The Laughterhouse (26 page)

He used a kitchen knife. Every time he put the knife into him, he dragged it up or down, creating cuts that almost tore Whitby apart. I never saw the scene. I wasn’t one of the officers who got the call to go there and help and I was thankful for it. I know there were pieces of Whitby all over the floor, things that had been sliced so badly they fell out of him. I know parts of him were scooped into a bucket. I know it was so bad the medical examiner had no idea whether Whitby had been hurt in the car collision because there just wasn’t enough left of him in once piece to tell.

And I know, thanks to the medical examiner, that if you count those wounds up it came to nineteen.

Caleb Cole drove home after Whitby was dead. He was covered in blood. His wife didn’t recognize him. She screamed when he walked in the door and their neighbors called the
police. She said he looked like he’d bathed in it. She said he looked like he had stepped out of a horror movie. Cole didn’t say anything to her, he went and showered and when he came out she was sitting on the couch with the knowledge of what he had done. They held each other until the police arrived a few minutes later. He didn’t resist arrest. He pleaded guilty to everything. Four days later his wife killed herself. She had lost her daughter on a Monday, and by the weekend she had lost everything else. She didn’t leave a note. Fifteen years Cole got. He tried to kill himself twice within the first week. Then he was on suicide watch for three months, and the moment he was off it he tried to kill himself again. He didn’t try anymore after that, though others tried for him.

“Victim number two was a teacher, is it possible he taught Whitby?” I ask.

“We’ll know soon,” Schroder says. “Along with victim number one.”

“Victim number three, Hayward. It must be a safe bet the connection is with Ariel Chancellor. He simply picked the wrong moment to pick up a prostitute. Also I’m thinking, if Cole blamed Whitby’s lawyer, maybe he blamed the judge too. That makes the judge a potential target, and also might be a chance of catching Cole.”

“Good thinking,” Schroder says. “We’ll get the judge out of there and put some armed officers inside the house. Maybe we’ll catch a break and nail Cole breaking his way in.”

“Mrs. Whitby too,” I say, looking down at her mug shot, taken while her son fought for his life in a hospital room. In it her hair is sticking up at the back from where she spent a few hours slouched in the couch watching TV. Her eyes are half-closed, she’s drunk and tired, and looks like she just doesn’t give a damn about anything. “Like I said before, she set the ball rolling on all of this.”

“You should go back and talk to Ariel Chancellor,” he says. “Take Kent with you. There’s a whole lot of different questions
you can ask her now that you couldn’t this morning. Maybe they’ve stayed in touch. Maybe Chancellor will be able to tell us something that can help track him down.”

“Sure,” I tell him. I head for the door.

He reaches into his pocket and grabs out the packet of Wake-E.

“You remember when we found her?” he asks.

I stop at the door and turn back. “I remember.”

“Landry was there too,” he says. “How the hell have fifteen years gone by?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m thinking, since Cole took Whitby out to the slaughterhouse,” Schroder says, “that means there’s some symmetry there. What do you think? You think he might go there again?”

I think of the snow, the blood, I think about how the slaughterhouse must look now, and I imagine Caleb Cole holed up there with the doctor and his family. If not there, then where else?

“It’s a good idea,” I tell him.

“I’ll check it out.”

“Want me to tag along?”

“I can handle it,” Schroder says, and he tosses a tablet into his mouth and I head out the door.

“Tick tock,” Caleb says.

“Please . . .”

“Tick. And . . .” Caleb says, then looks down at his watch, counts off a few beats in his head, “. . . tock. Time’s up. It’s been two minutes.”

“No, no,” Stanton says.

“Which one?”

“I can’t.”

“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this,” Caleb says, and it’s true. “So be it.”

He picks up his knife. He walks over to Katy. He has to get it done. If he holds back, if he lets the doubts creep in, then he may not do what needs to be done. He has no room left for humanity, all he has room for is the plan, and if he pulls back now it’s not going to happen. He has to focus on that. He looks at Katy. He can’t think of her as Katy Kitten. He has to look at her as a tool. But God how she reminds him of his own daughter, the same way they . . .

Stop it! Shit like that is only going to make it harder!

