The Laughterhouse (3 page)

Popular Consensus is a nightclub near The Strip, a line of bars operating as cafés and restaurants during the day, then doubling as nightclubs after nine. The club is owned by Landry’s brother, and is about five hours away from doing peak business with the thousands of alcoholic teenagers who roam this city at night. But right now the doors are open for those of us who knew Landry and the tables are full of sausage rolls and sandwiches and it’s an open bar. Nearly every flat surface has a photograph of Landry on it, and I study one from our days at the academy; him and Schroder and me side by side, hairlines further forward and Landry and Schroder’s stomachs not as round as they are now, and I guess those are things Landry doesn’t have to worry about anymore. The club has all the lights on and everybody sits around the bar and at the booths sharing stories and tears.

“Here,” Schroder says, handing me a drink.

“I’m fine,” I tell him.

“It’s only orange juice,” he says, and I take it from him. I look longingly at his beer as he nurses it, remembering how beer and all of its friends got me into trouble last year. “Seems like a lifetime ago,” he says, nodding toward the picture.

“I don’t even remember half these people,” I tell him.

“Landry’s the first.”

“Huh?”

He nods toward the picture again. “First one in that photo to have gotten himself killed.”

We sip at our drinks and take a few seconds to contemplate what he just said, wondering if he’ll be the last, wondering if the others will end up retiring in a few years or quitting now. A stereo is turned on, The Rolling Stones start playing to the bar, Landry’s favorite band—one of my favorites too.

“What the hell was he doing working on his own?” I ask.

He shrugs before coming up with something I wasn’t expecting. “ME says he had cancer.”

“What?”

“He’d have been dead before the year was out. I think he just got sick of the way things play out in this city.” He tips up his beer and drains half of it down his throat. “He tried to make a difference by himself and got killed for it.”

We move back to the bar. Every detective is trying to drink enough to hibernate through the winter. Landry’s brother looks more upset at the tab he’s covering than at his brother getting killed. He looks like he’s wishing he’d watered down the whiskey more than he already has. Schroder gets another beer and finishes it before I’m even a third of the way through my juice. All the voices are getting louder and there are snippets of stories coming from every direction, less and less of them about Landry the more everybody drinks, more and more of them about Christchurch, about the weather and the crime rate and the boy-racers, the boy-racers who have their teeth in this city and won’t let go. They block the streets at night racing their brightly colored cars, cars lowered and modified to look cool and be loud. The conversations get darker as the first hour slips into the second, the words more slurred, theories being thrown about on how to make this city a better place, who we ought to be going around shooting to
make that happen. Schroder finishes off his third beer and I start on my second juice. Other cops come over to talk to us, there’s lots of “you guys were at the academy with him, right?” and “you should come back to the force, Tate,” and “last thing the force needs is you coming back.” I sip at my drink, wanting nothing more than to get the hell out of here, wondering how many of these people will resent me if I do make it back onto the team.

“How are things going with the Melissa X case?” I ask Schroder.

He starts on a new beer, sipping at it slowly for a few seconds before lowering it back to the bar. “It’s like we’re chasing a ghost,” he says.

Melissa X is the woman the Christchurch Carver, a notorious serial killer now in jail, partnered up with. She is still on the loose—and still killing. When I was released from jail in February, Schroder was there to meet me in the parking lot, the Melissa X file in his car and needing all the help he could get. We found out her true identity. Her real name is Natalie Flowers—but she started calling herself Melissa when she was attacked and raped three years ago by her college professor. Since then she has tortured and killed at least half a dozen men, the last of which was seven weeks ago.

“Nothing new?”

“We’ve spoken to all her friends, all her family. Nothing,” he says. “We’ve followed up with surgeons and health clinics, checking to see if she’s had any cosmetic surgery, but nothing. It’s like she’s left this planet, and just when you think that might be true, she’ll kill somebody else.”

“It does seem that way,” I say. I have the file too, and I keep looking at it every day just like Schroder, but for me looking at that file isn’t paying the bills.

“We’ll get her,” he says. “I can promise you that.”

The woman I sat next to at the funeral sees us and comes over. Schroder stands up and smiles at her and I do the same.

