Collecting Cooper by Paul Cleave Page B

turned out to be the kind that had him dragging me unconscious through the woods. He held a gun to my head and in the end didn’t have the stomach to finish the job. He left me with the promise that if anything ever happened to his daughter he’d be back. I keep my hand on the door and my stomach sinks. If he’s here to kill me, then his daughter must have died from her injuries. Which means I won’t get to see my wife one last time. Which means I have to go along with whatever it is he wants to do. That’s the way things work in my world. Last year I wanted him to pull the trigger. Now I don’t.
    “Remember me?” he asks.
    He looks about as run-down and tired as he looked last time I saw him, as if the heat has gotten to him the same way it’s gotten tothe trees outside my house. His hair is messed up and his clothes are wrinkled and he hasn’t shaved in a few days and he smells like he hasn’t showered either. My mouth goes dry and I struggle to answer him. It must be obvious that I remember him. The kind of time we shared together is impossible to forget. I let my hand fall from the door and I take a step back.
    “You might as well come in.”
    “I know what you’re thinking,” he says, and he sounds tired. “I remember what I promised you. But I’m not here for that. I’m here for your help.”
    For him to want my help it must be bad. Bad enough he’d come to the one man he hates more than any other. I move aside and he comes in. I lead him through the house. He doesn’t comment on any of the furniture or décor. The stereo is on repeat, and the Beatles album has started back up. I take him outside onto the deck where the outdoor furniture has gathered some rust and a whole lot of cobwebs over the last four months. I don’t offer him a drink. The sun beats down on us and I figure he won’t want to stay long, and imagine he’d want to stay even less if I showed him the DVD I watched earlier. We sit on opposite sides of the table, balancing it out and giving the yard good feng shui.
    “I want to hire you,” he says.
    He’s beginning to sweat and he has to keep squinting to look at me because the sun is in his face but on my back. He’s wearing a T-shirt and shorts and not a suit, so he’s not here in any lawyering capacity, which means I won’t have to take out a second mortgage to talk to him. He looks like he’s slept in that shirt for the last few days.
    “I don’t need the work,” I tell him.
    “Yes you do.”
    “It’s a moot point. I lost my PI license so I can’t help you.”
    “That works out okay because I won’t be paying you. You’ll be doing this for free so it won’t be professional. You’re not going to need a license because you’re going to want to do this for free anyway. You owe me.”
    “Thanks for sweetening the deal. You want to tell me what’s bad enough for you to have come to me? You do realize I only just got out of jail today.”
    “I know. If that had been up to me you’d have been put away for much longer. You could have killed my daughter.”
    I don’t answer him. I’ve already apologized and I could apologize a thousand more times and he wouldn’t accept it. I know that because I’ve been in his shoes. I dragged the man who killed my daughter and hurt my wife into the woods and handed him a shovel. There was a lot he tried saying. He tried telling me how sorry he was that he’d been drinking so much, how sorry he was at all the other driving convictions in his past. He apologized for running down my wife and daughter by accident and doing nothing about it. He cried as he dug the hole, he got dirt all over his face and shirt. He was a mess. His face was covered in snot and tears and he kept blubbering that he was sorry, and in the end I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t see it as an accident. I saw it as murder. A man with that many convictions behind him, that many warnings, a man like that who keeps on drinking and driving, that makes it