“Have you spoken to those first three shop owners?” I said.
“Not yet,” Eric said. “I thought maybe we’d visit them together.”
“Who told you?” I said.
“Told me what?” Eric said innocently.
“That I’d already been to see all three of them,” I said.
“You just did, Cooper,” Eric said. I noticed that when we had our friendly, non-business talks, that Eric called me Elliott. But when he wanted to make a point and remind me of who was in charge, he called me Cooper. I got it.
“It was just out of curiosity more than anything,” I told him. “I’d just read an article in the paper about the third window being broke, found out it happened in the neighborhood and just paid a friendly visit to one of my neighborhood merchants.”
“And you no doubt left your card with all three,” Eric said. “Am I right?”
“A guy’s got to make a living,” I said.
“As long as that living doesn’t interfere with a police investigation,” Eric reminded me. “And right now that’s exactly what we have here. Follow me?”
“To the end of the world,” I said. “What happens now?”
“Now I take five statements and process these cases through the proper channels,” Eric said.
I gave Eric a puzzled look. “Five?” I said.
“Including you,” Eric told me. “You are a neighborhood merchant, aren’t you, Mr. Cooper?”
Mr. Cooper was an even sterner hint than when he just called me Cooper.
“Yes, Mr. Anderson,” I said in my condescending tone. “Whatever you say, Mr. Anderson.”
By the time we got back to my office, the photog was already on his way back toward the elevator. He paused in the hallway to assure Eric that he’d left everything exactly where it was. Eric thanked him and we continued to my office. Gloria was standing at the window looking down at the street. She turned when we came into the office.
“Are you all right, Gloria?” Eric said.
Gloria nodded. “Sure,” she said. “Not even a scratch.”
“I’m okay, too,” I said and then rolled my eyes.
Eric ignored my sarcasm and took a quick look at the damage, his eyes resting on the chrome nut that had bounced off the refrigerator door. He scooped it up with his pen and dropped it into a second envelope and marked it before stepping carefully over to my desk and looking at my laptop screen. That chrome nut was still embedded in the glass of my laptop’s lid. He inserted his pen tip into the nut and plucked it out, dropping into the same envelope as the other nut.
“Okay,” Eric said, as far as damage, it looks like you’ll need a new window and a laptop and some cleanup around here. Anything else?”
I gestured toward my table top refrigerator. “It still works,” I said, “but look at that door. It’s dented.”
Eric shot a quick glance at the door. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I think it gives it some character. You know, like a bullet hole in the wall at the bank. It’ll give you and your future clients something to talk about.”
“Thanks for your concern, Eric,” I said. “If it has so much character, I’ll make you a good deal on it. You could use it in your office.”
Eric ignored me and turned to Gloria. “Just submit a claim with your insurance man,” he said and turned for the door. Before he left, he turned back to me and added, “And don’t let me hear that you’re out looking for this guy, either. This is a…”
“Police matter,” I said, finishing his sentence for him.
Eric left and I turned to Gloria. “Guess I’d better take my broken laptop down to the computer store and see what Terry recommends,” I said, carefully placing my broken laptop into a shallow cardboard box. I started to pick up broken glass from my desk.
“Just leave that,” Gloria said. “I’ll clean it up.”
“Thanks,” I said and left the office with my cardboard box.
*****
The fourth store that had just been hit by the window smashing extortionist was a pet shop on Vine Street, just south of Sunset Avenue. Right after the impact of the nut through the glass, the window had completely shattered, allowing several of the animals in the window to escape into the street. “Two boa constrictors had slithered under a parked car while a three rabbits in a cardboard box hopped out of the display case and directly into the path of a kid on a skateboard. The kid kissed the cement losing two teeth while the rabbits scurried off into the traffic on Vine Street. Two of them were immediately run over by cars while the third one managed to make it across the street and disappeared between two houses.
Several pet mice dashed away from the store. Three of them were pure white, two were black and white spotted and four of them were brown. All of them disappeared without a trace, but not before making several woman walking by scream for their lives. One of the women jumped up into the reluctant arms of a man coming the other way on the sidewalk.
The police had arrived shortly after two of the store’s clerks had managed to prevent any other animals from becoming road kill. They talked with the manager, who had told them of the extortion attempt by the young man just before the incident. The cops got the information they needed and told the manager, a Mr. Abernathy, that they’d be in touch. That was three hours ago and since then Mr. Abernathy had been busy arranging for the glass company to come and take care of his problem.
Shortly after the glass company had come to take measurements, board up the windows and return to the glass shop, Mr. Abernathy was busy sweeping up glass and dumping into the dumpster behind his store. One of the clerks noticed his absence after a few minutes and went looking for him. The clerk found Abernathy lying behind the store next to the dumpster. The man’s glasses were shattered and lying next to his face. The back of Abernathy’s head had a hole in it the size of a half-inch nut, which was still visible inside the skull. A half-inch nut made a hole about the size of a .45 caliber slug, only without the velocity.
