“Smart guy, huh?” Dean said.
“Smarter than you, sonny boy,” Cobb said. “Now state your business and get the hell out of here.”
Gloria leaned into me and whispered something in my ear. I eased over toward Dean and relayed the message.
Dean turned back to Cobb and said, “Take your hands out of your pockets, Cobb.”
“Why?” Cobb said.
“Just do it,” Dean barked. “Let me see your hands.”
Cobb slowly pulled his left hand out of the robe pocket, raised it in the air and flexed his fingers wide.
“Now the other one,” Dean said.
The right hand came out much faster and it was holding a gun. Cobb pointed the gun at Dean. “Thought you were pretty smart, didn’t you?” Cobb said. “You all thought you were so clever. Well, you’re not as clever as me.”
“Why’d you kill Evans?” I said.
Cobb turned sharply at the sound of my voice. “Who the hell are you?”
“Clay Cooper,” I said. “My dad worked with Evans back in the early days, before Bud arrested you.”
“So what?” Cobb said.
“So, is that what this is all about?” I said. “Revenge? Is it possible that you actually held a grudge for sixty-six years?”
“Who was it said ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’?” Cobb said. “Whoever it was knew what they were talking about. Evans took sixty-six years away from me.”
“You took them away from yourself,” Elliott said, “when you killed Sergeant Lewis and that woman who lived across the street from you. You have no one to blame but yourself.”
“Jesus Christ,” Cobb said. “And who are you now?”
“Elliott Cooper,” Elliott said. “Matt Cooper was my grandfather.”
Cobb shot a look at Gloria. “Don’t tell me you’re a Cooper, too,” he said.
Gloria shook her head and held up both palms toward Cobb. “Nope, just a partner in the business,” she said. “Look, Mr. Cobb, why don’t you put that gun down so we can talk about this?”
“Yeah, talk,” Cobb said. “I’m sure that’s the first thing you’ll do if I put this down. “I’m not afraid of going back to prison. I have nothing on the outside. All my friends are inside. What do I care? Four more killings won’t make the sentence any longer. What are they going to do, give me another sixty-six years?”
“At least you’ll get to live out the rest of your life,” Dean said. “You keep going like this and today will be your last day on earth.”
I looked at Gloria and she winked at me just before she moaned and fell into Elliott’s arms in a fake faint. Cobb shifted his eyes momentarily to Gloria and I took the opportunity to grab his wrist and twist it upwards. The gun went off, shattering plaster on the ceiling. Dean jumped in and grabbed Cobb from behind and wrestled him to the floor. I wrenched the gun from Cobb’s hand and stood up, the gun now trained on Cobb.
Dean released Cobb and stood up alongside me. He looked down at Cobb. “Come on, Cobb, get up,” Dean said.
Cobb didn’t move. Dean nudged him with his foot. Still Cobb didn’t stir.
Gloria pulled away from Elliott, knelt down and pressed her fingers into Cobb’s neck and waited. She looked up at me and shook her head. She stood next to me. “He’s dead,” she said. “Must have been his heart.”
I looked down at Cobb’s right palm. There was a fresh cut on the heel of his palm and a round indentation surrounding the cut. Gloria walked into the kitchen to get a drink of water and looked down into the waste can next to the sink. She pulled a small colorful cardboard box out of the trash and brought it over to Dean. Dean took the box, turning it over in his hand. It was a box for a new meat thermometer. The warranty card was still inside the box. Dean pulled it out.
“I don’t suppose the warranty covers it getting broke from killing someone with it,” he said.
Dean grabbed Cobb’s phone and called for an ambulance and the coroner. Andy Reynolds arrived fifteen minutes later with his black bag and clipboard. Dean explained that the man on the floor was Bud’s killer. Andy shook his head and gave Cobb a cursory examination. He wrote something on his clipboard and stood again, looking at his watch.
“Dead,” he said, as abruptly as Ken Murray, the drunken doctor who had declared Lee Marvin dead in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”
“That’s why they pay you the big bucks,” I told Andy.
