Collecting Cooper: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  He puts on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and pads barefoot into the kitchen. There is orange juice in the fridge that he brought from the Twins’ house, along with some fresh eggs and bread from his mother’s house that isn’t as fresh now. There were already a few food items out here, but mostly junk food, like bags of chips and a fizzy drink of the kind he was never allowed to drink growing up and doesn’t want to drink now. He pours himself some orange juice and puts some bread in the toaster and puts on a pair of shorts while waiting for his toast to pop. He sits at the kitchen table and reads the newspaper he gave to Cooper yesterday. He learns the name of the girl he found last night. Emma Green. He reads an article about capital punishment, about the rights and wrongs of it, agreeing with both sides. The Twins deserved to die for what they did to people, but Adrian doesn’t deserve to die for what he did to the Twins. And if he did, then wouldn’t the people who carried out those executions on prisoners, wouldn’t they be killers too, and then wouldn’t they get arrested and go to jail and be next in line for the electric chair? Did New Zealand even have an electric chair? He isn’t sure when they got rid of the death penalty in New Zealand, or if they even had it, and, if they did, how did they use to do it? Probably a firing squad. Not all killers are monsters. Some have their reasons.

  He pours a second glass of juice and tucks the Taser into his pocket and grabs hold of the gun and opens up the bedroom door where Emma Green is tied to a bed similar to the one he slept in. He thinks this one was perhaps the master bedroom for whoever the Twins killed out here before taking it over. The furniture is old-fashioned with lots of curves and engravings, and the bedspread has lots of flower patterns over it. The window is open and the air is warm and the girl is fast asleep and he stands motionless staring at her. He wants to smell her hair and use his finger to stroke it from her face. After a few minutes she starts to stir as if sensing him. Her eyes flutter open and fix on him. She pulls back in horror.

  “I’m the one who found you,” he says, “and helped you. See, I have something for you to drink.”

  “What . . . what do you—” she says, then starts to cough. Her body tightens as she tries to cover her mouth with her hand but her hands are tied up around the headboard. “Do you, you, want?” she asks.

  She’s naked, but last night when he tied her to the bed he draped a sheet over her. He realizes now that she thinks he’s the one who took her. Didn’t she see Cooper?

  “Please, I’m not the one who abducted you,” he says. “I’m trying to help you.” He steps toward the bed and she has no more room to pull back from him. He holds the glass out toward her. “I want you to drink this,” he says. “I want you to feel better.”

  Before she can answer, he tips the drink toward her mouth. She gulps it down eagerly.

  “Don’t you remember me?” he asks, while she’s still drinking. “I helped you. I put you into the bath and helped cool you down and gave you water and took the duct tape off your eyes.”

  He pulls the glass away. She slowly nods. Her lips are wet with juice and there are drops on her chin. He’ll have to pick up some more glue when he’s getting supplies today.

  “I remember,” she says. “You put me in the trunk of a car against something that smelled dead,” she says, “but if you didn’t take me, why do you have me tied up?”

  “It’s complicated,” he says, and it always is. “I’m the man trying to help you,” he says, which isn’t exactly a lie. He wants to help her get better so he can give her to Cooper.

  “But you kidnapped me,” she says.

  “No, I found you,” he says.

  “Then why tie me up?”

  “It’s complicated,” he says again, and he likes this answer. He’ll use it on Cooper too when Cooper starts asking him things he doesn’t want to talk about.

  “If you didn’t kidnap me,” she says, “then can you untie me? And I need food too—I haven’t eaten in days.”

  “I’m going to untie you,” he says, “and give you some food, but first you need to understand that there’s no way you can understand what’s going on here. If you help me I can help you, and then you can eat and I can take you home,” he says, and the first part is true but the second part isn’t, and he can feel himself blush. He hates lying to somebody so . . . so pretty.

