Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

Erin gives an exaggerated sigh, but then she and the boyfriend disappear into the office, and Barlow hands Melanie a ten-dollar note. “Go and get us something from the vending machine,” he tells her. “I’m starving.”

“What do you want?”

“I’ll have the same as what you’re having.”

She disappears. Barlow doesn’t suggest we all hide before she comes back.

“Sweet reunion,” Schroder says.

“I had tears in my eyes,” I say. “You think you can help?”

“You mean do you think I can explain to an eleven-year-old girl what a bitch her mother is for walking out on them? At the same time I have to explain why her dad chose her over the others.” He shakes his head. “All I’d be doing is justifying Melanie’s feelings. Still, I’ll see what I can do.”

“She’s opened up a lot since you’ve been here,” Schroder says, nodding toward the vending machine. “Did she give any idea what panicked Cole into changing his plans?”

“Nothing. Just that this morning his plan was to kill them tonight in the slaughterhouse, and this afternoon he came rushing back and had changed his mind.”

“When we found the car it was surrounded by reporters,” I say. “It would have made the news. It’s possible that did it.”

“He’s probably addicted to the news,” Barlow says. “He’ll be trying to learn what he can in an attempt to stay ahead. He must know it can only be a matter of time before he’s caught.”

“If he’s addicted to the news, can we use that somehow?” I ask. “Can we leak some information, true or false, that might make him make a mistake or reveal himself?”

“I’m not sure,” Barlow says. “Maybe. Let’s think about how.”

Detective Hutton comes over and interrupts us. “We just got a witness hit on Cole,” he says, then looks down at his notepad. “Guy by the name of Derek Templeton. He was a neighbor of Caleb Cole’s years ago. Says he just saw him hanging around outside his old house a few minutes ago. He thought he was talking to something in the trunk of his car before taking off again. Says Cole looks different, but it was definitely him.”

“Get a patrol car out there to take a look around, then have them sit on the house,” Schroder says.

“Also, since we released Cole’s picture and details to the media, we’ve had a few psychics leaving messages.”

“Jones?”

“Among others. They’re all saying the same thing-that they have information.”

“They say what that info is?”

“No. But they did say they wanted to talk to somebody higher up the food chain, and would want to be recognized for their help. A few of them said you wouldn’t regret calling them back. You want to call them?”

“What do you think?”

Hutton nods and wanders off, digging into his pockets looking for something on the way, something edible I imagine.

“This is the house he used to own?” Barlow asks. “I assume he doesn’t own it anymore?”

“It was sold when he went to jail,” Schroder says.

“Unlikely the people inside it are posed any threat,” Barlow says, “but it’s interesting. Since his plans have changed, it’s quite possible right now he has nowhere to go. He can’t go back anywhere that we know he’s been. He wants access to the people on the rest of his list,” Barlow continues.

“So where do we look?” Schroder asks.

“Locations from his past, from his daughter’s life. The crime scenes, somewhere to do with Whitby. The answer may be in your case files. He used to be a teacher? Then try his school. Try the cemetery where his family is. Try his childhood home. His childhood school. He play sport? Then try a park somewhere, or a clubhouse. Jessica was murdered in the slaughterhouse, but what about the place she was abducted from? Try there. And of course James Whitby’s mother.”

Barlow looks at both of us, giving us both the most serious look a man with a comb-over can muster before carrying on. “It’s going to come down to how badly Cole wants to make these people pay,” he says, then pauses, “and at what point he’s ready to cut his losses and end things with Dr. Stanton. If I were a betting man, I would say he isn’t going to be satisfied unless he can get to the mother. After all, behind any serial killer you’ll usually find a domineering mother or mother figure, and you certainly had that in James Whitby’s case. Look at what that woman did to her son, look at what she made him. This woman-this woman,” he says, and doesn’t seem to know how to finish.

“And Ariel Chancellor?” I ask.

“He’s probably trying to reach out to her. If you find her, you might find him.”

“We’re not having any luck finding her. We’ve had patrol cars looking for her for the last three hours,” Schroder says.

“You tried her parents?” Barlow asks.

Schroder looks at me, and I shrug. “Worth a shot,” I say.

“It’s worth more than that,” Barlow says. “If Ariel and Jessica were best friends, then Ariel’s parents would have known Jessica’s parents too. Maybe they can offer some perspective. Maybe they’ll have a location in mind.”

“Let’s go back a few steps,” Schroder says. “It still doesn’t add up. Even if Cole pretends to kill the other girls, he won’t be doing what was done to him because Stanton will find out he’s been lied to. It’s not the same.”

“He won’t know,” Barlow says, “because when Cole is done with the girls I have no doubt Nicholas Stanton is going to die. And I have no doubt that after going through what he believes to be happening, Nicholas will be begging for death. I mean, who wouldn’t be after seeing that?”

“So why hasn’t he done it already? If he knows we have everybody from fifteen years ago under guard, why not finish it now?” I ask.

Barlow shrugs. “Who’s to say he hasn’t already?”

It’s a chilling thought.

“Which means if he hasn’t done it already, he has something else in mind,” I say.

Barlow nods. “And Caleb is the only one who knows what that is.”

Caleb parks on a quiet street near town behind a car that is similar to the one he’s driving right down to the color, and climbs out. He tightens his jacket around him and blows into his hands. Octavia is staring at him through the window, the juice box in her hand. Katy is watching too. There are wisps of fog, only just a few, up high around the bulbs of the streetlights. It takes him a minute to use the pocketknife he found in the glove compartment to unscrew each plate. He puts the old ones on the other car, hoping the owner won’t immediately notice. He remembers from his old life that when you had to take something apart, or fix something, there would always be one screw that would be way too tight and the head of it would strip away, making it useless. Every two-minute job in his life that required the use of a tool became a thirty-minute ordeal.

But not this time. Even the two of the eight screws that are rusted come away without much effort. He’ll take that as an omen. And why not? He’s owed some good omens. The doctor stays quiet in the trunk.

He gets back into the car. This all should have been over by now. He fucked up last night. He should have paced himself, ignored that asshole from town who paid for Ariel, just gotten into his car and gone door-to-door like a salesman, selling the people responsible for all of this a death that was long overdue.

He wanted to finish it in the slaughterhouse, but the reality is he can finish it on the side of the road if he has to.

Judge Latham-if he had to choose to let one of the two slide, it would be him. The judge made a decision on the facts presented to him. He believed the defending lawyers and the doctor-he deserves to be punished, and maybe in another life that will happen.