Collecting Cooper

chapter thirty-one

Damage control.

The newspaper article is bad, but it could be worse. There could have been a big headline, nice dark letters saying Serial Killer’s House Is Burned Down. Ten years ago there were rules, ten years ago if it wasn’t fact, the papers would be reluctant to print it. Things have changed since then. Most of the media is online, news channels are on twenty-four hours a day, the business is more cutthroat than ever, and the journalists don’t have time for fact-checking anymore. News isn’t about letting the people know what’s happening, it’s about shaping agendas and making money, and money is more important than what’s right or wrong. Rumors are now fact. A guy selling hotdogs outside the police department is now a confirmed inside source. The boundaries of ethics moved, then moved some more, then were eroded away. So if there had been any suspicion at all that Cooper was a killer, it would have made it into print.

The article is about his disappearance. Cooper Riley, fifty-two years old, professor at Canterbury University, abducted from his own house, his car left in the driveway, no indication as to where he’s been taken, his house razed the following day. There’s a photo of the fire and there’s a photo of Cooper standing in front of a class of students pointing up to a screen. The photo was taken years ago, it was a publicity shot that was bundled into a magazine to promote the university. His hair was a little thicker around the sides back then, a little blacker and there was still some on top too. He wasn’t going through the stress of a divorce. Five years on this side of the photo and he’s ten kilograms heavier and locked in a goddamn basement.

How much do the police know?

If they suspected more, somebody would have leaked it to the press. And nothing could have survived that fire. The photo is taken from the street, he can see his car engulfed by the flames, even half of the front yard is burning. The camera only needed to be anywhere on the property and it would have melted, the memory card useless. So he’s sitting good on that level. Both victims were in the trunk of his car at one point, and each time he had them on a tarpaulin. He knows there was no trace evidence in his car, but even if there was, the fire took care of it.

His house.

He loved his house.

He loved his collection.

Jesus-if he ever gets out of here, there’s no way he’s going to collect anything ever again. It would give him something in common with Adrian, and he’s sick at the thought that even breathing is something they have in common-though soon he’ll make sure that’s no longer the case.

He sits on the edge of the bed and rests the newspaper on his lap. He runs his fingers over the photograph of his house, an ink stain growing thicker on the pads of his fingertips. He thinks about the first girl he killed. It was last year. He starts rubbing the newspaper a little harder. Her name was Jane Tyrone and she was twenty-four years old, almost half his age, and at the time he thought nothing in the world felt better than a twenty-four-year-old. Five months later he would learn he was wrong-nothing felt better than a seventeen-year-old.

Of course it didn’t start with her. It started three years ago with another student. Natalie Flowers. That was her name back then. He doesn’t like to think about her much, and Adrian having a file on her is bringing back a whole lot of bad memories. He wonders if her real name is mentioned at all in that, and doubts it. The police don’t know. If they did, they’d have let the media know. He’d love to take a look at it. In fact he needs to-there could be something in there that relates to him.

Natalie Flowers.

She came into his life and brought along a change in him that he allowed to happen. His marriage was falling apart. Had been for some time, but he’d been too obsessed with his job and with his book to notice. Then his wife walked out. She told him she was leaving. He begged her to stay. She was seeing somebody else, she told him. No, he didn’t know the man she was seeing, and no, she wasn’t going to tell Cooper his name, only that she loved her new man and she was happy with her new man and that Cooper now owed her half of the house and half of everything he had ever owned. He bought a bottle of whiskey the same day and drank half of it, and then started on her half too. He drank it at his office after work. He didn’t want to go home. Didn’t want to face the empty house. He just wanted to drink, surrounded by his files and his work, his classes over for the day, the students gone home.

He’s always thought about how his life would be these days if his next decision had been different. He was drunk enough to think that driving was a good idea. That’s what the booze did to you-you can make a thousand right decisions when you’re sober, and when you’re sober you know you would never drink and drive, but the booze changes things. It gets into your blood and tells you everything is going to turn out okay. So he made it out to the parking lot. There were only six cars in it, one of them his, spaces for a few hundred more. The night was cold, the ground covered in leaves, daylight savings was over and it was dark even though it was only seven-thirty, each day darker than the last now until the downslope to spring.

