Collecting Cooper

chapter twenty-seven

Donovan Green doesn’t look like he’s had any sleep since the last time I saw him. He hasn’t changed either. His hair is a mess and his eyes are red and keep flicking left and right as if he’s being followed. He looks like he’s just walked out of a bar where he’s been holed up for the last twelve hours drinking hard.

“Here’s the money,” he says, handing me an envelope. When it comes to finding your daughter, there’s no limit to what you’ll spend. “What’s the lead?”

“Cooper Riley wrote a book,” I tell him. “It may have something in it we can use.”

“It’s five thousand dollars for a book?”

“It is for this one. I’ll call you later on today.”

He seems about to argue the point, that he wants to hang around and watch me work, but in the end he just nods slowly. He’s a broken man holding out the kind of hope that may kill him if things don’t work out the way he needs them to.

“The sketch in the news,” I say, “you recognize him?”

“Looks like the prime minister.”

“You know if the police have shown it to Emma’s flatmates and friends?”

“One of them thought it was their cousin Larry. I told you she was still alive, and the photos prove it,” he says. “I know you think things might have changed since they were taken, but they haven’t. She’s alive and I can feel it,” he says, and I really hope that he can. “She’s strong,” he tells me. “You know that for a fact. She survived what you did to her, and she’ll survive what’s being done to her now. She can talk her way out of anything.”

I hope she can. I hope she has the ability to talk.

“My wife, Hillary,” he says, “she was always the strong one. Last year, when you hurt Emma, my wife was a rock. I was the one falling apart. This time, Jesus, she’s a mess. All she does is sit in Emma’s old room holding on to some of the clothes Emma left behind when she moved out. Hillary is the strongest woman I know, but this. . if we don’t get Emma back alive,” he says, “she’s. . she’s. . I don’t know. I just don’t know,” he says, shaking his head. “Just. . just find her, okay? Find her alive. Please, I’m begging you, find my daughter alive.”

I want to tell him that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I want to tell him he can tell his wife everything is going to be okay, because by the end of the day, tomorrow at the latest, they’ll have their daughter back. I can see in his tired face and tired features that he wants me to tell him this, that hearing it would make him feel a whole lot better.

And I almost tell him.

I nod, and he takes meaning in that nod because he nods back, turns around, and I watch him walk away, maybe he’s going to head back home, maybe to the hospital, maybe to go and see Jonas Jones Psychic or a priest because he’s desperate to try anything.

I head back into the corridor. The idea of money isn’t as powerful as money itself, which is why I hold up two thousand dollars in the window of the door to the computer server room and knock on it. I could try holding up fifty dollars and hope for the same result, but the risk of having him call the police fades more with every hundred I hold up. The door is locked and the guy comes over and stares at the money then at me and then back at the money.

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.