“What theory?” Dean’s voice a croak.
Watching him, Cooper thinks: There are hard people living in this town. People who look for excuses to detonate. Their minds may not remember who they are, but their muscles do. People like Dick Dietrich who are wired to do damage. But Dean is not one of those people. Dean is not a coiled trap, waiting to snap. Dean is more like a malfunctioning valve, a faulty weld, a crack in a storage tank leaking toxins into the world. Dean is a mistake, an aberration. He leaches a different kind of harm.
A long sheet of fax paper spits haltingly from the machine behind Cooper, coiling extravagantly as it ejects, but Cooper ignores it.
“Seven years ago, you submitted a request to be moved to another part of the town,” Cooper says. “Closer to Errol Colfax.”
“Sure. I wanted somewhere quieter.”
“And how did that work out?”
“It’s pretty nice,” says Dean, suspicious, still wondering when Cooper will circle around to the point. “I mean, aside from that nastiness with Colfax.”
“True. And you drank frequently with Hubert Gable. May he rest in peace.”
“I don’t know if I’d say frequently. We liked each other’s company. I was sorry, what happened to him.”
“Still, you can see how all these connections might raise an eyebrow. Given your curious proximity to these two dead men.”
“I didn’t even know Colfax—”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, Gerald. I just want to let you know what kind of talk there is out there.”
Cooper pulls a ring of keys from his pocket, and thumbs through them until he finds a small desk key.
“You know how Gable died, yes?” he asks Dean.
“He got shot, right?”
“That’s right. By a nine-millimeter pistol.”
Cooper slides the key in the lock on his bottom right drawer and unlocks it. Pulls the drawer open. Retrieves a handgun. Holds it up to show Dean.
“This one right here, in fact.” Cooper puts the gun down on the desk, next to his revolver. “Same gun that killed Errol Colfax, too. Never did make its way back to Amarillo as evidence. Wound up stranded here in my desk drawer.”
Behind Cooper, the fax machine stops. There’s a sudden jarring quiet in the absence of the whirring. A long ribbon of paper, its sheen catching the fluorescents overhead, hangs languidly from the machine.
Cooper stands and turns, at last, to the fax machine. He rips the paper from the machine. It looks almost comically like a Christmas list in his hands—like he’s Santa, checking who’s naughty or nice. He turns back to Dean and passes him the sheet of paper.
“I thought you might be interested in this,” Cooper says.
Dean takes the paper but keeps his eyes locked on Cooper, searching for some clue of what’s in store. Finding nothing, Dean smoothes the paper on the desktop and starts to read.
Cooper stands over him. Watching as Dean’s face drains to an even paler, near-impossible whiteness.
On the paper. Dean’s photo. A mug shot.
The rest of the paper a rap sheet.
For someone named Lester Vogel.
Some vile twin.
Sixty-eight counts of conspiracy to create child pornography. Sixty-eight counts of possession of indecent material. Twenty-two counts forcible confinement of a minor. Eighteen counts kidnapping. Twenty-one counts statutory rape. Twenty-seven counts conspiracy to pervert a minor. Eighteen counts—well, the list goes on. A litany of unimaginable perversion. The chronicle of a broken valve, a mistake, an aberration, leaking toxins, poisoning the world.
The figures and phrases on the page sound loudly in Dean’s head as he reads them, like thudding explosions from very far away. Dean hears a rushing, a roaring, all around him, in the trailer. His mind is now a vacuum that threatens to collapse in on itself, to swallow itself whole. He doesn’t understand.
Yet the picture is of him.
The deeds described are his.
He looks up at Cooper, with nothing to say.
“That’s you,” says Cooper. He points to the rap sheet. “You’re Lester Vogel. You did those things. All of them.”
Dean sits, shaking, confused, his hands quaking, the fax paper rattling in his grip.
“I’m not supposed to see this,” Dean says finally, quietly. “I’m not supposed to know this.”
Cooper picks up the 9 mm from the desk.
“They’re children, Lester.”
At the sight of the pistol, Dean flinches. Then Cooper grips the pistol by the barrel and holds it out to Dean.
“Take it, Lester,” Cooper says, calling him by his real name.
Vogel puts down the paper and takes the gun, as he’s told to do. He regards the pistol quizzically. Then he seems to figure something out. Something dire. When he speaks, his voice quavers. “What do you want me to do with this? Am I supposed to shoot myself now? Is that what happened to Colfax? To Gable?”
“No,” says Cooper. “You’re supposed to shoot me.”
Vogel looks around, wondering what fresh trap this is, and what new horror will visit him next. He holds the pistol limply in his hand.
“Don’t worry,” says Cooper. “It’s not loaded. Though I believe some bullets arrived for you in the mail today. They were scheduled to, anyway. That’s what the fax machine told me.”
Vogel squirms and considers running, his chest rippled through with dread. But his body’s not built for flight, he knows that, and in the panic of a dead man he’s gripped with a last lunatic notion of survival and he points the gun at Cooper and pulls the trigger and hears it click.
“I told you it’s not loaded,” says Cooper. “I am many things—many bad, bad things—but I am not a liar.”
Vogel keeps the pistol raised, his arm still stiff and shaking. As though he believes that as long as he keeps it aloft he can hold his fate at bay. His eyes swim. He looks to Cooper. He looks at the sheet of paper in front of him. Then back to Cooper.
Then he says, simply, “Why?”
“I might ask you the same thing,” says Cooper. “Given the choices you’ve made.”
“That’s not me,” Vogel whispers.
“That’s your history, Lester,” says Cooper. “Your record. Your deeds. Your life. You thought they wouldn’t find you here. But they did.”
Vogel barely gets the words out. “I wish I didn’t know this.” Then he drops the hand with the gun to his lap.
“I’m sorry,” says Cooper, not without sympathy. “I can honestly say, I wish I didn’t know it, either.”
Then Cooper picks up his revolver and shoots Lester Vogel once through the chest.
As Vogel slumps in the chair, Cooper gathers the long fax paper and feeds it into the shredder. As the hungry blades gobble and swallow the detestable record of Lester Vogel, now deceased, Cooper prepares himself to greet the panicked citizens of the Blinds, who are even now bound to come running, frantic, full of questions, their peaceful evening shattered for the third time in a week by the rude intrusion of a gunshot.
THURSDAY
20.
YOU CAN’T KILL A MAN without consequence.