Collecting Cooper

chapter fifty-five

A guard comes and tells me to follow him. He has a large forehead creased with stress, and a lower lip that sticks out half an inch past his upper one, the kind of lip you wouldn’t want to have when you’ve got a bad cold. He escorts me past a metal detector where I’m frisked for any concealed weapons or drugs. It’s all caught on security camera from about four different angles, which must be switched off most of the time going by the amount of drugs and weapons that make it in here. I’m led into the visitors’ room, which is on the other side of a set of bars that slide open as we approach. The visitors’ room has a dozen or so square tables in it, all of them marked in some way, chips in the edges, lines and creases where things have been dragged across them, small words etched into the wood. A few of them are occupied with people in jumpsuits sitting opposite loved ones in summer outfits. The room is air-conditioned and doesn’t give the visitor any indication of how hot it gets in the cells this time of the year, or how cold it gets in the winter. The last four months I always approached this room from the other side. This time I’m given a small speech by the guard on things I can’t do. Edward Hunter is sitting behind a table with his hands in his lap looking at me and trying to place how he knows me. I sit down opposite him and neither of us offers to shake hands.

“Thanks for seeing me,” I tell him.

“I don’t remember speaking a single word to you when you were in here,” he says, “what could be so important that you had to come back?”

“There’s a missing girl.”

“There are lots of missing girls,” he says. “My daughter went missing once and she died, why should I care about anybody else?” His voice sounds neutral, like he’s being chemically balanced. He speaks with no emotion when he talks about his daughter. He sounds drained, empty. His wife was gunned down in the same bank robbery Schroder was talking about, the bank where Jane Tyrone worked. Edward’s daughter was kidnapped and held ransom for money, and Edward went after the men who had her. What he did to those men for killing his family is the reason he’s here.

“I’m sorry about what happened to your family,” I tell him.

“I know you are. Your daughter was killed too,” he says. “Did you kill the person who hurt her?”

“Please, I’m here for your help.”

“You did. I can tell,” he says. “Do you have a monster living inside of you? Mine likes the taste of blood.”

If Edward Hunter isn’t on any kind of medication, I sure as hell hope he starts getting it. If he’s already on some, then they need to up the dose. His words make me think of Jesse Cartman. Without a doubt there was a monster inside Jesse Cartman that was desperate to be fed.

“Her name is Emma Green,” I say, moving forward. “She was kidnapped Monday night and I think she’s still alive. She was taken by a man named Cooper Riley. Then they were both abducted by an ex-mental patient named Adrian Loaner.”

“Sounds like you know everything there is to know.”

“I don’t know where they are.”

“Well, nor do I. I haven’t even heard of those people. I don’t get out much, you know. And I don’t like the news. What’s there to like? Same stories every day with different names. Nothing to like about that at all.”

“What’s your relationship to Murray and Ellis Hunter?”

“Huh? What?”

“Murray and. .”

“I know. I heard you. They’re uncles, on my dad’s side,” he says, and for the first time he’s engaged with the conversation. “I hardly know them. I didn’t see them for years after my dad was, you know, arrested. I saw them at my grandparents’ funerals, and that was it. I hardly even spoke to them, and if I saw them on the street tomorrow I wouldn’t even recognize them.”

“They used to work at Grover Hills.”

“What’s that, some kind of retirement village?”

“Not quite,” I say, then explain it to him.

“So what do you want to know about them?”

“Any idea where they live?”

“None. Why? You can’t find them?”

“They’re dead.”

“What. . you mean. . what? How?”

“Murdered.”

“Jesus,” he says. “By who?”

“Adrian Loaner.”

“The man who has Emma Green.”

“He used to be a patient there. Everything suggests your uncles used to abuse him, along with others.”

“Oh, I see,” he says, reaching up and gripping the edge of the table. “Now I see why you came here. You think they have the Hunter gene, right? The one that makes us blood men. My dad had it, I have it, and now they have it too.”

Two of the guards look over but don’t approach us, though they look like they’re getting ready to. I keep my voice low. “They hurt a lot of people, your uncles. Killed a lot of people too so it’s looking.”

He shrugs. “So they got what they deserve,” he says, dismissively.

“I guess they did.”

“So why are you here?”

“Because they had to take their victims somewhere.”

“I told you, I don’t know where they live.”

“I’ve been to their house. It was full of souvenirs of people they’ve killed.”

“Fucking gene,” he says.

“They didn’t take their victims there. So where? Any ideas?”

“Like I said, I just don’t know them. I really don’t. I wish I could help you. I could if I knew anything, but there’s nothing.”

“There has to be something,” I say, the frustration and exhaustion starting to get the better of me. “Please, there has to be something.”

“I’m telling you, if I knew I’d tell you. I get that there’s a girl’s life on the line, okay? I get it. I just don’t know where they are. I haven’t seen them in about six years.”

“Since the funerals of your grandparents.”

“Yeah. That’s what I said earlier.”

“That’s the same time they left Grover Hills.”

“So?” he asks. “So it means when your grandparents died, they quit their jobs. Why would they do that?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

He doesn’t know, but it’s taking shape. They quit their job because they no longer needed the Scream Room at Grover Hills. They had somewhere to build their own. “Your grandparents. Where did they live?”

“They moved ages ago. I used to live with them when I was a kid. They had a pretty nice house near town, but they always wanted something bigger with a lot of land. It wasn’t long after I moved out that they bought a farm before retiring. They worked that farm for. . let me think. . seven or eight years, I guess, before my grandfather died. Not long after grandma died too, I think it was because she missed him so much.”

A farm. It’s perfect. “What happened to it? The farm?”

“I don’t know. It was sold, I guess.”

“But you don’t know?”

“I think they left it to their kids, to Ellis and Murray, and I always just figured. . shit, I just figured they’d sold it, but you don’t think they did, do you? You think this is where they were taking their victims?”

“Where is it?”

“You’re going to need a map,” he says.

“I got one in the car.”

“Then grab a pencil. You’re going to need directions.”