  “Help you?” she asks. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

  “I’m hurt,” he says, and he looks down at his leg. With the gun still in his hand, he tries to roll up the leg of his shorts but the Taser in his pocket stops him. He takes it out and rests it on the chest of drawers behind him where it is well out of Emma Green’s reach. Then he rolls his shorts up to reveal the medical padding. “I was shot last night and there’s an infection and I need you to clean it and bandage it.”

  “I’m not a nurse,” she says.

  “But you’re a woman,” he says, and in his experience all women seem to know what to do. “Please, help me with my wound and I’ll let you go.”

  “How do I know you’re not lying?”

  “I don’t lie,” he says, lying and feeling bad about it.

  “So what exactly do you want me to do?”

  “Clean the wound and bandage it. I want you to make me feel better.”

  “And for that you’ll let me go.”

  “Of course.”

  “You promise?”

  “On my mother’s life.”

  “Then you’ll need to untie me.”

  “I have a gun,” he says, waving it back and forth slightly even though surely she’s seen it by now. “If you try to escape I’ll shoot you. Please, don’t make me do that, it really is the last thing I want to do,” he says, and this time the entire statement is true.

  “Where’s the first-aid kit?”

  “There are some things in the bathroom,” he says, “but I don’t know what everything is and most of it is old anyway.”

  “Then untie me and bring everything you have back in here.”

  “No. I’ll get everything first and then untie you.”

  He heads back into the bathroom. He stares at the mirror. The rash is still there with the same intensity, but he’s no longer flushed—if anything he looks very pale. Like a ghost. He scoops everything into a plastic bag and carries it back into the room. He returns to the bathroom and fills a bucket with warm water and finds some cotton balls and a couple of clean cloths.

  “It will be easier if you take your shorts off,” the girl says.

  “Ah . . . I don’t know. I think it’ll be okay,” he answers, remembering the time he vomited on the prostitute.

  “They’re going to keep getting in the way.”

  “It’s just that . . . that . . .” he doesn’t know how to finish. He’s never taken his pants off around a woman before, except for last night when Cooper’s mother helped him, but she was more like a mother and less like a woman and that’s a big difference. “The shorts stay on.”

  “Okay. It’s your decision. You need to untie me.”

  “I know.”

  “And I’d like another drink.”

  “When we’re done.”

  “You promise you’re going to let me go?”

  “You sound like you don’t believe me.”

  “I do believe you,” she says. “After all, you saved me from whoever took me, and for that I’m thankful.”

  Adrian smiles. He likes her.

  “What’s your name?” she asks.

  “Adrian,” he tells her. He had never planned on telling her his name, and can’t believe how quickly he’s told her now.

  “I really like your name, Adrian.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course,” she says, smiling at him, and wow, what a smile! He can feel his heart beating. “It reminds me of classic romance novels.”

  “It does?”

  “Sure it does,” she says. “Adrian . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, nothing. I was just saying your name. I like it.”
r />   He’s pleased that she likes it. It makes him feel . . . warm inside.

  “My name is Emma,” she tells him. “Emma Green. I’m glad you’re going to take me home, Adrian, because my family will be worried about me. My mum especially. I can imagine she will be crying a lot, and so will my dad, and I have a brother too. My mum has cancer,” she tells him, “and is dying.”

  “Does she really have cancer?” he asks.

  “Of course she does. I wouldn’t make up something like that.”

  “Do you read books about serial killers?” he asks, then adds “or books about psychology?”

  “What? No, no, never. Why?”

  “No reason,” he tells her, and he’s suspicious that she’s trying to relate to him. She’s using his name a lot, and the story about the mum with cancer is supposed to make him feel sympathetic . . . that’s what he read in the books about serial killers, but if she doesn’t read those books, then she wouldn’t know to say these things. She’s not trying to trick him—she’s a nice person. Hanging around with people who aren’t nice is making him look for things that aren’t nice in nice people.

  “Do you have any antiseptic, Adrian?” she asks.

  “Huh?”

  “Antiseptic.”

  “Oh, yes, sure.”

