The Laughterhouse: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me.”

  “I can’t go back to jail.”

  “There are circumstances behind what you did, you can plead temporary insanity, you can—”

  “No,” he says. “There were circumstances last time too.”

  “Caleb—”

  “I’m not going to kill myself,” he says.

  “What then?”

  “Can we stay here or not?”

  “No. But you’re not leaving with those children.”

  He shakes his head. “They’re coming with me.”

  She blocks his view of Katy. “I mean it,” she says. “I promise I won’t call the police, not straightaway. I’ll give you thirty minutes. That gives you plenty of time to go anywhere in the city. It gives you time to think about what you want to do next.”

  “I need them.”

  “You only need their father, and you’ll still have him. Part of me hates him too. I know what he did to you, I do, and right now I’m offering to help you, Caleb. I’m going to compromise for the safety of these girls. I’m going to let you drive away with their father as long as you leave the girls here. Even if you don’t intend them any harm, it can still come to them. What if the police try to stop you and you crash your car? Or there are shots fired and one of them is hit? What if Katy gets so scared she gets hurt trying to run away?”

  “They’re going to be okay,” he says.

  “But you can’t know that! What happens here is permanent. You’re scaring these children, Caleb, you really are.”

  “How about this,” he says. “You call Wendy and tell her. . .”

  She leans in and at first he thinks she’s going to slap him, or beat his chest with her fists, and he stands solid, allowing her to do it, only instead she leans in and hugs him. He can smell her hair, her skin, and he likes it. It makes him think of his wife, makes him realize how long it’s been since he’s held on to a woman. He can feel the anger draining away from him.

  “I’m not going to help you hurt anybody,” she says, her voice soft and soothing and warm against his skin, and he imagines it’s the same voice she uses on those she helps. “Please, Caleb, for my sake, and for Jessica’s, let’s make sure no more children are hurt.”

  He nods. Hurt children are the last thing he wants. “When is Wendy due home?” he asks.

  “Soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “Any minute now.”

  He pulls back from her and holds her by the shoulders. “You’re lying,” he says. “Please, just tell me the truth.”

  “She’s visiting her parents. She’s in Auckland. I’ll be picking her up from the airport tomorrow night.”

  “In that case I have another plan,” he says, and he grabs her by the arm and leads her into the bedroom.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Schroder calls me as I walk down the path to my car. He tells me they still don’t have Caleb Cole in custody. I wasn’t really expecting that he would. He says there is still no sign of Ariel Chancellor. That doesn’t surprise me either. He doesn’t tell me anything that I didn’t know before leaving the station earlier.

  “Just the same bullshit psychics calling us wanting their fifteen minutes. Have you learned anything new?” he asks. He sounds desperate, but not desperate enough to have given those psychics a call back. A day ago I was just a guy giving a drunk detective a lift to a crime scene. Today he’s hoping I have some answers.

  “I’ve learned dog bites hurt like a bitch,” I tell him, then update him on the letters. “Hopefully they’ll give up something. I’ll be back soon,” I tell him, and climb into my car.

  I don’t bother going through the letters I didn’t get to when I sat on Chancellor’s doorstep earlier. I put them all down, except for the one Harvey gave me in the end. I open the envelope and slide it out, hoping there’ll be something in it that will help end this madness.

  Dear Ariel,

  I know it’s been a while since I last wrote to you, and I know what you must think of me. I just want to start out by saying I’m sorry. I’ve written you some pretty nasty letters over the years, but I’m okay now. I’ve dealt with things and can see none of it was your fault. It never was, and I genuinely feel sick at ever blaming you when the blame is with others. I wish you all the best in your future. I ask that you remember Jessica and honor her memory by being the best person you can be. I see you as a daughter, maybe as a replacement daughter, I don’t know, but I do love you and do want all the best for you.

