The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories)

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The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories) Page 81

by Bernico, Bill


  I let out a deep breath. “Okay,” I said. “Don’t tell me.”

  Tim laughed. “I’m guessing somewhere in France. Is that what you mean?”

  “Ah, yeah,” I said. “You done having your fun at my expense now?”

  “I’m sorry, Matt,” Tim said. “I’m just kidding with you. But she is a terrific gal.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “So when am I going to meet the young lady?”

  “Soon,” Tim said. “Real soon. We have another date tonight. Say, if you could scratch up a date for yourself by tonight, you could join us.”

  “Oh goodie,” I said. “A double date. Then we could stop at the malt shop and spin some records. Sounds like fun. Will your dad let you use the car tonight?”

  “Forget it,” Tim said. “Forget I even asked.”

  We walked on for another half block when a gust of wind whipped up in front of us. I spotted a five-dollar bill blowing my way and started to bend down to grab it when I heard the crack and felt my hat fly off my head. I instinctively crouched, pulling my .38 from under my arm and scanning my surroundings.

  “You see where that came from?” I said to Tim.

  Tim Blake didn’t answer and I turned toward him. He lay next to me on the sidewalk, a hole in his side and a red pool forming beneath him. Passing pedestrians looked down at him and then over their shoulders and began screaming and running for cover. I holstered my weapon and grabbed Tim by the arms, dragging him into a recessed doorway. I reached up and twisted the doorknob and pulled Tim inside the building, closing the door behind me. It was a shoe store.

  The man behind the counter came over to us and crouched down. “What happened?” He said.

  I pulled my .38 out again and pointed toward the counter area. “Call the police,” I said. “Tell them an officer has been shot and to send an ambulance. Make sure you give them your name and address.”

  The clerk stood staring at me as if I’d grown a third eye.

  “Go,” I yelled.

  The clerk hurried back behind the counter and dialed the operator. “Operator,” he said in a frantic voice. “Get me the police.” A couple seconds later he said, “Police? Yes, there’s been a shooting outside my store. A police office is wounded. Please send an ambulance to 6411 Hollywood Boulevard. Yes, it’s the Step Lively Shoe Store. Thank you.” He hung up the phone and hurried back over to where I sat with Tim Blake’s head in my lap.

  “I sure hope the ambulance gets here soon,” the clerk said.

  I looked up at him. “There’s no hurry,” I said. “He’s dead.”

  The clerk gasped and stepped back. A few blocks away I could hear the scream of sirens getting closer. I looked out the front display window and saw three black and white units stop and block off the street. Sergeant Dan Hollister jumped out of the cruiser closest to the sidewalk and ran toward the shoe store, crouching as he ran. He opened the door and hurried inside, closing it behind him. His police .38 was extended out in front of him as he scanned the store, stopping when he saw Blake and me in a pile.

  “Cooper,” Dan said. “What happened here?”

  I nodded my head down at Tim and said, “Tim and I were walking just outside this store when someone shot at us, probably from an upper floor. The bullet took my hat off and hit Tim in the side. I dragged him in here and this clerk called you.” I gestured toward the clerk who’d made the call. He nodded at Dan.

  “You see anyone or anything out there?” Dan said, tipping his head toward the sidewalk.

  “Nothing,” I said. “The whole thing came out of nowhere. Gees, if I hadn’t bent down to grab…” Then I remembered the five-dollar bill blowing toward me. What if I had been the target and Tim had just been in the way?

  “What were you going to say?” Dan asked.

  “Huh?”

  “You started to say something about grabbing something and then stopped in mid-sentence,” Dan said. “What was it you were grabbing at?”

  “A five-dollar bill,” I said absent-mindedly. “It was blowing toward me on the sidewalk. You know, Dan, I was walking on the outside and Tim was on the inside, I mean closest to the buildings. I was walking closest to the street. I just occurred to me, what if I was supposed to be the target? If I hadn’t bent just then, that would be me lying there dead.”

  “You got someone pissed at you?” Dan said.

  “Not that I know of,” I said. “I haven’t had a case in weeks and the last one that I did have didn’t have the kind of players that would do this.”

