The Laughterhouse

by Paul Cleave

  “Yes sir.”

  I step inside. The house is small enough that it doesn’t mess around with having a foyer or hallway entrance. Instead the door opens directly into the living room. A man and a woman are on the TV arguing over some food that one of them has accused the other of eating. There’s a cutaway shot, the woman sitting in front of a camera now, telling the audience that Derek is a jerk and just because she slept with him doesn’t mean he can eat her cornflakes. Derek comes on to tell us all how lazy the cornflake owner was in bed.

  To get to the TV to turn it off, I have to walk around what made the old man outside turn pale. I’m guessing the dead man on the couch was one of his friends. The dead man’s clothes are sliced up and stained in blood, and he’s stained in blood too, like most of the surfaces in the room. It’s hard to tell how many times he’s been stabbed. Anything over one is bad, and in his case I’d say bad happened at least a dozen times. There are lines of blood on the ceiling, cast off from the knife-the blade slinging it onto the walls and ceilings the way an artist might sling paint from his brush onto canvas. There’s blood on the TV, on the coffee table, there’s blood over the guy’s dinner. From the amount of blood on view and pooled into the base of the couch it’s looking like the guy could be hung up from his feet and we’d be lucky to fill a cup. Something has been written on his forehead with a marker.

  This isn’t a burglary gone wrong or a fight over who should or shouldn’t park out front-whoever killed this man invested a lot of rage into the act.

  Schroder comes to the doorway and stops. He crouches down and undoes his shoes, which are covered in mud. He takes them off and in the process nearly tips over. He sits them off to the side of the door, then rolls up the cuffs of his pants, which are also soaking wet. Then he comes in and stands next to me. He looks down at his feet, then shrugs. He’s chewing on a piece of peppermint gum to mask the smell of beer, but his suit needs to chew on the same stuff to complete the illusion. He spends ten seconds looking at the body before fixating on me.

  “Jesus, somebody must have really hated him,” he says, then he puts a hand on my shoulder for the second time today and hiccups into his other hand. “Look, Tate, you shouldn’t be in here,” he says, and before I can say anything he adds “but I’m grateful you are. I just need a little bit more time to get my head in the game. Forensics are on their way, should only be a few minutes.”

  “And the others?”

  “The others are loading up on coffee and breath mints so they can start asking questions. None of them are going to come within thirty feet of this room.”

  “You should send them home, Carl, and you should go home too.”

  “I know, but then what? Come back tomorrow and hope for the best? Somebody needs to be here, Tate.”

  “And you could all be fired if you stay.”

  “Yeah, then the department would have to hire you, wouldn’t they? They’d need at least somebody manning the phones.”

  “Anything you find will get tossed out in a court of law if anybody gets a whiff you were drunk,” I tell him.

  “I’m not drunk, and in twenty-four hours this case could end up being as cold as my last beer if we don’t do anything about it now.”

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “And neither should you. But I’m a realist, Tate, and right now I know I could do with your help.”

  “Just saying that proves you’re drunk,” I tell him.

  He crouches down next to the couch to get a good look at the dead guy’s face. “Herbert Poole with an e has been living here for eight years,” he says, and he really does sound sober. Out the door and in the distance one of the minivan cabs is being loaded back up with some of the detectives, including Detective Kent. Could be they’re all off to grab coffee and doughnuts. “Lots of friends, no enemies, and even if people here didn’t like him this doesn’t seem the way they’d show it. More likely they cut his roses or shorten a leg on his walker.”

  The words on Herbert’s forehead say You didn’t care enough. It even has the apostrophe. “An ex-wife maybe?” I ask.

  “He doesn’t have one. He’s a widower.”

  “An ex-girlfriend? A son he didn’t get along with? It could mean a hundred different things.”

