Paul Cleave - Collecting Cooper

It shatters against the side of my skull, but it feels like half of it has gone right through the bone. What looks like a severed thumb hits me in the nose before bouncing away, then the fluid washes into my eyes, the pain is instant and burns and everything goes fuzzy from the liquid and from the blow to my head. I can barely open my eyes. I try to blink away the fluid but it’s not helping.

Cooper leans down on me. His outline is blurry. His hands tighten against my throat. I reach for them but can barely even lift my arms. I can smell urine and sweat. I can hear creaking wood. I can taste blood. I’m quickly losing a battle against something I can do nothing about, and all I have is the hope that Schroder is about to walk through the door.

He doesn’t.

Cooper’s hands tighten.

I blink away more of the fluid. Pressure is building up inside my head. My eyes are going to pop out. Then something comes into view. A black object that looks like a gun but is too thick to be one. Cooper tilts his head up to see it and a moment later the end of it is jammed into his mouth.

“You fucker!” Emma Green yells and pulls the trigger.

His body goes tight for a second before going completely loose. There’s a low crackling sound of volts being transferred. Tiny lights are dancing in front of my vision that turn out to be small pieces of paper with serial numbers on them too fuzzy to read. Cooper’s hands slip off my throat and he falls on me, his face pressing hard against my face, the full weight of his body on me. I push him off to the side and he rolls onto his back. There are two thin wires leading from his open mouth to the Taser in Emma’s hand. Her finger is still on the trigger and Cooper is jerking on the floor until she lets go.

I wipe at my eyes but things still remain blurry. I crawl away and get to my knees and when I stand up I walk sideways and crash into the wall then back down to the floor. Emma puts the Taser down and picks up the crowbar. Her hands are still tied together, but now they’re in front of her. She must have hooked her feet up and through.

“Who are you?” she asks. “Who the fuck are you?”

I hold my hands over my head, ready to defend myself if she starts swinging, not sure that I’m going to be able to. “Your father, he, he sent me to, to find you,” I say.

“You look familiar.”

“That’s, that’s because. .”

“You ran into me last year. What the hell? Have you come here to hurt me?”

“No, no, of course not,” I say, trying to get my breathing under control.

Cooper starts gagging. He’s trying to move his arms but he can’t. His mouth is open and his tongue is swelling up. There’s a bulge growing in his throat. His face is turning purple and he can’t breathe. He’s trying to reach his mouth but he can’t.

“Your father hired me,” I tell her. Sweat is mixing with the blood from my scalp and whatever fluid was in that jar. I keep wiping it from my eyes. It stings like hell. “He thought that I owed it to you and to him to find you. That’s why, why, I took on the case.”

“Stay where you are,” she says. “Stay on the floor. If you try to move I’ll start swinging. I’m not kidding.”

“What about him?” I ask, nodding toward Cooper. His face is dark purple now.

“Was he going to kill me?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“Then let him die,” she says.

“You don’t want that,” I say. “You do now, but soon you’ll regret it. Trust me.” I push myself up from the floor. I wipe at my eyes and suck in some deeper breaths. I try to move over to Cooper. My knee isn’t bending again and hurts to take any weight.

“Stay where you are,” she tells me.

“He’ll die.”

“If you move one muscle I’ll put this through your skull. You got a phone?”

“No.”

“Bullshit,” she says. “Everybody these days has a phone.”

“Yeah? Where’s yours?” I ask.

“I don’t know. He took it from me.”

I wipe the bottom of my shirt over my face. My vision is starting to clear. Cooper is making gagging noises.

“Why do you want to help him so much?” she asks.

“The police are on their way, but they’re still five or ten minutes away, and honestly I’m just as happy as you are to stand here and watch him die. But he has information I need. There’s another woman I’m looking for. Another girl that he hurt.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You have to trust me.”

“I’m never trusting anybody again.”

I reach into my pocket. I find the photograph Donovan Green gave me the day I got out of jail.

“Your dad gave me this,” I tell her, and I show it to her. “He said the day this was taken you turned ten. He said all you wanted for your birthday was a puppy and when they didn’t get one for you, you ran away. He told me they found you two blocks away at the park on the merry-go-round trying to talk to the birds in the trees and make friends with them. They were so relieved you were okay and when they were about to tell you off, you talked your way out of it. Your dad said you told them you ran away because you felt bad about having wanted so much from them, and not because you hadn’t gotten it, and that you ran away because you were a bad girl. He knew you were making it up, but the way you said it was believable and made them feel bad and they couldn’t bring themselves to tell you off. He said you’ve always been able to talk your way into getting what you want from him. Put down the crowbar, Emma, and let me help him.”

“He told you all that?”

I nod.

She doesn’t put down the crowbar, but she nods toward Cooper. “Help him,” she says. “Ask him what you need to.”

I move over to Cooper and crouch down next to him.

“Calm down,” I tell him.

He doesn’t. He isn’t moving much, mostly just shudders, but I need him to stay perfectly still.

“Stop struggling or you’re going to die. Now, this is going to hurt but at least you’ll live. You got that?”

He stops moving.

I take the pen off the crossword book and snap it in half, giving me a plastic tube.

“What are you doing to him?” Emma asks.

“I’m going to save his life. You know what I’m about to do?” I ask Cooper.

His eyes tell me that he gets it. I pick up a piece of glass from the broken jar, put my hand on his forehead and push his head against the floor to keep him still, then drag the glass down his throat, between two little ridges. He starts struggling again. His face is covered in sweat. When the cut is big enough, I jam the tube into the wound.

He starts breathing, air going through the pen.

Sirens finally start sounding in the distance.

“The police are here,” I tell her. “Go and find some clothes. I’ll wait with him.”

Emma leaves the room. Cooper stays where he is. His skin is returning from the purple color back to normal.

“You remember Natalie Flowers?” I ask him.

He finds the strength to nod.

“Do you know where she is?”

He shakes his head.

“Any idea at all?”

He shakes his head again.

“If you knew, would you tell me?”

Another shake of the head.

“You sent her down a path, you know that, right?”

He nods.

“People are dying because of her, because of what you did to her. You’re a piece of garbage, you know that, right? The rest of the world is going to know it too because you were kind enough to take the photos to prove it. They’re going to know that you’re the worst kind of rapist. You know, I’ve been in jail, I know what it’s like, but for you, well, there’s a special place in jail for you. My experience in jail is going to look like a vacation compared to yours. Help me with Natalie, and maybe I’ll see what I can do. Maybe you don’t have to spend every day sitting on a bag of ice to keep down the swelling.”