquid metal of some kind into her ears and onto her legs and hands.”

  Eric pointed to the girl’s mouth. “Might want to take a look inside her mouth,” he said. “From the looks of her lips, she had some of that same liquid poured down her throat.”

  Andy pulled at the girl’s jaw, forcing the mouth open with a crackling sound. He pulled a small pen light from his pocket and shone it into the chasm. “Poor thing,” he said. “If that was the last thing he did to her, she was alive for all the other torture. What could she possibly have done to make someone this mad at her?”

  One of the uniformed officers leaned in to get a better look at the corpse. When he saw the damage to the girl’s body, he quickly turned away and vomited into the trash heap.

  “You men stand back,” Lieutenant Anderson told the other officers. “We can’t have anyone contaminating the scene.”

  The other three officers took several steps backwards. Andy motioned to his attendants, who rolled a gurney up next to the body and lifted it onto the white sheet. They rolled it back to the ambulance and slid it inside, closing the double doors.

  “In all my years as county medical examiner,” Andy said, “I’ve never seen anything as gruesome as this. I don’t envy you your job on this one, Eric.”

  “The hard part is going to be indentifying her,” Eric said. “There’s nothing on the body, no I.D., no pictures, nothing. And can you imagine running a picture of that in the paper? I don’t think so. We’re going to need a break in this case if we expect to get anywhere with it.”

  *****

  Norman watches from a distance as his next target goes about his business, unaware that his days are numbered. Norman has his reasons for selecting this particular victim. As far as Norman knows, the man has no tattoos or piercings. He may know his geography and his math and he even may know how to spell correctly, but Norman has another reason for selecting this man as his next toy. Three months earlier Norman had hired the man to install new countertops in his kitchen. The man claimed to be an expert in his field and had underbid three other installers in the area.

  Shortly after he had finished the installation of the countertops, Norman noticed that the area over his utensil drawer had been cut too short. He also noticed that the place where two pieces came together showed an obvious seam where it was supposed to be seamless. And where the countertops met the wall, there were gaps that had been covered with a brown calk that stood out like a newcomer in a nudist colony.

  To make matters worse, Norman had to have the newly installed countertops torn out and new pieces installed. The first installer, a man named Christopher Gunther, not only refused to refund his money, he refused to do anything about the poor installation at all. When Norman saw what Gunther had done, he tried to take the man to court to get his two thousand dollars back.

  Norman hired a lawyer and a court date had been set. Gunther hired his own lawyer and managed to get delay after delay for a court date. Gunther and his lawyer finally offered fifteen hundred dollars to settle the case. By now, Norman had spent nearly five hundred dollars on his own lawyer to fight this case, so even if he got the fifteen hundred, he’d still be out more than a thousand dollars when all was said and done.

  Just when he thought he could collect the settlement and put this whole thing behind him, Norman got a notice from his own lawyer that Christopher Gunther had declared bankruptcy and there would be no settlement. That was the last straw for Norman. Gunther would have to make a visit to Norman’s workshop, whether he wanted to or not. Norman was familiar with the saying, ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat’ and before he was finished with Christopher Gunther, he would make sure that this countertop installer would also be familiar with it.

  Norman had stalked Gunther for nearly ten days before he found the opening he was looking for. When he saw Gunther coming out of the home improvement store and get into his pickup, Norman followed at a safe distance. Gunther drove out of the parking lot and down the county road toward his home. Gunther’s truck wasn’t hard to find with Gunther’s name stenciled on the front door along with a phone number. Norman still had half a bag of sugar left over from the job he’d done on Stacey’s car and the now empty bag lay on the seat next to him along with the funnel. Now it would just be a matter of time before Gunther’s truck rolled to a stop in the middle of nowhere.

  Norman bided his time, following Gunther and when he saw the pickup truck roll to a stop at the side of the road, Norman pulled up behind him and hurried out of his car before Gunther had time to use his cell phone to call for assistance. He ran up to Gunther’s door, pulled it open and yanked Gunther out by his shirt, throwing him to the pavement with a thud.

  “What the hell?” Gunther started to say. He stopped when he looked up and saw Norman glaring down at him. It didn’t immediately regis
ter who this guy was who had assaulted him. Gunther reached for the phone in his shirt pocket, but Norman quickly kicked it out of his hands and stepped on it.

