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

by Bill Bernico

  Elliott and Gloria exchanged glances. “What case is that?” Elliott said.

  Dean turned to Gloria. “Do you remember last week when Clay called and asked you to get an old file out for us to look over? Well, that’s what I’d like you two to check out. See if you can find any connection at all between that case and this one. So far the only connection is one of proximity. The missing woman in that case turned up pretty close to where we found the car in the ravine. I know it’s not much and it’s probably a long shot, but see what you can dig up and let me know. I’d appreciate it very much.”

  “We’ll start right away,” Elliott said, rising from his chair.

  Dean grabbed a file folder from the ledge behind his desk and handed it to Elliott. “These are copies of the original contents of our file. You might find them handy when you look into your file.”

  Elliott took the file, excused himself and led Gloria back out of Dean’s office. As they walked back down the hallway toward the parking lot, Gloria turned to Elliott.

  “Are we telling Clay about this?” she said.

  “Dean’s probably already told him,” he said. “If he hasn’t yet, he will. It was Dad’s case after all.”

  Back in the office, Gloria pulled that original file out and returned to her desk with it. Elliott pulled up an extra chair and slid in next to Gloria, opening Dean’s file alongside Gloria’s folder. They paged through Dean’s documents, writing down the pertinent information on a yellow legal pad. Elliott read aloud, while Gloria made the notes for them.

  “First,” Elliott said. “List the two victims’ names on top. That’s, let’s see, George and Ellen Armitage.” He read their address to Gloria and then read their stats, such as height, weight, hair and eye colors and names of immediate family. Elliott picked up Clay’s original file dated August, 1979. He read off the name of the missing woman, her husband’s name and the name of their only child, a son. “In the middle of the page, draw a line across and write down ‘Conrad and Kate Archer’. She was the missing woman and he was the husband. Okay, now under his name write, ‘died in a car crash in 2009 in the same ravine area.’ Under her name write, ‘found dead, September, 1979 in ravine.”

  “What should I write under the son’s name?” Gloria said.

  “Nothing for now,” Elliott explained. “Since he was too young to be of any help, we’ll just let his name sit there on the page for now. How about if we check the Internet for any further information on this case of the people involved? The more we know, the more we can narrow down our search.”

  Gloria clicked on the Internet icon on her desktop computer and typed the husband’s name into the search engine. The screen filled with links to newspaper articles about the disappearance and later the discovery of Kate Archer’s body in the ravine near Burbank. Gloria clicked one of the links and read the article. It was from three years ago and it told of how Conrad Archer’s body was discovered in his wrecked Toyota Camry in a ravine off a mountain road near where his wife’s body had been discovered more than thirty years earlier.

  Elliott wrote down as much information as they could gather from all the links they tried. When he figured they’d collected enough data to work with, Elliott ripped two yellow sheets from the pad, secured them on a clipboard and pushed the extra chair away from Gloria’s desk. “We have enough to start with for now,” Elliott said. “What do you say we go and talk to a few people?”

  *****

  The weather had changed of late and the temperature during the day had dropped to a bone-chilling seventy-five degrees. I’m sure the folks in Chicago would settle for half that right about now. They were probably stomping through a foot of snow by this time of year. And that’s probably why a good many of them had migrated to sunny California over the years. The result of all this migration was an overabundance to unstable people. Easterners like to say that California is the land of fruits and nuts, intimating that we had more than our fair share of homosexuals and psychopaths, and who’s to say that there wasn’t some validity in all of that?

  It was almost noon on Saturday, with the sun high in the sky. Hal Jackson had taken his family to spend the day at the beach. He and Mrs. Jackson had set up two beach chairs under a large umbrella with a short fold-up table between them. They had a plastic cooler at their side and sat back enjoying a couple of ice cold lemonades.

