The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories)

by Bernico, Bill

  Elliott pulls open drawers and checks closet shelves, coming up with nothing for his efforts. H stoops down and looks under the bed. There’s nothing there except dust bunnies. He lifts the mattress and sticks his hand between it and the box spring. His hand hits something hard and he grabs it, pulling it toward himself. It’s a .45 automatic with a silencer screwed on to the end.

  Gloria gives the living room a thorough search but finds nothing incriminating. She heads back to the kitchen, pulling open cupboard doors and drawers. The drawer next to the sink must be his junk drawer because Gloria finds nothing more than a small hammer, a pair of pliers and two screwdrivers, one flathead and one Philips. There is also a box cutter with a retractable blade and a box of kitchen matches. She closes the drawer and heads back toward the hallway. She runs into Elliott coming the other way.

  “Anything?” he says.

  Gloria shakes her head. “Just the regular kitchen stuff plus a junk drawer with a few tools. How about you?”

  “The usual,” Elliott says. “Shirts, ties, shoes, socks, a .45 automatic with a silencer, underwear and jackets.”

  Gloria pauses, not sure she heard correctly. “Did you say socks?”

  Elliott smiles. He knows when Gloria’s yanking his chain. He nods. “Socks with a silencer,” he says.

  “Did you take it?” Gloria wants to know.

  Elliott shakes his head. “We can’t let him know that we’re onto him just yet,” he says. “I have an idea. You just keep watch out the window for a few minutes. Fifteen minutes later Elliott looks at his watch. They have less than five minutes to clear out. Elliott and Gloria put everything back exactly as they found it…almost. The let themselves out the back door again and Elliott takes a few more seconds to lock the door again before the two of them casually walk back to their car and drive away. Elliott looks at his watch again.

  “That was cutting it pretty close,” he says. “Let’s hope this works.” He reaches into his jacket pocket and produces a .45 slug and hands it to Gloria. She examines it, turning it over in her hand.

  “How will Dean explain where this slug came from?” Gloria says.

  “I don’t suppose he’ll worry about that for the time being,” Elliott says. “What’s important for now is if we can match this slug up to the ones taken out of Mad Dog Vogel’s face. If it matches, Dean and his men will come down on Wallens like a ton of bricks. If not, this slug can quietly find its way into the garbage and no one will be any the wiser. And that leaves Dean off the hook if anything goes wrong.”

  “And what about the two of us?” Gloria says. “Where does that leave us if something goes wrong?”

  “Let’s just try to make sure nothing does go wrong,” Elliott tells her. “Wallens starts his route tomorrow morning around nine. Let’s just make sure we’re there on time.”

  The next morning Gloria and Elliott meet in their office ten minutes before the time Chet Wallens is due to start delivering mail on his route. They drive to Gordon Street, parks under a palm tree and wait. Halfway down the block Elliott spots Dean in his unmarked cruiser. He’s almost positive that the black and white patrol cars can’t be far away.

  “Looks like everyone’s in place,” Elliott says. “And just in time. Here come Wallens now. Let’s see if we can rattle his cage a little.”

  They get out of their car and start walking down the sidewalk, toward mailman Chet Wallens. They watch as he goes up one sidewalk and down the other, dropping letters into the mailboxes hanging on the sides of the houses. The mailman is looking down at a stack of mail in his hands and doesn’t notice Elliott and Gloria approaching. They stop in the middle of the sidewalk and Wallens nearly walks right into them before he finally looks up and stops just inches from the two private eyes.

  “Excuse me,” Wallens says, trying to step around Elliott.

  Elliott takes a single step to his left, blocking Wallens’ path. Wallens tries stepping the other way, around Gloria, but she steps to her right, again blocking the mailman’s way.

  “I said excuse me,” Wallens repeats, louder this time.

  Elliott steps in closer and gets his mouth close to Wallens’ ear. “I know what you’ve been doing, Chet,” he says. “I just don’t know why?”

  Wallens recoils, stepping back and cocking his head at an odd angle. “Are you drunk?” he says indignantly. “Get out of my way.”