  Jail is tough. I hate it here. Does it make me regret what I did? No, of course not. I still have seven years to go in here, but there are girls out there now who are sixteen or seventeen or eighteen years old who would have been dead if I hadn’t taken care of James Whitby. It’s possible you are one of those girls. Whitby was obsessed with you, and who knows what he would have done? Two more years in a hospital with Dr. Stanton and he would have been “cured” and fit for life, free to carry on with his obsessions—that’s if he had even been sentenced. If he had been placed in your neighborhood again, then what? I do have some regrets I suppose. I could have waited and killed him when he was released and hidden his body, I could have tried to have gotten away with it, but that’s in the past, and anyway, the prisons and hospitals don’t exactly let the public know when inmates are being released, or where they are being placed. I will be counting on that too, when it’s my time to be free.

  Today a girl came to see me. She used to be just like you. Young, beautiful, smart, compassionate. Two years before James Whitby killed Jessica, he tried doing the same thing to her. She was the one he was supposed to go to jail for but never did. James Whitby hurt her, but so did many others by letting her down.

  I know you’re angry about what happened to Jessica, so I know you’ll keep this a secret too—but the girl, she hurt that woman who defended Whitby. She has the same anger as us. That anger, that’s what is going to get me through the next seven years, and when I come out I promise I will hurt those who hurt Jessica and this girl and, to an extent, have hurt you too. I know you feel guilty at what happened (how can you not?) and I’m sorry that my shitty letters to you over the years only made you feel worse. I don’t hate you, I don’t blame you.

  Having this girl coming to see me is like a sign. Revenge is all I have. I’m changing in here, I have what another inmate in here calls “the darkness” growing inside of me. He thinks by the time I’m released I’ll be capable of anything, that the darkness will have grown an appetite and will need to be fed.

  I would like to see you when I come out of jail. I would like to see the person you have become. You were my daughter’s best friend and for that friendship you gave her I am truly grateful. I hope you write back to me. I would like you to come and see me one day, but understand if you won’t. I am not a monster. I would never hurt you. I’m a father, I’m hurting—I loved Jessica so much, I loved my wife, and these people took that away from me. They will hurt others too, and they must be held accountable.

  I wish you all the best, and I wish you the best of lives,

  Caleb

  If Harvey Chancellor had handed this letter into the police, these deaths all could have been avoided. Or if Cole had started killing, we’d have made the connection immediately. Tabitha Jenkins would have been arrested and she would have gone to jail—that was the price. One woman’s imprisonment would have saved four lives, and perhaps more.

  My own car isn’t equipped with the technology of patrol cars, so I can’t look up Tabitha’s address on a built-in computer, but for the last few years I’ve been in the habit of carrying a phone book in the car. I look up Tabitha’s address, and on the way there I call Harvey Chancellor.

  “You could have saved a lot of lives with this,” I tell him, swerving to avoid a car speeding out of a driveway.

  “I know.”

  “Don’t you feel bad?”

  “Hang on a second,” he says, and he goe
s quiet and I imagine he’s walking away from his wife, wanting to be able to talk without her listening. “I feel bad for the doctor’s kids, sure, but for the others? No. Fuck them,” he says, sounding like a different Harvey Chancellor than the one who sat opposite me in the living room sipping coffee. “Those people, they ruined her, Detective. And don’t forget your promise. I don’t want to read in the news tomorrow you’ve arrested Tabitha. You gave me your word.”

  “She won’t be arrested,” I tell him. “But you should have come to us seven years ago. We could have made a deal.”

  “You’d have put her in prison.”

  “She put somebody in a coma!”

  “And Victoria Brown helped put Jessica Cole into the ground.”

