The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories)

by Bernico, Bill

  On top of the table sat a single coffee cup with a spoonful of coffee lying in the bottom of the cup. There were several dishes and pieces of flatware soaking in the sink. An open box of corn flakes sat on the counter. I nudged it and a cockroach scurried away into a corner and disappeared through a crack in the wall.

  There were no signs of any struggle and the place looked as though the owner had expected to be home again very soon. I checked the bedroom down the hall. A single bed with a simple wooden headboard sat against the south wall, it’s bedding pulled back up over the pillow, but not formally made up, like one would if he were expecting company, or if there had been a female living here with him.

  On top of the four-drawer dresser was a wristwatch. It was made of stainless steel and was nothing any burglar would want. This room also showed no signs of having been gone through. Even the cops who were the first to visit her after Nimbull’s death had been careful not to make a mess. On my way out the front door I looked at the fireplace. On the mantle was a single candle on a brass stand. I looked at it, shook my head and sighed.

  Before I walked back to my car I decided to have a quick look in the detached garage. I walked around the side of the house and stood in front of the double doors of the garage. There was a hasp on the front but no padlock. I flipped the hasp off the catch and opened one of the garage doors wide enough to pass through. Nimbull’s car, a gray Ford coupe sat in the middle of the space. I cupped my hand over my eyebrow and leaned against the Ford’s window. There was nothing of interest inside the car.

  Along the side of the garage wall sat an unopened bag of dog food and next to that was a bench with a few garden tools hanging above it. When I pulled my hand out of my pocket, a note I’d made earlier fell to the floor. I bent over to pick it up and saw something unusual under the Ford coupe. I dropped to my knees and looked under the car. I reached under and grabbed a ball of something and pulled it toward me. I unrolled the ball and found it to be a pair of pants, a shirt, a pair of socks and underwear all wrapped around a pair of plain brown shoes. These had to be Nimbull’s clothes. He was, after all, found nude in his yard with all the wax dripped on his body.

  I rolled the clothes up in a ball and I let myself out again. Alongside the garage was the entrance to the back yard where the patrolman had found Nimbull’s body. There was a small bloodstain and a few footprints left by Nimbull’s German Shepherd along with dozens of drops of wax that had missed the body during the gruesome ritual that had been performed on the poor man. I decided to drop the ball of clothes off at Walsh’s office and then head back to my office and think this through a little further.

  I slipped my business card out of my book and tried to pick up where I’d left off. Muriel Chess was still floating in the lake, still dead and still waterlogged. The same first paragraph of chapter seven eluded me as a knock came on my door.

  “It’s open,” I yelled, not wanting to get up from my reclining position. Dan Hollister walked in and took up a position next to my window, looking down at the traffic on Hollywood Boulevard.

  “Walsh showed me the clothes you dropped off. Thanks. Can’t imagine how my guys missed that.”

  “I almost missed it,” I said.

  We’re gettin’ nowhere, Matt,” Dan said, shaking his head. “You come with any new leads at the Nimbull house besides the clothes?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing you haven’t already seen. You find anything in the clothes?”

  “Nothing,” Dan said. “Just the clothes.”

  I tossed Nimbull’s key across my desk. “And it wasn’t even a case of Nimbull being in the wrong place at the wrong time from what I could tell. He didn’t just happen across our killer. Our killer came looking for him, probably because of his name. He must have been killed or knocked out right there at his house. It looked to me like the killer dispatched him inside the house, undressed the body and dragged him out of his house. He must have dripped all that wax on him right there in the back yard. I wonder where the dog was during this whole ordeal.”

  Dan grabbed the key and dropped it in his coat pocket. “This is getting frustrating, Cooper,” he said. “Our boy’s out there sizing up his next victim and all we can do is wait. I don’t know. I think we have to find a way to anticipate his next move, if that’s possible.”

  I nodded and dropped my eyes back onto the page I’d started four times before. It looked as if I was never going to finish this paragraph. My phone rang. I slammed the book closed and threw it on the desk. “Why bother?” I said in disgust. I picked up the phone and listened.