“Theodore Tate, this is Detective Inspector Kent,” he says, introducing us.

“Call me Rebecca,” she says, shaking my hand.

Rebecca is a few inches shorter than me, a few pounds lighter, and probably with a few less problems in the world. Athletic and attractive. Both Schroder and myself can’t stop smiling at her. She has black hair that hangs to her shoulders that she brushes back behind her shoulder.

“You work with Schroder?” I ask.

“Detective Kent just transferred down here from Auckland,” he says. “She’s only been with us a week. She was one of their best so we’re lucky to have her.”

She smiles. “I’m lucky to be back,” she says. “I’m Christchurch born and raised.”

“Really,” I say. “When did you leave?”

“Right after the police academy,” she says. “I got posted in Auckland ten years ago and have been trying to get back since.”

“That reminds me,” Schroder says, turning toward me. “Emma Green has been accepted into the academy.”

“I knew she was applying,” I say.

“Emma Green. How do I know that name?” Rebecca asks.

“She’s the girl who was abducted earlier this year,” he says. “Tate found her.”

“Oh, of course,” she says. “The same girl you . . .” she says, but doesn’t finish.

Emma Green is the same girl I ran into with my car last year when I was drunk. It’s what landed me in prison.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “That was dumb of me. I’ve had three too many gin and tonics,” she says, rattling the ice in the bottom of her empty glass.

“Not your fault. I’m the one who was being dumb last year,” I tell her, unsure of how I feel about Emma joining the force.

“Well, it’s all in the past now,” Schroder says.

He takes another sip of beer, then the conversation changes.
Rebecca gets another gin and tonic and comes back. We start talking about Schroder’s family. He pulls out his wallet and shows me photographs of his daughter and his six-month-old son. I’ve never seen his son before; met his daughter plenty of times but haven’t seen her in a few years. Rebecca smiles at the photographs and tells Schroder how cute his children are, before saying she doesn’t have children but she does have two cats and laughs that she understands how much work it must be for him.

He just starts telling us about something his son managed to jam into his ear when his cell phone goes off. He has to pat down his pockets looking for it, missing it the first time through. He answers it and I can hear another one ringing. And another. Detectives across the room are patting at their pockets, then there’s a chorus of people saying their names, including Detective Kent. The room goes quiet as people start listening. Schroder has one hand on the bar to keep himself steady. He stares at his beer, then slowly pushes it away. Rebecca puts her new drink—still untouched—onto the bar. People start hanging up, then another round of cell phones start ringing, a new set of detectives being called. News is flooding in from somewhere. Other detectives are finishing off their drinks in final gulps and heading toward the door, others to the bathroom. Schroder hangs up. “Call us some taxis,” he says to the bartender.

“What’s happened?” I ask him, following him to the door.

“You’re sober, right?”

“Right.”

“And your car’s here, right?”

“Right.”

“Then give me a lift and I’ll explain on the way.”

Caleb Cole is excited. He doubts the old guy is going to remember him, but he’ll get there with some explaining. He wasn’t sure what to get him; he did wonder if flowers would be appropriate before deciding it would just be a little weird. Showing up empty-handed would be just as strange, so he settled on a six-pack of beer, which he decided was perfect. He wasn’t sure what Albert drank, but figured at Albert’s age it probably wouldn’t matter too much. Beer, wine, he guesses one type tastes like any other when you’re closing in on a hundred. Not that Albert is a hundred, but he’s certainly closer to a hundred than he is to fifty.

He parks outside the retirement home. He doesn’t know if driving in will be enough to wake half of the residents even though it’s only seven thirty, or whether it’d be like waking the dead, which in a place like this would be a pretty neat trick. He carries the beer and straightens the fresh shirt he put on only half an hour ago, after taking a shower. The rain is coming and going—one moment it’s there, the next it’s gone.

