Collecting Cooper: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  “People go missing every day, but not like this,” Cooper says, looking around the cell. “What you’ve done here is nothing short of . . . brilliant.”

  “Oh,” he says, and then it sinks in. “Oh! That’s great,” he says, and he can feel himself blushing.

  “You know, Adrian, you seem like a pretty cool guy. I just wish you’d talked to me first before bringing me here. I’m sure we could have figured things out a little better. A little more . . . smoothly.”

  Adrian wants to believe him, but doesn’t think he can. Not yet. “Can I ask you some questions?” he asks.

  “Sure, sure you can, Adrian. Ask anything you like, and I’d be grateful if I could ask you some as well. Is that okay? I’m really interested in what you have to say.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course.”

  Adrian isn’t sure. Nobody has ever been interested before in what he has to say. Serial killers are clever people, they’re . . . what’s the word? Man-ip-you-la-tive. They’re certainly that, and suddenly he isn’t so sure Cooper really does think he’s a cool guy. He has to be careful.

  “What made you interested in serial killers? What made you want to become one?” he asks, and he sits down on the couch in the lamplight and waits for Cooper to tell him.

  chapter thirteen

  Emma Green’s flat is exactly what you’d expect from any flat rented by university students: run-down with long lawns and windows covered in films of dirt and a recycling bin overflowing with empty beer cans and wine bottles standing sentry by the front door. It’s one of those student neighborhoods where alcohol consumption equates to social standing, where the more you drink the cooler you become and the better friends you get. Donovan Green has smoothed the way for me to talk to Emma’s flatmate, which I do, along with her boyfriend and a couple of the boyfriend’s friends who are hanging out in the living room drinking instead of studying as they hope for the best and fear the worst for Emma. The furniture is all the kind of stuff you see dumped on the roadside with signs attached saying Free. I stay standing. The flat smells of cigarette smoke. The boys are stacking their freshly empty beer bottles on a coffee table in a formation like a house of cards. The flatmate is a pretty girl with bouncy blond hair styled from some latest sitcom. She keeps picking at her cuticles, snapping away splinters of skin from the sides of her nails and dropping them onto the threadbare carpet.

  She wipes at her eyes as we talk, there are mascara stains beneath them, what my wife would have called panda eyes, which she’d get sometimes if we fought, which, thankfully, wasn’t often. She tells me a similar thing that Emma’s father told me, that Emma’s a smart girl and can talk her way out of anything.

  “She even talked her way out of a speeding ticket a week ago,” she says. “She told the officer she was in a rush to get to the hospital because her mum was undergoing cancer treatment.”

  “I hadn’t heard.”

  She shakes her head. “That’s the thing. Her mother hasn’t got cancer. Emma has this idea that everybody knows somebody with cancer, or who has died from it, and you can use that to talk your way out of anything because people are sympathetic and they can relate. She’s been reading about psychology for the last year even though she only started studying it a few weeks ago. She has this way of seeing how people tick, you know?”

  I talk to everybody and don’t get any more information than I already had. The boys are more interested in shooting each other on the big-screen TV, their thumbs flying over game controllers and their eyes locked on the action. The volume is turned down so at least we can talk. Two mornings ago Emma Green woke up and went to class. She finished studying and had lunch with two of her friends. She went to work, pulling a four-hour part-time shift at the café. Then somebody abducted her.

  The file Schroder gave me has information that Donovan Green didn’t have. The police searched the parking lot behind the café and found a makeup compact and a small patch of fresh blood with skin and hair stuck in it. The flatmate identified the compact as belonging to Emma. The hair matched the color of Emma’s hair, and the blood matched Emma’s blood type. DNA testing takes weeks, but it’s a safe bet it’ll be a match. It all adds up to a struggle. Emma dropped her bag and the compact rolled out. Her head banged into the ground or somebody banged it into the ground for her.

