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

by Bill Bernico

  “It might at that,” Elliott said.

  *****

  The next day Sergeant Anderson was released but spent the next six days recovering at home. They released Dean a week later and told him to come back in two more weeks to have the stitches removed and for one final examination.

  Upon his release from the hospital, Dean immediately went back to the twelfth precinct and stopped in to see Captain Blake. As promised, he turned in his resignation and also recommended Sergeant Anderson to fill his position. The captain accepted Dean’s resignation and told him he’d see what he could do about Anderson’s promotion but that he’d have to run it past the board first.

  Elliott, Clay and Gloria closed their office early one Friday night and drove over to Dean’s house to look in on him. Helen greeted them at the door and invited them into the living room, where Dean sat with his feet up on a padded hassock watching television. He turned off the set when his guests walked in, all smiles.

  “Something occurred to me the other day,” Clay said.

  “What’s that?” Dean said.

  “You really don’t have to return all those retirement party gifts now, do you?” Clay said. “You haven’t yet, have you?”

  “I’ve been too busy,” Dean said. “I was going to get to it but just never got around to it. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I was fishing last Friday and my waders sprung a leak,” Clay said. “I was just wondering if I could borrow yours.”

  “Then what am I going to use?” Dean said. “I thought I was going to be your new fishing buddy?”

  “I guess I can have mine patched and make them last another season,” Clay said. You going to be ready first thing tomorrow?”

  Dean shook his head. “The doctor says I have to take it easy for another couple of weeks yet so I don’t strain my injury. Then we can hit the streams.”

  Helen came into the room with a tray of drinks in her hands. “Lemonade anyone,” she said, setting the tray on the coffee table. Everyone took a glass and sipped from it. They all agreed it was good and held onto their glasses.

  Elliott turned to Dean. “Did you ever get the full story on that whacked out family of killers?” he said.

  “Yes,” Dean said. “Lieutenant Anderson stopped by here yesterday to thank me for recommending him for the lieutenant’s position and to fill me in on the case.”

  Gloria leaned in closer. “What made them feel the need to kill so many people?” she said.

  “Well,” Dean said. “From what they learned, apparently it wasn’t a recent thing. This family, at least the mother and father, had been killing people for years without detection. The kid found out about his parents’ murderous ways and thought it would be cool to try it himself. The nut apparently doesn’t fall far from the tree in this case.”

  “Do you think Clyde’s parents dying in the same general area set him off in the first place?” Elliott said.

  “Hard to tell,” Dean said. “Clyde’s not talking much these days from beyond the grave and his wife and kid have both clammed up. What they have is mostly speculation but they think it might have played a part in Clyde falling off the deep end. We may never know the whole story, but at least they won’t be killing any more innocent people. Sarah Archer was sent to prison and is not eligible for parole until she’s at least eighty-five and even then they don’t think she’ll make parole.”

  “What about the kid?” Gloria said. “He was just seventeen when this all happened. Any chance he’ll ever walk free again?”

  “They sent him to juvenile hall,” Dean said. “He’ll be there until he turns eighteen in a couple of months and then he’ll be transferred to San Quentin to serve out the rest of his sentence.”

  Three months later Elliott had been reading the paper back in his office when he came across an interesting article on page three. He folded the paper in half and turned to Gloria. “Listen to this,” he said, turning back to the article. “Jacob Archer, eighteen, was found hanged in his cell in San Quentin prison. His bed sheet had been knotted around his neck. The other end had been tied to his upended cot frame. Archer and his parents Sarah, forty-eight and Clyde, forty-nine had all been involved in several murders in Los Angeles this year. Clyde Archer was shot dead by a police officer at the Archer home while Sarah Archer is still in prison for her part in the brutal slayings of at least nine people.”

  Elliott put the paper down on his desk and leaned back in his chair. “I guess it’s true what they say,” he told Gloria.

  “And what’s that?” Gloria said.