His keys were on the ground before he even realized what had happened. His hand was still by his car door, going through the motions of trying to unlock it. It was a few seconds before he realized what was happening, then a few seconds more to crouch down and pick them up. He should have called a taxi. Should have done more to stop his wife from leaving. Should have realized what was going on. Jesus, he felt so stupid, being cheated on like that and never knowing.

The girl had appeared from nowhere. Sometimes in his nightmares, he imagines her clawing her way out from Hell only meters away from him, or floating just above the ground with her feet never touching it, this beautiful demon who would change his life.

“Are you okay, Professor?” she asked, and no, he wasn’t okay, his wife was a cheating whore and was going to take half of his life, and where the hell did the years go, his twenties and thirties drifting by like they were nothing, the years steamrolling on, he would be fifty the following year and he hated that, really fucking hated that.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” he answered, dropping his keys again.

“I’m one of your students,” she said, and God, she was beautiful.

“Well, thanks for your time,” he said, unsure exactly what he meant by that. He got his door unlocked.

“Listen,” she said, “can I give you a lift home?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, but the truth was he was sure. He’d love to be taken back to her house. They could have a few drinks and. . and shit, that’s not what she meant. She meant she would give him a lift to his house. “I really need my car, I have something early in the morning I have to deal with,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

“It’s no problem,” she said. “We’ll take your car and you can pay for my taxi to get back.”

And so the scene was set and on the car ride there he spoke little, thinking about his wife, about his job, about men taking what it was they wanted, and honesty being the best policy, he wanted this girl, wanted her more than anything, wanted her to make him feel young again.

“Want to come inside for a drink?” he asked, when she had pulled his car into his garage.

“I should be getting back.”

“Just the one,” he said. “I promise not to keep you. I’m a criminology professor,” he said, “and I can tell you it’s a crime to let a man about to turn fifty drink alone.”

And so she had said yes, and three years later he isn’t sure why she did, or how exactly things led to him making a pass at her. Her rejection had hurt, in fact it had hurt so much he wanted her to hurt too. That’s how it started, the need to make her feel bad, to make his wife suffer, only this girl wasn’t his wife, just a stand-in for her. The textbooks would say all that added up was a trigger. He knew it at the time. It started with a ride home and led to him dragging her into his bedroom and tearing off her clothes, forcing himself on her, his hand tight on her face the entire time, covering her eyes so she couldn’t see him, and when it was done he lay there panting with her body pinned beneath him and the realization of what he had done came flooding through.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, rolling off her. His head was buzzing from the alcohol and he felt sick.

She said nothing. She stared at the ceiling and, God, she could go a long time without blinking. Tears had formed a small stream down the side of her face.

“I. . I don’t know what happened,” he said. “Please, please, I’m. . I’m sorry.”

He touched her shoulder. She didn’t flinch away. She didn’t move.

“Are you. . are you okay?”

She wouldn’t answer. Wouldn’t look at him. Wouldn’t move.

He started to panic. She would tell the police what had happened. He would lose his job. He would go to jail. Nobody would publish his book then. He sure as hell wouldn’t win his wife back. And when he came out, what would he do? Nobody would ever respect him. Nobody would hire him. His future self would be lost.

The easiest solution was to kill her. Could he cross that line? He had already crossed one, he could cross another. He thought about bundling her up in the car and dumping her somewhere. That part he could do. The strangling or stabbing part, no, that part he couldn’t do.

“I have money,” he said to her and it wasn’t true. He owned the house with his wife and the mortgage was small, but now that she was gone he was going to have to buy her out for her half. When she wouldn’t move, he sat up on the edge of the bed and pulled his pants back on. “It’s yours. All of it,” he said, and he meant it. He would sell the house and if there was anything left he would give it to her. His chest felt heavy and his breathing was forced, and he bent over and vomited on the floor. Immediately he felt better. Even the buzzing died down by half.

“I’ll drive you home,” he said, wiping his mouth on the bottom of his shirt, but of course he was in no condition to drive. “Let me help you with your clothes,” he said, and he helped her and she did none of the work, just kept laying there, letting him move her, and the clothes didn’t fit that well because they were torn and damaged. “Tomorrow we can go to the bank,” he said. “How much? Oh, God, please, just tell me how much you want?”