  The living room is full of the kind of sentimental stuff that in one or two week’s time a family member will box up with the intent of putting it on display but will put it into storage instead. There are photos of children and grandchildren, days out at the park, at the beach, at sporting events. If life was more like a Harry Potter novel, the people in those photographs would be crying out and telling us what went on in this room tonight. There’s a half-empty tin of beer and a dinner plate resting on the coffee table, and aside from all the blood, the rest of the room seems to be immaculate. In life Herbert Poole with an e was tidy.

  “He has two children,” Schroder says, “according to the manager. And his wife died about ten years ago from a brain tumor. We’ll talk to the kids. I don’t know, maybe one of them was pissed off with their dad.”

  We say nothing for a few seconds, letting the tragedy of Herbert Poole and his family settle in.

  “Anything taken?” I ask.

  “Jesus, Tate, I can’t know everything yet.”

  Herbert Poole’s head is tilting back as it rests over the arm of the couch, one arm pinned beneath him, the other in his lap, his body mostly on its side. His face is toward the wall, where a photograph of what is probably him and his wife from forty years ago stares back, though the features in that photo aren’t shared with the features on the dead man’s face. For Herbert Poole it was probably a good thing to look at while his life was draining out of him.

  “Impressions? Thoughts?” Schroder asks.

  “Bloody footprints head up the hallway, then head back,” I say, looking at the stains on the carpet. “Killer wandered the house for something.”

  “Then put these on,” he says, and hands me a pair of latex gloves.

  I step through the living room, careful not to get blood on my shoes, and into the hall. The footprints lead into the bathroom. The shower walls are wet and there is a pair of pants and a shirt wadded up on the floor. I poke at them, lifting a corner until I can see blood. There’s a wet towel lying next to them. The killer came in here and showered, he washed the blood off, then changed clothes but wore the same shoes. That could mean he had somewhere to go immediately afterward that wasn’t home. Forensics will pull hair from the clothes. They’ll find plenty of DNA-and if the killer has a record, we’ll find him. Problem is DNA is going to take a few weeks. Other problem is the killer may not have a record.

  I head back into the hall. There are more photographs in the bedroom, faces of people yet to be devastated, yet to know a man they knew is no longer with us. I move from one photo to the next, random people with random thoughts, perhaps one of them random enough to have done this.

  I open drawers and poke around, an entire top drawer dedicated to packets of unopened underwear and neatly folded hankies, beneath them all war medals that might belong to him or somebody else in his family. There’s one gray suit in the closet and lots of old man shirts, old man shoes, and old man ties. I thumb through some receipts. Poole had recently bought a few jazz CDs, some new slippers, a couple of paperbacks. There are letters from the hospital following up appointments-Herbert Poole wasn’t a healthy man. With his kidneys and liver shutting down, Poole’s murder is putting him into the ground about two months ahead of schedule according to the letters. Somebody just couldn’t wait. Which means it wasn’t about seeing Herbert Poole dead, it was about being responsible for seeing him dead.

  I wander back down to the living room. Poole still has a blank look on his face like he can’t quite believe he’s caused all this fuss. You didn’t care enough. Care about what? Or who?

  Schroder is talking on his cell phone, his spare hand rubbing at his face. There are more patrol cars outside now along with a few station wagons.
The cabs have disappeared, along with ninety percent of the people that came here in them. There are forensic techs heading toward the porch. They’re wearing white nylon suits so as to not contaminate the scene like the rest of us already have. Another station wagon pulls up and Tracey Walter, the medical examiner, climbs out. She stands next to the wagon and ties her black hair up into a tight ponytail. I stand in the kitchen and listen to Schroder on his cell phone as the newcomers take over the scene. Nobody talks to me or pays me any attention. There’s a sense of authority here that was certainly lacking ten minutes ago. People are carrying aluminum suitcases full of forensic tools. Alternate sources of light are being set up, bright halogens chasing away every shadow. Within moments I’m standing in the only living room visible from outer space. Tracey approaches the body carefully, as if scared it’s about to jump up and run from her cold hands.

