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

the men had been killed with my gun, and if death had occurred prior to my second encounter with Gina—which was the next time I'd seen the gun—then Putnam and Delancey had apparently lain dead since some time in the early afternoon. If I had been the first to discover the bodies, then why were all the lights on inside and out?—and where were the families of these men during all this?
    If, on the other hand, death had occurred after that afternoon encounter with Gina, then the timeframe could narrow somewhat and maybe all the lights had been on because it was dark or getting that way and Putnam had been expecting company. That would put quite a squeeze on, though, because I'd hit Beverly Hills at nightfall and obviously both Gina and the gun were there when I got there. Since I'd left home shortly after the encounter with Gina and went as straight to Beverly Hills as I could under the circumstances, that would not seem to leave her much time for a swing through the Al-
    tadena hills, and since the gun had been in her possession both times . . .
    No, I had to go with death in the afternoon.
    I had to wonder, then, about the PowerTron security cops who'd tailed me away from Beverly Hills. The guy I busted had told me that he was moonlighting for Putnam, that he was being "dispatched" privately by someone under Putnam's direct control—and they had made tracks straight toward Putnam's place after I let the guy go.
    Had I given those guys enough time to discover the bodies, turn on all the lights and get the hell away from there before my arrival?—and could that account for the presence of the sheriffs minutes after my arrival on the scene? But why would they run through the house turning on all the lights, either before or after the discovery? If before, would that be any way to act in their boss's house?—and why do it afterward if they did not mean to report the crime and hang around until the cops arrived?
    But wait... what or who sent them up there to begin with? The guy said they were radio dispatched. The one must have called it in when I pulled his partner out of the car. When I let the partner go, I saw him go straight to the telephone and the same car came along minutes later and picked him up, so that sounds like a dispatch. Then they hightailed it for Altadena. Why? And if they found the stiffs, who would they report it to?—and who would have ordered them to get the hell away from there before the cops came?
    There was much to be considered, see, and it did not all necessarily revolve around Gina. Then again, it could. Now she had flat-out told me that she worked for PowerTron and Tom Chase. No mistake about that. Even told me that she got the job via her Pentagon connections. So where did she fit into all this? Could it be that she worked for PowerTron but not for Tom Chase?
    My lawyer had been trying to get a line on Chase while I was in jail. No way. The feds had him under tight wraps, virtually incommunicado. We couldn't even get a line on his lawyer, if he had one, and it seemed likely that, based on past experience with these guys in similar situations, they were moving him around from one federal facility to another in an attempt to keep him buried in the system. They can get away with stuff like that, sure, especially when there is a "national security" cover for it.
    So I had damn little hope of getting any information from Tom in any foreseeable future. Which is to say, in any useful future. Time was closing in on us, I was certain of that. I couldn't afford to just sit around and wait for the feds to remember the Constitution, so I had to write Tom off as a source of useful information in the meaningful future. I was alone in the mess and I knew it. And most of what I had—even from Tom himself, maybe—was either misinformation or disinformation.
    See I'd been set up by Tom himself to leap to conclusions concerning Gina when he hinted that a woman was involved in his problem. You remember what