The Laughterhouse: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  “What does he suggest?”

  “He doesn’t have a suggestion. I mean, why would he? He’d be putting his career on the line. I rang Stevens.”

  “And?”

  “Stevens said you can’t hurt Mrs. Whitby. That’s all. He didn’t come up with an alternative, probably for the same reason. Best to come up with nothing because coming up with something might lose him his job. He told me others are on their way to meet you. Told me not to show up.”

  “It’s almost time,” I tell him.

  “I know. I know.”

  “He’s going to kill her,” I say. “He’s going to cut off her fingers, and then he’s going to put a knife into her chest.”

  “I know.”

  “We can’t let that happen.”

  “Damn it, Tate, don’t go in that room alone. That’s an order.”

  “From a friend?”

  “Just . . . just wait for me, okay? I’m almost there. Just a few more minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m serious, Tate. Wait for me.”

  “I will.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  “Hand the phone to the officer.”

  I hand over the phone to the officer. He takes it and listens, says “okay,” while he nods, then nothing more before handing it back. “I’ve been dismissed,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Cole isn’t coming here. There’s no reason for us to stay.”

  He gives me a relieved look. He has no idea what’s going on, but he knows it’s something bad, and he’s just learned he and his partner don’t have to be a part of it. He walks up the hallway and leans into the living room. I listen to him tell his partner the same thing, then he shrugs, and I can’t make out what his partner says. A moment later they’re both stepping outside. They close the front door just as another car pulls up outside.

  I look at the bedroom door, then at my watch. There are three minutes left. The front door opens. Schroder comes in. I can see my car out on the curb. I have his, and he must have ended up getting a lift back to the station and taking mine. He’s wearing shorts and his pajama top and he’s in bare feet. He’s puffing. Both his hands are shaking, but not like he’s scared or cold, but like an electrical charge is going through him. He’s chewing another tablet. He’s also carrying a gun.

  “We’re alone?” he asks, his eyes darting left and right.

  “Except for Mrs. Whitby. What’s the gun for, Carl? Cole isn’t here.”

  “She’s in there?” he asks, nodding toward the bedroom door.

  “Yep. The gun?”

  “The girl,” he says, still ignoring my question. “Is Cole really going to kill her?”

  “I don’t know. At the very least he’ll take her fingers. I really believe that.”

  “So do I,” he says. “If he can cut off one he can probably cut off ten. She’s a bitch,” he says, nodding toward the bedroom door again. “Mrs. Whitby. I remember her. I remember talking to her. She’s as bad as they get,” he says. “You saw the case file.”

  “She’s a monster,” I say.

  “One of the worst,” he says, and he’s staring at me and I can almost feel the charge coming off him. The hairs are standing on his arms and he’s still chewing at the tablet. His eyes are wide and jittery.

  “She put her son into a coma,” I say.

  “She hit him with an iron.”

  “Could have killed him,” I say.

  “I wish she had.”

  I nod. I wish she had too.

  “You know she only did a few months in jail, right?” he asks.

  “I know,” I tell him.

  “Not much of a punishment,” he says.

  “Not much at all.”

  “More should have happened to her.”

  “She should never have been let out,” I say.

  “All of this, it all began with her. Doesn’t seem right she should get away with it.”

  “Not right at all,” I agree.

  “The world needs balancing, Theo.” A cell phone rings. I look down at it. It’s the doctor’s. “This job,” he says, “we see the shittiest things.”

  “I know.”

  “Jesus,” he says, and he tilts his head up and stares at the ceiling for a few seconds, and when he looks back at me I think he’s trying hard not to cry. “I don’t . . .” he says, then shakes his head, “I can’t. I can’t deal with any more children dying. Last Christmas I promised myself no more kids were going to die on my watch,” he says, and I can tell he’s back in that moment where he last had to deal with the horror of a child being killed. “That day in the bathtub, drowning like that, I should have left the force then. I should have left.”

  “Carl . . .”

  “No more dead children,” he says. “No more.”

  The phone is still ringing. I look at my watch. It’s been thirty minutes. I’m shaking my head and Schroder is nodding his. He smiles. A sad, sad smile, and now the tears are there, just a few of them. “No more on my watch,” he says, and his smile grows. “Give me the phone,” he says.

  “Why?”

  “Because the world is about balance, Theo. That’s why. Give me the phone.”

  I hand it over. He looks at it for a few seconds as if he’s forgotten how to use one. The display is lit up with the number the call is coming from. “Four minutes I was dead,” he says. “Four minutes and nothing, just nothing. These kids, when they die they’re not moving on to a better place. We want to think so, but they’re not. The only thing waiting for us is a whole lot of nothing.” He presses the answer button. “This is Detective Inspector Carl Schroder,” he says, talking into the phone, straightening himself up and wiping at his eyes. He changes his grip on the gun so he can spare a few fingers to tug at his pajama top and get it sitting right, as if he were about to go into a meeting.

  I can hear Cole’s voice coming through the speaker. “Where’s Theodore Tate?”

  “He’s right next to me.”