  “Can I have some?”

  He moves around the bed and unties the ropes. She sits up, carefully so the sheet doesn’t drape from her body. She rubs at her wrists while he unties her feet. Her wrists are red and the skin is broken and it must be hard being tied up for nearly a week the way she was, and he’s annoyed at Cooper for doing that to her. Cooper could have just locked her in a room. When her feet are free she slowly leans forward and rubs at her ankles.

  “Can I have the antiseptic?” she asks.

  He passes it to her. She takes off the lid and starts to rub cream into her ankles and wrists. He watches her work, going from limb to limb, and he wants to offer to help but he doesn’t. He likes the idea of rubbing cream into her and helping her, but he doesn’t think she’ll like the idea as much.

  “It really hurts,” she tells him.

  “I’m sorry. Next time it’ll . . .” he stops talking, realizing his mistake. He looks down, unable to look her in the eye, waiting for her to pick up on it, waiting for her to say Next time what? You said you were letting me go. He doesn’t know how to finish his sentence, and thankfully he doesn’t have to because she lets him off the hook.

  “Let’s take a look then, shall we?” she says, missing his comment, and he is pleased. “What happened?”

  “Somebody shot me.”

  “Oh, you poor man,” she says, and her voice is soothing and already his leg doesn’t seem to hurt as much. The image that comes next is immediate—he sees himself sitting with this woman on the porch watching a sunrise and not with Cooper. His chest is warm and he feels a little light-headed and he isn’t sure what’s going on. Her wrists are shiny from the cream. He can’t stop looking at them.

  “It doesn’t hurt that much,” he says, but it really does. He doesn’t want her to know how much pain he’s in. “You know, I’ve had worse,” he adds and immediately wishes he hadn’t.

  She tucks the sheet beneath her armpits and clamps her arms down on the outside of it. “Is that everything in the plastic bag?”

  “Yes.”

  “We should start by washing the wound,” she says. “Is that okay? Do you want me to do that for you?”

  “Okay.”

  “You have nice legs, by the way,” she says.

  “Oh. Oh, really?”

  “Surely, Adrian, you’ve heard that before?”

  “Umm . . . no. Never.”

  “Never? I find that hard to believe,” she says, and her smile makes him smile. “Now, do you have any cotton balls?”

  “In the bag.”

  “Then let’s get started.”

  He hands her the bag and she goes through it, placing the items on the bed next to her. Along with the antiseptic, there are other ointments, bandages, gauze pads, tape, a safety pin, pills, creams, a pair of scissors. He keeps his eyes on the scissors. He wants to take them away from her, but at the same time he doesn’t want to say anything mean to her. He needs to take them away without sounding like he doesn’t trust her. He’s really starting to think it would be a waste if he gave her to Cooper.

  “Is that pad stuck on the wound?” she asks, leaning forward to get a better look. Her hair is draped down her back, the sheet open like a curtain through which he can see her spine, it looks like a row of knuckles down her back, her skin is smooth and pale. The skin on her neck is tight and there are beads of sweat sitting on the surface. He has the urge to run his finger over them and send them dripping down her body.

  “Yes,” he hears himself saying.

  “We’re going to need to remove it.”

  “The leg?” he asks, the image of him pacing uneven laps in his room comes back to him, and he can feel the blood drain from his face. He wants to be sick.

  “No, the pad,” she says. “That would be awful if we had to remove the leg,” she says, and she says it in a way to not make him feel stupid about his mistake. He doesn’t know why he thought she meant the leg—it makes no sense. He feels silly. In the past others would have laughed at him for getting something so simple so wrong.

  “It’s going to hurt,” she warns him, “but I sense you’re not going to have a problem. Here, let’s soak it first. It should come away easier.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  She soaks one of the cloths in water and he watches her fingers, her arms, the way her hair sticks to her face. His heart is racing. She squeezes the cloth and he loves the way the water sounds sprinkling back into the bucket. It makes him want to go for a swim, something he hasn’t done since he was a boy. She places the cloth and holds it against the pad on his thigh and she looks up at him and smiles and his legs are starting to turn into jelly. He wishes he were sitting down. She peels the corner of the pad away. It’s still stuck but not as bad.

