Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

“Listen, Doctor, I’m really sorry for what I’ve done, but I’m better now,” Caleb says, turning his palms upward and shrugging a little. “I’m good and want to be part of society once again, so give me some pills that I’ll try to remember to take and half an hour of counseling and I’ll be fine. Isn’t that what I need to say for your forgiveness?”

“Jesus, it isn’t like that! It’s not fucking like that, Caleb. We work, we try our hardest to make people better.”

Caleb ignores him. “It wasn’t my fault, I was raised wrong, I couldn’t help myself, just give me some antidepressants and I’ll be fine. See? You believe me, right? You believed James Whitby. Would you have believed him if it had been your daughter he fucked and wanted to kill? Let’s see, I’ve killed one of your daughters, maybe two-I can’t quite remember-”

“You. . you’ve. .”

“-because I have a mental problem and get confused real easy. Will you defend me, Doctor? If I turn myself in, will you get up on the witness stand and tell the world it wasn’t my fault?” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. “You’re happy to defend people, aren’t you, when it’s not your family who’s been hurt.”

“Is that. . is that what all of this is about? You want me to get up on the stand and defend you, to what, to prove that I’m a hypocrite? Because you think that I think it only matters when it’s my family?”

“Doesn’t it?”

“No, of course not.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter anyway, because that’s not what I’m asking. You don’t get to replay that moment from seventeen years ago, Stanton. You get to replay my moment from fifteen years ago.”

“Please, please, don’t hurt my family,” Stanton says, crying again.

“When you let him out, why didn’t you put him in a house on your street?”

“Please. . please don’t hurt anybody else.”

“Well, it’s late now,” he says, playing with his phone. “And I’m tired, and if I don’t get enough rest I won’t have the strength to deal with your third daughter tomorrow. See this?” he says, holding up the phone. “Cameras have changed a lot since I’ve been in jail. Last time I used a camera I had to take the film into the store to get developed. You always had to pick and choose when you were going to push that button, because every snap cost you money. Now every cell phone has a camera in it, now everybody is a photographer, every camera has a hundred functions, but no matter how you shoot a dead baby it’s always going to look dead.”

He turns the screen toward Stanton so he can see it. The glow lights him up.

“Take a look,” Caleb says, and he grabs Stanton’s hair and twists his head until his face lines up with the screen. The picture is of Octavia lying on the floor facedown, her body surrounded by blood. There’s a bloody knife lying next to her.

“You. . you stabbed her?”

“Just the once,” he answers, “and I sedated her before she died.” He slips the phone into his pocket, then puts the duct tape back across Stanton’s mouth. “I suggest you get a good night’s sleep-tomorrow is going to be an important day for you. Tomorrow you’re going to have to convince me not to kill Katy because I like her, and you like her too. It’s obvious she’s your favorite because she’s the one you never picked to die. You see, Stanton, all of this, this is just me warming up. The best part. .,” he says, “the best part is still to come.”

Tabitha Jenkins has her wrists tied behind her, her feet bound, and duct tape across her mouth. Her eyes are closed. She looks dead, except for the slight rise and fall of her chest. On the floor next to the bed is a baby that looks like Octavia, though I’ve found that except for my own daughter, all one-year-olds look the same. She is strapped into a car seat. Her eyes are wide open and she’s staring right at me with a very confused look on her face. There is tomato sauce all over the front of her one-piece pajama outfit.

The knife is no longer down by my side. Instead it’s in front of my body. My heart is racing and I want to rush into the room. I want to scoop Octavia up and shout out with excitement. I keep hold of those desires and stay calm and move in slowly, looking left and right, waiting for Caleb to appear like he did earlier today. Only he doesn’t, and I reach Octavia and crouch down next to her and give her a big smile.

“Hello, Octavia,” I tell her. “My name is Theo.”

“Hello-zies,” she says, smiling back.

“Is there anybody else here?” I ask her, knowing I could probably get more information from the seat she’s strapped into than from her.

“Bufwiffy,” she says, then her face scrunches up into a tight little ball and she turns red for a few seconds before relaxing, sending out a stench that makes my eyes water.

“Jesus,” I say, standing back up.

I shake Tabitha and she stirs but only a little. I cut her bindings and remove the duct tape, then make my way back through the house, checking the same rooms, the hallway, the living room, back the way I came in and passing the tomato sauce on the floor that now makes sense. Caleb has faked killing Octavia. I check to make sure the doors are locked and I secure the dead bolts. When I’m satisfied we’re alone, I head back down to the bedroom. I pick Tabitha up. She’s heavier than I thought she would be for somebody so slim, or maybe I’m just a lot weaker than I remember. My leg hurts from the dog bites as I walk down to the bathroom and my back threatens to slip a disc as I lower her into the shower. Her eyes open a little wider and her body flinches when I turn on the water. It’s cold for ten seconds before warming up. I stand back, not wanting to get wet. Her hair is pasted to her face and her clothes cling to her skin and she has her face pointing at the floor. Slowly she raises her head a little and puts her hands over her face.

“I’m awake,” Tabitha says, but she doesn’t sound it.

“Tabitha, my name is Detective Inspector Theodore Tate,” I say, talking loudly to be heard over the shower. “Can you understand me?”

“Understand me,” she repeats, the water splashing off her face.

“Tabitha? Where is Caleb?”

“Caleb,” she says, “he’s not a bad man.”

“How long ago was he here?”

“He’s just doing bad things,” she says, blinking heavily.

“Tabitha? When was he here?”

“Don’t know.”

“Is he coming back?”

“Don’t know,” she says, and she focuses on me for the first time. “Who are you? A cop?”

“Yes. My name is Theodore Tate.”

“It was an accident,” she says. “I didn’t mean it.”

She rests her head against the wall of the shower and holds her hands above her eyes like a visor, shielding them from water. She wraps her arms around her legs and rests her chin on her knees.

“Tabitha,” I say, and she looks up at me. “Is Caleb coming back? Do you know where he is?”

“No,” she says, staring at her feet. “He didn’t say.”

I step into the hallway. I check on Octavia and think about opening a window to help with the smell, but don’t want to give Caleb an outlet to sneak inside, not that I think he’s coming back. Octavia is okay and seems to be enjoying the smell as much as she seems to enjoy staring at her fingers, which in this case is a lot. I grab my cell phone and call Schroder.

“I’ve found Octavia Stanton,” I tell him.

“You what? Where?”

“At Tabitha Jenkins’s house.”

“What? You. . what? What are you doing there? Is the girl okay? What about the others? What about Cole?”

I update him, telling him I wanted to speak to Tabitha on the chance that Cole had approached her, not mentioning the real reason, and Schroder is happy to believe it.