Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

“So either he was having an affair,” I say, “and could only spend thirty minutes on it, or he saw a prostitute.”

“Or maybe he just really, really liked lipstick,” Schroder says.

“You got something you want to confess?” I ask him.

He laughs. “Even if he did see a hooker, there’s nothing illegal about that.”

“There is if she isn’t paying her taxes.”

“Yeah, maybe Hayward was giving her accounting advice in exchange for her services.”

Now it’s my turn to dig into the bacon. It has that crispy texture you get when bacon is burned just a little, which is what I like to call perfection. I eat one slice and can’t stop. I jam a second into my mouth, some egg, some mushroom, and the flavors are starting to wake me up. I reach for my coffee but it’s still too hot.

“We should fingerprint his belt, and also the car. Maybe we’ll get a match. Maybe she’s in the system somewhere for shoplifting or drug possession,” I say, not wanting to stereotype all prostitutes, but at the same time knowing the odds of her having a conviction are pretty good.

“Yeah. Good idea.”

“I asked John Morgan about where they park. They use a nearby parking garage, which would have provided a much easier location to murder somebody. He’d have had time to write his message too. Why not just wait there? It sure as hell makes more sense than following him into his garage and running away from his house.”

“Yeah. Doesn’t make sense,” Schroder says. “Listen, I got something else for you too,” he says, and he stuffs his last piece of bacon into his mouth, leans back, and reaches into his pocket. “This is yours,” he says, and he hands me my badge and ID, two things I gave up three years ago when I resigned.

“I’m back on the force?” I ask, barely containing my excitement.

“It’s temporary,” he says, then starts in on the eggs. “But should be permanent if you don’t screw it up. Just follow the rules and do what’s asked of you and no more.”

“Does it come with a car?”

“Don’t push your luck,” he says. “But you do have your driver’s license back, which means all that driving you keep doing is now legal.”

I run my thumb over the metal badge. I remember the last time I saw it, laying it down on my office desk and walking away. I turned my back on the job because everybody in the department suspected I was the reason my daughter’s killer had disappeared. I thought quitting my job was the best way to keep a low profile. It worked. At least until I killed again.

“A lot’s happened,” Schroder says, pausing with the food to test the coffee temperature, which he tries to cool by blowing on it. “You haven’t earned it back, but circumstances dictate the situation, Theo, and you can do some good here.”

“Thank you,” I tell him, and I slip the badge and the ID wallet it’s enclosed in into my back pocket.

“You can thank the superintendent. He’s the one who made the decision. And the best way to thank us both is to make neither of us look like idiots.”

I remember him running through the field yesterday to take a leak behind a tree. “I won’t,” I tell him.

“Hurry up with your breakfast,” he tells me, “because we’ve got a briefing at seven.”

Dr. Stanton is awake. He tries to cower deeper into the trunk when Caleb opens it. Caleb has never seen a man look so panicked. He has the look of someone who doesn’t know if his children are dead or alive. He should warn him that this is the easy part, that with what’s coming up this was the wrong time to be scared. There is a lump on the side of his head the size of a golf ball-he’ll have one hell of a headache, but he’ll live. His arms are bound behind him and his pajamas are all wrinkled to shit and his ankles are tied together.

“Your daughters are okay,” Caleb tells him. “But if you don’t do what I ask, I’m going to hurt them. I’m going to cut off their faces and mix them all up so you won’t know who the fuck you’re looking at. Do you believe me?”

The doctor nods but says nothing. Caleb can see he’s very much believed.

“See, that’s the thing, Doctor, in the past you’ve believed the wrong people, but it’s good to see you’ve learned from those mistakes. Do you know who I am?”

A shake of the head.

“No, I didn’t think you would. Life has moved on and I look a little different, I suppose, from when I was in the papers back then. But we’ve never met. I’ve been watching you over the last few weeks and learning even more about you over the years, but there are some things about you I didn’t figure out. I see your wife left you. That’s a shame,” he says, “because it would have been fun to kill her in front of you. In jail, it’s been hard to learn things, but sometimes we have access to the library and the Internet. It’s amazing how much shit there is on the Internet,” he says, and it’s true. It’s one of the things that has surprised him the most since coming out of jail-just how far the boundaries of privacy have eroded. People put their life stories online. They update their friends about how they are feeling. His update would say Caleb is angry.

The world was bat-shit crazy.

“Dote hurt eye chilren.”

Since arriving here half an hour ago, the scene has started to change. The slaughterhouse is a little more lit up than it was before, it’s soaked in the early morning misty light that is a hundred shades of gray, the trees look cold and foreboding, as if among them hide the creatures from any one of a thousand nightmares. Then he realizes that he is one of those creatures, that he is the boogeyman Dr. Stanton never dreamed about. He reaches in and grabs the doctor’s nose. He twists it without any care or hesitation and there’s a clicking sound and the nose springs back into shape. Blood drains out of it as the doctor thrashes about. It flows down the side of his face and past his ear, but he’s going to be okay. When it comes to banged-up noses, Caleb has had plenty of experience, and this one was dislocated, not broken. After ten seconds he’s sick of watching him.

“Get on your feet,” Caleb says.

“What do you want?” he asks, looking up from the trunk, the blood still flowing, but way slower now. He’s been crying and dirt has gotten stuck to the tear trails on his face.

“Get on your feet,” Caleb repeats, showing him the knife.

Dr. Stanton, with his hands behind him, tries to climb out, and ends up rolling out of the trunk and falling onto his side on the ground, the wind knocked out of him.

“There’s nowhere to run, and nobody to hear you scream for help.”

“Who are you?” Stanton asks, and he sniffs, then spits out a wad of snot and blood. He gets to his feet, puffing and swaying a little.

“You still haven’t figured it out?”

“No.”

“You remember James Whitby?”

“James Whitby? No, who the hell. .” he starts, then stops, and Caleb can see that it’s coming to him. “But. . he’s dead.”

“That’s right.”

“He was. . was murdered,” Stanton says, frowning.

“Come on, you’re almost there.”

“You’re. . you’re the man who killed him. You’re. . you’re Caleb. . Caleb Cole?”

“You got it.”

“Oh Jesus, Jesus,” he says, shaking his head, sending drips of blood from the end of his nose into the dregs of night. His eyes are wide, his face full of an awareness of the past and of his immediate future. “None of that was my fault,” he says, his voice getting high. “I was just doing my job, and I did the best I could with the resources I had. I promise you that, and what he did-I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry.”