Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

“You can’t stay here, Caleb,” she says. “And I should have gone to the police back then.”

“Then this life,” he says, spreading his arms, “wouldn’t be yours. Your girlfriend would be with somebody else, standing in photos hanging on some other woman’s wall. The people who come to you for help, they would go elsewhere and maybe they wouldn’t have somebody care about them the same way you do. The people you’re helping, are you really going to turn your back on them? Is that what you want?”

“What I want is for you to leave, and for you to leave alone.” She gets up from the table and moves toward him. “The others can stay.”

“No.”

“Please, Caleb,” she says, and she reaches out and puts a hand on his arm and it takes him back to that day in jail when she cried after he told her she had to live for Jessica too. He had put a hand on her shoulder and a guard had come over and physically separated them. Caleb had shoved him. The guard fell over and that gave Caleb five seconds to hug Tabitha. She returned the hug. It felt amazing. She promised she would always remember Jessica and honor that memory. Then two guards separated them. They forced him back to his cell. They beat him when they got there. They broke one of his ribs.

He was thankful for her visit.

She never came back.

Her touch now relaxes him. He doesn’t feel so alone. “You can’t carry on like this. It will kill you.”

“That’s the plan.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She pulls away her hand and puts it to her mouth. “Oh my God, you don’t want to live through this, do you?”

He can hear Octavia snoring softly from the living room. Katy is in the hallway staring at them, the cookie in her hand. There’s a bite mark out of it but she isn’t chewing-she’s motionless, listening. He wonders how much of the conversation she has heard. He can’t let her talk to her father.

“The only thing I have to live for is justice. When I have that, there is nothing left.”

“You’re going to kill yourself?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then what?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

“I can’t go back to jail.”

“There are circumstances behind what you did, you can plead temporary insanity, you can-”

“No,” he says. “There were circumstances last time too.”

“Caleb-”

“I’m not going to kill myself,” he says.

“What then?”

“Can we stay here or not?”

“No. But you’re not leaving with those children.”

He shakes his head. “They’re coming with me.”

She blocks his view of Katy. “I mean it,” she says. “I promise I won’t call the police, not straightaway. I’ll give you thirty minutes. That gives you plenty of time to go anywhere in the city. It gives you time to think about what you want to do next.”

“I need them.”

“You only need their father, and you’ll still have him. Part of me hates him too. I know what he did to you, I do, and right now I’m offering to help you, Caleb. I’m going to compromise for the safety of these girls. I’m going to let you drive away with their father as long as you leave the girls here. Even if you don’t intend them any harm, it can still come to them. What if the police try to stop you and you crash your car? Or there are shots fired and one of them is hit? What if Katy gets so scared she gets hurt trying to run away?”

“They’re going to be okay,” he says.

“But you can’t know that! What happens here is permanent. You’re scaring these children, Caleb, you really are.”

“How about this,” he says. “You call Wendy and tell her. .”

She leans in and at first he thinks she’s going to slap him, or beat his chest with her fists, and he stands solid, allowing her to do it, only instead she leans in and hugs him. He can smell her hair, her skin, and he likes it. It makes him think of his wife, makes him realize how long it’s been since he’s held on to a woman. He can feel the anger draining away from him.

“I’m not going to help you hurt anybody,” she says, her voice soft and soothing and warm against his skin, and he imagines it’s the same voice she uses on those she helps. “Please, Caleb, for my sake, and for Jessica’s, let’s make sure no more children are hurt.”

He nods. Hurt children are the last thing he wants. “When is Wendy due home?” he asks.

“Soon.”

“How soon?”

“Any minute now.”

He pulls back from her and holds her by the shoulders. “You’re lying,” he says. “Please, just tell me the truth.”

“She’s visiting her parents. She’s in Auckland. I’ll be picking her up from the airport tomorrow night.”

“In that case I have another plan,” he says, and he grabs her by the arm and leads her into the bedroom.

Schroder calls me as I walk down the path to my car. He tells me they still don’t have Caleb Cole in custody. I wasn’t really expecting that he would. He says there is still no sign of Ariel Chancellor. That doesn’t surprise me either. He doesn’t tell me anything that I didn’t know before leaving the station earlier.

“Just the same bullshit psychics calling us wanting their fifteen minutes. Have you learned anything new?” he asks. He sounds desperate, but not desperate enough to have given those psychics a call back. A day ago I was just a guy giving a drunk detective a lift to a crime scene. Today he’s hoping I have some answers.

“I’ve learned dog bites hurt like a bitch,” I tell him, then update him on the letters. “Hopefully they’ll give up something. I’ll be back soon,” I tell him, and climb into my car.

I don’t bother going through the letters I didn’t get to when I sat on Chancellor’s doorstep earlier. I put them all down, except for the one Harvey gave me in the end. I open the envelope and slide it out, hoping there’ll be something in it that will help end this madness.

Dear Ariel,

I know it’s been a while since I last wrote to you, and I know what you must think of me. I just want to start out by saying I’m sorry. I’ve written you some pretty nasty letters over the years, but I’m okay now. I’ve dealt with things and can see none of it was your fault. It never was, and I genuinely feel sick at ever blaming you when the blame is with others. I wish you all the best in your future. I ask that you remember Jessica and honor her memory by being the best person you can be. I see you as a daughter, maybe as a replacement daughter, I don’t know, but I do love you and do want all the best for you.

Jail is tough. I hate it here. Does it make me regret what I did? No, of course not. I still have seven years to go in here, but there are girls out there now who are sixteen or seventeen or eighteen years old who would have been dead if I hadn’t taken care of James Whitby. It’s possible you are one of those girls. Whitby was obsessed with you, and who knows what he would have done? Two more years in a hospital with Dr. Stanton and he would have been “cured” and fit for life, free to carry on with his obsessions-that’s if he had even been sentenced. If he had been placed in your neighborhood again, then what? I do have some regrets I suppose. I could have waited and killed him when he was released and hidden his body, I could have tried to have gotten away with it, but that’s in the past, and anyway, the prisons and hospitals don’t exactly let the public know when inmates are being released, or where they are being placed. I will be counting on that too, when it’s my time to be free.

Today a girl came to see me. She used to be just like you. Young, beautiful, smart, compassionate. Two years before James Whitby killed Jessica, he tried doing the same thing to her. She was the one he was supposed to go to jail for but never did. James Whitby hurt her, but so did many others by letting her down.