The Laughterhouse

CHAPTER TEN

I’m not alone when I get back to my car from seeing my daughter’s grave. There’s a guy sitting in the car I parked next to, trying hard to get his car started. The engine isn’t quite turning over but he keeps giving it a go. He looks up at me and there’s not much light coming from the street and none coming from the church, so it’s hard to get a good look at him, but what I can see doesn’t look good. There are scars on his face, and his nose looks like it’s been broken several times. He sees me looking and there’s nothing I can do except offer to help, whereas what I’d rather do is get into my car and get the hell out of here. Then I figure for this guy to be out here at this time of night he’s suffering a loss, maybe a similar loss to my own.

“You need a hand?” I ask him.

“I don’t know much about cars,” he tells me, climbing out of it. He must be around fifty, with a thick head of gray hair that is flattened down.

“Nor do I,” I admit, “but I’ve got a set of jumper cables that might do the trick.”

I open the trunk of my car and fish out the cables. We pop the hoods and attach our respective ends. I think if there was a competition to see who had the worse car, we’d both win. I start my car and my engine barely turns over, and for a second I think we could both be stranded here, but then it catches and I put my foot on the accelerator a few times.

I walk around my car while the other guy climbs into his. It takes a couple of tries, but then his engine starts. He guns it a few times, then climbs out and from the light of the cars I can get a better look at him. He looks like he’s been beaten up, not recently, but a long time ago, and many times too. We unhook the cable and I wrap it up and throw it into the trunk.

“I appreciate it,” he says.

“No problem,” I say, and instinct kicks in, and next thing I know I’m offering him my hand.

He looks at it for a few seconds. He seems unsure what to do, and I’m starting to feel like an idiot, but then he reaches out and shakes it. I shake his back, and he winces a little.

I quickly let go. “Sorry,” I tell him.

“Not your fault,” he says, massaging his fingers. “Just an old injury.”

“Well, don’t be surprised if you have to return the favor in the next day or two,” I say, looking at my car.

“I’m not even sure the car is going to last another day or two,” he answers.

The moment is over, and it’s nice to have met a stranger who wasn’t a jerk and who, at this time of night, wasn’t trying to steal my wallet. We both acknowledge the moment and climb into our cars. He gives a small wave as he drives away, then I’m back on the street, feeling good about helping somebody.

It’s one o’clock when I get home. I kick off my shoes and put them next to the radiator hoping they’ll be dry by morning. I fire up the computer and heat the remaining half of a supermarket pizza from a few days ago because the burger only helped out for a few minutes. I make some coffee. I haven’t eaten anything healthy since coming out of prison and see no reason to break the tradition. I lost eighteen pounds behind bars and none of them seem to be coming back-without my shirt on I look like a corpse.

I sit down in my study, where articles about Melissa X are pinned to the walls, photographs of her when she was Natalie Flowers. There are crime scene reports filed around the room in chronological order. Her icy blue eyes stare out at me from different images, they are the only thing identical between the two personalities, the rest changed with makeup, hair colors, and three years of killing.

I turn my back on Melissa and search for today’s victims online. The stories have hit the news, but not their names, although victim one, Herbert Poole, comes up from cases in his past, and victim two, Albert McFarlane, has a story of when he retired from school, students thanking him and wishing him the best. Schroder has already confirmed the lawyer victim two used for his divorce wasn’t victim one. The connection must be somewhere else.

I shut the computer down and head to the lounge. I lie on the couch and watch the news. I have the beginnings of a headache that I don’t think is going to take hold. I rub the side of my head and it fades a little as I watch a woman in her early thirties with a big smile and straight hair look into the camera and open the proceedings. Two old people murdered on the same day, and the media are throwing around the serial killer label. They already have a name for him-The Gran Reaper. I grimace at the name, wondering who the hell comes up with them so quickly, whether the media machine churning out the doom and gloom have some geeky guy stashed in a basement office earning minimum wage just for these occasions. If they do, then with his latest effort they should be paying him less. There is footage from the scenes, but there’s no mention of drunk detectives showing up. I’m grateful, but not as grateful as Schroder and the others will be-he and his work buddies seem to have dodged a bullet and kept their jobs. At least for now.

Knowing the media, it may only be a matter of time.