The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories)

by Bernico, Bill

“Jesus Christ,” I blurted out. “Sorry, Mr. VanDornen, I mean Art,” I said apologetically. “I have to go. Can I keep this for a while?” I said, holding the book out at him.

  “Sure,” he said. “What did you find, Matt?”

  “Can’t say just yet, but you’ve been a big help, Art. I’ll let you know when I can.”

  I let myself out and hurried back to my car and drove back to the precinct house. I rushed into Dan Hollister’s office with the yearbook under my arm, ready to show Dan what I’d found. The office was empty. I ran out to the desk sergeant in the hallway and asked for Hollister. He told me I could find him at pier nine on the docks. I ran back to my car, still clutching the book.

  I looked down at the body lying on the stretcher. The divers had just brought it up from the bay and it was still dripping water onto the pier. His face had a grotesque frozen look of horror on it that told a story all its own. It was as though you could see the victim’s last expression captured in time.

  The victim’s face was a pale white with blue lips and ears. A clump of seaweed curled around one of the ears and a small sand crab the size of a silver dollar was easing its body out of the man’s mouth.

  This was no accidental drowning. Not by a long shot.

  Anyone with a fifty-pound weight wrapped around his neck and his hands tied behind him was no candidate for suicide. The victim’s head had a lump the size of an egg just above the right ear. Someone wanted to make sure this man went down and stayed down.

  Dan Hollister stood alongside the body, talking to another officer when I approached him. I didn’t need to ask the victim’s name. I had it in my hand. I looked Dan square in the eye and said, “Stan Garton, right?”

  Hollister stared in amazement. “How’d you know? I got here before you and we didn’t release the name yet. Besides, if our guy is following the alphabet, someone with a last name beginning with F should be next.”

  I flipped out the book to the index and showed Dan what I’d discovered. When we got to Ellen Edelmeier’s name, I slid my finger down the list as we both counted aloud. “Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen” and my finger stopped on Stan Garton.

  Stan Garton was a 38-year-old insurance salesman from Santa Monica. That brought the number of alphabetical bodies to six.

  Dan grabbed the book from me. “What happened to F’?”

  “There weren’t enough of them,” I said.

  “Huh?” Dan looked puzzled.

  “There weren’t enough of them,” I repeated. “There were only eight names beginning with F and the next sequence ran into the G’s.”

  Dan turned back to the index and counted down another eighteen spaces. He stopped on the name Rita Hargrove. He looked at me and without saying a word, I knew what I had to do. “I’m on it,” I said, taking the book and running back to my car.

  I had to find Rita Hargrove now. If I didn’t, she’d be victim number seven and my class would continue to shrink.

  It took me half an hour to repel down the side of the cliff alongside the fire department rescuers. There on the canyon floor, three hundred and sixty feet from the rim, lay the twisted mangled body of Robert Hobart. He was barely recognizable by the time I was able to kneel next to the body and make my initial observations.

  Mr. Hobart had broken every bone in his body and had lost most of his blood during the fall and while the body laid there on the ground. His jacket was shredded but still on his back and his wallet had miraculously managed to stay in the inside pocket. I carefully reached in and retrieved it, opening the leather billfold to the window with his driver’s license in it.

  Robert Hobart, 37, was from Los Angeles. The picture in the window next to his license bore no resemblance to the mangled mess that lay before me.

  Dan Hollister was at the ambulance waiting when I made it back to the road. He was jotting notes on a pad and mumbling to himself. I knew that mumble. It was one of frustration. I’d heard it hundreds of times.

  Dan pocketed his pad and looked up at me. “Hell of a fall?”

  “Fall, nothing,” I said. “This guy had some help. You can’t land that far out without a good running start,” I said. “Besides, he didn’t walk way out here by himself. This place is what the kids call Lookout Point. He’d have no reason to come up here by himself. There’s no car and it’s more than three miles back to town.”

  “You think this body is connected in some way to the string of alphabet bodies we’ve been finding?” Dan pushed the hat up a little higher on his head and waited for a response from me.

