Paul Cleave - Collecting Cooper

“I’m going to make you better,” he says, and he puts water onto his fingers and rolls it into her mouth. This time she swallows. He smiles. Then his smile disappears. He can’t find the glue. He took it out of his ruined pants back at Cooper’s mum’s house and put it into his new pair-didn’t he? Ever since the beating Adrian took as a kid, he’s been fully aware anything he puts down he may never see again. He can take his watch off and sit it on a table only to find it two days later under the bed or outside in the garden. He can put down a key and turn his back on it and it’ll disappear. Screwdrivers, coins, books, even shoes-it doesn’t matter. And it’s frustrating. It makes him crazy. He should have been a magician.

Now the glue, which he knows he brought with him, is missing, and how else is he supposed to be able to keep the girl’s mouth closed?

The glue was something that his mother-his Grover Hills mother-used to use on him. He’d be down in that basement yelling so loudly because he was scared to be down there, and she’d come down with a couple of the orderlies, not always the Twins-though sometimes it was one or both of them and sometimes different people completely-and they’d hold him down and put the glue between his lips and pinch them shut. Most of the time when his mouth was glued he’d work at it with his fingers. He’d dampen them in the bucket of water and slowly pry them apart, a little at a time, trying not to tear the skin but usually failing. A couple of times there was too much glue, or a different kind, and for some reason no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get his mouth open, and when they finally let him out of his cell they’d rub alcohol or turpentine or something that tasted real bad across his mouth, rubbing it into the slowly widening gap and it’d hurt bad and taste even worse and roughed up the skin for days. The straw was his idea. He knew what it was like when you got thirsty and couldn’t drink.

He’ll do the same for this woman, once he finds the glue.

He just has to find the straws too.

He smiles at her, noticing for the first time just how attractive she is, and he blushes at the thought. He drips some more water into her mouth before pulling her out and, keeping her wet, he ties her onto one of the beds then heads outside for Cooper’s mother who has rolled onto her side and is in the process of trying to get to her feet.

Schroder goes to Cooper Riley’s mother’s house. He’s going in the hope a map fell out of Adrian’s pocket with a big circle around the location where he’s holed up with Cooper and his mother and maybe Emma too.

I catch a ride with one of the officers heading to Grover Hills. I figure I can do more for Emma there than I can from a motel room. The officer doesn’t make much conversation on the way. He’s not somebody who was in the department when I was three years ago, so he doesn’t know anything about my history, which feels nice. He also doesn’t get lost-he’s made the drive a couple of times today and can pick the difference between one dirt road over another. Maybe he grew up on a farm or the training these days is better than it was for me. Sunnyview and Eastlake were a bust, but forensic crews are still being sent to both to check for fingerprints and blood and to scout around the grounds for bodies.

We drive through the perimeter the media have set up around Grover Hills and questions are yelled at us and spotlights pointed at us and the officer is blinded by one of the cameras and clips one of the reporters with the side of the bumper. She is sent flying into the dirt. She gets up screaming abuse at us and threatening to sue before realizing her mistake, that being more hurt means a bigger story and more compensation, so she goes quiet and collapses into a heap. Every camera lights her up and she lays there in a caricature of pain. The officer stops the car and gets out and takes a couple of steps toward her, but is blocked by cameras and more lights all pointing at him now. He raises his hands to shield his eyes. I leave him to it and walk toward the building, passing a couple of cops coming back my way to help their colleague.

Two more bodies have been found since I’ve been gone, both of them in the same grave. There seems to be no pattern as to where the bodies have been laid out, probably because the people doing the digging were crazy. Nobody gives me so much as a second glance as I walk over to take a closer look. The two bodies are fresh-looking, lots of skin slippage, dark veins protrude from underneath their skin as if they are worms feeding and burrowing their way beneath the blotchy surfaces. My stomach turns for the second time tonight. One man is wearing jeans and one is wearing shorts and they’re both wearing T-shirts that are stained with fluids that have seeped from their bodies.

One of the medical examiners, a woman by the name of Tracey Walter, comes over. Last time I saw her was when I was working on the Burial Killer case. Back then she had black hair tied into a ponytail, now it’s been dyed blond but the style is the same. She always has an athletic look about her, as if she might break into a jog at any time.

“Who let you in?” she asks, at least grinning as she says it.

“Schroder asked for my help.”

She offers me her hand. “It’s clean,” she says, then seems to struggle holding it there as I shake it. Last year she was pretty angry with me and I don’t blame her. I almost got her fired when I stole evidence from her morgue.

“So what can you tell me about these guys?” I ask.

“Nothing,” she says. “No way in hell Schroder asked you for an opinion.”

“He did. Just not on this case,” I admit. “Come on, Tracey, I’m trying to find Emma Green.”

“And you’ll stop at nothing.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“It is for the people who get in your way, even the innocent ones.” “Any idea who they are?” I ask, nodding down toward the two men.

“Not yet,” she says. “Bodies haven’t been touched yet.”

“Then let’s touch them,” I say. I crouch down on the side of the grave and tug sideways at the shorts on the closest victim, twisting them until I can get to the back pocket.

“What the hell, Tate?”

I come up with a wallet and hand it to her probably an hour or two earlier than the plan, but there’s no time to mess around with protocol. There’s no cash, and there are no credit cards and no license. I reach into the second grave. Same tug on the pants. Same trick. The back pocket comes around the same way and a wallet with the same amount of nothing inside it comes free.

“Great,” she says. “Thanks for being so helpful.”

Close to the side of the grave, I take a better look at the bodies. “You notice how similar they look?” I ask.

“In what way?”

“Same height, same hair color, same bone structure,” I say. Rot and decay has taken some of the details away, but there’s plenty of skin and flesh left to see the similarities. Tracey crouches down and shines a flashlight into the face of one, then the face of the other. The eyes are milky white with dark brown centers.

“It’s hard to tell right now,” she says, “but they certainly do look alike. They could be brothers.”

“Brothers?”

“Yes. Related.”

“I know what you mean,” I say, getting back up. Brothers. Twins. Orderlies. “How long have they been in the ground?”

“No longer than a week,” she says. “Why, does that mean something to you?”

“Possibly. I gotta go.”

“You know who they are, don’t you?”

“I’m working on it,” I say, but I’m not sure she hears me because I’m already racing off looking for a car I can borrow.