The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories)

by Bernico, Bill

  “Huh?” Dan said.

  “Well,” I said, “since you asked and since I just came from the library I can give you the condensed version in case you’re really interested.”

  “I’m not…” Dan started to say when I jumped in.

  “The Old Mother Hubbard rhyme refers to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and his unsuccessful attempt to get an annulment for King Henry VIII. Old Mother Hubbard is Cardinal Wolsey. The cupboard is the Catholic Church. The doggie is Henry VIII, and the bone is the annulment Henry wanted in order to end his marriage to Katherine of Aragon.” I smiled smugly and waited to be appreciated.

  Dan stared at me in something akin to wonder. “Well, aren’t you just a walking encyclopedia of knowledge today? I don’t suppose you also see a pattern here, Matt?”

  “Well, yes,” I said. “Now that you mention it. Somebody was following along in the Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme book.”

  “How’s that?” Dan said.

  “It’s all right there in the book,” I said, flipping open my notebook to the page where I’d copied the contents of the nursery rhyme table of contents from the first couple of pages back in the library.

  “What’s all this?” Dan said.

  “It’s the table of contents of a Mother Goose book I found in the library,” I explained. “Look here. The first story listed is ‘Three Blind Mice’, followed by ‘Jack Be Nimble’.”

  Dan pulled the list out of my hand and read further. “‘Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater’ is third and then comes ‘Old Mother Hubbard’.” His eyebrows pulled down and his face contorted. “This is the same order that we found the bodies in. What the hell’s going on here, Cooper?”

  I explained about my trip to the library and what I’d found in the nursery rhyme book as well as the reference book.

  “And I’d looked at more than one Mother Goose nursery rhyme book,” I explained. “Some had more stories and some had fewer stories but there was only one volume where the stories came in this exact order. That leads me to believe that out killer may have used that very same book for his list of victims.”

  “You may be onto something there, Matt,” Dan said. “Stay with it. I’m gonna have my hands full here for a while yet.”

  I pointed to the next name on the page. “And according to the list of rhymes in the front of the book, the next rhyme is ‘Little Miss Muffet’.” I took my notebook back from Dan and slipped it into my pocket. “I’ve got a hunch I need to follow up on,” I said. “I’ll catch up with you later, Dan.”

  Dan’s further investigations revealed that Veronica Hubbard was sixty-six years old, widowed and had three kids. All were grown and had moved out of the area. This made six victims—seven if you counted the dog.

  Chapter 5

  Little Miss Muffet

  My notes from the library book led me to the house of Stanley Muffett, a building contractor. Strangely enough he was the only Muffett in the book. It seemed like a common enough name but it was there all by itself between Wayne Mueller and Mufflers, Inc. of Hollywood. I made it to the Muffett house in less than fifteen minutes.

  Mr. Muffett was in the back yard of his house watering the grass. As I approached, he twisted the hose nozzle, cutting off the stream of water, and laid the hose down. I held out my hand and he took it.

  “Mr. Muffett,” I said, showing him my I.D. and badge. “My name’s Cooper. I’d like to talk to you about…” My attention was distracted by the sounds of a little girl playing in the corner of the back yard. “Is there some place we can talk?” I said.

  Mr. Muffett opened the back door and led me into his kitchen. I took him aside and explained what my investigations had turned up so far. He immediately looked out the kitchen window into the back yard. He breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing his seven-year-old daughter quietly playing in the sandbox.

  He turned back to me and asked, “What makes you think he’d want to harm Claudine?”

  “Just a pattern,” I said. “He seems to be following the examples in the Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes book. I looked at the book in the library and I noticed rhymes about Three Blind Mice, Jack Be Nimble, Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater and Old Mother Hubbard. I briefly described what I’d found in each case.”

  “Good grief,” he said. “And you think he might want to harm my daughter?”

  “We don’t know for sure at this point,” I said. “But if he’s going in the order of the stories listed in the table of contents, well, it’s better to be cautious.”

  “And what was the next rhyme in that book?” He looked at me, hoping my answer wasn’t what he knew it would be.

  “Little Miss Muffet,” I said. “If he’s going in order, she’s a likely target. Better keep her indoors for a few days and keep a close watch on her until we have a chance to investigate further. Hopefully we’ll catch the guy before he can hurt anyone else.”

  “This guy wouldn’t really hurt a child, would he?”

  “Maybe not,” I explained, “But you don’t want to take that chance, do you?”

  Stanley Muffett agreed and shook my hand as we rose from the table. I turned to leave when we heard the screams coming from the back yard. I looked out the window just in time to see a short, squat figure run around the end of the fence, and disappear into the alley.

  Mr. Muffett and I raced to the sandbox to find his hysterical seven-year-old daughter screaming and slapping at her legs. The sandbox was overrun with spiders crawling every which way. Even from where I stood, I could make out the red hourglass design on those that had been turned over from the commotion. They were black widow spiders. There had to be a dozen or more of them. Most of them scurried around in the sand but several were making their way up the little girl’s legs.

