Paul Cleave - Collecting Cooper

“I would have starved to death out here,” he says, and he thinks of Emma Green, locked up in a cell at another abandoned mental institution. He left her some water but no food. How much water did he leave her? Two bottles, he thinks. Maybe two liters in total. More than enough for one day. He was going to return the following night. Only it hasn’t been one day. It’s been three and a half. If she’s spaced it out, she’ll be okay. If she drank it all on Monday night after he left her, she’ll be dead by now. When he gets out of here Emma Green isn’t going to be much fun to be around.

“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.

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.