Collecting Cooper: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  “I’m sorry about what happened to your family,” I tell him.

  “I know you are. Your daughter was killed too,” he says. “Did you kill the person who hurt her?”

  “Please, I’m here for your help.”

  “You did. I can tell,” he says. “Do you have a monster living inside of you? Mine likes the taste of blood.”

  If Edward Hunter isn’t on any kind of medication, I sure as hell hope he starts getting it. If he’s already on some, then they need to up the dose. His words make me think of Jesse Cartman. Without a doubt there was a monster inside Jesse Cartman that was desperate to be fed.

  “Her name is Emma Green,” I say, moving forward. “She was kidnapped Monday night and I think she’s still alive. She was taken by a man named Cooper Riley. Then they were both abducted by an ex–mental patient named Adrian Loaner.”

  “Sounds like you know everything there is to know.”

  “I don’t know where they are.”

  “Well, nor do I. I haven’t even heard of those people. I don’t get out much, you know. And I don’t like the news. What’s there to like? Same stories every day with different names. Nothing to like about that at all.”

  “What’s your relationship to Murray and Ellis Hunter?”

  “Huh? What?”

  “Murray and . . .”

  “I know. I heard you. They’re uncles, on my dad’s side,” he says, and for the first time he’s engaged with the conversation. “I hardly know them. I didn’t see them for years after my dad was, you know, arrested. I saw them at my grandparents’ funerals, and that was it. I hardly even spoke to them, and if I saw them on the street tomorrow I wouldn’t even recognize them.”

  “They used to work at Grover Hills.”

  “What’s that, some kind of retirement village?”

  “Not quite,” I say, then explain it to him.

  “So what do you want to know about them?”

  “Any idea where they live?”

  “None. Why? You can’t find them?”

  “They’re dead.”

  “What . . . you mean . . . what? How?”

  “Murdered.”

  “Jesus,” he says. “By who?”

  “Adrian Loaner.”

  “The man who has Emma Green.”

  “He used to be a patient there. Everything suggests your uncles used to abuse him, along with others.”

  “Oh, I see,” he says, reaching up and gripping the edge of the table. “Now I see why you came here. You think they have the Hunter gene, right? The one that makes us blood men. My dad had it, I have it, and now they have it too.”

  Two of the guards look over but don’t approach us, though they look like they’re getting ready to. I keep my voice low. “They hurt a lot of people, your uncles. Killed a lot of people too so it’s looking.”

  He shrugs. “So they got what they deserve,” he says, dismissively.

  “I guess they did.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “Because they had to take their victims somewhere.”

  “I told you, I don’t know where they live.”

  “I’ve been to their house. It was full of souvenirs of people they’ve killed.”

  “Fucking gene,” he says.

  “They didn’t take their victims there. So where? Any ideas?”

  “Like I said, I just don’t know them. I really don’t. I wish I could help you. I could if I knew anything, but there’s nothing.”

  “There has to be something,” I say, the frustration and exhaustion starting to get the better of me. “Please, there has to be something.”

  “I’m telling you, if I knew I’d tell you. I get that there’s a girl’s life on the line, okay? I get it. I just don’t know where they are. I haven’t seen them in about six years.”

  “Since the funerals of your grandparents.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I said earlier.”

  “That’s the same time they left Grover Hills.”

  “So?” he asks. “So it means when your grandparents died, they quit their jobs. Why would they do that?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  He doesn’t know, but it’s taking shape. They quit their job because they no longer needed the Scream Room at Grover Hills. They had somewhere to build their own. “Your grandparents. Where did they live?”

  “They moved ages ago. I used to live with them when I was a kid. They had a pretty nice house near town, but they always wanted something bigger with a lot of land. It wasn’t long after I moved out that they bought a farm before retiring. They worked that farm for . . . let me think . . . seven or eight years, I guess, before my grandfather died. Not long after grandma died too, I think it was because she missed him so much.”

  A farm. It’s perfect. “What happened to it? The farm?”

  “I don’t know. It was sold, I guess.”

  “But you don’t know?”

