“I found her on Monday night,” he says. “Isn’t she perfect?”
“I. .” Cooper says, then nothing else.
“You’re lost for words,” Adrian says. “I know what that’s like. See, I told you I can take care of you. I took care of your house. I burned it down.”
“Oh Jesus, my house,” Cooper says. “And this girl. Adrian, Adrian. .”
“I wanted to do something nice for you,” he says. “And I know you like women and I thought you’d like this woman and I used my own initiative. I want to help you, Cooper. I like helping my friends,” he adds, hoping Cooper believes he has other friends.
Cooper says nothing. Adrian finds the silence unsettling. He’s spent many days and nights down here in silence, and back then he got used to it. Now it hurts. “You said the very thing I liked about you the most is the one thing you can’t do locked up down here. But you were wrong, Cooper. See? I can bring them to you. As many as you need,” he says, hoping Cooper won’t want many, hoping that if Cooper does, taking girls like this one will only get easier.
“I. . I don’t know what to say,” Cooper says. “Is she mine?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, okay. Good, that’s good,” Cooper says. “So. . so I can do with her anything I want?”
“Of course,” Adrian says, smiling. He’s happy Cooper is getting the point. “Are you going to have sex with her?”
“Is that what I did with the others?”
“I think so.”
“Then yes, of course, I’d love to have sex with her. It’s just that, well. . ah, it doesn’t matter.”
Adrian is confused. “What doesn’t matter?”
Cooper sighs. “I’m going to have to say no, Adrian. You’re going to have to take her back, or kill her yourself. I’m sorry.”
“Why?” he asks, his voice gaining in pitch.
“No reason. But I appreciate the gesture, I really do. If only. . ah, nothing.”
“If only what? Please, just tell me,” he asks, desperate to know.
“This is stupid,” Cooper says. “It’s just that if I’m going to have sex with her, I can’t do it in front of anybody. I can’t have an audience. I’m going to need privacy.”
“Privacy?”
“See, I told you it was stupid, and now you probably hate me and think I’m being ungrateful and a bad friend.” Cooper turns away.
Adrian steps up to the door. “I don’t hate you,” he says, desperate for Cooper to believe him. I think I understand,” he says. “You don’t think you can. .” he searches for the right word, and settles on perform. “You don’t think you can perform if I’m watching.”
“Exactly.”
“So if I don’t watch, you can sex her?”
“And kill her, if that’s what you want, Adrian.”
“Is it what you want?”
“Of course.”
“Then it’s what I want too,” Adrian says, smiling.
“There’s one more thing.”
“What?”
“Ah, now I feel really silly, and you’re going to say no.”
“Go ahead and ask,” Adrian says. His eyes are wide open and unblinking as he stares at Cooper, hanging on his every word. This is why he wanted Cooper here. For the stories. For the excitement. For his collection.
“I was thinking it would be cool if I had sex with her, and you were to help me kill her when I was done.”
“You want me to kill her?”
“Just help me. You’ve never killed before, right?”
“Right,” he says, but that’s not true.
“So, I’m thinking that as a favor to you for bringing her to me, and to make sure you’ll bring me more, I’d like you to join in. Just on the killing, though, not the other stuff.”
“I don’t know.”
“I really want to kill her, Adrian, I really do. I have a strong need growing inside of me. Also. . there’s one more thing. I’m going to need a knife.”
“A knife?”
“Exactly! I appreciate it, Adrian, I really do,” Cooper says, and he claps his hands together and starts rubbing them. “See, sex isn’t the same unless you can do some cutting along the way. It doesn’t have to be a big knife, but it needs to be sharp. I’ll wait here while you get it.”
“I don’t know. .”
“Trust me, Adrian, it’s going to be fantastic. And she’ll be the first of many. How long until she wakes up? What did you to do her?”
“I knocked her out,” he says. “I don’t know when she’ll wake up. Are you really going to kill her?”
“Of course.”
“How do I know you’re not just saying that so you can try to escape?”
“Where would I go? You’ve burned down my house. This is all I have now, I’ve accepted that, and I’m not going to sit in my cell brooding for the rest of my life. I’m going to make the best of it.”
Adrian realizes he’s made another mistake. Even if he believes Cooper, there’s no way of getting the woman into that cell without being vulnerable to attack. Why didn’t he think this through better? He’s learning, that’s why, and things will only be better next time. One of two things will happen-Cooper will hurt her, and then they can become best friends. Or Cooper will try to hurt him. There has to be another way. Has to be. His mother would know what to do. He’s starting to think he killed her too soon. He can hear her voice. “A blessing is only half a miracle.” He doesn’t need a miracle here, he only needs to be smart.
“I need to think about it,” Adrian says, “and then I’ll decide,” he adds, and then it comes to him. There is another way. It’s perfect too. Cooper will get his gift and then Adrian will know if what Cooper is saying is for real or just another lie.
“I’ll be back in half an hour,” he says. He leaves the lamp on the coffee table, makes his way upstairs and closes the door behind him.
chapter twenty-one
The sun seems to get a degree hotter for every degree it moves further to the west. The shadow from the fence grows slimmer. The sun comes around the tree and Daxter’s grave is flooded with sun and the bandages on my feet and hand are stained with dirt. I feel angry and frustrated that I couldn’t have done anything more for him. I feel stupid for feeling so sad for Daxter while Donovan Green and his wife are going through much worse with their daughter. I stare at the grave thinking a lot of things, many of them stupid, many of them morbid, none of them motivational. My knee has swelled more since the digging. The paramedic would be upset with me if he were here.
I finally push myself away from the table and go back inside. I pop a couple of anti-inflammatories and a few more painkillers and I go hunting for some bandaging in the bathroom. I call Schroder and he doesn’t answer. A minute later Donovan Green calls me and I don’t answer. It’s the circle of life. What am I going to tell him? That I might have just seen his daughter burn to death? That when I went inside I took the stairs before searching the ground floor, that there was no reason to that decision, that next time I might have taken the ground floor first, that his daughter might have burned in there because of a fifty-fifty chance that I got wrong?
I hobble outside to the car. I’m able to keep my left leg straight while using my right to switch between the accelerator and brake. My face is feeling a little sunburned from yesterday and when I scratch at an itch on my nose it feels like I’m clawing my nail an inch deep. Traffic is blocked near town where an RV has turned the wrong way into a one-way street. It hasn’t hit anything, but none of the drivers coming toward it felt like pulling out of the way to give it room to turn back around, and there’s a chorus of swearing and advice being thrown from dozens of directions as more traffic backs up. I switch on the radio and there’re a couple of DJs talking about the death penalty. They talk about Emma Green and how her disappearance is proof that New Zealand needs to bring back capital punishment. They’re saying what the rest of are thinking-that whoever took Emma has hurt other girls in the past, and harder sentences would save future victims. It’s all commonsense stuff. Kill the really bad people and they can’t hurt good people, and who could argue with that? Only really bad people. The DJs are saying they should start with the Christchurch Carver. They’re coming up with ways in which they would execute him, starting out with the clichés like hanging or lethal injection before delving, or devolving, into more imaginative ways that make me seriously wonder about the two men giving the commentary. Then they throw open the lines to the public, to Steve from Sumner who thinks they should start setting these guys on fire, to James from Redwood who thinks we should go old school and stone these bastards in front of rugby-sized crowds in rugby-sized stadiums, then to Brock from Shirley who says nothing beats a good, slow cutting in half right down the middle where they dangle the guy upside down to keep the blood in his brain so he doesn’t pass out as fast. I turn off the radio and pray to God I never piss off Steve, James, or Brock.