  Gloria steps in closer and whispers, “You’ve already killed four people, Mr. Wallens. You can’t just walk away from that.”

  “I’m warning you,” Wallens says angrily. “Get out of my way.”

  “Or you’ll what?” Elliott says.

  Wallens catches Gloria looking at something over his shoulder. He turns to see a man walking toward them. Over Gloria’s shoulder Wallens sees a black and white cruiser go past the intersection and out of sight. He panics and reaches into his mail pouch, producing his .45 automatic with the silencer screwed onto the end of the barrel. He steps back two more steps, lifts the weapon and points it at Elliott’s chest. Without further provocation Chet Wallens’ pulls the trigger twice and then turns the gun on Gloria, firing two more rounds. His face falls apart when neither of his intended victims falls over.

  Elliott reaches into his jacket pocket and produces a handful of .45 caliber slugs and shows them to Wallens. “It works much better with real bullets,” he tells Wallens, who is nor staring incredulously down at his handgun.

  A hand reaches around Wallens’ body and pulls the gun from him. It’s Dean Hollister, who has his weapon stuck in Wallens’ back. “I’ll take that,” he tells Wallens, and then turns to Elliott. “I saw this man pull a gun on you and thought I’d better come over and make an arrest. Do you want to press charges, mister?”

  “I most certainly do,” Elliott tells him.

  Dean turns to Gloria. “How about you, ma’am. Do you want to press charges, too?” he says.

  Gloria nods. “Thank you,” she pauses like she doesn’t know who the man is.

  Dean pulls out the leather case with his badge and I.D. and holds it up, mostly for Wallens’ benefit. “Lieutenant Hollister, L.A.P.D.,” he tells Gloria.

  The black and white patrol car rolls around the corner and pulls to a stop in front of Hollister and his prisoner. Dean motions to the officer, who quickly pulls the cuffs off his belt and slaps them onto Wallens’ wrist. Before he connects them to Wallens’ other hand, he eases the mail pouch off Wallens’ shoulder and then turns him around, cuffing the other hand behind Wallens’ body. He shoves Wallens into the back of the patrol car and turns to Dean.

  “Take him downtown and book him on suspicion of murder, four counts, and two counts of attempted murder,” Dean tells the officer.

  The black and white rolls away and around the corner. Dean turns to Elliott and Gloria and shakes his head.

  “You two were taking an awful chance,” Dean tells the two of them. “Suppose Wallens had discovered that someone had tampered with his .45 and had pulled the slugs out of all his bullets. He could have reloaded it with live rounds and you two would be sucking seeds right about now.”

  “I take it the slug I gave you yesterday matched the Vogel specimens,” Elliott says,

  “Like two peas in a pod,” Dean says. “How’d you manage to get it?”

  Elliott laughs. “Funny thing,” he says. “When you get to Wallens’ house you may find a hole lengthwise in his mattress. Obviously Wallens didn’t see it last night when he went to bed or this morning when he retrieved his .45 from under the mattress.”

  “And wasn’t that nice of him to have that tool drawer in the kitchen?” Gloria says. “It only took Elliott a few minutes to turn that whole clip of slugs into a clip of blanks.”

  Dean pinches his chin and then points a finger at Elliott. “But we still don’t have a motive of any of Wallens’ killings, do we?” he tells Elliott.

  Elliott thinks for a moment and then offers, “From what you’ve told me and from what I was able to get out of Sylv
ia Wallens, my theory is that the killings were his way of protesting his recent transfer out of his old neighborhood. I guess he figured that if he made this neighborhood look dangerous enough that he’d have grounds for another transfer out.”

  “That’s a little weak,” Dean says.

  “Couple that with the fact that he had a short fuse,” Gloria says, and probably just needed one more thing in his life to send him over the edge and you have the makings of a dangerous man.”

