The Laughterhouse: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  He tosses Stanton onto the floor next to his daughters, then ties up his feet, then bunches up some blankets against the wall and lies down. He can feel the cold ebbing up from the concrete. The girls are all looking at him. He can hear them sniffling, crying, he can hear every time they move against the floor. For fifteen years he’s dealt with the sounds that others have made, the snoring and crying and taunting of others. Only thing that would stop him falling asleep right now would be a tank rolling through the front door.

  He thinks about turning off the light, but he leaves it on for the kids, not wanting to frighten them any more than necessary. Stanton is staring at him too. There are equal parts confusion and fear in his eyes, and a whole lot of anger and hate too. That’s good. Caleb wonders which of those will shine through the brightest when he makes the bastard choose the order in which those little girls are going to die.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The city is full of good and bad things, and this morning is a classic example. Good thing—the rain has completely gone, the sky looks pretty clear, and when the sun comes up we might just have blue skies in every direction. The temperature is around forty degrees but should go up to almost sixty by the afternoon. The icy wind from yesterday is now somewhere over the South Pacific, blown there by a wind that is still cool, but nowhere near as chilling. Bad thing—the air feels damp. I’m tired again and my tongue got burned drinking the coffee, so it feels numb. My car looks worse the lighter the morning gets, and there are already reporters hanging about outside the main entrance to the police station. They’re floating around like bottom-feeders, desperate to snack on any little piece of information, and the worst of them is a local psychic with slicked-back black hair and ultra-white teeth by the name of Jonas Jones. He’s wearing a pin-striped suit with a silk tie that makes him look like a well-paid lawyer. The reporters fire questions at me and I don’t answer them, and Jonas follows me into the foyer and I put a hand into my pocket to make sure my wallet doesn’t disappear. Schroder is ten minutes ahead of me, wanting to change into his third shirt for the day and tidy up a bit before the briefing.

  Good thing—Jonas starts with a joke. “I sensed you were going to help,” he tells me.

  Bad thing—just when I start to laugh, I realize he’s not joking.

  Jones used to be a used-car salesman before going bankrupt and figuring out a new way to screw people. He’s been successful at it too, appearing on reality psychic shows and writing books about his communiqués with the dead. So far he’s been instrumental in solving the case of who’s the most annoying psychic living in the country, and I bet he loses his keys around the house just as much as the rest of us. Over the years he’s been a pain in the ass to the department. Yet his books sell and people watch his show, suggesting the book and TV industries make about as much sense as the rest of the world.

  I ignore him and keep on walking.

  “I can help,” he says, flashing me the same smile he used to flash his customers back before he ran his business into the ground.

  I’m only two inches taller than Jones, but I use them both to look down at him. “Listen, Jones, just get lost, okay?”

  “He’s going to kill again.”

  “You think?”

  Jonas’s psychic abilities are way off because he doesn’t sense that I don’t want him to follow. He doesn’t sense that I’m getting close to breaking his legs.

  “He stabs them nineteen times,” he says, “and I know why.”

  I stop walking and look back at him. “Who told you that?” I ask.

  “So it’s true,” he says.

  “No comment,” I say.

  “Ah, I see, you really don’t know. Well, you will soon. I just happen to know already.”

  “Because of your psychic link?”

  “It’s a gift,” he tells me.

  “One that keeps on paying.” I push the button for the elevator. I press it a couple of times hoping it’s just an urban legend that pushing it repeatedly doesn’t really speed it up. “So why nineteen times?”

  “It’s easy,” he says, “but if I tell you, I want to be kept in the loop. You’re not a cop, but you must be a consultant because you were at all the scenes yesterday and you’re here now and I know you need the money,” he says, keeping his voice low. The officer behind the desk is watching us. “I don’t need to be psychic to see that,” he says, but if he were psychic he’d know that I am a cop and not just a consultant. “I give you the info, you keep me updated, and this can be the start of a useful partnership.”

  I go with what didn’t work before, but will hopefully work now. “Like I said, Jones, just get lost, okay?”

  “I want to help people,” he says. “And you want to help people. There’s no reason we can’t help each other.”

  I push the button again. The elevator doesn’t speed up. “And no reason you can’t profit from it.”

  “A man needs to eat,” he says. “And none of you are different,” he says. “Everybody in this building profits from people being hurt, Tate, or is everybody in this department doing this job for free?” He hands me his card. “Call me when you need help.”

  The elevator doors open and he walks away, leaving me pissed off that he’s made a good point. I look down at his card—Jonas Jones is written in silver letters raised against an ivory background, beneath his name in bold letters is Psychic. It’s a typo—the ic should have been an o. With no garbage bin in the elevator, I tear the card in two and store it in my pocket. If the two halves of the card rejoin by the time I reach the fourth floor, then I’ll admit that Jones does have some magical abilities. I wonder if he really does know why the victims were stabbed nineteen times. I should have grabbed him by his shirt and dragged him upstairs and questioned him. The thing is, psychics may be full of bullshit, but they can have a unique way of seeing things, and they can offer a theory that, though inaccurate, can branch off a new train of thought that can lead somewhere.

