by Bill Bernico
I crossed my heart with two fingers and held them up. “Scouts honor,” I said. “I wasn’t there myself. This happened a year or so before I was even born. Anyway, the band was doing a sound check by playing one of their songs. The kids with the general admission tickets all rushed to try to get a seat as close to the stage as they could, but most of the entrance doors were still locked. Naturally a few of the kids fell down and the kids behind them just trampled over them to get their seats. If I remember correctly, nearly a dozen kids died and a couple dozen more were seriously injured when the crowd pushed toward the doors, crushing those poor kids to death.”
“And that’s exactly the kind of thing I’m afraid of,” Matt said. “Now, what about you? There has to be something that at least makes you uncomfortable. What is it?”
“Okay,” I said. “When I was in the fifth grade we had a book that we took turns reading from in front of the class.”
“Public speaking?” Matt interrupted. “You’re afraid of public speaking?”
“Let me finish,” I said. “There was one story in particular in that book and it had a picture accompanying the text. Not an actual photo, but some illustrator’s drawing. The perspective was from a skyscraper looking down at the street. I remember even as a kid getting dizzy looking at that drawing. I had to close the book and that’s when I realized I was afraid of heights.”
“Heights?” Matt said. “You are afraid of heights?”
“That’s the strange part,” I explained. “I can look out the window of an airplane flying over an open field and it doesn’t bother me. But that same plane flying a thousand feet over a large city, where I can get some sort of scale of the height and I’m heading for the barf bag. Don’t ask me why. I could never be one of those base jumpers who leaps off a building.”
Matt snapped his fingers. “That’s it.”
“What’s it?” I said.
“A parachute rigging.”
“What about a parachute rigging?” I said. “You lost me.”
“That first guy, Max something or other.”
“Brewster,” I added. “What about him?”
“If I remember correctly, Andy said something about there not being a mark on him, except for two red marks around his shoulders.”
“Keep going,” I said.
“Well, what if Max was afraid of heights and whoever it was who wanted him dead, seemingly by a heart attack, rigged him up in a harness and just put him in the situation of looking like he was going to fall off a tall building or out of a plane.” Matt shook his finger toward me. “Max gets a look at the ground below and bites the big one right then and there. Whoever had him afterwards slips him out of the harness and positions him in a natural pose to look like a heart attack. Their hands are clean as far as anyone else knows but they accomplished the same thing.”
I turned in my seat, facing my son. “You know, Matt, you may just have something there.” I opened my door and got out again, walking around to Matt’s side of the car. “Come on, we’re going back in and you can tell Eric about your theory.”
Eric listened intently and then said, “And you thought all this up?”
“You don’t have to seem so surprised,” Matt said. “My mind is always working overtime on all kinds of things. They aren’t always as useful as this particular thought.”
“Well, thanks again,” Eric said. “This is exactly the kind of push in the right direction that we needed. I’ll be sure to let you both know if this pans out.”
“All part of the full service at Cooper Investigations,” I said, leading Matt out of the office again. We drove back to our office and hung up our coats. I noticed the red light blinking on the answering machine. I pressed the play button and listened. It was just Gloria reminding me to pick up a gallon of milk on my way home tonight.
Eric pressed the button on his intercom. “Hannah, would you get a hold of Officer Stewart in car nine and tell him to meet me back here at the precinct?”
“Right away, Lieutenant,” Hannah said, reaching for the microphone. “Headquarters to car nine, what’s your twenty?”
“Headquarters, this is car nine,” the voice on the other end replied. “I’m heading west on Sunset approaching Gower.”
“Car nine, meet Lieutenant Anderson at the station.”
“Copy that, headquarters. ETA six minutes.”
Officer Stewart pulled up in front of the precinct to find Eric standing at the curb. Eric slid in next to Stewart and told him to drive.
“Where are we going, Lieutenant?” Stewart said.
“I want to have another look at that abandoned warehouse on La Brea. You know the place I’m talking about?”
“Yes, sir,” Stewart said. “La Brea and Santa Monica. Right away, sir.” They’d driven a few blocks when Stewart asked, “What do you expect to find there, sir?”
“We had an inordinate number of heart attacks recently,” Eric explained. “The last victim was a private eye named Lester Bowman. They found him sitting on a bench at the bus stop on Western Avenue—dead. And he’d wet himself, but that in itself is not unusual. Your bodily functions let loose when you die. When the M.E. was undressing Lester for autopsy, he noticed a bit of black soot on the back of Lester’s jacket. He had it analyzed and it turned out to be foundry dust. Chances are he didn’t pick it up from that bus stop bench.”
“And this abandoned warehouse was once a foundry?” Stewart said.
“Exactly,” Eric said. “If Lester died somewhere else and was posed at the bus stop, it would also follow that he may have died in that warehouse. Let’s take a closer look.”
A few minutes later Stewart pulled up behind the warehouse on La Brea and cut the engine. The two cops got out and walked toward the back door to the warehouse. It was locked but the door had a glass panel in the upper half of the door. “Break it,” Eric told Stewart.
