Paul Cleave - Collecting Cooper

The group watching numbers almost twenty. He doesn’t know where they’ve come from. Most of them are women, some surely stay-at-home mothers. There aren’t any kids, which is great, because he doesn’t like kids. Most of the people seem to be at least forty and he thinks that’s because young people can’t afford to live in this neighborhood. He wouldn’t have thought any of them would want to stand in the sun and feel even hotter as the air around them heated from the flames. There are cars parked up and down the street with more arriving. There’s a jet boat next to Cooper’s house with the paint blistering along the side of it, the wheels of the trailer it’s in are completely flat. There aren’t any police cars or fire engines, but he can hear sirens in the distance. He enters the crowd but doesn’t ask anybody what’s happening. On the front lawn of Cooper’s house are three men and one mattress and a blanket. The mattress wasn’t there earlier, and looks like it’s been thrown from the upstairs bedroom. One of the men is being helped by the other two. He’s limping. His clothes are scorched and there is blood on his hands. Was that man inside the house? And who is he? A neighbor? A cop?

Yes. A cop. That feels right. But why was he there? Looking for Cooper because he’s missing? Or looking for Cooper because he’s killed six people? And he recognizes him too, he knows him, knows him, but can’t place him.

The first fire engine arrives. It’s bright red with lots of chrome, and big men wearing smoke-stained yellow uniforms jump out of it, moving quickly despite their size, hooking up large hoses and getting into place, they’re in time to fight the fire but nothing can be saved. The house collapses in on itself in a crash of violent sound that hurts his ears, sending a shower of sparks into the garden where dry bushes and plants start to smolder. Cooper’s car is also on fire. Another fire engine arrives. More yellow uniforms. Then come the patrol cars, two of them at first, and he can hear the siren of a third a few blocks away. The crowd grows bigger. Has to be at least forty people now. More firemen start piling into the street. Police officers start trying unsuccessfully to push back the spectators. The fire is getting louder. The flames larger and more beautiful. Adrian is caught between staring at them and the man. His mind is ticking over, trying to remember.

The fire hoses grow fat and tight, the pressure moves them across the ground where the folds snap into straight lines. Water arcs from nozzles into the fiery pit that was once a house, the firemen bracing themselves against the pressure. People are yelling at each other over the noise. There are more sirens of approaching vehicles. The crowd has reached fifty, their voices growing louder to be heard over the noise. Adrian is constantly pushed back as newcomers nudge forward for a better view. If he fell he would be trampled to death. It isn’t fair-it’s his fire and everybody else is getting a better view. He moves further down the street where he can get a better line of sight even if everything looks smaller, and even back here he can still feel the heat from it on his face. More and more he focuses on the man. The two men who helped him away from the flames have gone. The man is leaning against a car having an argument with somebody. It’s Detective Inspector Schroder. Adrian has seen him on the news. He’s on there a lot. In fact he thinks that’s where he knows the other man from. As far as he knows, Schroder has never killed anybody. Schroder would never be worthy of collection.

The crowd ebbs and flows as people come and go. Adrian walks back to the car. There is a moment where he’s scared the car will have disappeared, and another moment when climbing into it he suddenly realizes it might be a trap and police are watching, but it comes to nothing and he pulls away.

Adrian watches the news, but not obsessively, and only if it involves serial killers, which isn’t often, and he hasn’t seen it since leaving the halfway house he’s been forced to live in over the last three years since the institution closed. He thinks about the man on the front lawn as he drives, then has to pull over. He finds it hard sometimes to focus on two things at the same time, especially if one of them is driving. So he sits with his face in his hands and closes his eyes and thinks about the serial killers this city has had, he pictures them from the news and it only takes a few moments to put a name to the face he just saw. Theodore Tate. He remembers now. Theodore Tate used to be a cop and became a private investigator, and last year he was in the news because he caught and killed a serial killer. Adrian found the whole case fascinating. He remembers wishing he could figure out who the killer was before the police did, just so he could meet the guy.

Does that mean Theodore Tate has also figured out Cooper Riley is a serial killer? With his face still buried in his hands, Adrian decides that it does. Theodore Tate is hunting Cooper Riley. He doesn’t know how Tate figured it out, all he knows is that it’s what Tate does.

Not only is he trying to ruin Cooper Riley’s life, but Theodore Tate is going to try and take away Adrian’s collection. That’s not fair. When he pulls his hands away his eyes are assaulted by the sun and he has to close them again, opening them for a second at a time until he can bear the light. He drives to a service station. He fills up the two plastic containers that an hour ago were full of petrol but are now empty. He fills up the car too.

He pays with cash. He asks the woman behind the counter if he can borrow a phone book and she says yes, which immediately makes him like her. Women normally do their best never to speak to him. He borrows a pen to write down Tate’s address. He spends five minutes with his map sprawled across the passenger seat trying to figure out the best way to Tate’s house, not recognizing any of the streets because he doesn’t know the area. He draws a line with his finger, humming as he decides on the best way to go.

In total, five fire engines, four patrol cars, and one ambulance show up. Only three of the fire engines are used, the other two park at the back, the excess firemen standing around watching the blaze, one of them talking to a young blond woman in the crowd and making her laugh. I sit in the back of the ambulance with my view of the burning house obstructed, but there are still some pretty clear views of lots and lots of smoke. We’re parked far enough away to no longer feel the heat, but close enough so we still have to talk loudly to be heard over the crackling wood. I’ve drunk about a liter of water since being dragged away from the flames, my lungs are sore, I’m no longer coughing but my hands are shaking. I could have gotten back in there. I know I could have. Wouldn’t have mattered if only one leg was going to support me, I could have made it back in there and found Emma and made it back out. Instead I let those two men drag me away and I could have done more.

I try to focus on the positive. The positive in this case is that I didn’t see Emma, so that means she may not have been in there. The positive is that I’m still alive.

It only takes one paramedic to look me over, and the second one stands outside with everybody else. My knee has swelled up to twice its size from the impact of my fall and has almost no movement. The paramedic is a guy in his midthirties and is completely bald, his scalp glistening with so much sunblock you can see the ambulance walls reflected in it. He gives me anti-inflammatories and painkillers and the pain disappears somewhat but the tightness remains. He jabs my hand with a needle and injects some local anesthetic and digs out a few pieces of glass before cleaning the wound.