Andrews called in their location and requested an ambulance for his partner. He got out of the patrol car and started to walk toward the Monte Carlo when he saw the gasoline gushing from the ruptured gas tank. It pooled in a puddle under the car and splashed against the front tires. Andrews backed off and returned to the squad car. He had just grabbed his microphone and was about to put a call in to the fire department when a spark from the still hot engine ignited the pool of gas under the Monte Carlo.
In a matter of seconds the entire car was engulfed in flames and Andrews could only stand by helplessly as the two screaming occupants cooked alive in the front seat. On the one hand, he almost started to feel sorry for the two people burning alive when he remembered that they’d just killed two of his fellow officers. Any pity he might have had for them went up in smoke along with the two killers and he just stood there smirking at the instant justice that had been doled out in this case.
I’d been reading the paper in my office when Dean called.
“Clay,” Dean said. “Have you been following the stories on the police shootings yesterday?”
“I’m reading it now,” I said. “Sounds to me like there may be a couple of guys out there with an ax to grind with the police department.”
“That’s a safe bet,” Dean said. “We’ve got six officers dead, two civilians cooked alive in their car and the city’s about to explode if we don’t put a lid on all this violence.”
“Makes me glad I didn’t go into police work,” I said. “The kinds of people I usually deal with aren’t this out of control. I don’t envy your position, Dean.”
“Yeah, well that’s kinda why I called,” Dean said.
“How’s that?” I said.
“I could use another pair of eyes and ears downtown,” Dean said. “We’ve got several teams out in the field, trying to find out what they can about our shooters, but their faces are all known to most of the people they’d meet. It’s hard to get their confidence.”
“And you figured I could blend in with the local lowlifes, is that what you had in mind?” I said.
“Well,” Dean said. “I wasn’t going to put it quite that bluntly, but yeah, that’s what I had in mind. You working on anything now that can’t keep?”
I made an exaggerated motion of flipping through my appointment book and letting Dean hear me doing it. “I guess I could squeeze you in sometime around…”
“Now?” Dean said. “Is that what you were going to say?”
“You read my mind,” I said. “That’s me you hear knocking on your office door.”
“Don’t bother,” Dean said. “I’m not in my office. I figured you could meet me.”
“Where?” I said.
“Well,” Dean said. “When you come out the front door of your building you turn left and walk to the corner. You’ll see a phone booth there. You know the one I mean?”
“Yeah,” I said. “The phone booth on the corner. What about it?”
“Just so I’ll know you know the one I’m talking about,” Dean said, “stick your head out your window and take a look at it. Go ahead, I can wait.”
I grabbed the phone and walked it over to my window, threw up the sash and laid the phone on the sill. I still had the handset up to my ear when I leaned out and looked down and to my left at the phone booth. Dean waved back up at me.
“Yeah,” Dean said, pointing at the booth he was in and talking into the handset. “This phone booth.”
“Funny,” I said. “I’ll be right down.”
I took my time getting downstairs and over to the phone booth. Dean made an exaggerated gesture of looking at his wristwatch, tapping on the crystal, holding it to his ear and tapping on it again. He’d finished his little charade by the time I caught up with him.
“This is the town for it,” I said.
“For what?” Dean said.
“For getting an Oscar,” I said. “Isn’t that what your little pantomime was supposed to accomplish?”
“Okay,” Dean said, “so we both know how to be sarcastic. Shall we call it a draw and get on to the business at hand?”
“Fine,” I said. “What’d you want to see me about?”
“Not here,” Dean said. “How about at the coffee shop?”
I gestured with my upturned palm, bowing slightly at the waist. “Lead the way,” I said.
Dean and I walked into the Grove Coffee Shop half a block away from the phone booth and took a booth at the end of the aisle. Dean sat facing the door and I sat with my back to it. We both ordered coffee and waited as the waitress returned with the pot and poured us each a cup. Before we got a chance to discuss anything I saw Dean looking toward the front door and turned in my seat. Two uniformed police officers came into the shop and sat on stools at the counter. The one closest to us turned in his chair and waved when he saw us. He elbowed his partner, who also turned and waved. They both turned back around and grabbed menus.
“So,” I said, just to start off the conversation, “What did you have in mind for me?”
Dean ripped open a pack of sugar, poured the contents into his coffee cup and stirred thoughtfully. “I thought maybe you could hit a few of the bars downtown and just hang out. See if you can pick up some chatter about the shootings. Someone may feel like bragging.”
“Sounds kinda hit-or-miss to me,” I said. “Suppose I start talking up the shootings, like I was impressed? That may draw someone out.”
“Too dangerous,” Dean said. “It might come off as a bit obvious and we don’t want you becoming a target.”
“We?” I said. “You got a mouse in your pocket?”
“That’s a figurative ‘we’,” Dean said.
I looked up from my coffee to see Dean’s eyes get wide. He was looking over my shoulder at the two officers seated at the counter. I turned around in time to see a tall man, maybe six feet four, walking in holding a large revolver in his right hand. He walked up behind the first officer and leveled the gun at the back of his head and fired. The front of the officer’s head exploded onto the hamburgers cooking on the grill in front of him. The other officer tried to stand and draw his service revolver and took a bullet to the shoulder. He fell to the floor and the large man stood over him, aiming the gun at the officer’s head.
