The Laughterhouse

by Paul Cleave

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The day is moving quicker than it should, partly because of the unfolding events, partly because of daylight savings, mostly because that’s what happens in a murder investigation when things start to fall in place. The day is still light, but with the sun heading toward the horizon a little quicker every day it’s only a matter of weeks until it’s dark by five o’clock. I’ve been given the use of an unmarked patrol car that doesn’t struggle to start and has a heater and window wipers that work.

  While Schroder takes a team out to the slaughterhouse, I drive to Ariel Chancellor’s house and park out front. It’s taken me a little longer than I’d have hoped, the first of the boy-racers that Schroder warned us about are already warming up the streets for later on tonight. I don’t have Detective Kent with me because I don’t need help asking a bunch of questions, and I need to get through it quickly so I can see my wife. I have twenty minutes before my five o’clock appointment with Dr. Forster, and from here it’s a twenty-minute drive, longer if the boy-racers decide to circle the nursing home. I figure I can be ten minutes late, maybe even twenty. It’ll take Forster half an hour or so to look over my wife. So that gives me ten minutes to talk to Chancellor.

  I knock but nobody answers. If I were still a private investigator, then right now I’d consider breaking in. I weigh that up against my responsibilities as a policeman, then I weigh those up against my responsibilities as a human being who’s trying to save the lives of three young girls and their father. All that weighing pulls me around the side of the house where my feet sink halfway into the boggy lawn. There are patches of mold growing around the edges of the back door. I use a lock-pick set that has come in handy over the years and will continue to do so in the future, even in my role as a policeman.

  I call out a hello before making my way inside. The air temperature drops a few degrees. Any damper and I’d need swimming trunks. I step into the living room. To the right is a kitchen with rinsed dishes forming a pile next to the sink. There’s mouse shit along the floor near the oven, and beside a rubbish bin is a dead mouse broken in half in a spring trap. On the dining room table are a couple of fantasy paperbacks that possibly help Ariel escape her past and present. Next to them is a small plastic bag with half a dozen white tablets in it, all on display for somebody to steal-or in this case eat, because there are holes in the base of the first bag and some of the tablets are scratched up and there’s a dead mouse on the table that got high really quickly and OD’d before he could share the find with his friends.

  I take a look at the photographs I saw here earlier today. The edges have curled over the years, the colors have faded from the memories. I pick up one that has Caleb Cole in it, along with Jessica and Ariel. It can’t have been taken long before James Whitby destroyed all their lives. Ariel looks happy. There is life in her eyes that has since been extinguished. Back then she was a ten-year-old girl who dreamed of ponies and rainbows and watched cartoons on TV. Back then she had a best friend and the world was bright and happy and she was a princess. Then a crazy man made that world dark.

  Even at ten Ariel would have understood what happened. At eleven she would have understood it more. By high school it was probably ruining her life. The guilt, the shame, the knowledge she got away and her best friend didn’t. In this photo is a girl that never knew what lay ahead, would never need to know a world of drugs and prostitution, would never need to live in a run-down home with mouse shit on the floor and holes in the ceiling. James Whitby may not have killed her, but he took away her life.

  I move through to the bedroom. My cell phone rings. It’s Schroder.

  “Got an update for you,” he says.

  “You’re at the slaughterhouse?”

  “About five minutes away. You spoke to Ariel?”

  “Just pulling onto her street now. So what’s the news?”

  “It’s pretty moot now,” he says, “but fingerprints found under the hood came back as a match to Caleb Cole. And the court records have arrived. Want to have a guess at who was the jury foreman?”

  “Albert McFarlane?”

  “Try again.”

  “Herbert Poole.”

  “Bingo. Victoria Brown said Whitby had the mental age of a ten-year-old and wasn’t responsible for himself. Dr. Stanton was a critical piece of her defense. And, get this, she also had some character witnesses.”

  “McFarlane?”

  “Exactly. He used to be Whitby’s teacher. He spoke about how much Whitby had changed since the attack that hospitalized him. He told the jury that Whitby was basically a good kid, and everything he did was a result of the abuse.”

  “Brad Hayward?”

  “No mention of him. Has to be what you said earlier-he was just a random guy Ariel Chancellor worked last night, which must have upset Cole. Listen, we’ve got people sitting on the other jury members making sure they’re safe, along with everybody else listed in the case. We got Cole’s mug shot out to the media-everybody by the end of the day is going to know who Caleb Cole is. We’ll find him soon. Look, I gotta go-we’re pulling up at the slaughterhouse.”

  “Good luck,” I tell him, and he hangs up.

  I tuck the phone into my pocket and Schroder is right about finding Caleb Cole soon, because when I turn around he’s standing right in front of me. Before I can react, he swings a fist and punches me in the face.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  His fist gets me in the side of the jaw and the first thing that happens is one of my headaches explodes into existence. It feels much worse than earlier this year when the glass jar was smashed against my skull. The second thing that happens is I stumble backward. Another fists gets me in the forehead and it’s like somebody has set off a flashbulb inside my head, one of those old press ones that would flash white, then have smoke puff out from around it as it went dark. For two seconds I can’t see a damn thing, but I can hear him coming at me. I lift up my arms but he manages to hit me again. I fall onto the bed and then his face starts to appear from behind the dark clouds and he looks as surprised as I feel. He jumps on top of me.