  Their two children, Rosie, age five and Billy, age seven sat thirty feet from the ocean’s waves with their little shovels digging in the sand and filling their little pails. When they had them full, they’d pack them tight and turn them upside down, letting the lump of sand settle on the beach. They repeated this until they had seven or eight conical shapes in a circle.

  Billy stuck his shovel in the sand and before he could empty the contents into his pail, he noticed something shiny winking at him from the sand. He plucked it off his shovel and examined it. It was a ring with a bright stone glistening in the sunlight. He dropped the shovel and ran back to where his parents were relaxing.

  “Dad, Dad,” Billy said, holding out the ring. “Look what I dug up. Looks like pirate’s treasure. It’s probably worth a million dollars. Is it, huh, Dad?”

  Hal Jackson took the ring from his son, blew off a little more of the sand from around the setting and then poured a little lemonade over the stone. He held it up to the light, examining it from several angles before passing it over to his wife. “What do you think, Lois?”

  She didn’t have to look at it as long as her husband had to realize what she was holding. She nodded. “It looks real to me.”

  “Hal,” she said. “This is someone’s diamond ring. Some woman somewhere must be frantic over losing this.” She turned to Billy. “Where did you find this?”

  Billy turned, held his arm straight out and pointed to where Rosie still sat shoveling sand into her pail. “Right over there,” he said. “Come on, I’ll show you.” Billy ran back to the spot where he’d been digging and pointed down into the shallow hole.

  Hal dropped to his knees, grabbed Billy’s little shovel and began removing more dirt from the hole. After six more scoops he met with some resistance in the sand. Hal dropped the shovel and began digging with his hands. He pulled out a few more handfuls of sand and then recoiled when he made out the shapes of several human fingers. He stood back up, pulled his two children away from the hole and told his wife to take them back to the umbrella.

  Hal pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed 911 and waited. He told the operator what he’d discovered and she instructed him to stay on the line while she summoned the authorities. Hal was still on the phone to the 911 operator when the first police car pulled up to the edge of the beach. Two officers got out and hurried over to where Hal stood with the phone to his ear. He told the operator that the police had arrived and then hung up the phone, dropping it back in his pocket.

  He pointed to the hole in the sand and led officers over to the spot where he’d been digging. “Right there,” he told the first cop.

  The cop dropped to his knees and spread some more sand away from the fingers to determine if there was any more to the find. When he had the entire hand exposed, he got to his feet again, brushed off his knees and grabbed the shoulder mic to his radio.

  “Dispatch,” he said, “This is car seven. We’re at the Venice Beach Park, just off the Rose Avenue entrance. We’re going to need the coroner, the crime scene unit, a photographer and some backup units to meet us at this location. We have at least one DB in the sand.”

  “Roger, car seven,” the dispatcher replied. “Units are on their way.” She broke the connection.

  The officer remained next to the crime scene, keeping curiosity seekers away until backup arrived for crowd control. He stood there for twenty minutes.

  Andy Reynolds, the county medical examiner arrived first, carrying his little black bag and was followed by two ambulance attendants. He looked at the officer and then down into the hole. “This it?” he said.

 
“So far,” the officer said. “I stopped digging at this point and called it in.”

  By the time the backup units had arrived, the photographer was already there snapping shots of the scene at various stages during the unearthing procedure. Andy had already removed enough sand to reveal the victim’s arm and shoulder. The photographer kept snapping pictures as Andy dug. Once he had the head and face uncovered, he instructed the photographer to get several good shots and then wait.

  The crime scene unit arrived shortly after the second black and white. They left their vehicle on the road and walked the hundred yards or so to the crime scene. The three member of the CSU each knew exactly what they needed to do and had gathered any evidence within half an hour of the time that Andy had the entire body uncovered. The photographer took several more shots and then stepped back, awaiting further instructions.

  The two ambulance attendants lifted the body of a young woman onto the stretcher and waited for Andy’s final instructions before zipping up the body bag.

