Collecting Cooper: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  Keeping his eyes on the money, he asks “What do you want?”

  “To ask you some questions,” I answer. “About Cooper Riley.”

  “You a reporter?”

  “Come on, this is cash I’ve got here, not a check that’s going to bounce.”

  “What are you then?”

  “I’m somebody trying to find Cooper Riley and you’re somebody who looks like they could do with some cash.”

  “How much is that?”

  “Two thousand,” I say, beginning to grow impatient. “It’ll only take two minutes. You ever earned a thousand dollars a minute before?”

  He unlocks the door. The room is the coldest room I’ve been in since getting out of jail. There are fans blowing and an air-conditioning unit running hard with small ribbons taped to it fluttering in the breeze. There are LED lights coming from every surface and lots of light radiating into the room from a dozen switched-on computer monitors and overhead fluorescent lights that I can hear humming. Throw in the sound of a hundred ticking hard drives and we’re listening to an IT symphony. The door swings closed behind me. He can’t take his eyes off the cash.

  “Okay, so what’s the deal?” he asks. Then he adds, “You shouldn’t be in here,” almost as though he’s reading off a cue card.

  “I need some information.”

  “I’m not at liberty to . . . to . . . this is two thousand?”

  “That’s right. And I’m not after anything illegal,” I say, which is a complete lie. “Listen, all I need you to do is access any files belonging to Cooper Riley.”

  “I thought you only wanted me to answer some questions.”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that,” I tell him.

  “Police have already had me access them.”

  “Then this shouldn’t be too hard for you.”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “I’m looking for something in particular. I need to know if he’s backed something up. You take a look, and you get this,” I say, waving the cash.

  “Just for looking?”

  “Just for looking.”

  “Okay. Okay, that doesn’t seem too illegal,” he says, justifying it to himself and holding out his hand. I give him the cash.

  He walks over to one of the terminals. It only takes him thirty seconds to punch up the information he needs, having accessed it yesterday. A list of files and folders comes up.

  “He was writing a book,” I tell him.

  “What kind of book?”

  “About criminals.”

  “Hang on,” he says, and starts scrolling through the files. “Yeah, there’s a word processing document here that looks pretty big that the cops took a copy of yesterday. Let me check,” he says, and double clicks on the icon. Page one of a manuscript appears. “This looks like it could be it,” he says, and when he turns back around I’m holding out another thousand dollars in my bandaged hand.

  “I need it printed,” I say.

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “Nobody will ever know.”

  “If it comes back I did this . . .”

  “It won’t. Trust me. There’s no way I’ll get caught with it, and it’s not like Cooper Riley is going to be in any position to complain about his book being printed out—even if he ever does find out, and since the police have a copy anyway, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes public. I just need a head start on it.”

  “I don’t . . .” he says, but keeps looking at the money.

  “Just print it out and I’m gone.”

  “And nobody ever has to know?”

  “Not from me.”

  He turns back to the computer. He reaches into his pocket and grabs a flash drive and slots it into a USB port. “Printing will leave a record,” he says, “plus it’ll take too long. It’s about three hundred pages. It’d take close to fifteen minutes.”

  He copies the file, which takes about two seconds and hands me the flash drive. I’m halfway out the door when I turn back toward him. “One more thing,” I ask. “Can you tell me when he last accessed the file?”

  “I can only tell you when he last backed up this particular one. He may have been working on it at home, or have a different version saved somewhere. But this one was last saved three years ago.”

  Three years ago. The same time Natalie went missing. The same time Cooper got divorced.

  The dashboard of the rental tells me it’s almost eleven o’clock and one hundred and six degrees. Traffic starts to back up from the north where there’s another house fire. Hardly anybody is walking the streets. A few stray dogs are sniffing the gutters for food, the gutters having dried out now and full of fresh litter. I get past the fire only to get boxed in by traffic a few intersections later where two taxis have collided, the drivers both unhurt but yelling at each other in different foreign languages neither of them can understand. It takes ten minutes to get past them, glass pooled out over the road like diamonds.

  When I get home I leave the front door open and crack open the windows in the study and try to get some airflow going. I get the fan up and running and plug the flash drive into my computer. It takes a few minutes for my computer to boot up, it takes longer than last time and will take longer next time, the eighteen-month-old components inside making it an antique. I sit in front of it and massage my knee, which is feeling better and bending more than it did this morning. Three hundred pages is a lot to read through, but I’m only going to be scanning it for a connection between Pamela Deans and Cooper Riley and Grover Hills. I set it printing and pick up the first few pages as they come out. Before the pages have even cooled off I can see the connection. It’s in the introduction Cooper Riley has written. Riley was visiting Grover Hills. He was interviewing some of the criminals out there for his work. Nurse Deans was helping him. He was building up a study and writing this book and I imagine at some point was going to approach some publishers, or maybe he did and was rejected. He was heading out there on a weekly basis, Nurse Deans the liaison between him and the patients. More warm pages are ejected from the printer. I pick them up. It looks like Riley interviewed at least a dozen or so patients. A couple of things come to mind. First off, how far down the path was Cooper Riley toward abducting Natalie Flowers, killing Jane Tyrone, and abducting Emma Green when he conducted these interviews? Second, was the thought of torturing and killing a young woman something he never thought he’d do back then, or something he was dying to do? Impossible to know whether these interviews brought his desire forward or repressed it.

