Fifteen minutes later I was sitting on a bench outside the captain’s office. A moment or two after that Captain Rogers came out into the hall and gestured with his head toward his office door.
“Come on in, Mr. Cooper,” Rogers said.
I rose from the bench and followed Rogers into his office. “What’s with the ‘Mr. Cooper’, Captain?” I said. “You know me. I’m Dan Hollister’s friend. We met at the Christmas party a couple of years ago. What’s going on here?”
“Mr. Cooper,” the captain said, and then thought better of it. “Matt, two of my detectives answered a call from a workman at a house in Hollywood. It seems they were remodeling the basement and when they started to demolish a brick wall, do you know what they found?” He waited for effect.
“I give up,” I said. “What’d they find?”
“They found an adult skeleton,” Rogers said. “It was bricked up behind the wall.”
My eyebrows furrowed. “That’s very interesting,” I said. “But how does this concern me?”
The captain leaned back in his chair and was about to explain when he heard a knock on his door. Detective Brent poked his head in just far enough to say, “There’s a Mr. Clay Cooper out here. He says this gentleman is his father.”
“Tell him to wait a moment,” the captain said. “Tell him…”
“Tell him nothing,” Clay said, pushing his way past Brent. “Why did you bring dad down here? What’s going on?”
Brent started to pull Clay back out of the room and the captain waved him off. “That’s okay,” the captain said. “Let him come in. I’d like to talk to both of them. And George, would you please close the door?”
“Yes, sir,” Brent said and disappeared.
Captain Rogers looked at Clay. “Won’t you have a seat?”
“First you tell me why you brought dad down here,” Clay said, looking at me now.
“Come on, Clay,” I said. “Sit down and let’s see what the captain has to say. All right?”
Clay reluctantly sat next to me and the captain continued with his explanation, but looked at me now.
“As I was saying, Matt,” Rogers said. “The workmen called us when they knocked a hole in the brick wall in the basement of the house they were renovating and like I said, they found an adult skeleton bricked up behind it.”
Clay’s eyes got wide and he turned to me. “What does this have to do with you, dad?” he said.
“Beat’s me,” I said. “We haven’t gotten to that part yet.” I turned to Rogers. “You wanna tell me what any of this has to do with me, captain?”
“The house I’m talking about is the one you used to live in,” Rogers said.
I thought for a moment and then said, “But we haven’t lived there for more than ten years.” I looked at Clay and he nodded agreement.
“That’s right,” Clay said. “We moved out shortly after mom died back in ‘65. Dad sold the house less than a year later to…” He turned toward me. “What was that guy’s name, dad?”
“Martin,” I said. “Paul and Cecilia Martin. I just talked to them and Paul told me they were remodeling and said I could stop by and have a look when they finished with it.”
Clay slapped my shoulder with the back of his hand. “You don’t suppose Martin was hiding something down there, do you?” Clay said.
“I’m afraid it’s not Paul Martin’s problem,” Rogers said.
“Why not?” I said.
Captain Rogers picked up a report off his desk and read from it. “The body was that of an adult male, approximately thirty years old. He had suffered blunt force trauma to the back of his skull, causing his death.”
“And?” Clay said. “You still haven’t told us how this concerns us.”
“I’m getting to that,” Rogers said. “As far as the medical examiner can tell the body’s has been there for twenty-five to thirty years. That would put it somewhere between 1946 and 1951. And do you know who lived there during that span of time?” He looked directly at me.
“Me,” I said. “Well, at least for part of that time. “I met my wife in ‘49 and married her that same year. I sold my house on Franklin and moved in with her. We lived there until 1965 when Amy was killed in a mugging and Martin bought it the following year.”
Clay looked at me, his face showing genuine concern now. “Dad,” Clay said. “There’s no logical explanation for this. The M.E.’s guess on the date of the death has to be off by at least a couple of years.”
“I’m afraid not,” Rogers said, pressing the intercom button on his desk. “Shirley, would you have Doc Reynolds come in here right away?”
“Yes, sir,” Shirley said.
Rogers sat back in his chair and said nothing. Two minutes later his office door opened again and Andy Reynolds, the current L.A. county medical examiner walked in. He recognized Clay and me and extended his hand.
“Matt,” Andy said. “What are you doing here?”
Rogers cut in. “Doctor Reynolds, I was explaining to the Coopers what your findings revealed. Would you tell them in your own words what you found?”
Andy turned and looked at me specifically. “Matt,” Andy said. “I did several tests on the skeletal remains found in the basement of that home and here’s what I know for sure. The victim was a male, approximately thirty years old. He had a crushed skull and a broken right wrist. That’s usually indicative of someone trying to break their fall with their hand extended in front of them. He had two chipped front teeth, probably as a result of falling forward onto his face after he was hit. We also know that he was drained of all his blood and most of his internal organs had been removed prior to being placed where he was found.”
Clay and I were dumbstruck. I had no answers for this madness. I turned to Clay and said, “If the man was killed during the time we owned the house, how did the killer get him down into our basement without our knowing about it? We were never gone more than a few days at a time, even for vacations.”
