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

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