  “Put him on,” Cole says.

  “No. You’re dealing with me now.”

  “If you don’t put him on I’m going to—”

  “Shut up, Caleb. Just shut up and watch,” Schroder says, and he fiddles with the functions on the phone and puts it on mute, and a moment later the display shows what the phone is pointing at. It shows my feet, then Schroder’s, then the door frame. It shows Schroder’s hand reaching out to the handle. It’s blurry and dizzying. People must throw up watching his home movies.

  “Carl,” I say.

  He shakes his head, the smile still there, and then he shrugs. “Sometimes good men have to do bad things.”

  “Carl—”

  “Theo, shut up. This isn’t your decision. This isn’t for you to live with,” he says, and I don’t try to stop him, I just stand back and watch as he opens the bedroom door and steps through. The light is on inside. I can see Mrs. Whitby sitting up in bed, an empty vodka bottle on the nightstand next to her, her mouth hanging open and her eyes shut. The room smells of alcohol and cigarettes and cat piss. She’s wearing a robe, the front of it patchy with old stains.

  He turns back toward me. “It was me,” he says.

  “What?”

  “The prison records. I was the one who skipped past Cole’s. I mean, I looked at it, but . . . but fuck, I was still balancing a line between being drunk and being hungover, and of course the baby comes with a whole lot of sleep deprivation. You were right—I should never have been part of this case. I looked at that case file and I was too fucked to even notice it meant anything, and now . . . well, now I have to do what it takes to save that little girl.”

  “Carl . . .”

  “It’s true, and you know it. If I’d made that connection, most of this could have been avoided. We could have caught him when he was going for Victoria Brown, or when he took the doctor.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  He sighs. “Yeah, yeah I do. We bot
h do,” he says.

  “Carl . . .”

  “I’m tired, Theo. Tired and I just want this to be over,” he says, and he takes the phone off mute and closes the door.

  I stand in the corridor and I close my eyes and I wait for the gunshot.

  It doesn’t take long. Five seconds. It echoes and rolls around inside my head like a bowling ball for much longer.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Caleb watches the display on the phone and says nothing as he looks at the dead woman on the bed, just the one gunshot, right through the heart. Her eyes opened when it happened, she looked right at the phone, her mouth seemed to cave in on itself, and she didn’t even have the time to raise an arm to her chest. Instead her head dropped back down to where it was when she was sleeping, her neck slumped against her massive breasts. She’s in pretty much the same position she was a minute ago. He doesn’t doubt she’s dead. Still—he knows they can be faked.

  “There’s an empty bottle on the nightstand,” he says.

  “What? I can’t hear you.”

  “I said there’s an empty bottle on the nightstand.”

  “I still can’t hear you,” Schroder says. “You’ll have to give me a minute.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “What?”

  “I said you’re kidding,” he says, almost shouting it at the phone.

  “Missing? What’s missing?”

  Cole doesn’t answer. He keeps watching the dead woman on the screen, and then there is fast movement as the phone is lifted higher. He watches the wall swaying up and down, and he realizes the detective has his finger in his ear, twisting it back and forth. It’s the gunshot. It must be. The gunshot has deafened the detective so he can’t hear him. He has to wait a minute. It’s a long minute, but he’s excited. He’s missed out on the judge. He could try the same trick and convince somebody to kill the judge for him, but he doesn’t see it working, not again, not against a man who the world thinks is good.

  Finally the phone moves again, and he can see the side of Schroder’s face before his ear fills the screen. Obviously he’s forgotten he’s on speakerphone as well as video.

  “What were you saying?”

  “There’s a bottle on the nightstand.”

  “So?”

  “So I want you to pick it up and smash her over the head with it.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I’m not going to do that.”

  “You have to.”

  “No. I don’t have to. She’s dead.”

  “Then she’s not going to feel it, and she’s not going to mind.”

  “No.”

  “I need to know she’s dead.”

  “Yeah? Then why don’t you come down here yourself and take a Goddamn look at her. I’m not hitting her with the bottle.”

  Caleb thinks about it. Nods. Thinks about it a little more. Nods to himself again. He believes the detective. “Do you have a marker?”

  “What?”

  “A pen. Find a pen.”

  “I have a pen.”

  “I want you to write on her forehead.”

  “I’m not going to do that either.”

  “You’re going to do it, Detective, and here’s why—I’m going to tell you where I am.”

  A grunt comes down the phone line. “Yeah, sure you are.”

  “I am,” he says, looking down at the little girl that he won’t have to ever cut again. “I promise you, you write on her forehead, then you and Theodore Tate can come and take me away. I give you my word. You can save Katy Stanton.”

  “What about her father?” Schroder asks.

  “I’m still undecided about that.”

  “Don’t hurt him, and you have a deal.”

  “You write what I want you to write, and I won’t harm either of them. Deal?”

  “What do you want me to write?”

  “I want you to write I’m an evil bitch.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what she was. You know it. We all know it.”

  “Then why bother writing it?” the detective asks.

  “You going to write it or not? Or does our deal not stand?”

