Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

“Victim number two was a teacher, is it possible he taught Whitby?” I ask.

“We’ll know soon,” Schroder says. “Along with victim number one.”

“Victim number three, Hayward. It must be a safe bet the connection is with Ariel Chancellor. He simply picked the wrong moment to pick up a prostitute. Also I’m thinking, if Cole blamed Whitby’s lawyer, maybe he blamed the judge too. That makes the judge a potential target, and also might be a chance of catching Cole.”

“Good thinking,” Schroder says. “We’ll get the judge out of there and put some armed officers inside the house. Maybe we’ll catch a break and nail Cole breaking his way in.”

“Mrs. Whitby too,” I say, looking down at her mug shot, taken while her son fought for his life in a hospital room. In it her hair is sticking up at the back from where she spent a few hours slouched in the couch watching TV. Her eyes are half-closed, she’s drunk and tired, and looks like she just doesn’t give a damn about anything. “Like I said before, she set the ball rolling on all of this.”

“You should go back and talk to Ariel Chancellor,” he says. “Take Kent with you. There’s a whole lot of different questions you can ask her now that you couldn’t this morning. Maybe they’ve stayed in touch. Maybe Chancellor will be able to tell us something that can help track him down.”

“Sure,” I tell him. I head for the door.

He reaches into his pocket and grabs out the packet of Wake-E.

“You remember when we found her?” he asks.

I stop at the door and turn back. “I remember.”

“Landry was there too,” he says. “How the hell have fifteen years gone by?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m thinking, since Cole took Whitby out to the slaughterhouse,” Schroder says, “that means there’s some symmetry there. What do you think? You think he might go there again?”

I think of the snow, the blood, I think about how the slaughterhouse must look now, and I imagine Caleb Cole holed up there with the doctor and his family. If not there, then where else?

“It’s a good idea,” I tell him.

“I’ll check it out.”

“Want me to tag along?”

“I can handle it,” Schroder says, and he tosses a tablet into his mouth and I head out the door.

“Tick tock,” Caleb says.

“Please. .”

“Tick. And. .” Caleb says, then looks down at his watch, counts off a few beats in his head, “. . tock. Time’s up. It’s been two minutes.”

“No, no,” Stanton says.

“Which one?”

“I can’t.”

“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this,” Caleb says, and it’s true. “So be it.”

He picks up his knife. He walks over to Katy. He has to get it done. If he holds back, if he lets the doubts creep in, then he may not do what needs to be done. He has no room left for humanity, all he has room for is the plan, and if he pulls back now it’s not going to happen. He has to focus on that. He looks at Katy. He can’t think of her as Katy Kitten. He has to look at her as a tool. But God how she reminds him of his own daughter, the same way they. .

Stop it! Shit like that is only going to make it harder!

He moves toward Melanie instead.

Munchkin Mel. The same thing, really. .

“Please, please don’t,” Stanton says. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I am, I really am.”

“It doesn’t help.”

“Don’t do this! Fuck, fuck, don’t do this. You don’t have to do this!”

He crouches down over Melanie. “Choose somebody, Doctor, make it as painless as possible.”

“I can’t,” Stanton screams. “Don’t you see that? If it were you, if you’d had three children and had to decide, you couldn’t have done it either,” he says, and his words are quick and hopeful, as if there is enough logic in the idea to make Caleb stop doing this.

And it is a good point. But Caleb isn’t here to debate good points. He’s here to make Stanton suffer.

“Choose,” he says.

“It’s impossible.”

“I agree. It’s impossible, but you still have to choose. One dies now, or all three die now. Focus on that and it becomes less impossible.”

“You’re insane.”

“Maybe. It still doesn’t change the fact that if you don’t give me a name in the next five seconds you’re going to start seeing a lot of blood.”

“I-”

“One,” Caleb says.

“Wait-”

“Two,” he says, and he remembers giving his daughter similar countdowns, only he’d give her till the count of three to tidy up whatever mess she had just made or he’d put her in time-out. He’s giving Stanton two extra seconds. He’s being generous.

“Octavia. I choose Octavia.”

Caleb feels his stomach drop and his throat tighten. He straightens up and stares at Stanton and slowly shakes his head. “I don’t know whether to be impressed or disgusted, but I’m certainly surprised.”

“Fuck you.”

“Why don’t you like her?”

“I didn’t say that,” Stanton says, looking down.

“Yes you did. You wouldn’t have decided so quickly.” Caleb lifts his hands into the air, the knife catching the light coming through the dirty windows and sending a white spot across the wall like a shooting star. “You still had three seconds left. See, I think you knew all along who you were going to choose. Why is the decision so easy for you to make?”

“Are you so fucked in the head that you think this is easy for me? That it could be easy for anybody?”

Caleb scratches at his face. He ignores the jab and thinks about Octavia. He waggles the knife at Stanton and the shooting star races back and forth. Then he shakes his head. “It doesn’t make sense,” he says. “I mean, how you chose somebody so quickly. Less sense is how you chose the baby.”

“None of it makes sense. How about you choose, huh? How about you go and have a family and I make you choose who dies first.”

“Explain it to me,” Caleb says. “I used to be a math teacher. I understand about statistics. You must have weighed up values of life or something. Tell me. Or is it really that simple? Did you just choose the one you like the least?”

“I’ve done what you wanted,” Stanton says, looking up and looking defiant. “Are you happy? That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asks. “You sick, twisted fuck.”

“Happy? I’m not doing this to be happy,” Caleb says. “Look at you, you should be ripping your own arms off to try and get to me.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I thought it’d have been harder than this for you.”

“You’ve made your point, Caleb. You really have. Anything you do to my kids is just you getting off on hurting people.”

“Why don’t you like her? Is that why she doesn’t have her own nickname?”

“What?”

“You want something to match the others, right? How about Obsolete Octavia?”

“You’re wrong. I love her the same as the others.”

“Obsolete Octavia. I like it. And it does seem you have no use for her. However in this case you’re going to have to choose somebody else. When I said before I was going to start cutting off fingers, did I mention Octavia’s name?”

“Yes,” the doctor says, not looking so sure.

“Actually no. I would never cut the fingers off a baby. What is wrong with you?”

“With me? How can you-”

“Choose somebody else.”

“What?”

“You have to choose between the other two girls.”

The doctor stares at him, his eyes wide open-he’s hearing what Caleb is saying, Caleb is sure of it, he’s just not understanding it. Then he blinks quickly a few times as if trying to wake from a really bad dream. “You can’t do that,” he says, sounding like a kid in a playground defending himself to a teacher. “That isn’t what you said before, you can’t just change your mind like that. I made my decision! It’s not fair!”