  “I think they left it to their kids, to Ellis and Murray, and I always just figured . . . shit, I just figured they’d sold it, but you don’t think they did, do you? You think this is where they were taking their victims?”

  “Where is it?”

  “You’re going to need a map,” he says.

  “I got one in the car.”

  “Then grab a pencil. You’re going to need directions.”

  chapter fifty-six

  His collection is escaping. All the hard work, all the planning, it’s all turning to ruin. He no longer feels any pain in his leg from the gunshot last night, and even his foot doesn’t hurt compared to what’s going on in his head. His foot, his poor damaged foot, how will it heal? Can the toes be saved? His eye, his poor damaged eye feels like it’s on fire.

  The safety pin is gone. It’s back on the floor in the bedroom where Katie betrayed him. He will never trust her again. She failed him when he was a kid, she failed him when he tried paying her for sex a few months ago, and now she’s failed him again. Almost as much as the pain, that betrayal hurts. He doesn’t know how many bullets are in the gun but he knows it wouldn’t be wise to use them all up, so for the moment he’s stopped shooting. He isn’t even sure he wants to shoot his collection. Things can still be saved. All he has to do is close the cell door and give it some time and he’ll try, he’ll really, really try to forgive them, and he can use Cooper’s mother or Katie to help him heal. He can still have his sunrise on the porch with Cooper one morning and Katie the next.

  Like the Preacher told him, he just needs to have a little faith.

  Right now he just has to close that door.

  He can barely take any weight on his leg, and when he walks only the heel of his foot touches the ground, and his shoulder slides along the wall as he leans against it. He keeps the gun ahead, the end of it trained on the doorway to the Scream Room.

  Cooper’s mother comes out. Her eyes are half open and her face is sagging. She’s upright but standing kind of funny, the same way a puppet would stand in a puppet show, limbs all loose and not in control. She comes toward him and he takes a step back. He didn’t expect this. He levels the gun at her as best as he can, his hand shaking, his entire body sore. His free hand covers his eye.

  “What do you want?” he asks.

  She doesn’t answer. He takes another step back and the weight goes onto his foot and his leg buckles and he almost falls.

  “Don’t make me shoot you,” he says, talking loudly over his ringing ears.

  Closer. Closer still.

  “Get back,” he says.

  He pulls the trigger. Twice. One shot into the ceiling, the second into the woman’s chest. Instead of flying backward like people do in movies when they’re shot, she is launched forward. He takes another shot at her, this time getting her in the stomach, and she keeps coming at him and he lifts his arms to stop her from hitting him, even taking his hand from his eye as she crashes into him. He stumbles back and this time there is no way his foot can maintain his weight and he tips over,
his body lying flat and his head wedged upright against the wall, which now has a dent in the plasterboard. He pushes her off. She rolls onto the floor next to him, her face staring up at his.

  Cooper is standing in front of him, and Cooper looks mad. The front of his trousers are soaking wet, and there is still blood all over his shirt from the girl two nights ago. Has it been two nights already? The same view also includes Adrian’s foot, and the second of the damaged toes is missing now and he isn’t sure when it came off.

  He raises his gun, only the gun isn’t in his hand anymore, instead his hand is empty. He’s defenseless, just as he was all those years ago near his school when he was on the ground being pissed on, and he gets that same feeling that he got then when he knew what was coming. Cooper bends down and picks up the gun then steps in close.

  “It hurts,” Adrian says. “Please, Cooper, help me. You’re my best friend.”

  Cooper crouches down and puts the barrel of the gun against Adrian’s chest. Cooper smiles. Adrian smiles too. Everything is going to be okay. The gun barrel is hot. A moment later it feels like he’s having a heart attack. Every muscle in his body is cramping, and no longer does his eye seem to hurt. The world flashes brightly, like when the doctor used to come by in the hospital and shine lights into his eyes. Everything flares white again as the gun barrel gets hotter. Then the world darkens. There are twin pools of blood draining down his chest. He watches the world fade through the one eye that can still see.

  He watches Katie, his beloved Katie over all these years, come out of the room, naked and beautiful and he would never give her to Cooper, never. Cooper stands up and approaches her.

