Copp For Hire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) Read Free

sunglasses.
           Then I went back to that flower bed and picked up the key ring. It had four keys on it, two of which carried a Ford logo. Six Fords were parked out there. I scored on the fourth try, an old Thunderbird; found the registration and other ID in the glove box. Her name was Juanita Valdez. She would have turned twenty in a week, and she had lived about five minutes away from where I stood.
           I jotted down the address and returned the registration to its neat little repository, then locked the car and went to my own.
           Apparently she'd lived very modestly, as most kids her age are required to unless they have help from affluent parents. The car was old and the apartment building was older. It was not a security building, sat right on the street in a low-rent area, had no off-street parking for the tenants.
           I had a creepy feeling as I cruised past the entrance but I didn't know if that was caused by the building or by a glimpse I had of a dark car rounding the corner at the next intersection. I opted for the latter and got down there as quickly as I could in four o'clock traffic. Saw nothing there to induce quivers so went on around the block and found a parking place, went into Juanita's building. Main entrance was not even locked, though it was equipped for it. I tried the keys just for the hell of it and, yeah, one of them fit.
           It was a three-story walkup. The number I was looking for was at the top, rear. This door was locked and I had the key—but, damn, I also had a return of that creepy feeling as I let myself inside.
           Good enough reason for that.
           The place was a wreck. Furniture turned upside down, cushions slashed, litter everywhere. I waded through that to the kitchen for more of the same, then into a small bedroom for even worse.
           But the real booby prize was waiting for me in the bathroom.
           She was probably roughly the same age as Juanita, almost as pretty, just as dead.
           She wore open-crotch pantyhose and nothing else. She'd been hogtied, gagged, worked over and strangled with a G-string, probably her own.
           And I wondered what the hell I'd stumbled into here, on the hard side.

 
     
    Chapter Three
     
    IN MY BUSINESS, you either develop a neutral stomach or it retires you early. Mine went neutral a long time ago and it had worked on nothing since breakfast, so I was hungry as hell when I headed back to the office. I'd spent most of an hour going through the mess in that demolished apartment; found and pocketed a few small interesting items but left everything else exactly as I'd encountered it and quietly got away from there.
           But I was hungry. May sound callous, considering the moment, but a neutral stomach does not recognize such moments and mine was clamoring for me to send something down. Anything. I have no gourmet tastes. I stand six-three, as I said, and weigh two-sixty but I do not eat ritually or fancily. I just send something down when the belly demands. I also do not have much body fat. The frame is big and the bones are heavy. I try to do an hour a day on the track to stay in tune and maybe that much a week with my judo master to keep the black belt and the humility intact. Humility, yeah. My master is seventy-five and weighs about a hundred pounds. I have yet to beat his ass, or even to come close.
           Anyway, the stomach was yelling at me so I pulled into a coffee shop two blocks from the office and had a quick dinner. I didn't get back 'til about six. Two detectives were waiting for me in an official car parked right beside my door. I knew one of them. Too well.
           L.A. County provides police services on a contract basis to some of the smaller municipalities, like mine, that cluster about the big city. Police jurisdictions can be a nightmare in this area, with so many towns and cities jostling one another in