Cooper By The Gross (All 144 Cooper Stories In One Volume) Page 2

  I stepped between Parker and my partner and told Dan to take a break. I sat on the edge of the table and withdrew a pack of cigarettes from my pocket, pulled one out with my lips and offered one to Jesse. He took it and I lit them both with my lighter.

  I poured a cup of coffee and handed it to Parker. He just looked at it suspiciously at first. “Go on,” I said. “Take it.”

  Parker sipped slowly from the warm mug, puffed on the cigarette again and seemed to relax a little.

  I laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “You know, Jesse, we’ve got enough evidence to put you away already.”

  “Yeah,” he said, blowing smoke in my face, “Then why don’t ya?”

  I slid off the table and took a chair across from him. I turned it around and straddled the seat, my arms resting on the back of the chair. “Look,” I said, “The lab has already been over your place with a fine tooth comb. They found the mop with the blood on it. You didn’t rinse it out very well. From there it was just a matter of finding some more blood that you missed when you mopped up the hallway. They also found strands of her hair in the hall so we know she was dragged out by her heels. You need more proof?”

  Parker shrugged and sucked on the cigarette again.

  “Those blood samples,” I said. “They’ve been identified as belonging to Mary McGuire, so we know that she was killed in your apartment and dragged down the hallway and thrown out onto that fire escape where we found her.”

  Jesse took a long drag off the cigarette and blew smoke at Dan. “Sounds like you got it all, cop. What do you want from me?” Dan took a step toward Jesse before I stopped him.

  “The weapon, Jesse,” I said. “We don’t have the weapon. Oh, we can make it stick without the weapon, but it’s just a quirk of mine. I hate loose ends. Look, if you cooperate and tell us where the weapon is, they might go easier on you. What do you say?”

  “She shouldn’t have pissed me off,” Jesse said. “She had no right to call me that.”

  “Call you what?” I said. “What’d she call you, Jesse?”

  Jesse Parker took another drag off his cigarette before grinding it out in the ashtray. I gave him another and lit it. “We was just sittin’ there drinkin’ and I was tellin’ this broad about my mother,” Jesse said nervously.

  “And?” I said.

  “And all I said was how nice my mother was and how much I liked her and she started callin’ me a momma’s boy and makin’ fun of me,” Jesse said.

  “Then what?” I said. Dan was still standing near the door, smirking to himself.

  “Well,” Jesse went on, “I got mad at her. I couldn’t very well slap her up right there in the bar so I invited her up to my place. Told her I had another bottle of the good stuff. She followed me like a lost puppy. We drank some more and she started in again about my mother and called me a momma’s boy again so I slapped her and she threw her glass at me.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Like I said,” Jesse went on,” I was only gonna slap her up but she came at me, scratching and kicking and before I knew it I was stabbing her. I didn’t even realize I was doin’ it, I was so drunk.” Parker drank some more coffee and puffed on the cigarette before continuing. “I was scared, see? So I dragged her down the hall and put her out the window.”

  “We know all that,” I said. “What about the knife? Where is it?”

  Jesse looked over at Dan and then back at me. He dragged on his cigarette again. “Okay, I’ll tell you where it is,” Jesse said casually. “It’s right here in your police department.” He let the sentence hang there and sat back smugly as if he just heard a good joke.

  I said, “In our police department? Where in our police department?”

  Parker smirked again. “It’s in my evidence bag,” he said.

  Dan could remain silent no longer and came over to the table, his fists clenched. “What are you, some kind of wise guy?” Dan said, pounding his palm on the top of the table. “The evidence bag? Bullshit!”

  “It’s true,” Jesse said, almost proud of having pulled one over on us. “That dumb flatfoot that booked me made me take everything out of my pockets but never checked my hands. What a rube.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “He was busy writing all this stuff down on the envelope and all the while I got my hands in the air, see?” Jesse held his hands up to show us, his fists clenched. “And all the while I got the jack knife in my fist.” He laughed defiantly. “When he turned away for a second, I slipped the knife into the evidence bag. He sealed it up in there without writing it down on the label. What a maroon.” He laughed at how clever he’d been.

