Welcome to Cooper

by Tariq Ashkanani

  Ackerman was sat across the room. By the window, in a wheelchair with his back to me. His curtains were open, and he gazed out across the dark of the river and the snow that drifted past. A bedside lamp threw his reflection onto the pane, and I saw myself enter the room. His mirrored eyes found mine.

  “Brian?” I asked.

  He grasped the wheels of his chair with shaking hands and slowly turned himself around.

  I knew from Ackerman’s file that he was pushing seventy, but he looked a hell of a lot older. Thinning grey hair fell across his discolored scalp in wisps. Yellowed eyes peered out at me from deep within sunken sockets, his skin dry and grey and stretched across cheekbones so sharp they threatened to burst through.

  “Brian,” I said quietly, stepping fully inside and closing the door behind me. “My name is Thomas Levine. I’m a detective here in Cooper. I wonder if I could ask you a few questions.” I paused, then added, “I’m working a case with Joe Finch.”

  At the mention of Joe’s name, the old detective stiffened slightly. Opened his mouth a few times before anything came out, like he wasn’t used to working it, and when he finally spoke his voice was soft and rasping.

  “Get the hell out of my room,” he said.

  “I could really use your help.”

  “You tell Joe . . .” he started, then stopped. He stared at me for a moment, and then swung his chair around and went back to gazing out the window.

  I found his face in the reflection and took a step closer. “Brian?”

  “What’s done is done,” he said to the river. “I don’t want anything to do with whatever you boys are up to now.”

  I stopped, glancing around his room. Decided to take a different approach. I sat on the edge of his bed. Let the moment stretch out a little.

  “Is it cancer?”

  Ackerman let out a long, slow breath. “Lungs,” he said finally, and he patted his chest. “Least that’s where it started. Damn thing’s spread to just about every organ I’ve got.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Don’t be. I’m not. Brought this on myself. There’s smoking and then there’s smoking, you get me?”

  “I get you.”

  He let out a soft laugh. It quickly turned into a hacking cough, powerful enough to twist him forward, hunching over his chair as he retched into his lap. I picked up a box of Kleenex from the nightstand and passed them over. He pulled one out with a trembling hand and wiped at his mouth.

  “Thanks,” he said, sighing with what seemed like relief as his body relaxed.

  “How long have you been in here?” I asked him.

  “Just about two years now. But I reckon my stay’s nearly over.”

  I nodded and looked away. Through the window and out over the dark of the river. Past the water, where the land was flat and featureless. I found myself thinking about the Pine Ridge again; that curious swell on the horizon. Canyons and rivers. Cottonwoods that lit up orange in the fall. Mary had made it sound like another world.

  We sat in the quiet. There was a comfort to it that I hadn’t expected. He had a few personal items scattered about the room. A photograph of a younger woman, a daughter maybe. A small pile of books. A Stetson hanging from the bedpost. I picked it up and looked it over, imagined Ackerman as a cowboy, walking the streets with Joe. The woman at the front desk had said he didn’t have many friends. I got the feeling he didn’t get many visitors, either. I wondered when he’d last spoken to someone who wasn’t here to clean his bedpan or change his sheets. Hook up a fresh bag of morphine. I wondered if they ever thought to give him a little extra, and I felt a flush of guilt for having done so. I didn’t mean anything by it. This just wasn’t the way I’d want to go, is all.

  “What is it you want to talk to me about?” he said suddenly.

  Ackerman’s initial anger seemed to have faded. Whether from lack of energy or a simple desire to speak to someone new, I didn’t know.

  I chose my words carefully. “I’m looking into a series of murders,” I said. “Took place in ninety-five. Three dead women, all found in their backyards with their eyes missing.”

  “Sounds familiar,” he said, his voice flat and hard to read.

  “The first two girls, the killer was smart. Meticulous. Wiped everything down after him. But the third girl, he was sloppy.”

  “Left a print,” he said softly.

  “That’s right,” I said. “On her shirt button.”

