Collecting Cooper

chapter forty-nine

I’ve gotten a little more used to the roads now and only make two wrong turns leaving Grover Hills. I pull over at one point and fiddle with the unmarked patrol car’s laptop computer, dirt from the road slowly drifting by as I look up the address I want, and when I have it I turn up the volume on the police band and listen in to the reports coming from different parts of the city. Neighbors of Cooper Riley’s mother have described Adrian Loaner and Emma Green’s car as being seen in the driveway. It was one of the neighbors who called the police when he saw her being put into the trunk of the car. Bloody clothes have been left at the scene, and bandaging and medical tape and bloody rags were left on the dining room table. Adrian went there and forced Mrs. Riley to help him. More information comes in as I drive. An empty grave has been found out at Sunnyview, most likely the location where Jane Tyrone was buried. Fingerprints found inside one of the padded cells has matched those taken from the hairbrush from Emma Green’s flat. The background images in the photos Cooper took match those of one of Sunnyview’s padded rooms. Corpse dogs are running the grounds while they wait for ground-penetrating radar to arrive.

When I get into town I get caught up in a traffic jam. It’s almost eleven o’clock and hundreds of teenage drag racers with nothing better to do are out in their cars, cruising the four avenues surrounding the central city, proving to their friends and other drivers that they have a volcano of testosterone just waiting to be released, proving a point to the council and government that even though cruising in packs in their modified cars is now illegal they just don’t care, and proving to me that teenagers with this dickhead mentality are nothing more than sheep in their desperation to feel accepted. I listen to the police channel in the detective’s car, learning that there’s an estimated fifteen hundred drag racers circling the streets. Neon lights line the bottom of some cars, bright paint works, lots of chrome, and big mufflers, intersections are blocked and the police are just too busy with other things to care. Passengers in the car in front of me turn to give me the finger. I stare at them thinking about the man who killed my daughter, and how there’s a lot of room out in that forest for more graves. The line of traffic passes a parked car that’s been set on fire. I can see the lights from fire engines about four blocks away unable to get any closer. I manage to turn left onto a side street about a minute later and get clear of it all.

I drive out toward Brighton where the houses are a little more run-down and where there are fewer people to care. This part of the suburb on the edge of the beach is in need of one half-decent tidal wave to clean it up. I come to a stop outside the address I looked up, it’s a small worn-down house that can’t have many more than a couple of rooms, the kind of place where you’re being screwed if the landlord is charging you anything more than two figures a week. The lights are on inside, which means I won’t be waking anybody, but when I knock nobody answers. I knock a few more times and give it another minute before walking around the house, looking in the windows.

Jesse Cartman is sitting in the living room staring at a TV set that is switched off. He’s completely naked except for a photo album lying on his lap, and two cocktail umbrellas lying on his stomach. His eyes are wide open and unblinking. I tap on the window and he looks over at me. He stands up slowly and the album slides off and hits the floor and he comes to the window close enough for parts of his body to press against it. The cocktail umbrellas have stuck to the sweat and gotten tangled in the hairs on his belly.

“Detective,” he says, the word coming out so slowly it’s like he’s speaking underwater.

“I need to talk to you,” I say.

“Detective,” he repeats, just as slowly.

I make my way to the back door. It’s locked but doesn’t hold up to much of a kick. I figure the landlord won’t notice the busted doorjamb the same way he hasn’t noticed the building getting ready to fall over. The house smells of cat piss but I don’t see any cats. Cartman is still standing in the living room facing the window staring out at the overgrown garden.

“Hey, Jesse,” I say, and he doesn’t turn around. “You forget to take your meds?”

“My meds,” he says, still staring outside.

“Where are they?”

He doesn’t answer. The house is small enough to find the bathroom in about four seconds. The floor is tiled with mold growing in the grouting. The bathroom mirror is cracked and the glass is pitted. I open the cabinet and find a couple of containers of pills. I read the labels and have no idea what they are.

Back in the living room he’s still facing the window. He’s so close to it there’s no room to see his reflection around him. “You need to take some of these,” I say.

“I’m hungry.”

“Come on, Jesse, it’ll help.”

“I don’t want help. I just want to forget.”

“I need your help, Jesse.”

He doesn’t answer. I walk over to him and put my hand on his shoulder and he slams his head forward into the window. It doesn’t break and he bounces back. This is not the same man I spoke to earlier today. That man wanted to take his medication to get better. That man was reminded about things and this is the man who can’t remember them. I lead him back to his chair expecting him to resist but he doesn’t.

“Listen, Jesse, it’s very important you listen to me.”

“I’m still hungry,” he says. There is a bump forming on his forehead that he doesn’t seem concerned with. I shake out a couple of pills and try handing them to him but he won’t take them. He doesn’t even look at them or seem to know they’re there. I’m not even sure that he knows I’m here. There’s a large bite impression on the inside of his arm that no doubt lines up perfectly with this teeth. He’s hungrier than I thought.

“I need you to tell me about the Twins.”

“She was so beautiful,” he says. “So innocent. I just had to taste her. Had to. It wasn’t up to me, but it kept saying to do it, over and over at night when I was lying in bed he’d tell me and so I did, it was the only way to shut him up. He lived inside of me, this monster with no name.”

I look at the photo album. He’s talking about his sister. The picture of them staring up at me is nothing like the last time I saw him and his sister together.

“So much blood,” he says, “and I hate. .” He stops talking. Just in midsentence he stops and he closes his eyes and starts slowly rocking back and forth, just little movements at first, increasing into bigger ones until he tips out of the chair and sprawls on the floor facedown. I jump onto his back and pull his head up and open his mouth and jam a couple of pills in there and hold his mouth closed and pinch his nose shut and he doesn’t resist. He swallows the pills.

I sit him back in his chair and he stares ahead like nothing happened.

“The Twins,” I say. “Were they actual twins?”

“She tasted sweet,” he says. “Like candy.”

Somehow I don’t think she did. “Jesse, listen to me, think about Grover Hills.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No Grover Hills.”

“There were two orderlies there.”

“The Twins,” he says.

“Were they brothers?”

“They were twins.”

“Do you know their names?”

“Buttons knows.”

“What?”

“Buttons,” he says, and he stabs his finger into his forearm. “Buttons was there too.”

“Buttons is a cat?”

“Not a cat,” he says. “Buttons,” he adds, then holds his fingers up to his mouth and pretends he’s smoking a cigarette before stabbing it into his arm. A moment later he tilts his head back, closes his eyes, and falls asleep.