  I stood up and pulled Jesse to his feet. “Let’s go.”

  Dan turned to me and said, “Would you ask the evidence room to send Parker’s envelope up right away?”

  I slapped Parker on the shoulder and headed for the evidence room. I hate loose ends.

  02 - Petty Crimes

  The call came in around two a.m. while I was working the graveyard shift with Sergeant Dan Hollister. An anonymous woman caller reported seeing a body lying on the sidewalk near the corner of Western and Sunset. Across the street was The Bijou, a movie house that Dan and I frequently like to go to for our regular movie fix. The marquee on the front of the building let us know in letters a foot tall that Edward G. Robinson and Margaret O’Brien were starring in Our Vines Have Tender Grapes. Playing with it was a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

  When we got to Western and Sunset, the streets were dark, quiet and deserted. In the doorway of a liquor store we found the body of a man apparently in his sixties. He wore a dirty brown suit and scuffed shoes. If his shirt had had a collar, it would have undoubtedly had a ring around it. I recognized the man lying before me. It was Willy Logan, a local lowlife who frequented the bars in this Hollywood neighborhood.

  He lay face up, his upper body on the sidewalk and his lower body still in the doorway. The side of his head had a three-inch gash with streams of blood that had run out onto the sidewalk and pooled up around his head. There was another puddle near the body. It was urine. It looked like the guy got hit on the head while he was in the act of relieving himself. His zipper was down and little Willy was still hanging out. Written in the victim’s blood on the liquor store window was one word—PIG.

  “Either someone hates cops,” Dan said, “or someone with the nickname of Pig likes to sign his work. Better get the crime lab and a photographer down here, Matt,” Dan said, pulling his pen out and making notes on his pad. I walked back to the car and called our situation in to the desk. Within thirty minutes, two lab employees and a photographer had what they needed. Several minutes later the ambulance carried Willy back to the morgue, leaving Dan and me to try to make some sense out of what we’d found. Half an hour with Jack Walsh, the county medical examiner, and we’d know what kind of a death we were dealing with here.

  “How do you figure this one, Matt?” Dan said, scratching his head. “I mean the guy’s obviously taking a leak when someone else comes up from behind and slugs him. What could they possibly want from Willy? He didn’t have a pot to piss in—literally.”

  “I know,” I said. “Besides, nothing on the body was disturbed. The way we found him must have been exactly as he fell.”

  “And such a petty crime,” Dan said.

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Public urination,” Dan said. “It’s a petty, victimless crime.”

  “Unless you count the guy who has to clean up after guys like Willy,” I said.

  “Nobody said they all have to make sense,” Dan said. “Let’s go, Cooper. Our shift’s about up.”

  Nine days had passed since we’d found Big Willy and Little Willy hanging out in the doorway. It was just after seven and the sun was beginning to duck down behind the buildings. We were on our way to supper when the call from the precinct diverted us.

  “Control to car nine,” the dispatcher said.

  “Car nine, go ahead,” I answered.
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br />   “Car nine, see the man, corner of Wilcox and Fountain. Report of a dead body. Code three.”

  “Car nine, copy that,” I said. I replaced the mic to the clip on the dash and grabbed the portable, magnetic red light that lay on the seat next to me. I opened my window and slapped the light against the roof. I flipped the switch on the dash and the siren tore a hole in the silence as we sped to the scene.

  As we pulled up to the corner on Fountain we saw a man standing at the curb waving us down. We pulled up to the curb and got out. Dan approached the man, who was pointing to the corner pedestrian crossing. In the middle of the intersection lay the body of a man. At first glance I assumed he’d been hit by a car but upon closer examination I found that he’d died of a single bullet hole to the chest. The entrance wound was about the size of my little finger but I could have stuck my fist in the exit wound in his back.

