Collecting Cooper: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  I clean up the dishes and come back into the living room. The news has ended, replaced by a breakfast show. A woman in her forties is dressed like a woman in her twenties, she’s sitting on a bright red couch all relaxed with her arm propped up along the top of it, and sitting opposite her on another bright red couch is a man in a pin-striped suit with slicked-back hair and teeth so white there must be some supernatural element involved. The man’s name is Jonas Jones, and I used to run into him a lot when I was on the force. He’s a psychic who tries to scavenge information from the police department so he can make what he likes to call his in-tune psychic readings. You know there’s something wrong with the country when somebody green-lights the kind of show tailor-made for Jonas Jones—this one a reality TV show where psychics, including Jones, solve crimes. Not once have any of their insights led to an arrest. They like to hold clothing or keys or puppies that belonged to the victims, they like to sit in a dim room with a few candles, they close their eyes and tilt their heads slightly and crease their brows as they connect to a different plane of consciousness before spewing forth their predictions, putting on a show, never giving a damn about who they are hurting, each of them about as psychic as a brick. Jonas Jones has earned a pretty good living from this sham. He wrote a book, then another, and somehow people keep buying them, not caring that he’s exploiting real victims and their real pain, capitalizing on those who have died at the hands of somebody else. The author bio overlooks the fact that ten years ago Jonas Jones was a used-car dealer who filed for bankruptcy after two sexual harassment lawsuits were filed against him.

  I turn up the volume.

  “. . . police can only do so much, which is why there’s always going to be a need for people with skills such as myself,” he says.

  “I have to say, I love the show, it always gives me goose bumps seeing you work,” she says, “and I especially love your new book,” she adds, leaning forward before sweeping her hair back and giving him the look a hungry man would give a pizza.

  “Thank you, Laura, that’s always nice to hear,” he says, his teeth flashing at her. “It’s available now and if you buy it today through my website you’ll receive a ten percent discount, or twenty percent if you buy two. It does, as you well know, Laura, make a wonderful gift.”

  “It certainly does, Jonas. I know if I had a man in my life I’d certainly be buying one for him,” she says, and it doesn’t take a psychic to see she’s interested in him. “It appeals to everybody.” I roll my eyes and can’t decide between reaching for the remote or a vomit bag, and during my indecision she throws another line at Jonas and it’s an interesting one. “Now, you were telling me before the show you know something about Emma Green, the young Christchurch girl that’s gone missing.”

  “Yes, yes, a very sad case I’m afraid.”

  Well that’s the only thing he’s ever gotten right.

  “Christchurch is becoming renown for that kind of thing,” she tells him. “In fact, the police now refer to the city as ‘Crime’ church.”

  “As well they should,” he says, and that’s the second thing he’s gotten right. He’s on a roll. That means I should hear him out.

  “What can you tell us about Emma going missing?”

  An image of Emma Green comes up on a big screen in the background. She’s smiling. There are extra arms and shoulders to the sides, friends or family cropped out of the picture. The photo looks recent. There’s some generic greenery behind her, a tree or some shrubs.

  “Not missing,” he says, “she was abducted.”

  “And you think she’s still alive?”

  Jonas looks glum at the same time still managing to show his teeth. It’s a look he must have practiced in the mirror, back when he was selling used cars and telling his customers there was nothing he could do about the faulty water pump on the car they just bought. Copies of his book are standing on a small coffee table between him and his host, a bunch of flowers behind them, everything arranged just so.

  “Unfortunately no,” he says, playing the percentages. That’s what psychics do. They read the situation and go with the statistics. A young girl goes missing in Christchurch, then the statistics say she’s been abducted. They say she’s dead. And assholes like Jonas Jones come along and use that to promote their new book. The plane of consciousness he’s on with these in-tune readings of his has his bank balance on it too. I turn off the TV before he can say another word.

  I sit back down in front of the computer and go through the same information I found last night. Pamela Deans was fifty-eight years old, and for the last three years worked at the Christchurch Public Hospital. Before that, she spent twenty-five years working at Grover Hills, a mental institution built outside of Christchurch during the First World War. Joshua Grover was a businessman who made most of his money importing mining equipment into the country back when people were flocking to the south island searching for gold. Grover had three sons, the oldest was nineteen years old when he killed another schoolboy. The problem was Grover’s son had the mental capacity of a five-year-old. Back then there was no room for sympathy in the justice system, and Grover fought hard to keep his son alive but failed, and for the first time since making his money Grover found there were some things that couldn’t be bought. What he could do was make a difference. Within months of his son being hanged, he petitioned for and finally won the right to build a mental institution where people like his son could be contained. He was granted the right, as long as the institution was well outside the city limits where the mentally ill could be swept under the carpet. Over the years it became one of a handful of institutions, all of them flourishing until, over the last few years, one by one they were shut down, the costs too high and the funds to run them put to use elsewhere by the city council, money spent on trees, on roads and recycling, money being spent trying to solve the teenage drinking epidemic rather than being spent on keeping the mentally dangerous at bay. Patients were kicked to the curb and told to fend for themselves, many with nowhere to go, all of them with instructions that no matter what, they must keep taking their medications. They spilled back into society, those who went on to kill would wind up in jail, but of course it was always too late, the damage was done.

