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

by Bill Bernico

  “Skip, it’s Matt Cooper.”

  “Matt, I was just going to call you,” Skip said. “What’s up?”

  “I have another meeting across town and I wanted to check with you first, so I don’t have to wait by the phone. When can we get together?”

  Skip flipped his own desk calendar and said, “How does tomorrow work for you? Let’s say around eleven-thirty?”

  “Perfect,” Matt said. “Unless this call I’m going on is going to take longer than I thought. Either way I’ll let you know before tomorrow. Thanks Skip.”

  Matt hung up and called Kevin back. “Kevin, Matt. I pushed back my meeting with the other guy until tomorrow. How’s ten minutes from now in your office?”

  “We’ll be waiting for you,” Kevin said.

  Matt made it in twelve minutes. He had hit all the traffic lights wrong and apologized for the time when he walked into Kevin’s office. Kevin gestured toward a tall man in a blue uniform with gold bars on the shoulders. “Matt Cooper, I’d like you to meet Captain Lindsey from the Burbank Police Department. Captain Lindsey, this is Matt Cooper.”

  The two men shook hands and settled into their respective seats around a conference table at the other end of Kevin’s office. Kevin began the round of comments. “Matt,” he began, “the captain and I were talking about the connection between his three murders and the three that occurred here in Hollywood and we’ve decided that there is definitely a connection between them. Whether or not the two killers know each other is still in doubt, but it’s beginning to look like they do. As you and I discussed, it could be just one copycat killer trying to match the style of the other.”

  “Have you determined which murders came first?” Matt said.

  Captain Lindsey nodded and added, “That woman with her throat slit was the first murder in Burbank.”

  “And it was the first murder here in Hollywood,” Kevin added. “Our coroners have consulted on both cases and have determined that the Hollywood killing happened first, some seven hours before the Burbank killing.”

  That immediately sent shivers up Matt’s spine. “Seven hours?” he said. “The Hollywood murder wouldn’t even have made the papers by the time that second murder occurred. It sounds to me like these two killers would have to know about each other, otherwise how would the second guy know how to duplicate the first guy’s acts?”

  “Exactly,” Kevin said. “And certain details about the murders were never made public, so the second killer could only have gotten that information from the first killer.”

  “Do the other two, or should I say, four murders follow the same time lapse frame with the Hollywood version coming before the Burbank counterpart?” Matt said.

  “Right down the line,” Kevin said. “Each Burbank murder came at least six to eight hours after the Hollywood murder. And so far this second guy is matching the first guy move for move.”

  “And why are you telling me all this?” Matt said. “Is there something you think I can contribute to your efforts?”

  “Well,” Kevin said. “Captain Lindsey suggested that maybe you could work with some of his men on this. He’s a little short handed lately and could use another sharp mind. I suggested you. What do you think, Matt?”

  “Who’s footing the bill for my services?” Matt said.

  “The City of Burbank will underwrite your fees,” Captain Lindsey assured him. “That is, within reason.”

  “I get two hundred fifty dollars a day,” Matt said.

  Captain Lindsey’s brows furrowed. “I don’t think we have quite that much in the budget, Mr. Cooper. I think I could manage to convince them to pay a hundred.” He waited for Matt’s reaction but quickly added, “Plus expenses.”

  Matt knew he could make more privately, but for one, business had not been that lucrative lately, and for two, this was more important than chasing after some cheating husband. He extended his hand to the captain. “I can work with that,” Matt said. “Where would you like me to start?”

  Captain Lindsey handed Matt two business cards. One had his name on it and the other was for a sergeant named Maddox. “Go see Sergeant Maddox at the fifth precinct. He’ll set you up with everything you’ll need to get started. And thank you for your help with this case, Mr. Cooper.”

  “Can you do one more thing for me, Captain?” Matt said.

  “If I can,” Lindsey said. “What is it?”

  “Please, call me Matt.”

  “Very well, Matt,” the captain said and then rose from the table. He turned and shook Kevin’s hand. “Let’s stay in contact on this,” he told Kevin and left the office.

  Kevin turned to Matt and said, “You be careful out there. These guys are playing for keeps.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Matt said and returned to his car.

  When he got back to his office, Matt called Skip back and asked if he could postpone their meeting for a few more days. “Something came up that’s going to tie me up for a while,” Matt explained. “I don’t know when I’ll be available again, so we’ll have to just play it by ear.”

  “Not a problem, Matt,” Skip assured him. “I can look at your car any time. From what you described, it shouldn’t give you any major problems before I can tune it up. Just take it a little easier until I can go over it.”

  “Thanks, Skip,” Matt said. “I’ll call you.”

  He had no sooner hung up his phone when Benny came in, carrying a manila folder. Benny looked at Matt and then hurried over to his desk and pulled the middle drawer open. He looked up at Matt sheepishly. “I forgot to take along my expense sheet.”

  “Well, I’ve got to leave now myself,” Matt said. “I’ll leave the machine on, but if you need to reach me, try my cell.”

  “Got a case?” Benny said.

  “Yeah,” Matt said. “I’ll be working with the Burbank police for a while on those copycat killings.”