  Schroder hangs up. Before he can say anything, his phone starts to ring again. He rolls his eyes and gives an apologetic smile. I head out onto the porch where the crowd has swelled. I learn one of them is Bernard Walsh, the man who found the body. He’s wearing a shirt and tie, and either Bernard is magnetic or he loves badges because there are at least two dozen of them attached to the lapel of his suit jacket. I introduce myself and lead him further from the porch, to where there’s no angle of the view inside. We stand beneath an oak tree that’s three storeys high with a trunk the width of a compact car. It shelters us from the few spits of rain coming down. Walsh is holding a cup of tea that is half gone and looks stone cold. He’s shaken up and tells me he hasn’t seen anything like this since the war-and he’s old enough to be talking about any war in the last century.

  “I mean, Jesus, it makes no sense. It just makes no sense,” Walsh says. “Herb, Herb was a good guy. A real gentleman. Who the hell would want to hurt Herb?”

  “Run through it for me.”

  “Run through what for you?”

  “You finding him. What happened? He didn’t show up somewhere? Why’d you go inside? You always go inside, or was his door open?”

  “This place, don’t you for one second think we don’t know what this is. I used to be a photographer, came out of the war and needed something to do that didn’t involve people screaming. I worked for plenty of papers, saw plenty of things. Once I had to do a photo shoot of a slaughterhouse, and the cows were lined up for hundreds of feet, and at the head of that line they were getting shot in the forehead, you know? And the cows, each time they heard that cattle bolt gun go off, they knew. They were braying and panicking because they each knew their buddies were getting killed and they were next to get butchered. That feeling is here too, not in the same sense, and maybe one day in forty years you’ll know what I mean. This place, it’s like a lottery out here, you know what I mean? All of us gambling on who’s going to be the next to go. All of us losing our buddies and knowing we’re the next to go, but slap me seven ways from stupid, the way Herb went, ah hell, we know we’re all cattle facing the bolt gun but this. .’

  He doesn’t finish, he gives it a few seconds of thought before moving on, and I let him talk and burn off the tension. “We play chess against each other. There’s a few of us-we have an ongoing tournament in the community. We’re all about as good as each other, or about as bad as each other depending on who you ask. Mick, Mick was the best, but he don’t know it anymore. He don’t know much, his mind has turned to mush. Hell, he nearly choked to death a few months back on a pawn. I’ve seen people lose their minds and I’ll keep on seeing it. Herb, see, Herb lost his wife about, oh, going on maybe eight or nine years now.” He holds his hand up to his head as if receiving a psychic link, maybe to Herb’s wife, because suddenly he goes, “It was ten years. I remember now. Ten years next month. Or was it last month? Thing is, Detective, when you get to the age we are, time has this way of. . how should I say this. . well, time has a way of fucking with you.”

  “So, Mr. Walsh,” I say, cutting in before he moves on to the next thought. “Why’d-”

  “Call me Bernie,” he says, “everybody else does and I don’t see no reason you should be different.”

  “Okay, Bernie, I take it Herb didn’t show up for the chess game?”

  “He always calls if he can’t make it. We all do. You know, it’s just common sense, right? Place like this, it’s only a matter of time before we’re heading upstairs to chat with the Big Guy. Only I wish He’d picked a different time for Herb, and I sure wish He’d picked a better way for him to go.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Seven o’clock,” he says.

  I glance at my watch. It’s now nine-thirty.

  “I got here and started knocking, and when he didn’t answer, I let myself in. Normally he’ll answer, but when people don’t answer in a place like this, well, it gets your mind running, son, it makes you think it’s time to dust off your funeral suit,” he says, looking at my suit, my funeral suit. “I thought and prayed at the same time, Detective-thought he’d be asleep, prayed I wasn’t going to find him as stiff as a board in his bed. I guess. . I guess in a way the second part of that prayer was answered.”

  “The door was unlocked?”

  “I have a key. It was locked.”

  “And the lights and TV, they were already on?”