  “Well,” I started to say, “technically he’s not due until Rita Hargrove shows up. Unless Hargrove’s lying somewhere waiting to be found.”

  “Let’s hope we find her before this nut does,” Dan said.

  “I’m already on it, Dan,” I said. “I was on my way to find her when this came up.”

  We didn’t have to wait long for our answer. “Hargrove” never showed up but “Jenkins” did. There were only three names beginning with “I” in the index of my yearbook and poor Herbert Jenkins was next. Jenkins’ body was discovered three days later in the back room of Marty’s Pool Hall on La Brea near Highland. He’d been beaten with a pool cue.

  Marty discovered the body when he opened his billiard parlor at nine. The coroner placed the time of death at somewhere near four o’clock. Herb had been dead approximately five hours.

  Parts of the stick were splintered and laying next to the body. The thick part of the cue was found near the back door. There were clumps of brown hair and brain matter still clinging to it.

  Jenkins’ skull had been caved in with the force of the blows. His hands were also bruised and blue from having held them up in a vane attempt to ward off his attacker.

  I met with Dan back at his office. I told him I’d found Rita Hargrove. She was dead but not at the hands of our alphabet killer. She’d died twenty years earlier in an automobile accident just before graduation.

  “Looks like our boy doesn’t like to deviate from the list no matter what,” I said. “Sure, she was next on the list but since she was already dead, he just moved on to the next name eighteen spaces down—Robert Hobart.”

  Dan thumbed through the yearbook index again and showed me where he’d counted down eighteen more spaces from Herbert Jenkins’ name. He’d circled another name, Bill Langley and eighteen more spaces after that was circled the name Peter McMasters. There were seven other names circled altogether.

  “I’ve got my men tracking down every circled name on this list,” Dan explained. “If these people are still in the area, we’ll find ‘em.”

  I drove back to my place and flopped down on the sofa with my mail. It was mostly junk mail and bills but one envelope caught my eye. It was from someone named Lila Stewart. I didn’t know anyone named Lila Stewart. I ripped the envelope open and examined the contents. There inside was my invitation to our twenty year class reunion. It was signed Lila Stewart. Below that name she’d signed “Lila Robinson.”

  “So that’s whatever became of Lila Robinson,” I said, remembering my senior prom and how I wished I hadn’t let this girl slip through my fingers. She was everything to me at the time but now I couldn’t even remember what she looked like.

  The invitation read, “Join us at our twentieth class reunion at Central High School 7:00 Saturday, July 12, 1947. R.S.V.P.”

  I threw the invitation on the coffee table and went into the kitchen for a sandwich. As I bit into the bread, I looked back at the invitation and picked it up. Lila Stewart’s address was listed at the bottom.

  My sandwich dangling from my mouth, I drove to the Stewart residence in Pasadena. I swallowed the last morsel of the ham sandwich and rang the bell. The curtain on the door was drawn aside and a woman looked out before opening the door. She greeted me with a broad smile and outstretched arms.

  “Matthew!” She exclaimed. “Matthew Cooper, I’d know you anywhere.” She squealed with delight as she took my hands and drew me inside and closed t
he door.

  “Lila?” I asked, not sure if this was the same girl I’d dreamed about twenty years earlier. My dream girl was a petite blonde. The woman was a plump brunette. I smiled and tried not to look amazed.

  “Matt, you look as good as ever,” Lila said.

  “So do you, Lila,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t hear the disappointment in my voice. Could this be the same Lila I tried so desperately to lure into the back seat of my father’s Model T? These days it didn’t look like she’d fit.

  “Come in,” she insisted. “ Sit down. What are you doing with yourself these days, Matthew?”

  I removed my hat she took it from me, laying it on the coffee table. “I’m working on a case.”

  “A case?” she asked.

  “Yes, I’m a private investigator now,” I explained. “You remember my picture in the yearbook?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I still have it.”

  “Do you remember what it said below my name?” I asked.

  “Policeman,” she said, nodding and smiling. “I remember.”

