Copp In The Dark, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) (5 page)

CHAPTER
EIGHT

It was a small but nice garden apartment less than ten minutes from the theater, all units at ground level with parking just outside the door.

      
Enroute
, Elaine seemed to warm up a bit and began telling me about a series of "incidents" involving Craig
Maan
which just seemed too "queer" to be accidents. The trouble had begun two weeks earlier and just a few days after the investor group had come forward with their offer to produce the show for a national road company.

      
As she told me about it, a new scenario began forming in my mind—not the one she was painting for me but an alternate explanation of the events. In fact, if I had not already known about Dobbs and Harney and their interest in Craig
Maan
, I could have easily believed that the guy was a total
phoney
and spinning fanciful and self- aggrandizing stories to his friends for his own amusement. I have known people to do that, for no other reason than that it made them feel more important and interesting, if only to themselves.

      
"He was involved in two hit-run car accidents," she explained, "and he was shot at on the freeway. The police

called it a random shooting. Can you believe that? Then his apartment caught fire while he was asleep in it and—"

      
"His apartment?" I interrupted. "Don't you two live together?"

      
"I told you our marriage is secret. Of course we don't live together. We talked about him moving in with me while his apartment is being reconditioned but then we decided it would be best if he just bunked around with the guys."

      
I said, "Did he bunk around with the guys for your honeymoon too, or is that also none of my business?"

      
"It's also none of your business."

      
"When was the fire?"

      
"Last weekend. Then on Tuesday, the day we all decided something had better be done to put a stop to all this, he was shot at again."

      
"Where?"

      
"In the parking lot outside the theater."

      
"So there would be witnesses to that."

      
"No. Craig had stayed behind to have a talk with the backers. He met them in the lounge after the show. Everybody had left the theater area by the time that was finished. I guess his car was the only one left over there at the time. So there were no witnesses. But the hotel security men heard the shot."

      
"Have you seen his apartment since the fire?"

      
"I have never seen his apartment."

      
I said, "Come on now, Elaine. You've been working opposite the guy for months, you say you married him, yet you've never seen his apartment?"

      
"I don't even know where he lives," she confided. "The address on his employment file is a fake."

      
"You checked that out?"

      
"Yes, I checked it out. I know what you're thinking, Joe, because I've thought it all myself. Craig has always been very mysterious about his personal life. I used to think he was just being theatrical or whatever, until today when he broke down and told us all about it."

      
"You're saying that you married the guy without knowing anything at all about him?"

      
"Well let's not talk about that, but yes I did. Leave it at that, please. Just find out who is behind all these attempts on his life, or at least try to keep him safe until we leave this area."

      
I said, "Do you know how nuts this all sounds? Have you been to the police?"

      
"No."

      
"Why not?"

      
"Craig would have come unglued. He told us about each of these incidents in the strictest confidence. We assumed that the police already knew about it. After all, I mean, he's a cop himself."

      
"Have you seen the damage to his car?"

      
"Yes."

      
"Bullet holes and all?"

      
"Yes."

      
"Any reason to wonder, at any time, if maybe Craig was just... you know, being dramatic?"

      
"Well yes, I already told you that I never knew whether to believe him or not, until just the past few days. He was always so mysterious and ... well, sure, I wondered about it."

      
"So why, suddenly, are you buying everything?"

      
"Well... we saw you get shot at."

      
"You did?"

      
"We saw the bullet holes. And the pictures in the paper."

      
"What did Craig say about it?"

      
"It scared him bad. He thought they'd actually been after him—mistook you for him, I mean."

      
"So you told him the truth about me then."

      
"No. Not until today. He'd already made up his mind about the show. He'd decided to bow out. I think he'd made up his mind to just leave town very quietly. We didn't think it would serve any purpose to tell him about you, not until we saw you this afternoon before the matinee."

      
"Why did that change anything?"

      
"We had to tell him. He thought you were a hit man and he was going to run right then. So we told him. We thought he'd be mad about it, but he wasn't. He went out and checked on you. He has access to the police files, you see. And that reassured him very much. So much that he had a complete change of heart. When he came in tonight to dress for the show, he told me that he'd decided to stay and fight back. He wasn't going to let anyone stand in his way. Then thirty minutes later he walked out. So I don't know what. . . nobody knows, we're totally mystified."