He moves toward Melanie instead.

Munchkin Mel. The same thing, really. . . .

“Please, please don’t,” Stanton says. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I am, I really am.”

“It doesn’t help.”

“Don’t do this! Fuck, fuck, don’t do this. You don’t have to do this!”

He crouches down over Melanie. “Choose somebody, Doctor, make it as painless as possible.”

“I can’t,” Stanton screams. “Don’t you see that? If it were you, if you’d had three children and had to decide, you couldn’t have done it either,” he says, and his words are quick and hopeful, as if there is enough logic in the idea to make Caleb stop doing this.

And it is a good point. But Caleb isn’t here to debate good points. He’s here to make Stanton suffer.

“Choose,” he says.

“It’s impossible.”

“I agree. It’s impossible, but you still have to choose. One dies now, or all three die now. Focus on that and it becomes less impossible.”

“You’re insane.”

“Maybe. It still doesn’t change the fact that if you don’t give me a name in the next five seconds you’re going to start seeing a lot of blood.”

“I—”

“One,” Caleb says.

“Wait—”

“Two,” he says, and he remembers giving his daughter similar countdowns, only he’d give her till the count of three to tidy up whatever mess she had just made or he’d put her in time-out. He’s giving Stanton two extra seconds. He’s being generous.

“Octavia. I choose Octavia.”

Caleb feels his stomach drop and his throat tighten. He straightens up and stares at Stanton and slowly shakes his head. “I don’t know whether to be impressed or disgusted, but I’m certainly surprised.”

“Fuck you.”

“Why don’t you like her?”

“I didn’t say that,” Stanton says, looking down.

“Yes you did. You wouldn’t have decided so quickly.” Caleb lifts his hands into the air, the knife catching the light coming through the dirty windows and sending a white spot across the wall like a shooting star. “You still had three seconds left. See, I think you knew all along who you were going to choose. Why is the decision so easy for you to make?”

“Are you so fucked in the head that you think this is easy for me? That it could be easy for anybody?”

Caleb scratches at his face. He ignores the jab and thinks about Octavia. He waggles the knife at Stanton and the shooting star races back and forth. Then he shakes his head. “It doesn’t make sense,” he says. “I mean, how you chose somebody so quickly. Less sense is how you chose the baby.”

“None of it makes sense. How about you choose, huh? How about you go and have a family and I make you choose who dies first.”

“Explain it to me,” Caleb says. “I used to be a math teacher. I understand about statistics. You must have weighed up values of life or something. Tell me. Or is it really that simple? Did you just choose the one you like the least?”

“I’ve done what you wanted,” Stanton says, looking up and looking defiant. “Are you happy? That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asks. “You sick, twisted fuck.”

“Happy? I’m not doing this to be happy,” Caleb says. “Look at you, you should be ripping your own arms off to try and get to me.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I thought it’d have been harder than this for you.”

“You’ve made your point, Caleb. You really have. Anything you do to my kids is just you getting off on hurting people.”

“Why don’t you like her? Is that why she doesn’t have her own nickname?”

“What?”

“You want something to match the others, right? How about Obsolete Octavia?”

“You’re wrong. I love her the same as the others.”

“Obsolete Octavia. I like it. And it does seem you have no use for her. However in this case you’re going to have to choose somebody else. When I said before I was going to start cutting off fingers, did I mention Octavia’s name?”

“Yes,” the doctor says, not looking so sure.

“Actually no. I would never cut the fingers off a baby. What is wrong with you?”

“With me? How can you—”

“Choose somebody else.”

“What?”

“You have to choose between the other two girls.”

The doctor stares at him, his eyes wide open—he’s hearing what Caleb is saying, Caleb is sure of it, he’s just not understanding it. Then he blinks quickly a few times as if trying to wake from a really bad dream. “You can’t do that,” he says, sounding like a kid in a playground defending himself to a teacher. “That isn’t what you said before, you can’t just change your mind like that. I made my decision! It’s not fair!”

“It’s an unfair world, Doctor, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Now, I’m not going to cover old ground with you, but you need to make another decision. I say you’ve got about ten seconds. I think that’s probably a better time than two minutes. It makes it more instinctual.”