  I handed the phone to Dan. “It’s for you—your office.”

  “Hollister,” Dan said into the phone. “What? Oh gees. Yeah. I’ll head out there myself. Okay. I’m taking Matt Cooper with me. Have a black-and-white meet us there. What’s that? Oh, all right. We’ll hook with them when we get there.” Dan handed the phone back to me. I hung it up and leaned back in my chair.

  Dan stood and motioned for me to follow. “Let’s go, Cooper.”

  “Where?” I said.

  “Looks like our boy has struck again. Come on.”

  Once in the car Dan filled me in on the details of the call he’d gotten in my office.

  “There’s already three squad cars there,” Dan said. “They’ll give us the details when we get there.”

  “And where is there?” I said.

  “Griffith Park,” Dan said. “Sounds like it’s a bad one. The cops on the scene are talking to a young couple about it.”

  Dan turned into the first drive that led up into the park. It only took a couple of minutes before we found the spot with all the red lights rotating. That area of the park was lit up like a carnival as we pulled up.

  Chapter 3

  Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater

  We got out of Dan’s car and approached the first officers we saw. Two uniformed officers were talking to a young couple and several other policemen were busy keeping gawkers from stopping their cars in the area. Others kept curiosity seekers away from the crime scene. Dan walked over to where one of the other officers seemed to be standing guard over the scene.

  “Whadda we got?” Dan said, flashing his shield and I.D. at eye level.

  “Back there,” the young officer said, hiking a thumb over one shoulder. He didn’t bother turning around to look at the scene itself. The color had drained from his face and he was shaking.

  As Dan and I approached, all I could see were a dozen large pumpkins, all about a foot and a half in diameter. One of them appeared to have been carved up for Halloween, but that holiday was still more than three months away. Flies buzzed around the cutouts for the eyes, nose and mouth on the first pumpkin. We could see flashes of something red inside.

  Dan walked over to the first pumpkin in the row and grabbed the stem, which also served as a handle for the lid. I watched as he lifted it, bent over to look in and dropped the lid, stepping back quickly. Dan backed up so quickly that he bumped into me. We both tumbled to the grass.

  “What’s the matter, Dan?” I said, helping him up and brushing myself off.

  He said nothing, but just pointed. I slowly crept up to the pumpkin and peered in. In the carved-out pumpkin I could see fingers. The bright red fingernail polish stood out in contrast to the almost white fingers whose blood had drained from them. Closer examination revealed two complete hands, cut off at the wrists. Alongside the two hands I could make out part of a breast. Dan straightened up and came over to the second pumpkin just as I’d lifted the lid. I didn’t have any cutouts for eyes, nose or mouth. It held two human feet and what appeared to be two elbow joints. The body parts were floating in a gallon or more of blood. I replaced the lid and moved on to the next pumpkin in the row.

  The next few pumpkins held various internal organs, other joints, bones and flesh. The last pumpkin revealed an entire human head, that of a female, probably in her late thirties or early forties. Her eyes were frozen open in horror and her mouth gaped open wide, its
teeth stained with blood and the tongue hanging off to one side.

  One of the uniformed cops on the scene pointed to the young couple being interviewed by another officer. “They found all this and called us,” he said. “You can imagine what kind of shape the girl’s in. It’s a safe bet she won’t sleep tonight.”

  Dan walked over to where the officer was interviewing the girl. Her hands were shaking and she was sobbing, her breath coming in convulsions. Her boyfriend stood close to her, his arm wrapped around her shoulder.

  “Miss,” he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “My name is Sergeant Dan Hollister with the Los Angeles Police. Can I get your name?”

  The girl just kept cowering and it was her boyfriend who spoke up. “Her name’s Bernice Avery and I’m Martin Brooks.”

  Dan wrote the names in his notepad and looked up at the boy. “When did you find all this?”