  He hangs up on me. A car pulls up next to me at an intersection, the side window is wound down and the passenger leans out and vomits down the outside of the door, sees me, and gives me the finger and yells at me to fuck off before laughing hysterically. I reach Tabitha Jenkins’s house. It’s a small home in a quiet street where everybody has tidy gardens. I tuck the letter into my pocket and walk up to the door. I knock and wait and then knock and wait again. The lights are on but she isn’t answering. There’s no car in the driveway. I head over to the garage and look through the window. There’s a car parked inside. Just no signs of life. Houses come with a feeling—when I was a cop I could always tell the difference between there being nobody home and nobody answering. This house doesn’t feel empty.

  I move to the living room window. I angle myself until I can see through a gap in the curtains. There are no signs of a struggle. I tap against the glass. Nothing. I move around to the back door. There are a few options aside from the wait-and-see option. I can call Schroder for backup, which takes time. I could kick down the door, but then I’m in trouble for breaking and entering. So I get out my lock pick. No harm, no foul. If I’m wrong, I lock up after me and walk away. If I’m right, then time is of the essence.

  I crouch in front of the lock. It takes me a few minutes because I can’t see much. Then there’s a click and the door relaxes a little and I turn the handle. I step inside.

  “Hello?”

  I wish I had a gun. I have nothing. I head into the kitchen. There is blood all over the floor. Only it doesn’t quite look like blood. There’s an empty tin of tomato sauce sitting on the kitchen bench, next to a can opener. I can imagine Tabitha opening it, then getting a fright and dropping it. I move past it. There’s a knife with sauce on it in the sink. I reach for a clean one, then hesitate. If Tabitha is in the shower because she got sauce all over herself, then she’s going to scream when she sees me and I’m going to lose my job. I pick one up anyway. I keep it down by my side.

  “Hello? Tabitha?”

  I can’t hear a shower running. Tabitha wouldn’t sleep through the noise I’m making. Near the front door is a side table, on it a set of keys, a handbag, a cell phone.

  “Tabitha?”

  The sense you get as a cop when you’re about to find a dead body is kicking in. It’s the same bad feeling I got when me and Carl were the first to arrive at the slaughterhouse to find Jessica Cole. You hope one thing and get the complete opposite. Being a cop is all about that. Yet right now it’s just a feeling. Nothing here to suggest anything bad has happened. Only a set of keys and a cell phone and a handbag by the door.

  There’s an open packet of cookies on the kitchen table. I have an instant flash-forward of my future, of me sitting at the table cramming cookies into my mouth as Tabitha Jenkins walks in, a pile of crumbs forming around me.

  She could be asleep. Or next door. Maybe she’s gone running.

  I check the living room. I check the first bedroom, which looks like a guest bedroom. The second bedroom has been turned into an office. The computer is going. There’s a spreadsheet open on the monitor. It looks like Tabitha was doing her taxes. Probably figuring like the rest of us the balance between giving the tax department its due and surviving.

  Toilet. Closet. Bathroom. Nothing. I head to the master bedroom. The door is closed. I put my hand against the handle and my head against the door. I can’t hear anything. I suck in a deep breath. I have a real bad feeling about what’s going to be on the other side.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  He has to find somewhere to go. He can’t go to a hotel. People are looking for him. He’s too sore to sleep in his car. He needs a bed. Somewhere comfortable. He thought Tabitha would help. He’s disappointed in her. He thought about staying there but decided it was too risky. Anybody could come by.

  Fifteen years ago when he needed help, he could have asked any of his friends. Any one of them would have helped him kill James Whitby—at least in that moment of asking. When it came down to it, he knew none of them would be able to go through with it. What he did do was go and see his brother-in-law. He asked Adam if he could borrow his truck. Adam didn’t ask why he wanted it. He just handed over the keys and wished Caleb the best of luck. A week later Lara was dead and Adam has never spoken to him again. Now he uses his cell phone to call him. Katy stares at him from the passenger seat, her face wet with tears, but at least she’s sobbing quietly and for that he’s thankful. Out of the three girls, she really does remind him of Jessica the most.

  “Hello?”

  “Adam?”

  “Yeah? Who is this?”

  “It’s Caleb.”