  Norman grabbed Gunther’s shirt again and hauled him to his feet. He pulled a leather-covered sap from his back pocket and laid it behind Gunther’s left ear, knocking him unconscious with a single blow. Norman quickly looked both ways on the back road and noticed they were alone. He dragged Gunther’s limp body to the back of his car and dropped him into the trunk. Norman returned to the truck and pulled the shifter down into neutral, turning the wheel hard to the right. He got behind the truck and heaved with all he had. The truck left the shoulder and rolled down into a thicket of bushes, completely obscuring it from the road.

  By the time Christopher Gunther had regained consciousness, he realized that he had been secured by his ankles and wrists to a hard wooden chair. Straight ahead of him, Gunther could see a work bench, similar to the one in his work shop. He tried turning his head to take in more of his surroundings, but he could only see ninety degrees on either side of him. He had no idea what was behind him. The room was silent.

  “Hey,” Gunther yelled. “Hey, where are you?” No one answered. He tried pulling at his wrists but they wouldn’t budge. A moment later Gunther heard sounds from behind him. The sounds were those of Norman’s feet descending the basement stairway. Gunther turned his head to the left, trying to see where the noise was coming from. Norman stepped around to Gunther’s right, startling him.

  “Comfortable?” Norman said to his guest.

  “You let me out of here right now, do you hear me?” Gunther said.

  Norman gestured with his head toward Gunther’s wrists. “Doesn’t look to me like you’re in any position to demand anything,” he told his prisoner. “So just sit there and shut your mouth.”

  “What do you think you’re...” Gunther started to say before Norman backhanded him in the mouth.

  “I’m not going to tell you again,” Norman said, turning and walking back toward the work bench. He picked up a caulking gun and carried it back to Gunther. “Look familiar?” he said. “It should. Apparently it’s your tool of choice to cover up your shoddy workmanship.”

  Suddenly Gunther remembered where he’d seen this man before and a chill ran up his spine. “You,” he said.

  “Me,” Norman said. “Did you really think that by simply going bankrupt that you would get out of your commitments to me? You owe me more than two thousand dollars plus what I spent chasing you for it. It’s too bad you went bankrupt. It must mean that you don’t have any money to pay me with. And that only means one thing as far as I’m concerned. It means, Christopher, that I’ll have to take twenty-five hundred dollars worth out of your hide. How’s that sound, asshole?”

  “You can’t do this,” Gunther said.

  Norman smiled his wicked smile. “Watch me,” he said, raising the caulking gun to Gunther’s left nostril.

  Gunther quickly turned his head away, flailing it back and forth.

  Norman laid the caulking gun down and stared at Gunther. “I can see we’re going to have to do this another way,” he said, grabbing a long leather belt and wrapping it around Gunther’s head. Sticking up from the back of the wooden chair was a two-by-four that Norman had attached with several wood screws. Norman slipped the leather belt around the two-by-four and pulled it tight. Gunther’s head was held fast in the forward position. Norman picked up the calking gun again and held the open tip of the nozzle inside Gunther’s left nostril, pulling hard on the trigger until the brown calk completely filled Gunther’s nasal cavity.

  Gunther gagged when the excess calk began to enter his throat. He spit the excess calk out and began to gag. Norman moved the nozzle to the other nostril and squeezed, filling the other side of Gunther’s nose with calk. He stopped squeezing when Gunther began to gag again. He didn’t want to kill Gunther just yet. He had more fun in store for the man before it would all be over.

  Norman stood back to admire his handiwork. Some of the brown calk began to ooze out of Gunther’s nostrils. Norman slipped on a pair of surgical gloves and used his index finger to wipe the excess calk away, spreading it up the side of Gunther’s face.

  “That’s how you do it, isn’t it, Christopher?” Norman said. “In fact, this job I just did on your face looks even better than the job you did on my countertop, don’t you think?” Norman held a small mirror up so Gunther could see his own face and the calking job Norman had done on him.

  Gunther’s eyes shot a look at Norman that said he’d kill the guy if he could get loose. Norman would see that Gunther never got the chance. Norman set the calk gun back down on the workbench and picked up another tool that Gunther couldn’t see. When Norman turned back around to face Gunther, it became clear what the tool was and Gunther began to struggle against his restraints.