  The boy tried to remember but was also shaking from the ordeal. “I guess it was about thirty or forty minutes ago. Bernice and I were walking through the park, like we always do and when we got to this area we saw the row of pumpkins standing where they are now.”

  The girl didn’t look up at Dan but just mumbled something about her boyfriend being the one who’d first lifted the lid off one of the pumpkins. She’d been right behind him and had looked down into that first pumpkin.

  “When I saw what was inside the pumpkin, I just ran away. Marty and I ran up the road until we came to a wayside with a phone and then called the police. We were still standing at the phone when the police arrived a few minutes later.”

  “Thank you both,” Dan said. “I’ll need your information in case we need to contact you again.”

  Martin Brooks provided both of their addresses as well as their phone numbers.

  Dan gestured toward one of the police officers. “Officer Bancroft will drive you both home.”

  As the couple walked toward one of the patrol cars, another officer blew his whistle and waved his arms. Dan saw him and we both hurried over to where he stood. Under a nearby bush, the officer had found a pile of women’s clothing and a purse. Identification inside the purse told us that it belonged to the woman who’d gone to pieces in the pumpkin.

  “Rhonda McAllister,” Dan said, holding the woman’s wallet with his handkerchief and opening it to a cellophane window displaying a driver’s license. “Age thirty-eight, blonde, blue, five-five, a hundred and twenty-three pounds.”

  “She doesn’t look that tall now,” I said and quickly realized how inappropriate my offbeat sense of humor was in this case. “Sorry.”

  Dan gave me a look I knew all too well and I shrunk back with guilt. Dan made a note of the woman’s address and dropped the wallet back into the purse. He took hold of the purse handle with his handkerchief and handed it to the officer, handkerchief and all. “Get this back to the lab and have it dusted for prints.”

  “Yes, sir,” the officer said, leaving the scene.

  Dan turned to me. “Cooper, that smart mouth of yours is gonna get you in trouble one of these days.”

  “I said I was sorry,” I remarked. “What more can I say?”

  “Come on,” Dan said. “We need to check out the victim’s address. You might as well come along where I can keep my eye on you, otherwise the press’ll show up and you’ll make some dumb-ass remark that’ll set my investigation back a week or two.”

  “Well, give me a little credit,” I said. “I only made that wisecrack to try to ease the tension on the scene. I know it’s not funny, but that’s how I sometimes deal with a bad situation. All right?”

  Dan nodded. “All right. I guess we were all a little tense. Who could blame any of us? That was about as grizzly a scene as I’ve ever come across.”

  We drove the rest of the way in silence. Dan pulled the car up to the curb in front of the address that he’d gotten from the victim’s purse. It was a single story ranch house with an attached garage and a short driveway. We walked up the sidewalk and quickly found the front door. Dan pressed the doorbell button. After a moment the front door opened and a man in slacks and a tee shirt greeted us.

  “Yes, can I help you?”

  “We’re here regarding Rhonda McAllister,” Dan said.

  The man looked puzzled. “Rhonda doesn’t live here anymore. We’re divorced. She moved out a couple of weeks ago. What’s this all about?”

  Dan held up his badge and I.D. “My name’s Hollister. I’m with the Los Angeles Police Department and this is Matt Cooper. May we come in?”

  The man held the door open and stepped aside as Dan and I walked into the living room. The man closed the door and gestured toward a sofa and invited us to sit.

  “Can I get you anything? Coffee or maybe a beer?”

  We both held our palms up. “No thanks,” Dan and I said, almost in unison.

  The man sat on a chair adjacent to the sofa and looked at Dan. “Now can you tell me what this is all about?”

  “Can I get your name?” Dan said, pulling his notepad out of his pocket.

  The man apologized. “I’m sorry. I’m Peter McAllister. Rhonda and I were married until just recently.”

  Dan made a note of the name and put his notepad away again. He looked at Peter and said, “Mr. McAllister, I’m afraid I’m bringing you some bad news.”

  “What happened to Rhonda?” Peter said quickly. “Is she all right?”

