Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

I don’t know. If I call for backup, will Cole kill her?

If he does, can I live with that?

If I kill Mrs. Whitby, can I live with that?

Can I handle going back to jail?

Selfishly, that’s what it comes down to. No, no I can’t. Not with Bridget coming back to me.

I carry on driving, getting my cell phone out of my pocket. I hit the outskirts of town, and I hit them fast, coming out onto one of the main avenues where there have to be at least two hundred boy-racers all parked up on the road, blocking traffic. Fuck. I drive up over the medium strip and down into the oncoming lanes, which are empty. Up ahead I can see the lights of a fire truck and the orange glow of flames. I call Schroder. It rings a few times. He picks it up.

“Theo,” he says, and I can hear his wife in the background and a crying baby. I can tell by the tone of his voice he’s expecting bad news. He’s expecting me to tell him that Bridget has died.

“I need your help,” I tell him.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know whether I’m calling you as a friend or as a cop.”

“It’s as a friend, Theo. I’m not a cop, not tonight. Maybe not ever again.”

“Then it’s as my friend.”

“Okay, Theo, you definitely have my attention. What’s happened?”

“Caleb Cole came to see me.”

“He what?”

“Just now.”

“And he’s still there?”

“No. He left.”

“You let him leave?”

I tell him what happened. It takes up three of the thirty minutes Cole gave me. In those three minutes I pass two burning cars, one group of people watching a fist fight, and a purple car driving very slowly also in the wrong direction, with two flat tires and sparks flying up from the rims where they are shredding away and flapping at the neon lights below.

When I’m done Schroder is silent, but I can hear him popping open his packet of Wake-E, and a moment later he starts munching on a tablet.

“Well?”

“Well, you should ring Detective Kent, or ring Stevens directly. And of course you can’t kill her,” he says. “How long ago did he leave?”

“Eighteen minutes ago,” I tell him, “and of course I know I can’t do it.”

“If you knew that, you’d have called me eighteen minutes ago.”

“Listen, Carl, I don’t know why I didn’t call right away, okay? But that’s not the point here-the point is what do we do now?”

“Well, you can’t kill her.”

“I know, you said that already, and I’ve already told you I know that.”

“We have to fake something. It’s the only thing we can do. Make Cole think we’ve killed her.”

“He’s not going to fall for that. And when he calls, he’ll get me to prove it. He’s going to ask me to do something that we can’t fake.”

“Fuck, Theo! You should have called straightaway.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Well, you can’t kill her.”

“Jesus, Carl, stop saying it as if I’m considering it!”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry, but you can’t.”

“But if I don’t, he’s going to kill Katy. When he cut her finger off-shit, I just couldn’t believe it.”

“See, you are considering it,” he says.

“Just tell me what to do.”

“Where are you now?”

“About two minutes away from her house.”

“Okay. I’m in the car now. I’m on my way.”

“That’s still not telling me what to do.”

“I don’t know. Shit, we need more time.”

“I have to at least go there, right? Even if we’re going to fake something, I have to go there.”

“Okay. Listen, I’ll call the officers at the scene and let them know you’re coming. I’m ten minutes away.”

“They won’t listen to you, remember?”

“I’ll make them listen. Goddamn it, Theo, you should have called sooner! I’ll call you back,” he says, and he hangs up.

Mrs. Whitby lives in a neighborhood full of nice homes, nice cars-nothing really expensive, but everything is tidy and well kept. It’s the same kind of neighborhood my parents live in and where I grew up. Nobody rich, nobody poor, just people with families going through the daily grind of life, doing better than some, some not doing as good as others, but everything averaging out. There are no patrol cars in sight, and that’s because the house is still being used as bait. There is no point in hiding the fact anymore that the police are here-Cole knows Whitby is under guard.

I park in the driveway. There are eight minutes left. You can do a lot in eight minutes, or you can do nothing. I knock on the front door. An officer opens it and lets me in.

“She’s in the bedroom,” he says.

“I need to talk to her.”

“Detective Schroder said not to leave you alone with her.”

“Detective Schroder isn’t a detective at the moment,” I tell him.

“Doesn’t change the fact he told us not to leave you alone with her.”

“Okay.”

“And she’s drunk,” he says.

“Okay.”

“Real drunk,” he says. “Told my partner that for ten bucks she’d-”

“I get the idea,” I tell him.

“I don’t think you do,” he says, shaking his head. “This way,” he says, and he leads me down the hallway, the same hallway James Whitby used to walk up and down before he was violently attacked by his mother, before he violently attacked Tabitha Jenkins. We pass the officer’s partner, who’s sitting in the living room talking on his cell phone. There are no paintings on the walls, no photographs, just wallpaper that’s coming away at the edges near the top. The décor through the house looks like it’s been tired for about thirty years. The carpet is frayed up around the doors, the result of a cat living here at some point or still living here now.

My phone rings. It’s Schroder. “I’ve made some calls,” he says.

“And?”

“And I spoke to Barlow,” he says, and he sounds panicked. “I told him what happened. He said he couldn’t believe it. He said it’s outside of the box for what he thought Cole was capable of. He says cutting Katy’s finger off throws everything we’ve come up with into chaos.”

“What does he suggest?”

“He doesn’t have a suggestion. I mean, why would he? He’d be putting his career on the line. I rang Stevens.”

“And?”

“Stevens said you can’t hurt Mrs. Whitby. That’s all. He didn’t come up with an alternative, probably for the same reason. Best to come up with nothing because coming up with something might lose him his job. He told me others are on their way to meet you. Told me not to show up.”

“It’s almost time,” I tell him.

“I know. I know.”

“He’s going to kill her,” I say. “He’s going to cut off her fingers, and then he’s going to put a knife into her chest.”

“I know.”

“We can’t let that happen.”

“Damn it, Tate, don’t go in that room alone. That’s an order.”

“From a friend?”

“Just. . just wait for me, okay? I’m almost there. Just a few more minutes.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious, Tate. Wait for me.”

“I will.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Hand the phone to the officer.”

I hand over the phone to the officer. He takes it and listens, says “okay,” while he nods, then nothing more before handing it back. “I’ve been dismissed,” he says.

“What?”

“Cole isn’t coming here. There’s no reason for us to stay.”

He gives me a relieved look. He has no idea what’s going on, but he knows it’s something bad, and he’s just learned he and his partner don’t have to be a part of it. He walks up the hallway and leans into the living room. I listen to him tell his partner the same thing, then he shrugs, and I can’t make out what his partner says. A moment later they’re both stepping outside. They close the front door just as another car pulls up outside.