Clay turned to Rogers and said, “Have you identified the man yet, captain?”
“We’re still waiting for replies to our inquiries to all the area dentists,” Rogers said. “It could be a few days before we get our answers.”
“And if he didn’t have the dental work done in this area?” I said.
“Well, then we’d have to call on the FBI to help us out with their database,” Rogers explained. “That could take a bit longer.”
“And what happens to dad in the meantime?” Clay said.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to hold him,” Rogers said.
“What?” Clay said, and started to stand, but I held him back.
“Don’t worry,” I told Clay. “I don’t have anything to hide. I have no skeletons in my closet.” I turned to Rogers. “Or in my basement, either.”
“Sorry, Matt,” Rogers said. “It’s just procedure, you understand. Nothing personal.”
“I understand, captain,” I said. “You do what you have to do and Clay, you do what you have to do.”
“Don’t worry dad,” Clay said. “I’ll have you out in no time. Just hang in there.”
Clay turned to the captain. “Are you done with me, captain?” Clay said, rising from his chair.
“Sure,” Rogers said. “You’re free to go.”
Clay left the office and Rogers called for an officer to take me over to booking and to get me into the system. I walked with the officer to a small room with a medium height desk against one wall. On the desk sat an inkpad and a contraption that held fingerprint cards while the prints were being collected. I pressed my fingers onto the pad and the officer rolled my fingertips onto the paper, one at a time and then all four together on another part of the card. He handed me a moist paper towel and I wiped the excess ink from my fingers.
Then he set me up against one wall that had height markers painted onto it and gave me a placard to hold in front of me. It had the name of the police station and a series of numbers identifying me. There was a large
camera mounted on a tripod that was pointed directly at me. The officer told me to look into the lens and then snapped my forward-facing shot. He told me to turn to the left and then snapped my profile shot.
“Empty your pockets onto the table,” the officer said.
I laid out my wallet, comb, nail clipper, sixty cents in change and a small ball of lint.
“I’ll need your belt and shoe laces, too, Mr. Cooper,” the cop said.
“Afraid I’m going to lower myself out the window with them?” I said.
He didn’t answer.
I gave him what he asked for and stood there, holding up my pants with one hand. He walked me down the hall to a holding cell and opened the door. I stepped in and the iron cell door clanged shut behind me. I sat on the cot and looked up at the young officer.
“Sorry,” he said to me. “Just doing my job.”
He walked away and left me sitting there in the cell with nothing but my thoughts. I lay back on the cot, laced my fingers behind my head and crossed one leg over the other. If ever there was a time to think things over, it was now. It didn’t take long for me to fall asleep, wondering how I could have ended up in here.
I woke the next morning to the sound of the jailer bringing me my breakfast. Even on the outside, I didn’t get breakfast brought to me. If incarceration had any perks, I think I just found one. I didn’t get to sample the lunch menu because by eleven o’clock Clay had returned with our lawyer, Stuart Carlisle and a release form signed by one of the circuit judges. Clay had raised the mandatory ten percent of the bail needed to get me released.
I got my belt and shoelaces and all my other personal possessions back when I checked out. Clay and Carlisle were waiting for me when I walked out into the waiting room.
“You all right, dad?” Clay said.
“You have no idea what life on the inside is like,” I said. “Just staring at the calendar, marking off days.”
“You got to mark off one whole day,” Clay said. “But I’ll bet you didn’t even have a calendar in your cell, did you?”
Stuart Carlisle stood silently watching the apparently not so funny exchange between Clay and me. He stepped up and offered his hand.
“Matt,” he said, “Clay put up the house to raise your bail. You’re not thinking of leaving town, are you?”
I looked at Clay and simply shook my head slightly. “I think I’ll stick around and help my son look into this whole mess. Thanks, Stu.”
“Don’t thank me,” Carlisle said. “Clay took care of all this. Call me if anything develops. I have to get back to the office.”
I walked with Clay out to his car and he drove me home. I took a quick shower and changed clothes and the two of us sat at the kitchen table with our coffee.
“Where do you think we should start?” Clay said.
“Let’s lay out the facts,” I said, “and see where they lead us. One, there is no way anyone could have broken into our house and hid that body while we were gone, even for a few days. Two, if they had, I’d have noticed the new brickwork. Three…” I stopped and tried to remember what the basement looked like all those years ago.
“What is it, dad?” Clay said.
“I’m just thinking,” I said. “It seems to me that the brick wall that they tore up has always been there ever since I moved into the house with your mother. I never thought about it because it had always been there.”
“You think the person who owned the house before mom bought it may have done the brickwork?” Clay said.
“I think we just found our starting point,” I said. “Suppose we go down to the records department and see what Eva Bishop can tell us.”
After more than thirty years on the job, Eva was finally considering retirement. She’d held this same position since I was still on the police force in the early forties. She was sitting behind the counter when Clay and I walked in. She smiled at our arrival.
“Matt,” Eva said cheerfully. “How nice to see you again.” She turned to Clay. “And Clay, my goodness, let me look at you.”
