Detective Marcus Cooper
CHAPTER ONE
Detective Marcus Cooper pulled into the block to see at least half a dozen patrol cars with their emergency lights flashing. There were two ambulances and the coroner’s van all pulled in front of a house in the middle of the block too. He pulled up next to the last police car and got out. The officer standing on the perimeter watched as the tall African-American detective approached the police line. Cooper showed him his shield and the officer lifted the tape for him to duck under. As he walked up to the front door, he found the midnight watch commander, Captain Douglas Blake, talking to one of the crime scene technicians. “Morning, Doug, what do we got?”
“A family of five, two adults and three kids; two boys and a girl; all in their bedrooms, all dead. No signs of forced entry and no murder weapon. There are a couple of neighbors who heard the gunshots and the neighbor woman across the street is the one who first called it in.”
Marcus asked, “Do we know who the victims are?”
He looked down at his notepad and read, “Last name was Rhodes. Thomas, the father was 42. He was an insurance agent who dabbled in real estate sales on the side. The mother’s name was Beth and she was 40. She worked part time as a substitute teacher at the high school; mostly English and Literature, stuff like that. The kids were Olivia, 16; Ryan, 14; and Gavin, 9. They were just regular kids, you know, nothing noteworthy that we can find.”
Marcus nodded and headed into the house. He put on his rubber examination gloves as he walked. There wasn’t much to see in the living room. Just the regular furniture; couch, two chairs with ottomans, and a recliner, all facing both a fireplace and a huge flat screen television hanging over it. He moved over and looked closer at the TV, it was state of the art, the latest model.
He glanced in the kitchen and saw it was spotless. He also saw all the appliances were top of the line. ‘Damn, this guy didn’t spare any expense. Wonder what else he spent money on?’ Walking down the hall he came to the first bedroom and the horror show that was inside.
This was the daughter’s bedroom. It was all in pink and had the requisite posters of boy bands and other heartthrobs. He was surprised to see a poster for the latest model Corvette on the back of the door. The furniture was all white French provincial and covered with pink. Then he looked at the bed and the dead girl lying there.
Olivia Rhodes had been a good looking girl when she was alive but now she was a mess. Her hands and feet had been bound with duct tape and her mouth was stuffed with some type of cloth. When he looked closer at her face, he could see the terror still in her blue eyes. It was obvious how she died, both carotid arteries had been slit length-ways and she bled out in minutes. For just a second he saw his own daughter lying there and he gave an involuntary shiver.
He poked around the room for a few minutes but didn’t find much interesting. He had just turned to go when he saw her school book bag. Cooper picked it up and began examining the contents. The books were the typical school books any junior in high school might have in their book bag. He turned them over and shook them out over her desk. A few papers fluttered to the desktop and he scanned them. ‘Not much to look at,’ he thought. He was just shaking the last book when a gum wrapper floated down and landed on top of the pile of papers. Dropping the last book on the desk chair with the rest he was about to turn to the notebooks when he saw the writing. Picking it up he read:
Stay away from Casey or I’ll kill you. I mean it.
Cooper carefully put it back on top of the papers and moved on to the notebooks and loose papers. Ten minutes later he was done in Olivia’s room.
The next room was the boys’ room. The walls were white and were covered with sports pennants and posters of bikini-clad beach bunnies. There were two chest-of-drawers and a large closet with its doors open. In a corner next to the window there was a desk with a computer. Then he saw the two book bags sitting next to it.
Both boys’ bodies were on the same bed lying face down in a large pool of blood. Marcus noted that they had been tied up and thrown on top of each other. He knew this because there was blood all over the other bed too. He wondered which bed belonged to which boy. It didn’t really matter, neither one was going to need it anymore.
Cooper bent over and looked at the top body. This was the youngest boy, Gavin. He saw that his throat had been slit exactly like Olivia’s had been. There was no way to see Ryan’s body underneath but he could guess his throat was cut the same way. He’d have to wait for the coroner to begin moving the bodies to find out for sure.
Just as he had done in Olivia’s room, Marcus quickly went through the dressers and the closet. Nothing of any interest there, he thought. Then he turned to the book bags. The first one he looked at belonged to Gavin. He was in the fourth grade, Cooper noted. The books were unremarkable and there was nothing in the notebooks but school work. The last thing he looked in was the pencil bag. As he turned it over and poured out the contents, he watched a crumpled slip of paper fall out.
Cooper unfolded the note and read:
Snitch! If I ever get my knife back, I’m gonna use it on you and your whole family. I hate you, Gavin!
He put it down and began looking in Ryan’s bag. The books were typical of a high school freshman. Rifling through them was uneventful and the rest of the contents of the bag proved to be just mundane papers and notebooks. ‘At last a normal kid,’ Marcus thought as he turned toward the door to leave. That’s when he saw the clothes hanging on hooks on the back of the door.
Grabbing the older boy’s jeans and shirt, Marcus was checking the pockets when he felt something hard in the watch pocket. He pulled out a small piece of aluminum foil and his heart stopped. He thought he knew what he’d find when he opened the foil. It turned out he was kind of right and kind of wrong. He thought he’d find powered cocaine or crack but, instead he found three pink tablets that he knew probably weren’t prescribed for Ryan. He closed the foil and put it on the desk next to the note.
Cooper quickly checked the rest of the clothes hanging on the back of the door but didn’t find anything else. He sighed and moved on to the parents’ room, or so he thought. Looking around, he quickly realized there were no men’s clothes and nothing to indicate a man lived in that room at all. He quickly stepped out and scanned the hallway. That’s when he saw the fourth bedroom. Cooper poked his head in and looked around. ‘This is where Thomas slept,’ he thought to himself. It only took him a few minutes to discover he was right and that there was nothing worth looking at in there.