“Another wasted life,” Andy said. “Sometimes I have to wonder if I’m in the wrong business.”
“How’s that?” Elliott said.
“All I ever get to see is death,” Andy said. “It’s a wonder I’m not more cynical than I am.”
Gloria locked her arm around Andy’s and smiled. “You’re not cynical, Andy,” she said. “You’re, what’s the right word, practical.”
Andy gave Gloria a puzzled look. “Practical?” he said. “How do you figure that?”
“Well,” Gloria said, “Think about it. On our side, we sometimes see and get to know the people while they’re still alive. When they die, it sometimes affects us like it would never affect you, since they’re already dead when they get to you. Look at all the emotions you’re being spared by working on your end.”
Andy patted Gloria’s hand and smiled. “I guess I never really thought if it like that before,” he said, closing his black bag and walking with the attendants out to the ambulance as they wheeled Lester Cobb’s body out of the house.
Elliott sighed. “I guess I’ll go back and tell Grace Evans that it’s all over now,” he said.
“Would you like some company?” Gloria said.
Elliott nodded. “Thanks,” he said. “I’d like that.” As the two of them walked out of the house, I heard Gloria tell Elliott, “And you still owe me thirty bucks for the fan.”
I looked over at Dean. “I swear, if I live to be ninety, I’ll never understand some people,” I said.
Dean agreed. “Say, did I ever tell you about the time I arrested that old woman over on Western Avenue?” he said. “She had to be eight-five is she was a day.”
“No,” I said, “But I have a feeling you’re about to.”
“Lucky for you we came in separate cars,” Dean said.
“Isn’t it, though?” I said and slid behind the wheel of my Oldsmobile.
53 - Head Shot
Detective Lieutenant Dean Hollister looked down at the body lying in the street. The victim was a white male, approximately thirty-five years old with brown hair and lifeless blue eyes. The victim’s forehead was all but gone as a result of a bullet to the back of the head from a high-powered rifle.
Hollister motioned to his partner, Detective Sergeant Eric Anderson. Eric was a twelve-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department with several commendations. He’d moved up the ranks quicker than most recruits his age. Eric took a look at the victim and shook his head.
“What is that?” he said. “Six now, or is it seven?”
“Seven,” Dean said, “if you count the first victim in this killer’s tally.”
In the past eighteen months there had been six other victims, all killed in a similar manner. Each one had been shot from someplace high up and all but one were shot in the back of the head, producing similar results to the man now lying in the street. Dean’s reference to the first victim was one of skepticism, because that victim, a fifty-one year old man from Hollywood, had been shot in the back, right between the shoulder blades. Dean included this victim in this serial killer’s total because he figured that the first time around, the killer had not yet perfected the shot from a rooftop. The subsequent six victims had all been hit in the head. The killer must have perfected his trajectory and angles by the time he had claimed his second victim.
“And we’re no closer to finding this maniac, are we?” Eric said. “He’s good. He never seems to leave any clues.”
“When we get some background on this latest victim, maybe we’ll find some sort of connection to the others,”
Dean said.
“But as far as we know, none of the first six have anything in common,” Eric said. “This can’t be a totally random act. There has to be some sort of pattern and a motive for his madness.”
“Not necessarily,” Dean said. “Were you with the department during that last string of serial murders we had? I think it was sometime in the late eighties.”
“I didn’t join the department until 1990,” Eric said, “but I followed it in the papers. What did they call that guy?”
“The media tagged him the Laurel Canyon Killer,” Dean said. “He slipped up on his fifth victim and left some of his DNA behind. We got to him just minutes before he could claim his sixth victim.”
“Did his victims have any connections to each other?” Eric said.
“Not a thing,” Dean said. “They were from different backgrounds, different cities, and different ethnicity, in other words, totally random.”
“Did you ever find out what his motive was?” Eric said.