  I walked back over to where Dan and the man on the curb were talking.

  “Matt, this is Mr. Hubert,” Dan said. “Says he saw the victim get it. Says he was watching the neighborhood out his window, like he always does at night. Says the victim was standing on the corner, as if he was waiting to cross the street, and suddenly he started for the opposite corner—you know, kitty-corner—when the shot rang out and the victim fell right where he is now.”

  “Mr. Hubert,” I said, “Did you say you saw the victim crossing the street kitty-corner?”

  “Yes I did,” Hubert said.

  “And which way was he headed?” I said.

  Hubert pointed toward the northeast corner. “That way,” he said, and then pointed to the opposite corner. “He started over there. I see this man in the neighborhood all the time. And he always crosses the street kitty-corner. He’s come close to causing an accident more than once on this corner.”

  I looked at Dan and tossed my head in the direction of the intersection.

  “Thank you, Mr. Hubert,” Dan said. “We’ll need your statement downtown. We’ll stop by your apartment on our way back and pick you up. Shouldn’t take more than fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll be here,” Hubert said.

  Dan reached into the squad car and grabbed the microphone. He requested an ambulance and the same photographer we’d had on the first case nine days earlier. We returned to the victim and Dan stayed with the body while I mentally lined up the place where I thought the bullet might have come from. The bullet had entered the victim’s chest just above the right nipple and exited near the left kidney. That put the shooter up high enough to be able to shoot down at such an angle.

  Halfway up the block I found the entrance to an alley. I drew my service revolver and cautiously made my way further in. On the left side of the alley I found a fire escape with the ladder still hanging down. Whoever shot the victim must have come back down and fled through the alley.

  The ambulance arrived and drove the body back to the morgue. I left instructions with the ambulance attendants to have Jack Walsh call me when he was finished posting the body. Dan and the photographer joined me in the alley. The two of us proceeded up the fire escape. I told the photographer to wait here for us. The building was a fairly new three-story job from the thirties. In the corner of the roof we found a single spent cartridge from a rifle. Looked to be a 30-30 cartridge and it hadn’t been lying there long. I inserted my pencil in the open end and slipped it into a small envelope I carried in my pocket.

  Scratched into the tiles that lined the edge of the roof I found a hastily scribbled note that said, “That’s a no no.”

  “What do you make of that, Matt?” Dan said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It could have been there for some time or just since tonight. It looks fresh enough to be from tonight. As far as what it means, well, that’s anyone’s guess.”

  Dan leaned over the edge of the roof and called to the photographer to join us. He got the shots he needed of the roof area and the scribbled note and we all returned to the street. Dan and I took our seats in the squad car and just sat there in silence for a few seconds. In a few moments Dan broke the silence.

  “Another senseless killing,” Dan said. “I don’t get it. There doesn’t seem to be any connection between the two victims. This guy was one of the upper crust and wouldn’t be caught dead with Willy—either of them.”

  “We’ll they’re together now,” I said.

  We’d learned that the Fountain Avenue shooting victim’s name was Peter Masterson, a forty-five-year-old father of three. He had had the bad fortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He also made the mistake of being a creature of habit.

  For the next few days things seemed to be getting back to normal. Then the other shoe dropped. It had now been only four days since the jaywalker took one in the chest in the intersection. And it had been less than two weeks since we found the two Willies hanging out on Western Avenue.

  It was Friday night and Dan and I were near the end of our shift and were heading back to the precinct. We cruised along Highland Avenue talking about baseball, good food, and the upcoming holiday, anything but our recent cases. The thought of them was depressing and we tried not to take our work home with us.

  The call on the radio interrupted our conversation. The dispatcher told us to see a woman at Miller’s Department Store. Miller’s was located on the southwest corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Argyle Avenue. When we got there, we found a woman standing on the sidewalk in front of the store. She told us that her name was Mildred Campbell and that she worked as a clerk at Miller’s Five and Dime.

