The Laughterhouse (7 page)

The people he passes on the street act as if he doesn’t exist.
His car is parked half a block away. It’s over a quarter of a century old and the only thing he knows about this car is that there’s something under the hood that coughs and splutters every few minutes but still manages to get him around town. The guy he bought the car from had stripped the stereo out and replaced it with a piece of plywood that he’d painted black. He drives from the bad part of town to a slightly less bad part of town, networking his way through the suburbs.

It takes twenty minutes to get to her house. Driving a car was just like riding a bike—everything came back the moment he got behind the wheel. His license expired years ago but that’s only an issue if he gets pulled over. Drivers are worse these days, no doubt about it, and there must be twice as many of them on the roads. Nobody knows how to use a traffic circle. Nobody seems to remember what a signal light is for.

He doesn’t much like her neighborhood. Back when he used to have a family he lived in a pretty good place, friendly neighbors, nice homes. His own house had four bedrooms and two storeys and room for a pool in the backyard if they wanted one. The house he’s looking at now looks like it probably has a pool forming on the floor of the living room. The roof has a couple of missing tiles and a tarpaulin is covering part of it. Maybe, just maybe, prison might have been better than this house. He parks down the road beneath a streetlight that doesn’t work. He puts his hand on the door but doesn’t pull the handle. Instead he sits in the car and stares at the house. He’s nervous. For a dead man, that’s quite an accomplishment. He isn’t real sure what his opening line is going to be to the woman inside.

Maybe he should bring her beer. It’s still in the back of the car.

He’s still debating how to deal with her when a taxi pulls up outside the house and gives two quick taps of the horn. After a moment Ariel Chancellor steps from the house, glancing at her watch as she walks quickly to the taxi, a dress so short he looks
away as she climbs in. She shuts the door and talks to the taxi driver. They talk for about a minute before they pull away from the curb, and he guesses they are negotiating the fare.

Damn it, he’s missed his chance. He should have come last night, or any other night since being out of jail.

He starts the car up and begins to follow the taxi.

Schroder has the passenger window down, and is scraping the mud off his shoes with a penknife and flicking it outside. The rain doesn’t seem to be coming back. Traffic is backed up about a thousand feet before the scene. Media vans are cutting each other off to be the first ones to send out pictures. I don’t have authority because I’m not in a police car, so can’t flash any sirens or honk for people to get out of the way. Both of us continually swear as we inch forward. The inside of the car is cold and the seats feel damp and the backs of my legs are itchy. A passenger plane is soaring off into the distance overhead, the people onboard all with somewhere better to be. We arrive at a cordon manned by four police officers. Schroder shows them his badge and they let us through.

It’s quarter past ten and life feels like it’s rewound a few hours; similar buildings, similar groups of people standing around watching, similar dead guy to have died a similar death. The only differences are the names of the people and the place and the absence of police detectives running off to take a leak.
The dead man’s double is Albert McFarlane. The role of Bernie is being played by a similar looking man in a similar suit, only this one doesn’t have badges stuck to it. More lighting is set up, a new group of onlookers, there are different people here but they’re thinking the same question—
what in the hell is going on?

We step out into a night that is dropping a couple of degrees every hour. The air is completely still. There are no birds anywhere. Everybody is talking in library whispers. We move past two officers who nod at us stoically. We step up onto the porch. The deck groans softly beneath our weight. The front door is painted bright blue and is wide open. The air inside isn’t any warmer than outside. The view isn’t any prettier than the last house. In fact, it’s worse. This time the blood has been thrown up onto the ceiling fan. The fan, spinning, has whipped the droplets from the blades around the room, creating a line halfway up the wall like the ring around a bath. It looks like Morse code, lots of dots and dashes, almost like a cry for help. The dead man was stabbed so many times the blade kept throwing more blood up to the fan to redistribute, the law of physics meeting up with the law of creativity.

McFarlane looks just like Herb. Similar kind of position, similar cuts, you could string him up by his feet and he’d have the same amount of blood pour out of him. He’s been written on by the same marker across his forehead, same handwriting, only this message is different:
Was it worth it?