  “And his wife leaving him was just the thing to set him off,” Elliott says. “You can bet that every time he pulled the trigger on those people on his route that he was probably visualizing his wife, and that’s why he shot them in the face. Robbery was never a motive. Vogel was never a contract hit or revenge. He just happened to be on Wallens’ route and his time was just up on that particular day. One hell of a coincidence, though, wouldn’t you say?”

  “And therein lies the silver lining in this dark cloud,” Dean says. “Society got rid of Mad Dog Vogel in the bargain. Too bad those other three people had to pay for it, though. I’d better get back to the station and see that Wallens is read his rights. Wouldn’t want him to slip through any cracks in our justice system, now would we?”

  Elliott holds his hand out, exposing the .45 slugs. “Do you want these?” he tells Dean.

  Dean shakes his head. “I never saw them and neither did you two,” Dean says. “Get rid of them.” He walks back to his cruiser and pulls away from the curb.

  Elliott drops the slugs back into his jacket pocket and turns to Gloria. “Just wait until Dad hears about this,” he tells Gloria. “While he was busy feeding the pigeons, we took down a serial killer. How cool is that?”

  “You think that’s wise?” Gloria says.

  “What do you mean?” Elliott says.

  “Wouldn’t that be kind of like rubbing it in that his life has become too dull?” Gloria says. “What if that makes him rethink retirement? What if it makes him want to get back into the excitement? And what if that excitement causes another heart attack? Do you want to risk that?”

  Elliott lowers his head and shakes it. “You’re right,” he says. “He doesn’t need to know.”

  “Should we go and pay him a visit?” Gloria says, looking at her wristwatch. “He’s probably in the park right now.”

  “I’d like that,” Elliott says. “But first I have to make one stop on the way there.”

  “Where’s that?” Gloria says.

  “The grocery store,” Elliott tells her. “I’d like to pick up a couple more bags of peanuts for you and me. Maybe there’s something to this lifestyle after all. Let’s go find out.”

  75 - The Family That Preys Together

  It was nearly one o’clock in the morning by the time George and Ellen Armitage made it halfway home from the surprise birthday party in his honor. George’s sister, Shelly had made the arrangements weeks in advance and it was Ellen who made sure that she and George ended up at the Elk’s Lodge just outside of Burbank. The party had finally died down shortly after midnight and most of the attendees had already called it a night and gone home. George and Ellen were the next to last to leave, just before Shelly and her husband, Steve. George still faced the long drive home and he was hardly in any condition to drive, but Ellen had had even more to drink than he did, so it fell on George to drive them home.

  On a deserted stretch of road that passed through the mountains, George rounded a corner and saw a car along the side of the road, its hood raised and three people standing alongside it, waving their arms. George slowed his car to a crawl and noticed that the three people consisted of a middle-aged man and woman and a teenage boy. They all had the look of desperation on their faces as George drove past them. He wondered if anyone would stop for Ellen and him if the roles had been reversed. George decided not to leave this family stranded in the mountains in the wee hours of Sunday morning. He eased his car to the side of the road and got out, walking back toward the stranded trio. The three people stopped waving their arms as George approached and the look of desperation in their faces quickly turned to that of relief.

  The stranded man smiled and extended his hand to George. “Oh, thank you so much for stopping,” the man said. “We were sure we’d be spending the night in our car.”

  George shook the man’s hand and said, “I’m sure you’d have done the same for me.” He tried to release his hand from the stranger’s but the man held fast to George’s hand. The man’s wife stepped up along George’s right side and the teenage boy took his place at George’s left. George tried again to release his grip but the man would not let George’s hand go.

  George turned his head to look at the woman. As he did so, he felt a sharp pain in his side. He turned toward the teenage boy, who was now smiling a menacing smile. George looked down to see a hunting knife buried to the hilt in his ribs. George got dizzy and his ears began to ring. He felt light-headed and then another sharp pain overcame him as the boy twisted the knife in George’s ribs. George’s mouth gaped wider than he ever thought it possible as the man finally released his grip on George’s hand, allowing George to twist slightly and slide down to the shoulder of the road.

