Collecting Cooper

chapter forty-three

For the first thirty-eight years of my life I’d never been shot by a Taser. Now it’s my second time within the last year. Don’t know if that means I’ll go another thirty-eight years before getting shot again two more times, or whether I’m going to get shot every year now until I’m seventy-six. Last time it was my lawyer, this time it’s an ex-mental patient. I don’t know which is worse, but I do know who would bill me more.

I can see the stars and I can feel the ground beneath me, but I can’t move anything and just keeping my eyes open is using up all my resources. There are a few voices and somebody says my name a couple of times but it seems like all the words are being dialed in from one of the stars above me. Shapes move above me but they don’t stay still long enough to snap into focus, but I think they’re faces. Eventually I’m moved. I know this because the stars swirl around a little and then I can see the eaves of my roof rolling by and then the ceiling of a van comes into view. I close my eyes and can feel my head spinning. I think I nap for a little while and when I open my eyes I’m not sure how much time has passed, but I can feel my arms and legs even though I can barely move them.

“It was a mistake letting you out,” Schroder says, leaning over me.

“I’m starting to think the same thing,” I say.

“Huh?”

“I said I’m starting to think the same thing.”

“Whatever you’re saying might sound comprehensible to you,” Schroder says, “but all I can hear is wubwubwubbubwub.”

“Sorry.”

“Huh? Look, just relax. I’ll come back in a few minutes, hopefully you’ll be better.”

My mouth tastes like I’ve bitten into a very raw piece of steak. I can taste what may be copper or may be blood but is whatever chemical Adrian used to knock me out. I close my eyes and try to focus on one limb at a time. I can move fingers and toes but nothing more. I go through each limb again. I can make fists. I can clench my feet. I keep going through them until I can bend my arms, then my legs. I sit up and my head swirls and I pass straight out.

When I come to again Schroder is back. “How you feeling?”

“Like shit.”

“That matches up with how you look. Jesus, Tate, isn’t there anybody left in this city you haven’t pissed off?”

I’m seriously starting to doubt it. I sit up, much slower this time. I’m dizzy and hungry and thirsty and I can’t remember the last time I ever felt so exhausted. I have a headache made up of sharp waves that arrive one after the other, each feels like my brain biting at the back of my eyeballs. The ambulance looks cluttered and it’s a miracle the paramedics can ever know where anything is. I swing my feet out over the edge of the gurney and things swim out of focus for a few seconds but return.

“What the hell happened?” Schroder asks.

“I don’t. . don’t really know.”

“You were attacked while you were on the phone to me.”

“You rang me?”

“No, you rang me.”

“Hang on,” I say, and I close my eyes and try to remember. I can remember eating a burger. I remember walking through the gardens, all the flowers, the river, lush lawns and healthy-looking trees even in this heat. I remember the bodies at Grover Hills, the guys in their gang patches with the mean dog. Then I’m walking through my house and dialing the phone, I opened the door and there she was. Is that why I was calling Schroder? To tell him about the body? No, no, I was on the phone before I saw her. .

“She was hanging from my roof somehow.”

“Jane Tyrone,” he says, reminding me.

“He shot me with a Taser and drugged me.”

“We know, and no doubt it’s how he’s taken the others. There’s something he said to you.”

“Huh?”

“Not long after the gunshot. Probably when you were unconscious. He said, ‘Welcome to my collection.’ So Barlow was right and Adrian is obsessed with Cooper, he’s building up a collection that was going to include you. If he hadn’t freaked out at the gunshot, you’d be in a locked room somewhere on display.”

“Shit,” I say, thinking how things could have gone differently, thinking that right now I could have been waking up in a Scream Room all my own.

“I’m missing something,” I say.

“The gun?”

“No. I mean, yes, but there’s something I had to tell you.”

“Where’d the gun come from, Tate?”

I figure it’s likely that Adrian collected the gun after attacking me. I think about telling Schroder that Adrian brought the gun with him, but there’d have been no reason for him to fire it.

“It was a gift,” I tell him. “After my cat was strung up and Adrian broke into my house, I didn’t feel safe here.”

“A gift from who? From Donovan Green?”

“Why’s it matter?”

“Because it’s illegal, that’s why.”

“And if I hadn’t had it, who knows where the hell I’d be waking up right now?”