Lieutenant Eric Anderson took the call from the hysterical clerk at Abernathy’s Pet Shop. He and a backup unit made to the alley behind the store in just minutes. Eric looked down at the pool of dark blood beneath Abernathy’s head and then stepped around the body to take another look from a different angle. A dustpan and a broom lay next to Abernathy’s body. Eric took a few steps up the alley, looking for anything out of the ordinary. He found some wet footprints next to a puddle of murky water but nothing else useful to his investigation.
After he finished taking statements from the pet shop clerk and two customers, Eric walked back to his cruiser and radioed in to the dispatcher that he’d be out on some calls for the next hour or so. He drove off down the block and turned left on Sunset. Three blocks east he found a sporting goods store and parked in front of it. Once inside he approached the first clerk he found and asked to see the store manager. He was led to a small back office where the clerk knocked on a door marked, ‘private’ and waited. When the door opened, the clerk told the store manager that a police lieutenant wanted to see him. The manager invited Eric into his office and closed the door behind him.
“Won’t you have a seat, Lieutenant?” the manager said. He was a tall, thin man named Elroy Crawford.
“Mr. Crawford,” Eric said, “I’d like to know if this store sells slingshots.”
Crawford nodded. “We sell several models,” he said. “Were you looking for any special type, sir?”
Eric pulled a half-inch nut from his pocket and held it out. “Is there a model powerful enough to fire this?” he said.
Crawford took the nut and felt the heft in his palm. He looked at Eric. “Feels pretty much the same as a .45 caliber slug and those weigh a little less than half an ounce,” he said. “For something this size to work with a slingshot, you’d need something like our model three-fifty, which shoots .50 caliber ball bearings. A lot of hunters use these on small game with a lot of success.”
“Let me ask you something, Mr. Crawford,” Er
ic said. “Would there be any advantage to someone using these half-inch nuts over the .50 caliber ball bearings?”
“None I can think of,” Crawford said. “The ball bearing would be much more accurate, since they don’t have a hole through them like this nut does. But on the other hand, a guy buying a bag of nuts wouldn’t draw as much attention to himself as a guy buying a bag of ball bearings.”
“What do you estimate the range of a nut like this to be with that model slingshot?” Eric said.
“I’d say you could hit your target with the nut if you were within forty feet or so,” Crawford said. “Any farther away and your accuracy would drop dramatically, unless the target is a big one.”
“Like the size of a display window?” Eric said.
“Is that what this is about?” Crawford said. “I heard about those merchants in the neighborhood having their store windows broken. Is this what they used?”
Eric nodded. “It looks like it, Mr. Crawford,” he said. “Thank you for your time. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Stop by any time, Lieutenant,” Crawford said. “Glad I could help.”
Eric got up to leave and then had another thought. “Mr. Crawford,” he said, “do you keep records of the sales of your slingshots and ammo?”
“Yes, we do,” Crawford said.
“Could I have a look at any slingshot sales you may have had in the past year or so?” Eric said.
“Certainly,” Crawford said. “We keep that all on computer now so it’ll be a lot easier to access than having to go through a bunch of sales slips. Please, have a seat again and I’ll bring up those records.”
Crawford hit a few keys on his desktop computer and enter slingshot for the search word. He got more than a dozen hits for slingshot sales. “Can we narrow this down at all?” Crawford said.
“Narrow it down to just the models powerful enough to propel the half-inch nut,” Eric said.
Crawford entered the model number three fifty and the list immediately shrunk to just three names. He hit another button and the list printed out on his desktop printer. He handed the list to Eric. “That’s all I have,” Crawford said. “But keep in mind that there are three other sporting good stores just in the Hollywood area, not to mention the Greater Los Angeles area.”
“I have a feeling the guy I’m looking for will turn out to be local,” Eric said. “Well, thanks again, Mr. Crawford.
Eric left the office and returned to his car. The first name on the printout belonged to Ron Harper with a Hollywood address. Eric drove to the house on Carlton Way just east of Gower Street. It was a single story ranch with several bushes around the perimeter of the yard. A red bicycle lay in the front yard, along with a coaster wagon that had a fielder’s mitt in it. On the other side of the sidewalk that led up to the house there was a doll buggy with lace netting over the top. Eric got the idea that several kids lived here and they were none to neat about picking up after themselves.
Eric rang the bell and a woman in a half apron answered the door, holding a young girl, maybe two years old. The girl cried when she saw him looking back at her. Her mother soothed the kid and turned sharply to Eric.
“Yes?” she said, somewhat impatiently.
Eric pulled his I.D. card and shield out and held them up for the woman to see. Her demeanor softened when she realized she was talking to a policeman.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just a little busy right now. How can I help you?”
“I’m looking for a Ron Harper,” Eric told the woman.
“Ron’s still at work,” she said. “Why did you want to see him?”
“Routine questions, ma’am,” Eric said. “I’m just doing a follow-up on recent slingshot purchases in the neighborhood. Do you know if Mr. Harper still owns the slingshot that he bought at the sporting goods store on Sunset last July.”
“He did have up until two months ago,” the woman explained. “He had to throw it away. It broke.”
“Those things are built pretty solid,” Eric said. “How did it break?”