  Elliott smirked and said, “The family that preys together slays together.”

  “And pays together,” Gloria said.

  Elliott straightened up in his chair and reached for his phone.

  “Who are you calling?” Gloria said.

  Elliott sighed. “I suddenly got this urge to talk to my dad,” he said, and dialed the number.

  75 - Next

  “I’ll bet you could fry an egg on this pavement,” Elliott said. “It must be ninety-eight in the shade. I told you we should have bought a soda before we got in line for this ride.”

  Gloria shrugged. “The line didn’t look that long when we got in it,” she said. “But once you get past the barriers it’s too late to turn back. I didn’t know there were another five hundred people ahead of us.”

  “These amusement parks are all the same,” Elliott said. “They herd you in like cattle and make you wind around a maze of chains and barriers. By the time you get to the ride, you forget which ride you were standing in line for.”

  “Next,” the ride attendant barked, herding two dozen more riders toward the thrill of their life.

  Elliott shifted his feet and leaned against the railing, looking up. There was a metal structure resembling a tower with six sets of seats, each holding four people, ascending two hundred feet straight up into the air. In a matter of seconds twenty-four people were looking down on him and Gloria from their lofty perch, their legs dangling beneath them. A few seconds later the latches securing the seats let loose and the screaming riders descended in a free fall. Fifty feet from the bottom, the brakes grabbed and the ride slowed down until the riders were back on the firm asphalt.

  “Next,” The ride attendant said without enthusiasm or expression.

  “Eighty-five seconds,” Elliott said, looking at his watch.

  Gloria gave him a curious look.

  “Eighty-five seconds,” Elliott repeated. “It takes exactly eighty-five seconds from the time you sit down until you’re off the ride and the next bunch gets on. You spend twenty seconds getting pulled to the top, five seconds paused at the top, three seconds free falling and another twelve coming down that last fifty feet. Throw in another forty-five seconds herding out the riders and seating the next bunch and you got eighty-five seconds between bunches. Call it ninety seconds—a minute and a half.”

  “Amazing,” Gloria said. “The sign out front said there was a ninety minute wait from that point. How many people would have to be in line to cause a ninety-minute delay?”

  “Well, let’s see,” Elliott said. “Twenty-four riders per round times two rounds, that would make it forty-eight people every three minutes.”

  Gloria jumped in, “Times thirty would give you the ninety minutes,” she said. “So what’s forty-eight times thirty?”

  Elliott wrote on his invisible blackboard, running his fingers through the air and drawing a line under his imaginary figures. “That’s four, carry the two, times…” he said. His mental calculator kicked in. “Fourteen hundred and forty people.” He and Gloria whistled in unison.

  Gloria and Elliott inched their way around the last turn in the maze. There were maybe sixty people between them and the head of the line. All heads tilted skyward again as the next twenty-four nervous riders rose into the sky.

  “What’s this?” Gloria asked.

  “It looks like a service entrance for the ride attendants,” Elliott said, looking at t
he gate to his left. Past the gate he could see a small gravel path leading to somewhere behind the adjacent attraction. It wound around to the right and disappeared behind a man-made boulder that sported a sign that said Mine Shaft. “Maybe we should have come this way and avoided the other six hundred people,” Elliott said, half joking.

  “That would have saved us half an hour in line,” Gloria said.

  The screams of the free falling riders echoed above them as something caught the corner of Elliott’s eye. Coming up the gravel service path he could see two men. They approached the gate, looking back and forth nervously as they got closer. One of them opened the gate and they both stepped into the line directly ahead of Gloria and Elliott. The bigger of the two closed the gate silently and stood there looking up at the next set of riders as if he’d been there all along.

  The taller of the two looked to be in his mid-twenties with dirty brown hair and a short-sleeved shirt that helped display several tattoos. He wore blue jeans over biker boots. His partner was three inches shorter and forty pounds heavier. The elastic in his baseball cap was straining to contain the fat head beneath it. His tee shirt didn’t quite reach his belt and the extra forty pounds he had over his partner hung over his belt like bread dough rising on an open oven door.