  “Yeah, Herb always watches the news, you know? He hated reporters, God, there ain’t a single journalist he’d spit on if they were on fire, except for a couple of the girls on the news at night, you know, the ones who can deliver the worst news and still look sexy doing it. Jesus,” he says, and he starts to cry, “tonight they’re going to be talking about Herb. They’re going to look just as sexy and. . and. . Christ,” he says, and he tips the rest of his tea into the garden. “I feel so old and. . and. .” he shakes his head. “And so useless.”

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “We’re going to catch the guy who did this.”

  He’s still looking down at the tea he just threw away, and at the contact of my hand he looks back up. “I’ve seen a lot, Detective,” Bernard says. “I’ve fought for this country. I’ve seen men die, good, loyal men have exploded in front of me, their goddamn guts and limbs flying everywhere. One second they’re there, the next they’re just soup on the ground.” He shakes his head. “Let me tell you this, Detective-I sure as shit felt safer in that world than I do in Christchurch.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  His face has gone red and he wipes at the tears. “I see him pretty much every day. It’s not like there’s much to do around here by yourself except be lonely or die,” he says, and then he smiles at the bleakness of the world before his face tightens as the loss of his friend comes crashing down around him. “Shit,” he says. “I. . I. . ah, shit.”

  “You saw him today?”

  “Huh? What? Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. He came over about four and we watched some horse racing on TV.” He smiles. “We like to gamble a little, not that it does us any good. I mean, sometimes we’ll place. .”

  “What time did he leave?” I ask.

  “What time? I don’t know. Probably around five, I guess. He had to get back for dinner. It’s an option for us, we can either have our meals provided or we can cook them ourselves. Herb was pretty stubborn that way. He felt a man should always be able to put his own food on the table. But he was getting old and he knew his limitations. He’d let them bring him dinner, but he was adamant on making his own breakfast and lunch. So he had to be back in time for his dinner.”

  Herb had eaten most of his dinner, which means the person who delivered it would have been and gone, but they’re still going to be somebody we need to talk to.

  “You walk with him when he left?”

  “Walk with him? Why would I walk with him?”

  “So he left around five and that’s it.”

  “That was it, until. . you know, until I found him at seven.”

  “You see anybody hanging around yesterday or today?”

  “What, like
somebody suspicious? People don’t tend to hang around here, son. If anything people like to stay away. Herb’s kids sure as hell liked to, just like my own do. You give them everything and this is how they repay you, by sticking you into. .”

  “Herb have a run in with anybody? Any arguments?”

  “Jesus, what kind of argument would you need to have to end up like that? Anyway, everybody liked Herb. Everybody.”

  “Not everybody,” I point out, and Bernie slowly nods.

  “I’ll think about it long and hard,” he says, “I really will, but for the life of me there’s nothing. I don’t know why anybody would want to hurt Herb, not like that. There was so much blood in there at first I couldn’t even tell it was Herb, but the toupee was his. You see it?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer. “It was hanging from his scalp, like it had been unhinged. I used to give him hell over that toupee-it looked stupid, and everybody knew what it was. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was him. Had to be. No chance two people in this small world could have the exact awful taste in toupees,” he says, and forces himself to smile.

  “And you haven’t seen anybody hanging around?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s like I said, nobody wants to hang around us old folks.”

  “What did he do for a living?”

  “What? Well, he did nothing. None of us do.”

  “I mean before he retired.”

  “Oh, yeah, of course you did,” he says, and he offers a sad smile. “He was a lawyer.”

  “What kind of lawyer?”

  “I don’t know, really. He doesn’t talk too much about it. Nothing exciting from what I’ve always gathered, you know, contract law, dealing with properties being bought and sold, the mundane stuff we get billed about four hundred bucks an hour for.”

  “When did he retire?”

  He shrugs, then starts doing the mental addition. The rest of his body seems to shut down as he thinks about it and he becomes a statue for five seconds. Either he’s still got a psychic link to Herb’s wife, or he’s just gotten one to the man himself because when he starts back up he has an answer.