At that moment Dean slid out of the booth and stood, drawing his .38 and firing at the large man. Dean hit him in the side, the bullet going clean through the man. The man turned and fired two rounds in our direction before he fled out the front door.
We both ran up to the fallen officer and I knelt at his side. “Call it in,” Dean said, following the large man out of the coffee shop.
The waitress and the short order cook both ran for the back room when the shooting started. Several other customers in the coffee shop hit the floor and remained motionless, their hands covering their heads.
I grabbed the microphone from the wounded officer’s shoulder and got headquarters. “Officer down, officer down,” I yelled into the microphone. “Grove Coffee Shop, Hollywood and Cahuenga. Send an ambulance.”
“This is dispatch. Identify yourself,” dispatch said.
“My name is Clay Cooper,” I said. “Sergeant Dean Hollister is in foot pursuit of the suspect. Send backup immediately. Suspect is a black male, approximately six feet four, two hundred fifty pounds, short cropped hair and carrying a large caliber handgun, probably a .44 magnum.”
“Copy that, Mr. Cooper,” dispatch said. “Stay there. I have backup on the way.” The microphone went dead.
I placed my hand over the officer’s wound and applied pressure to stop the bleeding. I looked down at the cop. He was just a kid, maybe twenty-three or twenty-four. His eyes showed pain and something else—fear. I couldn’t blame him. He probably had less than three months on the street and he has to see his mentor and partner killed in front of his eyes. Even some veterans would find that hard to wrap their minds around.
Six minutes later two black and white squad cars pulled up to t
he curb, their lights flashing. Two pairs of policemen emerged from the cars and rushed into the coffee shop, their guns all aimed at me. I kept my hand on the fallen cop’s wound and looked up at the cops with the guns.
“My name’s Cooper,” I said. “I called this in. Dean Hollister’s out chasing down the suspect.”
They raised their guns toward the ceiling and I breathed a little easier. A minute later an ambulance screamed up to the curb and two attendants got out and rushed into the coffee shop. One of them knelt next to me and took over applying pressure to the officer’s wound.
He looked at me. “Good job,” he said. “You probably saved this officer’s life.”
I stood up and grabbed a towel off the counter and wiped the blood off my hands. Just then Dean came back into the coffee shop alone, shaking his head.
“I lost him,” he said. “He can’t get far with that stomach wound. We’ve got an APB out on him and teams are scouring the neighborhood. We’ll get him.”
The second attendant did a cursory examination of the first officer but as he suspected at first sight, the officer had been killed instantly. He pulled the officer’s collar back and looked at the cops who’d just arrived. “A lot of good the bulletproof vest did him,” he said.
Dean called into the precinct for a shooting team and a supervisor to meet him on the scene. Everyone did the job they were trained for and when all was said and done, it was no surprise when the supervisor ruled Dean’s actions justifiable. The shooting team agreed.
The ambulance rushed the wounded officer to the hospital. Officers on the scene questioned the waitress, the cook and the customers who’d been lying on the floor. A little better than an hour later, everyone was permitted to leave. Crime scene tape was stretched across the front door before the rest of the policemen left. Dean and I went back to my office, less than a block away.
“This whole town has gone crazy,” Dean finally said when we got back to my office. “Not even the cops are safe. You can imagine how the citizens are feeling right about now.”
“That was some pretty fast thinking,” I said. “And some pretty good shooting, too. You saved that second officer’s life, you know.”
“You did,” Dean said. “Too bad I wasn’t a better shot or that lowlife would be on a slab in Andy’s morgue.” He was referring to the medical examiner, Andy Reynolds.
“They’ll get him,” I said. “There are not too many places he can hide with his kind of heat on him. I mean, who’s gonna take him in?”
“You’d be surprised,” Dean said. “Friends, relatives, other lowlifes, they all hate the cops and any one of them would hide this guy from us.”
“We’ll see,” I said.
Two days later the suspect from the coffee shop shooting was seen loitering near an abandoned car, whose engine was running. The cop on patrol radioed in the license number of the car and found it was stolen. The patrolman got out of his cruiser and ordered the suspect to stop and raise his hands. The suspect refused to obey orders, and instead turned toward the patrolman and raised the gun he was holding. The patrolman promptly shot him dead on the spot.
The suspect was later identified as Maurice Clemson, 37, of North Hollywood. After shooting him dead, police found Clemson had a serious gunshot wound from the coffee shop shootout. The wound had been treated and bandaged.
I read the reports the following day in the newspaper. It told how four other people were arrested for allegedly helping the suspect elude authorities during a massive two-day manhunt. It also said that investigators began arresting more than a half dozen people they say helped Clemson run and hide. On Monday, officers detained Clemson’s sister, who they think treated the suspect’s gunshot wound. They believed that she drove up to North Hollywood, bandaged him and gave him a place to hide overnight.
