The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories)

by Bernico, Bill

  “What we have is four unrelated murders with no apparent connection. The victims were from four different communities, each had different jobs and except for Jerry Abrams, as far as we know none of the rest of them was in any sort of trouble with the law.” Hollister shook his head and slammed the pointer down on the desk where he stood.

  One of the detectives asked, “I notice they’re all within a year of each other in age. Anyone checked that angle?”

  “We’re checking that now. As soon as we have a little more to go on, we’ll fill you in,” Dan said, frustrated by the lack of leads in these cases.

  I looked at the easel again and then down at my notes before speaking. “Is it just a coincidence or has anybody noticed that the victims seem to have been found in alphabetical order?”

  Hollister looked up at me and then back at the stats board. He turned back to the group and answered, “We noticed that when the third body, Ray Carlson, was found. We’re not ruling out some serial nut who wants to run through the alphabet, but until we can dig a little deeper into the victims’ backgrounds, I’m afraid we have nothing to connect them yet.”

  Body number five was discovered at six o’clock the next day. Her name was Ellen Mueller and that put an end to the alphabet theory. She had been found lying in the alley behind Mike’s Bar on Crocker Street. An old electrical cord was wrapped tightly around her neck. Her face was a grotesque combination of blue and pale white with traces of red where the blood had trickled out of her mouth. Her eyes bugged open in a frozen stare of horror.

  Mueller, like the others, was in her late thirties. Her license showed that she lived in Pasadena. A subsequent check revealed that Mrs. Mueller had been self-employed as a freelance writer. Besides the initial clues, nothing tied her to the others. All I had to go on was the location.

  Mike’s Bar was like a hundred others I’d seen. It was small, dark and dingy. Its main clientele was welfare types, transients and guys like the ones I’d seen lying in the alleys around town. It took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the dark.

  I hadn’t even made it to the bar when a woman approached me. She looked like the female equivalent of Peter Lorre. Her hair was gray and matted close to her head and she smelled like an outhouse in August. She hung on my shoulders and said, “Lookin’ for a good time, honey?” Her breath was enough to make me lose my lunch. I carefully picked her hands from my shoulders and let them drop, quickly stepping back a few paces.

  “What’s the matter?” she said. “Think you’re too good for me?” She looked at me with a glazed-over look before passing out on the floor.

  The bartender was a fat guy in his late fifties. He had a small, dark ring of hair around the back of his head. His tee shirt sleeves were rolled up revealing a tattoo of a snake wrapping itself around a bottle of beer. The apron that he wore might as easily have been worn by an Indy pit crew mechanic. If I were casting his life story, Broderick Crawford would have played the part.

  I motioned him over. He took his time but eventually he stood in front of me. I could see the three-day stubble and the cigar butt clenched between his teeth.

  Wanting to spend as little time as possible in the company of this missing link, I cut to the chase and held up a five-dollar bill in front of him. “What can you tell me about Ellen Mueller? I understand she may have been in here last night.”

  The bartender grabbed for the fin but I pulled it back just out of his reach. “Okay,” he said. “She was here last night. So what. She’s always in here. If you’re lucky, she’ll be here again tonight. That all you want?”

  I held the bill a little closer and asked, “Anyone in here with her? Did you see her leave with anyone?”

  Broderick wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and thought for a moment. “Nope. She was here by herself and left by herself around eleven, and that’s the god’s honest truth.”

  He looked at the bill and back at me. I hesitated for a second and then held the bill close enough for him to grab. The bill was gone before I could say “Neanderthal.”

  I produced another dollar and a half and laid it on the bar. “Let me have a pint of bourbon.” Broderick laid the bottle on the bar and grabbed my money as I pocketed the bottle. The bartender was too busy examining the five-dollar bill to notice the shot glass I’d pocketed from the bar.

  I left the bar and walked the short distance to where the alley divided the block in two. I took a drink from the bourbon bottle and returned it to my pocket. Two metal garbage cans now stood in the spot where Ellen Mueller had been found the night before.

