Copp In The Dark, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) by Don Pendleton Read Free Book Online Page A

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