  “Who are you?” he shouts.

  The room is spinning. My back is sinking into the mattress.

  “Huh? You fucked her as well?” he yells.

  He puts his hands around my throat and squeezes. I grab his hands but can’t push them away. Something inside my skull is trying to break free, it’s stomping around and banging at the walls.

  “Shaleb. .” I say, and it takes a lot of strength just to say his name, but it sounds different in my head and feels different on my tongue.

  He lets go. I grab my throat and rub it. He climbs off me and steps away. “What did you just say?”

  I get up onto my elbows. I start to cough, each cough vibrating through my skull. “Shisshen,” I say, my throat ticking, my mind woozy, “Shesh me shelp you.”

  He comes in and takes another swing at me, I block it, but he buries his left fist into my stomach. The air rushes out of me. He turns and heads for the door and I get to my feet, half doubled over. My right arm hangs by my side, not working, it flaps around as I race out of the bedroom. By the time I reach the hall he’s already in the kitchen.

  “Shate!”

  He doesn’t wait. I reach the door and he’s already scaling the back fence. I manage two paces before everything changes angles-the trees, the fence, the house, everything shifting varying degrees and I throw up, first falling to the ground on all fours.

  The headache fades a little. Feeling returns to my arm. I press at the sides of my head and get my eyes open and Caleb’s face is staring at me from the other side of the fence as he lowers himself down. Then he’s gone. I get to my feet. My legs take me three steps sideways and one step forward, then two sideways and two forward, and then more forward than sideways until I reach the fence. I hang on to it, suck in some air, and climb. I drop down into the neighbor’s backyard, where the lawn comes up past my ankles. Cole is almost at the opposite fence
. The thing inside my head is still banging to be heard, but at least it’s no longer stomping around and setting off distress flares. It’s going to let me get through this and wait for the next opportunity.

  I grab my phone and call Schroder. I reach the fence and he hasn’t answered. I drop the phone into my pocket and climb into the next neighbor’s backyard. When I hit the ground Cole is running down the side of the house. I pick my phone back up and it’s gone through to Schroder’s voice mail. I hang up and call the station. I try asking for backup but the words don’t come out. They ask me to repeat myself and I do, but it’s still no good. I reach the road and Caleb has gone right. I follow, but he’s still gaining ground. He turns down an alleyway. I suck in a deep breath and tell the dispatch officer who I am, and that I’m in pursuit of Caleb Cole, and none of the words come out how I want them to. The dispatch officer doesn’t hang up.

  “Do you need medical attention?” she asks.

  I try asking for backup.

  “Are you intoxicated?”

  I reach the alleyway and Caleb is already at the end of it. I can barely breathe. Four months in jail followed by two months of eating all the wrong food have me in the worst shape of my life. And getting smacked in the head hasn’t helped. I swing my arms harder and try to pump by legs faster but it’s not working. Caleb goes right. I’m at least ten seconds behind and the distance is increasing with every step. He looks over his shoulder and doesn’t look as convinced as I am that I’m losing the race, so he pushes himself harder. I push myself harder too but there’s nothing there. The legs won’t respond. Then he starts to slow down. He’s been in jail for fifteen years and had to eat that same shit much longer than I had to.

  I close the distance. I shave a second off, then another, I close in on him and then I can’t run anymore. I start to pull up, my lungs burning, my energy levels drained. My throat is sore, my head is pulsing, my face feels like it’s going to explode from the heat. I think of the three girls and I keep going. Caleb sees I’ve closed in on him. He turns into the closest house and runs down the side of it. He pushes through a gate into the backyard of a house with run-down cars parked in the driveway. People are staring out the window as I follow him. They’re getting up and coming to the door, already yelling. Caleb scales the fence. The back door of the house opens and a dog races out after me, somebody yelling at it to “rip those fuckers apart.” I reach the fence and the dog grabs my leg and digs its teeth into my calf. I scream out, hug the top of the fence, and kick out with my other foot, connecting with the dog’s head. It doesn’t let go. I kick it again for the same result. I pull myself up higher, the dog coming with me, and Caleb is standing right below me on the other side. He grabs my shirt and pulls me down. I’m the rope in a tug-of-war between man and beast. The dog comes halfway up the fence and comes free when it starts to lever over the top. I hit the ground hard. Caleb kicks me in the stomach, steps back, then comes forward and kicks me again.

  “You. You’re the guy from last night,” he says, puffing and leaning forward with his hands on his knees. “You’ve been following me?”

  I try to talk. The words don’t form the way they should, but I grab hold of them, I force them out and they’re a little clearer now. The headache is leaving.

  “Caleb,” I say, “I can shelp.”

  “Let me do what I have to do,” he says, having to yell to be heard over the dog as it barks and bangs its paws against the other side of the fence, the taste of blood not enough for it. My cell phone must have hung up in the fall because it starts ringing.