  It wasn’t yet dusk and the alley took on a strange hue from the setting sun. The businesses on Crocker Street all had their garbage cans out for the usual pickup the next morning. It seemed quiet. Too quiet. I decided to have a closer look.

  I walked the entire length of the alley and back and was about to leave when I spotted two shoes protruding from beneath a pile of newspapers and cardboard. Carefully I removed the layers of paper to reveal a face. It was an old, wrinkled and weatherworn face. His mouth had a caved-in look from the absence of teeth and he looked like one of the last Civil War veterans, though he was probably born a few years after Lincoln died.

  The face occasionally twitched and moved with each uneven breath its owner took. The old man smacked his lips twice, his tongue darting out with each smack. I could see the outline of his eyeballs rolling around beneath their dirty lids. This guy was having a dream. Maybe a good dream. Maybe he was in hobo heaven swimming in a lake of sour mash bourbon.

  Reluctant to touch this disgusting body, I tapped his shoe with my own. It took several taps before his eyes fluttered open. He gave his lips a couple more smacks and blinked his eyes twice before focusing on my face. His eyes opened wider at the sight of someone looking down on him and he sat up somewhat.

  I crouched in front of him, keeping my distance. “Hey, old-timer. How you doing?”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Cooper, Matt Cooper. I’m looking for someone and I thought you’d know where she might be.” The old man just looked back at me and said nothing. “This gal was about thirty-six or thirty-seven and may have hung around these parts. Her name was Mueller, Ellen Mueller.”

  The old man’s lips went into their smacking routine again. I reached into my pocket and produced the bourbon bottle and held it in front of him just out of reach. It was like a lab experiment with Pavlov’s dog. The old man’s tongue swept his lips and he began salivating at the sight of the brown liquid.

  “What about Ellen?” I asked, still holding the bottle in plain sight.

  He pointed to the spot where the officer on patrol had found Ellen Mueller’s body. “Right there,” he said, reaching for the bottle. I pulled it back just out of reach.

  “What about it?” I asked. The old man seemed to lose his train of thought and focused on the bottle. I opened it and retrieved the shot glass from my jacket pocket. I poured a shot of bourbon and handed it to him. He tossed his head back and downed a swallow like the pro he was. I pulled the bottle back out of his reach. He held the shot glass out for more but I just took the bottle, stood up and turned to go.

  “She’s dead,” the old man said. It was enough to make me stop in my tracks and turn around. I crouched in front of him again and poured him another drink.

  “Did you see it?” I asked, waiting for him to swallow another mouthful of bourbon.

  The old man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He reached out to me with a shaky hand and said, “Yep. I was right here when that guy drove up and dumped her out.”

  I poured him some more bourbon and listened. “Go on.”

  “He didn’t even see me. He was busy pullin’ her out of the trunk of some big Caddy.” I handed him the bottle this time. He held it up to his eyes to examine the remaining contents before he upended it, his eager mouth acting like a funnel.

  I pulled his hand away from his mouth and the bottle spilled a little of its contents o
n the man’s suit. “Did you get a good look at this guy? What can you tell me about him? How tall was he?”

  The old man took another quick swig from the bottle before answering. “That cop didn’t even see me sittin’ here. No one ever notices me.”

  “What about this guy you saw? What happened?” I persisted.

  Reaching back into his shallow memory, the old man thought for a second and then got wide-eyed. His eyes teared up and he began to shake. He took another drink, his hand still shaking. “He just dumped her there,” the old man said in a shaky voice. “Musta been sore at her. He threw her down over there and kicked her. Said something like ‘see ya, bitch’ and kicked her again.” Next thing I know he runs past me and gets back in his car and drives away.”

  “Did you get a look at the man when he ran past you?”

  “Yeah, I seen him,” the old man said. “He didn’t see me but I seen him.”

  “Think you could identify him if you saw him again?” I asked.