Officer Stewart pulled out his night stick and smashed the window before reaching in to unlock the door. The two men entered, their flashlights illuminating the way. It was a large room, probably a hundred feet long by seventy-five feet wide. The far end opened to another section of the warehouse that probably once housed the machinery necessary to manufacture cast iron products.
The two cops shined their lights on the floor, up the walls, across the ceiling and back to the floor. They split up, going in opposite directions, not really sure what they were looking for. After a few minutes, Eric yelled to Stewart, “Over here.” Officer Stewart hurried over to where Eric stood shining his light on a spot on the floor. There at his feet Eric could make out the blackened cement with one obvious white spot showing. “Look at this. There’s a fresh chip in the cement. The edge closest to me has a smooth, rounded portion and the section opposite it is jagged. You recognize that pattern, officer?”
“Looks like a gunshot pattern,” Stewart said. “I’ve seen that pattern enough times in the aftermath of a shootout to know what it looks like.”
“Good observation, officer,” Eric said. “And that means what?”
Stewart thought for a moment and then offered, “That means that the bullet would have ricocheted and hit another part of the walls or ceiling.”
“And we’re going to find it,” Eric said, shining his flashlight in the direction of the ragged edge of the chipped cement. Stewart followed and in just a few minutes stopped with his flashlight pointing at a smooth hole in the corrugated metal wall several feet away.
“Looks like a .44 or .45 slug went through here,” Stewart said.
Eric led the officer through a door on that wall and entered another part of the warehouse. He shined his light up where the hole should be and found it. The two men shined their flashlights in the approximate path the bullet would have to have taken. “The floor and this wall would have slowed that bullet down considerably,” Eric said. It can’t be far from here. Keep looking.”
It took less than a minute for Stewart to stop and aim his beam on a slug, lying on the floor.
“Lieutenant,” he said. “Over here. It probably bounced off that brick pillar.”
Eric shined his light down onto the slug and then retrieved a small manila envelope from his shirt pocket. He scooped the slug into the envelope, sealed it and dropped it back into his pocket. He turned to Stewart. “Let’s have another look in that first room again before we head back to the precinct.”
Eric and Officer Stewart found the chipped spot on the floor again. Immediately to the left of the chipped cement, Eric noticed that some of the black soot seemed to have been disturbed. There was also a damp spot two feet away from the chip. Eric touched the spot and smelled it. He immediately pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his finger.
“What is it, sir?” Stewart said.
“Smells like urine,” Eric explained. “And the soot here has been disturbed, like there had been someone here recently.”
“What do you make of it, Lieutenant?”
“Let’s keep looking,” Eric said and spread out their search from there. Stewart began walking away from the area while Eric remained where he was. He looked directly overhead, wondering if the damp spot on the cement could have been a result of something dripping from above. His beam stopped on a dent in the ceiling. He called to Stewart. “Officer Stewart, go back to the squad car and call in to the station for some backup. Tell them to bring a ladder truck tall enough to reach this ceiling. I’d say thirty feet should do it.”
“Yes sir,” Stewart said and hurried back to his cruiser.
Two more patrol cars arrived within fifteen minutes, followed by a ladder truck from the fire department. Two firemen jumped off the truck and walked over to where Eric stood next to the building. Eric pointed to a rusty overhead door. “Can you guys get that thing open?”
One of the firemen looked briefly at the door and announced, “No sweat, Lieutenant. We can have that open in a couple of minutes.” He was right. With the pry bars and other tools they carried, they had the overhead door pushed up and out of the way in just under five minutes.
Eric gestured toward the truck. “Would you back that truck inside? I’ll tell you when to stop. I don’t want the scene disturbed, but you have to be able to reach the ceiling directly above it.”
“Sure thing, Lieutenant,” the fireman said and climbed back into the truck. It sounded a steady beep, beep, beep as it back into the warehouse. Eric flagged him down when the truck got close enough. The fireman who was driving climbed down from the cab and met Eric behind the truck.
Eric pointed to the area with the chipped cement. “I don’t want that area disturbed,” he explained. “But directly above it there’s a small dent in the ceiling that I need to get a closer look at.” Eric turned to the other officers who had come with the truck. “Tape this whole area off,” he said, pointing to the floor. “Give me a good fifteen-foot diameter around that chipped cement.”
“Yes sir,” the cop said, returning to his car for the crime scene tape.
Once the fireman had the ladder positioned, he stepped aside and turned to Eric. “You sure you want to do this?”
“I can handle thirty feet,” Eric explained. “If it was a hundred feet, you wouldn’t get me on the ladder.”
“It’s not for everyone,” the fireman explained as Eric started up the ladder.
Once at the top of the ladder, Eric reached into his pocket and withdrew his digital camera, which was about half the size of a pack of cigarettes. He snapped several photos of the dented area before crawling back down the ladder. He looked back at the fireman again. “Thanks. Can you leave the truck where it is until the crime lab gets here?”
“Not a problem,” the fireman said.
Eric turned to one of the recently arrived officers. “No one gets near that area until the crime lab gets here, understand?”
“Yes, sir,” the cop said as Eric and Officer Stewart left the building.