  Dan took a breath, let it out and started in. “Mr. McAllister, I’m afraid Mrs. McAllister is dead.”

  “What? How? When did this happen?” McAllister said. “I just saw her last week and she was fine. What happened to her?”

  “It looks like murder,” I said. “A young couple walking in Griffith Park found her in a clearing.”

  McAllister’s face went white. He dropped his head into his hands and sobbed openly. His body convulsed with each sob and Dan laid a hand on Peter’s back.

  Mr. McAllister,” Dan said, “I’m going to need you to come with me downtown to make a formal identification. Are you up to that or do you want to wait until tomorrow?”

  McAllister raised his head and wiped his eyes. “Now,” he said. “I can do this now. Just give me a minute.” He turned to Dan. “Can I ride with you? I don’t think I’m in any condition to drive.”

  “Of course,” Dan said. “When we’re done I’ll bring you back. Thank you, Mr. McAllister. I know this must not be easy for you.”

  “It’s been a hard month all around,” Peter said. “I didn’t want this divorce, but Rhonda did. We’d only been married a little more than a year when she told me she wanted out. Said she had to get away and be by herself to think things out.”

  “Sometimes women just need a little space,” I said. “Sometimes they come back after they realize what they gave up and sometimes the split does what it’s designed to do. But I know from experience that you can’t make someone stay if they don’t want to.”

  “I know,” McAllister said. “We’ve been separated before and she came back last time, but that didn’t last, obviously. I don’t know what she wants or what she expects from me. I think part of the problem is that she gets a lot of bad advice from her friends. I mean, everybody knows about us and our troubles.”

  Dan pulled into his parking space downtown and the three of us walked down the hall to the medical examiner’s office. Dan opened Jack Walsh’s door and the three of us walked in. Jack was at his desk filling out some forms. He looked up and saw Dan and me and a face he didn’t recognize.

  “Jack,” Dan said, gesturing toward Peter, “This is Peter McAllister, the husband.”

  “Ex-husband,” McAllister corrected him.

  “Ex-husband,” Dan said. “He’s here to make the formal identification of our Griffith Park victim.”

  Jack gestured toward the seats in his office. “She’s on her way here, but hasn’t arrived yet,” Jack said. “Should be any time now. Do you have a few minutes?”

  Everyone nodded and an awkward silence followed
that lasted several minutes. The silence was broken by the sound of the back door opening followed by the sound of wheels rolling across a cement floor.

  Jack stood up. “Well, shall we do this?”

  The rest of us stood and followed Jack into the back room, where two ambulance attendants were pushing a gurney up to the examining table. There was a box on top of the gurney. McAllister looked at the box and then over at Walsh.

  “I thought you said they were bringing Rhonda in,” McAllister said, pointing at the box. “What’s all this?”

  “Peter,” Dan said. “Are you sure you want to do this? Like I told you, Rhonda’s been murdered and it’s not a pleasant sight. We can do this another time if you’d rather.”

  As Jack pulled the pieces of the woman from the box and laid them on the examination table, Peter McAllister’s eyes widened further than I’d ever seen eyes open before. He looked on in horror as limbs were laid out on the table, but when the head came out of the box, Peter McAllister’s eyes rolled up and he fainted. He hit the floor before either of us could grab him.

  “I’m sorry,” Jack said. “But you all got here before the body. Usually I can arrange the parts where they belong on the table and cover them all with a sheet. I’d usually have time to clean her up and then pull the sheet back off just her face for the identification.”

  One of the attendants rolled a wheelchair up to where Peter lay. I helped him ease Peter into the chair and then the attendant rolled him away from the examination table and back to Walsh’s office. He stayed there with Peter and brought him around again with some smelling salts.

  Dan turned to Jack. “Can you keep McAllister here in one of the rooms for a while? I don’t think it’s a good idea to move him just now.”

  “Sure, Dan,” Walsh said. “I’ll give him something to make him sleep. You go on and do what you have to do to catch this killer. This is as bad as I’ve ever seen before, and I’ve seen it all.”