  “Oh man,” Benny said. “And here I am stuck with Mrs. Wooster and her non-cheating husband.” He sighed, tucked the expense sheet into the manila folder and left the office again, mumbling something to himself as he walked toward the elevator.

  Matt switched on the answering machine, patted his underarm holster, assuring himself that it was still there, and locked up the office. He drove to Burbank, parking in the lot behind the building. Once inside, he walked up to the desk sergeant and handed him the card that Captain Lindsey had given him. “I’d like to see Sergeant Maddox, please,” Matt said.

  “Is he expecting you?” the desk sergeant said.

  “I’m pretty sure he is,” Matt explained. “Captain Lindsey sent me over here to talk with him.”

  “Hold on a minute, I’ll buzz his office.” The desk sergeant said something into the phone and then hung up, turning back to Matt. He pointed down the hall and said, “Second door on your right.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” Matt said and found the second door. He knocked and was invited in.

  “Mr. Cooper?” Sergeant Vincent Maddox said.

  Matt nodded. “That’s right. Captain Lindsey sent me over to see you.”

  “I know,” Maddox said. “I just got off the phone with him. Have a seat, please.”

  Matt sat and looked around the office. This guy had to be a bachelor from the way this room had been decorated with no-nonsense furniture and nothing remotely frilly on the walls or desk tops. Either that or this was his way to rebel against the way a wife would have decorated his home. Matt put those silly thoughts aside and waited for the sergeant to speak.

  “Mr. Cooper,” Maddox began, “Captain Lindsey tells me that it was you who made the connection between our three killings and the three in Hollywood.”

  Matt explained about the basketball game he’d been having with his son when the connection occurred to him. “What is it you’d like me to do for your department, Sergeant?”

  “I have some of my men canvassing the neighborhood, asking questions about the nights that the three murders took place,” Maddox s
aid. “It’s a big job and that’s where we could really use your help. I don’t have enough men to cover all the neighborhoods and I was hoping you could start out by checking with the residents on some of the nearby streets to see if any of them saw something that might help us with our investigations.”

  “That’s what I do best,” Matt said. “Just give me the locations and I’ll get started right away.”

  The sergeant pulled a sheet of paper out of his printer and handed it over to Matt. “You can start with the first address on this list. I had the computer map out the most efficient route for you so you’d have a minimal amount of backtracking. That list should keep you busy for the rest of today. If you finish early, just stop back here and I’ll see if I have any more locations for you to cover.”

  Matt folded the sheet twice the long way and tucked it into his jacket pocket. He shook the sergeant’s hand and thanked him for his time before he returned to his car. Matt switched on his GPS and entered the first address into it. It took him just eight minutes to drive to that address. He parked his car on the street and walked up to the first house on the list.

  A woman answered the door, opening only as far as the chain would allow. She looked at Matt suspiciously. “Yes?” she said.

  Matt produced his badge and I.D. and introduced himself, explaining that he was working with the Burbank police on the three murders that had happened recently in this neighborhood. “I was wondering if I could ask you just a few questions about three specific nights.”

  “Okay,” the woman said, still staying behind the chained door.

  Matt didn’t press the issue but jumped right in with his questions. “On the night of May twenty-first at approximately,” he looked down at his fact sheet on the first murder and continued, “ten-thirty, would you have heard or seen anything unusual in this neighborhood?”

  “Unusual?” the woman said. “Unusual how?”

  “Any strange noises, unfamiliar people, anything out of the ordinary?”

  The woman shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I usually go to bed before ten so I wouldn’t have heard anything by ten-thirty. Sorry.”

  “Well, thank you for your cooperation anyway,” Matt said. “If you think of anything or hear of anything from any of your neighbors, please call Sergeant Maddox at the fifth precinct.”

  Matt walked off the porch and over to the next house to the east, crossing off the address of the first house. He went through the same series of question with this homeowner and got almost the same results. He tried every house on that block and still came up empty. He was beginning to get discouraged as he crossed the street and tried the first house on that side. He got nothing he could use from the next five houses. At the sixth house, the man who answered the door seemed more receptive than his neighbors. He invited Matt inside.

  Matt asked him the same questions he’d asked his neighbors and had expected to get the same disappointing results but was surprised when the man said, “Come to think of it, I did hear something rather peculiar that night. I thought it was probably just a stray cat or maybe a rat, but the noise came from the alley behind my house.” He looked at Matt with wonder in his eyes. “I heard they found that poor woman murdered just a block from here. How terrible that must have been.”

  “Yes,” Matt agreed. “We’re checking with all the neighbors around here. What can you tell me about that night?”

  The man thought for a moment and then said, “I think it was around ten-twenty or ten-thirty. I’m not sure of the exact time. Anyway, I was getting ready for bed when I heard a sound coming from the alley behind my house. Like I said, I thought it might be a cat or even a rat, but there was too much noise for that. I looked out the kitchen window and thought I saw someone running up the alley toward that end of the block.” He pointed toward the corner where Matt had crossed the street. “A few seconds later I didn’t hear anything else. If there was someone back there, he was long gone before I could even open the back door and say anything.”