  “I bet I could. Yep, I just bet I could.” His lips began smacking again.

  I had all I needed for now and stood again. There was no way I wanted this smelly excuse for a human being in my car. “I’ll be right back with a policeman friend of mine. Will you tell all this to him when I get back?”

  “Got another bottle?” he said, holding the bottle upside down to show me it was empty.

  “Sure, we’ll bring you one. I turned and walked away. From over my shoulder I could hear “Cheers.” I looked back to see the old man holding the bottle out in front of him as if to toast me.

  “Cheers,” I answered and headed back to my car.

  Dan Hollister’s office was just ten minutes from this section of town and I wasted no time getting there. After a brief explanation of what the old man had told me, Dan and I headed back to the alley. We made a quick stop at the first bar we saw and picked up another pint of bourbon.

  Within thirty minutes from the time I’d left the old man, Hollister and I were back at the alley. I took Dan over to where the old man was still sitting. The old man hugged the empty bottle and had his head tilted to one side and his eyes closed.

  “We may have to take him downtown and throw him under the shower before we can get anything out of him,” I said, crouching at the old man’s feet. I nudged him on the shoulder with no result. The empty bottle clanked to the pavement and the man’s hand fell limp at his side. I grabbed both lapels and pulled. The old man’s head flopped forward and down toward his chest. That’s when I spotted the bullet hole.

  It was a small hole, probably a .25 caliber. It had entered just above the right ear. Whatever this guy had to say would have to wait indefinitely.

  “He told me the suspect didn’t see him. Looks like he was wrong,” I said.

  “Dead wrong,” Dan added.

  I found out that the old man who had seen Ellen Mueller’s murderer was a guy named Charles Rudman, age seventy-three. Just as I figured, he’d missed Lincoln by a few years. He was buried in the pauper’s cemetery at the county’s expense.

  It was three days after the discovery of Ellen Mueller that an assistant to Sergeant Hollister surfaced with the news that unmistakably tied the first four victims together. They had all attended Central High School in Los Angeles. Three of the victims had graduated with the class of ‘27, and one dropped out from that same class.

  Finally, I had a lead to follow—a slim lead, but a lead nonetheless. I gathered all the papers I had on this case and headed back to my office to sort through the clues.

  If there was a common thread among these people I had to find it. What are the odds that five people, all within a year of my own age, could be snuffed without there being some connection?

  I worked into the night, scanning all the documents I’d gathered. My eyes were getting heavy and the printing on the pages became blurred. I don’t remember much of anything after reading the Draper file somewhere around 4:30 A.M.

  It was after eight the next morning when Lois brought me the final papers in the Mueller case. She nudged me on the shoulder. “Matt. Wake up. My lord, have you been here all night?”

  “Huh?” I sat upright and rubbed my eyes. The morning light hurt them and I laid my head back down on the desk.

  “Wake up, Matt,” Lois said.

  I got up from my desk. My pants clung to the backs of my sweaty legs and my suit felt like a second skin. I’d been over the preliminary documents for most of the night and was about to go home for some much needed sleep when the final folder was tossed on my desk. Lois flipped the folder around, face up to me, and opened the cover. “Notice anything strange, Matt?” she said with her hands on her hips.

  “It’s late,” I said, forgetting that it was actually morning. “I’m tired, my eyes are bugging outta my head and I’m in no mood for guessing games. Just tell me,” I said.

  Lois looked a little hurt as her hands moved from her hips to a folded position across her chest. “Well, good morning to you, too,” she said sarcastically.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you’ve been at this a long time too. What do you have for me?”

  Lois unfolded her arms and braced her hands on the edge of my desk. “Look at her maiden name, Matt.”

  “Edelmeier, so what,” I said.

  “Edelmeier—E. Ellen Edelmeier.” Lois stood erect again and waited for my response.

  “Gees. This guy IS some kind of an alphabet nut after all. What about the school connection” I asked.

  “She left in her senior year. Moved to San Pedro with her aunt. She had a baby five months later,” Lois explained.