She stayed unresponsive and he needed another drink, a drink would help him think, so he went back out to the living room, passing clumps of her hair in the hallway, strands that had been pulled out when he fought her into the bedroom. He leaned against the dining table and knocked back a shot of whiskey, then slowly sipped at another. His hands were shaking and there were spots of blood on his palms. The shot glass kept clicking against his teeth.

To this day he still doesn’t know what she used to hit him. One moment he was leaning, the next the living room floor was rushing up to reach him. His face slapped into it, and when he came to he was tied up. He was spread-eagled, his legs tied to couch legs. His arms were over his head, tied to the TV cabinet. Something was in his mouth. His vision was foggy.

“You want to know how that felt?” she asked. “You want to know what I just went through?”

Her questions were calm. None of the words were stressed. It was like she was asking him if she could get him a drink.

He couldn’t answer. She lifted a pair of pliers in her hand. They were his pliers. She must have taken them from the garage, and he’s never seen them since. She didn’t say anything. She put the pliers onto his testicle and squeezed. She didn’t even hesitate. He heard something pop. Felt every nerve in his body catch fire. He screamed into the rag until he passed out, and when he came to he was alone, untied and bleeding on his carpet. He made his way to the hospital. He kept waiting for the police to arrive, but they never came.

A month passed. The student was reported missing. Nobody knew where she was. He knew he was the reason she had vanished. He thought she had killed herself somewhere. Part of him felt guilty, part of him felt relief, and the part of him that had lost his testicle was angry he hadn’t been given the chance to kill her himself. That first year he thought about her every waking moment. Then he started to think of her less. Two years after the attack and he still hated her, but the anger had dulled, he didn’t think about her constantly. Three years after the attack she was hardly in his thoughts anymore, and then she showed up in the papers last year. Her name was Melissa. She was on the front page, and he was sure it was her. There were differences, of course there were, a person can change a lot physically in three years if they want to, but it was her, and she was doing bad things. He couldn’t understand the psychology. There must have been more to it than his attack on her. He wanted to know. He needed to understand. He wanted to kill her. What she was doing to other people, that was his fault. He knew that. He had made her into a monster. He wanted to feel bad about it too, but he didn’t.

It had all been an accident. It was his wife’s fault. If she hadn’t cheated on him, none of it would have happened.

He wanted to track the girl down but there was no way to do it. He wasn’t an investigator. Seeing her in the papers brought the anger back. He became obsessed again. He hadn’t had a drink in three years, but this made him return to it. He wanted revenge. He wanted that night with her back so he could do it differently. It would start the same but end with his hands around her throat.

He couldn’t take that night back. He would sit in his living room staring at the wall while the bottle of whiskey disappeared in front of him. He would dream about what he would do to her if he found her. He would go to work the following day disguising his hangover, and nobody ever knew what was really going on inside his head.

Then he met Jane Tyrone.

She reminded him in some ways of Natalie Flowers. Same hair, young and pretty, same smile. She worked at his bank. He had gone in to deposit a check. She gave him a big smile that was part of service. He wanted the service to include seeing her naked. He wanted it enough that he followed her after work into a parking building in town. It was an impulsive thing to do, but also very simple. Just a matter of timing, really, as long as nobody else was around, and there wasn’t. He walked up to her while she was unlocking her car. He smiled at her and she smiled back and she didn’t recognize him. Then he reached behind her and banged her head down into the roof, once, twice, and a third time for luck. She was out cold. He put her into the trunk of her car and left her there for fifteen minutes until he returned with his own. He had to park a few spaces down, and he killed five minutes reading the newspaper until again there was nobody around, and then he made the switch.

He kept her alive for a week. That hadn’t been the plan. There had been no plan, really. He had woken up that morning with no intent of harming anybody, and had ended it at the institution with her locked in a padded cell. He thought he would use her and dispose of her the way he should have disposed of that bitch three years earlier.

Things had changed. He found he began to like her, and part of him, there’s no kidding himself here, part of him wanted to be liked by her too. Sometimes, within the moments after using her, he would tell her he was sorry, and tell her everything was going to be okay. In the beginning he thought he meant it. In the end he knew he didn’t.

He kept her alive, he used her over and over, and each time he found himself not caring as much about her as the time before. He wasn’t sure how long he wanted to keep her, but after seven days she just went and died on him. It was okay, because after seven days there was nothing left to be attracted to, nothing he hadn’t done a dozen times to her already that he felt the urge to do again. It had been time to move on anyway. For both of them. It was bound to happen. People drift apart.