Authorities said that Clemson had singled out the Hollywood officers and spared employees and other customers at a coffee shop. He then fled, but not before Dean Hollister, a plain-clothes detective, who’d been in the coffee shop at the time of the shooting shot Clemson in the torso. The slain officer was identified as Sgt. Mark Reingold, 39. His partner, Greg Roberts, 22, is expected to make a full recovery. The detective who shot Clemson was not injured, a source said.
Police said they aren’t sure what prompted Clemson to shoot the two officers, who were in uniform and working on paperwork at the coffee shop just two blocks outside of their jurisdiction. The only motive that they had was that Clemson had decided he was going to go kill police officers. They also said that they’d found out that Clemson talked the night before the shooting about killing a couple of cops and watching it later on the news.
Clemson had been released on bail just a week earlier even though a psychological report in October warned that he was dangerous, one report said. Clemson had told psychiatrists he had visualizations of people drinking blood and people eating babies.
Police believe Clemson chose the coffee shop because it was frequented by police officers from various precincts. They did not believe that these specific Hollywood officers were actually targeted other than that they were police officers in that location at the time where Clemson knew he could find police officers.
I laid the paper down in disgust. Who were these psychologist clowns who decided to release Clemson? They should be held responsible for the killings along with Clemson himself. This was just another case of blatant apathy on the part of the system.
I slipped into my coat and headed for the street. I decided to pay Dean a visit. He was in his office when I arrived. He was on the phone but gestured toward the spare chair. I sat and waited for the phone call to end. When it did, Dean hung up and looked at me.
“That was ballistics,” Dean said. “They just finished their reports on the stash of weapons we found in the house where officers Wilton and Jessup were killed answering that domestic dispute call.”
“What did they find out?” I said.
“There were eight hand guns, four high-powered rifles with scopes, two shotguns, half a box of hand grenades, fifteen hundred rounds of ammunition and assorted knives,” Dean said. “One of the rifles matched samples taken from the street shootings at Selma and Gower and the other was a perfect match to the officer slayings at Sycamore and DeLongpre. Those two animals who cooked alive in their Monte Carlo were the shooters. We matched prints found on the weapons with their rap sheets. And they both had long, violent histories.”
“If that was the case,” I said, “why were they still out walking the streets free?”
“They were both out on bail,” Dean said. “They were awaiting trial for a totally unrelated offense. Their previous arrest history couldn’t be used in the trial so the jury would never have gotten any of that information. It’s a shitty system, I know, but it’s all we have.”
“Were these two responsible for any of the other cop killings these past few months?” I said.
Dean nodded. “Once ballistics started their testing, samples began pouring in from all over the area and wouldn’t you know it? They all matched, all twenty of them. Those two killers had been busy. Hopefully we can all breathe easier now that they’re dead.”
“So I take it this means you won’t be using me to infiltrate the seedier element downtown,” I said.
“Maybe next time,” Dean said. “By the way, Clay, how’s Matt doing these days?”
“Dad’s slowing down quite a bit lately,” I said. “He’s seventy-six now and I’ve noticed subtle changes in him these last few months.”
“Like what?” Dean said.
“Like when we’re talking,” I said. “Shortly after we have a conversation he’ll ask me about something we’d just discussed. It’s like he can’t remember short term. Ask him about something he did in the forties and he’ll rattle off every last detail, but yesterday is a mystery to him.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Dean said. “My dad was as sharp as a tack up to the end, but cancer is no way to go, either.”
“I know I did,” Dean said. “If I were you I’d just enjoy him while he’s still around, sharp or not. You’ll be glad you did.”
I nodded and sighed. “Well, I’d better get home. Veronica’s fixing dinner and I promised Elliott I’d take him to the park to fly his kite.”
“Give ‘em both a hug for me,” Dean said just before I closed the door to his office.
That night I enjoyed dinner with my family and then told Elliott to go and get his kite. Before he returned I made a phone call.
“Dad,” I said. “It’s Clay. How’d you like to go to the park with Elliott and me?”
40 - Beatlemaniac
SATURDAY, July 11, 1992
“Ask me why,” the note said. “Ask me why I killed her and I just may tell you.” The note wasn’t signed or dated and left no other clues as to its origin or composer. It was just a quarter sheet of paper with the handwritten note and nothing more.
Sergeant Dean Hollister turned the note over in his hand, finding nothing on the backside. He looked at the front side again and tried to make sense of it. There were just twelve words and two small pinholes in the paper where it had been attached to the victim’s chest with a safety pin. The victim had been found nude and the safety pin had pierced her flesh right about where you’d expect to see a corsage pinned during prom night. But it was no prom that this poor girl had attended. Her last outing anywhere turned out to be just that—her last outing anywhere.
The body had been found behind several trashcans in an alley off Beverly Boulevard the night before last. Andy Reynolds, the county medical examiner had determined that the as yet nameless girl had died as a result of strangulation. Her neck sported a bright purple ring around it and her tongue hung out like a thirsty dog on a hot summer day. Whatever had been used to strangle her must have also had a knot tied in it near the middle because the killer exerted enough pressure to crush the woman’s trachea. The only other marks on the body were the two pinholes in the chest.
The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories) Page 130