Paul Cleave - Collecting Cooper

Already he is thinking what he can use her for.

Ultimately she’ll be another gift to Cooper, but he doesn’t want her being part of a test like the last one turned out to be. He wants something greater for her, and the universe wants something greater for her too-that’s why he found her here.

But first she needs his help.

“I’m here to help you,” he says.

She doesn’t answer. He needs to get her some water, but he’s afraid if he gives her some now she’ll regain enough strength to try and run away. He carries her outside. She groans a little but doesn’t speak. Her skin is hot to touch. It’s hard to fit her in the trunk of the car because of the dead girl already in there, but with some perseverance he gets them snuggled up tight. He leaves the duct tape over her eyes so she doesn’t have to see the view, but he knows she must be able to smell it.

Before he closes the lid, he gets the rag out of the front seat and pours the chemical that puts people to sleep, then holds it over the girl’s face. She doesn’t fight it, and a moment later she’s asleep. He closes the lid carefully, not wanting to snap some fingers or a limb. Then it’s back on the roads again, following them through the darkness and back toward their new home, the itching almost gone now, just one more thing to do before returning to the new home to see Cooper.

I wonder if Jane Tyrone and Emma Green knew each other. I wonder if they had more in common other than being young and blond and the type of girl Cooper Riley wanted to rape and murder. I try not to think about the hell Karen Ford went through here with one mentally unstable man and one madman. Whatever the relationship is between Cooper Riley and Adrian Loaner, there’s no doubt that Karen Ford suffered. Her body is a mess. There is glue residue and torn skin around her lips with a drinking straw hanging from her bottom lip. I try not to think about her last few minutes but it’s all I can think about-what a fucking cruel place to die.

The team of police searching the area has expanded over the last hour. So far only the one extra body has been found, this one has also been in the ground for several years according to the medical examiner, as many as twenty. Dozens of high-wattage halogen bulbs have been strung up around the scene. Moths are attracted to the lamps, they fly in at full speed, some of them impacting against the lamps and burning, others basking in the light as they dance in the air. From a distance it all looks like some archaeological dig, or a group of scientists unearthing an extraterrestrial find. So far no sign of Emma Green. Fingerprints taken from her flat, from her hairbrush and the books she was reading, have been run up against fingerprints found at Grover Hills and so far no match. Grover Hills is Adrian Loaner’s hiding place, but it wasn’t Cooper Riley’s.

Schroder has made some calls to some of the staff who worked at Grover Hills. The first call he made seemed to be going well until he mentioned the Twins. Then he was shut down. The woman he was talking to said she wanted a lawyer. Every phone call since has followed a similar pattern.

“They’re lawyering up,” Schroder tells me. “Getting anything out of them is like getting blood out of a stone, and this is why. They knew shit was going on there. We’re going to have to start getting warrants and bringing them in for questioning, and this is going to take a fuckload longer than it should.”

Over the last thirty minutes media vans have started showing up. Men and women in expensive-looking outfits have been pouring out of vehicles and hitting the dirt roads, unable to pass the cordon that was erected only minutes before the first van arrived. Others are circling the perimeter, heading toward the trees on the hill in the near distance, all of them hoping for a better shot, wanting so desperately to be the first to share the tragedy with the rest of the country, to have their smiling faces on the ten-thirty news tonight to speak of horrors unburied, all of them aware the more bodies we find the bigger the story, the longer the story can survive, the better the ratings. At this point they have no idea what story they’re covering, only that for this amount of police attention they know it’s a big one. Emma Green and Cooper Riley are names that will pass across the airwaves as TV anchors bounce theories back and forth with the journalists live at the scene. As I watch them, a BMW that can only be a year old at the most pulls up and Jonas Jones steps out, the psychic here to predict that there are bodies in the graves. I allow myself a brief smile as I imagine what it would be like if a small earthquake opened the ground beneath the media and the city was suddenly short a couple of dozen journalists, but the smile disappears when I realize only more would come to replace them, only now with more to report on, bigger smiles and bigger news and bigger ratings.

“We’re running out of time,” I say, and Schroder nods. I turn toward Benson Barlow. “Who killed Karen Ford? Adrian Loaner or Cooper Riley or both of them together? And who abducted her? Did Riley abduct her and they were both taken by Adrian, or did Adrian take her by himself, and if so, why?”

“It’s possible Riley and Loaner may start working together,” Barlow says. “There are many cases of relationships between killers where one personality dominates over the other. I say it’s possible, but I imagine highly unlikely. Riley won’t have any time for Loaner. I think you’ll find if an opportunity comes to kill Adrian Loaner, Cooper Riley will take it. If he’s still alive, Cooper will be doing what he can to manipulate his way to freedom. I would imagine Adrian is trying to please Cooper, and the girl was a gift to him.”

“Jesus,” I say. “So you think Cooper Riley is still alive then.

“Until the novelty wears off, yes.”

“And Emma Green?”

“If she’s still alive, it won’t be for long. That’s one thing I can be certain of.”

“We don’t know anything for certain,” Schroder says. “For all we know Adrian might try eating Cooper.” He puts his hand on my shoulder to steer me away from the graves. “Look, I know you’re not going to give me any peace, and like you said, there are things you can do that we can’t.”

“What are you asking, Carl?”

“I don’t really know,” he says, but I think he does know, he just doesn’t want to voice it. He looks back to see if Barlow is following, but he isn’t. He opens up his car door and leans inside. He pulls out four folders. One each for Adrian Loaner, Cooper Riley, Karen Ford, and Jane Tyrone. He holds them against his chest. “Look, Theo, you have a way of finding people and finding out about them, and if Emma Green really is still alive. . just, I don’t know, I want to say just do what it takes. I guess that’s what I am saying. Do what it takes, and in your case dial it back a little.”

I nod and he hands me the folders. The one with Adrian’s name on it is by far the thinnest of them all. I open it up and there’s a photograph of him from the institution. I don’t know when it was taken, but it doesn’t look much like the sketch I tore from the newspaper.

He leans back into his car. “Don’t lose this one again,” he says, and hands me the Melissa X file, only now it’s thicker and the front of it says Natalie Flowers / AKA Melissa X.

I get lost on the way back home. There is no point in hanging around at Grover Hills, and there aren’t any names jumping out at me as to who to speak to next. It’s dark and there’s no other source of lighting on these roads other than what’s coming from my car and the sliver of pale moon. Nothing is recognizable, and certainly nothing looks the same as it did this afternoon. I have no idea how the media made it out here, and can only assume that in the deal they made to sell their souls, the Devil threw in GPS as a bonus. I drive up and down a wrong set of dirt roads until lucking my way back into what I’d deem civilization. The highway gets me back onto the road to town where traffic is thick but so far flowing quickly, and for the first time in my life I make it through town hitting less than half a dozen red lights.