  I quickly grabbed the garden hose and turned the nozzle on full strength and pointed it at the little girl. As I sprayed her down, her father grabbed her under her armpits and pulled her away from the sandbox. I continued spraying the girl as her father held her out in front of him. The spiders that had been on her appeared to have been washed off from the force of the water.

  Mr. Muffett quickly undressed his daughter and looked for more spiders. There were none left and he rushed her into the house and phoned for an ambulance. I ran to the garage and found a small gasoline can and hurried back to the sandbox. I spilled the gas around the inside of the sandbox and threw the can aside. I ran as I threw the match and the sandbox exploded in a loud “whoosh” of the burning gas and then the tiny sizzling sound of spiders frying and popping.

  I could hear the sirens and squealing tires of the ambulance pulling up to the house. The little girl and her father were whisked away amid the sounds of the disappearing ambulance. I drove my own car to the hospital and waited.

  I waited for what seemed like several hours. It was probably closer to forty-five minutes. The doctor emerged from behind the curtain that had been drawn around Claudine Muffett’s bed.

  “I think she’s got a good chance of pulling through if she can make it past these critical first few hours,” he said to Mr. Muffett. “She has three severe bites and probably would have died if it had not been for your quick actions.”

  “You can thank Mr. Cooper, here, for that,” he said, laying his hand on my shoulder. He looked like he was fighting back tears that he didn’t want me to see.

  I wished him well and told him to let me know how Claudine was doing and that I’d check back with him the following day. I had a little more to go on now and I knew where I had to go next.

  I returned to the alley behind the Muffett house, where I’d seen the man who had run down the alley just hours earlier. Thin puffs of smoke rose from the smoldering ledge around the sandbox on the other side of the fence. This was just an alley but I knew there must be some trace of the man who I’d seen here earlier.

  There was nothing, or so it seemed. Under the edge of a bush I found a discarded jar with the lid still on. It appeared to be empty but upon closer examination I saw what looked to be a singl
e human hair inside the jar. I pulled out my handkerchief, grabbed the jar by the sides of the lid and held it up to eye level, peering inside. It wasn’t a hair. It was a spider’s leg that had probably been pinched off when the lid had been screwed back on. Hopefully, this clue would lead us to the identity of the madman who’d been killing people just because they had something in common with the characters in the nursery rhyme book.

  I drove back to the precinct and gave the jar and its contents to Dan Hollister. Dan stood holding the jar up to the light, examining the spider leg that had been left inside. “What’s next, Matt? What else does this sick, twisted creep have in mind?”

  “I guess it’s back to the library,” I said. “I need to learn more about that Mother Goose book.”

  “I’m going with you,” he said. “Wait a minute.” He put the jar inside a large manila envelope and marked it with the victim’s name and gave it to the desk sergeant. “Process this right away.”

  Dan and I hurried out to his car and we drove to the library. Our combined efforts would be needed on this job and I didn’t want to waste another minute.

  Chapter 6

  Mother Goose

  Dan and I returned to the library shelf where I’d last seen the book. I pulled it off the shelf, opened it to the table of contents and handed it over to Dan.

  “This has to be his point of reference,” Dan said. “From what you’ve told me, none of the other nursery rhyme books have these same stories in this same order.”

  I took the book from Dan and brought it to the attention of the librarian at the desk and asked, “Can you tell me the names of the last few people to have checked this book out?”

  She took the book from me and opened it to the back cover, which had a small manila pocket glued onto it. It held a small index card with a series of numbers on it. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I can’t…”

  She hadn’t finished her thought when she found herself staring at Dan’s badge and I.D. “Police business, ma’am,” Dan said and returned the shield to his pocket. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist.”

  “Right away, sir,” she said, pulling the card out of the back of the book. She turned around and thumbed through a card index file. She plucked a card from the drawer and turned back around, holding it out in front of her. “Here you are, sir.”

  Dan and I scanned the card, which contained only numbers. We turned back to the librarian. “Can you decipher this for us?” I said.

  “Those are the library card numbers of the people who checked that book out in the last six months,” she explained. “I’ll cross-reference them and get you the names.”

  The cross reference showed that in the past six months, only three people had checked out this particular Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme book. The first one turned out to be a twenty-five-year-old mother of two. The second name belonged to a first grade teacher from Pasadena. Neither was a viable suspect.

  It was the third name that held our interest. It had been signed out to someone named Donald Humphrey. Dan wrote down Mr. Humphrey’s name and card number on his notepad.

  “Do you have the information he gave you when he applied for his library card?” Dan said.

  The librarian opened another drawer behind her and retrieved Donald Humphrey’s application card. She handed it to Dan and he copied the information onto his notepad and handed the card back to the librarian.

  “Thank you. Miss,” Dan said. “You’ve been a big help, and I mean that, really.”

  The librarian looked puzzled. “I’m not sure just what I did to help, but I’m glad I could be of some assistance to you, sergeant.”

  “I’m going to have to take this book as evidence,” Dan said. “I’ll sign a receipt for it and get it back to you as soon as I can. I don’t know when that will be exactly.” He signed something at the front desk and we left with the book.