  Andy made a preliminary examination of the body. The woman was dressed in a two-piece bathing suit. He turned to the lead CSU and said, “Looks to be in her late twenties or early thirties. Overall she’s in good physical condition, except for the obvious.” He gestured toward the gash in her rib cage. “Probably done with a large hunting knife with a serrated edge. I’ll know more after the autopsy.” He nodded to his attendants, who zipped up the body bag and carried the gurney over the sand to the waiting ambulance.

  At this point Lieutenant Dean Hollister arrived. The officers on the scene straightened visibly and saluted. Dean returned their salutes and held a hand out to stop the ambulance attendants. They set the gurney down, unzipped the bag far enough to let Dean see the wound. He nodded and they zipped her up again and continued toward the ambulance. Dean turned to Jenny Howard, the lead CSU. “How’s it looking here?” he said.

  Jenny pointed to one of the other CSU team members, who was running a metal detector over the surrounding area. “We’re still searching in the sand, just in case there may be more than one victim,” she said. “There was no trace of excess blood in or around the hole. From the looks of things, the victim was killed somewhere else and then dumped here. A single stab wound between her ribs was the cause of death.”

  The CSU team member with the metal detector stopped and scanned one spot in the sand. His detector beeped and he bent over with a scoop and dug a shallow furrow in the sand. He sifted the sand and found a nickel. He looked back at Jenny and shook his head before he continued to scan other areas.

  A few minutes later his detector started beeping again, this time louder and more insistent than before. He laid the metal detector down and dropped to his knees with the sand scoop. After just five or six scoops of sand, he stopped, dropped the scoop and started removing sand with his hand. A moment later he looked up from the hole. “Lieutenant,” he yelled. “Over here. I found something.”

  Dean and Jenny hurried over to where the CSU knelt in the sand. They looked down into the shallow hole and saw a young man’s face, its mouth agape and full of sand. The third CSU member joined them and together they removed enough sand to expose the entire body. The young man was wearing only a pair of swim trunks.

  Dean looked at the man’s face and then over at the CSU who’d found this victim. “What made the metal detector go off like that?” he said, gesturing toward the victim. “He doesn’t even have any pockets, so where the metal that set your machine off?”

  The CSU, a man named Bruce Collier, brushed some more sand away from the face and then dug with his fingers in the open mouth, removing as much sand as he could. He pointed to the victim’s upper set of teeth. “Lots of fillings,” he said. “Lucky for us he had them or we might not have found him.”

  “Lucky for us,” Dean said. “Not so lucky for him.” He pointed down at the victim and then turned to Jenny. “See any marks or wounds on the body?”

  Jenny shook her head and then instructed Collier to turn the body over. As soon as he did that, the cause of death was evident. There was a large stab wound in the upper back, just opposite of where the heart would be. “Same as the other one,” Jenny said, “except in the back. My guess is the killer did this one first, surprising him from behind and then doing the girl.”

  It was another hour and a half before the second body was removed to the morgue and the area had been completely scoured. Nothing else was found and no other bodies turned up in the sand. Dean returned to the precinct and parked his car in the lot. Before returning to his office, he paid Andy Reynolds a visit in the morgue. Andy had the woman on his autopsy table when Dean approached.

  Andy pointed at the wound in the woman’s torso. He hiked a thumb toward the other body that waited on the other table. “Same knife made both wounds,” Andy said. “No doubt about it.”

  Dean turned to Andy. “Would you check these wounds against the couple that we found in the grave down in the ravine last week? This looks like a similar M.O.”

  “Sure thing, Lieutenant,” Andy said before returning his attentions to the woman on the slab.

  Dean returned to his office and caught his breath for a moment before dialing Elliott Cooper’s cell phone.

  Elliott answered on the third ring. “Cooper here,” he said, a little out of breath.

  “Elliott,” Dean said. “It’s Dean. You make any progress yet?”

