Copp On Ice, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

higher elevations, while I was running parallel.
    The street plan changes at that point so I could have lost her if she'd squirted across Foothill and into the maze of new development. The intersections up there are sometimes half a mile apart and separated by intricate patterns of odd-shaped subdivisions with circular streets and cul- de-sacs enough to drive you batty; you don't want to venture into those areas at night without a guide.
    I got lucky. She'd pulled into a donut shop on Foothill. A police cruiser was parked there also, two uniformed officers were seated inside, and Turner was standing at the table conversing with them when I eased past.
    I went on down to a 7-Eleven just beyond the donut shop and waited for her there. It was a short wait, only a couple of minutes, then she barreled east right past me along Foothill. Even at that time of night the traffic along that boulevard is respectable, which made it easier to tag closer to the jeep without fear of discovery.
    Used to be, back before the freeways were built, that section of Foothill was the famous Route 66 immortalized in song, the main passage in and out of Los Angeles for folks back east wherever. Still has a few small motels and eateries but mostly now the old boulevard has been caught up in the development fever and offers an almost endless array of upscale shopping centers and other commercial establishments, glitzy restaurants, fast food joints, service
    stations and all the other requirements of a bustling population center.
    Generally, the homes above Foothill are priced in the three to four hundred thousand dollar range, those south of the boulevard beginning to age and give way to apartment complexes and other lower-range alternatives which tend to present the larger police problem for such a city.
    Brighton even has its own version of the barrio. It also has a redlight district, drive-by shootings—mostly the result of gang activity—and an adjacent unincorporated section where anything goes and usually does.
    To the people located north of Foothill, though, all of that is out of sight and largely out of mind, and north is where most of the people and practically all of the influential people of Brighton live. A three hundred thousand dollar home can be hard to swing on a cop's salary, so I doubt that many of the cops in this town live north; I suspect that most of them live somewhere outside of Brighton.
    I had no idea where Turner was leading me, of course, but I'd assumed that she was headed homeward and I wanted a look at where she lived and how she lived, so I was a bit surprised when she eventually swung north and began climbing into a ritzy area above Foothill. But now I had to lay back too much and play games with my headlamps, and I could not always keep her insight in the tumble of hills, curves, and switchbacks. Finally I lost her entirely, had to rely on my prowling instincts, found her car five minutes later tucked onto a hillside drive below a veritable mansion.
    Forget three or four hundred thousand; this one was a cool mil at market bottom, and it was blazing with lights at two a.m . I knew she could not live there, unless Daddy was a millionaire. Looked like three levels of mostly glass front, overlooking the valley like some baronial estate, walled grounds with security decals on the gates and conspicuous Guard Dog warning signs. I jotted the address and cruised on by, parked around the next curve and hiked back for a closer look.
    The jeep was parked outside the gates. There was also a pedestrian gate equipped with a CCTV-Intercom device. I kept out of camera range, couldn't see anything anyway. Wondered, too, about Guard Dog. Not for long. Didn't see him but heard his presence just beyond the gate, a deepthroated growling, then heard a handler shushing him.
    I went on back to my car, turned around and re-parked where I could keep the driveway in view, waited. Again, not long. I'd been on the scene for about ten minutes when