“No, no, you can’t make me decide something like that.”

“You decided two minutes ago that it should be Obsolete Octavia.”

“No, no, you can’t do this.”

Caleb crouches back down. He grabs Melanie’s hand and spreads her fingers, then puts the knife against the top of her index finger. He looks over at Stanton, who is not only crying now, but who has gone bright red. He inhales loudly, snorts, then strings of bloody snot explode from his nose, hanging down over his lips and sticking to his chin. His hands are bound behind him. He keeps trying to wipe at his face with his shoulder. Veins are sticking out in his neck.

“Choose, Stanton.”

“Okay, okay damn it. Give me a minute.”

“You have five more seconds. Tick tock, Doctor.”

“Okay, okay. Fuck,” he says, crying harder now. “Choose me,” he says.

Caleb nods. He had expected that answer. Only it was the answer he expected first.

“Okay.”

“What? Oh, Jesus, Jesus, no,” and the words are barely out of his mouth before he manages, just like Octavia, to wet himself. “Please don’t kill me.”

“You’re pathetic,” Caleb says.

“Please—”

“Tell you what, Stanton, if you really mean it I’ll kill you right now and let your children go. Is that what you want?”

“I . . . I don’t want to die.”

“Don’t worry, I’m just kidding.”

“You’re kidding? You’re not going to hurt anybody?”

“Oh, no, I’m not kidding about your daughters, just about you. So save your breath begging for your life. That would be too easy. You have to go through what I went through fifteen years ago.” He has to experience it all. He has to understand loss.

Right through to the end.

That’s the point of all of this.

Stanton looks confused, and bolstered by the fact Caleb doesn’t want to kill him he becomes more insistent. “Yes,” he
says. “Yes, it’s that easy, just kill me and let my children go. You don’t want to hurt them.”

“You’re such a slimy bastard,” Cole says.

“They’ve done . . .” Stanton says, and then hiccups loudly as the words get jammed in his throat and die. He makes a high-pitched squealing sound as he panics to replace them, and then they come again. “They’ve done nothing to you. Nothing.”

“Just like my family did nothing to you.”

“I didn’t kill your family! James Whitby killed your family!” he cries, using his playground voice again.

Caleb can hear Octavia crying louder outside. She’s probably distressed at the sounds she’s hearing from in here. Distressed at being obsolete. He’s going to have to feed her soon. “James Whitby was a loaded gun,” he says, “one you fired into a crowd.”

“It’s not like that. You don’t understand, I was only doing . . .”

“Come on, Stanton, stop trying to defend it. You’re a coward. You proved that by choosing to kill a baby before you’d take your own life.”

“I’m choosing to die now.”

“I’m going to cut Melanie’s fingers off now,” Caleb says. “Maybe then you’ll see I’m not fucking around.”

The next words out of Stanton’s mouth are muffled as he squirms across the floor, fighting with the bindings, his face pressing into the concrete as he talks, the side of his cheek getting grazed. He inches his way closer. Caleb admires the determination. “Stop,” he tells him, and when the doctor doesn’t stop, he tells him again, this time more forcefully. “Stop!”

The doctor stops. He looks up at Caleb, and he keeps the knife over Melanie’s fingers.

“Caleb, listen to me, listen to me. You’re becoming the thing you hate. You’ll become the man who killed your daughter.”

“Not just my daughter,” Caleb says, “my entire family. And it’s too late—I’ve already become him. Pat yourself on the back, Doctor, you’re the reason why.”

“No, no, you’re worse than him. And, in this world of yours, if your son was still alive, would that mean somebody who loved me would be allowed to kill him for what you’re doing?”

“What do you mean?” Caleb asks.

“I think you know. When all this is over, are you okay with somebody who loved me or my children coming along and hurting others you love?”

“There is nobody left that I love.”

“That’s not the point!”

“No, the point is you helped to take away everybody I loved.”

Stanton is shaking his head. “It wasn’t like that. And you’re still avoiding what I told you, and that’s because you see it. If you hurt me, it will never end—at least that’s the way it would be in your world. Somebody I love will kill somebody you love, and it will go on forever.”

“Like I said, there is nobody I love.”