The Laughterhouse: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  “Bloody hell,” Schroder says. “Will she be okay?”

  “Would you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “You think Cole is going to hurt the other daughters?” I ask.

  Barlow stares at me for a few seconds while thinking about it. His head bobs up and down from left to right and back again. “Unlikely. He wrote I’m sorry across Melanie’s forehead. She said he was mean to her father, but kept trying to be friendly to her and her sisters, and he would only snap at them when he was really stressed. I think he genuinely feels bad for those children. But he’ll use them to get what he wants.”

  “Which is?” I ask.

  Barlow shrugs. “If it were just about killing Stanton, he’d have done it already. If it were just about making him think all three girls were dead, he’d have done that already too. He has an endgame, I don’t doubt that—I just don’t have any idea what it’s going to be, other than making Stanton suffer for as much of it as he can. Maybe he wants Dr. Stanton to get a little taste of what he went through all those years ago when he lost his daughter.”

  “To what end?” Schroder asks.

  Just then Melanie comes out of the office. She slams the door behind her and looks up at Barlow and Schroder and me. She’s crying. “I want to go home,” she says.

  “You should—” Barlow says, then he’s interrupted by Erin Stanton coming out of the office.

  “Melanie—” Erin says.

  “You’re not my mother,” Melanie says, looking back, then to us she repeats “I want to go home. Only I don’t even know what home is anymore.”

  “Melanie,” Erin says, lowering herself down to hug her daughter.

  Melanie turns her back on her mother, and her mother sobs into her hands and stands back up. The boyfriend stands a few feet into Schroder’s office watching uncomfortably. He’s holding on to his helmet, probably thinking that this is all just too much for him.

  “I want to go home.”

  “Soon,” Barlow says, taking her hand. “I promise. But for now you need to wait with your mother.”

  “She walked out on us.”

  “I’m so sorry, baby,” Erin says.

  “I don’t like her.”

  “Don’t say that, baby,” Erin says.

  “I don’t like my dad either,” she says. “He wanted me dead.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Melanie,” Barlow says, trying to sound soothing.

  “I know what it was like,” she says. “He was trying to do the best he could. He didn’t want any of us to die, but he did choose somebody and that somebody was me. I’m the one worth the least.”

  “Come home with me,” Erin says.

  “No,” Melanie says. “You’re even worse.”

  Erin tries to embrace her daughter, but Melanie pulls away. “Come with us, Melanie,” she says.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Barlow says. “Listen, why don’t you go and wait back in the office,” he says to Erin, “and I’ll come in soon with Melanie and we’ll talk about things. Okay?”

  “We don’t need some psychic telling us how to fix our kids,” the boyfriend says.

  “It’s psychiatrist, you moron,” Melanie says.

  Even Erin rolls her eyes at her boyfriend’s comments before disagreeing with Barlow. “She’s my daughter,” she says. “I think I know what’s best for her. She needs to be around family.”

  “Right now she needs to be around somebody who hasn’t abandoned her,” Barlow says.

  “Fuck you,” she says.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” Barlow says, “but the fact remains she’s feeling vulnerable and abandoned and right now—”

  “That’s why she needs to come home with us.”

  “Give me some more time with her,” Barlow says. “It’s why I’m here. Let me help.”

  Erin gives an exaggerated sigh, but then she and the boyfriend disappear into the office, and Barlow hands Melanie a ten-dollar note. “Go and get us something from the vending machine,” he tells her. “I’m starving.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’ll have the same as what you’re having.”

  She disappears. Barlow doesn’t suggest we all hide before she comes back.

  “Sweet reunion,” Schroder says.

  “I had tears in my eyes,” I say. “You think you can help?”

  “You mean do you think I can explain to an eleven-year-old girl what a bitch her mother is for walking out on them? At the same time I have to explain why her dad chose her over the others.” He shakes his head. “All I’d be doing is justifying Melanie’s feelings. Still, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “She’s opened up a lot since you’ve been here,” Schroder says, nodding toward the vending machine. “Did she give any idea what panicked Cole into changing his plans?”

  “Nothing. Just that this morning his plan was to kill them tonight in the slaughterhouse, and this afternoon he came rushing back and had changed his mind.”

  “When we found the car it was surrounded by reporters,” I say. “It would have made the news. It’s possible that did it.”

  “He’s probably addicted to the news,” Barlow says. “He’ll be trying to learn what he can in an attempt to stay ahead. He must know it can only be a matter of time before he’s caught.”

  “If he’s addicted to the news, can we use that somehow?” I ask. “Can we leak some information, true or false, that might make him make a mistake or reveal himself?”

  “I’m not sure,” Barlow says. “Maybe. Let’s think about how.”

  Detective Hutton comes over and interrupts us. “We just got a witness hit on Cole,” he says, then looks down at his notepad. “Guy by the name of Derek Templeton. He was a neighbor of Caleb Cole’s years ago. Says he just saw him hanging around outside his old house a few minutes ago. He thought he was talking to something in the trunk of his car before taking off again. Says Cole looks different, but it was definitely him.”