  Paint scrapings were taken from the side of the dumpster I looked at, which had been driven into. They were red and Emma’s car was yellow. If somebody was speeding away from the scene with Emma in the trunk of their car, why come back for her car later on? No, most likely whoever hit the dumpster had nothing to do with Emma’s disappearance. Could have happened yesterday, could have happened three days ago. It’s not useful. Sales receipts are being run from the café, a list of people there on the day is slowly being built, but the problem is most people spending five or ten bucks on coffee and a muffin don’t use credit cards. If the suspect did take Emma’s car, how did he get there? Bus? A taxi? Does he live close enough to have walked?

  There have been no unusual visitors to the flat, no maintenance men or gardeners or a creepy landlord, no strange phone calls, nobody hanging around outside. The flatmate lets me look through Emma’s room about twelve hours after the police already have, and everything is out of place from this morning’s search and anything they found relevant taken away. I spend an hour at the flat with my questions and leave feeling more frustrated than when I arrived.

  I get home just before nine o’clock. It’s been a long day, and one that started with me waking up in jail. There are kids out in the street racing on skateboards, some throwing a football, others playing a game of tag. The sun is moments away from sliding off the edge of the horizon, but at the moment it’s reflecting brightly off the windows, a blistering orange ball of fire trying to melt the glass. It’s the first time in four months I’ve seen the sun sink from view, and the sight has never looked so fantastic. For four months day and night were brought in with the flick of a switch. It’s hard to imagine that tomorrow I’ll be waking up in my own bed. Hard to imagine Emma Green can see the sunset. It’s the perfect evening for a beer but I’ve made a promise never to touch another beer again.

  I stay outside until the sun is completely gone and I can no longer hear the kids in the street. The temperature drops down to a more livable seventy degrees. I watch the late-night news and there’s no mention of Emma Green, no mention of Melissa, but the news is no different from the news I was watching before being shut away for four months—bad people doing bad things to good people all across the city, across the country, all across the world. The news becomes blurry as my eyelids become heavier. There’s a brief mention of the fire Schroder attended today. The victim peeled from the floor was a nurse by the name of Pamela Deans. It shows a picture of Pamela in a nurse’s uniform. It makes me think about Melissa for a moment, but all her victims have been men and the fire doesn’t fit. The picture has to be at least a few years old and in it she looks around fifty, hair streaked black and gray pulled tightly in a bun, perhaps her downcast smile is a result of her extra chin weighing down on her lips.

  I make some coffee and go back through the file Schroder gave me. I call Schroder for an update but his phone goes through to voice mail. I leave a message. Some of the facts in Emma’s folder are things I learned about her last year when I ran into her life. Her birthday was the day after I ran into her with my car. She’ll be eighteen this year and has an older brother, Jason, living in Australia. She has blond hair and hazel eyes and a look that would have men watching her anywhere she went. It could be that look that got her abducted.

  My cell phone rings and I’m hoping it’s Schroder, but it’s Donovan Green. He’s wanting an update. I tell him I’ve spoken to the boyfriend and her boss and her flatmate and I’m going to speak to some of her classmates in the morning. I tell him there will be many who won’t want to speak to me, and he tells me to remind them why I’m there—to help find Emma. He reminds me in an almo
st pleading way why he’s come to me. I don’t tell him about the blood and hair. I hang up and a minute later Schroder calls.

  “We’re working on something,” he says. “We got a report of a car speeding away from the café just after Emma finished work. Another driver had to slam on his brakes to avoid a collision.”

  “He get a plate?”

  “He got the first two letters. Said if he’d gotten the rest, he’d have reported the guy for reckless driving yesterday. He said he forgot about it, then Emma’s case made the news tonight, and he thought it might be relevant. He said it was a red four-door sedan, maybe five years old. Couldn’t pin him down on any other details. You saw the dumpster?”

  “Yeah. Red paint. But if he sped away from the scene, where’s Emma’s car?”

  “That’s the key question. You take another look at the Melissa file?”

  “Not yet. I’m going to talk to some of Emma’s classmates,” I tell him.

  “Yeah, I figured you would. You still think you can do a better job.”

  “It’s not that . . .”