  And the last words Adrian hears are Cooper’s as he talks to her.

  “There’s something I should tell you,” he says, turning his back on Adrian and raising the gun to Katie, “because so far I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

  And then Adrian sees himself on the porch, an old man now, watching the sunrise with Katie by his side, Cooper no longer part of their lives, the sunrise starting to fade, fading to night, his hand in hers, dark now, and then gone.

  chapter fifty-seven

  I think about my promise to Donovan Green. He wants his five minutes with Cooper Riley, and if Adrian Loaner wasn’t involved, maybe I’d give it to him. Instead I call Schroder. It’s the best thing for Emma, for Schroder, and for me. I need things to stay good between me and Schroder. No doubt I’ll need him in the future. The prison phone is covered in scratches, names and dates etched into it, and the guard stands next to me, listening to the whole thing.

  Schroder tells me they’ve gotten a warrant for the Grover Hills patient and staff files and will have them within the hour. He tells me interviewing of the staff will start by lunchtime, and that everybody who ever worked there now has a lawyer. I tell him that’s good, and then I give him the address where I think Emma Green is being held. He asks how I came to that conclusion and I tell him there isn’t time to explain it all, that he needs to meet me there, that I’m right on this one. I have probably a twenty-minute head start on him. Anything can happen in twenty minutes. He tells me to wait and I tell him that I’ll check it out and call him if I see anything suspicious.

  “From where? Adrian smashed your cell phone.”

  “I’m not just going to stand around and wait. Twenty minutes is a long time.”

  “Tate . . .”

  “I gotta go,” I say, and I hang up.

  I start to walk away from the phone, and go two paces before changing my mind. I call Donovan Green.

  “You got a pen?” I ask.

  “Sure.”

  “Then write this down,” I tell him, and give him the address. “I’m pretty sure this is where Emma is.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “I don’t know. If you want your five minutes with Cooper Riley, you’re going to need to hurry.”

  I hang up, confident there’s no way Green can get out there before the police do. If Emma is alive, it’s going to be a fantastic reunion. If she’s dead, then I’ve just given Donovan her location and he’s going to see his daughter’s body and he’s going to fall apart. But it’s what he wants, it’s what I’d want in his situation, and it’s what I owe him.

  Edward Hunter has given pretty good directions, but it’s been years since he was last out here, which gives him plenty of room to be a little vague. For the most part he was confident, and for the most part that made me confident too. I compare his map against the map in the car, vowing that when this is over I’m going to purchase the most expensive GPS unit on the market. More paddocks and wire fences and if a case ever brings me into this part of the country again I’m turning it down.

  The farmhouse comes into view. It’s a big building with a large A-frame roof, the sides of the building painted red, the roof is black, lots of white trim around the windowsills and door. It looks like the grandparents saw a nice farmhouse in a movie or jigsaw puzzle and wanted the same one. What’s missing is a steaming pie on the windowsill, but what is here at the top of the dirt road leading up to the farmhouse is Emma Green’s car. I keep driving. Problem is I have to drive another five hundred meters before I can find anything to park behind that will hide my car. I check the trunk and find a crowbar for wrenching off wheels that get stuck when you’re changing a flat. I jump the fence. Nothing has been farmed here in a long time, there are areas of hard dirt, areas of tall grass and even taller weed, some of it up around my knees. I move diagonally across the section staying low, approaching the house from only one side to decrease the number of windows I can be seen from, waiting, waiting for a gunshot from the gun Donovan Green gave me to ring out and drop me like a rock.

  By the time I get to the building my legs are itchy and blotchy from the grass. I pause against the wall. The wood is warm and the heat soaks into my skin. There is no sign of anybody. No sounds. I look through one of the windows, struggling a little to see beyond the netting. There’s a large living room suite with flower-patterned upholstery, an oak coffee table with sculptured legs, a boxy TV that must weigh a ton. It all looks very neat, as if Grandpa and Grandma Hunter are still living here. I move past the window and look into the next one. It’s a master bedroom with a queen-sized bed and the blankets all thrown back. The next window is completely black and I can’t see anything beyond it. It’s covered on the inside with something much thicker than curtains.

