Collecting Cooper Read Free Page A

comment.”
    “See, the man I knew a year ago would have wanted that. He would have asked me how he could have helped. That man a year ago, he would have been giving me his help even if I didn’t want it. You remember that, Tate? You remember that man? Or did those four months in the slammer fog up your memory?”
    “I remember it perfectly. I remember you shutting me down when I knew more than you did.”
    “Jesus, Tate, you have a strange perception of reality. You got in the way of an investigation, you stole, you lied to me, and you were a real pain in the ass. Reality saw you kill somebody, it saw you crash your car into a teenage girl and put her in the hospital.”
    Last year I tracked down a serial killer, and people died in the process. Bad people. At the time I didn’t know one of them was bad, and killing him was an accident. That guilt, it changed me. It got me drinking. And drinking led to the car accident which led to me getting sober again.
    “You don’t need to lecture me on reality,” I say, thinking about my daughter, cold in the ground for three years and never coming back, then thinking about my wife in her care home, her body nothing more than a shell inside of which used to live the most perfect woman in the world.
    “You’re right,” he says. “You’re the last person who needs a lecture on reality.”
    “Anyway, I’m a different man now.”
    “Why, did you find God while you were locked away?”
    “God doesn’t even know that place exits,” I tell him.
    “Look, Tate, we’re losing a battle and I need your help. That man a year ago, he didn’t care about boundaries. He did what needed to be done. He didn’t care about consequences. He didn’t care about the law. I’m not asking any of that from you now. I’m only asking for your help. For your insight. How can a man who did all of that last year not want to offer that?”
    “Because that man ended up in jail with nobody to give a damn about him,” I say, the words more bitter than I intend them to be.
    “No, Tate, that man ended up in jail because he got drunk and almost killed somebody with his car. Come on, all I’m asking is for you to take a look at the file. Read it over and tell me what you think. I’m not asking you to track anybody down or get your hands dirty. Truth is we’re all losing perspective, we’re too close—and hell, no matter what you’ve done or the actions you’ve taken, this is what you’re good at. This is why you were put on this earth.”
    “You’re stretching,” I tell him. “And trying to appeal to your ego.” He takes his eyes off the road for a second to flash me a smile. “But what isn’t a stretch is the fact that you can do with the money.”
    “Money? What, the police department is going to put me back on the payroll? I seriously doubt that.”
    “That’s not what I said. Look, there’s a reward. Three months ago it was fifty thousand dollars. Now it’s two hundred thousand. It goes to whoever can offer information that leads to an arrest. What else you going to do, Tate? At least take a look at the file. Give yourself a chance to—”
    His cell phone rings. He doesn’t finish his sentence. He reaches for it and doesn’t say much, just listens, and I don’t need to hear any of the conversation to know it’s bad news. When I was a cop nobody ever rang to give me good news. Nobody ever rang to thank me for catching a criminal, to buy me some pizza and beer and say good job . Schroder slows a little as he drives, his hand tight on the wheel. He has to swerve out wide to avoid a large puddle of safety glass from a recent accident, each piece reflecting the sunlight like a diamond. I think about the money, and what I could do with it. Istare out the window and watch a pair of surveyors in yellow reflective vests measuring the street, planning on cutting it up in the near future to widen it or narrow it or just to keep the city’s roadworking budget ticking over. Schroder