  There is silence on the other end. Caleb waits it out, waiting for his brother-in-law to hang up, hoping he won’t—and he doesn’t. Instead he comes back with “Hang on, give me a minute.”

  Caleb hears a door closing and then footsteps, and thirty seconds later Adam is back on the line. “Jesus, Caleb, how have you been?”

  “I’ve had better days,” Caleb says.

  “I’ll say. You’re all over the news. You’ve been doing some bad shit. You hurt those girls?”

  “I would never do that.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling Marie,” he says, and Caleb wonders what his sister-in-law looks like these days, wonders how much money she is spending on still chasing the Barbie-doll looks she was chasing when he last saw her. “I kept saying as fucked up as Caleb must be, he’d never hurt any kids. So what do you want, Caleb?”

  He stares out the windshield. The street is empty of people but he can count at least a dozen cats wandering about, some of them staring at each other, two of them looking as though they either want to fuck or fight. He’s aware that Katy is listening to every word he is saying. He will have to drug her again soon.

  “I need some help.”

  He imagines Adam the same way he was fifteen years ago. The current Adam may be bald, he may have put on a few extra pounds, but the look on his face right now will be the same, a look of pained confusion.

  “Geez, Caleb, I can’t do that. Last time I helped you . . . fuck, you remember.”

  “I didn’t know that was going to happen. Any of it.”

  “No, because you were only thinking of yourself, and you’re doing the same thing again. I have my own family, Caleb. I can’t get into trouble for you. They’ve spoken to me by the way, the police. They want me to call if I hear from you.”

  “Will you?”

  “I should. I should hang up and call them right now.”

  “But?”

  “But it depends on what you have to say.”

  The two cats are still stalking each other. They’ve decided on a fight. The other cats are all watching the show. They’re forming the kind of circle where money would start exchanging hands. Or paws.

  “On?”

  “On what you’re doing with the girls?”

  “I’m not hurting them,” he says, staring at Katy who won’t look back at him. She’s also watching the cats, her hands on the window forming a seal between the glass and her face as she tries to get a closer look.

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “I’ve just let one of them go,” he says. “She’s safe and sound and the police
will find her tomorrow. And I promise I’m not going to hurt the other one.”

  Katy flinches at the remark but keeps looking out the window. She is starting to hum her cute little song, and he hopes the vocals don’t kick in.

  “What about the doctor?”

  “He’s going to pay for what he did.” One of the cats runs forward and the second one turns and runs. The first one chases it across a front lawn and up over the fence. The other cats look as though they don’t know what to do now. “Are you still in the furniture-moving business?”

  “Yeah. Unfortunately. Though I don’t do the lifting anymore, my back is shot from too many years of it. But I’m not lending you the truck again. Everything else that happened was bad enough, but the final insult was the insurance company wouldn’t cover the damage. It was a write-off, Caleb. I lost my niece, my sister, then I nearly lost my job. It took me years to pay off that loss.”

  “I don’t want your truck, Adam.”

  “No? What then?”

  “You still rent furniture to real estate agents to put in empty houses going on the market?”

  There’s a few more seconds of silence. Some of the cats are wandering off and Caleb starts looking at the houses, looking for signs of life. He should be safe. Nobody called the police when his daughter was being abducted—why would they call the police for seeing a man sitting in a car?

  “Adam?”

  “Why?”

  “I need somewhere to stay. I can’t go to a hotel. I need somewhere I can hole up for the night, maybe even two. Somewhere empty you’ve filled with furniture would be perfect.”

  “Geez, Caleb, I don’t know.”

  “I’m desperate.”

  “I know, I know, but you’re also hurting people. I can’t be part of that.”

  “I’m only hurting the same people that took away Jessica and Lara.”

  “I know, I know that, okay?” Adam says, his voice taking on a whiney tone. “But the thing is, that’s not really what you’re doing.”

  “What?”

  “You killed Whitby, man, wasn’t that enough?”