Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

I thank her for her time, scoop up the pictures, and replace them with my card.

“I thought you were a cop,” she says, looking at the card.

“I am,” I tell her. “But that’s my number,” I say, looking down at the card, which says I’m a private investigator.

“I don’t get it,” she says, and I get the idea there’s a lot of things she doesn’t get. Simple logic, for one. A maid, for another.

“Call me if you can think of anything, okay? We’re trying to get a killer off the streets.”

“And I’m trying to get through this,” she says, holding up an almost empty bottle of vodka, “before going to bed and living the dream all over again in about nine hours.”

I leave her to her drink and her dreams. I drive to the hospital hoping to still meet Schroder in time. Half of the parking lot has been shut down due to construction, the workers all on a coffee break and not one of them without a cigarette in his hand. It seems like some smokers do it just to have something to do with their hands in social situations. I park in a section for staff parking where they have dedicated a few spaces for the police department, right next to Schroder who is sitting in his car on the phone. He looks over at me and nods. A couple of doctors are standing outside and smoking, chatting to a nurse with long blond hair who looks like she just stepped off the set of porno. She keeps flicking her hair over her shoulder and laughing at everything they say, and I get the idea she would flutter her eyelids and laugh all through surgery too to keep their attention. I step past a dumpster with a biohazard sign on it, which might be full of needles or, just as equally, full of body parts. I have to sign in to get past a security guard with no neck who gives me directions to the only elevator in sight, and I wait for Schroder before stepping in.

“What’s wrong?” I ask him, when he catches up, his face creased into a frown.

“Maybe I should drink more,” he tells me. “That way I can get fired, and getting fired is probably the only thing that’s going to stop my wife from leaving me. You know,” he says, looking at me with a thoughtful look, “I’m always telling her things are going to get better, but then another case comes along and. . and I’m gone. She said it’s like being married to a ghost. And with the new baby. . things are just stressed, that’s all.”

“I’m sure it’ll be okay,” I tell him, but the only thing I’m sure about is how lame that sounded.

“Yeah, well. . fuck it,” he says, and stabs at the button to take us down into the bowels of the hospital.

The one thing reliable in life is this-the feeling in a morgue always stays the same. People come and go-staff, medical examiners, cleaners, victims-and the equipment is updated ever so subtly over the years, probably handpicked out of catalogues brought to the hospital by sales reps. The atmosphere is one thing that can’t be upgraded-it’s bleak, it’s depressing, every time you catch the elevator here you’re taking a ride down to a well of misery.

The morgue is full of shiny surfaces that look cold, they reflect the harsh white light and make the sterile environment look even more sterile. There are gurneys with bodies lying on them-four of them I can identify, two more I can’t, all of them with the same look on their faces.

Normally there are two medical examiners who work here, but the second, Sheldon, is away. His daughter is getting married in Fiji on a beach, so he’s away with his family soaking up the sun and drinking cocktails and all of us, including the dead people in here, would much rather be with Sheldon than with Tracey, even though Tracey is the more attractive and lively of the two. Her current caseload has aged her since seeing her a few hours ago.

“Come on, guys, give me a chance,” she says, not even looking up at us, she’s so preoccupied with a file in her hands. “I know you’re desperate, but unless you want to join these people,” she says, nodding toward the victims, “you need to give me some time.”

“Just your general impressions,” Schroder says, trying to sound calming.

“Sure, my first impression is that I need to get paid more. Second impression is Sheldon chose the right week to go on holiday. And, if you like, I can do a really good impression of a really short-tempered medical examiner who snaps and attacks one police officer and one. .” she looks at me, “just what the hell are you now anyway?”

“Your impression of a medical examiner going nuts would have to include two police officers,” I say.

She looks at Schroder, and Schroder nods. “It’s true,” he says, then he reaches out and puts a hand on her arm. “Look, Tracey, I know we’re asking a lot, and I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t important, but please, what do you have?”

Slowly she nods and for a moment there is a small smile. “Okay,” she says, “this way,” and we gather around the body of Victoria Brown. “First of all, you were right about the stab wounds,” she says, looking at Schroder. “Nineteen exactly,” she says. “Three of them into the same wound, each taking different angles beneath the surface. But our man over there has only the one,” she says, nodding toward Brad Hayward, who doesn’t react to the sound of his name.

“I can confirm the same knife was used on each victim,” she says, “and that victim number two also has the same amount of wounds.”

I feel a chill run up my spine. Three victims with nineteen wounds. That has to mean something.

“Victim number one was dying anyway-lung cancer had been toying with him for years,” she confirms. “Victim number four wasn’t dying, but she wasn’t really living either. And like I said a few hours ago, there are indications victim number three had just had sex. And his wife should get tested,” she adds. “For syphilis.”

That’s not a conversation that is going to go well.

She hands over an impression of the blade used to kill these people. She’s isolated one of the wounds and poured thick liquid into it that’s taken the shape of the wound and then hardened. It gives us the dimensions of the knife. It looks like a kitchen knife, something a chef would slice onions with, or something Hitchcock would put into the hands of a madman. Knowing what kind of weapon it is doesn’t bring us any closer to knowing who’s using it, especially when there’s a million identical knives out there, but the nineteen stab wounds does. How it does, we don’t know-not yet.

“I’ll call you when I know more,” she says.

Catching the elevator to the world above ground doesn’t reverse the feeling of misery and depression I caught when catching it down, it just gives it more contrast. It always takes a few minutes to shake that bleakness away. Coffee break is over and we stand in the parking lot surrounded by the dust of construction and roadwork, construction workers yelling at each other over the pounding of equipment and engine noise. The doctors and nurse are off playing doctors and nurses. The day is bright and I yawn into my hand, go to say something to Schroder, then yawn again, this time into my other hand. I don’t like to play favorites. Schroder starts to yawn too, then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small white cardboard box with Wake-E stenciled across it in orange letters.

“Caffeine tablets,” he says, and chucks one into his mouth. “Want one?”

I do want one, but what I don’t need is an addiction. Aside from the one to coffee. . which is one I need to break anyway. I shake my head. We walk over to our cars. Schroder looks at the addition of the broken headlight on mine, seems about to mention how it just adds character, or some other joke, but can’t come up with anything.