  “You think Tim might have been the intended target?” Dan said.

  “I can’t imagine anyone with a grudge against Tim,” I said. “Everyone liked him as far as I know. He was just that kind of guy.”

  “I don’t suppose it would do any good to tell you to stay out of this one, would it?” Dan said.

  I shook my head. “You’d have to lock me up to keep me out of it,” I said. “Tim was a friend of mine for one, and for another, what if it was supposed to be me? Nope, I’m in and that’s the last word on the subject.”

  “Okay, Matt,” Dan said. “But like always, you make sure you share anything you find. Understood?”

  “Like always,” I said.

  Another officer came into the shoe store and hurried over to where Dan and I sat. Two ambulance attendants followed him in with a gurney. They loaded Tim’s body onto the gurney, pulled a blanket over his face and wheeled him out to the waiting ambulance at the curb. The officer looked at me and then at Dan.

  “All clear outside, sir,” he said. “We found this on the sidewalk.” He held out my brown hat. I plucked it from his hands.

  “That’s mine,” I said, examining it. I found a bullet hole through the tip of it. I stuck my finger through the hole and whistled. “Another inch lower and you’d be wheeling me out of here.”

  The officer turned back to Dan. “Whoever it was is long gone. We checked rooftops and high windows across the street. Four other officers covered the neighborhood at street level. Nothing.”

  “Thank you, officer…” Dan said, looking at the nametag on the officer’s shirt pocket. “…Officer Bullard. Would you go on back outside and help with crowd control?”

  “Yes, sir,” Bullard, saluting.

  Dan stood and returned the salute and Bullard exited the way he’d come in. I got up off the floor and looked down at my pants. I had some of Tim Blake’s blood on my thighs.

  I turned to Dan. “I’ll be across the street in my office if you need me,” I said. “I have to get out of these pants.”

  Finding a window fan suddenly didn’t seem as important anymore. I rode the elevator to the third floor and walked to the end of the hall to my office. I threw my hat at the coat rack and it hit the mark, only this time the hook on the coat rack stuck through the bullet hole in my hat. I pulled my coat off and hung it next to the hat and took a seat behind my desk. I had no idea what I was going to say or how I was going to say it, but I knew I had to make the call.

  I pulled the phone book from my desk drawer and opened it to the R’s and slid my finger down the page until I came to Roosay, S. at 6518 Willoughby Avenue. I knew that was less than a dozen blocks south of where Tim had died. I dialed the number and listened as it rang. On the third ring a female voice answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello,” I said. “Could I speak with Sheryl Roosay?”

  “This is Sheryl,” the woman said in a pleasant voice.

  “Miss Roosay,” I said. “My name is Matt Cooper. I’m a friend of Tim Blake’s.”

  “Yes, Mr. Cooper,” she said. “I’ve heard Tim speak of you. What can I do for you?”

  “Miss Roosay,” I began when she cut in.

  “Sheryl,” she said. “Please call me Sheryl.”

  “Okay, Sheryl,” I said. “I was speaking with Tim a short while ago and he told me that you two had a date for tonight.”

  “Yes,” Sheryl said. “We do.”

  “Well, I, uh,” I said
nervously. “I was wondering if I could stop by and see you for a minute.”

  “What is it?” Sheryl said anxiously. “Has something happened to Tim? Is he all right?”

  “Sheryl,” I said. “Tim was involved in a shooting a few minutes ago.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I know being a policeman can cause unexpected delays. I suppose he has to fill out all kinds of paperwork now to explain why she shot his gun. I understand, Mr. Cooper. How late will he be, do you know?”

  “Uh, no, Sheryl,” I said, trying to find the right words. “Tim didn’t do the shooting.”

  There was a gasp on the other end of the phone and then silence. After a moment she said, “Is he…?”

  “Miss Roosay,” I said. “I’d like to stop over to see you right now. Would that be all right?”

  “I guess so,” Sheryl said, and hung up without further comment.

  I yanked my hat and coat off the rack, locked up the office and drove the dozen or so blocks south to Willoughby. I walked up the sidewalk and stepped up onto the porch and rang the bell. A tall woman with dark hair answered the door.

