Collecting Cooper

chapter thirty

Yesterday there was the need to cuddle Daxter’s corpse, as if I could still offer him some compassion, as if holding him against my chest was going to let him know he was loved. Today I can barely look at him.

I raise my fists and turn quickly, suddenly sure the person who did this is behind me, but there’s only the door I stepped through and the living room. I feel violated. I feel like I need to take a shower, burn down my own house, even hose down my dead cat. Something dark and very creepy has just touched my life. There are footprints all around the grave in the loose dirt that I don’t want to disturb. Did the person who did this kill Daxter too? Of course he did. He wasn’t accidently run over. He was killed just to be dug up, just to be part of a message. I have no idea what that message is. Stop looking for Cooper Riley? Stop looking for Emma Green? Stop looking for Natalie Flowers? Or is this a message from the past, perhaps somebody I arrested years ago?

There’s another possibility that makes more sense. I call Schroder. “Somebody killed my cat,” I tell him, and I realize I’m almost crushing my phone. What I’d love to do right now is crush the person who killed Daxter.

“You told me yesterday.”

“What I mean is somebody murdered him,” I say, and then I tell him about Daxter hanging from the roof.

“Jesus,” he says. “You think it’s a message of some kind?”

“I’m thinking it might be somebody from Grover Hills.”

He says nothing. I can almost hear him thinking things over. Can almost hear the bones creaking in his hand as he tightens it on the cell phone. He breathes heavily a few times. Then, “How do you know about that?”

“Google.”

“That the only way?”

“No, Carl, I spent my childhood there growing up.”

“Well it’d certainly explain a lot if you had.”

“Listen, Carl, it’s possible one of the patients who got turned loose three years ago has an obsession with Cooper Riley and Pamela Deans, and now with me.”

“Because of your cat.”

“Yes. Because of my cat. Sane people don’t pull that shit,” I say. “Sane people don’t go digging up your fucking dead pets!”

“Calm down, Tate.”

“I am calm,” I say, pacing the yard faster now. “I want you to send a patrol car and some forensics,” I say. “Get some officers to canvas the neighborhood. Somebody must have seen something. And there has to be a load of trace evidence here, there are footprints around the grave for a start.”

“Anybody could have done it, Tate. It doesn’t take a crazy person. It just takes somebody you pissed off in an incredible way.”

“No, I really think it does take a crazy person, Carl. If it only took somebody who was pissed off at me then you’d be number one on my list of suspects.”

“I hear you,” he says, “but it’s just as likely it’s an ex-con with a grudge.” It’s true. I’ve arrested a lot of people over the years. Schroder presses on. “I know you’re thinking it’s a hell of a coincidence,” he says, “but if it was going to happen it wasn’t going to be done while you were in jail-no point in that.”

“So why not do it before then?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they were in jail too.”

“Have you showed the sketch to any of the ex-staff from Grover Hills? Maybe somebody there will recognize him.”

“It’s getting done, Tate. I’ll send out some people to take a look around your house and pick up your cat.”

He hangs up. I grab the papers and head inside. There are smooth rectangles of dirt leading from the front door to my study, dirt that’s fallen from the tread of somebody’s shoes. I drop the papers and duck into the bedroom and pull out Donovan Green’s gun from beneath the mattress. I carry it into the study. The computer is still running. There’s nobody standing in the room. Most of the manuscript is missing, only the last dozen or so pages are left in the printer. All of the files Schroder gave me on Melissa X are gone. Daxter was either a distraction or a message-either way, somebody doesn’t want me finding out what happened to Cooper Riley.