  Ackerman sat up a little at that. I watched his eyes in the reflection of the window and they slid about uneasily.

  “You know who I’m talking about?” I asked.

  “Course I do.” He fumbled in his pockets for something. “You got a smoke?”

  I shook my head.

  “Damn, I could really go for one right now. You know Joe didn’t used to smoke either, not when I first knew him. But that case changed him. Changed a lot of things.”

  “Brian,” I said quietly. “There’s been another murder. The killer used the same MO. The same as the first three girls, you understand?”

  “Why are you bringing this to me? I don’t do that sort of thing anymore.”

  “I went back through the original case files.”

  “I told you, not anymore.”

  This wasn’t exactly going the way I’d hoped. My temper started to rise.

  “I read your reports, Brian. You hear me? I read them all. And they stink.”

  His head whipped around sharply. His bony cheeks were flushed, his breathing coming in short, heavy pants. “What?”

  “No confession, no evidence he was at the crime scene, no evidence he’d ever killed so much as a fly.” I reeled them off, ticking each one with a finger.

  “Fingerprint not enough for you?”

  “For a triple murder conviction? I’m amazed it took a judge this long to throw it out. It’s circumstantial and you know it.”

  “He killed them.”

  “Yeah, I read your reports. Nice and brief. Why the hard-on for Foster?”

  “Because he killed them.”

  “Well, I don’t know if you’ve seen the news, but he’s out on appeal. Killed a new girl last week, too.”

  “Sounds like someone screwed up there.”

  “Oh, come on, Brian. The guy was in worse shape than you are. Weak as a dying kitten. There’s more going on here. You planning on taking the truth with you when you go?”

  Ackerman fell quiet. I worried I’d pushed him too far. But hell, what else could I do? The guy wanted to lock up on me, fine. Just, after he’d told me something.

  “Cooper’s a small town,” he said at last. His voice had taken on a sort of pleading tone. “People spend their whole lives there. Dying in the same house they were born in, across the street from the same neighbors they grew up with. You understand? It’s a community.” He was becoming more animated now. “Now, I didn’t get that. Not at first. But if we weren’t careful? If we’d taken too long on a case like this? Folks would get impatient. They’d get restless. They’d start getting concerned about their safety, about their family’s safety, about their neighbors’ safety, and before long we’d have a goddamn mob marching down Main Street and son I’m not joking.”

  His chest rose and fell in a quick staccato. He looked wiped out. A machine by the bed gave off a short series of chimes. He reached down and grasped an oxygen mask, took in a number of long, deep breaths. I looked away. Stared at the photograph again.

  “That your daughter?”

  Ackerman followed my gaze, nodded gently. A slight smile appeared from nowhere. “That’s Becky. She’s a vet, down in San Antonio.”

  “You sound proud.”

  “Oh, I am.”

  “She come visit you much?”

  “Not as much as I’d like.” His smile dipped a little. “We had a falling out a while back. The usual family bullshit.”

  “She know how bad you’ve got it?”

  “She knows some. I keep things to myself to
o much. That’s part of the problem, I guess.”

  “When’s the last time you spoke with her?”

  “What is this, you a therapist now?”

  “I’m just saying, maybe you should give her a call.”

  Ackerman turned his attention back out the window, his smile gone completely now. He coughed again into his Kleenex. When he took it away I caught a glimpse of red.

  “What we did . . .” His voice trailed off. “It wasn’t right,” he said, barely audible now. I leaned closer to pick it up. “It wasn’t.”

  “What, Brian? What wasn’t right?”

  “I always said to him, I said, ‘Joe, there’s a procedure to all this. You do it wrong and everything gets thrown out.’ You know how many people I’ve seen walk because some dumb cop tried to jump an arrest too soon? But Joe, he was headstrong, wanted to keep people safe. Wanted to skip ahead a few steps, didn’t see the harm . . .”

  “What did you do, Brian?”

  “I told you, I don’t do that sort of thing anymore.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  The door swung open. A nurse entered, stopping when she saw me.

