So whether Holliday gives him the information he’s looking for on Fran Adams or not, Cooper knows it’s almost finished. He’s already got Fran halfway convinced to leave the Blinds, take Isaac with her, and find a better life. And while $200,000 can’t buy back your memories or your past life, it can go a long way toward getting you safely set up in a new one. New identities. New papers. A new home, somewhere rural. A place to live that’s safe and far and remote from all this madness. Maybe with a view. Maybe with a yard. Near good schools, and other people. Good people. That doesn’t seem too much to ask, all in all. A life far away from this town and its fences and its befuddled denizens and their unspeakable, buried crimes. If Cooper wasn’t convinced that Isaac needed to leave before—and he was, he definitely was convinced—then the arrival of an animal-burning psychopath like Dietrich has proved more than persuasive enough. Something is unraveling in this town; Cooper feels it. The very experiment itself is coming undone. And Fran and Isaac can’t be here when it does.
And once they take his money and leave, then Cooper’s done. No more faxes. No more proposals. No more killings. And if the Institute shuts down Caesura, so be it. He would be glad to know he had a hand in closing it down. He’s watched over it for eight years, watched what it does to people, living with a giant hole in the middle of your mind and the knowledge that once you did unspeakable things and you don’t even know what they are. It kills you a little bit, day by day, without killing you. That’s why Colfax’s suicide was so easy to sell. The other residents weren’t suspicious. They were envious.
If the Institute shuts this place down, Cooper can live knowing he’s made one right choice in his life. Set one thing right, as best he could.
After all, wouldn’t you kill three murderers to save one child’s life?
But it is not without consequence for Cooper, he knows that.
For example: Lester Vogel’s eyes.
Looking up at Cooper from the other side of the desk. Holding that fax paper. Hands vibrating. Fax paper rattling. His eyes drained once and for all of any hope.
I wish I didn’t know, he’d whispered, which turned out to be his final words. Clutching the revelations of his past. This accounting of who he really is.
I wish I didn’t know.
Cooper understands that sentiment completely.
He feels that way himself nearly every day.
21.
ALONE IN THE POLICE STATION, in the stillness of dawn, Cooper sips his morning coffee. He, along with Robinson, already hefted Gerald Dean’s body and lugged it over to Nurse Breckinridge’s infirmary—she’s making the arrangements right now to have the corpse picked up later today and taken to the nearest town to be cremated. By this time tomorrow, Dean will be ashes. And, if all goes well, Fran will be gone. In the meantime, Cooper’s got paperwork to do. Wrap everything up, file an incident report to the Institute, give them a plausible explanation: How, confronted with Cooper’s theories and the irrefutable evidence of the box of bullets in the mail, Dean confessed that he’d killed Colfax and Gable both, then pulled his 9 mm pistol on Cooper, and that’s when Cooper was forced to shoot him dead.
Cooper puts the mug down and unfolds the fax from his breast pocket, the one he’s been toting around for a day, the one with Gerald Dean’s real name and mug shot, and he stands and feeds the fax into the shredder.
Almost over, he thinks.
Two hundred thousand dollars is plenty. More than enough.
He’s so lost in this comforting thought that he nearly doesn’t notice when the fax phone starts to ring.
He stares at the phone. It rings again.
No one ever calls this number, he thinks.
Then he answers it.
Just as he’s lifting the receiver to his ear, Robinson and Dawes come through the door together to start their shift. Cooper raises a finger to hush them and says into the phone: “Cooper here.”
“—”
“Of course, I remember you. I was just—”
“—”
“As a matter of fact, last night we had a break in the case—”
“—”
“Well, I’d sure hate for you to waste your time coming all the way out—”
“—”
“Okeydokey. Well, we’re here. We’re always here. So I guess we’ll see you then.”
Cooper hangs up the phone.
Robinson asks, “So who was that?”
“Agent Rigo, the liaison from the Institute who came by on Monday. He says he’s coming out with an investigative team today.”
“A team? How many people?” says Robinson.
“Six.”
“Seriously?” says Robinson. “Well, shit, looks like we finally got someone’s attention.”
“Apparently, there’s a lot of ‘top-level’ concern about the recent ‘incidents’ in the town,” Cooper says. “His words, not mine.”
“And it only took three dead bodies and some barbecued coyotes,” says Robinson. “You tell him we got a fresh body on our hands this morning? Not to mention a full confession?”
“I tried, but he didn’t seem too interested in chatting.”
Dawes, for her part, just watches the proceedings unfold.
“As long as they’re making the long trip out here,” says Robinson, “can they talk to those top-level types about bringing some better-quality toilet paper out to us? Something softer than that surplus sandpaper they’ve been sending?”
Cooper gives a distracted smile, but keeps staring at the fax phone. Like it might jump to life again. Offer up another surprise.
Almost done. Almost over.
Well, be patient, Cooper thinks. You’ve got a story. Stick to it.
Then he says abruptly to Robinson and Dawes: “He said they’d be here in an hour, so we better get busy putting out the welcome mat.”
22.
THIS TIME, Rigo arrives bright and early, in a black SUV that looks, in the distance, like a hearse. It barrels ahead on the private approach in a convoy with a second SUV, sleek and identical. As they rumble up, Cooper rolls open the gate and then motions them forward, and the trucks enter and curl to a halt. The agents disembark, three from one car, three from the other, all of them dressed in black suits, like pallbearers, waiting for the hearse to unload.
Rigo steps out from the backseat of the first truck and stretches in the sun, smiling and shaking off the long drive. Beside him, a woman strides out from the shadow of the first SUV: petite, all business, maybe five feet in heels, and dressed in a black pantsuit. Her white blouse crisp and open at the neck, her black hair pulled back harshly in a ponytail. The other four agents are uniformly beefy and inexpressive in a way that identifies them as supplementary muscle. They array in a loose spread pattern and survey the scene like soldiers in an occupying army.
Cooper raises a hand in greeting to the party.
“Sheriff Cooper,” says Rigo. “Anything notable happen in my absence?” He steps forward and claps Cooper on the shoulder like they’re old buddies, then gestures back toward the woman behind him. “This is my partner, Agent Iris Santayana.” She nods. Doesn’t move. Says nothing.
“Pleased to meet you,” says Cooper, stepping forward. “I’m Calvin Cooper. I’m the sheriff of this town. Sort of.” He starts to offer a handshake but aborts at the last minute, thus saving himself the humiliation of holding his hand out in the air while she ignores it. Instead he shoves the hand into his pants pocket, like something he’s ashamed of.
Rigo doesn’t bother to introduce the other agents individually—he just waves in their direction and calls them “the team.” Rigo and Santayana are the ringleaders, clearly, and, standing together, one of them seems like a vigilant master and the other like an exotic, expensive pet, though it’s impossible for Cooper to tell which one is which. He introduces them to Robinson and Dawes, who’ve been lingering on the periphery like shy children. “My deputies are at your disposal, as am I, of course,” says Cooper.
“We’d just like to get settled in,” says Rigo. “And then get started.”
“And what exactly are you here to do?” says Cooper.