  “I know, I know,” he says. “I didn’t mean it like that. Hell, maybe you can do a better job. There could be something to what you said earlier.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Or I’m just frustrated and tired, that’s all. The fact is you do have a good insight and one that can save lives,” he says before hanging up, and I hope he’s right, I hope that we can balance the scales of this city a little by finding Emma Green alive.

  chapter fourteen

  Cooper has to be careful with Adrian’s questions: What made you interested in serial killers? What made you want to become one? His instinct is to say he isn’t a serial killer, but instead he has to play the game. He didn’t set the rules, but he can follow them. Already he has made wrong assumptions. He thought Adrian had been the one to sell him the thumb, but that’s clearly not the case. The thumb is a coincidence in a day full of random shit. The basement is getting cooler. It’s too dark to see if there’s damp or mold, but he can sense it there, growing in and around the concrete blocks, leeching the warmth from his body. He’d rather freeze to death than wrap the sheet laying on top of the mattress around himself. He takes a deep breath and plunges into the delusion, answering the question with one of his own. “Do you know how many women I’ve killed?”

  Adrian, smiling now because he is being drawn into the conversation, smiling because he’s getting everything he wants, raises up two fingers, and then says “Two,” confirming it. “Plus the man who owns the thumb. That’s three in total that I know of. Are there more?”

  Be careful. And be believable. Just what is a good number to start with?

  Christ, it’s like bidding in one of the auctions. Ten is way too many, but he likes the idea of going higher than three because it will give Adrian the feeling of being drawn into a secret. He settles on five.

  “Six,” he says, changing his mind at the last moment. “Four women and two men,” he says.

  Just hope he doesn’t ask you to name them.

  Making up the names won’t be the problem, no, the problem will be remembering them. He struggles enough as it is to remember somebody’s name when he’s introduced to them. What he’ll do is go with some of his students. Surely Adrian wouldn’t recognize the names. He pushes forward, hoping to get past that. “I enjoyed the women,” he says, “but the men were necessities.”

  “Why?”

  “One of them was a boyfriend of one of the women who was in the way,” Cooper says, then pauses. It sounds unbelievable to himself and surely to Adrian too, and he waits to be called a liar, and when it doesn’t happen, he carries on. “And the other one owed me money.”

  “And the thumb belongs to one of them?”

  “Yes. The one who owed me money,” he answers, wishing he’d gone with four people. Or just the two Adrian said in the beginning. Wait—three—because of the thumb in the jar. This is going to be harder than he thought. He can feel those two-to-one odds tugging in the wrong direction.

  “What did you use to cut off the thumb?” Adrian asks, stepping closer to the window. “Who was he? Why did he owe you money?”

  Shit. Cooper can see this quickly getting away from him. “He was a friend of mine,” he says, “and I lent him some money a few years ago, but then he refused to pay it back,” he says, and he has lent money to friends before and every one of them has always paid him back and there was no need to remove any thumbs. “So I strangled him, and I used a knife to cut off his thumb, and I buried his body.”

  “Where did you bury him?”

  “In the woods.”

  “What woods?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Cooper says, slumping his shoulders. “What matters is it’s over now,” he says, and he looks away, but not away too far because he needs Adrian to see just how sad he’s pretending to look.

  Adrian takes another step forward. “What’s over?”

  “The killing.” He rests his forehead against the window. “The very thing you like about me is the very thing I won’t be able to do anymore.” Unless you let me out, Cooper thinks but doesn’t say. It’s too soon. Baby steps. Anything more than that and he’ll blow it.

  “I have thought about that.”

  “You have?” he asks, looking up, genuinely curious.

  “Yes. And I have something that can help.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a surprise. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  Baby steps. He’s clenching his fists but Adrian can’t see him. He can only imagine what it’s like to strangle somebody, his imaginary friend didn’t struggle, but when he gets out of here he’d like to find out how it feels with Adrian.

  “Okay, Adrian. Thank you,” he says, and it’s a struggle not asking what the surprise is. “You know, I always knew the killing was going to come to an end.”