  “Is everything alright in here?” she asked, her eyes narrowed.

  “Everything’s fine,” I said.

  The nurse bent over the various machines next to the bed, scribbled a note on his charts. “I think it’s time Mr. Ackerman got some rest,” she said, and held my gaze challengingly.

  I glanced back at Ackerman but he was out of it. Medication had kicked in. His gaze slid over everything, taking in nothing. I wondered if the nurse had slipped him something extra to get me to leave.

  I got to my feet, collected my notebook and said my goodbyes. Retraced my steps through that grim human warehouse and out into the cold. As I walked away I nearly stumbled over something. A dark shape, a cat, lying motionless on the sidewalk. Its glassy eyes stared up at me and I caught the sharp tang of decay. Its stomach was burst. Looked like someone had beaten it to death.

  Afterward I drove home, slowly because I needed to mull everything over, and for some reason my headlights seemed to be on the way out. They were working, but just barely. Like a flashlight with its battery winding down. Damn car was falling apart on me.

  When I got home I pulled the bundles of cash from my coat. Set them out on the kitchen counter. If you want to know what changed my mind, then you’ve not been paying attention.

  Joe had talked about the Omaha cartel, about the guy who was in charge. It wasn’t difficult to work out who the toothless foreigner in the police station parking lot was. Walking around with twenty-five grand in my coat suddenly didn’t seem like such a smart idea—last thing I wanted was to get jumped in some dark alley in the dead of night, and it wasn’t the beating I was scared of. Bones heal.

  So I hid it. Wrapped the bundles in plastic, stuffed them behind a cabinet by the bathroom sink. Temporary, until I had a better plan. I kept a few notes back for myself, and I figured it was about time for that drink.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mary was behind the bar. Leaning, like she always did. She was drying a glass with a tattered rag. Gazing at the counter, her pink-streaked hair tied up. When she saw me she smiled. Flipped the glass she was drying right side up and placed it on the counter.

  “Didn’t think I’d see you back here so soon,” she said teasingly, moving on to the next glass. “Not given the state of your tab.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m paying it off in full,” I said, sitting, pulling out a hundred-dollar bill and dropping it onto the bar.

  Mary’s eyes slid onto it, and she paused her drying. “I see you found the local betting house.”

  “Poker game at the station.”

  “That right?”

  “That’s right.”

  Mary raised her eyebrows as she picked up the money. Stared at it for a beat, hard to tell what she was thinking. She rang it up in silence and counted my change.

  The place was practically empty. “Sultans of Swing” on the jukebox and the steady clack of two big guys playing pool in the back corner. A television set above our heads played silent news footage of the hijacked police van. Text scrolled along the bottom, daring early-hour heist in a never-ending loop. I felt sick.

  “It always this quiet?” I asked.

  “Pretty much,” Mary said, her voice clipped, and when she closed the cash drawer she did so with just a little too much force.

  “I guess that’s nice,” I said.

  “I guess.”

  “Don’t suppose I can tempt you into joining me for a drink?”

  “I don’t drink.”

  I shifted uncomfortably on my barstool. “With me?”

  “With anyone.”

  “What, you got some sort of problem?”

  “Says Mr. Johnnie Walker.” She stared at me as she placed my change on the bar. “What can I get you?”

  “Have I pissed you off?”

  “Why would you have pissed me off?”

  “Jesus, Mary, I just came for a quiet drink.”

  “So order it.”

  “Gimme a beer.”

  “Coming right up,” she said, turning to the fridge before stopping. “You think I haven’t seen this before?”

  “Seen what?”

  “Guys like you.”

  “Like me?”

  “Tough guys, like to throw their weight around.”

  “Mary—”

  “You tell me you got that money from a poker game, and I want it to be true, Thomas.”

  I forced myself not to glance up at the news footage. Kept my eyes on hers. “It’s true.”

  “I tried to warn you about this place,” she said softly. For a moment she lost her hard edge. “It’ll pull you under. You’ve got to push against it.”