  Dan and I drove back to the precinct where he ran Humphrey’s name through the records department. A subsequent investigation revealed all we needed to know about Mr. Humphrey. He was a forty-one-year-old janitor from North Hollywood. He cleaned up the showroom and offices at a Chevrolet dealership. He was divorced and had one child, Carrie, deceased. His ex-wife was employed as a waitress working at an all-night coffee shop in Glendale.

  Dan started with the car dealership where Mr. Humphrey worked and I took the ex-wife. I visited the coffee shop that night, took a seat in a corner booth and waited. I didn’t have to wait long.

  “Coffee?” The waitress asked, poised with her pencil.

  “Black with sugar,” I said. She returned a minute later and set the cup down on my table. She turned to walk away when I said, “Mrs. Humphrey?”

  She stopped and turned around with a quizzical look. “Yeah?”

  “Can I have a minute?” I asked, pointing to the seat across from me. It was nearly midnight and I was one of only two customers in the place. She hesitated.

  “Please,” I said, “I only need a minute.”

  She sat across from me. “What’s this all about?”

  I produced my I.D. and badge and said, “Mrs. Humphrey, I’m working with the L.A. police on a series of events and I thought you might be able to help me.”

  “Me?” she said. “How can I help?”

  “ I understand you were married to Donald Humphrey,” I said.

  She said nothing but kept listening.

  “I just need a little information if you don’t mind,” I said.

  “What kind of information?” She said, wringing her hands in her lap.

  “Our records show you were married to Donald Humphrey for twelve years,” I said.

  She nodded and kept listening.

  “Would you mind telling me why…?”

  “Why I left?” she said. “Is that what you want to know?”

  I nodded. “Every little bit of information may help us in our investigation.”

  After a pause of several seconds she said, “He left because of Carrie.”

  “Carrie?”

  “Our daughter. She was only four when…” She stopped in mid-sentence and I noticed her eyes tearing up. She pulled a napkin from the holder on my table and dabbed at her eyes with it.

  I reached out and took her hand. She straightened up in her seat and continued. “Carrie was in the Mother Goose Pre-School when it started.”

  “When what started?” I asked.

  “The fire,” she said. “It spread so quickly and only one person got out.”

  “One person?” I said.

  “Yes, the teacher,” she explained.

  “The teacher?” I said, to her surprise. “Mrs. Humphrey, I’m so sorry. If you’d rather not…”

  She shook her head and continued. “It was six years ago. Don never really got over it.”

  “When was this exactly, Mrs. Humphrey? I said.

  “October 31, 1941,” she said, looking at my note pad. “I remember like it was yesterday. It was Friday and the kids went in that day dressed in their Halloween costumes. They were all so eager to go Trick-Or-Treating right after school, while it was still light out. We, that is, all the parents were going to meet at the school and pick up their children.”

  “Mrs. Humphrey,” I said. “How is it that the teacher was the only one who made it out of there alive?”

  She though back for a moment and then offered, “She’d been called to the phone by the head of the pre-school. She didn’t want the children wandering off so she locked the classroom door, figuring she’d be right back. According to the Fire Marshall, the wiring in the ceiling above the classroom shorted out and the room was engulfed in a matter of minutes.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Humphrey. And how did your husband take the news?” I said, waiting for some sort of explanation to help me understand the monster we were tracking.

  “Don just came apart,” she said. “We were married five years before Carrie came along. We’d almost given up trying. Carrie was his whole life until this happe
ned. Afterwards, I couldn’t reach him. He became impossible to live with and we divorced four years ago. I’ve only seen him once since then. I’d heard that he was institutionalized for a while but they released him again not too long ago. Someone told me that he’d had some sort of electro shock treatment and that he was just a shell of his former self after that.”

  “Mrs. Humphrey,” I said. “Do you happen to remember the name of that pre-school teacher?”

  “Oh Lord, let me think,” she said, and then it came back to her. “Beatrice Crosby. Yes, that was it. I remember it because of those Road pictures with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. Funny, the things you pull from your mind to remember other things.” She signed. “I was hoping I’d never have to hear that name again.”

  “I’m sorry, but I had top bring it up just one more time. You’ve been a big help, Mrs. Humphrey. And again, I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  She looked at me, obviously puzzled. “You never did tell me why you asked about Donald, Mr. Cooper”

  “I’d rather not say until we’re certain, Mrs. Humphrey. I don’t want to needlessly worry you. I’ll be in touch.”

  I thanked her for her time and got up to go. She returned to the kitchen and didn’t see me leave. I had a little different picture of Donald Humphrey after that. It was obvious that his cheese had slipped off his cracker during his stay at the asylum, but was he capable of the kinds of murders we’d been discovering these past few days?

  Chapter 7

  Jack And Jill

  The next day I got a call to meet Dan Hollister on Mulholland Drive near Laurel Canyon. When I got there, I saw Dan’s car, a black and white, an ambulance and a small red sports car. A rescue squad was just coming up from a ravine off Laurel Canyon. They carried a stretcher with a body covered by a sheet. A few seconds later another stretcher emerged with a second body draped in white. Dan followed the second stretcher up to the road.

  “Dan,” I yelled, “What’s all this?”