  “Sheryl Roosay?” I said.

  “Come in,” she said wearily.

  I extended my hand. “I’m Matt Cooper,” I started to say when she collapsed and fell against me. I grabbed her under her arms and sat her down on the sofa. I grabbed a magazine from the coffee table and fanned it in front of her face. Her eyes fluttered and then opened. She looked at me and then buried her face in my chest. I wrapped an arm around her shoulder and patted it.

  “Miss Roosay,” I said. “I mean Sheryl, you were the last thing Tim talked about before, before it happened. He seemed so happy.”

  Sheryl sat up straight and took a deep breath. “Thank you, Mr. Cooper,” she said. “What happened out there?”

  I explained how we had been walking and talking when the shot had brought him down. I explained everything that happened after that and leading up to my phone call.

  “I’m so sorry to have to be the one to tell you, Sheryl,” I said.

  “I just saw him night before last,” Sheryl explained. “He took me bowling. Can you believe it? I’d never bowled in my life before that night. But Tim was good at it. He convinced me how much fun bowling could be and he was right, you know. I really had a good time.”

  I looked at Sheryl. “Do you have someone who could come over and stay with you tonight? A friend or relative, maybe?”

  Sheryl thought for a moment and then said, “My sister Cathy lives nearby,” she said. “She can come over for a while.”

  “Would you like me to call her for you, Sheryl?” I said.

  She shook her head. “No, Mr. Cooper. Thank you, but I can call her. She’s just down the block. Really, you don’t have to stay. I’ll be all right.”

  “You sure?” I said.

  Sheryl nodded. “Yeah. I’m sure.”

  I stood while Sheryl made the call. After she hung up I laid my hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll find the person who did this and bring him to justice.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Cooper,” she said and showed me to the door.

  I drove back up to Hollywood and stopped in front of the Step Lively Shoe Store. Dan was still inside making notes on the incident and getting information from the clerk and a few pedestrians who had come forward with bits of information about the shooting.

  “Anything?” I said.

  Dan shook his head. “Just bits and pieces,” he said. “A lot of people heard the shot but no one saw where it came from. I was just about to go see Jack Walsh. You want to come along?”

  Jack Walsh was the county medical examiner who had an office in the same building as Dan. “Sure,” I said. “I just came from Tim’s girlfriend’s house. Needless to say she’s pretty shook up.”

  “I didn’t know he had a girlfriend,” Dan said. “He never mentioned her at work.”

  “They only met last month,” I said. “Something like five or six dates. He probably mentioned her to his partner.”

  “He didn’t have a regular partner,” Dan said. “He mostly worked foot patrol in this neighborhood and only rode with a partner when someone called in sick or had been reassigned.”

  “She could have been the one, from what he told me about her,” I said.

  Dan finished with the interviews and tucked his notepad into his pocket. “Let’s go, Matt.”

  There was still one black and white parked in front of the shoe store, its driver still directing traffic away from the murder scene. It was the patrol car Dan had come here in. I gestured toward my car at the curb.

  “Get it, I’ll drive you back to the station,” I said.

  It was a ten-minute drive back to the precinct. I parked in the lot behind the building and we went directly to Jack Walsh’s office. He was in his office, preparing the necessary forms needed for the autopsy on Officer Timothy Blake. He looked up as we entered. He had a long, expressionless face.

  “Gentlemen,” he said when he saw us. “These are the hardest ones, when it’s one of our own.” He stood up, papers in hand and walked toward us. We stepped aside and followed him to the examination table where Tim lay. His body was covered by a sheet, except for his head. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn he was only sleeping. He looked so peaceful.

  Jack stepped up to the body and pulled the sheet back away from Tim’s right side. The bullet hole was just under his right armpit. There was no exit wound and Jack knew that recovery of the fatal bullet was critical to the case. Jack lifted Tim’s right arm and laid it across the body while he grabbed a long, thin probe and inserted it into the bullet hole, gently pushing until it was in a foot or more. Then he stepped back to make a notation on his clipboard.

