Collecting Cooper (40 page)

No scream room. No basements with thick iron doors. No Emma Green, no Cooper Riley, no Adrian Loaner, and no indication they were ever here.

“Shit,” I say, voicing my anger. “We chose the wrong one. She must be at Sunnyview,” I say, but nobody is listening. The armed team is going back through the rooms, and one man is covering the room I’m in with Schroder, while Schroder is on his cell phone, so I’m talking to myself.

Schroder is slowly shaking his head and I have a real good idea of what he’s about to tell me and a real bad feeling about it. He slips his cell phone back into his pocket.

“Don’t tell me,” I tell him.

“It was a good idea, Tate, and nobody here rejected it, but that was the team at Sunnyview and it’s empty.”

“No way,” I say, punching the padded wall of one of the cells. “It can’t be. They have to be there or here. Have to be.”

“There are signs somebody was there,” Schroder says. “Apparently there’s a new chain and lock hanging from the door that’s just been smashed, there’s dirt on the front steps, and there are some empty water bottles in one of the padded rooms. Forensics are going to take a look around; it’s possible she was being kept there, and just as possible some homeless guy was using it for shelter.”

“Emma’s still somewhere.”

“I know. She’s just not here.”

“Then where?” I ask, hitting the padded wall again, this time not as hard.

“I don’t know. But it has to be somewhere big enough for four people.”

“Why four?”

“I got another call while I was on the phone to the other team. Adrian’s collected another person.”

I almost can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Jesus,” I say, “are you joking? Who?”

“He’s taken Cooper Riley’s mother.”

The bandaging is tight but it makes the wound feel much better and Adrian is thankful for her help. He did to Mrs. Riley what he did to her son, and she rode in the trunk of the car in the same style too. Cooper would want him to have treated her worse than that, but of course he’ll never admit to it. He didn’t need to use the Taser though. He only needed to point the gun at her and hold the rag over her face, and it was enough. Cooper’s mum had to be a hundred years old and was never going to put up much of a struggle, and she didn’t, not when he told her he was taking her to see her son.

He should have thought of her immediately, especially after his conversation with Cooper that morning. But instead he sat parked on the side of the road for twenty minutes before her name tumbled into his head. This time, as he had predicted, there were no cars outside her house when he got there. He parked in the driveway and he planned what he would say, but at the door those same words tangled in his mouth and he said nothing that made any sense. So instead he cried and he pointed the gun at her and told
her he would kill her if she didn’t help. When they were done, he found some clothes in the back of a wardrobe before putting her into the trunk of the car alongside the other girl.

By now the police will have unearthed some of the bodies at the Grove. He doesn’t know how many are there. Grover Hills ran for over fifty years before he got there, and he imagines records of patients back then would have become as lost or as buried as some of the patients. Could be there were other orderlies, other “Twins” who tormented other patients and put them in the dirt. There might be a hundred graves out there. He never saw any ghosts but he’s never believed in them, and he suspects the two things are related, that you can only see what you believe. He must remember to ask Cooper about that. If there are ghosts, is it possible the ghosts of the Twins are haunting the ghosts of those they killed out there, their souls tormenting other souls? Ever since that first visit down to the Scream Room, the Twins have been haunting him; in fact, it’s only been since he killed them that they’ve finally left him in peace. They took him down to that basement eighty-seven times over the twenty years he was there. He doesn’t know how many times a year that is. Sometimes it was once a month. Other times twice a year. One year they only took him down there on his birthday. Eighty-seven times. He doesn’t like that it ended on an odd number. It was the irregularity of it all that frightened him the most. You just never knew. Any minute they could come and take you.

And then he took them.

