Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

“I’ve been away for a long time, Katy, but how about you tell me?”

“Two.”

Two. Jesus, just how much did he get wrong? No wife, three daughters, what else?

“Katy, are there any other adults in the house?”

“No.”

“No brothers?”

She shakes her head. “You seem mean,” she says.

“I’m not mean,” he tells her.

“Are you going to hurt anybody?”

“No,” he says. “Tell you what, you can make sure nobody gets hurt by making sure everything I say gets done. You can be my special helper.”

“I don’t want to be a special helper,” she says.

“Your older sister is Melanie,” he says.

“Yes.”

“And the other sister? Is she younger or older?”

“She’s only one,” she says.

So he’s dealing with an eleven-year-old, an eight-year-old, and a one-year-old. He thinks about how it’s going to change the plan, and realizes it doesn’t. It might tweak how things are done, it’ll give him some more leverage with the doctor, but the end result is going to be the same.

“What’s her name?”

“Octavia. What about Dad? Are you going to be mean to him?”

“Your dad did a bad thing,” he tells her.

“My dad helps people.”

“Sometimes he helps the wrong people.”

“What did he do?”

“It’s a grown-up thing, Katy. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I’m grown up,” she says. “Remember? I’m talking to you like a grown-up would.”

Despite the situation, despite the man bound on the floor and all the blood and the years in jail, he can’t help but smile. It feels good, for the first time he feels something, and it’s dangerous.

“Maybe Dad can help you,” she says. “Are you one of his patients? Are you a crazy man?”

His smile disappears. “No,” he tells her. “I’m a friendly man.”

Her eyes narrow as she stares at him. “I don’t believe you.”

“Well, the thing is, Katy, it doesn’t matter if you believe me or not, because you’re going to do what I say. If you don’t, you’re going to get in trouble, and the last thing I want is to see you or your sisters getting hurt because you wouldn’t do what I say,” he says, reaching into his pocket for the duct tape. “Now, how about you show me where they are,” he tells her, “before you make me mad,” he adds, and she shows him, not saying another word on the way.

From out of nowhere the rain comes back. I have to increase the speed of the window wiper that works. It makes a strange grinding sound, making me worry it’s going to fly off the window and get lost in somebody’s front lawn, but then, just as quickly, the rain disappears again, just a thirty-second assault on the city. I have to drive carefully even though I have the urge to speed, scared that if I take my car over thirty miles per hour the engine will turn into a jigsaw puzzle. There are patrol cars and lots of vans with sleepy looking reporters beside them at the nursing home, and even though I managed to leave before Schroder he’s beaten me out here.

Schroder is standing in the foyer next to Nurse Hamilton who, for the moment, looks nothing like Nurse Hamilton, but more like a woman wearing a Nurse Hamilton suit that’s been stuffed under a couch for the last twenty years. She starts to come over, then thinks better of it. Schroder leads me up the stairs to the second floor and in the opposite direction of Bridget, but I can’t follow him, not straightaway, not until I check on my wife. I head to her room and there is enough light from the hallway to see her sleeping peacefully.

“She’s okay,” Schroder tells me. “What happened here has nothing to do with her.”

I’m not sure what to tell him. I try to grab hold of my thoughts to calm them down-I want to move Bridget to another home. I want to hunt down the man who violated this place.

“Come on, Theo, we’ve got work to do,” he says, holding up a thin file in front of me. “Look, I know you’re pissed off, but you need to focus on what’s relevant here, and what’s relevant is that Bridget hasn’t been hurt but somebody else has been, and we need to make it as right as we can for that person because that’s what we do.”

I take a few seconds to listen to what he’s saying. I try to absorb it. I realize he’s right.

“Theo, are we on the same page here?”

“We are,” I tell him.

“Good.” He turns around and I follow him into a part of the nursing home I haven’t been in before, but it looks the same as the rest of it-rubber plants potted along the corridors, landscape paintings, views from the windows out over the gardens. We pass rooms along the way, other patients in similar states to my wife, some in better shape as they turn and look toward us as we walk, others in worse shape, hoses and tubes connecting them to a form of artificial life.

“Victoria Brown,” Schroder says. “She’s forty-nine years old, married, no children. She’s been here for seven years after being assaulted in a shopping mall bathroom. She had her head smacked into a sink and never woke up,” he says. “Never got the person who did it,” he adds.

“There’s a lot of blood,” I say, stopping outside the room and looking in.

“He stabbed her like he stabbed the first two.”

“So whatever pissed our guy off happened at least seven years ago,” I say.

“Has to be. I don’t see her making anybody angry since being here. And he must have been angry,” he says. “She put up no fight and he just kept stabbing her all the same.”

“What did she do? Before the attack?”

“Here’s the thing. She was a criminal lawyer.”

A small chill rushes down my spine as a connection is made. “So that gives us two lawyers and one teacher and one accountant. He leave a message?”

“It’s on her forehead. Same as the others. You were complicit. ”

“In what?”

“In whatever made victim one not care enough and was or wasn’t worth it for victim two.”

I look up and down the corridor. “And nobody heard or saw anything?”

“No, and it’s not like the victim was making a sound.”

“You talk to the husband?”

“He’s dead. He killed himself a couple of years ago. Hung himself.”

Does every story in this city have a bad ending? Does everybody have a sad tale?

There are forensic experts inside and outside the room. There are plastic markers next to blood drops on the floor and bloody shoe tread prints that are dark near the body but lighten with every step until they disappear near the stairs. The dead woman’s arms are still by her side and there is no expression of horror on her face. Her eyes are closed, her face perfectly relaxed. It’s the first time either Schroder or myself have ever seen a murdered coma victim. Maybe it’s the first time anybody has. We’ve seen them get pregnant and contract diseases, but not this.

“You okay?” Schroder asks.

“I’m not sure,” I tell him.

“You look like you could do with some air.”

The handwriting across the dead woman’s forehead is a match for the others.

“Two lawyers and one teacher and one accountant,” Schroder repeats.

“Doesn’t seem like the setup to a joke anymore,” I tell him.

“No. But it never did.” He pushes his hands into his back and stretches it out, his spine popping softly. I once saw a guy do that and throw out his back. “The staff say you were here earlier,” he says. “You didn’t see anything?”

“I did see somebody walking with a bloody knife but didn’t think it was worth mentioning.”

“Hey, look, I’m just asking.”

“I’d have told you. Who found her?”