  “Well,” I said, “I was one for many years before I went off on my own.”

  “My, that’s fascinating,” she said. “You ARE coming to the reunion, aren’t you?”

  “That’s what I came to see you about, Lila,” I said. “Do you have a list of the people you sent invitations to?”

  “Sure, Matt. It’s right here,” she said, plucking a piece of paper from her end table. “The invitations went out a week ago last Friday and some people are already sending their R.S.V.P.’s. I’m checking them off as they come in.” She held the paper out to me and I took it from her.

  “How many have you sent?” I asked.

  “There’s a hundred and ninety-six names on that list, Matt,” Lila explained.

  “A hundred and ninety-six? But there were two hundred and eight in our class, weren’t there?” I asked.

  “Two hundred and seven, Matt,” Lila said. “Over the past twenty years nine have died, one of them is me and one is Jack. That’s eleven more.”

  “Jack?” I asked.

  “You remember Jack, don’t you, Matt?” Lila asked. “Jack he was captain of the track team and the football team. Tall guy, wavy hair and baby blue eyes.”

  “Oh that Jack. I never could stand him. He was always showing off with his football and track letters. He really thought he was something. I can’t even remember his last name anymore. Whatever happened to ol’ Jack?”

  “His name was Jack Stewart,” she said. “I married him nineteen years ago.”

  My ears burned and my face turned six shades of red. I quickly tried to recover from my blunder and blurted out, “Nope, I was thinking of some other Jack who . . . “

  “It’s all right, Matt. I thought he was kind of a jerk myself back then. But he’s really changed since we got out of school.”

  Lila let me off the hook and I turned back to the matter at hand. “That makes two hundred and seven,” I said. “What about the last one?”

  “Matt, are you sure about that number?” she asked. “I’m positive I counted everybody.”

  I spread my hands and shrugged. “Can I borrow this list for a little while, Lila?” I asked. “I’ll get it back to you later today after I have a copy made.”

  She agreed. I thanked her and left. I took my list back to Hollister’s office and sat across the desk from him. We compared the list with the names in the index. Dan checked off the nine people who had died since graduation. One by one I read the other hundred and ninety-six names aloud while Dan checked them off in the index. When I said, “Walter Reynolds” Dan said, “wait a second, what happened to Michael Reinhart?”

  I looked back at my list, scanning down with my finger. “Not on here,” I said. I gave Dan the list and took the book from him. The index showed Michael Reinhart’s name immediately before Walter Reynolds. The index referenced him to page forty-eight. I turned to page forty-eight and found Reinhart’s picture. Below it was the caption “Undecided.” It didn’t say much for Michael Reinhart’s future.

  Dan looked up at me. “Maybe we’d better find out if this Reinhart is still in the area.”

  Hollister stopped dead in his tracks. “Over here, Captain,” he yelled. He was standing in what used to be the living room of this burned out third story apartment. The apartment, or what was left of it, dripped water everywhere from the three-hour battle with the fire department.

  The body of Bill Langley lay on the charred remains of the sofa. Half the frame and two of the cushions from this sofa had been burned to cinders along with Bill Langley’s legs. The blackened ash that was once flesh on those legs crumbled away, exposing fragments of bone where the victim’s thighs had been. From the waist down, Bill Langley could fit into an ashtray—and rightly so. From the waist up wasn’t much prettier.

  Captain Oliver Waldon of the Los Angeles Fire Department crouched near the kitchen stove. He sniffed and scratched at the black appliance, collecting samples of whatever he could find.

  Another investigator emerged from the bedroom, which was actually just an extension of the living room separated by a flimsy curtain. He held an alarm clock in one hand and some ashes in the other. Captain Waldon met him near the hall entrance door. They whispered and looked back at me and Bill Langley, or what was left of him.

  The Captain motioned Hollister over to where he and the investigator had been whispering. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but I did hear Dan say, “it’s all right. He’s on this case, too.” After a minute of secrecy, Hollister motioned to me by tossing his head to one side.