It’s common knowledge that killers like to keep souvenirs, and it was no different for him. He had a digital camera in his briefcase. He used it every day with her. He took one photo, then another, and it turned out he enjoyed taking photos. It’s a good thing too, because he liked to spend time looking at those pictures. It was a week’s worth of fun compressed onto a microchip smaller than a fingernail. The irony is he actually thought of bringing her to Grover Hills. He needed an abandoned building, and this one suited his needs perfectly. However there were two others that were the same, two other mental institutions he used to visit to talk to the patients to write his book, both closed down within months of this one. In the end he settled on one of the locations to take the girls, a place called Sunnyview Shelter.

If he gets out of here alive, how much of his life can he return to? The camera has been destroyed, but what of the photographs on the flash drive behind his filing cabinet? There was another one too, hidden in his office at home, surely as melted and ruined as everything else in his house. He knew it was a bad idea hiding them at work, but he needed to be able to look at them any time he pleased.

The day he took Emma Green had been a lousy one. There had been another article in the previous Saturday’s paper about Melissa X, or rather, Natalie Flowers. It was a feature piece that covered three pages and had pictures of her taken from a video recording the police had. The entire weekend he read that article over and over, each time a little more fueled by alcohol. Monday he went to work. The hangover was a bitch and a struggle to hide at work, but thankfully some of his classes were canceled because of the heat wave. There was a girl in his class who reminded him a little of Natalie. She worked at a café he went to sometimes. He went there to see her and nothing more, just to take a look at her and fantasize what it would be like to hurt her, and then that old man assaulted her in the parking lot. He first went toward her to help her, he’s sure of that, because he was never going to harm another of his students because then the police might have questions for him. So he went to her aid and changed his mind. Just like that. His thought process went from helping her to hurting her in under a second and it was a mistake. He knew it then but couldn’t help himself.

He was going to keep her for seven days like Jane Tyrone. He liked the symmetry. Other’s would call that a signature. Taking the pictures was stupid. He knew it was stupid but took them anyway. It went against everything he had learned. There were rules you had to follow if you didn’t want to get caught. He had broken them. Killers always ended up becoming smug enough and arrogant enough to think they won’t get caught and they take bigger risks, and he knew, he absolutely knew that he was better than that. Better than all those smug bastards. It’s unlikely the police have found the photos. They would have no reason to even look. At this point he’s a victim, nothing more. Emma Green being a student of his doesn’t look good for him, but at least the bank teller was a random stranger.

His fingertips are completely black with ink as he continues to stroke the newspaper. He turns it over and looks at the second page. A picture of Nurse Pamela Deans stares out at him from a black-and-white square about the size of his palm. There was no warmth to her, and every time he spoke to her he was sure it took all her energy to remain cordial. However she was extremely useful in his studies and exceptionally efficient. He always imagined her living alone in a house full of straight edges and starched bedsheets, perhaps a few cats, a small TV and a radio tuned only to classical music. Now she is dead, burned in the same way his house was burned.

Burned, no doubt, by Adrian.

This is bad. Really bad. If the police make the connection between the two fires, is it possible they’ll connect everything to Grover Hills? Yesterday he’d have loved it if the police showed up to rescue him. But if they come today they’ll find the girl who helped him, and who he killed in return for that help.

Again, that was stupid. For a man who knows a lot about killers, for a man who knows what their common mistakes are, why can he not stop himself before acting?

There is still blood on him. His clothes are stained, and there’s a murder weapon with his prints on the other side of the door. He begins pacing the cell. The police will make the connection. At some point somebody will drive out here to take a look around. They’re going to find the dead woman and there are going to be some tough questions. He has to get out of here. He has to kill Adrian. He has to make it look like Adrian killed the dead woman. He needs to destroy his clothes. If he escapes he can change and he can set the stage any way he wants to. As long as the camera or the photographs in his office haven’t been found, there’s no reason for the police to suspect him of anything.

He turns the newspaper over and goes to the front page where he saw the sketch earlier when Adrian was holding it. Up close it looks like his brother-in-law, except it’s supposed to be Adrian, only it doesn’t look much like Adrian.

Jesus.

He has to escape.

He has to convince Adrian to let him out of here.

It’s time to try a different tactic.