First one, then the other. He knocked on the door and swung the hammer the moment it was opened. He forced his way inside, but it didn’t take much forcing at that point. He finished off one of the Twins then sat quietly in the living room while waiting for the other to come home. A hammer to cave in the backs of their skulls. No need for any discussion. He didn’t care what they had to say, and for years they’d told him to shut up. The Twins lived together, neither of them married, a modern three-bedroom house in a nice neighborhood with a garage door that automatically opened with
the touch of a button—something he’d never seen before. There was nothing there to suggest they were so mean and cruel. Nothing to suggest they had missed the Grove so much that they had built their own Scream Room. No, those suggestions were all kept for the farmhouse they kept an hour out of the city. He knows that because even before he thought about returning to the Grove, he had been following them. He had seen the farmhouse from a distance.

The farmhouse is more open than the Grove. Lots more ground with low wooden-beam gates between paddocks fenced off with wire. Lots of different types of grass and weed are devouring the landscape, no animals anywhere, just a million bugs making sounds in the night. He wonders what used to be farmed here, if there were ever any cows and sheep and chicken. He imagines growing up in a place like this, going to one of the small schools in one of the small towns nearby, where kids who live on farms are shipped to by bus five days a week. Winters sitting around the fireplace, summers riding horses and lying under trees and eating fresh fruit. When the hunt for Cooper has died down, he should look at getting a horse and planting some apple trees. He’ll plant orange trees too, and whatever else he can plant.

In hindsight, it might have been better to have brought Cooper out here in the first place. Nobody has any reason to visit, only the Twins, and they won’t be visiting anymore. There must be graves out there among that tall grass, other victims of the Scream Room built inside, a room with padded walls and little acoustics and you could scream and scream in there for a thousand years and never be heard. Since he’s heading down the path of hindsight, he should have locked the Twins in the Scream Room at the Grove and just left them there. Starvation would have taken care of them. Let them stay down there and let them scream their throats raw and never be heard, one of them eventually eating the other to live longer. He wishes now he had thought to do that. They were lucky to have only been hammered. With what they did to him, to the others, to what they’ve done in the Scream Room they built out here, they deserved much worse.

The key for the farmhouse is now hanging on the same set of keys for the stolen car. He checks on the mother and lays her down on the driveway, then pulls out the girl. He has to drag her because his leg is too sore to carry her weight. She’s still asleep, and in her sleep she doesn’t look happy and he guesses she didn’t enjoy the earlier ride, jammed up against the girl he dug up. He gets her up onto the porch and inside and lays her down in the hall. He grabs a glass of water and comes back to her and tips it toward her mouth, but it runs over her face and soaks into the carpet. She is no good to Cooper like this, and what kind of host would he be offering her to him like this anyway? She groans a little, and he isn’t sure whether she’s asleep or partly awake. He drags her into one of the bathrooms where it’s much cooler, his leg too sore for him to carry her. He fills one of the tubs with cool water and slides her inside. She blinks and focuses on him but still doesn’t say anything.

“I’m going to make you better,” he says, and he puts water onto his fingers and rolls it into her mouth. This time she swallows. He smiles. Then his smile disappears. He can’t find the glue. He took it out of his ruined pants back at Cooper’s mum’s house and put it into his new pair—didn’t he? Ever since the beating Adrian took as a kid, he’s been fully aware anything he puts down he may never see again. He can take his watch off and sit it on a table only to find it two days later under the bed or outside in the garden. He can put down a key and turn his back on it and it’ll disappear. Screwdrivers, coins, books, even shoes—it doesn’t matter. And it’s frustrating. It makes him crazy. He should have been a magician.

Now the glue, which he knows he brought with him, is missing, and how else is he supposed to be able to keep the girl’s mouth closed?

The glue was something that his mother—his Grover Hills mother—used to use on him. He’d be down in that basement yelling so loudly because he was scared to be down there, and she’d come down with a couple of the orderlies, not always the Twins—though sometimes it was one or both of them and sometimes different people completely—and they’d hold him down and put the
glue between his lips and pinch them shut. Most of the time when his mouth was glued he’d work at it with his fingers. He’d dampen them in the bucket of water and slowly pry them apart, a little at a time, trying not to tear the skin but usually failing. A couple of times there was too much glue, or a different kind, and for some reason no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get his mouth open, and when they finally let him out of his cell they’d rub alcohol or turpentine or something that tasted real bad across his mouth, rubbing it into the slowly widening gap and it’d hurt bad and taste even worse and roughed up the skin for days. The straw was his idea. He knew what it was like when you got thirsty and couldn’t drink.