  For a quarter of a century Pamela Deans worked with these people, and then three years ago Grover Hills closed its doors and hung up a Closed for Business sign.

  For nearly thirty years Cooper Riley has studied serial killers and murderers. Along with psychology, he has taught about them at Canterbury University for fifteen years. Some of the cases he speaks about happened here in Christchurch. He studied people who were mad, and Pamela Deans looked after people who were mad.

  The connection this morning is just as thin as last night—but it’s all there is.

  I ring Emma Green’s boyfriend, tell him that I don’t have any news yet about Emma, and then ask him if he knows anything about Grover Hills.

  “Like what?”

  “Have you heard of it?”

  “Yeah, it closed down a few years ago, right?”

  “Right. Has Professor Riley ever mentioned it?”

  “Not really. I think it’s something he covers in later years if you start moving from psychology to criminology.”

  “Do you know if any classes in the past took any field trips? Anything like that?”

  “I doubt it,” he says, and I doubt it too. Nobody would take a class field trip to a mental institution. “He’s missing, right? Professor Riley? Somebody took him and burned down his house.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s connected to Emma?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he kill her?”

  I think of the photographs, Emma Green naked and bound in a chair but still very much alive. “You sure he never mentioned Grover Hills?”

  “It’s only my first year with him, and we’re only two weeks into it, and we’re only doing psychology one-oh-one, not criminology. You should ask one of the other lecture
rs, or a past student, or you should get hold of his book.”

  “His book?”

  “Yeah. There’s a rumor Professor Riley was writing a book about killers in Christchurch. You know, the crazy ones, sociopaths and multiple killers. He’s an expert in that kind of stuff. If it’s true, he’d be writing about people who might have ended up in Grover Hills.”

  “Where can I get a copy?”

  “You mean if there really is one? See, that’s part of the story. He never got it published. It was kind of a joke for some of the students. Professor Riley acts like he knows everything there is to know, but he couldn’t get a publisher to sign him up. We figured that meant he didn’t know enough.”

  “Do you know anybody who’s ever seen it?”

  “No. But I don’t even know if he really wrote one. Could just be one of those urban legend type deals. But if he did write one it must be on his computer or something, right?”

  “Right,” I say, thinking about the lump of plastic his home computer has become.

  After I hang up I call Schroder. He lets it ring half a dozen times before picking up.

  “Look, Tate, I’m glad you called,” he says. “I’ve been thinking hard about this, and the way things are running now, it’s best you leave things to me. I know it’s about finding Emma Green, but it’s also about getting a conviction. Having you running around, that puts any conviction at risk.”

  “I thought you were going to keep me in the loop.”

  “It’s beyond that, Tate.”

  “And Natalie Flowers? Have you spoken to her parents?”

  He sighs, and I think he’s about to hang up, but instead he carries on. “We’ve spoken to her mother. The father died a month after Natalie went missing. The mother says it was from a broken heart. She said that if nothing bad had happened to Natalie, then she would have gone to her father’s funeral, but she never did. You remember the Melissa Flowers case?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Yeah. That took a toll on that family, and when Natalie went missing, well, you can figure out the rest. We showed her the images we had of Melissa X. She says it looks like her daughter, but it’s not her. She saw the photos in the papers last year and thought the same thing. I think she can’t get her head around the possibility of what her daughter was capable of, that’s why she can only see a stranger in those pictures. Look, Tate, if we do it your way then maybe we get the guy and we find Cooper and they take a walk because their defense attorney points out how a convicted felon was contaminating the crime scenes. We do it that way then I lose my job too and then I’m no good to anybody else that goes missing.”

  “The connection between . . .”

  “Jesus, Tate, let it go.”

  “I’m trying to help you here.”

  “No you’re not. You’re trying to help yourself. You feel responsible for Emma Green, but you’re not.”

  “I . . .”

  “I’m hanging up now, Tate. It’s for your own good.”

  I start pacing the study, loosening up my knee. It’s still swollen but not as tight as yesterday. The rain has eased off and the gutters on the roads are no longer overflowing. There are patches of blue sky far in the distance. I understand what Schroder is saying, but it’s hard to give a damn when I’m trying to save Emma Green’s life. I’m talking short term and he’s talking long term. I’m talking about saving one girl and he’s talking about saving future girls.

  There has to be a copy of Cooper Riley’s book somewhere. If he was working on it at home, then any trace of it there would be destroyed, but Riley seems the kind of man who would keep it backed up. Maybe it’s hidden on a flash drive somewhere taped to the back of a filing cabinet. Or, more likely, it’ll be on his office computer.