There are a few other differences. McFarlane managed to defend himself a little, as evidenced by the lacerations on his hands. He’s attached to an oxygen machine, or was, the tube now lying on the carpet blowing air into it. The long jagged cuts down his body are easily visible because the shirt has mostly shredded away, leaving flabby skin that was pale yesterday, but today is stained red. The cuts are deep and reveal parts of this guy nobody has seen before, except maybe his heart surgeon. He looks like he was raked over by a broken beer bottle.

The retirement home is smaller than the other one but has
the same feel about it, though this one isn’t really a retirement home, but a small subdivision of adjoining town houses where the youngest person looks old enough to have test-driven the wheel. The news has gotten out that it’s the second homicide of the evening, and there can be no denying the connection, and the media are spreading the story over the airwaves and the gallery of people coming down to watch the show is growing every minute. An elderly lady is walking around carrying a tray, a tea service on top of it, offering drinks of hot tea to the officers on duty.

Police tape has been strung up and only time will tell whether or not the department has enough of it in stock to get us through to tomorrow morning. Each unit, though adjoining, has its own section, with shrubs and small flax bushes and rose plants out front. We head inside. More bloody footprints, hopefully belonging to the same killer. A serial killer is bad enough, but two madmen running around with magic markers and sharp knives is worse. Some of the forensics guys from the first scene have already shown up. They’re doing their thing, checking for prints and fibers and DNA. They’re working near the body and Schroder is talking to two people.

You didn’t care enough.

Was it worth it?

One statement. One question. I stare at a vase full of lilacs on the dining table and think about those words while watching a ladybug climb the stem, going about its day-to-day job but somewhat lost, maybe confused by the amount of light for this time of evening.

I start with the bedroom. There is fingerprint powder over plenty of surfaces. The forensic guys are working fast. Maybe they’re keen to get home or back to the other scene, or maybe they’re sensing more bodies to come their way tonight. The bed is made up and nondescript, the kind of flower-patterned duvet cover everybody’s widowed grandparent would sleep under. There’s a bookcase with a wide selection of books. A
couple of potted plants, a painting of a landscape, and nothing in here to suggest why the owner angered somebody enough to stab him over and over. There are photographs on the dresser, the victim and his children, of grandchildren, photos this man would have looked at every night going through his bedtime routine. Nothing with his wife.

I put on the same pair of gloves from the last scene, only now they’re on inside out. I go through the drawers and cupboards, Schroder joining me a few minutes into the search, the smell of beer no longer as strong.

“Any theories?” he asks.

“Victim one was a lawyer,” I answer. “Maybe he upset somebody.”

“He hasn’t been a lawyer for ten years,” he says. “Why wait all that time?”

“Maybe the person he pissed off was in jail,” I say, “and just got out.”

“It’s possible, but our victim wasn’t a criminal lawyer, he was a divorce lawyer.”

“Some would find that more of a reason to want him dead,” I tell him.

“Victim two is seventy-eight years old,” he says, “but taught high school for forty years. Retired thirteen years ago.”

“Family?”

“Divorced. Two children.”

“That explains the photographs,” I tell him. “You check out who his divorce lawyer was?”

“It’s getting looked at as we speak.”

I look through an address book and find no mention of Herbert Poole. “Maybe they were friends long ago. Maybe Albert taught Herb’s kids, or Herb got Albert his divorce. You know the reasons for the divorce? Was his wife having an affair? Anything there that can lead back?”

“Jesus, Tate, we’ve been here fifteen minutes. Cut me some slack.”

I breathe out heavily. “Okay, point taken. I’m just throwing ideas out there,” I say. “And I’m out of practice. Any prints?” I ask.

“Yeah, lots of them, but we just gotta narrow them down. Could be none of them belong to our suspect.”

“Any witnesses?”

“Not yet, but we haven’t started canvassing yet.”

“What do you make of the messages?” I ask.

