The Laughterhouse: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  “That’s a lot of files,” I tell him.

  “You want to be a cop again, right? This is part of the job. This is the life you’ve been desperate to get back.”

  Two other detectives walk into the room, each of them with coffee in their hands, making me crave some even though I fuelled up earlier. The four of us sit down and start going through them. We start making piles. We don’t talk much. We just knuckle down and get the work done. The details are the same in many of them. Violent men with violent histories. Drug charges, rape charges, armed robbery charges, sprinkle in some murder too. No wonder the people of New Zealand want to be heard on their views of capital punishment.

  “We need those damn lawyer files,” I say.

  “If the law firm could bill us for the time they’d be more helpful,” Schroder says.

  The piles we’re forming are two possibilities. People it could be, people it certainly wouldn’t be, but the problem is any of the men in these folders could kill if required. Nothing stands out. After an hour we’re only a third of the way through and my pile of possibilities is the same as when I started.

  “There’s been another development,” a detective says, stepping into the room, and it’s Detective Watts, the man who had his face superglued to his desk by Landry. “We got a missing doctor,” he tells us, directing most of the dialogue at Schroder. “A psychiatrist. Nicholas Stanton. Nanny showed up this morning and found signs of a struggle. Officers went down there and have just confirmed it looks like Stanton was attacked.”

  Schroder is no longer looking at Watts. He’s looking at me, and we’re both thinking the same thing. Then, to spell it out for us anyway, Watts carries on. “Two dead lawyers, an accountant, and a school teacher. Now a missing doctor. Could be related, right?”

  Schroder keeps looking at me. Everybody in the room does. It’s as if they’re all waiting for my opinion before they react, but they’re not. They’re forming their own ideas on what this could mean.

  “Nanny means children,” I say. “How many?”

  “Three,” Watts tells us. “Stanton is separated from his wife, but he has full custody of the three children. The older two haven’t shown up to school today. Daughters, aged eleven and eight. The one-year-old is normally looked after by the nanny.”

  “Let’s go,” Schroder says, standing up, and I follow.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Caleb jerks awake in the car outside the slaughterhouse listening to the radio. Shit. He was only planning on closing his eyes for a few seconds, maybe five minutes at the most, but a quick look at his watch tells him he’s been asleep in the driver’s seat for three hours. The warmth from the sun combined with his exhaustion has knocked him out. He straightens up in the seat, his neck is sore from the angle he’s slept on it. The midday news is on. There are many reports, except the reports don’t have much detail. It seems the reporters don’t know anything but that isn’t stopping them from reporting it. He tries using the cell phone but the signal is too weak for the Internet to connect.

  He steps out of the car and leans against it. The sun is still surrounded by blue sky, but it looks overcast toward town. The ground is still wet, but only in the shade. There are birds hanging about. He bends down and picks up a stone and starts throwing it up and catching it, not high, just to about the top of his head, over and over. The first time he came out here was fifteen years ago with James Whitby. People died that day. First there was the policeman. He didn’t mean for that to happen. He knows that’s why the cops told the inmates Caleb had raped and murdered his own daughter. It set him up for years of torture, and that made the cops happy and, in a way, he can’t blame them for doing it.

  Fifteen years ago. Christ, he can’t believe it’s really been that long. It’s almost one-third of his life. His daughter has been dead for more years than she was alive. Can it really be that way?

  Fifteen years. Crazy. There was still crime scene tape out here when he came that day. It was easy to find which room his daughter had died in. Just look for the blood. The entire place was so fucking cold he thought he’d lose his toes on the walk from the car to the doorway. He had a head start on the police but he was sure they would know who had taken Whitby, where he was going, just as he’s sure that they’ll come out here again once they realize who they’re dealing with. It’s all about symmetry. But he had to back then—there were rumors that Whitby was going to get away with what he had done because the confession had been beaten out of him—he couldn’t allow that to happen. It was hard not to blame the police for that mistake, even though the police had beaten the confession out of Whitby in the hopes of finding Jessica alive. So Caleb had done their job for them.