  I step outside and there’s a warm wind flicking rain water from the trees into my face. By the time I get to the university all the dark clouds have disappeared, the sky out to the east is gray but in the west it’s all blue, the sun beating down on half the city. There are more cars in the parking lot since yesterday and more people around. Everybody seems more awake than the last few days. Though that might change, because the morning is getting muggier by the minute. In my lifetime I can remember Christchurch going above one hundred degrees less than a dozen times. It’ll hit ninety degrees ten times in a good summer, perhaps once in a bad one. Last week it kept closing in on one hundred and ten, and I get the feeling today isn’t going to be any different.

  I park in the shade of a silver birch and leave my windows open a crack so the pressure inside from the heat doesn’t punch a hole in the roof. There’s a patrol car parked outside the psychology building. I walk past a set of double doors with a sign out front saying Psychology Loading Bay. Maybe they load crazy people into the lecture halls for the students to practice on. I make my way upstairs and keep walking past Cooper’s office, nodding toward the two constables stationed outside. When I’m out of the hallway, I call Donovan Green. I can hear pigeons up on the roof through the air vents, they’re loud enough that I have to jam my finger into my other ear.

  “I heard about the photographs,” he says. “But the police won’t show me.”

  “It’s for the best.”

  “You were the one to find them?”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet you didn’t call.”

  “I’m calling now.”

  “We had a deal, remember? You were meant to report to me first, not the police.”

  “That just puts Emma in greater danger.”

  “At least she’s alive. I told you she was a survivor.”

  “I think Cooper Riley being abducted may have saved her life,” I tell him, “but we just don’t know.”

  I walk up and down the corridors of the psychology department until I find the server room. Inside I can see lots of computers all hard-wired together. I can hear the fans going and the air-conditioning unit inside keeping the room cool. There’s a guy inside so pale-looking he can’t know there’s a heat wave outside because he hasn’t stepped into the sun since turning thirteen. He’s about twenty now, with messy hair and long sideburns and I watch him and try to figure out how much money we’re going to need. I figure I’m going to need more than I have on me.

  “So now where do we look?” Green asks.

  “I have a lead, but I need some cash.”

  “How much?”

  “Five grand. Hopefully less.”

  “What for?”

  “I’ll explain when you get here,” I say, and I tell him where I am and hang up and wait.

  chapter twenty-six

  Adrian is settling into the routine. For the three years he’s been gone from the Grove he’s missed the place, which, honestly, he doesn’t understand because for the twenty years he was here he hated every minute of it. When he was forced to leave, as they were all forced to, groups were put into halfway houses, where they would be integrated into the community, some successfully, some not so, others killing themselves, others dying homeless in the streets. They were given bank accounts and sickness benefits, almost two hundred dollars a week going to them from a government that didn’t care where they ended up. Adrian had never had nightmares until he began living in the halfway house, a run-down wooden version of his real home run by a man who called himself the Preacher. The house was less than a quarter of the size of Grover Hills, with only one kitchen and two bathrooms they all had to share, his bedroom shared with a man the same age as him but in a wheelchair, wheeled in from another institution that closed down around the same time. In all that time the man never spoke a word to him, and for a long time Adrian resented him for that, but that resentment faded once he learned the man’s silence was brought about by the fact he’d had his tongue bitten out. Adrian was unclear whether the man had bitten his own tongue out or if it had been done for him, and either possibility made his muscles contract around the back of his neck and his stomach sag. The most noise that man ever made was about five months ago when he cho
ked on a chicken bone and died, the color drained from his face leaving dark bags under his eyes. The halfway house always stunk of food and the carpets were damp and his shared bedroom was smaller than his room here. The windowsills in the bathrooms were full of rot and the ceilings in them sagged and if you put your face against the wall it would be sliced up by flakes of dried paint. He hated it there. His mother never came to visit, even though she promised she would.

  Adrian’s real mother never visited him at all since he left home twenty-three years ago, not since the incident with the cats. He has two mothers, the one who abandoned him when he was sixteen, and the one who abandoned him three years ago when his home was closed down. Both were hard women. Both left him to fend for himself. Both he holds in contempt, as well as loving them fully. His original mother died eight years ago. Nobody told him it had happened, and he only found out when he was released. He has no idea if she died being the same person he remembered her being when he was a kid. He doesn’t even know how real his memories are, whether they’re true accounts of their relationship or whether they faded and twisted over time. He knows he was sad when he found out about her. He had it all planned—a trip back home, a knock on the door, his mother would hug him and everything would be okay. Only back home wasn’t home anymore, it still felt that way until he knocked on the door and a stranger answered. The stranger was a man in his fifties, he had bought the house years earlier and knew nothing about Adrian or his mother, but the neighbors next door were still the same. So it was from next door that he got the news his mother had died, and he broke down and sobbed, the old lady there doing her best to comfort him. His mother had died of a brain embolism. He doesn’t know what that is, what causes them, but was told an embolism is basically a ticking time bomb inside your head that can go off at any time. His mother’s had gone off while she was standing in line at a supermarket. The checkout aisle was the last thing she ever saw. One second she was alive and the next second she wasn’t.