He’ll do the same for this woman, once he finds the glue.

He just has to find the straws too.

He smiles at her, noticing for the first time just how attractive she is, and he blushes at the thought. He drips some more water into her mouth before pulling her out and, keeping her wet, he ties her onto one of the beds then heads outside for Cooper’s mother who has rolled onto her side and is in the process of trying to get to her feet.

Schroder goes to Cooper Riley’s mother’s house. He’s going in the hope a map fell out of Adrian’s pocket with a big circle around the location where he’s holed up with Cooper and his mother and maybe Emma too.

I catch a ride with one of the officers heading to Grover Hills. I figure I can do more for Emma there than I can from a motel room. The officer doesn’t make much conversation on the way. He’s not somebody who was in the department when I was three years ago, so he doesn’t know anything about my history, which feels nice. He also doesn’t get lost—he’s made the drive a couple of times today and can pick the difference between one dirt road over another. Maybe he grew up on a farm or the training these days is better than it was for me. Sunnyview and Eastlake were a bust, but forensic crews are still being sent to both to check for fingerprints and blood and to scout around the grounds for bodies.

We drive through the perimeter the media have set up around Grover Hills and questions are yelled at us and spotlights pointed
at us and the officer is blinded by one of the cameras and clips one of the reporters with the side of the bumper. She is sent flying into the dirt. She gets up screaming abuse at us and threatening to sue before realizing her mistake, that being more hurt means a bigger story and more compensation, so she goes quiet and collapses into a heap. Every camera lights her up and she lays there in a caricature of pain. The officer stops the car and gets out and takes a couple of steps toward her, but is blocked by cameras and more lights all pointing at him now. He raises his hands to shield his eyes. I leave him to it and walk toward the building, passing a couple of cops coming back my way to help their colleague.

Two more bodies have been found since I’ve been gone, both of them in the same grave. There seems to be no pattern as to where the bodies have been laid out, probably because the people doing the digging were crazy. Nobody gives me so much as a second glance as I walk over to take a closer look. The two bodies are fresh-looking, lots of skin slippage, dark veins protrude from underneath their skin as if they are worms feeding and burrowing their way beneath the blotchy surfaces. My stomach turns for the second time tonight. One man is wearing jeans and one is wearing shorts and they’re both wearing T-shirts that are stained with fluids that have seeped from their bodies.

One of the medical examiners, a woman by the name of Tracey Walter, comes over. Last time I saw her was when I was working on the Burial Killer case. Back then she had black hair tied into a ponytail, now it’s been dyed blond but the style is the same. She always has an athletic look about her, as if she might break into a jog at any time.

“Who let you in?” she asks, at least grinning as she says it.

“Schroder asked for my help.”

She offers me her hand. “It’s clean,” she says, then seems to struggle holding it there as I shake it. Last year she was pretty angry with me and I don’t blame her. I almost got her fired when I stole evidence from her morgue.

“So what can you tell me about these guys?” I ask.

“Nothing,” she says. “No way in hell Schroder asked you for an opinion.”

“He did. Just not on this case,” I admit. “Come on, Tracey, I’m trying to find Emma Green.”

“And you’ll stop at nothing.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“It is for the people who get in your way, even the innocent ones.” “Any idea who they are?” I ask, nodding down toward the two men.

“Not yet,” she says. “Bodies haven’t been touched yet.”

“Then let’s touch them,” I say. I crouch down on the side of the grave and tug sideways at the shorts on the closest victim, twisting them until I can get to the back pocket.

“What the hell, Tate?”