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From internationally bestselling author

Paul Cleave—a gripping new thriller about a

former private investigator’s search for redemption

and a mental patient’s dark obsession

PEOPLE ARE DISAPPEARING IN CHRISTCHURCH. COOPER Riley, a psychology professor, doesn’t make it to work one day. Emma Green, one of his students, doesn’t make it home. When ex-cop Theodore Tate is released from a four-month prison stint, he’s asked by Green’s father to help find Emma. After all, Tate was in jail for nearly killing her in a DUI accident the year before, so he owes him. Big time. What neither of them knows is that a former mental patient is holding people prisoner as part of his growing collection of serial killer souvenirs. Now he has acquired the ultimate collector’s item—an actual killer.

Meanwhile, clues keep pulling Tate back to Grover Hills, the mental institution that closed down three years ago. Very bad things happened there. Those who managed to survive would prefer keeping their memories buried. Tate has no choice but to unearth Grover Hills’ dark past if there is any chance of finding Emma Green and Cooper Riley alive.

For fans of Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island, Thomas Harris’s Silence of the Lambs, and Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter series, Collecting Cooper is another “relentlessly gripping, deliciously twisted, and shot through with a vein of humor that’s as dark as hell” (Mark Billingham) novel by this glimmering new talent in the crime thriller genre.

ALSO BY PAUL CLEAVE

Blood Men

Cemetery Lake

The Killing Hour

The Cleaner

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A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead,

is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Paul Cleave

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Atria Paperback edition July 2011

ATRIA PAPERBACK and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cleave, Paul, date.

Collecting Cooper : a thriller / Paul Cleave.—1st Atria pbk. ed.

p. cm.

1. Murderers—Fiction. 2. Christchurch (N.Z.)—Fiction.

3. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

PR9639.4.C54C65 2011

823ˈ.92—dc22

2011002934

ISBN 978-1-4391-8962-7

ISBN 978-1-4391-8964-1 (ebook)

To Paul Waterhouse and Daniel Williams—

we’ve been friends for over thirty years with much more to go

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

COLLECTING

COOPER

prologue

Emma Green hopes the old man isn’t dead. It’s one of those moments that come along in life where you think one thing and pray for another. The one thing dead for sure is the café. There have only been two customers over the last hour and neither ordered anything beyond a coffee, and her boss isn’t the kind of guy to let anyone go home early even on a slow Monday night, and just as equally he isn’t the kind of guy to be in much of a good mood because of it. The parking lot out back has her car and her boss’s car and a couple of others. There’s a dumpster off to the side and some milk crates stacked against it and the air smells of cabbage. There’s not much in the way of lighting. But some. Enough to see the old guy slumped in the front seat with his mouth open and his eyes closed, his head angled to one side, looking exactly the same way her granddad looked a couple of years back when they had to bust down the bathroom door after he went in and didn’t come out.

She walks up to the car and peers in. A string of saliva dangles from his lower lip to his chest. His hairline has receded about as far as a hairline can go before being considered bald. She recognizes him. He was in a couple of hours ago. Coffee and a scone and he sat in the corner with a newspaper trying to solve the crossword puzzle. “The devil lives here,” he kept whispering over and over while he tapped his pen on the table, and she glanced over his shoulder thinking she knew the answer and saw there was only space for five letters. Christchurch has twelve. “Hades,” she had told him, and he had smiled and thanked her and been pleasant enough.

She wants to tap on the window hoping he’s sleeping, but if he is sleeping then she may startle and frighten him and then it’s all going to be very embarrassing. But if he isn’t sleeping, maybe his heart only stopped beating a few seconds ago and there’s a good chance it can be kick-started. The sums don’t add up, though, because he left the café over an hour ago. No reason for him to sit out here for an hour before dying, unless he was working on the crossword. Well, maybe the devil got him. She stares through the window. She reaches out to it but doesn’t touch it. She should just let the next person deal with it. But if she did that the old man would still be just as dead in the morning only he’d be poorer, and his car stereo would have gone too.