  They snickered at each other at the thought of avoiding hundreds of people and an hour in line. They both looked at Elliott as he opened his mouth to say something. The fat one came nose to nose with Elliott, his breath making Elliott’s eyes water. “You look like you wanted to say something,” Fat Boy said. “Do you want to say something?” He held a clenched fist up to Elliott’s nose.

  Elliott looked at him and his partner and then over at Gloria. He decided it wasn’t worth the trouble they could cause us if he challenged them so he said nothing and stepped back. It was times like these that Elliott wished he could wear his .38 wherever he went, on duty or off. But even private detectives aren’t allowed to bring firearms into the park.

  Gloria didn’t share my passive attitude. Her eyebrows turned up and her eyes showed her rage. “You can’t just butt in line ahead of us,” she said, like a little banty rooster. “You get out of here or we’ll call the security guard.” She held her ground and waited for a reaction from the taller one. He just laughed at the tenacious little woman.

  Elliott turned around and pushed Gloria back away from the two low-lifes. “Forget it,” Elliott whispered. “They’re not worth it. We’ll get on the ride just as quick and this’ll all be behind us in a few minutes.”

  “But…” Gloria started to say.

  Elliott placed his finger to his lips and shook his head. “Come on,” he said, “the line’s moving again.”

  “Next,” the ride attendant barked again.

  They advanced with the surging crowd toward the front of the line. People anxious to get their turn kept pushing and forced them ahead into the fat man ahead of Elliott. He turned around, as Elliott was about to excuse himself for being pushed into the man.

  “You sure you don’t want to say something, pencil neck?” Fat Boy said. He grabbed Elliott’s shirt in front and bunched it up in his fist, raising Elliott up onto his toes. He released his grip and pushed Elliott back, still laughing.

  Elliott backed up and gave him his space. The last set of riders exited and the next set took their seats on the ride. Elliott and Gloria were sure to be among the next twenty-four riders and thirty seconds after that, they’d be away from here and away from the two idiots in front of them.

  “Next,” the ride attendant bellowed.

  Nervous giggles followed the screams of the riders as they left the ride in search of other heart-stopping thrills. Their line moved again and Gloria and Elliott moved forward. People scrambled for their seats, trying to position themselves for the best view from the top. The two tuffs ambled toward the ride in a walk that would have made John Wayne look like a pansy.

  Gloria and Elliott approached the gate, ready to find a seat for themselves. The attendant lowered the barrier in front of them. “That’s all for this ride,” he said, trying to sound important. “Step back folks.”

  Gloria spun me around, “Those should have been our spots on the ride,” she said angrily. “Those two goons got our spots.”

  “Will you let it alone?” Elliott said. “In a minute and a half we’ll be up there enjoying the view. Have a little patience, will ya?”

  “But there’s two empty seats on that ride,” Gloria said. “We could have been…”

  “Shhh,” Elliott said, “You wanna sit next to them? Looks like nobody does. Look up there.” Elliott pointed to the people ascending the tower. “Let’s just watch their faces and try to have fun, okay?”

  The ride stopped at the top of the tower and paused to let the riders gaze at the skyline thirty miles to the east. The six latches released the seats simultaneously as twenty-four riders free fell toward the earth at terminal velocity. At the sixty-foot mark, the brakes took hold and slowed five of the seats to a safe, slow descent. The sixth seat, holding the two wise-guy idiots screeched and scraped and Elliott heard an attendant barking.

  “Look out,” he yelled, stepping back.

  The sixth car’s brakes held enough to keep the seat from disintegrating into the asphalt, but it slammed the ground at a much higher rate of speed than the designers had intended. Several attendants and security guards rushed over to the damaged seat and the two bullies who were now crying out in pain.