As soon as he walked into the master bedroom, he found Thomas and Beth. Like their children, they were both dead but, unlike their children, their throats hadn’t been cut.
Instead Marcus saw Thomas had been shot at least twice in the back on the head, execution style. Moving over to the chair, he saw that Thomas had been tied up, just like the kids, and shot twice. As many homicides as he’d investigated, he never got used to the empty, staring eyes. They were creepy and always gave him the chills.
Then there was Beth. She was different than all the others and it was immediately apparent why; she was soaking wet and completely naked. Marcus could also see that she had not been bound like the others either. Obviously, Mrs. Rhodes had been in the shower when the killer or killers came in. The strange thing was the water wasn’t running. Looking closer at the corpse he saw she’d been shot under the chin.
In his mind’s eye Cooper thought he knew what happened. He could see the killer or killers came in the house and quickly bound the kids. Then, they found Thomas, probably in his bedroom and forced him into the master bedroom where Beth was taking a shower. They tied Tom to the chair and forced him to watch as they pulled Beth out of the shower, shoved a gun under her chin and pulled the trigger. Then they shot him in the back of the head and left the house.
It made sense to him. What didn’t make sense was that someone had actually taken the time to shut off the water in the shower. ‘Well,’ he thought to himself, ‘I’ve seen stranger things in my time.’
Captain Blake called, “Cooper, are you done lookin’ around? Mickelson’s ready to start. He said it’s your call but the sooner he starts, the sooner we can get outta here.”
Marcus called back, “I’m done lookin’, they can start processing the scene.”
For the next hour a team of four crime scene technicians photographed the various scenes and collected evidence, including the gum wrapper, the note and the drugs. At last, the Medical Examiner’s Office technicians came in and collected the bodies, sealing them in body bags. Then each was placed on a separate gurney and wheeled out of the house and into the waiting van.
He walked back to the front door and told the captain, “The crime scene people are done and the ME’s office has the bodies so I think that’s it except for the witnesses. I guess I’ll start getting names of the neighbors.”
Captain Blake nodded and Marcus began walking over to the dozen or so people, all in their pajamas and robes, standing by the police tape ogling the house. He was about halfway there when the entire area was bathed in bright lights. The news crews had arrived on the scene.
While he was walking, a woman reporter called out, “Detective, can I have a word, please?”
He knew the woman and so he moved over toward her. As he walked, the lights and cameras focused on him. “Linda, turn the camera off, you know I can’t say anything on the record.”
“Not even for your little sister?” she said with a smile.
He gave her a hug and she asked, “Well, what have you got?”
“An entire family wiped out but I don’t know anything else. This is off the record, sis, Captain Blake is the only one who can give you an official statement.”
She nodded, “Oh, I know. Any suspects?”
“Nothing yet, I just got here.” He patted her on the shoulder and said, “I gotta go, the captain’s lookin’ over here.”
She smiled and said, “Send him my way would you?”
He smiled as he walked away. His little sister was one of the top reporters in town. She was good, maybe she was too good. He was heading back to the police line when Captain Blake caught up to him. “Telling your sister all our secrets again?”
Cooper smiled and said, “Nope, that’s your job, boss. I just solve cases, like a good little detective.”
Just then, Linda Cooper called, “Captain, can we have a word with you? Can you tell our viewers what happened here?”
Walking over to the crowd, he saw his little sister had talked the captain into giving an ‘on-camera’ statement. ‘Damn, that girl’s good,’ he thought.
He stopped a few feet away and called out, “Any of you people see or hear anything?”
A middle aged woman in curlers and a pink flowery robe raised her hand. Marcus opened his notebook as he stepped closer. “What’s your name?”
“My name is Loretta Holmes and I live right across the street from the Rhodes’. Beth was my best friend,” she said as she broke down. Marcus waited patiently for her to get herself together and said, “Mrs. Holmes, can you tell me, briefly, what you saw or heard?”
She nodded and blew her nose on a tissue. “I couldn’t sleep so I was in the kitchen warming up some milk. Warm milk always helps me whenever I can’t sleep. It’s good for insomnia, you know.” Marcus nodded and she continued. “Well, it was about one-thirty or two o’clock when I just happened to be looking out the window and I saw this car with its lights off pull to the curb across the street. Well, I didn’t think anything of it, I just figured Olivia was coming home late from a date again; she does that a lot, you know. Very pretty girl and quite popular too. Well, I had just finished my warm milk when I heard two or three gunshots. I thought they were gunshots but I’ve never heard gunshots before so I was guessing. That’s when I looked out the window again and saw that car speeding away and that’s when I called the police.”
Marcus scribbled her information down and said, “Mrs. Holmes, since it’s so late would it be alright if someone came to talk to you about this in a day or two?”
“Oh, yes. That will be fine.” Then she said, “I’ll tell you what, why don’t I write down what I remember and then, if I remember anything else, I can add it before you come back? How would that be?”
He smiled and said that would be fine. Then he looked around and said, “Does anyone else remember hearing or seeing anything?”
There were a few hands that went up in the air. For the next hour or so, Detective Cooper listened as the neighbors told him what they knew. He wrote down everything and, after getting their names and addresses, he promised to talk with them all soon.
Walking back to his car, he saw Crime Scene Technician Mickelson loading his gear into the back of a marked SUV. Cooper walked over and said, “Hey, Rick.”
Mickelson turned toward him and he asked, “When you guys got here, did anyone turn off the water in the shower?”
“Nope, we looked around real quick and then waited for you.”
“Wonder who did,” Cooper mused.
Mickelson turned back to his equipment and said, “No idea, Marc.”