“It’s all conjecture,” Dean said, “since we never got to interrogate the guy. Our sharpshooter took him out on his last night of hunting humans. He died without saying a word to us. The so-called experts say that he was mentally unbalanced, that maybe he had a tumor.”
“Did he?” Eric said.
“No way to tell,” Dean said. “The sharpshooter took off half his head. If there was a tumor, it got splattered across a gravel rooftop in Hollywood.”
“Too bad,” Eric said. “We could have used some of what was in that guy’s head.” Eric heard an approaching vehicle and spun around. “Looks like Andy’s here,” he told Dean.
Andy was Andy Reynolds, the county medical examiner. He pulled up behind Dean’s cruiser and brought his little black bag over to where the victim lay. Andy knelt next to the body but he didn’t even bother checking for a pulse. He reached into the man’s coat and pulled a wallet out, handing it to Dean. Dean flipped it open and made a note of the man’s name and address before handing the wallet back to Andy. Andy returned the wallet to the victim’s pocket.
“Gees,” Andy said. “You’d think I’d be used to seeing this kind of mess after a while. Well, I’m not.” He looked up at Dean. “Another Rooftop Sniper victim?”
Rooftop Sniper was the name the papers had given this killer. He had made headlines all across Southern California ever since the first victim some eighteen months earlier. His killing spree added victim number seven on this hot August night in Hollywood.
An ambulance’s siren tore a hole in the night as is screamed to a stop several feet from Andy. Andy waved them off and the siren died out. “No big hurry,” Andy said as the attendants emerged from the ambulance. “He’s beyond help.”
Dean glanced at the ambulance attendants. “Hold off there for a while,” he said. “I want the photog to get a few shots of the area, including the victim.”
The police photographer, a middle-aged man named Broderick, took several photos showing the victim’s head, a longer shot that included the whole body and several others of the surrounding areas. He gave Dean the nod and then left. Dean gestured to the attendants and they lifted the body onto the gurney and loaded it into the ambulance. They drove away, their red lights and siren turned off.
“Get the report to me as soon as you can, will you Andy?” Dean said.
“I can pretty much tell you what it’s going to say now,” Andy replied. “Victim died as a result of a single gunshot to the head. If you want, I can photocopy the last report and just change the name.”
“I know, I know,” Dean said. “This is getting to be like cookie-cutter reporting. All the same except for the name.”
“Except for the name,” Eric echoed. He looked puzzled for a moment.
“What is it, Eric?” Dean said.
“I don’t know,” Eric said. “Maybe nothing. It’s just something you said about them all being the same except for the name. That made me think of patterns, or lack of patterns in this case. Maybe there’s some kind of pattern in the names of these victims. Has anyone analyzed just the victims’ names?”
“What do you mean by ‘analyzed’?” Dean said.
“I’m not sure,” Eric said. “I’m just taking a stab in the dark on this thing. It may not lead anywhere, but I’d like to take a look at the list of victims’ names just for the hell of it. We’ve got nothing to lose.”
Dean flipped open his notepad and copied this latest victim’s name on a separate piece of paper, handing it to Eric. “I’ll meet you back at the precinct,” he said. “You go ahead and see if you can come up with anything we can use.”
Eric gave a half-hearted two-finger salute and walked back to his car, leaving Dean at the scene with another pair of patrolmen, who’d been called in for crowd and traffic control.
**********
I was on my way to the office and it was seven fifty-two. Gloria was probably there already, making coffee and straightening out the mess I’d left last night. It was like having a built-in maid when I hired her a year and a half ago to take up the slack during Dad’s recovery from his heart attack. She was much more than mere maid, though. Gloria came to me with more experience than I could have hoped for. She already had her P.I. license from having worked in the business with her late father. She had excellent handgun experience and was a top marksman. She had her Tae-Kwon-Do certification, and as it turned out, she was also a master of disguise and makeup. She fit in seamlessly with our operation.