  “Get a patrol car out there to take a look around, then have them sit on the house,” Schroder says.

  “Also, since we released Cole’s picture and details to the media, we’ve had a few psychics leaving messages.”

  “Jones?”

  “Among others. They’re all saying the same thing—that they have information.”

  “They say what that info is?”

  “No. But they did say they wanted to talk to somebody higher up the food chain, and would want to be recognized for their help. A few of them said you wouldn’t regret calling them back. You want to call them?”

  “What do you think?”

  Hutton nods and wanders off, digging into his pockets looking for something on the way, something edible I imagine.

  “This is the house he used to own?” Barlow asks. “I assume he doesn’t own it anymore?”

  “It was sold when he went to jail,” Schroder says.

  “Unlikely the people inside it are posed any threat,” Barlow says, “but it’s interesting. Since his plans have changed, it’s quite possible right now he has nowhere to go. He can’t go back anywhere that we know he’s been. He wants access to the people on the rest of his list,” Barlow continues.

  “So where do we look?” Schroder asks.

  “Locations from his past, from his daughter’s life. The crime scenes, somewhere to do with Whitby. The answer may be in your case files. He used to be a teacher? Then try his school. Try the cemetery where his family is. Try his childhood home. His childhood school. He play sport? Then try a park somewhere, or a clubhouse. Jessica was murdered in the slaughterhouse, but what about the place she was abducted from? Try there. And of course James Whitby’s mother.”

  Barlow looks at both of us, giving us both the most serious look a man with a comb-over can muster before carrying on. “It’s going to come down to how badly Cole wants to make these people pay,” he says, then pauses, “and at what point he’s ready to cut his losses and end things with Dr. Stanton.
If I were a betting man, I would say he isn’t going to be satisfied unless he can get to the mother. After all, behind any serial killer you’ll usually find a domineering mother or mother figure, and you certainly had that in James Whitby’s case. Look at what that woman did to her son, look at what she made him. This woman—this woman,” he says, and doesn’t seem to know how to finish.

  “And Ariel Chancellor?” I ask.

  “He’s probably trying to reach out to her. If you find her, you might find him.”

  “We’re not having any luck finding her. We’ve had patrol cars looking for her for the last three hours,” Schroder says.

  “You tried her parents?” Barlow asks.

  Schroder looks at me, and I shrug. “Worth a shot,” I say.

  “It’s worth more than that,” Barlow says. “If Ariel and Jessica were best friends, then Ariel’s parents would have known Jessica’s parents too. Maybe they can offer some perspective. Maybe they’ll have a location in mind.”

  “Let’s go back a few steps,” Schroder says. “It still doesn’t add up. Even if Cole pretends to kill the other girls, he won’t be doing what was done to him because Stanton will find out he’s been lied to. It’s not the same.”

  “He won’t know,” Barlow says, “because when Cole is done with the girls I have no doubt Nicholas Stanton is going to die. And I have no doubt that after going through what he believes to be happening, Nicholas will be begging for death. I mean, who wouldn’t be after seeing that?”

  “So why hasn’t he done it already? If he knows we have everybody from fifteen years ago under guard, why not finish it now?” I ask.

  Barlow shrugs. “Who’s to say he hasn’t already?”

  It’s a chilling thought.

  “Which means if he hasn’t done it already, he has something else in mind,” I say.

  Barlow nods. “And Caleb is the only one who knows what that is.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Caleb parks on a quiet street near town behind a car that is similar to the one he’s driving right down to the color, and climbs out. He tightens his jacket around him and blows into his hands. Octavia is staring at him through the window, the juice box in her hand. Katy is watching too. There are wisps of fog, only just a few, up high around the bulbs of the streetlights. It takes him a minute to use the pocketknife he found in the glove compartment to unscrew each plate. He puts the old ones on the other car, hoping the owner won’t immediately notice. He remembers from his old life that when you had to take something apart, or fix something, there would always be one screw that would be way too tight and the head of it would strip away, making it useless. Every two-minute job in his life that required the use of a tool became a thirty-minute ordeal.

  But not this time. Even the two of the eight screws that are rusted come away without much effort. He’ll take that as an omen. And why not? He’s owed some good omens. The doctor stays quiet in the trunk.

  He gets back into the car. This all should have been over by now. He fucked up last night. He should have paced himself, ignored that asshole from town who paid for Ariel, just gotten into his car and gone door-to-door like a salesman, selling the people responsible for all of this a death that was long overdue.

  He wanted to finish it in the slaughterhouse, but the reality is he can finish it on the side of the road if he has to.

  Judge Latham—if he had to choose to let one of the two slide, it would be him. The judge made a decision on the facts presented to him. He believed the defending lawyers and the doctor—he deserves to be punished, and maybe in another life that will happen.

  The mother—there’s no choice there. He has to get to her. And driving around with the doctor and two daughters in his car is only tempting fate. The doctor will only stay quiet for so long.

