Paul Cleave - Collecting Cooper

“Why do you think I’m a serial killer? What have I done to make you think that?”

“For one, you have a thumb in a jar. Serial killers collect things like that from their victims.”

Cooper smiles. “You think I cut the thumb off somebody I killed?”

Adrian likes seeing the smile, and he smiles too. “Didn’t you?”

Cooper nods, the smile still there. “Okay,” he says. “No more lies. You got me. Of course I cut it off one of my victims.”

“Why did you ask me before if I had sold it to you?”

“I’m not sure. I woke up feeling groggy and confused. Did you shoot me with a Taser?”

“Yes.”

“And then held something over my face. What was that?”

Adrian doesn’t know. It’s stuff he picked up last week when he got the Taser. He shrugs. “Something that makes people sleep,” he says. “Who did you cut the thumb off?”

“A man I killed.”

“You kill men? I thought you only killed women.”

“Sometimes both,” Cooper says.

“Why did you kill him?”

“Because I wanted to. How did you figure out I was a serial killer, Adrian? Lay it out for me. The police don’t know I’m one, so you must be smarter than the police.”

Adrian smiles. It’s been a long time since he’s had any emotional warmth well up inside of him, and it feels great. This is exactly why he wanted to have Cooper so badly. They will become best friends. Cooper can tell him how it feels to be a serial killer, and Cooper can tell him about all the other killers he’s known. He’s glad he rewound the tape earlier and is recording over their previous conversation. He hopes it comes through clearly-he has his shirt hanging over the radio so Cooper can’t see it.

“I started watching you because I remembered you were writing a book,” he says. “You used to come out here years ago and ask us questions, but you never had any questions for me.”

“Here? Where is here? One of the abandoned institutions?”

“Grover Hills,” Adrian says, “and it’s not abandoned because we’re here. And it’s not an institution, it’s a home. You were writing a book about us, and I’ve looked for it but haven’t found a copy anywhere.”

“It’s not finished,” Cooper says.

“I’d like to read it.”

“Sure, I’d like that too. I’m interested in what you have to say on it. How can I give you a copy, Adrian? It’s on my computer. We could go to my house and I could show it to you.”

“Maybe,” Adrian says, knowing Cooper is trying to trick him, “but not today. You never had any questions for me. Do you remember me at all?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“You only spoke to killers, that’s why,” Adrian says. “They were my friends.”

“And now they’ve all gone,” Cooper says.

“Yes, but I’m back, and since I can’t have them, I can have you because you knew them all, you can tell me their stories, and you’re a killer just like them.”

“People go missing every day, but not like this,” Cooper says, looking around the cell. “What you’ve done here is nothing short of. . brilliant.”

“Oh,” he says, and then it sinks in. “Oh! That’s great,” he says, and he can feel himself blushing.

“You know, Adrian, you seem like a pretty cool guy. I just wish you’d talked to me first before bringing me here. I’m sure we could have figured things out a little better. A little more. . smoothly.”

Adrian wants to believe him, but doesn’t think he can. Not yet. “Can I ask you some questions?” he asks.

“Sure, sure you can, Adrian. Ask anything you like, and I’d be grateful if I could ask you some as well. Is that okay? I’m really interested in what you have to say.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

Adrian isn’t sure. Nobody has ever been interested before in what he has to say. Serial killers are clever people, they’re. . what’s the word? Man-ip-you-la-tive. They’re certainly that, and suddenly he isn’t so sure Cooper really does think he’s a cool guy. He has to be careful.

“What made you interested in serial killers? What made you want to become one?” he asks, and he sits down on the couch in the lamplight and waits for Cooper to tell him.

Emma Green’s flat is exactly what you’d expect from any flat rented by university students: run-down with long lawns and windows covered in films of dirt and a recycling bin overflowing with empty beer cans and wine bottles standing sentry by the front door. It’s one of those student neighborhoods where alcohol consumption equates to social standing, where the more you drink the cooler you become and the better friends you get. Donovan Green has smoothed the way for me to talk to Emma’s flatmate, which I do, along with her boyfriend and a couple of the boyfriend’s friends who are hanging out in the living room drinking instead of studying as they hope for the best and fear the worst for Emma. The furniture is all the kind of stuff you see dumped on the roadside with signs attached saying Free . I stay standing. The flat smells of cigarette smoke. The boys are stacking their freshly empty beer bottles on a coffee table in a formation like a house of cards. The flatmate is a pretty girl with bouncy blond hair styled from some latest sitcom. She keeps picking at her cuticles, snapping away splinters of skin from the sides of her nails and dropping them onto the threadbare carpet.

She wipes at her eyes as we talk, there are mascara stains beneath them, what my wife would have called panda eyes, which she’d get sometimes if we fought, which, thankfully, wasn’t often. She tells me a similar thing that Emma’s father told me, that Emma’s a smart girl and can talk her way out of anything.

“She even talked her way out of a speeding ticket a week ago,” she says. “She told the officer she was in a rush to get to the hospital because her mum was undergoing cancer treatment.”

“I hadn’t heard.”

She shakes her head. “That’s the thing. Her mother hasn’t got cancer. Emma has this idea that everybody knows somebody with cancer, or who has died from it, and you can use that to talk your way out of anything because people are sympathetic and they can relate. She’s been reading about psychology for the last year even though she only started studying it a few weeks ago. She has this way of seeing how people tick, you know?”

I talk to everybody and don’t get any more information than I already had. The boys are more interested in shooting each other on the big-screen TV, their thumbs flying over game controllers and their eyes locked on the action. The volume is turned down so at least we can talk. Two mornings ago Emma Green woke up and went to class. She finished studying and had lunch with two of her friends. She went to work, pulling a four-hour part-time shift at the café. Then somebody abducted her.

The file Schroder gave me has information that Donovan Green didn’t have. The police searched the parking lot behind the café and found a makeup compact and a small patch of fresh blood with skin and hair stuck in it. The flatmate identified the compact as belonging to Emma. The hair matched the color of Emma’s hair, and the blood matched Emma’s blood type. DNA testing takes weeks, but it’s a safe bet it’ll be a match. It all adds up to a struggle. Emma dropped her bag and the compact rolled out. Her head banged into the ground or somebody banged it into the ground for her.

Paint scrapings were taken from the side of the dumpster I looked at, which had been driven into. They were red and Emma’s car was yellow. If somebody was speeding away from the scene with Emma in the trunk of their car, why come back for her car later on? No, most likely whoever hit the dumpster had nothing to do with Emma’s disappearance. Could have happened yesterday, could have happened three days ago. It’s not useful. Sales receipts are being run from the café, a list of people there on the day is slowly being built, but the problem is most people spending five or ten bucks on coffee and a muffin don’t use credit cards. If the suspect did take Emma’s car, how did he get there? Bus? A taxi? Does he live close enough to have walked?