  I closed the folder, grabbed my hat and headed out the door leaving Lois at my desk looking puzzled.

  Central High School was housed in one of those buildings that looked like it could go through an earthquake and come out with only a few bricks loose. It had been built around the turn of the century and fifty years later seemed as solid as when it was new.

  I parked my Olds at the curb and entered the front door over which was engraved CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL—1897. It was 10 A.M. and school was in session. The halls were vacant and I had no trouble finding the office of the principal, Mr. VanDornen.

  The secretary at the main desk buzzed the principal’s office on the intercom and then looked back at me. “You can go in now, Mr. Cooper.” I felt the same as I did more than twenty years ago when I’d been sent to this same office for cutting class. Mr. VanDornen still made me nervous but I tried not to show it.

  “Sit down, Matt,” my former principal said. “How can I help you?”

  “Well, Mr. VanDornen, I . . . “

  “Come on, Matt, we’re adults now. Call me Art,” he said.

  “All right, Art. As you may have read, there have been a rash of murders lately and the only thing the victims had in common was that they all attended this school,” I said.

  Art looked at me without surprise. “Matt, most of the people in this area attended my school. It doesn’t seem too much of a coincidence that they would have all attended here at one time or another.”

  I set my hat on his desk and stood. I pulled a cigarette from my inside coat pocket and held a match in my right hand, ready to light it with my thumbnail when I realized where I was. I quickly put the items back in my pocket and sat again. “Art, these victims were all in the same class as well.”

  “The same class?” Art asked, looking a little more concerned now.

  “That is, they were all from the class of ‘27, or would have been if one of them hadn’t dropped out,” I explained. “Ellen Mueller, that is, Ellen Edelmeier left here a few months before graduation.”

  “That was your class, wasn’t it, Matt?” Mr. VanDornen asked.

  “Yes. I didn’t really know the victims all that well but I was standing next to one of them when he was murdered. We’d just been talking about the class reunion coming up in July when someone shot him.” I squirmed uncomfortably in my chair and stood again, pacing the floor in f
ront of Art’s desk. “Do you suppose I could have a look at our yearbook from back then?”

  “Certainly, Matt. I’ll have Mrs. Andrews bring it in.”

  The secretary came in a few minutes later holding my old yearbook and handed it to Mr. VanDornen. Art passed it over his desk to me and I thumbed through the senior section looking at pictures of the victims.

  It was a big school with more than 800 students among the four grade levels. My graduating class had exactly 208 members and too many years had gone by to recognize many of them at first glance. I flipped past the C’s and found my picture with the caption beneath it “Policeman.” We all had some occupation written below our pictures depending on what we told the counselor we wanted to be that year.

  I flipped back to the A’s and looked up Jerry Abrams. His picture showed a clean cut kid who wanted to be an engineer. He never quite made it.

  I wanted to find Ellen Edelmeier’s picture but since she didn’t graduate, her senior class picture was missing. I decided to check the index in the back of the book for Edelmeier. I found it with a reference to the girl’s glee club and another page but before I went to that page something else caught my eye.

  One page back I found Lee Draper’s name. Several places higher was Ray Carlson with a notation pointing to page twenty-three. I turned to page twenty-three and found his picture with his name directly beneath it—Edward Raymond Carlson. Below that in quotes it said “Teacher.” That was it. Carlson went by his middle name these days. It was the same guy.

  I flipped back to the index again and found Edward Carlson’s name again and counted up from Lee Draper. It was eighteen places higher to be exact. Further up I spotted Max Branigan. I ran my finger up, counting places as I went. Eighteen places. I counted up another eighteen places and my finger stopped on the name in that spot—Jerry Abrams.

  The hair on my arms twitched and a chill ran down my back. I counted down from Lee Draper’s name when I came to the bottom of the page. I’d counted fifteen spaces and turned the page. There, three spaces from the top on the next page was Ellen Edelmeier’s name.