  “Gloria and I are just a few blocks away from the first person on our list of people to see,” Elliott said. “I’ll have more to tell you within the hour. Can I call you back?”

  “Sure,” Dean said. “Oh, and one more thing, Elliott. We just uncovered two more bodies in the sand at the Venice Beach Park. The M.E. is checking the stab wounds against the couple from the ravine. We may have a serial killer on our hands, so you be careful.”

  “Will do,” Elliott said. “And thanks for the heads up.” He flipped the phone shut and turned to Gloria. “Dean says we may be dealing with a serial killer. He’s checking to see if a couple they just dug up on the beach was killed with the same knife as the couple found near the ravine in the mountains.”

  “One more block,” Gloria said, pointing out the windshield. “It should be the house on the right, second from the corner. There, that white one with the hedge.”

  Elliott pulled up to the curb and killed his engine. “Read me that name again, would you?” he said to Gloria.

  Gloria checked the clipboard and said, “Carl Archer. He was Conrad’s brother.”

  The two of them left the car and walked up the sidewalk to the front door. Elliott pressed the doorbell and waited. A moment later the door opened and an old man stared back at him. “Carl Archer?” Elliott said.

  “I’m Carl Archer,” the man told Elliott. “Can I help you?”

  “Mr. Archer,” Elliott said. “My name is Elliott Cooper and this is Gloria Campbell. We’re looking into a couple of murders that happened last week and I was wondering if we might talk to you about your sister-in-law, Kate and your brother, Conrad.”

  A frown covered Carl’s face. “Conrad wasn’t murdered,” he said. “His car went off the road and down into that ravine. Everyone just assumed that he was thinking of Kate and just lost control of his car.”

  “Do you think we could come in, Mr. Archer?” Elliott said. “It would be a lot easier than discussing this in the doorway.”

  “Of course,” Carl said. “Please, make yourselves at home.” He gestured toward the living room.

  Elliott and Gloria sat on the sofa while Carl sat in an overstuffed easy chair, a coffee table between them. Gloria broke the ice by looking at the clipboard and then asking Carl what he remembered about the events leading up to his brother’s death three years earlier.

  “I remember when Kate first went missing,” Carl said. “Conrad was beside himself with grief and worry. And my god, when they found her all those months later and Conrad had to identify what was left of the body, well, he just came apart. I can unde
rstand why he wouldn’t have been in his right mind sometimes, like the day his car went down into that ravine.”

  “What about their son?” Elliott said, looking to Gloria for the name.

  Gloria looked at the yellow sheet again and then offered, “Clyde. According to our records he would have been about five years old when his mother died.”

  “Six actually,” Carl said. “He didn’t fully understand what had happened to his mother at first, but as he grew up, Conrad eventually explained everything to him.”

  “So that would make him, what?” Elliott said. “Somewhere in his late thirties by now?”

  “He’ll be forty in March,” Carl offered.

  “Does he still live in the area?” Gloria asked.

  “He and his family live in Glendale,” Carl said. “Carl works in the foundry right there in Glendale and his wife, Sarah works the counter at the Copper Penny coffee shop over on Colorado Boulevard. Jake, that’s their son, is still in high school. He’s a senior this year.”

  “Do you think Jake would mind if we stopped by to talk with him?” Elliott said. “I’m not sure how much he’d be able to tell us, but it’s usually the little details that end up making or breaking a case.”

  Carl shook his head. “I don’t think he’d mind,” he said. “If you like I can give you his address and phone number.”

  “That would be great,” Elliott said. “Do you know when we could find him home?”

  Carl glanced at his watch. “He should be there now,” he said. “Clyde works the graveyard shift, ten at night until six in the morning.” Carl grabbed a pencil and jotted down Clyde’s address and handed Gloria the slip of paper. She clipped it to the clipboard.

  Elliott and Gloria stood, shook Carl’s hand and thanked him for his time. The two of them slid back into the car and headed north toward Glendale.