  James Whitby was unconscious in the backseat when he came here last. When Caleb closes his eyes he can still feel the moment, can remember the day. He can remember the long sleepless night earlier, holding his wife, the tears and the anger burning right through to a morning that didn’t feel any better. The day started with rain washing at the snow. There had been no blue sky, no sun. He said goodbye to his wife and when he saw her again he had killed two men.

  When he got to the slaughterhouse with Whitby, he didn’t even turn off the engine. He was sure he only had a few minutes at the most before the police arrived, and he didn’t want to waste them. It turned out he had longer. It turned out the police didn’t figure it out until after they’d arrested him at home.

  He dragged Whitby through the mushy snow into the building. He got him into the same room and laid him down in his daughter’s blood and started slapping him until he woke up. Caleb tried to stay calm, he tried to ask why Whitby had hurt his little girl, but he did none of that. He couldn’t control himself.

  The cutting started right away. It didn’t bring his daughter back, but it did stop other young girls from being killed. For that Caleb would spend fifteen years in jail. His wife would kill herself, she would kill their unborn baby, and for that James Whitby could no longer be punished.

  He throws the stone toward the slaughterhouse, aiming for one of the few windows that has defied the odds by not being broken over the years, but misses—it hits the wall a few feet beneath it and bounces into the weeds.

  It won’t be dark for another five or six hours, and he doesn’t want to risk carrying on his work until then. He’ll go and see Ariel Chancellor. That’s what he was going to do when he came out here earlier. He still doesn’t know what he’s going to say to her. Or do. First he’ll go and see another psychic. Why not—he has all day to kill.

  And speaking of killing—there is still the judge, there is still Mrs. Whitby, and then it’s time to come back here. That’s when the blood is really going to hit the floor.

  Tonight at the slaughterhouse it’s all going to come to an end.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Town rushes past in a blur. Schroder’s car has flashing lights built into the front and a siren that wails all the way to the doctor’s house. Most people try getting out of the way for us, others get confused and come to a complete stop, blocking our path.

  “What do you think?” he asks.

  “What do psychiatrists and lawyers have in common?” I ask him.

  “Other than overcharging?” he says, swerving at the wheel to avoid a car backing out of a driveway. “They can both end up dealing with very sick people.”

  “Exactly. What if our killer was a client, he blames his lawyer, he blames his shrink.”

  “Blames them for what?”

  “I don’t know. The same thing he blames his teacher, his accountant, and his divorce lawyer for. The same thing that put him in jail. His life has fallen apart and he feels these people are the reason why.”

  Stanton lives in a nice neighborhood, where friendly neighbors are all craning their necks to get a good look at the action. There are patrol cars blocking off the street and media vans clogging the traffic. There’s a media helicopter circling and if we’re lucky it might start raining reporters and c
ameramen. The house is a two-storey affair with a lush front lawn and manicured garden. There’s a series of garden gnomes along the base of the house among the shrubs, some of them giving me a wink while others go about their work, one pushing a wheelbarrow, another holding a potted plant, another laying on his back with his eyes closed and a book on his stomach—probably the foreman.

  The front door is wide open and there’s a flurry of people moving around it. The fridge and pantry have been raided, tins and sachets of food have been knocked over and dropped on the floor. The doctor’s car is gone. It’s possible he’s grabbed his children and gone on the run, but not likely because his wallet is still here. People don’t go on the run without their wallets. There’s a stroller in the corner of the living room. Why didn’t he take it? There are drops of blood on the floor and plastic ties that have been done up and then cut. They all have evidence markers next to them, and a photographer is going from one to the next, taking shots. The girls’ beds are unmade and their pajamas are dumped on the floor.

  My phone rings and the caller ID displays the number I called earlier. It’s Dr. Forster. I put the phone back into my pocket without answering it. This isn’t a great time.

