by Bill Bernico
Elliott knocked on Dean’s door and peek in. The office was empty. Just then Abbie came around the corner holding a coffee cup with both hands. She looked startled to see Elliott and Gloria standing there.
“What are you two doing here?” she said.
“We’re looking for Lieutenant Hollister,” Gloria said. “Is he in the building?”
“Nope,” Abbie said, turning to Elliott now. “He and your dad pulled an Elvis?”
“Huh?” Elliott said.
“They left the building,” Abbie said, smiling.
“Do you know where we can find them?” Elliott said.
“They said something about checking Bud’s apartment again,” Abbie said. “You might still be able to catch them there. Do you know where it is?”
Gloria and Elliott both shook their heads.
Abbie wrote the address on a sheet from her telephone message pad and handed it to Elliott. “They just left here a few minutes ago. You should be able to catch up with them.”
“Thanks, Abbie,” Elliott said, stuffing the piece of paper in his shirt pocket. He turned to Gloria. “You want to meet me there or ride with me?”
“I’ll follow you there,” Gloria said. “In case we end up back at the office, I’ll have my car.”
“Let’s go,” Elliott said.
We pulled up in front of the apartment building near the corner of Las Palmas and Franklin. Dad’s Oldsmobile was parked behind Dean’s cruiser. Gloria followed me up the walk and into the lobby. We checked the names on the mailboxes and spotted Evans’ name on box 212. We rode the elevator up to the second floor and found 212 mid-way down the hall. The apartment door was standing open when we entered and found Dad looking through drawers and in closets. We must have startled them when we walked in.
I spun around, my hand automatically reaching inside my jacket.
“Hold on there,” Elliott said. “Don’t shoot your only son.”
“Or me,” Gloria said.
I relaxed and released my grip on the .38 under my arm. “That’s a good way to get yourself shot,” I told Elliott. Next time make some noise when you enter a room.”
“What are you so jumpy about?” Elliott said.
Dean came out of the bedroom to see who Dad was talking to. He looked at Gloria and then at me. “What did you two turn up?” he said.
“Bud’s daughter was no help,” Elliott said.
“And Andy Reynolds is just finishing up on Bud’s autopsy,” Gloria added. “I have to call him by three. He may have more for us by then.”
“What did you two turn up here?” Elliott said.
“Nothing yet,” I said. “We just got here ourselves. You want to take the bathroom and Gloria, you can check the kitchen. I’ll keep looking in here. Dean’s going over the bedroom.”
Elliott looked around the room. “Where was Bud found?” he said.
I pointed to a spot near the living room chair. “Right there,” I said. “The super came in and found him lying on his back. His right hand was on his left biceps. I suspect the body was staged to make it look like Bud was having a heart attack and was grabbing his left arm. Not very likely, knowing what we know.”
Gloria’s cell phone rang and she flinched. On the third ring she said, “Gloria Campbell. Yes. Uh huh. Thanks, Andy.” She turned toward Dean and said. “Earlier I stopped in to see Andy and he had some concern about a red spot near Bud’s mouth. He looked again at the area under ultra-violet light and it’s definitely a hand print. Looks like someone clamped one hand over Bud’s mouth before they shoved that ice pick into his brain.”
“All right,” Dean said. “So the killer shows up here, gets a hand over Bud’s mouth and jabs the ice pick in and then arranges the body on the floor. Why?”
“Why do people usually kill?” I said. “Jealousy, revenge, hate, fear, robbery. Pick one.”
“Who could be jealous of a ninety-year-old man?” Gloria said, sifting through the kitchen drawers. “And he didn’t have any possessions worth robbing.”
“Fear is out,” Elliott said. “Who’d be afraid of a man that old? I doubt if it was hate.”
“That leaves revenge,” I said. “And that leads us back to what I dug up earlier—Cobb.”
“Bingo,” Gloria said, pointing to a long, pointed utensil in kitchen island drawer. She pulled a sheet of paper towel off the roll hanging under a cabinet and grabbed the utensil, holding it up in front of her eyes.
“What is it?” Elliott said.
“It’s a meat thermometer,” Gloria said. “This end has a small thermometer dial and the other end, this long, pointy end, goes into the meat.”
Dean walked up and took a closer look at the utensil. Gloria twisted it around in her hand. Except for the dial on the end, the rest of this thing could have passed for an ice pick. Gloria laid the paper down on the counter and reached into her pocket, producing a fold-away magnifying glass. She bent over and examined the piece and then stood upright again.
“Looks like there might be some blood on the shaft, up near the dial,” she said.
“Makes sense,” I said. “It was a meat thermometer, after all.”
Gloria shook her head. “I doubt any rump roast left that blood,” she said. “It looks fairly recent. And take a look at the glass on the dial. It’s broken and a small piece is missing.”
Elliott looked at the dial and then said, “Are you thinking that this might be the murder weapon?”
“It’s possible,” Gloria said.
Dean held up one finger. “Hold on a second,” he said. “That would mean that whoever killed Bud would have had to rely on the fact that Bud even owned a meat thermometer. Isn’t that leaving a lot to chance?”
“What about this?” I said. “The killer brought the meat thermometer with him, killed Bud with it, wiped it clean, supposedly, and then put it in the drawer.”
“But why leave the murder weapon behind?” Dean said.
“Okay,” I said. “Suppose the killer is stopped on his way out of the building. If it’s found on him, he’s done, so why not just hide it in plain sight where it looks like it belongs?”
“In the kitchen drawer,” Dean said. “Works for me.”
“And that means that the killer’s hand would have a cut on the palm from the broken glass on the dial,” Gloria said.
“If this was the murder weapon,” Elliott said.
“There’s one way to find out,” I said. “Suppose we all pay Mr. Cobb a visit.”
“Are we done here?” Dean said.
Everyone nodded, looking at each other for confirmation.
“Then let’s take a drive over to Kenmore Avenue,” Dean said. “It’s halfway up the block between Hollywood and Franklin.”
Our four car caravan pulled to a stop on Kenmore and the four of us converged on Cobb’s house. Elliott and Gloria covered the back door while Dean and I approached the front. If this hadn’t been such a serious matter, it might have seemed silly, what with four people coming to take down an eighty-nine-year-old man.
Dean rang the bell and listened as the sound of shuffling feet came closer to the door. It opened and an old man looked back at us from behind wire-rimmed bi-focals. He was wearing a plaid bathrobe with a rope tie holding it closed in the front.
“Yes?” he said in a frail voice.
Dan held up his shield. “Lester Cobb?” he said. “Police. I’d like to talk to you. May we come in?”
Cobb said nothing, but stepped aside to let us pass. Dean stayed in the living room and I walked through to the kitchen and opened the back door for Elliott and Gloria. The three of us returned to the living room.
“Mr. Cobb,” Dean said. “I understand you got out of San Quentin on parole less than two months ago. Is that right?”
“You got the records,” Cobb said. “Why are you asking me?”
“Just answer the questions, sir,” Dean said.
Cobb shoved both of his hands into the pockets on his bathrobe, gave Dean a dis
gusted look and muttered, “Yeah, what of it?”
“What have you been doing for the past two months?” Dean said.
“Are you asking if I found a job yet?” Cobb said, laughing. “Is that it? Are you here to arrest me for vagrancy?”
“Can it, Cobb,” Dean said. “We’re not here to pass the time of day with you. Now what have you been doing since you got out?”
“Well,” Cobb said, “Let’s see. The first day out I fed the squirrels in the park. The next day I fed the pigeons. Then I…”
“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.
52 - 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 th
is 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.