  Almost a hundred pages are finished printing. I tap them against the desk to level them then carry them out to the living room. The house is stuffy at this end and the smell of toner has followed me down the hall, making the house feel even stuffier. I open the French doors to head out to the deck.

  I drop the pages. Daxter is hanging from the gutter, his eyes half open, and while yesterday he looked like he was sleeping, today he looks exactly the way dead cats look when a noose has been fashioned from a piece of wire and hooked up to the roof.

  chapter twenty-eight

  The payoff is in the expression. It’s been more than twenty years since he last saw that look. It brings a flood of memories that makes his insides warm and gives him a sense of longing for those days. There will be more cats, he tells himself, because there are more people who have hurt him. Through the gap in the fence he watches Tate drop the pages. They hit the deck and slide apart like a deck of cards, the top few peeling away and drifting onto the brown lawn. Tate reaches up to the cat and Adrian doesn’t stay to see what happens next, instead he runs down the street to where his car is parked, mission almost accomplished, drives to the end of the street, turns left, then turns left again and comes up the parallel street into the cul-de-sac and stops outside Tate’s house.

  The front door to the house is open, which makes this easier. He was going to knock on the door and shoot Tate when he answered it, which is always risky, but now he ste
ps inside. He can’t hear anything except a mechanical sound being repeated over and over from the first room on the left, a whirr-clunk, whirr-clunk. He takes the Taser out of his pocket. His hands are sweating and he almost loses his grip on the handle. He keeps it pointed ahead of him, but close to his body where he can protect it. The rag is in his back pocket, along with the small plastic bottle of the fluid that makes people sleep.

  Ideally he’d like to shoot Tate in the back. The whole thing would go that much easier, but it’s not necessary. Either way, once Tate is down and unconscious, Adrian can back the car into the driveway and pick him up. He’s not the best at reversing a car but he’s done it enough times that he’s confident he can do it again. He’ll park next to Tate’s car because the driveway is wide enough. Then he’ll pop the trunk and load Tate in and drive back to the Grove. He’ll put him in one of the rooms with the padded walls. Not as comfortable as a bed, but much safer when dealing with somebody like Tate.

  Theodore Tate—both killer and hunter of killers—the perfect collector’s piece. He will have stories too—good ones.

  The room making the sound is a study. There are pages coming out of a printer, being ejected through a slot like an envelope being mailed. The pages fall into a tray. There’s a bunch of them already, and there are lots of other papers and photographs scattered across the floor and desk. He takes hold of the next page rolling out of the printer. He scans it then picks up other pages from the tray and scans those too.

  Oh my God, is this the book Cooper was working on? He recognizes some of the names. It is! It really is! He can’t believe it, and he’s so excited that his hands start shaking even more. More pages come out of the printer. He snatches them up. How did Tate get hold of a copy? And why? He glances around the room as if the answer is going to be there for him, but it isn’t, but what is here are lots of other papers and photographs to do with another case, one that he’s been reading about lately. Tate is not only looking for Cooper, but also for the woman who’s been killing men in uniform.

  He can’t believe his luck in coming here.

  He doesn’t think the smile will leave his face for hours!

  He steps into the hallway. He can hear Tate talking to somebody and his heart slams harder in his chest and his smile disappears. There are two people here! He steps back into the study and scoops up the manuscript and all the papers scattered around the room, and the papers he jams into an empty file. He doesn’t get them all and he can’t wait for the rest to come out of the printer. Cooper will love getting his hands on this Melissa X information. What a way to make him happy! He feels like he’s raiding a treasure chest. He feels like, at any second, Tate and his friend are going to burst into the study and capture him. It makes him both excited and anxious.

  He gets back outside and runs down to the car. His racing heart slows down, but he’s still dripping with sweat. He starts the car and is about to pull away when he realizes that Tate may not have had somebody with him, but may have been on the phone. He feels stupid. He bets that’s what it was, that Tate was calling somebody. Probably the police. He still has time to go back inside and try to collect him.

  Only he’s too nervous, way too nervous now, and he’s ridden his luck for the morning, getting in and out of the house without being seen, getting all that information, and digging up the cat. He can come back any time. He can come back tonight, or tomorrow, or next week. So he puts the car into gear and drives out of the street. His nerves turn to excitement. In fact he’s so excited on the way home he pulls over for five minutes to look through the book. Seeing the names of people he used to know, it’s like pulling the scab off an old memory, a happy scab because the memories make him smile. He drives to a convenience store and buys a newspaper, and when he finally gets home he bursts through the front door and puts Cooper’s book on the floor by the basement door, then heads straight down into the basement.

  chapter twenty-nine

  “I have something for you,” Adrian says.

