Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

“What? What kind of problem?”

“With you and Cole. Are we in danger here of you sympathizing with him?”

“No, of course not.”

“Are you sure? I know you and him both went through similar things when you lost your daughters, and I know part of you probably doesn’t hate Cole for killing those he thinks is responsible, but he’s a bad guy and he’s hurting innocent people.”

I throw my hands up in the air. “Jesus, Carl, I know that, okay?”

He sticks with the cold stare. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” I say.

“Good,” he says, and gives a slow nod of acceptance. “I just had to be sure, because it would be a major fuckup, Tate, to be on his side.” He gives it a second to sink in, then carries on. “The evidence and case files have arrived from both Whitby cases,” Schroder says, “from where he hurt both girls.” Barlow sees us and his forehead raises up and he says or mouths the word ah to nobody in particular and heads in our direction. “They’re in the conference room,” Schroder says. “I haven’t had a chance to go through anything yet. And, just quickly, we have another problem.”

“We do?”

“At least you do. What the hell happened to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I heard a recording of your call for help. You sounded like you had a tennis ball jammed in your mouth.”

“Caleb hit me pretty good.”

“He must have. Are you sure you’re okay? You look a little unsteady.”

“I’m fine.”

“Okay. Well, next time I tell you to take somebody with you, how about you listen to me?”

Barlow reaches us. We swap how’s it goings with each other as we shake hands with him. He’s wearing a turtlenecked sweater and plaid pants. He’s looking exactly how you’d imagine a psychiatrist who’s about to head out for eighteen holes to look.

“I’ve read Whitby’s psychiatric file,” he says, and he puts on his grave face as his voice drops an octave, “and I can assure you that a man like that would never have been let out of my custody. He was a ticking time bomb,” he says, with all the accuracy that comes with hindsight and confirming my belief that psychology is a science that has evolved from many, many mistakes. “Now, tell me, how was Melanie Stanton found?”

Schroder spells it out. Melanie was found wrapped in a blanket and her clothes were covered in fake blood. She had been drugged. She woke up saying she was the one who’d been chosen. Across her forehead Caleb Cole had written I’m sorry. She was taken to the hospital and checked over, cleaned up, and put into a fresh change of clothes, where she woke up. Then she was brought to the station. So far she has been unresponsive to any questions.

“You don’t have a healthier environment?” Barlow asks.

“Like what?”

“Well, a room with pictures and crayons and toys would be a great start. Somewhere children can feel more comfortable.”

“This is a police station,” Schroder says.

“But you must interview children here, right?”

“We had a room like that,” he says, “but we had to extend the conference room. Look, the office is the best we can do,” Schroder says, and I can tell he’s trying not to sound pissed off, “and we don’t have time to mess around.”

“Detective, we’re going to need to make time. I can’t just. .”

“I know,” Schroder says, “but there are other lives on the line here, Doctor. That’s why I’ve called you. I have faith that you’ll do the best you can in the time we have.”

Barlow nods. “Well said, Detective,” he says, smiling. “So, what about her mother? What’s the situation there?”

“She’s on her way. She was out of the country with her boyfriend. Mother and father separated six months ago. She left him,” he says, and explains the situation.

“We should wait for her,” he says. “It may help.”

Schroder shakes his head while I do the talking. “We waited for you,” I say, “and we’re all out of waiting.”

“If time is what you’re worried about, then I need to go in alone,” Barlow says, “and when her mother arrives, don’t send her in-let me finish first. If she walked out on her family, then her showing up now may only make Melanie more prone to shutting down.”

“I need to go with you,” Schroder says.

“No, absolutely not,” he says, shaking his head. “Two grown men both trying to talk to an eleven-year-old girl? It will only frighten and stress her even more, especially when one of those men is desperate for answers. She isn’t a suspect here, she’s a witness, but more than a witness she’s a young girl who’s scared and who doesn’t know where her family is. Trust me, if I go in alone there’s a chance I can bring her out of her shell, and if you come in with me, she might not talk for a week. If at all. And I know what you want me to ask, Detective. You want to know what the man who took her said. You want to know what he did to them, and you want to know if she heard where he’s going next. He left her alive, Detectives, so I very much doubt he did that with the risk she can be of any help.”

“Or maybe whatever he has planned will be over before anything she says can be of any help,” I offer.

Barlow nods. “Good point,” he says. “Now, gentlemen, you called me because you know I can help. How about you let me go ahead and do my job?”

Barlow heads into Schroder’s office, and I head into the conference room for what I’m hoping is going to be nap time, but the knife betrays any hope of that. It’s one of those joke-shop knives, where the blade slides back into the handle. It’s sealed up in a plastic bag and sits right in the middle of the table. When I was a kid one of my friends at school used to keep stabbing himself with one of those knifes as a joke. It wasn’t funny back then, even less funny now. Dr. Stanton is out there somewhere believing his older daughter is dead, seemingly murdered by a toy that’s designed to give people a bit of a laugh.

The case files have been stacked on the desks. Two other detectives are going through them. We’re careful to keep the Whitby and the Cole case files separate. I sit down and feel like resting my head on the desk and switching off for a few hours, but the doctor’s warning is weighing heavily on my mind and I’m worried if my head touches anything other than a pillow it might be lights out permanently. I find a photograph of Jessica Cole taken not long before she died, this beautiful little girl that reminds me of my own daughter. Jessica died out of an act of intent; my own daughter, Emily, died out of an act of stupidity. One man was evil, one man was drunk, the result was the same. However maybe things aren’t that black and white. One man was sick, one man was an addict, neither man was fully in control of himself. Does that make it any easier to deal with? No. If anything it makes it harder. It means other people could have stepped in and never did. Doctors, shrinks, family, or friends-where the hell were these people to get Whitby the medical attention he needed, or to stop Quentin James, the man who killed my daughter, from buying another drink?

Schroder is partly right. I can feel a connection with Cole. I can understand his need for revenge-but he’s targeting the wrong people. He took care of James Whitby fifteen years ago and it should have ended there. I took care of Quentin James and it stopped with Quentin James. I blame society for letting him get behind the wheel of a car, I blame the courts for not putting him behind bars for the numerous other drunk-driving convictions he’d had, but not enough to kill the lawyer who defended him, the judge who failed to put him away, the bartender who sold him his last drink. If Cole had stuck to killing only James Whitby I wouldn’t have given him a medal, but I would certainly have understood his pain.