When I walked in, Gloria was sitting at her desk making notes. Across from her sat another woman, perhaps forty years old with a weary expression. I eased the office door closed and walked over to where they sat. I introduced myself to the woman.
“Good morning,” I said, extending my hand. “I’m Elliott Cooper, and you are?”
“Talking to this woman,” she said sharply. She didn’t offer her hand.
I drew my hand back and wiped it on my shirt. “Okay,” I said, and stepped over to my desk.
Gloria stood up. “Sorry, Elliott,” she said. “You caught us at a bad time.”
The woman immediately had second thoughts about her behavior and stood as well, turning to face me. “Excuse me,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be so rude with you. It’s just...” She didn’t finish her thought, but instead broke down and cried.
Gloria sat her back down and pulled a tissue from the box on her desk, handing it to the woman, who dabbed at her eyes with it. Gloria motioned me over.
“Elliott Cooper,” Gloria said. “This is Mrs. Watson. Mrs. Conrad Watson.”
The woman looked up at me and this time extended her hand. “I’m sorry Mr. Cooper,” she said. “I didn’t mean to bark at you.”
“Not a problem, Mrs. Watson,” I said. “Is there something we can do for you today?”
Gloria came around from behind her desk and stood next to me. “Olivia wants to hire us to find her husband’s killer,” she said.
“Wouldn’t that be a job for the police?” I said. “We’re a private investigations business.”
Olivia Watson looked up at me. “I’ve already been to the police,” she explained. “They tell me that they don’t have anything to go on and that I should be patient. Mr. Cooper, it’s been nearly five months since Conrad was killed. You’d think the police would have found something, anything in all that time.”
“Did they give you a reason for the lack of progress with your case, Mrs. Watson?” I said.
“Please, Mr. Cooper,” she said. “Call me Olivia.”
“All right, Olivia,” I said. “And you can call me Elliott. Now what about the police?”
“They tell me that Conrad was one of the Rooftop Sniper’s victims,” Olivia said. “They say he was that animal’s fifth victim and that they were doing all they could to find him. Well, Elliott, whatever they’re doing isn’t working. I don’t think they’re looking hard enough and I’d like you and Gloria to check into it for me, if you would.”
I pulled my client
’s chair away from my desk and slid it next to Olivia and sat. “We can take your case if the police will allow me to look into it,” I said. “After all, it is an ongoing investigation and it may not be easy to get access to what they know. We may be starting from scratch in this case.”
“Whatever you do,” Olivia said, “would have to result in more effort than they’re putting forth at this point. I’d appreciate anything you could do for me. This has been hanging over me like a big loose end for too long now and I need to get some answers and some closure. Please, please see what you can do.”
I nodded at Gloria and she laid her hand on Olivia’s shoulder.
“We’ll do whatever we can,” Gloria said. “Between Elliott and me and Elliott’s father, Clay, the three of us will dig as deep as we can to help you find the answers you need.”
“Thank you both,” Olivia said. “Will you call me when you find anything out?”
“It may not be right away or in the next couple of days,” I said. “But as soon as we know anything, we’ll call you.”
Gloria walked Olivia to the door and watched as she walked down toward the elevator. She turned back to me and said, “A little high-strung, but I really feel sorry for her.”
“Seems sincere,” I said. “Where did you want to start on this one?”
Before Gloria could offer an answer, the office door opened again and Dad stepped in. “Good morning, kids,” he said, like he did every other morning.
Gloria and I were both in our early thirties, hardly kids. But since dad was in his early sixties, anyone younger than he was a kid to him.
“What’s on the front burner this morning,” Clay said.
“How’s a murder case grab you, Dad?” I said. “We just had a woman in here who wants us to look into her husband’s murder.”
“Was that the woman I passed on my way out of the elevator?” Clay said.
“Olivia Watson,” Gloria said. “Her husband was the fifth victim of the Rooftop Sniper that the police are still trying to find and she seems to be up against a brick wall as far as getting any answers out of the police.”
The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories) Page 168