He’s never stepped foot in a retirement community before today. No reason to. His parents both went to one for almost ten years before they died, but he never visited them, and he doesn’t have any uncles or aunts that he’s kept in touch with. His grandparents—well, half of them were dead before he was born, and the other half not long after. Looking around, the retirement community feels like exactly what it is—a holding pattern for old people between this world and the next. All the homes are made from brick with aluminum windows and are well insulated. They’d stay warm in the winter and cook anything inside in the summer, but they all look the same, and he struggles for a few minutes to figure out exactly which one he’s supposed to be heading to. Once he thought it was the kind of place he and Lara would end up living in. The kids would get sick of looking after them and put them into a home. They would grow old together, dreading that day when one of them got sick, picked up pneumonia or a lung infection to complicate the matter, then say goodbye.

He finds the right unit. There are lights on inside. He feels nervous. He tucks the beer under one arm and knocks on the door. He can hear a TV going inside, but nothing else.

He knocks again. “Albert?”

Nothing. He walks around the unit and is able to peek through a gap in the curtain and into the living room. Albert is facing away from him, toward the TV, of which they both have a clear view. Turns out the world is full of reality shows these days. He wonders if his own life would ever make for good reality TV, and decides it probably wouldn’t. It would, for lack of a better word, be too
real.
Albert is sitting on a couch with patterns of flowers on it. There is a machine next to him that looks like a dehumidifier, only there’s a clear tube leading from it to Albert, providing him oxygen.

Caleb taps on the window.

Albert jumps a little, then turns toward the sound. It’s obvious he can’t see anything beyond the window, so Caleb taps
on the window again, then moves to the door. He knocks and waits, and a few seconds later the front door opens.

“Yes?”

“Albert McFarlane?” Caleb says.

“Yes, that’s right,” Albert answers. He’s bald with ears that are pushed out slightly wider than normal because of the oxygen tube going over them and tucking into his nose, which is red and looks irritated. When he talks, he wheezes, and the effort is making him puff hard. He puts a finger on the bridge of his glasses and pushes them a little closer to his eyeballs, so close the lenses must nearly touch. His eyes narrow as he focuses on the way everything has just been magnified.

“My name is Caleb Cole,” Caleb says, “do you remember me?”

“Remember you?” Albert leans forward and takes a closer look. “Are you one of my grandchildren?”

Caleb shakes his head. “No. Do you mind if I come in?”

“Are you trying to sell me something, son?”

He lifts up the beer. “No. I just wanna shoot the breeze,” he says, figuring the term will make Albert happy.

“Ah huh, well that’s mighty good, son, but I still don’t remember you, and I don’t drink beer anymore. Doctor’s orders. But hell, it’s not like I got much more to do, so sure, come on in.”

Albert steps aside and Caleb walks in and closes the door behind him. Albert’s clothes are hanging from his body with all the shape of laundry hanging on the line, and he’s squinting, as if trying to see past the cataracts clouding his vision. He doesn’t look well. Caleb has seen people with cancer before, and that’s exactly what it looks like Albert has.

“Take a seat,” Albert says. “Can I make you a coffee?”

“Sure, thanks,” Caleb says, and he sits the beer on the coffee table and makes a mental note to take it with him since Albert doesn’t want any. He follows Albert into the kitchen, which isn’t far since it’s effectively part of the living room. The oxygen
tube looks long enough to hang somebody a few times over.

“Kettle just finished boiling a few minutes ago,” Albert says, then reaches up into the cupboard for a cup. “How do you like it?”

“Strong,” Caleb says. “No sugar. No milk.”

“Well, that I can do.”

The house is small. From the space between the kitchen and living room he can see down the hallway. It’s not a complicated layout. A bedroom, a toilet, a bathroom, not much else. It looks like a lonely life, and he guesses that’s just the way it goes when you get to this age. It’s not like people are dancing in the streets. Hell, nobody even saw him come in here and no doubt nobody will see him leave either. People in this community can only see about thirty feet ahead and fifty years into the past and not much else.

“What did you say your name was again?” Albert asks.

“Caleb Cole,” he says.

“And we know each other,” Albert says.

“This is your family?” Cole asks, looking at some of the photographs in the room. There are pictures of a lady in most of them, she ages at the same rate as Albert, then disappears. There are children and grandchildren. The living room is full of the knickknacks of life. There’s a cordless phone on a small table to the side of the couch, the phone large and heavy and perhaps one of the first ever built. The TV is on mute, but the oxygen machine is humming like a fridge. He wonders how Albert can sleep at night with it running.