Back in Stewart’s cruiser, Eric held his camera and the small brown envelope. “Something tells me Lester Bowman had help with his heart attack. Something also tells me that it happened in there.” Eric hiked a thumb toward the warehouse entrance.
“How do you figure, Lieutenant?” Stewart said.
“The foundry dust on the back of Lester’s jacket and shoes obviously came from this building,” Eric explained. “The place on the floor where the dust was disturbed leads me to believe that he may have been lying on that floor near the cement chip. I’m not sure in which order the next two events occurred, but I’d say that someone or someones had Lester standing at that spot. One of them probably stood behind him and made sure he heard the sound of a revolver being cocked. That would have made anyone nervous, but poor Lester had a bad heart to begin with. I’d say whoever was back there fired that shot into the ceiling where I found the dent.”
“And that would have scared the piss out of Lester,” Officer Stewart said.
“Literally,” Eric offered. “That would account for the damp floor with the urine smell. Lester probably collapsed right there and the guy with the revolver probably threatened to finish ol’ Lester off where he lay.”
“But at the last minute he pulls his shot to the right and hits the cement,” Steward surmised. “And that’s what caused the chip in the cement.”
“We match that slug we found with the shooter’s gun and we have probable cause,” Eric said.
“The tricky part is going to be finding the guy with that gun,” Stewart said.
“Well that’s what they pay us for,” Eric told him. “And the sooner we get on it, the sooner we can wrap up this case.”
An hour later Matt took the call from Eric. “Matt,” Eric said, “Is Elliott there?”
“Sorry, Lieutenant,” Matt said. “Dad’s been called out on a case. Can I help you?”
“How long do you think he’ll be out?”
“Boy, Lieutenant,” Matt said. “If I was the sensitive type I might be offended that you didn’t have faith in me.”
“Not at all, Matt,” Eric said. “It’s just that your dad has knowledge of a case that goes way back before you joined him and I needed to ask him something about that case.”
“Well, then I guess that lets you off the hook,” Matt said. “It also leaves me with my confidence still intact.”
“It’s obvious where you got your sense of humor, Matt. Just tell Elliott to give me a call when he gets the chance.”
“Will do,” Matt said and then hung up.
Eric left his office and walked down the hall to the morgue. Andy Reynolds was at his desk, going through some of his findings from the last few victims. Eric knocked and let himself in. Andy looked up and invited Eric to sit.
“So, what’s up this time, Eric?” Andy said.
Eric gestured at the papers in front of Andy. “Those the papers for our last three heart attack victims?”
Andy nodded. “Uh huh. Just double-checking my findings.”
“Well, as long as you’re at it,” Eric said, “Would you also check our second victim for anything unusual?”
“Do you have a name?
“Lazslo,” Eric said. “Leo Lazslo. He’s the one they found on the bench in MacArthur Park.”
Andy paged through the reports and pulled Lazslo’s file out. “What am I looking for?” he said.
“Not sure at this point,” Eric said. “Just anything that seems odd or unusual; anything you haven’t come across before. No matter how insignificant it might seem, there could be an explanation within a different context.”
Andy stared at the report, looked up for a moment and dismissed his thought.
“What is it, Andy?”
“Probably nothing,” Andy said.
“Let’s have it,” Eric insisted.
“It’s just that I found some sticky residue on both cuffs of Lazslo’s long-sleeve shirt. I initially thought he might have been restrained with tape, but there was no indication of bruising on the flesh around the wrists, just the sticky residue on the shirt itself
. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Can’t say that it does,” Eric said. “At least not until I can get some more information back about Lazslo and things he might have been afraid of.”
“Well, let me know if I can do anything else for you, Eric,” Andy said.
Eric got up to leave and as Andy was straightening out the files again he looked up at Eric and added, “I don’t know how important this is, but Lazslo also had something under his fingernails.”
“Skin?”
Andy shook his head. “A red, fuzzy material. More like fibers.”
“Did you analyze them?” Eric said.
“I did. Turned out to be one hundred per cent cotton.”
“Cotton?” Eric said, totally puzzled. “Like he had something covering his hands? You think maybe he was wearing gloves?”
“I don’t think so,” Andy said. “It’s not likely his fingers would have had enough room to move around scraping up fibers.”
“Mittens?”
“Who wears mittens in California?” Andy said.
“Well, whatever it was, they were apparently taped to his wrists.” Eric thought for a moment. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“Nothing,” Andy admitted. “These three cases are getting stranger by the minute.”
“Let me know if anything else occurs to you,” Eric said, exiting Andy’s office this time.
Eric returned to his office to find his secretary, Hannah writing a note. She stopped writing when she saw Eric. “I was just going to leave you a note, Lieutenant. Elliott Cooper just called, saying he was returning your call. He was calling from his cell phone. Do you need that number?”
“Not necessary, Hannah,” Eric said. “I’ve got Elliott on speed dial. Thanks.”
Eric pressed the key for Elliott’s cell phone and then put his phone on speaker to free up his hands.
“Cooper,” I said, after flipping open my phone.
“Elliott, it’s Eric. Where are you?”
“On the Hollywood Freeway heading for Burbank,” I said. “What’s up? Matt said you called about some old case I worked on.”