Paul Cleave - Collecting Cooper

“I guess they did.”

“So why are you here?”

“Because they had to take their victims somewhere.”

“I told you, I don’t know where they live.”

“I’ve been to their house. It was full of souvenirs of people they’ve killed.”

“Fucking gene,” he says.

“They didn’t take their victims there. So where? Any ideas?”

“Like I said, I just don’t know them. I really don’t. I wish I could help you. I could if I knew anything, but there’s nothing.”

“There has to be something,” I say, the frustration and exhaustion starting to get the better of me. “Please, there has to be something.”

“I’m telling you, if I knew I’d tell you. I get that there’s a girl’s life on the line, okay? I get it. I just don’t know where they are. I haven’t seen them in about six years.”

“Since the funerals of your grandparents.”

“Yeah. That’s what I said earlier.”

“That’s the same time they left Grover Hills.”

“So?” he asks. “So it means when your grandparents died, they quit their jobs. Why would they do that?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

He doesn’t know, but it’s taking shape. They quit their job because they no longer needed the Scream Room at Grover Hills. They had somewhere to build their own. “Your grandparents. Where did they live?”

“They moved ages ago. I used to live with them when I was a kid. They had a pretty nice house near town, but they always wanted something bigger with a lot of land. It wasn’t long after I moved out that they bought a farm before retiring. They worked that farm for. . let me think. . seven or eight years, I guess, before my grandfather died. Not long after grandma died too, I think it was because she missed him so much.”

A farm. It’s perfect. “What happened to it? The farm?”

“I don’t know. It was sold, I guess.”

“But you don’t know?”

“I think they left it to their kids, to Ellis and Murray, and I always just figured. . shit, I just figured they’d sold it, but you don’t think they did, do you? You think this is where they were taking their victims?”

“Where is it?”

“You’re going to need a map,” he says.

“I got one in the car.”

“Then grab a pencil. You’re going to need directions.”

His collection is escaping. All the hard work, all the planning, it’s all turning to ruin. He no longer feels any pain in his leg from the gunshot last night, and even his foot doesn’t hurt compared to what’s going on in his head. His foot, his poor damaged foot, how will it heal? Can the toes be saved? His eye, his poor damaged eye feels like it’s on fire.

The safety pin is gone. It’s back on the floor in the bedroom where Katie betrayed him. He will never trust her again. She failed him when he was a kid, she failed him when he tried paying her for sex a few months ago, and now she’s failed him again. Almost as much as the pain, that betrayal hurts. He doesn’t know how many bullets are in the gun but he knows it wouldn’t be wise to use them all up, so for the moment he’s stopped shooting. He isn’t even sure he wants to shoot his collection. Things can still be saved. All he has to do is close the cell door and give it some time and he’ll try, he’ll really, really try to forgive them, and he can use Cooper’s mother or Katie to help him heal. He can still have his sunrise on the porch with Cooper one morning and Katie the next.

Like the Preacher told him, he just needs to have a little faith.

Right now he just has to close that door.

He can barely take any weight on his leg, and when he walks only the heel of his foot touches the ground, and his shoulder slides along the wall as he leans against it. He keeps the gun ahead, the end of it trained on the doorway to the Scream Room.

Cooper’s mother comes out. Her eyes are half open and her face is sagging. She’s upright but standing kind of funny, the same way a puppet would stand in a puppet show, limbs all loose and not in control. She comes toward him and he takes a step back. He didn’t expect this. He levels the gun at her as best as he can, his hand shaking, his entire body sore. His free hand covers his eye.

“What do you want?” he asks.

She doesn’t answer. He takes another step back and the weight goes onto his foot and his leg buckles and he almost falls.

“Don’t make me shoot you,” he says, talking loudly over his ringing ears.

Closer. Closer still.

“Get back,” he says.

He pulls the trigger. Twice. One shot into the ceiling, the second into the woman’s chest. Instead of flying backward like people do in movies when they’re shot, she is launched forward. He takes another shot at her, this time getting her in the stomach, and she keeps coming at him and he lifts his arms to stop her from hitting him, even taking his hand from his eye as she crashes into him. He stumbles back and this time there is no way his foot can maintain his weight and he tips over, his body lying flat and his head wedged upright against the wall, which now has a dent in the plasterboard. He pushes her off. She rolls onto the floor next to him, her face staring up at his.

Cooper is standing in front of him, and Cooper looks mad. The front of his trousers are soaking wet, and there is still blood all over his shirt from the girl two nights ago. Has it been two nights already? The same view also includes Adrian’s foot, and the second of the damaged toes is missing now and he isn’t sure when it came off.

He raises his gun, only the gun isn’t in his hand anymore, instead his hand is empty. He’s defenseless, just as he was all those years ago near his school when he was on the ground being pissed on, and he gets that same feeling that he got then when he knew what was coming. Cooper bends down and picks up the gun then steps in close.

“It hurts,” Adrian says. “Please, Cooper, help me. You’re my best friend.”

Cooper crouches down and puts the barrel of the gun against Adrian’s chest. Cooper smiles. Adrian smiles too. Everything is going to be okay. The gun barrel is hot. A moment later it feels like he’s having a heart attack. Every muscle in his body is cramping, and no longer does his eye seem to hurt. The world flashes brightly, like when the doctor used to come by in the hospital and shine lights into his eyes. Everything flares white again as the gun barrel gets hotter. Then the world darkens. There are twin pools of blood draining down his chest. He watches the world fade through the one eye that can still see.

He watches Katie, his beloved Katie over all these years, come out of the room, naked and beautiful and he would never give her to Cooper, never. Cooper stands up and approaches her.

And the last words Adrian hears are Cooper’s as he talks to her.

“There’s something I should tell you,” he says, turning his back on Adrian and raising the gun to Katie, “because so far I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

And then Adrian sees himself on the porch, an old man now, watching the sunrise with Katie by his side, Cooper no longer part of their lives, the sunrise starting to fade, fading to night, his hand in hers, dark now, and then gone.

I think about my promise to Donovan Green. He wants his five minutes with Cooper Riley, and if Adrian Loaner wasn’t involved, maybe I’d give it to him. Instead I call Schroder. It’s the best thing for Emma, for Schroder, and for me. I need things to stay good between me and Schroder. No doubt I’ll need him in the future. The prison phone is covered in scratches, names and dates etched into it, and the guard stands next to me, listening to the whole thing.