  Jack spoke into the microphone hanging over the examination table. “The bullet entered from above at approximately fifty degrees and slightly forward, traveling at a downward trajectory.” He withdrew the probe and laid it on the table. He pulled the rest of the sheet back, exposing the entire body. He continued with his narration. “The body is that of a well-developed male, approximately thirty-three years old and in good physical condition.”

  Jack picked up a scalpel and stopped to turn to us. “You two sure you want to see this?”

  I took a deep breath and nodded. Dan said nothing.

  Jack began his incision at the left shoulder, pulling the scalpel down toward the breastbone. He made a similar incision from the other shoulder and then pulled his scalpel down to the pubic area. It was a typical Y incision that started every autopsy. Jack opened up the body cavity and laid the flaps aside, exposing Tim’s internal organs.

  Even as an untrained observer, I could see the damage that the bullet had done to some of the vital organs as it passed through the body. I looked away briefly, held my stomach and then breathed in through my mouth before turning back again.

  Jack made a few more incisions before reaching in with his gloved hand and plucking a bullet that had been distorted when it had ricocheted off bones. He dropped it into a metal pan alongside the body. It clanked and echoed in the large, mostly empty room. Jack continued slicing and removing organs, weighing them before setting them in metal containers. He laid his surgical tools down and picked the bullet out of the pan, rinsing it under a stream of water and handing it to Dan. Jack pulled off his gloves and tossed them into a medical waste container and turned to pick up his clipboard. He gestured toward the bullet with his pencil.

  “What’s your best guess, Dan?” He said.

  Dan examined the bullet, turning it around in his hand and looking at it from every angle. “Looks like a .22 long rifle, the most common size out there. May not look like much, but it’s just a deadly as the bigger rounds because it stays in the target, bouncing around and doing a lot of internal damage. Hell, a high-powered rifle round like a .30-06 might have gone straight through and come out the other side without making this much damage.”

  Dan handed me the slug. “Pret
ty common,” I said. “Gonna be a lot harder to trace.” I handed the slug back to Dan.

  “Thanks, Jack,” Dan said as the two of us left Jack to clean up after the autopsy.

  Jack called after us, “Dan, please let me know how this one goes.”

  “I will,” Dan said. “You can be sure we’ll all be working on this one.”

  Dan and I walked down the hall to his office. I walked in first with Dan closing the door behind him.

  We hadn’t even had time to sit down when the door opened again and Dan’s secretary, Hannah poked her head in. “There’s been another shooting,” Hannah said.

  “Where?” Dan said.

  “Hollywood again,” she said. “Western and Sunset.”

  “Any units on the scene?” Dan said.

  “1A-85 is there now,” she said. “1A-55 and 1A-12 are en route.”

  “Call for a K-9 unit to meet me there,” Dan said, hurrying out of the office. Once in the parking lot, Dan jumped into a cruiser and sped away. I followed close behind in my car. Western and Sunset was a fifteen-minute drive from the station. We made it in nine minutes.

  Dan pulled up behind a black and white and I pulled up behind Dan. An officer met him and they both crouched behind Dan’s cruiser.

  “What do we have here?” Dan said just as I took up a position next to him.

  The officer was one that I recognized from having spent so much time around the precinct. It was Roger Tate, a two-year veteran who’d been on traffic detail when the shooting occurred. He was visibly shaken.

  Tate pointed to a body clad in blue lying in the intersection. “It’s Ray Carlisle,” he said. “The traffic signal wasn’t working when we got here and Ray was directing traffic. I was in the squad car calling it in to maintenance when I heard the shot. When I looked out at the intersection, Ray was lying right where he is now. I tried to reach him, but I was pinned down by more shots. I couldn’t make it out there.”

  “Could you see where the shots were coming from?” Dan said.

  Roger pointed to a four-story building on the southwest corner. “There,” he said. “The Belfont Building, third floor in the front. I held off returning fire because there were people at the other windows. I was afraid I might hit someone else. And all the while that maniac is still shooting at Ray, even after he was lying there. I could see Ray’s body twitch every time the sniper hit him again. He must have taken six or seven hits after the initial shot.”

 

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