      
"Did you see him walk out?"

      
"Sure, we all saw him."

      
"So he went under his own steam."

      
"I guess so. The other guys went after him. Nobody came back and it was curtain time. So ..."

      
So, yeah.

      
We'd been sitting outside her apartment during the final half of that conversation.

      
We went inside then, and Elaine turned on the lights.

      
Craig
Maan
was there, seated on the couch.

      
Waiting for us in the dark, you might say—still made up for the stage but now totally naked and
tighdy
bound hand and foot—but I guess he hadn't minded any of that for long.

      
His throat had been slashed from ear to ear, and he'd been dead for quite awhile.

      
I silently apologized for my alternate scenario, and for all the uncomplimentary things I'd been thinking about the

guy-

      
A dream had ended there, yeah . . . and maybe a nightmare or two.

CHAPTER NINE

Since the crime scene was located in an unincorporated area of San Bernardino county, the police response was by the sheriff's department—and I happened to have a nodding acquaintance with the detective in charge of the initial investigation, guy named Art
Lahey
.

I took him aside and told him the circumstances as I understood them but cleaned up a bit for the sake of credibility, and suggested that he notify the FBI. I pointedly named special agents
Shenks
and
Osterman
, and
Lahey
took it all down.

Elaine was in a mild state of shock. She went that way at the first sight of the corpse and I had taken her back out to my car even before phoning in the find. Then I'd gone back inside to call it in and to look around on my own before the cops arrived. There was no sign of a struggle, no sign of forced entry, nothing apparently out of place or even disturbed. Except for the area around the couch, which was of course a bloody mess, the whole place was neat as a pin. There was only one bedroom and a small combo kitchen-dining-living room, tiny bathroom, but all very nice and feminine like an ad in Good Housekeeping.

      
She lived there alone, yeah, that much was obvious—no masculine articles of clothing or toiletries, nothing like that.

The responding patrolmen immediately evicted me to the front lawn and secured the scene with yellow tape, then we stood around and waited for the homicide response while I provided them with the data necessary for their patrol reports. I'd filled out several thousand such reports myself during a fifteen year police career, so I knew what they needed and that's all I gave them. The rest would keep for the detectives.

I was glad to see
Lahey
. Some of these guys can be real jerks sometimes but Art
Lahey
is a highly intelligent and coolheaded cop. We'd brushed official elbows a few times over the years and it had never been an unpleasant experience.

I went through the whole thing with him—all he needed to know at the moment, that is, including the angle on the U.S. Marshals—but to no great detail. It was obvious that Elaine Suzanne was in no condition to be questioned. I wanted to get her away from there, and I promised
Lahey
that I would produce her on demand. I pointed out that she had been virtually in my
sight
and on stage in front of hundreds of people throughout the evening, therefore she could not be a viable suspect.

He agreed and allowed me to take her away.

By then it was past midnight. I ran her by a friend of mine who practices medicine the old-fashioned way. She checked her out and gave me a few pills, told me to put her to bed and let her sleep it off. Elaine had said not a word to me since the discovery of the corpse in her living room, and I'd left her alone too, but she did talk a bit with

the doctor—"I'm fine"—"I’ll be okay"—"Thank you"—that sort of thing.

As we returned to my car, I asked her, "Where would you like to go?"

She replied in a monotone, "I don't know."

"Any family in the area?"

"Not anymore."

I sighed. "You can stay at my place tonight if you'd like."

"Okay," was all she said to that offer, and without any noticeable enthusiasm.
 

Don't know why I felt responsible for the kid, I just did. Well, she was sort of a client, I guess. A piece of an ex- client anyway. I still had the retainer. Dawned on me that I had failed. I shrugged it away. I'd never actually agreed to do anything, had been trying to return the money, had been jailed, fired, and sort of re-hired, but I'd never actually been given an opportunity to succeed or fail in anything. So why should I feel that I had failed anyone? I decided that I hadn't and that felt better, for a moment anyway.