  Cooper is standing on the opposite side of the door. He’s been asleep for a long time—two shots from the Taser within two days has made him tired. It’s been a long morning in the dark, followed by a long night in the dark. This basement is like a black hole when it comes to time. The basement also doesn’t vent any smells that well. The stench of vomit and urine is really getting to him, and he had to take a shit when he woke up a few minutes ago, which is making the air feel thick. Plus his hand is sore. There’s a neat slice through the webbing of his thumb that looks like it would peel apart with just a little help. He’s got nothing to wrap it in. Best thing he can do to avoid an infection is hope for the best.

  “I have something for you too,” Cooper says. “An apology. I know you thought last night that I was trying to escape, and I’m sorry if that’s what you thought, but I wasn’t, I really wasn’t. I was coming upstairs to find you.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course,” he says, but he can tell that Adrian is feeling unsure. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Adrian. After all, you’re all I have.”

  “You’re all I have too,” Adrian says. “And that’s why I got you something. Two things, actually.”

  “More women for me to kill?” he asks, hoping that it is. Next time he won’t mess it up. It was his stupid ego that got in the way last time. He should have let the girl live. At least until he’d dealt with Adrian. In lieu of an answer, Adrian holds up both hands. In one he’s holding a newspaper, in the other he’s holding a file. If this is what he brought for him, Cooper feels disappointed. The sun is coming through the basement door and the paper is easy to read. He can see a sketch on the front page of somebody who looks like one of his old teachers from school, Mr. Maynard, who used to smoke his pipe in the classroom back when things like that were considered normal. Adrian puts the file down on the coffee table, then wraps the first page of the newspaper behind the last, then folds it back in half.

  “Stand back,” Adrian says.

  “Why?”

  “I want to slide this through the door.”

  “Okay.”

  He stands back. There’s the snap of a bolt being undone, not as loud as the one last night that opened the door. It takes all of his willpower not to run forward and try to reach out and grab Adrian’s arm, but he doesn’t, he keeps his ground. Even if he was quick enough to grab Adrian, what then? Start gnawing at the man’s fingers until he reaches up and unbolts the door?

  Actually, yeah, it’s a pretty good idea, but it’s already too late. The flap is opened a fraction and the newspaper slid through, and then the bolt is slid into place and Adrian is back at the window. Cooper walks forward and picks up the paper.

  “What’s in the file?” he asks, looking out at it.

  “We can talk about that in a moment,” Adrian says. “The police are looking for you,” he says. “Have you really killed six people?”

  “Where’s my camera?”

  “What camera?”

  “There was a camera in my briefcase. It’s gone now.”

  “Oh, I burned it,” Adrian says. “In the fire. I didn’t want the police to find it.”

  “Are you sure it was destroyed?”

  “I poured petrol on it. Take a look,” he says, and he starts to scratch at his neck and Cooper wants to believe him but isn’t sure. “It’s in the paper. There’s a photo of the fire.”

  Cooper unfolds the newspaper, careful not to open the wound on his hand with a paper cut. It’s too dark to see anything. Adrian figures it out and steps aside so the light coming from upstairs enters the cell. There is a photo of his house, only it isn’t his house anymore, it’s a fireball with his address.

  “Oh Jesus,” he says, and he feels nauseous. He loved his house. Loved it. “My house. You completely destroyed it.”

  “I know, isn’t it great? It’s stopped the police from finding anything to suggest you’re a serial killer. I thought that today you could tell me about some of the people who used to
stay here,” he says.

  “My house,” he says. “You fucking burned down my house!” He looks up at Adrian, and Adrian is looking confused. When he gets out of here he’s going to burn this place down too and Adrian can watch it happen from the comfort of this fucking cell.

  He tightens his grip and the cut by his thumb squeezes out some spots of blood. At least the camera was destroyed. It must have been. He can clearly see his car. It’s where he dropped his briefcase, so even if Adrian is lying about burning it, it must have been destroyed anyway.

  Must have been.

  Or maybe not.

  “I did it for you,” Adrian says, his voice quieter now. “To help you.”

  Cooper lowers the newspaper. He folds it in half and tosses it onto the bed. Baby steps. You’re dealing with a moron, remember?

  A moron who is in control of his future.

  “That’s right,” he says, “you did it for me. I did love that house,” he says, and thank God for insurance. “But you’re right, it’s for the best and I’m thankful you’re looking out for me.”

  “This is your home now,” Adrian says, “and that house was an anchor to your old life. Also, I have your book.”

  “What?”

  “It looks good,” Adrian says.

  “Of course it’s good,” Cooper says. “How did you get it? You printed off a copy from my house?”

  “No. I took it from somebody.”

  “What? How? From who?”

  “From Theodore Tate. He’s trying to find you.”

  “I know that name,” he says, and a moment later he knows from where. Theodore Tate has made the papers a few times over the last few years. It used to be with different cases, he would be part of a team looking for some guy who had killed a prostitute or held up a service station with a shotgun, and then he made the news when he lost his daughter in an accident. The man who killed her went missing, the theory being he skipped the country rather than face jail. Then Tate made the papers again last year when he tracked down and killed a serial killer.