The Laughterhouse

CHAPTER TWELVE

My phone goes off and it’s the first I’ve realized I’ve fallen asleep on the couch, still dressed in my funeral suit. I look at my watch. It’s two o’clock. I’ve only been asleep for ten minutes. The news has ended and there’s an infomercial on TV, some new piece of must-have fitness equipment that folds down and slides under your bed so you don’t have to feel embarrassed about it when the neighbors come around. The woman displaying it has more abs than I have nutrients floating around inside my body. I check the caller ID. It’s Schroder. Either he’s ringing to tell me I can work on the case, or I can’t.

“I’ve spoken to the powers that be,” he tells me.

“And?”

“And I reminded them when it comes to serial killers, you have a knack for looking in the right places, even if you do go about it the wrong way.”

“And?”

“And they reminded me that your success rate comes with a homicide rate.”

“The first was an accident,” I say, “and the second one killed himself.” The first one is partly true and partly not true. The latter is also made up from the same parts. Schroder knows this, can’t prove it, and wouldn’t want to even if he could.

“You’re on the case,” he says. “Not as a cop, but as an official consultant.”

“That’s all I was hoping for at this point.”

“Yeah. If it goes well-hell, maybe this is your chance to get back on the force.”

“Yeah, sucks that my chance comes about by two people dying.”

“Three,” he says.

“What?”

“That’s why I’m calling you now and not in the morning, and this is why we need all the help we can get. We’ve got a third victim.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Christchurch hospital. He’s hanging on. Could go either way. Meet me there five minutes ago.”

The traffic is sparse, ninety percent of it made up of taxis ferrying the drunk. It thickens around the hospital where there’s been an accident outside the main entrance, a boy-racer has jumped the curb and knocked down a lamppost, pinning somebody inside his car. The parking lot is mostly empty and I don’t drop any coins in the meter. I head to the emergency department and it’s full of people who have fallen over drunk and hurt themselves. I call Schroder and he comes through the security doors to meet me.

“Nice shoes,” he says, looking down at my running sneakers.

“You too,” I say, looking down at his running sneakers, which, like mine, are probably the only thing he had that was dry. He’s also changed into a new shirt. “We can be shoe buddies. So, does being a consultant come with a wage?”

Schroder shrugs. “It does, but don’t ask me what it is. Hell, maybe it’ll be more than what I make.”

We head back through the doors. There’s a series of intersecting corridors and people have probably died in here looking for the right place to be. Doctors and nurses are walking about in a hurry, patients are in cubicles behind curtains, voices and tears and laughter coming from different ones.

We follow the corridor to a small foyer with chairs where two women are sitting down, one doing the crying, one doing the comforting. The first the wife, the second a neighbor or friend. We stop thirty feet short of them so we can talk without them hearing.

“It’s bad,” Schroder says. “Lots of internal damage, lots of blood loss. Doctor ten minutes ago said if the guy has a priest, now would be the time to call him.”

“What happened?”

“According to his wife he came home, parked the car, then didn’t come to bed. She got up after ten minutes to go look for him. Found him in the garage next to his car, he was holding his guts in with his fingers. He was in so much pain he couldn’t move, couldn’t even call out. By the time the ambulance arrived he was already unconscious.”

“She see anything?”

“Just her husband.” Schroder lowers his voice even though nobody can hear us. I can still smell beer on him. “Different type of victim, just the one stab wound and nothing written on him, but it’s our guy.”

“Yeah? What do you have?”

“Killer walked across the front lawn and dragged some mud with him. Matches up with the bloody footprints back at the retirement homes. I mean an exact match, right down to gaps in the tread. It’s our guy.”

“Well, if it is him, why is this scene so different?”

“Theory is he panicked and fled.”

“What else have you got?”

“From victim three, not much. From the first two he drank coffee at each of the scenes, but he’s wiped down the cups. He’s wiped down all the surfaces he may have touched, including the bathroom. So no prints. DNA, well, we got plenty of that. Just that’s not going to be any good until the results come back.”

“Jesus,” I say, “three people within, what, six, seven hours?” I nod toward another big set of doors, which lead to another corridor and operating rooms where right now our victim is on a table with somebody’s hands inside him. “What if he’s not our last?”

“Victim three is Brad Hayward,” he says. “Forty-one years old, an accountant, wife with two children, all of whom were home when it happened.”

“The kids see anything?”

“The kids were in bed.”

“So the extra people at the house could be why the killer didn’t hang around to make sure the job was complete.”

“That’s the theory,” Schroder says. “So far no links to either of the other victims.”

“So a teacher, an accountant, and a lawyer-”

“All walk into a bar,” Schroder says, then shakes his head. “Does sound like a setup,” he adds.

The wife has been staring at the doors the entire time, but now she looks over at us, whispers something to her friend, stands up, and comes over. She clutches at the bottom of her jacket and tugs it down, straightening it, then brushes away the tears from the front of it. Schroder introduces me but doesn’t give me a title. She nods an acknowledgment but doesn’t offer to shake hands. I feel like I’m not wanted.

“Do you know anything yet?” she asks, directing the question at both of us.

“We’re certainly building up a picture of what happened,” Schroder says.

“Was it the Grim Reaper?”

“It’s Gran Reaper,” Schroder corrects her.

“What?”