  A rattle from behind me and Johnny Cash started singing. I cocked my head. Kickback rising in my throat. I could never just let things be.

  “I’m not some kid, Mary. I can stand up for myself.”

  “Jesus, how do you not get this?”

  “You know, given the state of this bar, I thought you’d appreciate someone spending some money here. I don’t get why you’re so pissed.”

  “I don’t care where you spend your money.” Mary popped the cap off a beer, placed it down hard enough to make it foam. “It’s not my bar. And yeah, fine, I guess I am pissed. At you, at me, at every goddamn jackass that steps foot in this town.”

  “You think I wanted to come here?”

  “You want my advice?”

  “I got a choice?”

  “Get the hell out of Cooper,” she whispered, leaning in close, her hand still on the bottle. “Get back in your car and drive back to whatever crappy life you had before because it’s a hell of a lot better than the life you’ll have here.”

  I blinked. It was suddenly very hard to think of a snappy remark. A long pause and then Mary backed off, withdrew her hand, and wiped it down her apron. I thought I saw it tremble. From behind me there was a thump and the music stopped dead. Mary’s eyes rose and focused past my shoulder.

  “Hey!” she shouted.

  I swiveled in my seat. Watched her march over to a big bald guy by the jukebox. One of the pool players from the back corner. He was wearing a stained wifebeater and when he turned around I saw his hairy stomach hanging out beneath it.

  “Touch the machine again and you’re done.”

  “Relax,” the guy said. He stepped forward and leered down at Mary. “Not my fault this piece of shit keeps sticking.”

  “It sticks because people like you keep smacking it.”

  “Some things like being smacked. People too.” He sniggered, took a drink from a bottle wrapped in pudgy fingers. From across the room his large friend let out a guffaw.

  “What’s the problem here?” I said.

  Wifebeater looked over at me. “And who the hell are you?”

  “Someone trying to listen to the music. Leave the machine alone.”


  Mary said, “Thomas, I can handle this.”

  “You heard the lady, Thomas,” the man said, wiping at his wet lips with a dirty thumb. “She can handle this.”

  His friend hooted again. “I bet she can handle it!”

  “I bet she can too,” Wifebeater said quietly, his eyes running over her.

  I could feel it flickering in my chest. That old familiar sting. I slid off the barstool and onto my feet.

  With the music gone, Stingray’s was near silent. The only sound was that of heavy breathing—Wifebeater’s, not mine. His paunchy stomach rose and fell, the thick bundle of exposed hair shimmering in the light.

  I held his gaze. Dared him to start something. If I’d been smart I’d have pulled my gun already. Or my badge. Only that would’ve wrapped things up too quick. I wanted to draw this out.

  “Why don’t you mind your own business,” String Vest said. “I don’t remember this having anything to do with you.”

  “Want me to jog your memory?” I said.

  Footsteps from across the room as his friend moved closer.

  Mary said, “Okay everyone, let’s just take a moment.”

  “Tell you what,” Wifebeater said to me. “You go home, and Jimmy and me won’t kick your ass. How does that sound?”

  “When was the last time you kicked anything, you fat fuck.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You look like you’re one stuffed crust away from keeling over. What’s going on with that thing anyway? You’ve got more hair growing out your stomach than you do on your head.”

  Mary put her hands up. “Alright. Enough. I want you guys out.”

  “You heard her,” I said. “You and your buddy Jimmy better leave before I beat the shit out of you.”

  “I want all of you out,” Mary said.

  I stared at her. Then at Wifebeater. And suddenly it wasn’t Wifebeater anymore at all. It was Joe. Brass knuckles glinting. I thought of Kelly, and of Rachel, and of every other woman that was hurt or dead because of me. Because of what I’d done. Because of what I hadn’t done.

  Wifebeater was saying something but I didn’t catch it. Fire in my chest and rocks in my fists; I closed the distance in a few quick strides and drilled him in his large stomach.