  Within a couple of minutes an ambulance pulled up next to the ride and two attendants in white brought the stretcher over to where the two men sat, waiting to be released from their harnesses. The taller, thinner man was laid out on the stretcher and loaded into the back of the ambulance before it pulled away. A second ambulance took its place and two more men in white hurried over to where workers tried to free the fat bully from his seat.

  It took almost ten minutes to free the man from the ride and get him onto the stretcher. By now the crowds had swarmed the area, making transporting of the patient difficult. The attendants slowly inched past us with the stretcher. They stopped momentarily to allow security guards to clear the crowd. Gloria and Elliott looked down at the man who’d moments earlier given us so much grief. His neck was wrapped in a stiff, white collar to help immobilize his head movements. He looked up at me with tears in his eyes and tried to open his mouth.

  Elliott smiled back at him and said, “You look like you wanted to say something,” Elliott told him. “Do you want to say something?”

  The man said nothing. He just winced in pain as the stretcher moved on toward the ambulance. Behind them, the line for the ride had disappeared and several ride attendants looked at the failed ride. Ahead of them two thousand people disbursed into the park. The sun began to drop in the western sky and storm clouds appeared above.

  “Ready to go home?” Elliott said, putting his arm around Gloria.

  76 - Change Of Heart

  I got in early this morning so I could peruse the morning paper at my leisure without any interruptions. Sometimes when Gloria was here with me, she would ask for a section of the paper or interrupt me with questions about something work related or else she’d just want to talk when I didn’t. Well, this morning I’d have thirty quiet minutes alone with my paper. It would be worth getting up early to have the paper complete read by the time Gloria came in.

  I’d finished the front section as well as the business section and the comics. I really had no interest in the sports section and set that aside. The back section was all that was left, and as long as I still had five minutes to myself, I decided to give it a quick look. I skimmed past the editorials and the classified ads and turned to the obituary page just for the hell of it. Whenever I looked at someone’s obituary, the first thing I’d do is subtract my age from theirs and try to get a general idea of how many years I still had left before someone would be reading about me on this page.

  I was just about to fold up the paper when something cau
ght my eye and made me look closer. The name on the last obituary was Gloria Campbell. I sat upright in my chair and bent over the paper, reading through the obit as fast as I could. It mentioned that Miss Campbell was just thirty-one and went on to mention those who preceded her in death and those she’d left behind.

  My heart raced as I quickly scanned the rest of the article. The office door opened and Gloria walked in whistling a familiar tune. She stopped whistling when she saw my face.

  “You look as though you just saw a ghost,” Gloria said.

  I held the folded section of paper up in my left hand and pointed at it with my right index finger. “You, you…” was all I could manager to squeak out.

  “You, you?” Gloria said. “What happened to ‘good morning, Gloria’ or at least a warm smile?”

  I laid the paper down on my desk and got up to meet my fiancé and business partner. I gave her a warm hug and held on tight. I didn’t doubt that Gloria could feel my rapid heartbeat or my quickened pulse. She pushed me away from her and backed up a step.

  “What’s gotten into you, Elliott?” she said. “You’re acting awfully strange, even for you.”

  I still had a hold of both of Gloria’s hands and as if on automatic involuntary impulse, I blurted out, “Gloria, will you marry me?”

  A puzzled look played over Gloria’s face. “You’ve already asked me this question,” she said. “And I’ve already said yes, remember? We’re already engaged.”

  “No,” I said. “I mean right now, today. Will you marry me?”

  She held her palm against my forehead and paused. “No,” she said. “You’re not running a fever.” She ran her hand over my skull. “No, I don’t feel any lumps. You didn’t hit your head. Let’s see, what else could it be?”

  Before she could examine me further, I snatched up the folded paper section and handed it to her. She looked at it for a moment and then said, “Aw, poor Mr. Fletcher passed away, and he was only ninety-seven. Talk about cut down in your prime.”