  “Just a little longer,” she says. “Or I can just rip it straight off. Would you prefer that?”

  “Yes,” he says, and the word hasn’t been out of his mouth for more than half a second when rip, it’s torn from his thigh. “Ah,” he says, “ah that . . .”

  “Was really brave of you,” she says, and smiles at him.

  He smiles back, hiding the pain. She reminds him of Katie, Katie the girl he fell in love with, only Emma is much nicer than Katie. Far more beautiful, and friendly, and even though she’s much younger than Adrian he can feel himself falling. It’s as if he’s thirteen again. Of course his mother would say he’s becoming obsessed, but his mother would be wrong.

  “Now, let’s take a look,” Katie says—no, not Katie, Emma. When they’re sitting on the porch watching future sunsets, he’s going to have to be careful not to make that mistake. “Hmm, it looks nasty. Let me wash it down,” she says, and she soaks some cotton balls in antiseptic.

  “It’s old,” he says, nodding toward the same antiseptic she put on her own wrists and ankles.

  “This stuff lasts forever,” she says. “Trust me, they only put expiration dates on it to make sure you keep buying more. It’s perfectly safe.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. I used it, didn’t I?”

  She did, but she didn’t know it was old, and he feels bad about not having told her before she used it on herself. He has a decision to make—does he believe her or not? Does he trust her? He decides that he does. She’s a nice person, that is obvious, and nice people can be trusted.

  He nods. “Okay,” he says, “use it on me.”

  She smiles. He never wants to see her not smiling. She pads two cotton balls against his thigh, then slowly wipes them downward. “You’re doing really well,” she says. “Not much longer to go.”

  “Okay.”

  “You really should get stitches, Adrian.”

  �
�I can’t.”

  “Then we’ll do the best we can. Now, I need to cut some gauze into the right size.”

  “I’ll do it.” He leans over to the bed and picks up the gauze and the scissors. “What size?”

  “Just a little bigger than the wound.”

  “Oh, of course.” He uses the scissors then hands her the gauze. He puts the scissors into his back pocket. She holds the gauze in place and puts another medical pad on top of it.

  “Now I need you to cut some tape to the right lengths.”

  “How long?”

  “Just a little longer than the pad.”

  She passes him up the tape. It’s difficult because he’s still holding the gun, but he manages okay. He cuts a piece at a time and hands it to her and she sticks it across the edge of the pad and across his thigh. When all four are in place she lets go and leans back.

  “Looks good,” she says. “How does it feel?”

  “Much better,” he says, and he smiles and she smiles back and this is perfect, just perfect.

  “Okay, now, where’s the bandage?” she says, turning back to look at the contents on the bed. “Ah, there we go,” she says, picking it up. “Now I’m going to put this on tight, but not too tight, okay, Adrian? Let me know if it hurts.”

  “It won’t hurt,” he says, his heart fluttering, liking how his name sounds coming from her mouth. He can see what Cooper saw in this girl, but what Cooper was going to do to her was wrong. Very wrong. He will never let Cooper hurt her. Never.

  “Just let me know if it does,” she says. “I don’t want to hurt you, Adrian.”

  “And I don’t want anybody to hurt you.”

  She puts one hand on the inside of his thigh and he can feel himself stirring and is embarrassed about it. She reaches the bandage behind his leg and takes it in her other hand then starts pulling it around. She repeats the movement over and over, crisscrossing the bandage until it’s nice and secure and covering about half of his thigh.

  “Now you’ll need to do this again tonight, so if you like I don’t mind staying for the day, and tonight after I re-dress the wound you can take me home? Is that okay, Adrian? I need to see my parents. I love them so much and miss them.”