  I head around to the back of the house. The deck leading up to the back door groans as my body weight shifts onto it. I come to a complete stop. I give it a few seconds and there’s no indication anybody is coming to check out the sound. I walk as close as I can to the wall and the groaning stops. I turn the handle on the back door and it opens freely. I step into the kitchen. It’s tidy. There are lots of white tiles behind the sink and a table off center for the family to sit around. There’s a calendar hanging on the wall dating back nearly sixty years showing a painting of an orchard. It’s faded and the edges are creased and one of the dates has a fading circle around it. Inside the circle in a script that looks old-fashioned and has also faded are the words Our wedding. The sun is still reasonably low and shining in under the veranda and through the windows, casually hitting every surface and filling the kitchen with light. I close the door behind me and stop and listen. It’s me and a crowbar up against an ex–mental patient with a gun and a Taser.

  The kitchen is open plan into a dining room, from where there are two doors, one leading into a living room, another into a hallway. I can see into the living room and there’s nobody in there. I enter the hallway. It branches off in two directions, one is up a flight of stairs, the other goes straight ahead where it turns right. I stay on the ground floor and follow the hall around the corner, passing some pretty old furniture and some paintings on the wall. There’s a door wide open. The hinges have been reversed so the door opens outward rather than in and it blocks the rest of the hall. The front of the door is facing me. I step up carefully to it an
d look around it. There are two bodies in the hall further down. I close the door slightly so I can look into the room. It’s empty inside. The entire thing is padded, ceiling and floor. There are stains on the floor—this is the Scream Room the Hunter twins built. This is where at least nine men lost their lives. Despite the heat a cold shiver runs the length of my body. Could be they kept their victims in here for only a day, or it could be they kept them for months.

  I swing the door completely closed and approach the bodies. One man and one woman. The woman looks to be in her late seventies. The man is who I saw setting fire to Cooper Riley’s house and tried to collect me from my own. There’re a pair of bullet holes in his chest. His eyes are wide open and one of them is ruined, there’s a hole in it and the area has swollen and there’s been some seepage. I crouch down and check the woman for a pulse. Nothing. I don’t even bother with Adrian. No point. There’s no immediate sign of the gun. Cooper Riley probably has it. He probably has Emma Green too. He can’t know how much the police know about him, and has to be thinking the best way he can get out of here and resume any kind of life is by making up his own version of events, and to do that he can’t let anybody live.

  So why isn’t Emma Green laying on the floor here too?

  There’s a sound like a small gunshot and then a muffled scream from further down the hall. I move in that direction. There’s another gunshot sound that isn’t loud enough to be a gunshot. I want to rush the rest of the way, but I just keep taking one step at a time, slowly, carefully, past a bathroom and an empty bedroom and toward another one that has a queen-sized bed with Emma Green on top of it. She’s naked. As I watch, Cooper Riley, standing in front of her, swings his belt down against the bedside drawers, on top of which is resting the gun and a Taser. Emma jumps at the sound. It’s the noise I heard earlier. Her hands are bound behind her and she tries to push herself further into the mattress. I move forward. Either he senses me or he notices Emma change as she senses me, because he turns quickly, the large bedroom window behind him, and I think about running hard at him and trying to push him right through it, only he could take me with him and I could end up landing on a rake and he could end up landing in a pile of hay. He snatches up the gun and brings it up toward me and I throw the crowbar forward. It hits his arm and he shouts out as he lets go of the gun, both items go hurtling in the same direction, the pry bar hitting and cracking the window, the gun flying out the smaller open window to the world outside. Cooper comes forward and I meet him, he throws a fast right punch that catches me in the jaw at the same time I swing one, mine catching him in the cheek. He comes at me again and I block him, grab him, and then we’re tipping over into a chest of drawers. Solid objects start littering down on us, a hairbrush, a mirror, some figurines, a couple of novels, a crossword book with a pen hooked onto it, a thick glass jar with something floating inside. Emma Green is off the bed and she’s gone for the door. I push up and hit Cooper in the side of the face again, and before I can follow it up he grabs the glass jar and swings it down.