“Okay, Tate, I’ll let the gun slide for now, but I’m not forgetting about it. By the way, you shot him.”

“What?”

“We found the bullet in the fence. There’s cloth and blood on it, so it went through something. And we got drops of blood on the lawn surrounded by the Taser ID disks, and we’ve got blood leading up the street. Not enough to be something major, but you got him pretty good.”

Schroder helps me out of the ambulance, taking some of my weight so I can step down. My first few steps are like those a baby foal will take and Schroder has to help me for a few seconds. The headache stays, though. I remember pulling out the gun. I was holding the phone in my good hand and reached for the gun with my bandaged one. It made me a split second slower. It made the grip more difficult. If I’d had a fraction longer I could have taken aim. This would be all over now. Problem is Adrian would be lying in my backyard with a bullet in his head, his brain pulped, along with Emma Green’s location.

The ambulance is parked in front of my house. On the footpath are plastic markers sitting next to what must be blood drops. We head to the backyard where six people are looking around, all of them slightly out of focus. All the lights in my house have been switched on, and a couple of large lamps have been set up outside. My neighbors keep peering over the fences.

Jane Tyrone is hanging where I last saw her. There’s rope wrapped around her chest and under her arms, and she’s been strung up, the rope thrown around the chimney on the roof and pulled back down to lift her weight, then tied off against the leg of the picnic bench. I can imagine Adrian heaving her into the air, the actions like climbing a rope. Nobody would have seen a thing over the fence. Ever so slowly, her body is rotating a hundred degrees or so, the rope spinning, she comes to a stop going one way then slowly starts to spin back the other. Her body is bloated and there isn’t much left in the way of skin, just a few patches, but mostly it’s just raw-looking flesh and even bigger areas of no flesh at all. There’s a large slice across her chest that must have been made by the shovel that unearthed her. She’s naked, but covered in dirt. Parts of her are moving slowly, and I realize she has bugs squirming inside her. What face she has left is dark and sagging, the remaining skin is loose and her fingers and hands look like she’s wearing gloves that’re two sizes too big for her.

“Anybody see anything?” I ask.

“Lots of people heard the gunshot,” Schroder says, “and most of them looked out their windows. We got a bunch of matching descriptions that line up with Adrian Loaner, along with a description of the car.”

“That it?”

“That’s about as good as we can get. At least this time he didn’t take all your files.”

“Remind me to thank him,” I say. “So we don’t know anything more than we already knew, is that what you’re telling me?”

“Not true. We know he’s obsessed with you.”

“Can’t somebody cut her down?” I ask, nodding toward the dead girl.

“Not yet.”

“Jesus, Carl, she’s been up there long enough.”

“Not yet, Tate. You know how it goes.”

“Goddamn it,” I say, and I’m hit by another wave of nausea and have to crouch down before I lose balance.

“You okay?”

“No, I’m not okay,” I say, sounding pissed off and wanting to sound that way. “I was ringing you earlier because there was something I had to tell you. Goddamn it, it was important.”

“It’ll come to you.”

I close my eyes. I hate it when people say that, but I hate even more forgetting something I’m about to say before I can say it. This feels just like that. I squeeze my eyes shut even tighter in the hope it will help. I’m in the backyard, I’m on the phone to Schroder, I’m thinking about Emma Green, about Grover Hills, about places where Adrian can keep his collection. Grover Hills. . for a while Christchurch did what it could to hide the mental people away until one day they realized they were going to need a hundred institutions, so instead they closed down the three they had and let everybody go.

The three they had. .

All within driving distance!

My eyes snap open. Every muscle in my body is humming with energy. “I know where she is,” I tell him, almost but not quite grabbing hold of Schroder and shaking him.

“What?”

“Emma Green. It’s what I wanted to tell you. I know where she is.”

“Where?”

“I’m going with you,” I say and head to Schroder’s car. In the last few minutes a couple of vans have shown up, TV network slogans stenciled across the sides. I feel nauseous again. “And we’re going to need to lose these vultures,” I say, nodding toward the vans.

“You’re staying here, Tate. Tell me, what’s your theory?”

I open up the passenger door and climb in. “Let’s go,” I say, ignoring him, “and get some backup. We’re going to need it.”