  “Hang on.” The footage changes again. He sees Schroder’s shirt and then the bed, and the screen stays on the bed for thirty seconds. Then the phone is on the move again. It’s pointed at Mrs. Whitby’s face. It’s all blurry and out of focus for a few seconds, but then it becomes sharp. The words are on her forehead. The handwriting is neater than his own, nice blocky lettering, but he hasn’t gotten the spacing right and the last few letters have to curve up over her left eye where they get smaller.

  “Good,” he says.

  “Now where are you?”

  “Will you come alone if I tell you? Just you and Tate?” he asks, because that’s what Schroder will be expecting him to ask. He doesn’t care whether Schroder and Tate come alone, or whether they bring a hundred cops with them.

  “Yes.”

  “How do I know if I can believe you?”

  “Enough games, Caleb. Just tell me where you are.”

  “Fair enough,” he says. He gives Schroder the address of the house that’s for sale, hangs up, then calls the journalist he was going to call before. He tells him who he is, and he knows the man doubts him, so he takes a photograph of Katy on the phone and sends it to him. Then he makes a few more calls, a radio station, a TV station, and he gives them all the address too. Then he walks back through to Dr. Stanton. He has five minutes, he guesses. Five minutes and then everything will be over.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Schroder opens the door and hands me the cell phone. I get the same view I had on his way in. Mrs. Whitby is slumped in pretty much the same way, looking drunk, only Schroder has scrawled something across her forehead.

  “Don’t speak to me,” he says.

  “Shoo did the right thing,” I tell him, holding my hand lightly against the side of my head. The gunshot is still rattling around in there.

  He gives me a strange look, then shakes his head. “Theo, seriously, just shut the fuck up, okay? We’re going for a drive and I don’t want to hear a single word from you, is that clear?”

  It’s clear. We head out into the street. There are lights on in the neighboring houses, the gunshot having woken people. It’s the first time Schroder has ever killed anybody, and I’m guessing he never thought he’d ever have to, and I know surely he could never have envisioned such a set of circumstances. He’s thinking he killed an innocent woman—but he didn’t. He saved one.

  “Keys,” he says, putting his hand out. I hand him his keys and he hands me mine. We get into his car. I don’t ask where we’re going. His cell phone rings and he reaches into his pocket and hangs up without answering it. Then mine rings.

  “Don’t answer it,” he says.

  I look at the display in case it’s the hospital, but it isn’t. It’s the police station. I kill the call and put the phone back into my pocket. Schroder’s starts ringing again. He flips it over, pops out the battery, and tosses both halves into the backseat. Mine rings again. He looks at it ready to do the same thing. I put it on silent and don’t answer it.

  I give it a few minutes, switching between watching Schroder and watching the night slowly lose its battle to the light. The headache is creeping back slowly, the work the pills had done to fight it all falling away over the last few minutes. In the distance the sky is dark blue. In a few hours people will be getting up and heading to work, hitting their stride and being productive. Right now they’re mostly still asleep, they’re in their dream worlds—some are being chased by monsters, some are visiting women they’ve seen on TV, others are flying, others are falling.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “We’re going to arrest Caleb Cole and save Katy Stanton.”

  “And how are we going to do that? He didn’t happen to tell you where they all are, did he?”

  He nods. “As a matter
of fact, he did.”

  “What?”

  “He gave me his address.”

  “You believe him?” I ask, rubbing at my temple.

  “I do.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You have no right to ask that,” he says. “When was the last time you came straight to me with something?”

  “It’s part of his endgame,” I say. “Whatever he has planned, it’s going to happen when we show up.”

  “I know that, Theo. I’m not a fucking idiot. His endgame is to die, that’s what everybody is saying, but that’s not going to happen. We make sure of that. We get there and we take this bastard alive because it’s the last thing he wants. You get that?”

  “No sholem.”

  “What?”

  “I said ‘no problem.’ ”

  “Look, I’m serious, Tate, this fucker isn’t getting off easy. He’s going back to jail.”

  “I said no problem, okay? But . . . shouldn’t we call for backup? Have you forgotten you’ve been suspended?”

  “He told us to come alone.”

  “This sounds dangerous, Carl. And stupid. You’re blowing any chance you have to shave your job.”

  “Shave?”

  “What?”

  He shakes his head. “I can drop you off here if you want. I won’t hold it against you.”

  “Carl, you’re fucking things up. This isn’t the way to do things. We should call for backup.”

  He finally looks over at me. He gives me a five-second stare, which is a long time when the person giving it is also in control of a speeding car. I’m rubbing my temple harder now.

  “Jesus, Theo, are you okay?”

  “Are you?”

  “Look, if it were the other way around, you’d go ahead and do it your way anyway. You’ve always done it your way. Even when you were a cop. It’s always had to be the Tate way. Tate knows best. Tate doesn’t have to play by the rules. Now we’re doing it the Schroder way. Okay?”

  “Okay, Goddamn it, okay!”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I said I was okay,” I snap, rubbing at my head. I’m starting to worry that I’m in the process of filling out the ER doctor’s prescription.