Collecting Cooper by Paul Cleave

salads in them, chicken or mince pies, rich-looking palm-sized cakes and custard treats that all look pretty damn good after four months in the slammer. The coffee looks good too, but I get the feeling if I ordered a cup I’d have to sink some antibiotics to the bottom to balance out whatever the barista would add with his back turned. The café is located in Merivale, a block away from the Main North Road—one of the central roads heading out of thecity. Merivale is one of those suburbs that defines its own housing market, where you pay far more for far less, where if you don’t own a four-wheel drive and expensive clothes the neighbors would ask you to leave. Everybody has the collars on their shirts and jackets turned up, many of them walking around as though they were living in a country club. There’s a parking lot behind the café and no sign of Emma’s car. I walked around it when I arrived, passing a Help Wanted sign in the window that I hope isn’t advertising the spot Emma isn’t filling. Not even two days missing and the world is moving on.
    The café owner’s name is Zane Reeves. He has a toupee that at the most cost what he’d make off about eight cups of coffee, and he’s one of those guys who always has to lean against something when he talks, propping himself up against the counter and putting his fist on his hip, his stomach extending out. He smiles for the first five seconds until I introduce myself and he realizes I’m not there to buy something. The café smells of warm food and coffee and is full of people hovering a year or two either side of twenty, all of them drinking hot coffee from small cups on an incredibly hot day, the café full with the low murmur of conversation and some kind of classical music folk guitar blend being pumped through the speakers that is already making me drowsy. Reeves’s smile turns into a grimace and he takes me through a door into the kitchen to talk.
    “I’ve already spoken to the cops,” he says.
    “Then it will still be fresh in your memory.”
    “Speak to them. If they want you to know then they can share.”
    “Did she mention any weird customers? Anybody watching her, or giving her weird vibes?”
    “We all want Emma back, and mate, you have a bad track record when it comes to people you get involved with. Emma is better off without you trying to help.”
    “That’s not what her father thinks.”
    “People make bad decisions when they’re grieving.”
    “Grieving? Why, you think she’s dead?”
    “Don’t you? Mate, last thing I want is anything to have happenedto her, she’s a great kid, a good worker, but I watch the news as much as anybody. I’m not an idiot.”
    “That why you already have a new help wanted sign in the window?”
    “Fuck you, man,” he says, pointing a finger at me. “I have a business to run. I can’t just keep her position open. See those people out there? They don’t care who serves them as long as they get served. It sucks, but that’s the way it is. There’s nothing here for you, mate. You’ve already hurt her, and I’m not going to help you hurt her family.”
    “Where does she park normally? Out back?”
    “We all park out there.”
    “Security cameras?”
    “Does this look like a bank to you? Now get the hell out of here.”
    I try to make eye contact with the other staff, hoping one of them will want to talk to me, but they all look away. I head again into the parking lot. There’s some crime scene tape that’s been left behind from the search earlier, it’s fluttering in the breeze and caught up against the side of the dumpster. Nobody is around, and no cars are parked there. It’s a likely site for Emma’s abduction, at night it would be fairly dark, nobody around, lots of shadows. Emma could have walked to her car and been attacked, her abductor throwing her into the trunk of her own car then speeding away. I walk over to the dumpster and open it up, knowing the police have already searched