Collecting Cooper

by Paul Cleave

  “How long were you here, Adrian?” Cooper asks.

  “Nineteen years, eight months, and four days,” Adrian says proudly. “I counted.”

  “You counted?”

  “Sometimes there wasn’t much more to do.”

  “And why were you here?”

  “Because my mother, my real mother, she was forced to bring me here.”

  “Your real mother?” Cooper repeats. Insanity aside, he’s intrigued again. If the camera hasn’t been found and his life is waiting for him once he escapes, there’ll be a book in this, one that the publishers have to accept this time.

  He puts the webbing of his thumb into his mouth and lightly sucks on it, tasting it and feeling a tiny twinge of pain that actually feels pretty good.

  “I have two mothers. My real one, and the one I had here.”

  “Your mother here-she was one of the nurses?”

  “Nurse Deans,” Adrian says. “I saw you speaking to her sometimes.”

  He used to drive all the way out here, and for the privilege of talking to some of the patients he had to slip Nurse Deans two hundred dollars a week in the beginning, and when he was really getting into it, he had to start slipping her two-fifty. She let him use an empty office to talk to whoever he wanted, as long as there was an orderly in the room, and as long as he didn’t tell anybody about the money. He was writing about killers. Writing about people who’d had nervous breakdowns or spent their time eating flies wouldn’t make good reading.

  But Adrian will make for great reading. Especially with all that’s going on. Cooper will kill the bastard when he escapes from here, stage the scene any way he wants, he’ll come out of it a hero and there’s no way the publishers will shoot him down again.

  “So why was your real mother forced to bring you here? Because of the cats?”

  “Yes,” Adrian says. “Because of the cats.”

  “I really was coming upstairs to find you last night,” Cooper says.

  “I believe you. Kind of. Would you like some time to read the paper?”

  He turns back toward it. It’s on the bed but he can’t make out any of the text. “Just a couple of minutes.”

  “Then we can talk about my friends,” Adrian says, “and you can tell me stories about other killers you met. We can compare them against your own stories of killing once I’ve read your book.”

  “You really love the stories, right?”

  “I do,” Adrian says.

  “Okay, Adrian. Give me some time to read the paper and get my thoughts together.”

  “That would be great.”

  “But it has to be like before, quid pro quo.”

  “I. . I don’t understand French,” Adrian says.

  “It’s Latin.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?” Adrian says.

  How the hell can a guy like Adrian still be holding him captive? It’s like being beaten by a six-year-old at chess. “Also, I’m hungry. I need some food.”

  “Okay.”

  “And you need to empty out the bucket. It stinks in here.”

  “Later,” Adrian says, “I promise.”

  “Then let me read the paper and we’ll talk soon. Come back with some sandwiches. And leave the upstairs door open so I can see.”

  Adrian rushes upstairs, leaving Cooper to read the paper in peace.

  chapter thirty

  Yesterday there was the need to cuddle Daxter’s corpse, as if I could still offer him some compassion, as if holding him against my chest was going to let him know he was loved. Today I can barely look at him.

  I raise my fists and turn quickly, suddenly sure the person who did this is behind me, but there’s only the door I stepped through and the living room. I feel violated. I feel like I need to take a shower, burn down my own house, even hose down my dead cat. Something dark and very creepy has just touched my life. There are footprints all around the grave in the loose dirt that I don’t want to disturb. Did the person who did this kill Daxter too? Of course he did. He wasn’t accidently run over. He was killed just to be dug up, just to be part of a message. I have no idea what that message is. Stop looking for Cooper Riley? Stop looking for Emma Green? Stop looking for Natalie Flowers? Or is this a message from the past, perhaps somebody I arrested years ago?

  There’s another possibility that makes more sense. I call Schroder. “Somebody killed my cat,” I tell him, and I realize I’m almost crushing my phone. What I’d love to do right now is crush the person who killed Daxter.

  “You told me yesterday.”

  “What I mean is somebody murdered him,” I say, and then I tell him about Daxter hanging from the roof.

  “Jesus,” he says. “You think it’s a message of some kind?”

  “I’m thinking it might be somebody from Grover Hills.”

  He says nothing. I can almost hear him thinking things over. Can almost hear the bones creaking in his hand as he tightens it on the cell phone. He breathes heavily a few times. Then, “How do you know about that?”

  “Google.”

  “That the only way?”

  “No, Carl, I spent my childhood there growing up.”

  “Well it’d certainly explain a lot if you had.”

  “Listen, Carl, it’s possible one of the patients who got turned loose three years ago has an obsession with Cooper Riley and Pamela Deans, and now with me.”

  “Because of your cat.”

  “Yes. Because of my cat. Sane people don’t pull that shit,” I say. “Sane people don’t go digging up your fucking dead pets!”

  “Calm down, Tate.”

  “I am calm,” I say, pacing the yard faster now. “I want you to send a patrol car and some forensics,” I say. “Get some officers to canvas the neighborhood. Somebody must have seen something. And there has to be a load of trace evidence here, there are footprints around the grave for a start.”