  “Whoever did this took the doctor’s car,” I say, “which means maybe we’re looking for two people, one to take the doctor’s car, one to take the car they came in.”

  Schroder shakes his head. “There are other possibilities. Maybe our suspect took the girls with him and forced the doctor to follow in his own car, or maybe he walked here, or caught a taxi, or parked around the block. I’ll get some officers to canvass the street. Knock on doors to see if there are any parked cars that don’t belong,” Schroder says.

  “There has to be a name in his patient files common between these people.”

  “Stanton has an office in town. I’ll get somebody working on a warrant. Even if Stanton works alone we’ll still need one. We go breaking down doors and looking through patient files and this is all a big misunderstanding, then the force will get sued and you and me will lose our jobs. Even if it’s not a misunderstanding, we’re looking at the same result. Jesus, this could be harder than getting a warrant for the law offices. These kind of things . . . fuck, medical records for psychiatrists are always a nightmare to get.”

  He makes a call and puts the nightmare into motion and then we go through the study, hoping there may be patient notes but there aren’t. Stanton doesn’t bring his work home with him. There are photos of his family on the walls, but none of them include the wife.

  “You notice that?” I ask Schroder, pointing at the pictures.

  “Yeah, can’t have been a happy separation. If the nanny doesn’t know the details, some of the neighbors probably do. Looks like the kind of street where people seem to know a lot. Kent’s talking to the nanny now.”

  The pictures of kids keep drawing my attention. Three girls who right at this moment may be dead, or at the very least scared half to death, only I’m only seeing pictures of two of the girls. The younger one in the pictures has a big grin on her face as if she’s the happiest girl in the world. She must be around six or seven in the photo. It must be Katy. I can feel the anger building up inside of me. I want to find the man that took these children and make him pay.

  “You notice there are no photographs of the baby?” I ask Schroder.

  “Yep. Why do you think that is?”

  I shrug. “Maybe he just hasn’t gotten around to it,” I say.

  I check the message on my cell phone from Dr. Forster. He’s saying that he’s returning my call and that he’s with patients for the rest of the afternoon, and at five o’clock he’s going to go and visit my wife. I look at my watch. That gives me over four hours. He says he’s spoken to Nurse Hamilton and they both understand my excitement, but tells me not to get my hopes up. He tells me that he hopes to see me there.

  We keep looking around the house, but I can’t focus, not fully, not when I keep thinking things may be changing with Bridget even though nobody else seems to think so. Forty minutes later Schroder gets the call. The warrant is ready.

  Just when he hangs up Detective Kent approaches us. She smiles at us both, nods once, and says “I got some info. Nanny was pretty talkative. Erin Stanton walked out on her family six months ago. Just up and left. Apparently she was having problems with the baby. Was much worse than some of the usual postpartum stuff we hear about. Stanton tried prescribing her medication but she wouldn’t take it. He tried getting her to talk to somebody else but she wasn’t on board with the idea. She managed to find her own solution. It involved meeting some guy ten years her junior online and leaving this life behind. Stanton is still bitter about it. Nanny says she’s never seen Stanton show one iota of warmth toward the little girl. She says he loves the other two kids, he’d do anything for them, but she says he looks at the baby the same way somebody would look at a pizza they weren’t so sure they wanted. Nanny has been working here six months,” Kent says. “She got hired a week after the wife walked out. She said the house was a mess. Says without a nanny this place would fall apart. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are no photographs of Octavia anywhere.”

  “Has anybody gotten hold of the wife or the boyfriend?” Schroder asks.

  “Thought you’d want to do that,” she says, and hands him her notepad. He jots down the number of the wife.

  “And the boyfriend?”

  “Nanny knows nothing about him, just that he’s younger and how they met. I’ll speak to some friends and family and see what else I can learn.”

  “Okay, good job,” he says, and Detective Kent smiles again at us both before heading back outside.

  “What do you think?” he asks.