  “Matt, look at this,” he said, handing me the alarm clock.

  I looked it over carefully and handed it back. “Yeah? Am I supposed to notice something?”

  “There, on the alarm crank,” Captain Waldon answered for him. “Residue of tape and these pieces that I found near the clock confirmed what I had suspected.”

  I looked puzzled and turned to the captain.

  “Someone had taped something, probable a kitchen match, to the alarm crank of this clock. It probably was placed next to the box with the striking surface standing along side it,” he explained.

  “And then?” I asked, wanting him to finish his thought.

  The captain continued, “well, that in itself wouldn’t do much, but the pilot light from the stove had been snuffed out, probably an hour before this contraption was set up in the bedroom. Our killer knew exactly when Mr. Langley would be home and set the alarm on the clock to go off shortly after he arrived.”

  My eyebrows raised and I looked back at the clock. “Looks like Langley may have been overcome by the gas and fell onto the couch, or he just thought he was getting sleepy and laid down.”

  “Right,” the captain said. “And a few minutes later when the alarm went off, the crank unwound with the match taped to it and struck the side of the match box. With an apartment full of gas all it took was that one spark to turn this place into an inferno.”

  Dan turned to me and said, “find Peter McMasters NOW, Matt. We can’t waste another day with this.”

  I was out the door and into my car before Hollister’s words had stopped ringing in my ears. An earlier preliminary search of McMasters in the phone book led nowhere and I had to hurry downtown and pull in all favors if I were going to find Peter McMasters before our killer did.

  Eva Bishop was my contact at City Hall. I found her behind her counter on the second floor. I explained that I needed tax records for one Peter McMasters for the past twenty years for a government case I was working on. Sometimes you have to spread it on a little thick.

  Eva told me to meet her in the park across from City Hall in an hour and she’d have my records. She was right on time. She explained that the records had to be back in the cabinet right away and that I had to browse them right here on the bench. The last entry for Peter McMasters was dated April 15, 1945.

  “That it?” I asked, looking to Eva for some sort of explana
tion as to why records for the past two years were missing.

  “That’s everything that I have,” she replied.

  “What, did he just stop paying taxes two years ago?” I wanted to know.

  “Not necessarily, Matt. It just means that he no longer paying them to this office. According to the last memo in his folder, he moved to Orange Country eighteen months ago. I have his address, if that’ll help.”

  I jotted down the information that I needed and kissed Eva on her forehead. “You’re a doll, Eva. I owe you,” I said as I hurried back to my car.

  It took me the better part of an hour to get to McMasters’ house. It sat high on a hill with a large deck attached to the back of the house overlooking the city. I passed a white telephone company truck parked at the curb as I pulled into the driveway.

  I walked up to the front door, thinking of how I would explain Mr. McMasters’ dilemma to him. The main door stood wide open with just a screen door separating the living room from the outside world. Before I’d even reached the stoop, I noticed a small round hole in the screen about eye level. Just inside the door I noticed one brown shoe looking out of place by itself there on the floor.

  I cupped my hands to the side of my face and pressed it up against the screen to get a better look inside. About two feet from the shoe I caught a glimpse of the foot it had once been on. The body was lying on its back in a pool of blood. I pulled my head back quickly and opened the screen door, entering with my .45 drawn.

  As I bent down to examine the body, I heard a creaking sound immediately behind me. Before I could straighten up and turn around, I felt something hard come down on my head and heard the sounds of heavy feet leaving the house. I staggered to the front door just in time to see the telephone truck squealing away from the curb.

  I don’t know how long I’d been out but when I came to I was still clutching my .45 and I heard voices. I propped myself up on one arm and looked toward the front door. Two uniformed policemen entered with their guns drawn and pointed them in my face.

  “Drop it!” One of them screamed at me.

  I released my grip on the gun and laid back down flat on my back. The other cop kicked my automatic away from me and stepped on my wrist. The first one holstered his piece and grabbed me by my lapels and sat me upright while his partner retrieved my weapon.