  We learned that she had detained a shoplifter who had tried to leave the store with three candy bars in his pocket. The woman had called the police. Before we arrived, the suspect had managed to break free and fled on foot down Argyle Avenue. That was about three minutes ago. She said he was a young man, probably in his twenties, with blonde hair and a slim build. He was wearing a bright blue windbreaker, jeans and some black and white sneakers with a bright red ball design on the side. We told the woman we’d be back for her statement after we’d patrolled the neighborhood.

  Dan slid in behind the wheel and I rode shotgun. We started out search on Argyle and drove as far as we thought someone could run in under five minutes. Nobody we saw on Argyle matched the description of the assailant. We turned onto Sunset Boulevard and worked our way back toward the store, scanning the blocks in between.

  As we rounded the corner onto Sunset and Argyle I spotted a blue windbreaker in an alley between the blocks and told Dan to circle back. I got out and approached on foot while Dan drove around the block and drove in from the other direction. I cautiously entered the alley with my revolver drawn. The blue windbreaker I’d spotted was the one we were looking for. The assailant was still wearing it, but he was slumped down against a brick wall, his head hanging low.

  Dan drove up as I knelt down beside the boy. There was a length of rope around his neck and it had been pulled so tight that his tongue hung out further than I thought a tongue could. His eyes bulged out in terror and his face was a dark shade of violet. I quickly released the knot in the rope but I was probably two minutes too late. He’d stopped breathing.

  Dan lifted the boy’s head so we could get a good look at his face. Written on his forehead in bright red lipstick were two words—”Bad Boy.” Dan released his head and let it slump again and stepped back.

  “Boy, that’s one store with a strict policy against shoplifting,” Dan said. “They take their petty crimes seriously, don’t they? I wonder what they do to holdup men.”

  I looked up at Dan. “What’d you say?”

  “I said, I wonder what they do to holdup men.” Dan said, wondering if my hearing was going.

  “No,” I said. “Before that.”

  “Huh?” Dan said.

  “You said something about petty crimes,” I said.

  “Oh,” Dan said, trying to remember his statement. “I just said that I thought they took their petty crimes seriously.”


  “That’s it, Dan,” I said. “Petty crimes. That’s our link, if it’s the same killer for all three homicides.”

  “How’s that?” Dan said.

  “Think about it,” I said. Willy’s only apparent crime was public urination. The second guy was cut down while he was jaywalking. And this kid shoplifted three lousy candy bars.”

  Dan said, “That’s what the word in Willy’s blood meant—PIG. The killer wasn’t knocking cops. He was calling Willy a pig for urinating in public.”

  “And the note scratched in the roof tile, “That’s a no no,” was no doubt a reference to the guy jaywalking. The words “Bad Boy” on this guy’s head have to be about the shoplifting. Jesus Christ, who’s next, litterbugs?”

  After the photographer and morgue attendants left with the body, Dan and I drove back over to Miller’s Store to talk with the clerk. She was checking another woman out through the far register. She closed her register drawer and put out her “Next Register Please” sign and came toward us.

  “Did you catch the little thief?” she said in a weary voice.

  I nodded. “Yes, we did, Mrs. Campbell. They took him downtown a few minutes ago.”

  “And did you find the three candy bars he took?” she said.

  I nodded again. “Yes we did. They’ll be booked into evidence.”

  “Boy, if I could get my hands on that little punk, I’d…” she started to say and then stopped herself.

  “You’d what?” Dan said.

  The woman felt a bit embarrassed by her outburst and composed herself. “Oh, nothing. It’s just that I get so damned tired of these hoodlums coming in here and helping themselves to whatever they want and thinking they can just walk out of here, like we didn’t see ‘em.” She wiped her knuckle against her lips and bit down, trying not to flare up again. “Will I get to see this guy at the lineup? Will I at least get to give him a piece of my mind?”

  “I’m afraid not, Mrs. Campbell,” Dan said.