  “Anybody could have done it, Tate. It doesn’t take a crazy person. It just takes somebody you pissed off in an incredible way.”

  “No, I really think it does take a crazy person, Carl. If it only took somebody who was pissed off at me then you’d be number one on my list of suspects.”

  “I hear you,” he says, “but it’s just as likely it’s an ex-con with a grudge.” It’s true. I’ve arrested a lot of people over the years. Schroder presses on. “I know you’re thinking it’s a hell of a coincidence,” he says, “but if it was going to happen it wasn’t going to be done while you were in jail-no point in that.”

  “So why not do it before then?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they were in jail too.”

  “Have you showed the sketch to any of the ex-staff from Grover Hills? Maybe somebody there will recognize him.”

  “It’s getting done, Tate. I’ll send out some people to take a look around your house and pick up your cat.”

  He hangs up. I grab the papers and head inside. There are smooth rectangles of dirt leading from the front door to my study, dirt that’s fallen from the tread of somebody’s shoes. I drop the papers and duck into the bedroom and pull out Donovan Green’s gun from beneath the mattress. I carry it into the study. The computer is still running. There’s nobody standing in the room. Most of the manuscript is missing, only the last dozen or so pages are left in the printer. All of the files Schroder gave me on Melissa X are gone. Daxter was either a distraction or a message-either way, somebody doesn’t want me finding out what happened to Cooper Riley.

  chapter thirty-one

  Damage control.

  The newspaper article is bad, but it could be worse. There could have been a big headline, nice dark letters saying Serial Killer’s House Is Burned Down. Ten years ago there were rules, ten years ago if it wasn’t fact, the papers would be reluctant to print it. Things have changed since then. Most of the media is online, news channels are on twenty-four hours a day, the business is more cutthroat than ever, and the journalists don’t have time for fact-checking anymore. News isn’t about le
tting the people know what’s happening, it’s about shaping agendas and making money, and money is more important than what’s right or wrong. Rumors are now fact. A guy selling hotdogs outside the police department is now a confirmed inside source. The boundaries of ethics moved, then moved some more, then were eroded away. So if there had been any suspicion at all that Cooper was a killer, it would have made it into print.

  The article is about his disappearance. Cooper Riley, fifty-two years old, professor at Canterbury University, abducted from his own house, his car left in the driveway, no indication as to where he’s been taken, his house razed the following day. There’s a photo of the fire and there’s a photo of Cooper standing in front of a class of students pointing up to a screen. The photo was taken years ago, it was a publicity shot that was bundled into a magazine to promote the university. His hair was a little thicker around the sides back then, a little blacker and there was still some on top too. He wasn’t going through the stress of a divorce. Five years on this side of the photo and he’s ten kilograms heavier and locked in a goddamn basement.

  How much do the police know?

  If they suspected more, somebody would have leaked it to the press. And nothing could have survived that fire. The photo is taken from the street, he can see his car engulfed by the flames, even half of the front yard is burning. The camera only needed to be anywhere on the property and it would have melted, the memory card useless. So he’s sitting good on that level. Both victims were in the trunk of his car at one point, and each time he had them on a tarpaulin. He knows there was no trace evidence in his car, but even if there was, the fire took care of it.

  His house.

  He loved his house.

  He loved his collection.

  Jesus-if he ever gets out of here, there’s no way he’s going to collect anything ever again. It would give him something in common with Adrian, and he’s sick at the thought that even breathing is something they have in common-though soon he’ll make sure that’s no longer the case.

  He sits on the edge of the bed and rests the newspaper on his lap. He runs his fingers over the photograph of his house, an ink stain growing thicker on the pads of his fingertips. He thinks about the first girl he killed. It was last year. He starts rubbing the newspaper a little harder. Her name was Jane Tyrone and she was twenty-four years old, almost half his age, and at the time he thought nothing in the world felt better than a twenty-four-year-old. Five months later he would learn he was wrong-nothing felt better than a seventeen-year-old.

  Of course it didn’t start with her. It started three years ago with another student. Natalie Flowers. That was her name back then. He doesn’t like to think about her much, and Adrian having a file on her is bringing back a whole lot of bad memories. He wonders if her real name is mentioned at all in that, and doubts it. The police don’t know. If they did, they’d have let the media know. He’d love to take a look at it. In fact he needs to-there could be something in there that relates to him.

  Natalie Flowers.

  She came into his life and brought along a change in him that he allowed to happen. His marriage was falling apart. Had been for some time, but he’d been too obsessed with his job and with his book to notice. Then his wife walked out. She told him she was leaving. He begged her to stay. She was seeing somebody else, she told him. No, he didn’t know the man she was seeing, and no, she wasn’t going to tell Cooper his name, only that she loved her new man and she was happy with her new man and that Cooper now owed her half of the house and half of everything he had ever owned. He bought a bottle of whiskey the same day and drank half of it, and then started on her half too. He drank it at his office after work. He didn’t want to go home. Didn’t want to face the empty house. He just wanted to drink, surrounded by his files and his work, his classes over for the day, the students gone home.

