Collecting Cooper

chapter thirteen

Emma Green’s flat is exactly what you’d expect from any flat rented by university students: run-down with long lawns and windows covered in films of dirt and a recycling bin overflowing with empty beer cans and wine bottles standing sentry by the front door. It’s one of those student neighborhoods where alcohol consumption equates to social standing, where the more you drink the cooler you become and the better friends you get. Donovan Green has smoothed the way for me to talk to Emma’s flatmate, which I do, along with her boyfriend and a couple of the boyfriend’s friends who are hanging out in the living room drinking instead of studying as they hope for the best and fear the worst for Emma. The furniture is all the kind of stuff you see dumped on the roadside with signs attached saying Free. I stay standing. The flat smells of cigarette smoke. The boys are stacking their freshly empty beer bottles on a coffee table in a formation like a house of cards. The flatmate is a pretty girl with bouncy blond hair styled from some latest sitcom. She keeps picking at her cuticles, snapping away splinters of skin from the sides of her nails and dropping them onto the threadbare carpet.

She wipes at her eyes as we talk, there are mascara stains beneath them, what my wife would have called panda eyes, which she’d get sometimes if we fought, which, thankfully, wasn’t often. She tells me a similar thing that Emma’s father told me, that Emma’s a smart girl and can talk her way out of anything.

“She even talked her way out of a speeding ticket a week ago,” she says. “She told the officer she was in a rush to get to the hospital because her mum was undergoing cancer treatment.”

“I hadn’t heard.”

She shakes her head. “That’s the thing. Her mother hasn’t got cancer. Emma has this idea that everybody knows somebody with cancer, or who has died from it, and you can use that to talk your way out of anything because people are sympathetic and they can relate. She’s been reading about psychology for the last year even though she only started studying it a few weeks ago. She has this way of seeing how people tick, you know?”

I talk to everybody and don’t get any more information than I already had. The boys are more interested in shooting each other on the big-screen TV, their thumbs flying over game controllers and their eyes locked on the action. The volume is turned down so at least we can talk. Two mornings ago Emma Green woke up and went to class. She finished studying and had lunch with two of her friends. She went to work, pulling a four-hour part-time shift at the café. Then somebody abducted her.

The file Schroder gave me has information that Donovan Green didn’t have. The police searched the parking lot behind the café and found a makeup compact and a small patch of fresh blood with skin and hair stuck in it. The flatmate identified the compact as belonging to Emma. The hair matched the color of Emma’s hair, and the blood matched Emma’s blood type. DNA testing takes weeks, but it’s a safe bet it’ll be a match. It all adds up to a struggle. Emma dropped her bag and the compact rolled out. Her head banged into the ground or somebody banged it into the ground for her.

Paint scrapings were taken from the side of the dumpster I looked at, which had been driven into. They were red and Emma’s car was yellow. If somebody was speeding away from the scene with Emma in the trunk of their car, why come back for her car later on? No, most likely whoever hit the dumpster had nothing to do with Emma’s disappearance. Could have happened yesterday, could have happened three days ago. It’s not useful. Sales receipts are being run from the café, a list of people there on the day is slowly being built, but the problem is most people spending five or ten bucks on coffee and a muffin don’t use credit cards. If the suspect did take Emma’s car, how did he get there? Bus? A taxi? Does he live close enough to have walked?

There have been no unusual visitors to the flat, no maintenance men or gardeners or a creepy landlord, no strange phone calls, nobody hanging around outside. The flatmate lets me look through Emma’s room about twelve hours after the police already have, and everything is out of place from this morning’s search and anything they found relevant taken away. I spend an hour at the flat with my questions and leave feeling more frustrated than when I arrived.

I get home just before nine o’clock. It’s been a long day, and one that started with me waking up in jail. There are kids out in the street racing on skateboards, some throwing a football, others playing a game of tag. The sun is moments away from sliding off the edge of the horizon, but at the moment it’s reflecting brightly off the windows, a blistering orange ball of fire trying to melt the glass. It’s the first time in four months I’ve seen the sun sink from view, and the sight has never looked so fantastic. For four months day and night were brought in with the flick of a switch. It’s hard to imagine that tomorrow I’ll be waking up in my own bed. Hard to imagine Emma Green can see the sunset. It’s the perfect evening for a beer but I’ve made a promise never to touch another beer again.

I stay outside until the sun is completely gone and I can no longer hear the kids in the street. The temperature drops down to a more livable seventy degrees. I watch the late-night news and there’s no mention of Emma Green, no mention of Melissa, but the news is no different from the news I was watching before being shut away for four months-bad people doing bad things to good people all across the city, across the country, all across the world. The news becomes blurry as my eyelids become heavier. There’s a brief mention of the fire Schroder attended today. The victim peeled from the floor was a nurse by the name of Pamela Deans. It shows a picture of Pamela in a nurse’s uniform. It makes me think about Melissa for a moment, but all her victims have been men and the fire doesn’t fit. The picture has to be at least a few years old and in it she looks around fifty, hair streaked black and gray pulled tightly in a bun, perhaps her downcast smile is a result of her extra chin weighing down on her lips.

I make some coffee and go back through the file Schroder gave me. I call Schroder for an update but his phone goes through to voice mail. I leave a message. Some of the facts in Emma’s folder are things I learned about her last year when I ran into her life. Her birthday was the day after I ran into her with my car. She’ll be eighteen this year and has an older brother, Jason, living in Australia. She has blond hair and hazel eyes and a look that would have men watching her anywhere she went. It could be that look that got her abducted.

My cell phone rings and I’m hoping it’s Schroder, but it’s Donovan Green. He’s wanting an update. I tell him I’ve spoken to the boyfriend and her boss and her flatmate and I’m going to speak to some of her classmates in the morning. I tell him there will be many who won’t want to speak to me, and he tells me to remind them why I’m there-to help find Emma. He reminds me in an almost pleading way why he’s come to me. I don’t tell him about the blood and hair. I hang up and a minute later Schroder calls.

“We’re working on something,” he says. “We got a report of a car speeding away from the café just after Emma finished work. Another driver had to slam on his brakes to avoid a collision.”

“He get a plate?”

“He got the first two letters. Said if he’d gotten the rest, he’d have reported the guy for reckless driving yesterday. He said he forgot about it, then Emma’s case made the news tonight, and he thought it might be relevant. He said it was a red four-door sedan, maybe five years old. Couldn’t pin him down on any other details. You saw the dumpster?”

“Yeah. Red paint. But if he sped away from the scene, where’s Emma’s car?”

“That’s the key question. You take another look at the Melissa file?”

“Not yet. I’m going to talk to some of Emma’s classmates,” I tell him.

“Yeah, I figured you would. You still think you can do a better job.”

“It’s not that. .”

“I know, I know,” he says. “I didn’t mean it like that. Hell, maybe you can do a better job. There could be something to what you said earlier.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Or I’m just frustrated and tired, that’s all. The fact is you do have a good insight and one that can save lives,” he says before hanging up, and I hope he’s right, I hope that we can balance the scales of this city a little by finding Emma Green alive.