  “Recognize this?” Norman said. “I thought so. It’s an electric sander, you know, the thing one would use to smooth out seams so they don’t show. Oh, that’s right, you don’t do that, do you. Maybe it’s because you don’t know how to use a sander. Is that your problem? Well, I’m here to help and I’m going to give you a free lesson in the proper use of a sander. Shall we begin?”

  Norman pulled box cutter from his back pocket, slid the blade out an inch and quickly ran it across Gunther’s exposed forearm. It left a shallow gash that dripped blood onto the plastic sheet that had been spread out beneath Gunther and his chair. “Oh no,” Norman said. “That looks like a seam, doesn’t it? An unsightly seam that needs to be smoothed out. Okay, Christopher, here how you get rid of an unsightly seam.” He switched on the sander and edged closer to Gunther’s arm.

  Gunther screamed as the rotating belt made contact with the cut on his arm. Norman leaned into the sanding job, running the sander back and forth until the top layer of skin on Gunther’s arm was nothing more than a memory. Now the arm was really bleeding. Norman grabbed the cauterizing iron that had been heating beneath a blue flame and touched it to several places on Gunther’s arm. Gunther howled like a dog who’d been hit by a car.

  Norman returned the hot iron to the stand beneath the propane flame and picked up a small bottle. He opened the bottle and held it beneath Gunther’s nearly unconscious nose. Nothing happened and then Norman remembered that Gunther couldn’t smell anything if he’d wanted to. His nostrils were packed with calk. Norman grabbed his power drill and inserted a quarter-inch bit. He held the business end of the bit against the calk and started the drill. He pushed upward as hardened calk sprinkled out of the opening and onto the floor. Norman withdrew the drill bit and blood spilled out onto the floor. Gunther’s eyes flickered a few times and his head moved slightly, even though restrained with the strap.

  “Can’t have you sleeping through all this fun,” Norman said. “We still have a lot of work to do to get this job right.” He picked up a tape measure and pulled several inches out and let the tape slap back inside again. He repeated this three or four times as he walked toward Gunther.

  When he got close enough, Norman pulled the tape out again and laid it against the top of Gunther’s head, running the tape downward to his chin. He pulled the tape back again and examined the part that had touched Gunther’s chin. “Nine and a quarter inches,” Norman said, looking at the tape. “Let’s see what mine measures.” Norman stretched the tape from his head to his chin, examined the results and said, “Nine and eleven sixteenths exactly. Looks like you’re short seven sixteenths. Isn’t that a coincidence? That countertop you installed in my kitchen was seven sixteenths too short for the cabinet you attached it to. What are the odds? I think we’re going to have to fix that, even though you didn’t think it was important enough to bother with for me. Well, I happen to take a little more pride in my work than you do. Don’t you worry, Christopher. I won’t let you get by with less than perfection.”

  Gunther began to cry uncontrollably. His body convulsed and spasmed between sobs.

  “Settle down,” Chri
stopher,” Norman said. “This is a minor fix. I’ll have you symmetrical in no time at all.” Norman turned back to his work bench again and selected the right tool for the right job. Then he picked up several Popsicle sticks and carried them along with his new tool over to where Gunther waited.

  “What are you going to do?” Gunther said, as best he could with two nostrils full of calk.

  “You need another seven sixteenths added to come up to the standard,” Norman said. “Otherwise it’ll be noticeable and we wouldn’t want that, now would we, Christopher? Of course not. Hold still now. I wouldn’t want to have to do this twice.”

  Norman held one of the Popsicle sticks up to Gunther’s chin and then pressed his latest tool, a power stapler, against the wooden stick and pulled the trigger. The inch-long staple easily penetrated the Popsicle stick and drove itself another seven eights of an inch into Gunther’s chin.

  Gunther screamed an animal scream.

  “There,” Norman said. “That wasn’t so bad, now was it? And now your chin is another eight of an inch closer to perfection. Just three more to go and we’ll be there. Ready?”

  Gunther tried in vain to struggle but it was useless. Norman held the second wooden stick against the first one and drove another staple through it into Gunther’s chin. The crying started again, interspersed with moaning and convulsing.

  “That a quarter inch down and just three sixteenths to go,” Norman said, repeating the procedure two more times before standing back to admire his handiwork. He pulled his tape measure out again and measured the distance between Gunther’s head and chin. “Nine and three quarters. We went over by one sixteenth. Now I know you’d let that a shoddy workman like you would let that slide, but I take more pride in my work. Don’t worry, I can easily sand off that last sixteenth.”