Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

“Sorry?” Caleb says, amazed at the word. “Sorry? That’s all you have say? That you’re sorry? Where were your apologies when I was in jail for the last fifteen years?”

“I-”

“Shut up,” he says, and he punches the doctor in the stomach as hard as he can, the impact making both men double over, Stanton winded, Caleb clutching his hand against his stomach and cradling it. When he’s able, he pulls the duct tape out and slaps it over the doctor’s mouth. Stanton draws ragged breaths through his damaged nose. Caleb is tempted to cut a small hole in the tape to help him breath, but he’s so angry that he’ll keep on cutting and next thing he’ll be left with three useless kids and one dead doctor. Instead he grabs him by the hair and pulls him toward the slaughterhouse, leading him inside.

So one day is going to turn into two. No big problem. And like he thought earlier, it gives him time to figure out what he’s going to do with Ariel Chancellor. Right now, the only thing he needs to figure out is how best to get comfortable. It’s going be tough when all he has to deal with are concrete floors and the occasional leftover piece of furniture.

He tosses Stanton onto the floor next to his daughters, then ties up his feet, then bunches up some blankets against the wall and lies down. He can feel the cold ebbing up from the concrete. The girls are all looking at him. He can hear them sniffling, crying, he can hear every time they move against the floor. For fifteen years he’s dealt with the sounds that others have made, the snoring and crying and taunting of others. Only thing that would stop him falling asleep right now would be a tank rolling through the front door.

He thinks about turning off the light, but he leaves it on for the kids, not wanting to frighten them any more than necessary. Stanton is staring at him too. There are equal parts confusion and fear in his eyes, and a whole lot of anger and hate too. That’s good. Caleb wonders which of those will shine through the brightest when he makes the bastard choose the order in which those little girls are going to die.

The city is full of good and bad things, and this morning is a classic example. Good thing-the rain has completely gone, the sky looks pretty clear, and when the sun comes up we might just have blue skies in every direction. The temperature is around forty degrees but should go up to almost sixty by the afternoon. The icy wind from yesterday is now somewhere over the South Pacific, blown there by a wind that is still cool, but nowhere near as chilling. Bad thing-the air feels damp. I’m tired again and my tongue got burned drinking the coffee, so it feels numb. My car looks worse the lighter the morning gets, and there are already reporters hanging about outside the main entrance to the police station. They’re floating around like bottom-feeders, desperate to snack on any little piece of information, and the worst of them is a local psychic with slicked-back black hair and ultra-white teeth by the name of Jonas Jones. He’s wearing a pin-striped suit with a silk tie that makes him look like a well-paid lawyer. The reporters fire questions at me and I don’t answer them, and Jonas follows me into the foyer and I put a hand into my pocket to make sure my wallet doesn’t disappear. Schroder is ten minutes ahead of me, wanting to change into his third shirt for the day and tidy up a bit before the briefing.

Good thing-Jonas starts with a joke. “I sensed you were going to help,” he tells me.

Bad thing-just when I start to laugh, I realize he’s not joking.

Jones used to be a used-car salesman before going bankrupt and figuring out a new way to screw people. He’s been successful at it too, appearing on reality psychic shows and writing books about his communiqués with the dead. So far he’s been instrumental in solving the case of who’s the most annoying psychic living in the country, and I bet he loses his keys around the house just as much as the rest of us. Over the years he’s been a pain in the ass to the department. Yet his books sell and people watch his show, suggesting the book and TV industries make about as much sense as the rest of the world.

I ignore him and keep on walking.

“I can help,” he says, flashing me the same smile he used to flash his customers back before he ran his business into the ground.

I’m only two inches taller than Jones, but I use them both to look down at him. “Listen, Jones, just get lost, okay?”

“He’s going to kill again.”

“You think?”

Jonas’s psychic abilities are way off because he doesn’t sense that I don’t want him to follow. He doesn’t sense that I’m getting close to breaking his legs.

“He stabs them nineteen times,” he says, “and I know why.”

I stop walking and look back at him. “Who told you that?” I ask.

“So it’s true,” he says.

“No comment,” I say.

“Ah, I see, you really don’t know. Well, you will soon. I just happen to know already.”

“Because of your psychic link?”

“It’s a gift,” he tells me.

“One that keeps on paying.” I push the button for the elevator. I press it a couple of times hoping it’s just an urban legend that pushing it repeatedly doesn’t really speed it up. “So why nineteen times?”

“It’s easy,” he says, “but if I tell you, I want to be kept in the loop. You’re not a cop, but you must be a consultant because you were at all the scenes yesterday and you’re here now and I know you need the money,” he says, keeping his voice low. The officer behind the desk is watching us. “I don’t need to be psychic to see that,” he says, but if he were psychic he’d know that I am a cop and not just a consultant. “I give you the info, you keep me updated, and this can be the start of a useful partnership.”

I go with what didn’t work before, but will hopefully work now. “Like I said, Jones, just get lost, okay?”

“I want to help people,” he says. “And you want to help people. There’s no reason we can’t help each other.”

I push the button again. The elevator doesn’t speed up. “And no reason you can’t profit from it.”

“A man needs to eat,” he says. “And none of you are different,” he says. “Everybody in this building profits from people being hurt, Tate, or is everybody in this department doing this job for free?” He hands me his card. “Call me when you need help.”

The elevator doors open and he walks away, leaving me pissed off that he’s made a good point. I look down at his card- Jonas Jones is written in silver letters raised against an ivory background, beneath his name in bold letters is Psychic. It’s a typo-the ic should have been an o. With no garbage bin in the elevator, I tear the card in two and store it in my pocket. If the two halves of the card rejoin by the time I reach the fourth floor, then I’ll admit that Jones does have some magical abilities. I wonder if he really does know why the victims were stabbed nineteen times. I should have grabbed him by his shirt and dragged him upstairs and questioned him. The thing is, psychics may be full of bullshit, but they can have a unique way of seeing things, and they can offer a theory that, though inaccurate, can branch off a new train of thought that can lead somewhere.

I’ll call him after the briefing.

The doors open at the fourth floor and it’s a different world from downstairs. Dozens of people all looking hungover and tired. The floor smells like cheap bourbon. Things aren’t as clean around the station anymore on account of their main janitor going to jail last year after it turned out he had a taste for killing people. Schroder is wearing a new shirt and he’s back in his original shoes, which have dried out, but he’s still wearing the same pants. He smells like he’s had a beer and followed it with a toothpaste chaser.