  “I guess,” Adrian says, scratching at a red blemish on the side of his face. “But it doesn’t have to.”

  “How’s that? You’re not going to start bringing me people to kill, there isn’t much . . .”

  He trails off when he sees Adrian smile. Oh, Jesus, that’s his plan! He’s sure of it. The surprise Adrian has for him is going to be somebody for him to kill. His stomach tightens at the thought.

  “Just wait until tomorrow,” Adrian says, almost confirming it. “You didn’t answer—why did you become a serial killer?”

  Is the person he’s supposed to kill already here? A man or a woman? Somebody he knows?

  “Cooper?”

  Wait, this can be a good thing. It can be somebody who can help. They can help each other.

  “Hey, Cooper?”

  “Huh?” He looks at Adrian. Adrian is looking concerned.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sure I am.”

  “Why did you become a serial killer?”

  “What?”

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “What? Yes, yes, of course. It’s just that, well, it’s a hard question to answer,” Cooper says, trying to focus, trying to recall what he’s learned and taught all these years. “It just kind of happened. The first one was almost accidental. I was breaking into somebody’s house,” he says. “I was looking for money and this woman just, you know, kind of just came home at the wrong time.” It’s a standard answer. Every day somewhere in the world somebody comes home to find a stranger in their house and gets killed for it. A burglar goes in to steal money and is presented with a career changing opportunity, it happens all the time, burglars upgrading from thief to rapist to killer.

  “That’s how it can often start,” Adrian says, nodding. “It’s in the books.”

  “One thing just led to another.”

  Adrian stops scratching at the blotch on his face to study his fingers. “Did you rape her?”

  “Like I said, one thing just led to another.”

  “Did you kill animals when you were a kid?” Adrian asks, returning to his scrat
ching.

  “Did you?”

  “Umm . . .”

  “Remember the deal, Adrian? I was going to answer your questions but only if you answer mine.”

  “I remember.”

  “Was it a cat or a dog?” Cooper asks.

  “How did you know?”

  “But it’s never gone beyond that, has it? You’ve never killed a person?”

  “No, never,” Adrian says, looking down, and Cooper can tell he’s lying. Adrian is a killer. The odds at getting out of here slip a little more. Hopefully the other people Adrian has killed haven’t been people he collected in this room.

  “Tell me about it,” Cooper says.

  “It was a long time ago,” Adrian says. “At school, I used to get bullied.”

  “So did I,” Cooper says, though that isn’t true. He never got bullied and he wasn’t a bully. He was more of a ghost—people didn’t really see him.

  “It was all the time. I didn’t get beaten up every day, but I got teased every day, and punched or pushed at least every week. I hated school.”

  “It can be tough,” Cooper says, “but you survived it.”

  “One day these kids beat me up really bad. I had to go to hospital. I was in there a while. They kicked me heaps and put me into a coma. The coma didn’t hurt, but the rest of it did.”

  “That sounds awful,” Cooper says, wishing the kids had finished the job.

  “It was awful. I wanted to get revenge on them but they were all bigger than me and there wasn’t anything I could do. I wanted to kill them. I would follow them home, but, but . . . like I said, they were all bigger than me.”

  “So you started killing animals?”

  “Pets. I started killing their pets. There were eight boys that beat me and they all had pets. Cats or dogs. At night I’d sneak out of my house and hang outside their homes. It took only a few days to learn what kind of pets they had. I didn’t think they’d all have them, but they did.” Adrian moves back to the coffee table. He begins to straighten up the books again. “Eight cats and two dogs because some of them had more than one pet. I started with the cats because they were easier to get to. I took a packet of cat food and when I caught one I held it down and wrapped it in a blanket so I wouldn’t have to see it, then I’d just jump on it. They would move around like a thousand volts was being pumped into them, and then they’d stop moving. When I unwrapped it the cat would always feel floppy and warm, like it was fast asleep. I’d leave the animal on their front lawn. Because I wasn’t going to school anymore, I could hang out near their house most of the day. I’d watch where they buried the pet, then that night I’d go back to visit the grave.”