  Ellen eventually got impatient and got out of the passenger side of their car to see what was keeping her husband. She turned and walked back toward the stranded car and stopped abruptly when she saw George lying on the side of the road. A large red stain soon filled the side of George’s shirt and Ellen screamed.

  The stranded man turned to the woman and said. “You’re up, dear.”

  The boy handed the hunting knife to the woman and she wasted no time running toward Ellen.

  Ellen screamed even louder and ran back toward their car. She slid back into it and locked both doors, sitting in the middle of the front seats.

  The stranded woman slid to a halt just outside Ellen’s window and tried the door handle. It was locked. She didn’t bother asking Ellen to open the door. She knew it would do no good. Instead she banged on the passenger side window and showed Ellen the knife.

  Ellen retreated to the driver’s side and reached for the keys, hoping to start the car and drive to safety. The keys were not in the ignition. She screamed again until her throat ached. The stranded woman ran around to the other side of the car and continued banging on the window. Ellen hopped over the console and opened the glove compartment, hoping to find something, anything to defend herself with. It was empty except for one item and Ellen could not very well defend herself with a box of tissue.

  The stranded woman turned the hunting knife around and hit the center of the driver’s window, shattering it. She reached inside and unlocked the driver’s door and then proceeded to crawl into the car.

  Ellen quickly unlocked the passenger side door and slid out, falling to the shoulder. She pulled herself up again and started running down the mountain road. She ran full out for two minutes looking back just once to see if the stranded woman was gaining on her. She didn’t see anyone and just continued to run for her life.

  A minute later Ellen had managed to put enough distance between herself and the stranded woman to allow herself to stop to catch her breath. A moment later Ellen saw a pair of headlights coming around the curve and down toward the section of road where she now found herself. Ellen exploded in tears and turned to wave the car down.

  “Please,” Ellen screamed. “Help me, please. She’s trying to kill me. Help!” Ellen waved her arms in a crisscross pattern across her face. The car slowed to a stop and Ellen ran up to the driver’s window. “Oh, thank you, thank you. Please get me out of here. This crazy woman was chasing me.”

  The driver turned on the dome light and gestured toward the woman in the front passenger seat. “You mean this woman?” he said, laughing maniacally. He reached out his window and grabbed Ellen by her wrist as the stranded woman slipped out of her side of the car and ran around to where Ellen stood helpless.

  The crazy-looking woman held the hunting knife up to
Ellen’s face and touched the sharp blade to Ellen’s cheek. “We’re going to have some fun, aren’t we, Clyde?”

  The driver exchanged glances with the crazy woman and then looked Ellen in the eyes. “Yes we are, dear,” he said.

  The rear door opened and a teenage boy emerged. He grabbed Ellen’s free wrist and pulled her away from Clyde’s grip and into the back seat. “Come on, ma,” the boy said. “Get in.”

  Ma slid in next to Ellen, who was now sandwiched between ma and her son. Clyde stepped on the accelerator and continued down the mountain pass. Ma kept the knife in plain sight as a way to keep Ellen in line. The boy reached onto the floor and produced a partial roll of duct tape, ripping off a nine-inch strip and positioning it over Ellen’s mouth. Ma laid the knife down on the floor in front of her and grabbed Ellen’s hands, holding them out so her son could wind the tape around them several times.

  Ellen’s heart was pounding out of her chest as her imagination ran wild with the thoughts of what they might to do her. The car continued rolling along at the posted speed. Ellen glanced out the window, seeing nothing but a black void. They drove along for five or six more minutes and then the driver turned right, down an unpaved road through the woods. Several hundred yards into the wooded area, the car eased to a stop and Ma got out, retrieving the hunting knife from the floor and pulling Ellen out of the car and into the woods.

  Ellen’s braced her feet, trying hard to resist. By now the son had slid out of the car and had taken Ellen’s taped hands and was pulling her toward a small clump of bushes. He ripped the tape from her mouth and she flexed her jaws and ran her tongue over her sticky lips. Clyde shut the engine off and followed along behind mom and son.