Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

“I understand your daughter is out here too,” Father Jacob says.

I’m not sure how to respond, so I keep walking.

“It’s the hardest thing in the world to lose a child,” he says.

“There’s a man who’s about to lose three if we don’t hurry,” I tell him, and we break into a jog, row after row of the dead beneath us, and two minutes later when we reach the graves I’m out of breath and the back of my shirt is damp. Jacob, who’s at least twenty years older than me, is puffing nowhere near as much.

“This is them,” Jacob says, stopping in front of two graves that look like any other. Only they’re not like any other.

“Jesus,” I say.

“Theo,” the priest says, giving me a bad look.

There are no flowers in front of them and the grass needs to be clipped around the base of the headstones. I read the inscriptions on the graves. Next to them is an empty plot, probably reserved for the husband and father.

Reserved for Caleb Cole.

It all makes sense now.

All that blood from fifteen years ago. .

I start running.

“Who are they?” Father Jacob calls out.

I don’t answer him because he’s already thirty feet behind me, with more distance gaining every second as I race back across the graveyard, my feet pounding over the ground, over the edges of other people’s graves. I pull out my cell phone to call Schroder, but before I can dial it rings anyway, Schroder on the other end.

“I got something,” he says, and he sounds excited.

“So do I,” I tell him. “Caleb Cole,” I tell him, and it’s all rushing back to me in detail. I remember standing in the snow, my feet freezing cold, Schroder was there too, so was Landry, so was a small dead girl sprawled out and covered in blood on the concrete floor. It’s all so clear that for a moment my blood runs the same temperature it felt back that day. There are good places to die and bad places to die, and the slaughterhouse was about as bad as it got. I remember the fear we were going to lose a conviction because the suspect had been beaten by a detective using a phone book.

“I know,” Schroder says.

“What?”

“The nineteen stab wounds. I just got off the phone with the ME. She ran a check. I mean, shit, we should have thought of it, right? But none of us did. Except her. We were looking for a connection to the past, right? So she looks for other victims that have come through the morgue with nineteen stab wounds, thinking there may have been something current, but what she got instead were two names from fifteen years ago.”

I have to slow down so I can talk. “Jessica Cole,” I say. “Was she one of them?”

“Yes. And the other was James Whitby. I’m still at Stanton’s office,” Schroder says. “Wait a moment,” he says, and the phone thuds in my ear as he puts it down on a solid surface. I can hear a large filing drawer being opened. He’s flicking through folders, his fingers sliding over the names. I can hear him talking to himself, he’s saying “come on, come on, where are you. .,” then a “yes!”

“Got it,” he says, coming back on the line.

“Let me guess-you just pulled a file for James Whitby?”

“Bingo,” he says. “Whitby was a patient of Stanton’s.”

“And Cole blames him?”

“Hang on, give me a second,” he says, and I picture him leaning over the file, reading it. “Shit,” he says. “Stanton was the doctor at Whitby’s trial two years before Jessica Cole was murdered,” he says, and I remember it clearly. James Whitby had abducted a young girl by the name of Tabitha Jenkins. He kept her for two days until he was caught. He went to trial. He was found not guilty because he was insane. He was confined for two years to a mental institution.

“What was Stanton’s role?”

“He testified that they could help Whitby, that it wasn’t his fault, but a result of an abusive upbringing.”

Other people have arrived since I showed up, and some stare at me as I jog past them. I have sweat dripping off my forehead, and they look behind me to see what is chasing me, but all that’s back there are two graves that have unlocked the mystery as to what the fuck is going on.

“So Cole blames Stanton,” I say, because within a week of Whitby being released, he killed Jessica Cole. “What about the others?”

“I don’t know, but they must be involved in similar ways,” Schroder says. “One of them might have been Whitby’s lawyer. Just wait where you are. You might be closer than I am.”

“Closer to what?”

“Just wait. I’ll call you back.”

He hangs up on me. I’m at the car now. I have the urge to speed somewhere but I don’t know where. I tap my fingers against the roof. I’ve left Father Jacob somewhere far in the distance. I stare at my cell phone and wait for it to ring. I start talking to it, saying come on over and over.

For four minutes the mantra fails, but by the fifth one it works. I figure that’s worth knowing for the future.

“Caleb Cole was released from prison six weeks ago,” Schroder says. “I’ve just spoken to his probation officer. Cole’s been keeping all the appointments. Even got a job at the big tire factory in Brighton. We placed a call there but. .”

“Hang on, hang on,” I say. “Six weeks ago?”

“Yeah. He didn’t show up for work today. I’ve got his address. I want you to check it out. Armed officers will meet you there. Okay? I’m at least twenty minutes away,” he says, and he gives me the address. I write it down.

“Okay. But if it was six weeks ago he was released, how come we didn’t come up with his name when we were going through the prison records?”

“Jesus, Tate, I don’t know, it’s not important,” he says, “just do your Goddamn job.”

“Uh, yes sir,” I tell him.

“I didn’t mean-”

“It’s fine,” I tell him. “And it’s going to take me ten minutes to get there.”

“Make it five,” he says. “You’ve got sirens, so go ahead and use them.”

Psychic number five is the same as the other psychics, as if the first four had their personalities blended up and poured into this fifty-something-year-old Asian woman with a receding hairline and a chin home to four good-sized moles, each of which is home to at least one good-sized hair, the longest of which-the length of a baby’s arm-she must be keeping for luck. She senses dead people and can tell your destiny, and her husband gives tarot card readings too for an extra forty dollars. She doesn’t put on a show like some of the others. Instead they sit at her kitchen table while she sips Asian tea with Asian prints on the walls full of Asian symbols that mean nothing to him. The incense burning on the windowsills is making his nose itch. She looks at his palms and tells him that she isn’t a palm reader, takes her hands in his, and, like dial-up modems before he went away, she makes strange noises as she makes a long-distance connection.

“You’ve lost somebody,” she tells him, when she’s logged into the afterlife and, unlike dial-up modems, she makes the connection on the first try. “Somebody you care about.”

When it’s over he feels betrayed again, another hack taking his money from him, and most of all he feels annoyed at himself for putting himself through it. For some reason he thought her being Asian would have made it more real, more spiritual, and it makes the disappointment harder. He’s running out of chances to talk to his family.

He doesn’t thank her for her time. He pushes himself away from the table when she tells him his wife forgives him. He throws the money down and declines her offer of the tarot card reading.

Caleb is passing the living room when he sees his car on the TV. He sees it, and has taken two more steps before it registers with him. He comes to a stop and moves back to the doorway. The husband is on the couch with two golf ball-sized crystal balls in his hand, using his fingers to circle them around each other. He looks up and nods at Caleb but doesn’t say anything, and Caleb watches as the reporter tells them Dr. Stanton and his children have been reported missing. She tells them there have been signs of a struggle and blood found at the scene. A car found on the same street has drawn the interest of the police, and they show the car again, and then they show it being loaded onto the back of a truck.