Paul Cleave - Collecting Cooper

Adrian frowns. “Why would they come here?”

“Because they’re the police. They’ll look for me. They’ll figure out who took me, and they’ll figure out where you have me.”

“No they won’t,” Adrian says, and he’s confident of that. “And that’s one of the surprises. See, I don’t want them to figure out you’re a serial killer because then they’ll look even harder for you. That’s why I’m going to burn it down.”

“Burn what down?”

“With your house gone the police won’t be able to learn as much about you.”

“Wait, wait, hang on a second, Adrian,” Cooper says, putting his hand on the glass. “Listen to me. There’s no need to do that. I’ve been careful. There’s nothing there for them to find.”

“But it’s for the best! You don’t need it anymore, and it’s safer this way. I’m doing this for you! It’s about being careful,” he says. “I’ll be back in an hour or two and I’ll bring you some lunch,” he adds, and he makes his way back upstairs, shaking his head as Cooper continues to call to him, thinking, who knew being a collector was so much work?

Cooper Riley lives in Northwood, one of the newer subdivisions in the north of Christchurch that came into existence around the same time the twentieth century ended. Out here half a million dollars can buy you a badly built house that looks nice, but is nowhere as strong as a home built across town fifty years ago where land and life is cheaper. People come to Northwood for the safety of a community that isn’t addicted to drugs or murder, but like all things, the violence is already catching up. Today it doesn’t matter where you live in Christchurch, everywhere is being blasted by the heat wave equally. Paint has peeled from letterboxes and iron fences, and the only grass that hasn’t been burned off is in thick shade. All of the houses have manicured gardens, and there aren’t any weeds in sight. Each house falls in line with a similar design. It’s the kind of community where everybody’s uniqueness conforms with the collective agreement. If somebody built a front fence or painted their house something that wasn’t a shade of fawn, they’d be lynched. There are garage-sized sculptures every few blocks that are supposed to look like pergolas but instead look like incomplete garages. Cooper lives on Winsington Drive, surrounded by other pretentious-sounding street names that could have come out of some 1940s golf clothing catalog, the Winsington Jacket is a collaboration of style and elegance, a must for when one is taking lunch on the 19th hole . Cooper’s street is part of a subdivision less than five years old, the tar seal road has bubbled from the heat and there are potholes where it’s melted and stuck to the tread of passing cars. I drive slowly because it’s impossible to know what direction other drivers are wanting to take because the residents of Northwood are allergic to indicating.

The price tags increase as the houses get bigger, two-story places with columns leading up from the front door to the top floor, columns that in another time and country would have been made from marble. Here, however, ninety percent of the homes are made from plaster that’s been slapped over polystyrene sheets, a great idea until some kid punches a hole in a wall with his soccer ball and then the moisture is sucked into the wooden framework of the house where the rot spreads. It’s an expensive problem and a common one across the country. People here are paying for the area and for the look and for the illusion of quality. There’s a big jet boat parked up on a trailer out on the street next to Cooper’s house, taking up most of the lane. It looks expensive, and I guess the nice house wasn’t enough by itself for the owner to prove to the neighbors he has wealth. I get past it and there are two cars on the other side and they certainly don’t look like they belong to a detective. The smaller car parked out front is yellow and looks out of place in this neighborhood because it’s not European. If it were here for more than twenty-four hours it would get picked up by the sanitation department. The second car, the BMW, is in the driveway. I pull in ahead of the cheaper car. I’ve seen it before. Emma Green’s file is next to me on the passenger seat. I open it and there’s a photo of her car with her standing next to it, taken about four months ago. I look at the registration plate in the file and then the one in real life and they’re identical. Since Tuesday night there has been a report out to look for that car, but the problem is there are more cars than cops in this city, and the report to look for it doesn’t mean anything unless it enters the orbit of a patrol car. This is the car the insurance company gave her after I ruined her other one. In the photo she has a big grin on her face. In the photo she thinks the worst is behind her. She has no idea she’s about slap-bang between two tragedies, one that almost took her life and one that may have. I close the file and step into the sun, her smile staying with me and pushing me forward, making me desperate to find the man who took that smile from her.

I walk carefully up to the house, the lenses in my sunglasses ready to drip from the frames. Schroder must have made a call by now and somebody will be on their way to talk to Cooper Riley. That means soon a police car is going to arrive and a detective along with it. But something here isn’t right. The front door to the house is ajar. The keys are hanging from the lock. The driver’s door to the BMW is closed, but hasn’t latched. The interior light isn’t going so either the bulb has blown or it’s switched off or the door has been open all night and the battery has died. The BMW is dark blue and about ten years old and can’t have been the car that hit the dumpster behind the café.

I take a deep breath and pop the trunk and breath out slowly when I see Emma Green isn’t in there. If she ever was folded up into it at any point there’s no sign. If Cooper did take her he could have wrapped her in something. When I walk around the car there’s something plastic on the ground sticking out from beside the tire. I bend down. It’s a camera. There’s a crack running across the back of the display screen and the lid to the battery compartment has busted off. I open up the small compartment covering the memory card and pop it out. I sit the camera back on the ground and look under the car. There’re a couple of papers, a teaching schedule, a sandwich wrapped in clear wrap, and an apple that’s wrinkled and soft. Wedged beneath the edge of the tire are some tiny pieces of paper, disk-shaped with a serial number across them. There are others further beneath the car, and when I stand back up I can see some against the edge of the lawn. They are from a Taser gun. I slip the memory card into my pocket and walk around to the trunk and take out the tire iron.

I don’t knock on the door. Instead I take the keys and pocket them before swinging the door all the way open with my foot. The stench of petrol wafts out. My eyes water as I move forward. There are two empty petrol cans just inside the doorway. I wipe at my eyes while holding my breath. The tiled foyer floor is wet and slippery. To the left are a set of open French doors leading through to a carpeted living room with large dark patches where petrol has been splashed around. Ahead are more French doors, another living room, a dining room, and a kitchen. To the right a staircase twists up to the second-floor landing, a ninety-degree bend halfway up, all of it edged with iron wrought bars connected by a white wooden handrail.

I step back outside. I suck in a breath of clean air. Somebody was shot by a Taser, and somebody is about to set fire to the house. All that petrol-it’s going to burn quick, and it’s going to happen any second now. If Emma Green is inside she’s going to burn quick along with it.