Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

“You. You’re the guy from last night,” he says, puffing and leaning forward with his hands on his knees. “You’ve been following me?”

I try to talk. The words don’t form the way they should, but I grab hold of them, I force them out and they’re a little clearer now. The headache is leaving.

“Caleb,” I say, “I can shelp.”

“Let me do what I have to do,” he says, having to yell to be heard over the dog as it barks and bangs its paws against the other side of the fence, the taste of blood not enough for it. My cell phone must have hung up in the fall because it starts ringing.

“You can’t, can’t. .” I say, and have to spend a few seconds sucking in air. “The girls, shoe can’t shurt them.”

“What kind of monster do you think I am?”

He kicks me again, then takes off toward the house, runs down the side of it, and is gone. I get to my knees but can’t get any further. I roll onto my back and grab my phone. Before I can answer it the people from next door put their heads over the fence.

“You kicked my dog, you fucker,” one of them says, and he starts to come over. He’s joined by his buddy who says “you’re going to fucking pay.” Both of them have shaved heads with similar scars running across them that look like badges of honor. Maybe they got that way playing with knives.

I pull out my badge and show it to them. They look at each other, passing a look as if unsure of what to do next, unsure whether kicking a police officer to death is going to be worth the years in jail they’ll have to spend for it. I can already see their lawyers going to work, showing pictures of their dog and saying how it was my fault it bit me, how as humanitarians these two men had to defend its honor, that only coldhearted individuals wouldn’t have kicked the shit out of me.

“Just go back inside,” I tell them, the words feeling right now. “Backup is here,” I say, knowing how bad things are going to get if they don’t believe me. “Go back inside and don’t do anything stupid.”

“Pig,” one of them says, and the other one spits on me and the guy who spoke seems to hate the idea he didn’t spit on me first, so makes up for it by spitting on me twice. Then they climb down off the fence, yell at the dog, and take it inside.

My phone has stopped ringing. I wipe the spit off of me onto the lawn. I follow the path Cole took out onto the street, taking as much weight off my left leg as I can. Nobody comes out of the house. My pants are damaged, and when I roll them up there’s a row of puncture holes, all of them leaking blood. The phone starts ringing again. There is no sign of Cole. No sign of any of the patrol cars.

I sit down on the curb and put the phone to my ear. “Yeah?”

“We’re at the slaughterhouse,” Schroder says, and I have to press my finger into my other ear to drown out the dog, but instead all I can hear is my heart beating. “Cole was here. So was Dr. Stanton. Tate, one of the girls, Cole has left one of the girls for us to find. She’s fine, Tate, a little scared, but other than frightening her, Cole hasn’t hurt her at all.”

Caleb’s hands hurt. Wrapping them around that man’s throat, Jesus, his fingers are so sore he could swear the pain would be easier to deal with if he just chopped them off. And the running-another dozen steps and he’d have dropped dead. His right hip feels like it’s swiveling on glass, both legs feel like metal spikes have been driven through the balls of his feet into his shins. He has to control the pain, otherwise he’s going to have a hard time killing the judge.

He has no idea who the man is. If he’s been followed, then. . but no, he wasn’t followed, the man was at Ariel’s house first. So he has to be a cop, and if so, then the police have made the connection. But what about the cemetery last night? A coincidence?

The man referred to him by name.

He reaches the doctor’s car. The day is getting darker. Katy is asleep in the back, and Octavia is in the front in the car seat with a blanket pulled tightly from the headrest to the floor, acting like a tent over her seat. Last thing he needed was somebody seeing her and calling the police. He puts a small piece of duct tape over the little girl’s mouth to keep her quiet. Katy is also covered by a blanket, but the pills he ground up into her drink are keeping her from complaining. More cops will be on the way. He starts the car and pulls calmly from the curb, careful not to draw attention to himself even though every instinct is telling him to put his foot down and get the hell out of here. He switches on the lights. Where are the cops? He doesn’t see them and he keeps turning corners so he won’t have to, putting distance between him and the house. He leaves the suburb and heads toward town, having to stop and wait at three green lights where intersections are jammed to a halt with brightly colored Japanese cars, all of them being driven by young men listening to loud music.

Still no cops.

He’s not a monster, and when this is over, people will see that. He’s a man trying to bring balance to the world. What about the next child rapist to be treated and released by Dr. Stanton? What of the next baby killer to be defended by Victoria Brown to be released on the world, their punishment no greater than a slap on the wrist? No, he’s not the monster, they are-they are monsters of this world for defending those people, and they must learn there are consequences for their actions.

The judge signed off on the entire thing, the judge was happy to sentence James Whitby to no more than two years in a mental hospital and never follow it up. The judge was happy to wash his hands clean of the entire affair, damn the consequences, and move on to the next case. So right now those consequences are going to come back and damn him.

If the police know him by name, is it possible they know who the rest of his targets are? He is two blocks from the judge’s house when he decides it isn’t just possible, but extremely likely.

He needs a different car, but he has no idea how to get one. He would hear stories in jail about how to steal one. It sounded difficult. Some would say you had to touch certain wires. Others said you just jam a flathead screwdriver as far as you can into the ignition until you break the lock, turning the screwdriver into a key. Even if he could figure that shit out he doesn’t think his fingers would be nimble enough to do the work. He could always pull a knife on somebody, carjack them, but he can’t see that scenario going well. He sees police chases and people getting hurt needlessly. Like the cop back at Ariel’s house-he could have choked him, or left him to that dog, but he wasn’t to blame for any of this. Cops were the ones that had tried to help him fifteen years ago. Cops were the ones who tried to put James Whitby away two years before that.

It’s five fifteen and the streetlights come on. He drives around the block and parks one street over outside the same number house as the judge. He sits in the car and watches the evening getting darker. He switches on his phone. Over the weeks since being out of jail, he’s eaten pizza at least every second night. It was his favorite food before being sent away, and he’s been making up for not having a slice in fifteen years. He calls the number from memory and he orders three pizzas along with garlic bread and fries, and says he’ll pay by cash. The person repeats the order back to him, and then he gives the judge’s address. The person tells him it’ll be there within thirty minutes, otherwise his next order will be free. In some movies he’s seen on TV over the last few weeks the police can track a cell phone signal in a matter of a minute; other times they have to use different cell towers in the area to try and triangulate it. Caleb doesn’t know how difficult it really is, but Caleb switches the phone off, not wanting to take the risk, unsure of how the police would have his number anyway. He keeps the blankets over the girls, neither of them show any sign of waking. When Jessica was small and couldn’t sleep, he’d put her in the car and drive around the block over and over until she drifted off, then he’d drive around the block once more for good measure, then slowly pull back into the driveway and sneak her into her room. He would have done that a hundred times over a few years, but they all merge into one memory, one that he smiles at as he climbs out of the car fifteen minutes after making the call.