I'd become involved in other lives, though, and it was never easy for me to insulate myself from people and their problems. Craig
Maan
, or whoever, was dead, sure, but the dead are never the problem. Death is the end of problems. It was fairly easy for me to let the dead go. My troubles were always with the living. I knew that, and I knew that I was opening myself to troubles but I couldn't just turn this kid out onto the street in the middle of the night and I knew damned well that she didn't want to go home even if she could, not with the dried blood of her dead "husband" dominating that small apartment.

So I took her to my place.

I live in an unincorporated area, too, but in L.A. county. Bought a house up in the hills overlooking the San Gabriel and Pomona valleys, did it at a great time before the development pressures became intense out that way, got it relatively cheap and now my equity is worth probably ten times what I have in the house. What's better, I'm not jammed in cheek to jowl with hordes of other people. I'm up there with the
horsey
set, and though I personally dislike horses myself—well, nothing against the horses, just their byproducts—the size and arrangement of the lots gives me privacy bordering on seclusion and there's plenty of room to stretch. My neighbors can't hear me peeing in my toilet—and not everybody in Southern California can say that. Best of all, I'm only a few minutes above every convenience our civilization can offer, so it's not like I'm isolated or deprived in any way. I even gave up my office space down below and moved it all into my bedroom since most of my business comes via telephone anyway and it's more comfortable at home, gives me more time for gardening and working in my woodshop.

Remind me to tell you sometime about my woodworking. Some day I may decide to make a living at it. Started as a hobby, something to keep me busy during slow times, but one thing led to another and I've done a few custom kitchens for hire and for some pretty good money. It's an option, if things get too ratty in police work or if I decide to take another bride. Marriage and police work don't mix well, I've found, at lest not for me and not for the women I've tried to mix into it.

Anyway, I took Elaine Suzanne to my castle in the hills with the intention of offering her the comfort of my

rollaway which I keep on hand for such occasions. I only have one bedroom now, knocked out some walls and did some radical restructuring inside to give me plenty of stretch—hate being confined—and for at least a presumption of luxury. Nothing wrong with luxury. I recommend it to everyone, even the poor. I'm poor, but you'd never know it to look at my house, so most of the time I don't know that I'm poor.

You get to it along this little tree-lined lane, past half a dozen other "estates" as the realtors call them, and dead- ending in a circle at my place. Hardly anybody ever comes back there unless they're lost or looking for me, and I consider that ideal.

There are drawbacks, of course. The area is not well lighted at night unless I go in and turn on my own floods— and the way the lots are staggered along die hillside and mixed in with the old trees that have stood there most of this century, you can get a feeling of total isolation and vulnerability to attack if you have any reason to expect such a thing.

Don't know where my head was, but I guess I wasn't expecting anything like that when Elaine and I rolled in there at about one
a.m.

I hit my garage-door opener at the usual twenty yards out and rolled on into the garage without a pause. It's attached but I have saws and lathes occupying the inner wall and blocking direct access to the house, so I have to go around to the front door to get inside.

No big deal, it's only about twenty paces out of the way, but it sure made things easy for the guy who was laying out there on the hillside waiting for me.

I heard the crack of the rifle and felt the big slug whistle past my nose as I rounded the comer of the garage with Elaine in tow. She'd taken a pill at the doctor's house and was sort of
loosey
-goosey halfway out of things and I was half-walking, half-dragging her toward the house when the attack came.

I took us both to the ground and rolled her ahead of me toward the doorway with bullets thwacking in all around us as the fusillade continued. I use the word fusillade advisedly; there were at least ten rounds, all from the same gun and obviously from a high power rifle, maybe a thirty- thirty. I know it made a mess of my stucco and penetrated the garage wall to tear into my woodworking tools, I discovered that later.

But we got inside untouched. I carried Elaine through to the bedroom and dropped her on the bed, ordered her to stay there, then I grabbed some firepower of my own and went out the back way to see what I could see.

I saw nothing, but I heard a car tearing along the lane above me and knew that the shooter was beating a hasty retreat. So much for that, but I'd spotted the muzzle flashes and I wanted a close look at the point of attack, went on up there on foot and found some still-hot expended brass that had been ejected from a thirty-
calibre
breech, took them back to the house and hurried in to reassure my guest for the night.

Except that I had no guest for the night.

She wasn't there—not on the bed, not in the bathroom, not anywhere inside that house or staggering along the lane or running down the highway.

Elaine Suzanne was simply nowhere.