He shrugs. “One of them is a question,” he says, “and one a statement. Was it worth it? That could be anything. Could mean was his TV worth the thousand bucks he paid for it, or was the hooker he paid for last night worth the hundred bucks? Could reference anything.”

“Same with the statement,” I say. “You didn’t care enough. Probably means he didn’t care enough about somebody, rather than some
thing.
Anybody spoken with Herbert Poole’s kids?”

“Yeah. It’s on the list,” he says.

“It’s a long list.”

“And only getting longer.”

“So what do you want me to do? I’m not much help here looking at a dead man, and anything here will be found anyway. Put me to use.”

“Look, Theo,” he says, and here it comes, the thing that all evening he has only ever been a moment away from saying. It was only a matter of time. “I appreciate all the help, but right now it’s best if you just go home.”

“So that’s it? Thanks, Theo, for the ride?”

He holds up his hand. “Let me finish,” he says. “The boss is on his way,” he says, and I haven’t seen Superintendent Dominic Stevens in a few years and I know where Schroder is going with this. “He’ll be here in about fifteen minutes, and if he sees you here . . . well, you can probably kiss any chance of having your career back goodbye, and I can probably do the same for any chance of a promotion. You’re a civilian, Theo, he’s not going to like you being here, not right off, just let me get him
aside and explain the situation instead of him just showing up and seeing you working.”

“Yeah, okay, sure,” I say.

“I know you’re pissed off. Once I’ve spoken to him, I’m sure we can put you to use, and if we do, you have to follow some rules. You’re not a cop, you’re a private investigator, but you can’t bend the law, not if you want any chance of getting back on the force.”

“I’ll be a good boy,” I tell him. “I promise to behave.”

He doesn’t answer me for a few seconds, just stares at me long enough to let me know I’ve just pissed him off too.

“Okay, go home and get some rest. I’ll give you a call soon. If you can come back, I’ll let you know. Otherwise I’ll see you in the morning. And Tate, if you work on this I need you to do me a favor. I’m not kidding here, this time make sure you don’t kill anybody.”

Caleb follows the taxi into town. If the girl is going to a club or a bar, there are going to be a lot of people around. That’s not going to work well. They pass a line of bars, where people who are students and plumbers and lawyers by day double as assholes by night. The music coming from the clubs and the other cars on the street is nothing like he used to hear before he went away.

The taxi slows up when it gets to Manchester Street, coming to a stop at every intersection, timing the red lights perfectly. Then it stops at a green light halfway down the street outside a stereo shop. It pulls over, and Caleb goes through the intersection and pulls over too. He watches the woman in the rearview mirror handing money over to the driver and then waiting for change. When she climbs out she takes a cell phone from her pocket and makes a call. Her short skirt doesn’t seem as short in comparison to some of the other girls on the street, the hookers on the street corners that walk past on her way to . . .

She stops walking. She stands on the spot, turning slowly,
and then the cell phone is back in her handbag and is replaced by a cigarette, which she lights up. One of the hookers comes over to her and they start chatting. Caleb doesn’t get what’s going on. He knows how it looks—it looks like she’s standing on the corner waiting to fuck the next person willing to pay for it—but that can’t be. Only thing he can think of is she’s trying to help these girls. Ariel and her friend start chatting, and they’re both shivering because it’s so fucking cold and neither of them are wearing jackets. They’re smoking and laughing. On the corner opposite a car slows up and a girl over there approaches it and leans into the passenger window. A few seconds later she climbs in and the car disappears.

Another car pulls over to the same corner. It does a U-turn and stops next to Ariel and her friend. Both girls flick their cigarettes into the gutter, and it’s Ariel who approaches the car. He can see it all happening and it makes him feel sick. He can’t hear what she’s saying because the weather and the distance kills any chance of that. He waits for her to walk away, only she doesn’t, instead she opens the passenger door, throws a smile and a shrug at her friend, and climbs in. The car doesn’t move for half a minute as business is discussed, then it pulls away from the curb, goes through the intersection and past him, then hangs a right at the next corner.