  I’ll call him after the briefing.

  The doors open at the fourth floor and it’s a different world from downstairs. Dozens of people all looking hungover and tired. The floor smells like cheap bourbon. Things aren’t as clean around the station anymore on account of their main janitor going to jail last year after it turned out he had a taste for killing people. Schroder is wearing a new shirt and he’s back in his original shoes, which have dried out, but he’s still wearing the same pants. He smells like he’s had a beer and followed it with a toothpaste chaser.

  The briefing room is much bigger than the last time I was here. It used to be a conference room that could sit a dozen people with perhaps standing room for another ten, but now the wall has been knocked down and rebuilt further out to double the size of the room, the Christchurch crime rate demanding the modification. There used to be potted plants in the corner and a couple of prints on the wall of landscapes, but that’s all gone now. There’s a large aerial shot of the city taken last year, and in that moment when the camera shutter flicked open, it would have caught a hundred crimes going on, each of them too small to see.

  The window overlooks a city that at the moment has a glow far out to the east, where the sun is breaking the surface. I can see the Avon River snaking its way alongside Durham Street, the banks still green and lit up by the streetlights. A few people are jogging by it, their heavy breath forming clouds in the air. The morning is still, not many other signs of life, not even any birds.

  On the main wall of the room is a map with pins locating the crime scenes. There are photographs of the victims on the wall. Photographs of the crime scenes. Within twenty-four hours that wall has almost run out of space. Tomorrow more builders might need to come along and double the size of the room again, maybe even put on an extension that goes out over the side of the building. There are seats set out in a chessboard formation, all of them facing the front. I take one near the back and Schroder takes one near the front. More people file into the room. Many of them are yawning.
Many are carrying coffees that weren’t made in the station. Most of them recognize me and do a double take.

  Seven o’clock passes and the briefing doesn’t start. Most of us stay in our seats, knowing it’ll just be a matter of minutes. The sky gets lighter outside, the glow of the city becomes stronger. At quarter past seven Superintendent Dominic Stevens walks in. He’s the least tired looking person in the room. Everybody goes quiet and we all watch him take his place at the front. Stevens is barely on the good side of sixty and, according to Schroder, these days on the bad side of irritable since giving up smoking. His head is neatly shaved and his face is stained with old acne scars. His voice is grave and he’s decked out in his well-pressed uniform.

  “Four victims,” he says, in way of a good morning, “and I don’t need to tell each and every one of you that you need to be giving one hundred percent,” he says. “And if any of you ever show up to a crime scene again stinking of booze I swear it’ll be your last day with a badge,” he says, his words even and calm and the threat sounds very real. “If I could spare the manpower,” he says, “I’d fire a few of you now just to prove how pissed off I am at you all. That goes for everybody in the room,” he says, focusing his gaze on Schroder for a few seconds before casting a general gaze over the rest of us.

  “Now, I don’t want to sound like an asshole by storming in here and busting your balls, but it’s for your own good because obviously you need it. I mean, I sure as hell never thought I’d have to explain to a group of such competent people that showing up drunk at work is a bad idea, but maybe it’s my fault for overestimating you all.”

  Nobody in the room is holding his gaze. For some, the desks are the most interesting desks they’ve ever seen; for others, so are their shoes, or the window, or a spot about six feet to Stevens’s right.

  “Okay, I can see I’ve made my point,” he says. “Now, I know you’re all tired. Nobody here has ever been through something like this, but some sick fuck is out there killing our citizens, and today we’re going to nail this son of a bitch,” he says, “and when we do then you can all go home and get some sleep. Now, I didn’t want to have to come in here and give you all a pep talk, but you need it,” he says, and then does it, breaking down the routine, stressing the importance of us not messing up, and going over every detail in detail. He looks at me during his final part of the speech, where he says none of us can afford to let the department down, and more than ever this city needs us. I couldn’t agree more.

  “I know emotions are running high,” he says. “We buried one of our own yesterday and we’re hurting,” he says, and he looks at an empty chair near the front of the room that I’m guessing Landry usually sat at. We all look at it, and I wonder if last night Stevens watched the latest cop drama to get tips on what to say. “We’re low on numbers and help and for all we know we could have another four dead bodies by this time tomorrow.”

  There’s a murmur across the room and I contribute to it. Four more bodies today, maybe a few more tomorrow. It’s hard to be optimistic when there’s a pattern forming and you don’t know the shape of it.

