by Bill Bernico
“And I’ll be glad to get out of these?” I said.
“Out of what?”
“These rags. I must look like…”
“Like me?” Frank said.
I laughed. “I guess so.” We finished the rest of our meal in silence and then walked out onto Hollywood Boulevard together.
When we got to Highland Avenue I stopped and turned to Frank. “This is where I get off,” I said. “I’ve got to get back to my office and make out my reports and expense voucher and report back to Vivian. If I need to find you and tell you anything from Vivian, where can I contact you?”
Frank thought for a moment. “Hollywood and Vine. I usually make my rounds and I cover that corner around noon most days.”
“Great,” I said. “I may not have anything to report, but it’s good to know I can if I do. You take care, Frank.”
“I will, and thanks for your help.” And with that Doctor Francis Conklin walked away.
I couldn’t wait to get back to my office but was too tired to walk. I waited at the bus stop and when the first eastbound bus came along, I stepped up into it. As the bus pulled away from the curb I dug into my pockets only to find them empty. I gave the bus driver a sheepish look and smiled. He promptly pulled back to the curb and opened the door, giving me a nasty look. I stepped off again and started walking.
I got back to my house twenty minutes later, retrieved the key from under the garden rock and let myself in. The first thing I did was strip out of those grimy clothes and stuff them into a grocery bag. I opened my back door, lifted the lid on my garbage can and dropped the bag in. I ran the water in my shower, stripped off the under garments and stood under the shower for twenty minutes, scrubbing hard with my bar of soap. When I’d all but rubbed the skin off my bones, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and shaved my face clean again. I splashed on a bit of after shave, pulled my robe off a hook on the back of the bathroom door and wrapped myself up in it.
I opened my front door again and picked up the evening paper and brought it back to my easy chair. Before I’d read even half of the front page, I was asleep. By the time I woke up it was seven-thirty the next morning and every bone in my body ached from all that walking. I washed my face, combed my hair and dressed in one of my suits. I made myself a breakfast of eggs and toast and washed it down with a cup of coffee. I grabbed my fedora from the coat hook and let myself out. I pulled my car out of the garage and drove down to my office.
My phone was ringing as I walked into my office. I picked it up and said, “Cooper Investigations.”
It was Vivian Conklin asking if she could see me at noon today. I said I had a few things to finish but that I’d be free at noon and told her to come up. I hung up, feeling good that I’d have some good news to report to her. She’d want to know that her father didn’t blame her for anything and that he was all right, even if he didn’t want to join the rat race again and come home. He was where he wanted and apparently needed to be.
After I hung up I dialed Hollister’s office and let it ring. I was just about to hang up when Dan came on the line. “What is it?”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” I said, trying to disguise my voice.
“Excuse me, sir,” Dan said. “I was…”
I laughed. “It’s Matt, Dan. Did I catch you busy?”
“Yes, but go ahead. What do you want this time?”
“I missed you too,” I said sarcastically. “Anyway, I finished my business and wanted to know if you’d like to compare notes later today.”
“I’m a little busy,” Dan said. “Might be a while before I can get there, unless you want to come here.”
“That’s me you hear knocking,” I said. “Fifteen minutes?”
“Come on down. I have something I want to show you.”
“What is it?”
“It’ll keep.”
I hung up and drove to the precinct. Hollister was just coming out of his office at the same time I was walking down the hall toward it. He closed his door and grabbed me by the arm, spinning me around.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“To Walsh’s office,” Dan explained. “They found another one last night.”
A moment later Dan knocked on Walsh’s door and peeked in. The office was empty. We opened the door to the morgue and saw Jack standing over the autopsy table. He was still making the initial incision on the body of an old man when we approached. Dan and I watched in silence as he spoke into the overhead microphone while he worked on the body. After he’d made the Y cut he laid his scalpel down and turned toward us.
“What is this now, five this week?” Walsh said, looking to Dan for confirmation.
“Five,” Dan said. He looked at me now. “They brought this one in late last night. Found him sleeping under a stairway near Cahuenga.”
“Strange, this one,” Jack said.
“How so,” Dan said.
“When they undressed him they found this in his pants pocket.” Walsh held out two ten-dollar bills. “Where do you suppose this old guy came up with twenty bucks?”
I took a closer look at the man’s head. His throat had been slashed so deeply that he’d almost been decapitated. The cut made the man’s head tilt back too far to get a good look at him. I walked around to the head of the table and turned my head sideways to get a better look. I closed my eyes again and threw my head back, letting out a deep breath.
“What is it, Matt?” Dan said.
“Is this what you wanted to show me?” I said.
Dan nodded. “You said your case might me tied to mine and I just wanted to compare notes. Why?”
“I know this guy,” I said.
“No shit?” Dan said. “Who is he?”
“Name’s Conklin. Doctor Francis Conklin. I just met him yesterday, Dan. This is the case I was working on that I couldn’t tell you about.”
“Sorry, Matt,” Dan said. “But it looks like we’re going to have to talk about it now.”
I agreed. “Can it wait until after lunch?” I said. “I have one more loose end to tie up on this case before I can fill you in on everything.”
“Be in my office at two.”
