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

at... ?"
           "It's an eight-thirty curtain."
           "So about three hours later you found him dead."
           "About that, yeah."
           "You called it in immediately."
           "Yeah. Well, within a couple of minutes. The girl was
    overcome so I took her back to the car. Then I went straight back inside and called it in."
           "The log shows the call received at eleven thirty-three."
           "Sounds like it," I said.
           "So you had just met her for the first time about thirty minutes earlier."
           "That's right."
           "Even so, you made a pitch on her behalf and took responsibility for her, took her away."
           I said, "It seemed the thing to do, Art. She was a client, sort of."
           "So you said. You took her to your own doctor. Why not to the emergency room?"
           "You know how that goes. We'd have been there all night. My doctor was closeby , and it took five minutes."
           "What medication did the doctor give her?"
           "Think she said it was seconal . I still have a couple of the pills at home, probably, in the clothes I was wearing last night. What's this all about, Art?"
           "Just shut up."
           I said, "Fuck you, don't ask me a thousand questions you've already asked and then tell me to shut up. Where are we headed?"
           "Well see."
           But I already knew, I thought, where we were headed. We were near Rancho Cucamonga by then and approaching the apartment complex where I'd found the body of Craig Maan .
           But I was in for a bit of a surprise. We went on past the scene of that crime and whipped around a corner to another section of the complex.
           It looked very much the same as the other. Yellow tape was strung about the outside of the building and there were cops all over the place.
           I asked Lahey , "What the hell is this?"
           "Guess," he said.
           "That's all I've done for three days," I told him.
           "Then you shouldn't mind a few minutes more," he growled.
           But I did. I minded it all to hell.
           Four more murder victims were at that scene. And I recognized them all.
          
           All were nude, three guys and a gal, and if you could believe the evidence, they'd all died in the midst of a sexual orgy. Blood was everywhere throughout that small apartment, spattered onto the walls and even the ceilings though all four bodies lay in a heap on a large waterbed. Drug paraphernalia were scattered about, as were small plastic packets of a white powder that looked like cocaine. A video camera was positioned on a tripod near the bed with the power still on and the monitor displaying the hellish scene, although the VCR to which the camera was attached was not now functioning.
           All four victims had been repeatedly slashed and stabbed.
           I identified them as Elaine Suzanne, Peter Stein who played Pedro, Jesus Sanchez who played Sancho — Quixote's faithful manservant—and James Peterson, one of the Muleteers.
           I asked Lahey , "Is there a tape in that VCR?"
           "Seems to be," he replied. "Well let the forensics people check it out. Don't you touch a damned thing in here."
           I was not about to touch a damned thing in there, didn't want my prints left on any of it.
           "How long dead?" I asked him.
           "Don't know yet. The call came down just before I picked you up. Hasn't been time for the coroner to respond. What would you say?"
           I'm no forensics expert but I'd seen enough stiffs in my time to guess. "Quite awhile. Can we get out of here?"
           "Lost your stomach for it, Joe?" Lahey asked quietly.
           "Never developed one," I told him.
           We went outside and stood in the grass to await the forensics team. Lahey went over to talk with one of