  “The results are in on our two oldest, and first victims,” he says. “Multiple stab wounds each,” he says, the number echoing in my head in Jonas’s voice. “Victim number one has nineteen,” he says, “victim number two we’ll know later on. Victim number three has the one stab wound, no defensive wounds, and we have a preliminary report for victim number four, which also states at least a dozen wounds and no defensive wounds. Victim number three falls outside of the scope in what appears to be a disorganized attack compared to the others. Our killer was able to sneak into two retirement communities and one nursing home without being seen, yet he chose to stab victim number three in his home while his wife and kids were inside. One stab wound and no message and two possibilities—Brad Hayward isn’t part of the pattern, or he is part of it and the killer wasn’t able to follow through. We have a dead accountant, a dead teacher, and two dead lawyers—one a criminal lawyer, one a family lawyer—and so far no connection. Somebody must have seen something, somebody must know something. People don’t just start killing people without a reason,” he says, and it’s true. People kill people for money, for love, for revenge. They kill people because they like the way it feels or because they’re hearing voices from God. Those are all reasons. So is killing somebody for their watch. They’re just not always reasons we understand.

  He turns toward the board and points at an enlargement of the first victim’s forehead with the note written across it. The marker isn’t fluid across the skin—it’s broken up by the wrinkles, an occasional hairline or two of ink missing. There is blood on the forehead, streaks on one side where it’s been wiped off with a sleeve or a rag to make a cleaner writing slate.

  “ ‘You didn’t care enough,’” he says. “Somebody was angry at our victim, he felt let down by him, he felt like something in his past could have not turned out the way it did because of Herbert Poole.”

  He points to a similar photo, this one of victim number two’s forehead. Same handwriting, same tiny patches of missing ink where the felt has bounced over a wrinkle, same streaks of cleared away blood. “ ‘Was it worth it?’” he asks. “Complete with question mark. Was what worth it? The same thing that let him down with Herbert Poole?” Then on to victim number four, similar photo, same handwriting, less wrinkles in Victoria Brown’s skin so the handwriting is neater. “ ‘You were complicit.’ Whatever victims numbers one and two did to our killer, he felt victim number four allowed them to do it.” He turns back toward us. “Listen up, people. There’s pressure from the media, from the citizens, and from the victims’ families, and I’ve promised them all we’re going to provide them some answers, and I’m sure as hell going to keep that promise, and you’re all sure as hell going to work your damn hardest to make that happen. We’re drawing the line. No more of this shit anymore in this city. You’re all familiar with the case, I want to hear some feedback. Questions? Theories?”

  Nobody says anything. It’s like being back at school and nobody knows how to answer the teacher. We’re all back to looking at these really interesting desks and shoes, and that spot to the right of Stevens.

  “Don’t be shy,” he says, then slowly shakes his head, disappointed in all of us. Then we make eye contact and I know it’s a mistake. “Tate?” he asks.

  Everybody turns to look back at me and the world stops. I wasn’t expecting this and feel myself turning red. I do my best to meet all their eyes.

  “Many of you will remember Detective Inspector Theodore Tate,” Stevens says. “He’s been assigned to help on account of his track record, the good part of it anyway, which, as we know, lately has been outweighed by the rest of it.”

  Detective Kent is giving me a sympathetic smile, and perhaps it’s part relief too—if I wasn’t here she’d be the newest team member and the one facing the question.

  “Many of you have worked with Tate before so you know what he’s capable of, and now you all have the chance to work with him again. He’s asked repeatedly to be a part of this force because over the last few years he’s believed he can do a better job than us, isn’t that right, Detective?”

  “I just want to help,” I tell them, “and work with the best there is.”

  The answer doesn’t win anybody over.

  “Well, how about you take this opportunity you’ve been given, and prove how clever you are by offering something we’d all like to hear?”

  Now I feel even more like I’m back at school, being screwed over by the teacher. I look at Schroder. He’s expressionless. I hope he had no idea Stevens was going to pull this on me. “So, any theories?” Stevens asks.

  I have lots of theories. One of them is that Superintendent Dominic Stevens is an asshole even though five minutes ago he said he didn’t want to sound like one. I can’t share that because it’s not really a theory, it’s a fact, and he wants theories. I could theorize that my life would be better off
if somebody had beaten the shit out of him in the parking lot before work. I could theorize life might feel a little better if it happened after work too.

  “The stab wounds,” I tell him, my hand in my pocket sliding the two pieces of Jonas’s card against each other. It’s magic time.

  “What about them?”

  If Jonas can figure it out, so can I.

  “The first two victims—what if they were stabbed the same amount of times?”

  Stevens looks at Schroder, then back at me. “What are you saying?”

  “We need to find out from the medical examiner exactly how many times victims two and four were stabbed.”

  “Because?”

  Because a psychic knew the first two had nineteen stab wounds, and guessed the last one had the same.

  “Because at least a dozen times could also mean nineteen times, which would give three of our victims an identical amount of wounds.”

  “But not the fourth,” he says.

  “Which goes to what you were saying about victim number three falling outside of the pattern. Same killer, but different reason for killing. He’s not part of the pattern.”

  “Carry on.”

  “Well,” I say, everybody still staring at me and my mind racing, “well, if three of the victims have been stabbed nineteen times, then it must mean something.”

  Nobody says anything. I can tell I have everybody’s interest now.

  “What kind of something?” Stevens asks. “Like a year for example? Or a person? Is that what you’re saying?” he asks, working with me.

  “Exactly. Whatever annoyed our killer may have happened nineteen years ago. Or it happened to him when he was nineteen.”