“I will,” I said. “I gotta get back to my office. See you then, Dan.”
I drove back to my office, hurried upstairs and recalled the sight of Conklin’s throat on the slab. I rushed into my bathroom just in time to lose my eggs and toast in the toilet. My stomach felt like it had been turned inside out and it tasted sour. I filled a water glass, gargled the vomit out of my mouth and spit it into the sink. I swallowed the second gulp.
I sat down behind my desk and pulled out the Conklin report, erased and few entries and rewrote them with the new information. I closed the folder and leaned back in my chair.
This was going to be hard for me to tell and harder for Vivian Conklin to hear. While she may be relieved to know that her father’s leaving wasn’t her fault, the good news would soon me outweighed by the news of his death.
I didn’t usually like to get personally involved in police cases, but I was going to make sure I did whatever it took to find the person responsible for those last eight homeless murders, even if I had to take the case for free.
22 - Guilty As Charged
The bailiff took the verdict slip from the jury foreman, walked over to the bench and handed it to Judge Parker, who glanced at it briefly and returned it to the bailiff. The bailiff handed it back to the jury foreman.
“Have you reached a unanimous decision, Mr. Foreman,” Judge Parker asked solemnly.
“We have, your honor.”
“What say you?”
The foreman looked down at the verdict slip and read aloud, “Case 87325A, the State of California vs. Cletus McCormick, we the jury in the aforementioned case, find the defendant, Cletus McCormick, not guilty.”
There was an immediate undertone in the gallery. The judge tapped his gavel hard on the bench. The audience continued to talk among themselves and Parker ban
ged his gavel again, several times.
“Silence,” he almost yelled to be heard. A hush fell over the room. He looked at the jury. “Thank you for your service in this case. The jury is dismissed.” He turned to the defense council and shook his head. He desperately wanted to say something to them but at the last second thought better of it and let it go. One last bang of the gavel and the judge descended the two steps from his bench and disappeared into his chambers.
McCormick turned to his lawyer, John Kellogg and grabbed his hand, pumping it furiously. “You did it. Thanks a lot, councilor. You can send me your bill.” Cletus McCormick hurried out the courthouse door to the throngs of newspaper reporters.
Kellogg gathered his papers into his briefcase and walked out a minute or so behind his client. When they saw each other on the steps of the courthouse, McCormick winked at Kellogg and took him aside, out of camera view and out of any reporter’s earshot, leaned in and whispered into Kellogg’s ear, “Just between you and me, councilor, I did it.” He laughed manically. “Gotta love this country.”
Kellogg pulled back and stared at McCormick.
McCormick nodded. “That’s right. And you got me off. I have to admit I was a little worried before the jury came back, but you did one hell of a job. Thanks.” He walked off the steps and into a waiting limo and was gone before Kellogg could absorb what he’d just heard. Kellogg felt like he was about to be sick to his stomach.
John Kellogg had gone through years of college and law school, studied for the bar and passed it on his first try. He held the justice system in high esteem. At least he had until now. It was obvious that the system just didn’t work all of the time and in this case it grated on him something terrible. It was lunchtime but he’d suddenly lost his appetite. Kellogg walked slowly to his car and laid his briefcase on the seat beside him. He drove back to his office and instructed his secretary not to put through any calls for the rest of the day and that he was not to be disturbed.
Kellogg slammed his office door and sat at his desk, going over the events of the past two weeks in that courtroom. He had done everything according to the law and still a guilty man had been allowed to go free. It would do no good to go to the judge with McCormick’s confession. In the first place, it was too little, too late. In the second place, double jeopardy prevented McCormick from being tried for the same crime twice after being found not guilty. And in the third place, he could be disbarred for revealing client confidentiality.
It seemed that John Kellogg had two choices. He could either just try to put it behind him and move on with his career, or he could do something about it, career be damned. He played the two scenarios in his mind for the rest of that afternoon in solitude and by the time he left his office, he knew exactly what he was going to do about the injustice played out in the courtroom earlier that day.
I was standing at my window looking down onto Hollywood Boulevard. The traffic was light and there was a heavy mist in the air that threatened to turn into rain soon. My last case had ended in a huge disappointment for both my client and me and my mood had turned sour of late. I thought I had time to feel sorry for myself when I heard my outer office door open and close. A few seconds later there was a firm knock my inner door that made the frosted glass rattle.
“It’s not locked,” I said, walking toward it.
The door opened and I recognized a familiar face.
“John,” I said smiling and extending my hand. “Come on in. How long has it been? Three, four months?”
John Kellogg grabbed my hand and shook it but without the same enthusiasm I’d come to expect from a professional like him. I gestured toward my client’s chair and invited him to sit. I took my seat behind my desk and leaned back.
“How are Mary and the kids?” I said, just trying to break the ice.
Kellogg nodded. “They’re good.”
I had expected a somewhat extended answer but that’s all that came out of him. I could sense something was wrong.
“Is something troubling you, John?” I said.
He hesitated and then offered, “I suppose you heard about my court case yesterday. It was in all the papers.”
“Seems I did hear something about it,” I said. “Your client was some sort of hoodlum, wasn’t he?”
