Copp On Fire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp, Private Eye Series) by Don Pendleton Page B
Authors: Don Pendleton
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house?
There was no evidence of a search by anyone. Everything seemed to be in place.
I did not call it in and I did not hang around. Dead is dead, I could do nothing for them now. I could do something for myself, though. I left everything exactly the way I'd found it, even the front door ajar, and I got away from there, groceries and all.
Some crazy son of a bitch was running wild, killing wild, and I had the sick feeling that somehow I'd helped launch this thing. I could do nothing about that now—but for sure I could try to stop it.
I've never been able to take death casually, not any death anywhere for any reason, not even death in bed from old age. A police psychologist once tried to tell me that was because I feared death so much for myself, but that's a crock. I think it's because I learned at an early age and through personal experience that death is always a personal loss to everyone left alive. Today we take death too casually. Murder is no longer a heinous crime. In this state now there even has to be "special circumstances" before a prosecutor can request for the death penalty.
But murder is a heinous crime because it takes something irreplaceable from all of us, whether or not we know the victim. Murder touches us all in some fine way. Ken Forta is no longer around to pull your baby from a burning building or to stop a drunk driver twenty seconds before he would've slammed into a school bus carrying your kids and all your neighbor's kids. He isn't here now to coach a Pop Warner team or to take a brotherly interest in screwed-up teen-agers or to turn a street gang onto a Toys for Tots drive next Christmas.
It touches us all, pal, each of us and all of us in many fine ways. We're all in this thing together and the loss is real for all of us when any of us takes the tumble. Try to remember that the next time you have to wait a couple of minutes at an intersection for a funeral procession; instead of impatience, try a little grief for a stranger whose death has diminished you.
Of course I was thinking in no such terms at the moment. I was just mad as hell and scared as hell ... I came down out of the hills and onto the Foothills Freeway, cruising west and starting to think like a cop again with Abe Johnson's abstract open on the seat beside me. San Marino leapt to my eye as the home of Justine Wiseman and because it was just a few minutes down the pike. It's one of the more affluent areas, sort of a Beverly Hills East with extensive neighborhoods of stately homes and million-dollar estates. Some of the movie people live out there. It was on my way and I was in rush-hour traffic—which isn't all that different anymore from midnight traffic or midmorning traffic; it's always bumper-to- bumper; there's just more stop-and-go during rush-hour—so I got off the freeway at Huntington and cruised past Santa Anita and on to San Marino. The surface routes were not much clearer than the freeway, but at least there's some justification for stop-and-go there so it doesn't affect my blood pressure as much.
It was about five o'clock when I found the Wiseman residence—not Bernard's anymore but still Justine's. He'd moved to Bel Air when they separated, poor guy, had to give up one stately mansion and start all over in another—the American Dream in Southern California, his-and-hers mansions.
This one was no slouch by any standards, not even Bel Air's. It gives me a shiver to even try to guess the current market value of such digs. I pulled the old Cad onto the circular drive and left it under the canopy at the front door behind a gleaming Mercedes SL. A uniformed Chicano maid answered my ring, a lovely young woman with glowing dark eyes that dulled a bit at the sight of my ID. Her English probably was not up to the fine distinction between public and private badges, so I didn't try to draw it.
She left me standing in the marbled foyer amid exotic potted trees and museum-quality objets d'art while she went to fetch the
There was no evidence of a search by anyone. Everything seemed to be in place.
I did not call it in and I did not hang around. Dead is dead, I could do nothing for them now. I could do something for myself, though. I left everything exactly the way I'd found it, even the front door ajar, and I got away from there, groceries and all.
Some crazy son of a bitch was running wild, killing wild, and I had the sick feeling that somehow I'd helped launch this thing. I could do nothing about that now—but for sure I could try to stop it.
I've never been able to take death casually, not any death anywhere for any reason, not even death in bed from old age. A police psychologist once tried to tell me that was because I feared death so much for myself, but that's a crock. I think it's because I learned at an early age and through personal experience that death is always a personal loss to everyone left alive. Today we take death too casually. Murder is no longer a heinous crime. In this state now there even has to be "special circumstances" before a prosecutor can request for the death penalty.
But murder is a heinous crime because it takes something irreplaceable from all of us, whether or not we know the victim. Murder touches us all in some fine way. Ken Forta is no longer around to pull your baby from a burning building or to stop a drunk driver twenty seconds before he would've slammed into a school bus carrying your kids and all your neighbor's kids. He isn't here now to coach a Pop Warner team or to take a brotherly interest in screwed-up teen-agers or to turn a street gang onto a Toys for Tots drive next Christmas.
It touches us all, pal, each of us and all of us in many fine ways. We're all in this thing together and the loss is real for all of us when any of us takes the tumble. Try to remember that the next time you have to wait a couple of minutes at an intersection for a funeral procession; instead of impatience, try a little grief for a stranger whose death has diminished you.
Of course I was thinking in no such terms at the moment. I was just mad as hell and scared as hell ... I came down out of the hills and onto the Foothills Freeway, cruising west and starting to think like a cop again with Abe Johnson's abstract open on the seat beside me. San Marino leapt to my eye as the home of Justine Wiseman and because it was just a few minutes down the pike. It's one of the more affluent areas, sort of a Beverly Hills East with extensive neighborhoods of stately homes and million-dollar estates. Some of the movie people live out there. It was on my way and I was in rush-hour traffic—which isn't all that different anymore from midnight traffic or midmorning traffic; it's always bumper-to- bumper; there's just more stop-and-go during rush-hour—so I got off the freeway at Huntington and cruised past Santa Anita and on to San Marino. The surface routes were not much clearer than the freeway, but at least there's some justification for stop-and-go there so it doesn't affect my blood pressure as much.
It was about five o'clock when I found the Wiseman residence—not Bernard's anymore but still Justine's. He'd moved to Bel Air when they separated, poor guy, had to give up one stately mansion and start all over in another—the American Dream in Southern California, his-and-hers mansions.
This one was no slouch by any standards, not even Bel Air's. It gives me a shiver to even try to guess the current market value of such digs. I pulled the old Cad onto the circular drive and left it under the canopy at the front door behind a gleaming Mercedes SL. A uniformed Chicano maid answered my ring, a lovely young woman with glowing dark eyes that dulled a bit at the sight of my ID. Her English probably was not up to the fine distinction between public and private badges, so I didn't try to draw it.
She left me standing in the marbled foyer amid exotic potted trees and museum-quality objets d'art while she went to fetch the
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