Collecting Cooper by Paul Cleave Read Free Book Online

come forward to identify her. Family, friends, colleagues, schoolmates, doctors, teachers—if these people are in her past or present, they don’t recognize her. Melissa may be her name but it also may not be. At one point during the Carver investigation she showed up at the police station to help identify a suspect—giving false information to help the Carver evade capture. She gave her name as Melissa Graves, and nobody at the time had any reason to doubt her. The name, of course, isn’t real. Since then it’s been narrowed down to Melissa X, and it’s unlikely Melissa is her real name either.
    Days after that the Carver was caught and nobody has seen Melissa since. For the first few weeks after the Carver’s arrest, the consensus was Melissa X was dead, another of his victims. Then the bodies started showing up and Melissa X went from suspect to victim and back to suspect again.
    Since the Carver’s arrest five months ago, multiple attempts havebeen made to get him to offer up information on the woman, and each time he shoots them down. Melissa X is a monster with the blood of at least four people on her hands. I can’t blame Schroder for wanting all the fresh perspective he can get.
    The report details each of the homicides, leading with Calhoun’s. All three of the other men worked in uniform—though no uniforms were found near the bodies, which were stripped down to their underwear. Two security guards and one police constable. The constable was found in a park, naked. He’d been tortured. One security guard was found in his home, the only thing reported missing was his uniform. The other guard was found on a golf course where he patrolled, his almost naked body pitching distance from the fourteenth green with the same signs of torture as the other men—a completely crushed testicle, the same injury Melissa gave the Christ-church Carver. No connection has been made between the men other than the way their throats had been opened up by a blade, and the fact they all had missing uniforms. There was nothing to link them to the Carver. There are two theories floating around as to why the uniforms were taken—either for practical use to impersonate one of these men or as a trophy. The reason for the torture is unknown—again two possibilities—one was to extract information, the other was for fun. I watch the DVD in the living room and my take on Melissa is she hurt these men for fun. Detective Inspector Calhoun is bound to a chair. The chair is in a bathroom and there is tape over his mouth. There are patches of blood on his shirt and the skin around the duct tape is dry and raw. His eyes are wide with fear and his face is soaked with sweat and he looks like he hasn’t slept in a week. The footage is taken two days before the Carver was arrested.
    “I don’t understand what you’re playing at, Joe,” Melissa says. There aren’t any background sounds. Her voice comes from somewhere to the side of the camera. The report says the angles in the footage and an examination of the apartment show the camera was hidden in the wardrobe pointing out. It means Melissa didn’t know she was being filmed. It’s possible Joe was going to try and blackmail her. The report doesn’t say.
    “He’s my witness to what you really are.” They are Joe the Carver’s words, and his voice is also off to the side. The footage still only shows Calhoun, his eyes wide in panic. Every ounce of his being is seeping fear. Calhoun didn’t need to be a detective to figure out what was going to happen to him. My stomach tightens and I tighten my grip on the remote control to try and stop my hands from shaking.
    “Oh? And what do you have on him?” Melissa asks.
    “Enough.”
    I wonder what “enough” means, and I’m sure I’m not the only one wondering. Calhoun’s fingerprints were found on a knife used to kill a prostitute only days before his death, but the scene was staged. Calhoun was innocent.
    “You’re forgetting