Paul Cleave - Collecting Cooper

The roads are full of early-morning weekend traffic. Most people have the windows down with their arms hanging out the window, some of them with cigarettes between their fingers with smoke trailing into the air. There are no early indications that today is going to be any cooler than yesterday. I think of Buttons and what he said about rumors in a mental institution, and wonder how much of what he said last night was true. I hope Jesse Cartman is doing better this morning, that he’ll take his medication today and not be found with his hands buried in somebody else looking for the soft meat. There’s a delay up ahead, a couple of the teenage drag racers from last night have crashed, shutting down one of the lanes, so we’re all bottlenecked up to and through an intersection, the heat cooking us all.

I make it through the city. I drive out past the airport taking a road with a view to the runways, an incoming plane low enough to shake the car. There are a few dozen people parked off the road, caught between reading newspapers and watching the planes come and go. Out past more paddocks and more farmers and I should just buy a house out here because it’d mean less commuting.

I don’t get all warm inside at the thought of returning to the prison. I have to go past a guard station and show some ID before I pull into the parking lot where there’s a small scattering of other visitor vehicles. It all looks exactly the same as it did a few days ago when I was stepping out of it. Same shimmering blacktop. Same dust floating up from the exercise yard. Same machines and same scaffolding and same work crews extending the prison walls, making more room for the new arrivals being bused in on a daily basis, not having to work too fast because the prison just keeps on busing them back out. The entrance betrays what it’s really like inside. A nicely landscaped garden around the parking lot that’s turning brown in the sun, a large double set of automatic glass doors, all modern styling with furniture inside only a year old at the most. There’s a reception counter with about four people behind it, all of them look like they should be on the other side of the bars, especially the woman who speaks to me. She has dark black hair along with a small reserve of it lining her upper lip. She looks at me as if trying to figure how many pieces she can break me into, and I imagine it would be a lot. She has to be at least twice my weight, and she’s carrying most of that in her shoulders and chest.

“I’d like to see a prisoner,” I tell her.

“You have an appointment?”

“No.”

“You just say no?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t just come down here without making an appointment.”

“Then I’d like to make an appointment,” I say.

“For who and for when?”

“For Edward Hunter, and for now.”

“I just said you can’t come here without making an appointment.”

“I just made one.”

“No you didn’t,” she says. “You just asked to make one. It’s a big difference.”

“Please, it’s important.”

“That’s what everybody says.”

I think about calling Donovan Green. Asking him for some more money to grease the transition between not seeing Edward Hunter and seeing Edward Hunter, then figuring it’s too risky. The woman looks like she’d be happy because most of her income is being blown on steroids, but sad because she’d have to split it with the others behind her. “Please, it really is important,” I say. “I think he knows something that can help me find Emma Green, the girl that’s missing. Please. Her father sent me. He’s desperate. And what can it hurt letting me see him?”

She takes a good ten seconds to think about it. Weighs up whatever options there are for and against, and comes to the conclusion that helping me out may end up being her good deed for the day.

“Don’t make this a habit,” she says.

“I won’t. I promise.”

“It’ll take ten minutes. Sit down and wait, and if it takes longer, don’t complain.”

I sit down and wait and I don’t complain, even though I can feel each of the minutes ticking away.

The screams are loud, muffled somewhat by the padded walls of the cell, but high pitched enough to come through and for Cooper to know they’re being made by a woman. Probably from Emma Green. There’s a second gunshot, then three more, and Cooper is desperate to know what’s going on. Have the police arrived? He hopes not.

His mother is in the opposite corner of the cell. He can’t see her-he still can’t see a damn thing in here and has no idea whether it’s even morning yet, and his bladder is so full that fluids must be starting to back up into his stomach and his groin feels like it’s going to pop. His mother isn’t talking to him, or even looking at him now, and for that he truly hates himself. He starts banging on the cell door. He has to bang hard to produce sound loud enough to be heard, and he uses his shoe like he did back in Grover Hills.

“Hey, hey, what’s going on out there? Adrian? Hey, let me out of here. Let me out, let me out, let me out!”

The screaming stops. There is no more gunfire, only silence. He keeps banging at the padded door.

Then the slot at face height opens up.

“Who are you?” Emma Green asks.

He almost jumps at seeing her face. In a weird way it’s like seeing a ghost. “Who. . who are you?” he asks, trying to sound like he doesn’t know. “Please, please, you have to let me out of here,” he adds, trying to hide his shock at seeing her. “He’s crazy. He’s going to kill us.”

“You look. . kind of familiar.”

“Please, we have to hurry.”

“Oh my God, you’re one of my university professors! What the hell is going on here?”

“I don’t know,” he says, and right now he really doesn’t. Somehow Emma Green has escaped. The screams must have come from Adrian. The gunshots must have been Emma Green shooting him! It’s perfect. All absolutely perfect. “Listen, what’s your name?” he asks.

“Emma.”

“Listen, Emma, I’ve been captive for. . I don’t know, I’ve lost track of time. Please, please, you have to let me out of here. You killed him, right? The man who took me?”

“No. He’s still alive. I only hurt him,” she says, glancing over her right shoulder to look down the corridor.

“You shot him, right? Please tell me you shot him.”

“He was shooting at me.”

“Oh, fuck, so he’s still out there? You have to hurry. You have to let me out, you have to let me out now!”

“Are you in there alone?” she asks.

He steps aside so she can see into the room. “My mother is in here with me,” he tells her.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“It’s what I’m trying to tell you. He killed her. Last night he killed her right in front of me and there wasn’t a thing I could do,” he says. “It was the worst. . the worst thing in the world.” And it was the worst thing. He wrapped his hands around his mother’s throat and he told her he was sorry over and over as her eyes bulged forward and he took her life from her. He loves her, but he loves his freedom even more. There was no other way. The police would question her. She would tell them a crazy man thought her son was a serial killer. The police would wonder if there was something to that, on account of one of his students going missing. Two students, if you counted the one from three years ago.

“Oh my God,” she says.

“Please, you have to let me out.”

“Hang on a second.”

She takes a step back and the door opens outward into the hall. The relief washes over him. He can feel the excitement of killing Adrian. He can taste the excitement of being alone with Emma Green. For the first time he notices she’s completely naked. He steps out of the cell. This isn’t Sunnyview or Eastlake. “Where in the hell are we?”