  He’s always thought about how his life would be these days if his next decision had been different. He was drunk enough to think that driving was a good idea. That’s what the booze did to you-you can make a thousand right decisions when you’re sober, and when you’re sober you know you would never drink and drive, but the booze changes things. It gets into your blood and tells you everything is going to turn out okay. So he made it out to the parking lot. There were only six cars in it, one of them his, spaces for a few hundred more. The night was cold, the ground covered in leaves, daylight savings was over and it was dark even though it was only seven-thirty, each day darker than the last now until the downslope to spring.

  His keys were on the ground before he even realized what had happened. His hand was still by his car door, going through the motions of trying to unlock it. It was a few seconds before he realized what was happening, then a few seconds more to crouch down and pick them up. He should have called a taxi. Should have done more to stop his wife from leaving. Should have realized what was going on. Jesus, he felt so stupid, being cheated on like that and never knowing.

  The girl had appeared from nowhere. Sometimes in his nightmares, he imagines her clawing her way out from Hell only meters away from him, or floating just above the ground with her feet never touching it, this beautiful demon who would change his life.

  “Are you okay, Professor?” she asked, and no, he wasn’t okay, his wife was a cheating whore and was going to take half of his life, and where the hell did the years go, his twenties and thirties drifting by like they were nothing, the years steamrolling on, he would be fifty the following year and he hated that, really fucking hated that.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive,” he answered, dropping his keys again.

  “I’m one of your students,” she said, and God, she was beautiful.

  “Well, thanks for your time,” he said, unsure exactly what he meant by that. He got his door unlocked.

  “Listen,” she said, “can I give you a lift home?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said, but the truth was he was sure. He’d love to be taken back to her house. They could have a few drinks and. . and shit, that’s not what she meant. She meant she would give him a lift to his house. “I really need my car, I have something early in the morning I have to deal with,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “It’s no problem,” she said. “We’ll take your car and you can pay for my taxi to get back.”

  And so the scene was set and on the car ride there he spoke little, thinking about his wife, about his job, about men taking what it was they wanted, and honesty being the best policy, he wanted this girl, wanted her more than anything, wanted her to make him feel young again.

  “Want to come inside for a drink?” he asked, when she had pulled his car into his garage.

  “I should be getting back.”

  “Just the one,” he said. “I promise not to keep you. I’m a criminology professor,” he said, “and I can tell you it’s a crime to let a man about to turn fifty drink alone.”

  And so she had said yes, and three years later he isn’t sure why she did, or how exactly things led to him making a pass at her. Her rejection had hurt, in fact it had hurt so much he wanted her to hurt too. That’s how it started, the need to make her feel bad, to make his wife suffer, only this girl wasn’t his wife, just a stand-in for her. The textbooks would say all that added up was a trigger. He knew it at the time. It started with a ride home and led to him dragging her into his bedroom and tearing off her clothes, forcing himself on her, his hand tight on her face the entire time, covering her eyes so she couldn’t see him, and when it was done he lay there panting with her body pinned beneath him and the realization of what he had done came flooding through.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, rolling off her. His head was buzzing from the alcohol and he felt sick.

  She said nothing. She stared at the ceiling and, God, she could go a long time without blinking. Tears had formed a small stream down the side of her face.

  “I. . I don’t know what happened,” he said.
“Please, please, I’m. . I’m sorry.”

  He touched her shoulder. She didn’t flinch away. She didn’t move.

  “Are you. . are you okay?”

  She wouldn’t answer. Wouldn’t look at him. Wouldn’t move.

  He started to panic. She would tell the police what had happened. He would lose his job. He would go to jail. Nobody would publish his book then. He sure as hell wouldn’t win his wife back. And when he came out, what would he do? Nobody would ever respect him. Nobody would hire him. His future self would be lost.

  The easiest solution was to kill her. Could he cross that line? He had already crossed one, he could cross another. He thought about bundling her up in the car and dumping her somewhere. That part he could do. The strangling or stabbing part, no, that part he couldn’t do.

  “I have money,” he said to her and it wasn’t true. He owned the house with his wife and the mortgage was small, but now that she was gone he was going to have to buy her out for her half. When she wouldn’t move, he sat up on the edge of the bed and pulled his pants back on. “It’s yours. All of it,” he said, and he meant it. He would sell the house and if there was anything left he would give it to her. His chest felt heavy and his breathing was forced, and he bent over and vomited on the floor. Immediately he felt better. Even the buzzing died down by half.

  “I’ll drive you home,” he said, wiping his mouth on the bottom of his shirt, but of course he was in no condition to drive. “Let me help you with your clothes,” he said, and he helped her and she did none of the work, just kept laying there, letting him move her, and the clothes didn’t fit that well because they were torn and damaged. “Tomorrow we can go to the bank,” he said. “How much? Oh, God, please, just tell me how much you want?”

  She stayed unresponsive and he needed another drink, a drink would help him think, so he went back out to the living room, passing clumps of her hair in the hallway, strands that had been pulled out when he fought her into the bedroom. He leaned against the dining table and knocked back a shot of whiskey, then slowly sipped at another. His hands were shaking and there were spots of blood on his palms. The shot glass kept clicking against his teeth.