“Ronny,” the woman said, “that’s our son, was playing with it and left it lying in the driveway. Ron ran it over when he came home and it flattened out. There was no way to fix it, so he threw it away.”
Eric thanked the woman and apologized for the interruption before returning to his unmarked cruiser. The second name on the list belonged to someone named Karl Essinger who lived on LaMirada, just south of Fountain. He turned out to be a Boy Scout troop leader who used his slingshot when he had taken his troop on overnight outings in the woods. After talking with him for several minutes, Eric made a few notes on the man, but had discounted him as a viable suspect.
Drake Phillips’ name appeared third on the list and he lived on Argyle Avenue, between Sunset and Hollywood. Phillips, as it turned out, was fifteen years old and a freshman at Hollywood High School. His mother had told Eric that she didn’t know where Drake was at the moment, but that she expected him home by five o’clock. Eric got a description of the boy and asked his mother if she had a photo that he could borrow.
“What’s this all about?” Phillips’ mother said.
“Routine investigation,” Eric said. “Do you know if Drake owns a slingshot, Mrs. Phillips?”
She looked puzzled. “I haven’t seen him with one,” she said. “Is it important?”
“It could be,” Eric told her. “Would you mind if I took a quick look in Drake’s room, Mrs. Phillips?”
“Why?” she said suspiciously.
“I could make a call to Judge Parker and get a search warrant,” Eric said, “but then I’d have to have the entire house searched and the guys doing the searching aren’t known for their neatness. If I could just have a quick look, I wouldn’t have to disturb the rest of the house. Please?”
She stepped aside and allowed Eric to pass. She led him down a hall to a room on the right. Once inside, Eric made a cursory search, looking under the mattress and in dresser drawers. In the closet, Eric found a cigar box up on the shelf and pulled it down. He lifted the lid and found perhaps forty or fifty chrome nuts. They looked to be approximately half an inch in diameter. Eric looked at Drake’s mother.
“Any idea why Drake would need this many nuts?” Eric said. “Especially when there are no corresponding bolts.”
The woman shook her head. “I didn’t even know he had those,” she said.
The slingshot was nowhere to be found and Eric had to assume that Drake had it with him, along with who knows how many chrome nuts. He turned to the woman. “I’m going to have to take this box of nuts with me,” he said. “And I’ll have some officers parked at the curb, in the event that Drake comes back here before I find him.”
“What’s he done?” Mrs. Phillips asked, a touch of panic in her voice now.
“I’m afraid it pretty serious,” Eric told her. “Several merchants have complained about broken windows in their shops.”
“You know how boys are,” she tried to explain. “It just harmless mischief. His father and I will have a talk with the boy.”
“We’re past the mischief stage, Mrs. Phillips,” Eric said. “One of the merchants is dead. He was killed with a slingshot, shooting chrome nuts like the ones I found in Drake’s closet. I have to find him and stop him before anyone else gets hurt, or killed.”
Mrs. Phillips was crying now. “Don’t hurt Drake,” she said between sobs. “He’s really a good boy.”
“We’ll do everything we can to bring him in unharmed,” Eric assured the woman.
Eric left the home and drove to the twelfth precinct. He had dozens of copies of Drake’s photo made and circulated them throughout the department. An all points bulletin was gotten out for the boy.
*****
Clay Cooper walked into the office shortly after two-thirty to find his son and daughter-in-law pecking away at their laptop computers. He looked at the plywood that covered the window behind Elliott’s desk. “What happened here?” he said.
> “Some nut with a slingshot,” Gloria said.
“More like a slingshot with a nut,” I said, explaining about the chrome nut that had destroyed my other laptop computer. “I just picked this one up at the computer store and we’re entering old cases into them?”
“Them?” Dad said.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “All three of our computers are connected with a local network. Now all three of us can help with the data entry that Gloria has been doing by herself.”
Dad sat at his desk and I briefly explained how the network functioned by connecting all three computers. “We’ll all have access to the database any time we need it.” I looked at Dad. “What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you were talking the day off.”
“You can only watch just so much daytime TV before it starts to wear on you,” Dad said. “If I see those gabby broads from The View one more time, I swear I’m going to open a vein. Christ, they all talk at once and say nothing.” Dad looked at the refrigerator and saw the dent in the door. “Same guy?”
I nodded. “Have you been reading about the rash of broken store windows in the neighborhood?” I said.
“I just read that article this morning,” Dad said.
“Well, since then it’s gotten a lot more serious,” I said. “The last store owner was killed in the alley behind his store. Someone hit him in the back of the head with a chrome nut. Has to be the same guy who’s breaking the windows. In fact, the store owner had just complained to the police earlier that day about some kid trying to shake him down for protection money.”
“What’s this world coming to when kids are the new gangsters?” Dad said.
“And Elliott just missed getting hit himself,” Gloria said.
Dad turned to me. “What?”
I told him how I’d left my desk for a soda when the window shattered and my laptop got smashed.
“So what are you doing about it?” Dad said.
“Eric told us to stay out of it,” I explained.
“When has that ever stopped you before?” Dad said.
The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories) Page 246