Kellogg nodded. “Cletus McCormick. They had charged him with first degree murder in the death of a school teacher in the valley last summer.”
“Yes,” I said. “I remember that one. That was pretty grisly if I recall.”
“Uh huh.” Kellogg said. “She’d been raped, strangled and dismembered. Her body and a lot of the pieces had been found in a drainpipe on Mulholland Drive up in the Hollywood Hills area. McCormick had been picked up for questioning in the case, but he claimed to have been in San Francisco at the time.”
“I’m guessing he wasn’t,” I said.
“And you’d be right,” John said. “Not only was he not in San Francisco, he was seen on Mulholland Drive that very night. Claimed he got his days mixed up.”
“Was there any other evidence against him?” I said.
John sighed. He’d been through the evidence so many times over the past few weeks that it was depressing to sift through it again. But that’s why he was here. “There was one witness, a mechanic from Burbank. He was test-driving a customer’s car on Mulholland Drive and saw McCormick and two other men near where the schoolteacher’s body was found. It wasn’t much, but it put him at the scene.”
“Well, didn’t his testimony help?” I said. “That sounds like solid evidence.”
“He never got the chance to give it,” Kellogg said. “When McCormick’s boys found out he was going to testify, they took him on a test drive of his own, and he didn’t come back from it.”
“I think I get the picture,” I said. “McCormick has enough muscle to prevent anyone from speaking out against him. And I suppose they had no evidence linking him to the mechanic’s death, either.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Kellogg said. “So you can see why I’m so frustrated lately.”
“Then why’d you take his case?” I said.
“I didn’t,” Kellogg said. “I was appointed. McCormick’s regular lawyer was in Europe and wouldn’t have been back in time for the trial so they stuck me with it.”
“Interesting story,” I said, “But why did you come to see me? It wasn’t just to unload, was it?”
Kellogg looked away for a moment and then offered, “Matt, you’ve known me for a long time now and you know how I stand on justice and fair play.”
“Yes,” I said. “You were always a stickler for having the books balance when everything was said and done.”
“Well,” Kellogg said, “I just can’t let this one rest. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do anything to set things right again.”
“And you want me to do what?” I said.
“Matt, I’ve given this a lot of thought and I know I can’t do anything about this last crime that he just got away with, but I’m damn sure going to try to get him on whatever else he may have done, and I’m going to need your help.”
“My help?” I said. “What can I do?”
“I’d like to hire you to tale him and look into his life,” Kellogg explained. “Try to catch him at something that’ll put him away for a long time. Or see if you can dig up anything in his past that we can use. There has to be something that he’s done where he hasn’t covered his tracks.”
“I think this sounds like a dangerous plan,” I said. “You know if McCormick gets wind of what you’re up to, he’ll come looking for you, and by association, me. You’d better be damned sure you want to do this before we get in so far we can’t get out again.”
“I am,” Kellogg said. “And I’ll do whatever it takes to nail this bastard to the barn wall.”
I pursed my lips and nodded.
“Of course, you realize I won’t be able to do any of the legal work on this one. They’d come after me for conflict o
f interest, among other charges. You just get the goods on McCormick and we’ll let the wheels of justice roll over him. You in?”
I thought about it for a second and then said, “I’m in. Where do you want to start?”
Kellogg seemed to get a burst of enthusiasm and leaned in over my desk. “I was thinking we could start with Lee Duncan. He was one of McCormick’s henchmen until they nabbed him last year on that extortion charge. He’s doing one to fifteen in San Quentin. I thought you could go and see him. See if he’d open up to you about any of McCormick’s past activities.”
I shook my head. “You know he’s not going to roll over on McCormick without something in it for him. What could we possibly offer him to make him sing?”
“I know,” Kellogg said. “You leave that part to me. I have a few connections in the D.A.’s office and they might be willing to trade a small fry for the big fish.”
“You might be on to something there,” I said. “I can get up there tomorrow and start poking around. You want to tap any of McCormick’s current help?”
“Better not,” Kellogg said. “If they don’t go for it and tip him off, he’ll come after us before we get what we need. For now let’s just stick with Duncan and see where that leads. We can always come back to his current muscle if it doesn’t pan out.”
I stood up and extended my hand. “Wish me luck,” I said, shaking Kellogg’s hand.
He exhaled and dropped his head. When he looked up at me again he seemed more at ease with himself. “Thanks, Matt. I’m going to sleep a lot better tonight knowing McCormick can’t just walk away from his punishment.”
“We haven’t got him yet,” I reminded him. “I’ll keep in touch and let you know what I find, if anything. You’d better lay low for a while. Don’t even mention to anyone that you’re dissatisfied with the criminal justice system or that you’re not happy with the outcome of McCormick’s trial. Just play it smooth and don’t give anyone any reason to remember anything you did or said. All right?”
“All right,” Kellogg said. “It’s business as usual around my office.”
I walked Kellogg back to my office door and gave him one last pat on the back before he left. If nothing else, this was one case that would keep me on my toes. I’d have to grow eyes out of the back of my head just to stay alive, but if it worked out, we could be rid of one more lowlife.