“It’s Gran Reaper.”

“Gran?”

“As in Grandparent.”

“Cute,” she says, but doesn’t sound like she means it.

“We don’t know for sure it’s him, but it’s possible,” Schroder says.

“Which firm does your husband work for?” I ask.

“Goodwin, Devereux, and Barclay,” she says.

“They interact with lawyers?” I ask.

She shrugs. “You’d need to ask them, but I assume so.”

“Have you heard of Herbert Poole or Albert McFarlane?” I ask.

“Your partner asked me that already,” she says, “and the answer is no. Are they the two men killed earlier today?”

“What can you tell me about your husband?” I ask. “Was he well liked? Having any problems? Any strange phone calls, any late-night meetings, anything at all?”

“Brad’s a great man,” she says, frowning at me. “Nothing like that at all, and everybody likes him. Everybody. I hope you’re going to have better questions than that.”

“What time does he normally finish work?” I ask.

“It varies. He aims to finish at six most nights, but most times he doesn’t finish till seven or eight. Sometimes, like tonight, he doesn’t finish till much later. It’s not unusual for him to get home after midnight.”

“And he calls first?”

“He called around five and said he wouldn’t make it home till around eleven. He has a lot of work at the moment. One of his colleagues was arrested for murder and is in jail now,” she says, “so Brad has to take on the extra workload.”

“So finishing late is a recent thing,” I say.

“He would finish late in the past, maybe once or twice a month, but now it’s almost every night, and of course much later too. Midnight is about as late as it gets. I don’t complain because he’s under a lot of stress at work. I mean, it came up, sure it did, I was sick of having to take care of the house and the kids and I didn’t want to become a widow to an accountant firm, and. . and. .”

She stops talking. The word widow has registered with her and her face is changing shape around the thought, I can see it in her features, in her eyes, she’s mapping a future with her husband no longer in it, no more phone calls, no more arguments, no more being unsure of when he’s going to arrive home. No more of anything-just an emptiness in her life that one day she may fill with somebody else or won’t.

“He’s going to make it,” she says. “He’s. . he’s lost a lot of blood,” she says, “and the doctors. . they still don’t know if. .” she stops talking. Her friend stands up and comes over and puts an arm around her. She gives us a dirty look, like everything is our fault, like we’re being intrusive with all the questions even though we all want the same thing.

“How long has he worked at the firm?” I ask.

“Five years, going on six.”

“Before then?”

“Before then he used to work for Inland Revenue.”

I glance at Schroder and he returns the look. The Inland Revenue thing is a problem. That means we can start throwing darts at the phone book and each time we’d find somebody with a motive. I know it means that I hate Brad Hayward, and Schroder hates him too. We’re out there putting our lives on the line every day just to give a third of our wages to the government, and it’s not like the government’s taking one-third of the risk. And if Schroder gets shot, Inland Revenue isn’t going to send flowers and wish him the best and thank him for all the tax he’s paid.

“Any problems back then? Any threats?” I ask.

“No, nothing,” she says, and Schroder’s cell phone goes off. He excuses himself and steps back.

“Why’d he leave?” I ask.

“Oh, well, he just wanted a change,” she says, her eyes looking down.

“That’s all?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Would he tell you if there had been any threats?” I ask.

“Brad tells me everything.”

I’ve never known whether girlfriends and wives really believe that.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she says.

I don’t need to prompt her to carry on.

“You’re thinking with all the late nights, that Brad was having an affair. Well, he wasn’t.”

I wasn’t thinking that-at least not seriously, but now I certainly am. “Listen, Mrs. Hayward, were people suspecting your husband of having an affair? I need to know everything. Anything you hold back could be vital, it could help us find who did this.”

“I’m not holding anything back.”

“Why did he leave Inland Revenue?”

“I told you, he just wanted a change,” she says, and this time she holds my eye for a few seconds before looking away and, combined with what she said about her husband being faithful, I know she’s lying to me. I’ve been doing this for too long to let somebody like Mrs. Hayward fool me. “Better money, better conditions, plus nobody wants to work for the tax department,” she says.

I nod. That’s true. “I’m going to ring them first thing in the morning and talk to his old boss and find out anyway,” I say, “so you might as well tell me.”

“Is this necessary?” her friend says.

“It’s okay,” Mrs. Hayward says, and then she holds my look. “It was nothing. Just, you know, problems with another woman. She said he was harassing her when he wasn’t. Stupid stuff. She didn’t like Brad so she made up stuff about him. It was easier to move on than to follow it up. So that’s it, Mr. Policeman, and now you think Brad was cheating on me and he wasn’t, he’d never do that, he’s not the cheating kind,” she says, only I think he might be and she thinks he might be too. The late nights, the extra hours at work-you don’t have to be an accountant to see what that adds up to.

I thank her for her time and wish her husband the best. Schroder wraps up his phone call.

“Get anything?” he asks. “You looked like you were giving her a hard time.”

“Her husband was having an affair. It’s probably why he was late home tonight. Maybe he was messing around with the wrong girl. Maybe that’s the connection.”

“She tell you that?”

“Not in as many words,” I say.

And on that note a doctor, looking dejected, comes out from behind the doors, and before he can even say a word we all know what he’s about to say, and the two women break down and cry and the Christchurch homicide rate marches on.