  “You can’t, can’t. .” I say, and have to spend a few seconds sucking in air. “The girls, shoe can’t shurt them.”

  “What kind of monster do you think I am?”

  He kicks me again, then takes off toward the house, runs down the side of it, and is gone. I get to my knees but can’t get any further. I roll onto my back and grab my phone. Before I can answer it the people from next door put their heads over the fence.

  “You kicked my dog, you fucker,” one of them says, and he starts to come over. He’s joined by his buddy who says “you’re going to fucking pay.” Both of them have shaved heads with similar scars running across them that look like badges of honor. Maybe they got that way playing with knives.

  I pull out my badge and show it to them. They look at each other, passing a look as if unsure of what to do next, unsure whether kicking a police officer to death is going to be worth the years in jail they’ll have to spend for it. I can already see their lawyers going to work, showing pictures of their dog and saying how it was my fault it bit me, how as humanitarians these two men had to defend its honor, that only coldhearted individuals wouldn’t have kicked the shit out of me.

  “Just go back inside,” I tell them, the words feeling right now. “Backup is here,” I say, knowing how bad things are going to get if they don’t believe me. “Go back inside and don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Pig,” one of them says, and the other one spits on me and the guy who spoke seems to hate the idea he didn’t spit on me first, so makes up for it by spitting on me twice. Then they climb down off the fence, yell at the dog, and take it inside.

  My phone has stopped ringing. I wipe the spit off of me onto the lawn. I follow the path Cole took out onto the street, taking as much weight off my left leg as I can. Nobody comes out of the house. My pants are damaged, and when I roll them up there’s a row of puncture holes, all of them leaking blood. The phone starts ringing again. There is no sign of Cole. No sign of any of the patrol cars.

  I sit down on the curb and put the phone to my ear. “Yeah?”

  “We’re at the slaughterhouse,” Schroder says, and I have to press my finger into my other ear to drown out the dog, but instead all I can hear is my heart beating. “Cole was here. So was Dr. Stanton. Tate, one of the girls, Cole has left one of the girls for us to find. She’s fine, Tate, a little scared, but other than frightening her, Cole hasn’t hurt her at all.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Caleb’s hands hurt. Wrapping them around that man’s throat, Jesus, his fingers are so sore he could swear the pain would be easier to deal with if he just chopped them off. And the running-another dozen steps and he’d have dropped dead. His right hip feels like it’s swiveling on glass, both legs feel like metal spikes have been driven through the balls of his feet into his shins. He has to control the pain, otherwise he’s going to have a hard time killing the judge.

  He has no idea who the man is. If he’s been followed, then. . but no, he wasn’t followed, the man was at Ariel’s house first. So he has to be a cop, and if so, then the police have made the connection. But what about the cemetery last night? A coincidence?

  The man referred to him by name.

  He reaches the doctor’s car. The day is getting darker. Katy is asleep in the back, and Octavia is in the front in the car seat with a blanket pulled tightly from the headrest to the floor, acting like a tent over her seat. Last thing he needed was somebody seeing her and calling the police. He puts a small piece of duct tape over the little girl’s mouth to keep her quiet. Katy is also covered by a blanket, but the pills he ground up into her drink are keeping her from complaining. More cops will be on the way. He starts the car and pulls calmly from the curb, careful not to draw attention to himself even though every instinct is telling him to put his foot down and get the hell out of here. He switches on the lights. Where are the cops? He doesn’t see them and he keeps turning corners so he won’t have to, putting distance between him and the house. He leaves the suburb and heads toward town, having to stop and wait at three green lights where intersections are jammed to a halt with brightly colored Japanese cars, all of them being driven by young men listening to loud music.

  Still no cops.

  He’s not a monster, and when this is over, people will see that. He’s a man trying to bring balance to the world. What about the next child rapist to be treated and released by Dr. Stanton? What of the next
baby killer to be defended by Victoria Brown to be released on the world, their punishment no greater than a slap on the wrist? No, he’s not the monster, they are-they are monsters of this world for defending those people, and they must learn there are consequences for their actions.

  The judge signed off on the entire thing, the judge was happy to sentence James Whitby to no more than two years in a mental hospital and never follow it up. The judge was happy to wash his hands clean of the entire affair, damn the consequences, and move on to the next case. So right now those consequences are going to come back and damn him.

  If the police know him by name, is it possible they know who the rest of his targets are? He is two blocks from the judge’s house when he decides it isn’t just possible, but extremely likely.

  He needs a different car, but he has no idea how to get one. He would hear stories in jail about how to steal one. It sounded difficult. Some would say you had to touch certain wires. Others said you just jam a flathead screwdriver as far as you can into the ignition until you break the lock, turning the screwdriver into a key. Even if he could figure that shit out he doesn’t think his fingers would be nimble enough to do the work. He could always pull a knife on somebody, carjack them, but he can’t see that scenario going well. He sees police chases and people getting hurt needlessly. Like the cop back at Ariel’s house-he could have choked him, or left him to that dog, but he wasn’t to blame for any of this. Cops were the ones that had tried to help him fifteen years ago. Cops were the ones who tried to put James Whitby away two years before that.