“Clay,” I said. “I think you’ve met Eva Bishop before, haven’t you?”
“Eva Townsend,” she said, wiggling her ring finger at me. “Remember?”
“I stand corrected,” I said. “You’d been Eva Bishop so long, I guess you’ll always be Bishop to me.”
“I could have been Eva Cooper, but you wouldn’t wait for me,” Eva said.
Clay gave me a look and switched his gaze to Eva. “You two?”
Eva shook her head. “No,” she said and then added, “Unfortunately.”
“What’s this I hear about you retiring?” I said to Eva.
“Another three months,” Eva said. “Then I’ll turn this whole enchilada over to my successor, whoever that might be.”
“You’ll miss it,” I said. “Retirement’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Believe me.”
Clay gave me a strange look. “And you always told me you liked retirement,” he said.
“Who knew it would be this boring?” I said and shrugged.
“So, Matt, what is it you need today?” Eva said.
“I’m not even going to try to pretend that I came just to see you,” I said. “I’m in trouble and I could use your help, Eva.”
Eva’s face got serious. “What is it, Matt?”
“We need you to look up the tax records on my old address, if you wouldn’t mind,” I said. “I need to know who owned it before me.”
“That’s it?” Eva said. “Piece of cake. You wait right here.” She retreated to a back shelf somewhere unseen and returned with the oversized ledger, setting it down between us. “Let me have that address, Matt.”
I gave her the address and she flipped a few pages over and finally stopped on the page with my whole neighborhood on it. She ran her finger down the column and found my house.
“Here we go,” Eva said. “Paul Martin is the current owner of record. You and Amy show up as the previous owner. And before that it was owned by Franklin and Joanne Dunlap.”
“When did they own it,” Clay said.
Eva checked the dates. “They bought it in 1946.”
“There must be some mistake,” I said. “Amy owned that house before we were married. And she’d had it for a few years before she met me.”
“Let me check something else,” Eva said. She found another ledger and laid it next to this one, selecting the correct page and pointing to an entry in it. “Look here, Matt,” she said.
I read the entry, not believing what I was seeing. I read aloud, “Joanne Amy Callahan and Franklin Steven Dunlap. Married June 25, 1945.” I looked up at Eva. “I don’t see any date for a divorce.”
“There isn’t one,” Eva said, checking the ledger. “It looks like Joanne went back to her maiden name and started using her middle name as her first.”
“And you’re sure that’s my Amy?” I said, not believing what I was seeing.
“No doubt about it,” Eva said.
“Mom was married once before?” Clay said. “I don’t believe it. Where’s this Dunlap character? Can’t we ask him?”
I glanced up at Eva and she turned to another page in the second journal. “Dunlap, Franklin Steven. Born September 25, 1918 in San Francisco. Married Joanne Amy Callahan…well, you know the rest,” Eva said.
“But where is he now?” I said.
Eva scanned the pages and came up with nothing. “That’s strange,” she said. “There are no other entries after the purchase of your old house in 1945. If he died, there’d be a record of that in here somewhere.”
“But what if he just up and left the area?” Clay said. “Wouldn’t there be something that points in that direction?”
Eva shook her head. “He could be anywhere in this big country. He might even have left the country for all we know. Looks like a dead end.”
“Thanks, Eva,” I said, giving her a hug. “I’ll check back if we find anything else that might be in the records.”
“Anytime, Matt,” Eva said and turned to Clay. “And it was nice to see you again, Clay.”
“You too, Miss Bishop,” Clay said and then corrected himself, “I mean, Mrs. Townsend.”
Clay and I left the records department and drove back to downtown Hollywood. Clay’s office would be a good spot to sort the evidence and sift the clues, as I used to describe the process back in the day.
Once we’d situated ourselves in the office Clay turned to me and said, “Can you believe that? Mom was married once before.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know that I do believe that,” I said. “And if she was…” I let the sentence hang there in the air, unwilling to finish it.
“You’re probably wondering the same thing I am, aren’t you?” Clay said.
“What’s that?” I said.
“If the skeleton behind the wall could be Franklin Dunlap,” Clay said.
“Even if it turns out to be him,” I said, “that doesn’t mean…” I couldn’t even make myself say it.
“We have to check every possibility,” Clay said. “Even if it means uncovering something hurtful. Otherwise, you’d always be wondering about it.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I just didn’t want to consider that possibility.”
“So where do we go from here?” Clay said.
“Sacramento,” I said. “If Dunlap’s anywhere in the state, they’ll know. If not, there’s always Washington and the national database or social security. We haven’t exhausted all our resources just yet.”
“Aren’t you forgetting one more resource?” Clay said.
I shrugged.
“Your old neighbors,” Clay said. “Some of them must have lived there since before you moved in and if they’re still there, they may remember something about those days.”
“I should have thought of that myself,” I said. “See, you’re going to make a better P.I. than I ever was.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, dad,” Clay said. “Where do you think I learned it? Shall we visit your old neighborhood?”
“After you,” I said, bowing at the waste and extending my palm out.
The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories) Page 124