Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

“Dr. Forster is on his way too. I’m about ten minutes away.”

“Wait, wait, you said she’s awake?”

“Yes.”

“Bridget is awake.”

“Yes, Theo, she’s awake.”

“I’m. . I’m on my way,” I say.

I hang up and move into the living room. I feel light-headed. My mouth is dry. I fumble with the phone and actually miss dropping it into my pocket and it hits the floor, then I almost step on it.

“Theo?” Schroder says.

I’m scared Nurse Hamilton is going to call back and tell me she was just joking, I’m excited that for the first time in a long time a life changing phone call is going to be a good thing rather than a bad one. Schroder is looking at me. My hands are shaking.

“Theo?”

I open my mouth to answer him, but it’s so dry that the words just get caught at the back of my throat. I try to build up some moisture.

“Theo? What is it?”

“I have to go.”

“Go? Go where?”

“Bridget-she’s. . she’s out of her coma.”

“Jesus,” he says, and he stops himself from coming forward and putting his hands on my shoulders. “Theo, that’s. . that’s fantastic.”

I head for the door.

“Wait,” he says, following me.

“What?”

“Oh Jesus, there’s no way to say this without sounding like a prick, but you can’t leave.”

“What?”

“You can’t compromise the investigation.”

“What?”

“We got headlights,” one of the officers says. He’s crouched behind the living room window. He’s holding the curtain back about an inch. “They’re slowing down,” he says. “Wait, wait, it’s coming to a stop. About three houses away. It’s just sitting there. No movement.”

“He knows you, Theo,” Schroder says to me. “If Cole is on his way, if he sees you walking out that door, or walking down the street, it’ll ruin everything.”

“I have to go,” I tell him.

He nods. “I know,” he says, “I know you do. But you can’t. Not yet. Soon, but not yet.” He puts his hand on my shoulder and I shrug it off.

“I swear, Carl, if you try to stop me, I’ll fucking hit you.”

“Ladies,” Detective Kent says, also looking through the curtain now and glancing back at us, “the car is still there. It might be showtime.”

“The headlights are still on-I can’t even tell what kind of car it is, and I can’t tell how many people are inside,” the officer says. “Should we send someone out there?”

“I’ll go,” I say.

“No. Not yet,” Schroder says. He turns toward me. “Theo, it’s been three years. I’m just asking you for another few minutes.”

“Do you even know how that sounds?”

“Yes,” he says.

“Carl, right now I don’t care about Caleb Cole, I don’t care about the case, all I care about is seeing Bridget.”

“Think of Katy Stanton,” he says, and I do, and it works.

“Five minutes,” I tell him. “And if that isn’t Cole out there now, there’s no way you can stop me from leaving.”

He nods, but I’m pretty sure he thinks between the five of them they can stop me from doing anything. I don’t think they can.

“Let’s just go out there,” I say.

“I don’t want to spook him, and we don’t even know if it is Cole. Could be he’s sent somebody else, another pizza boy even,” Schroder says, and then he gets on the radio and tells two of the unmarked cars to move in a few blocks. “If he takes off, we’ll still get him,” he says.

“Whoever it is,” Detective Kent says, “they’re still in there. If it were a neighbor they’d just go up the driveway. If it’s a friend they’d have gotten out by now.”

“I agree,” I say to Schroder. “We can go out there, sneak up from behind and-”

“Hang on,” the officer says. “The lights just switched off. Still no movement though. It looks similar to the doctor’s car but it looks similar to about a thousand cars. Damn it, I can’t tell from here, but I can see a partial plate. I don’t think it’s a match.”

The comment seems to take the tension out of the room.

“Do you see that?” Kent asks.

“Yeah I do.”

“What?” Schroder asks.

“The door has just opened, just the driver’s door,” Kent says. “One person inside. Male. Caucasian. Can’t get a good look at him. Could be our suspect.”

“Who else could it be?” Hutton asks.

“He’s getting out,” the officer says. “Now he’s standing by the side of the car looking at the house. He’s just closed the door.”

The tension comes back.

“Make sure he doesn’t see you,” Schroder says.

“He’s not moving anywhere. Now he’s turning a full circle, looking at the other houses. Now he’s coming forward,” he says, his voice getting quicker with excitement. “He’s coming this way, walking slowly. Jesus, my grandmother can walk faster than this guy.”

“Is it him?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m going out there,” I say to Schroder.

“Just wait,” he says. “Stick with the plan, Tate. Let him come to us,” he says, and he’s right but that doesn’t dull the desire to rush out there. “We have to be careful. If Stanton and his daughter aren’t in the car, then they’re somewhere else, and we need Cole to give up their location. If Tabitha is right about Cole wanting to die and we go running out there, for all we know he might jam a knife into his own throat.”

I nod. I get his point.

“He’s coming straight for us,” the officer says.

“You and you,” Schroder says, pointing to the other officer and Detective Kent, “circle out the back door and around the side of the yard but don’t approach the suspect. Just be ready to cut off his escape route. Tate, get ready, the moment he reaches the doorstep we’re on him, okay? Not before then. Let’s-”

“We’ve got another vehicle,” the officer says. “The guy is still coming toward us. The other car isn’t worrying him. Shit, we’ve got two more vehicles. They’re both slowing down. Our suspect is pausing, he’s looking back but not going anywhere. They’re not cars, they’re vans.”

“What the hell is going on?” Schroder asks.

“They’re parking right outside. Shit, our suspect is heading back to his car.”

“We have to go,” I say.

“Go, go, go,” Schroder shouts, and we all rush toward the door while the two who went out the back rush around the side of the yard. All we can hear is footsteps as our feet pound into the floor. The door is already unlocked and I’m the first one through it.

We all converge on the man at the same time. People are getting out of their vans. They’re holding lights and cameras. Shit. Schroder is the first to reach Caleb Cole, who is now looking at us without an ounce of surprise on his face and, who, it turns out, isn’t Caleb Cole at all.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Schroder asks, grabbing him by the collar.

“I saw the news, Detectives,” Jonas Jones says, looking from Schroder to me, all of it caught under the harsh glare of the camera lights. Schroder glances at the cameras and lets go of the front of Jonas’s shirt.

Jonas takes a step back, then straightens it, then runs a hand over his hair, making sure it’s all in place. “I know how much Octavia Stanton needs her medication,” he says. “I knew it before it was even on the news. The thing is, Detectives,” he says, adjusting his shirt one more time, “this is where Jessica Cole told me I would find her.”

The camera lights wake up the thing living inside my head, it rolls over and taps at the walls briefly before falling back asleep.

“You need to get the hell out of here!” Schroder yells, directing the words at everybody on the street. He pulls out his handcuffs and seems to realize two very important things. The first is that there is nothing he can arrest Jonas for except being a weasel. It’s a public street and Jones hasn’t broken any laws, and the same goes for the reporters sending out a live feed to the rest of the country and a warning to Caleb Cole.