  He needs somebody who can help him. He can’t drive to Whitby’s mother’s house. He can’t try the pizza trick again. His neighbor from way back when would have called the cops. There is nobody in this world he can turn to.

  Katy is sitting up in the seat behind him. She still isn’t saying anything. She tightens her mouth to prove just how quiet she’s being.

  “Put your seat belt on,” he tells her.

  He expects her to ask why. Instead she does as he asks.

  “Are you cold?”

  She nods. He turns on the heater and points the vents toward the back of the car.

  It may not be true that there is nobody in the world who will help him. There is one other woman. He wanted to go and visit her. He wanted to see if she was doing okay, but he never did. He felt if he visited her, all he would be doing was picking at the scabs of her life and reopening old wounds.

  She is his only chance.

  He uses his phone to look up her address.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  There’s a media circus outside the department and I have to drive through it on my way to see Ariel Chancellor’s parents. I’m using my own car again because all the others are in use. I drive out the gates and through the barrage of questions and bright lights, fighting the temptation to find out how well reporters work as speed bumps. It’s after ten o’clock, town is lit up from streetlights and nightclubs, the alcohol in the city starting to flow. More boy-racers will fill the streets as the hours tick by, teenagers with nowhere better to be or nothing better to do, all of them slaves to the current fashion of drinking as much as they can as quickly as they can. A few of them are already throwing bottles from their cars, arcing them out over the street into the path of pedestrians or oncoming cars. I have to slow down a few times to avoid hitting clusters of drunk people staggering out into the road.

  I head home and spend five minutes cleaning up a little from my run in with the dog. I ball up my pants and throw them into the trash. I put on a fresh pair and am about to head out the door when my cell rings. It’s Dr. Forster.

  “You missed the appointment,” he says with his smooth-talking voice. Forster is the kind of guy who makes you feel like you’re his friend when he’s talking to you. He has the kind of voice that would probably make cute woodland creatures follow him around if he sang.

  “I know.”

  “I’ve seen you on the news. You’re working again?”

  “Trying to.”

  “You’re working on this Caleb Cole thing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s awful,” he says. “How can a man do all of that?” I’m not so sure he’s really after an answer so I don’t give him one, and he carries on. “I saw your wife,” he tells me.

  “And?”

  “And I looked her over. I spent an hour with her. Physically, she’s in great health. The nurses are doing a great job of exercising her. They’re taking care of her.”

  “I know,” I say. “But did you notice anything?”

  “I’ve made an appointment for her to be brought into the hospital,” he says. “I can see her in three weeks.”

  “You’ve noticed something, haven’t you,” I say, trying to keep the excitement from taking over.

  “She’s responsive to flashing light,” he says. “Nurse Hamilton said last night she stood at the window and stared at the police lights. She said nurses through the night kept finding her there until they ended up sedating her.”

  I didn’t know she had kept going back to the window. My heart is starting to race. “And?” I say, knowing there’s more. Or at least hoping.

  “And this morning, at the pond, I think it’s likely she was looking at the sun reflecting off the ripples caused by the breeze. More flickering light. So I ran a penlight past her eyes. She was unresponsive. But when I tried the test a few minutes later her eyes followed the light.”

  “She’s never done that before.”

  “No.”

  I sit down. “So that’s good, right?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “With brain injuries, there’s always a lot going on. Or a lot that’s not going on. You can’t just get in there and take a look. Sometim
es the brain rewires itself, other times it just atrophies. In three weeks hopefully we’ll know more.”

  The word hopefully is as unappealing as the time frame. “Three weeks? Why not tomorrow?”

  “Because Bridget isn’t my only patient, Theodore. If there are any changes, Nurse Hamilton will let me know. It’s very important you don’t read anything more into this than what happened—her optic nerves had an automatic response and her eyes followed the light. I repeated the test five more times while I was there over the hour, and failed to get the same result.”

  “But the tests—”

  “The tests will happen in three weeks. And then we’ll know more.”

  “So there’s a chance that—”

  “Theo, there’s always a chance. Miracles happen every day. But that’s what they are—miracles. I’ll send you the details of her appointment.”

  When he hangs up I head outside, knowing the next three weeks are going to go slower than the four months I spent in jail.

  It’s a ten-minute drive to the Chancellors’ house and the streets are mostly empty, a few people are out for walks holding hands, they’re bundled up in jackets, sometimes a dog or two on a leash with them. It’s only a matter of time now before the decreasing temperatures mean thicker jackets and shorter walks. I like the way dogs look at everything as if they’re seeing it for the first time, the excitement at a tree, a lamppost, at a stick being thrown.

  “We haven’t seen our daughter in two years,” Harvey Chancellor says, looking at my badge. “I’m almost too scared to ask what Ariel’s done.”

  “Nothing,” I tell him. It’s getting cold on the doorstep and he doesn’t invite me in. It’s a single-storey house with a bird feeder in the middle of the front lawn. There are three cats sitting beneath it and no birds. “But she may be able to help us find somebody.”