  “Did you tell this to the police?” Matt asked.

  “I mentioned it to an officer the next day when while I was visiting my friend down the street,” the man said.

  “The police have already been to this neighborhood?” Matt said, somewhat surprised.

  “Well, they mostly checked with the people on the next block, you know, closer to where it happened. I had stopped in to see Leroy; he’s the friend I just mentioned. Anyway, while I was there a policeman came to the door asking questions about the night before. Leroy said he hadn’t heard or seen anything unusual and then this cop asked me and I told him about the noise behind my house but I never heard anything about it after that.”

  “Well, thank you for your time, sir,” Matt said and left. He interviewed three more people in this block with no better luck than he’d had earlier. When he walked up to the last house on the block he saw a man sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch. The man had a can of beer in one hand and was smoking a cigarette with the other. On a small table next to the rocker sat an open box of a dozen donuts. Eight of them were gone. Mat had already formed a mental opinion of this guy before he even spoke to him.

  “Good morning, sir,” Matt said as he approached. He showed the man his badge and I.D. card and asked if he could speak with him for a minute. The man agreed and gestured with his beer can at a second chair on the porch. Matt declined, thanking him but telling him he wouldn’t be here long enough to sit.

  The man held up his can of beer. “Care for a can of suds?”

  Matt held up both palms. “No thank you,” he said. “I was wondering if…”

  “How about a cigarette,” the man said, showing Matt the one that burned between his fingers.

  “Thanks, I don’t smoke,” Matt told him.

  “At least have yourself one of them donuts.”

  “No thank you,” Matt said, making up another excuse to decline. “I gave them up.”

  The man laughed out loud. “I knew a man who gave up drinking, smoking, rich food and sex.”

  “Is that so?” Matt said, not really caring if he got a reply.

  “That’s right. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.” He laughed again and took another sip of beer, even as the cigarette still hung from the corner of his mouth.

  Matt went through the same questions he’d asked a dozen other neighbors so far and got nothing he could use from this poor excuse of a human being. The guy was probably passed out at the time and couldn’t have heard the woman’s screams if she’d been killed in his living room at the time. Matt thanked him and walked back down off the porch and back to his car. He crossed this last guy off his list and drove back to the fifth precinct to see Sergeant Maddox.

  Sergeant Maddox took the used list back from Matt and filed it in the manila folder. He pulled out the second sheet and asked Matt if he’d like to cover another neighborhood yet today. Matt took the second sheet from him and told him that he’d start on it right after lunch. “Some of the people I spoke with told me that they’d already talked to an officer the next day. Why was I covering ground that’s already been covered?”

  “My men talked to a few people in the immediate vicinity that day, but we never got a chance to do a thorough canvass of everybody in that neighborhood,” Maddox explained. “I guess you could call what you’re doing, the detail work, for lack of a better phrase.”

  Matt nodded. “All right. I’ll get back to it after I get something in my stomach. It’s beginning to grumble.” He left the Sergeant’s office with the new list of names and addresses and drove to a coffee shop he passed on his way back to the station. It was already after one o’clock by the time Matt slid into a booth and ordered his lunch with a glass of chocolate milk. The waitress brought the glass of milk separately and returned to fill his food order. As Matt sat looking out the window, a familiar figure walked past and waved to him. It was Tom Bowers on his way in to work. Tom walked into the coffee shop and fou
nd Matt at the booth. Matt invited him to sit. Tom checked his watch and then slid in across from his brother-in-law.

  “Another day, another donut,” Matt said and then chuckled.

  “I never heard that one before,” Tom said.

  “Really?”

  “Only every day since I started,” Tom said. “I wonder who started this whole cop-donut connection anyway. People just naturally assume that all cops are donut freaks.”

  “You have to admit, they are a good choice for people on the run, like cops. I mean it’s not like eggs and toast, where you have to leave it on the table and dash out to answer a call. The donut could come with you on your way to the traffic accident. You can bite down on it and still have two hands free to extricate an accident victim from his car.”

  “All right,” Tom said. “I get it. What are you doing in Burbank today?”

  “Actually,” Matt said, “I’m canvassing the neighborhood for Sergeant Maddox, trying to find out if anyone can add anything to what they already know about that first killing.”

  “Why’d they ask you?”

  “I guess the sergeant is short handed and just wanted a fresh approach to the neighbors,” Matt explained. “So far I’m coming up with a big fat goose egg. I got a second sheet with a list of names to check.” He showed Tom the sheet.

  Tom looked over the list of addresses and handed it back to Matt. “Good luck with that. That’s a pretty rough neighborhood.”

  “Do you have time for some coffee?” Matt asked.

  “I have to start my shift at two,” Tom said, “but I guess I have time for just one cup.” He flagged the waitress down and held up the coffee cup that was already on the table. She filled it and left again. Tom stirred in some creamer and sipped.

  “You still liking the job?” Matt asked.

  Tom nodded. “I really do,” he said. “It can get a little monotonous at times, but all in all it’s a great job.”

  “Just wait until you’re past your probation period and you get out there on some really interesting cases,” Matt said. “That’ll get the old juices flowing.”