Paul Cleave - Collecting Cooper

“Oh yeah, Cooper Riley,” she answers, “but I can’t tell you where you can find him. This is the second day he hasn’t shown up. It’s like, totally random, you know? Looking at him you’d kind of think he had never been late for anything in his life. Maybe the heat got him.”

“Maybe,” I answer, thinking about the timeline, about Emma being missing for two and a half days and Cooper Riley not showing up for two. Riley wasn’t mentioned in the file-no reason he would have been questioned because it was only yesterday Emma was officially considered missing. I get directions to the faculty lounge and thank the students for their time. I phone Schroder on the way.

“The name Cooper Riley mean anything to you?” I ask.

“Nothing. I don’t even know who he is.”

“He was one of Emma’s professors.”

“Come on, Tate, I’ve told you already, it’s not my case.”

“And he didn’t show up for work yesterday or today.”

“Shit. So now you’re jumping to conclusions, right?”

“I think he knows something.”

“Tate, he may be sick, or was called away because somebody else is sick.”

“Either way I still want to talk to him.”

“Doesn’t matter what you want. We’ll be the ones to talk to him.”

“Damn it, Carl, I’m coming to you with this, just like you asked, remember? I’m not holding back. Don’t cut me out of the loop.”

“I’ll call you back,” he says and hangs up.

The psychology department has its own faculty lounge. In fact the psychology department is actually one of the largest departments in the entire university, and I think that sums up Christchurch pretty well. All the corridors are like hospital wings, linoleum floors and pastel colors. I learn the same thing from another professor that I did from the students-that Cooper Riley hasn’t shown up for work in two days. I ask if I can see Riley’s office and the woman I’m talking to tells me I’d have to ask Cooper.

“How can I get hold of him?”

“You could ring him, I suppose,” she says, “or you could try. His phone has been switched off.”

She gives me his cell phone number and landline and I try calling the cell on the way back to my car and get a message saying the phone is off or out of range. The landline goes through to an answering machine and a promise of a returned call.

I give Schroder another call but his line is busy. I borrow a phonebook and match up the home number I was given with Riley’s name to get his address, wondering, wondering, was Cooper Riley the last person to see Emma Green alive?

It’s a brand-new day. His second mother used to tell him anything can happen on a brand new day, that a fresh start each morning gave you a chance to redeem yourself for the things that angered you the day before. That never helped much when he was locked in the Scream Room and didn’t have the chance to prove himself, but it certainly helps now.

He’s noticed Cooper using his name as often as he can. Part of him likes it, he likes the connection forming between them and hearing his name makes him genuinely hope that connection is real. His mother hardly ever used his name, only when he was in trouble, the kind of trouble that got him locked downstairs.

Ultimately he isn’t sure whether Cooper is trying to bond with him or fool him. Reading about all this kind of stuff, he learned if you’re ever attacked by a serial killer, you should use their name as much as you can if you know it. That’s why Cooper is using it. He doesn’t know this for sure-and he doesn’t like the confusion that comes with not knowing. It actually makes him angry. He tries to think of an adage his mother would use, but can only come up with “ A frown is a foe that certainly must go.” Cooper is hoping to humanize himself so Adrian won’t hurt him-but of course there is no chance of that. He hasn’t gone to all this effort to hurt the one thing he cherishes the most.

Today he will give Cooper his gift, and from there any bonding between them will be genuine. The gift will reset the mistakes from yesterday. The gift is his redemption. He learned years ago that you can feel better giving rather than receiving. It will be like that today. He is sure of it. He also learned years ago he felt good taking things. Like the lives of those cats.

The sun is pouring through the eastern windows as it makes its way around to the north. He fell asleep last night after listening to his conversation with Cooper, and then listening to classical music. The radio is still on, and the news is on, the announcer is talking about the temperature. People have been dying in the heat and Adrian doesn’t fully understand why. People should just stay inside if they’re getting too hot, or drink more water. He turns the radio off and a few minutes later he sits outside and drinks an orange juice. He likes the heat. He’s spent too many days locked in cold rooms to want to hang out in the shade. The trees forming a barrier between him and the neighboring paddock and the road are absolutely still, no breeze or birds to create any movement. There’s a forest about a kilometer away covering a shallow hill, the trees in there thick and old, the branches gnarled and twisted. The air is sticky. A persistent fly keeps landing on him and he keeps swatting it away until it falls into his orange juice. He starts to wonder what will happen if Cooper doesn’t like his gift, and that makes him sad. “ Depression is a sad man’s joy,” his mother used to say. This is one she said to him many times, but he never really understood. He picks the fly out with his finger, studies it for a few seconds, then gently sits it on the porch. Its wings are stuck together. He moves it into the shade so it won’t burn.

He walks inside where the temperature drops a little. There are flies on the walls and ceiling and he’s never known how they do that without falling off. There isn’t much in the way of furniture to land on. He rinses his glass in the kitchen and makes his way upstairs to the bedroom next to his own. The girl is awake. He enters the room and holds up the pitcher of water and helps her tilt her head forward and she sucks it in greedily through the straw. He gives her ten seconds and then pulls it away. She makes sounds inside her mouth; he thinks she’s trying to form some words but he has no idea what and doesn’t want to know. He holds the water back up and she takes another drink then slumps her head down. Her arms and legs are flushed the most, her face and stomach a close second, and he doesn’t know how attracted to her Cooper needs to be to do what it is he does best. He could try to put some makeup on her once he’s cleaned her up, but he doesn’t know how. It can’t be difficult.

When he goes down to the basement Cooper is standing at the cell door, looking out the small window as Adrian walks down the steps. The sun is still low outside, coming in through the windows and hitting the basement door, and for the next hour or so, as long as that door’s open, it’s almost as good as it used to be when this place had electricity.

“Good morning, Adrian,” Cooper says. “Did you have a good sleep?”

“Not really,” Adrian says, suspicious at how friendly Cooper sounds. Suspicious. . and happy.

“That’s a real shame. So what are we going to do today?”

“Today you get your surprise. In fact I have two of them. One will have to wait until tonight. It’s a nighttime kind of surprise.”

“And the other one?”

“You haven’t made the news yet,” Adrian says. “When the police go looking for you, they’re going to find out you’ve done bad things.”

“True,” Cooper says. “That’s good thinking, Adrian. Excellent thinking. And we need to do something about that, because they’ll come looking for me and eventually they’ll come here.”