  “I think you’re a married man,” I tell him, as we both watch her go.

  “Huh. Good one, Theo. That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  I turn back toward him. “It’s starting to look possible Stanton fled his house for a reason that doesn’t extend to the other victims. No doubt he didn’t leave on his own accord, but it may have something to do with the wife or the boyfriend.”

  “That’s my thinking.”

  An officer comes inside, looks around and spots us, and comes over. He has a healing split lip and a fading black eye, which I guess he got from arresting somebody last week, or getting amorous with his wife when she wasn’t in the mood. Or maybe when she was.

  “We’ve found a car,” he says. “Just down there,” he adds, and nods toward the cordon where the media are growing in numbers. “Right in their midst.”

  “Doesn’t belong to any of them?”

  “According to the owner of the house it’s parked outside, it’s been there since he woke up this morning. He doesn’t know who it belongs to. We’ve checked the neighboring houses. Nobody has seen it before. Plus, you look at this neighborhood, then you look at that car, and it doesn’t line up. So we ran the plates—belongs to a guy named Donald Shrugs. He doesn’t have a record and the car hasn’t been reported stolen.”

  Donald Shrugs. Is that who we’re looking for? A sense of excitement builds quickly as Schroder turns his attention to me.

  “Look, Tate, could be nothing, could be that Donald Shrugs parked it there and is sitting inside another house on the block, or it’s been stolen and he doesn’t know, or Donald Shrugs is the man who took Stanton. Go check it out, then get it transported back to the department garage and get forensics onto it. Talk to the owner, but don’t go alone. If Shrugs is our guy, then he has three missing little girls out there. I’ll head to the doctor’s office and get my hands on his files.” He looks at his watch. “It’s one o’clock now,” he says, “should only take me ten minutes to get there. Stay in touch.”

  Schroder leaves the scene and I walk with the officer toward the abandoned car. He keeps glancing over at me with a weird look on his face. Either he knows my backstory or he wants to hold hands. He keeps licking at his split lip. Even though the city has clouded
over, the temperature is still getting warmer. Ariel’s prediction of rain tonight is looking way off. Somebody in the street or maybe in the next block over is cooking something on a barbecue, the smell of sizzling steaks and fried onions making my stomach rumble. The officer uses his radio and calls in for a truck. We’re told it’ll be here within thirty minutes. We have to pass through the media and they ask questions of us and we ignore them. Jonas Jones walks next to us for a few seconds, fishing for information before falling back into the crowd. We reach the car and I slow down. My heart starts to race a little.

  “I’ve seen this car before,” I tell the officer.

  “It was parked here when you drove past earlier.”

  “No, no, it’s not that,” I say, shaking my head. “I didn’t even notice it before, there were too many people in the way.” I walk around it. It’s a beaten-up Toyota older than my own. It looks exactly like the one I jump-started last night. I put on a pair of latex gloves and try the driver’s door and it’s unlocked. The keys are still hanging in the ignition. I turn them and the engine doesn’t make a sound.

  “Flat battery,” the officer says.

  “And whoever left it here doesn’t need the keys anymore, including his house key,” I say.

  “If he has the keys, it’s unlikely he stole it.”

  The man last night in the cemetery, is this who we’re looking for? Was that Donald Shrugs? The beatings he took, are they why he is pissed off at the world? A couple of the journalists realize the car is of importance, and that realization spreads like a virus among them. Within seconds there are dozens of cameras in our faces.

  “Get back, get back,” the officer says, putting his hands in the air and showing them all his palm. “Get the hell back.”

  Other officers come down and start helping push the media back. A new perimeter is formed and it gives us room to take a better look at the vehicle. There’s nothing on the dash or behind the seats, and the glove compartment has a map in it and nothing else. I check the ashtray and it’s empty. There are dried blood spots on the passenger seat and plenty of them. They could have come from a weapon resting on it. Something like a knife. I look under the seats and find nothing.