The Laughterhouse

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

We’re not dealing with a serial killer. We’re dealing with a spree killer, and that’s not something Schroder or myself or anybody else in the department has had experience with. A serial killer takes his time. A spree killer is running around killing who he can in as quick a time as he has. You’re dealing with one victim and at the same time our perp is creating another.

At three in the morning we leave the hospital and the city’s most current grieving widow and drive to the crime scene in our own cars. We drive past the journalists who, like vampires, never sleep and, who, like vampires, suck the life out of people. The world would be a better place if vampires were real and reporters were not.

The neighborhood suggests accountants get paid well and there must be more of them living on the street. They probably have accountant parties every few months and swap the latest lawyer jokes and write everything off as an expense. Reporters shout questions at us and I can feel dozens of lenses zooming in on my face. We park behind a patrol car, which has somebody locked in the backseat, somebody wearing a press ID hanging around his neck and a pair of handcuffs around his wrists. Resting on the roof of the car is an expensive camera with one side scratched up and gouged from a fall.

The house is a four-bedroom, single-storey place with a very small front lawn. The interior smells like dinner. There are a few other detectives already here, including Detective Kent, who is talking to one of the neighbors. She gives a friendly nod toward us as we walk past. There’s blood all over the garage floor and the side of the car, Brad having fallen backward and slid against it. There are handprints on the concrete and streaks of blood. It looks like Brad tried to drag himself forward before his body gave up on him. The garage door had been left open by the killer, but nobody had seen poor Brad as he lay waiting for his wife to help him, or one of the neighbors. Well, the neighbors are here now-and plenty of them. They’re all standing outside their houses and watching, fascinated by the goings-on of death, addicted to the drama. They can’t look away. The amount of blood here means the doctors didn’t have much to work with.

I step over the blood and through the internal doorway into the hallway. The house is ten degrees warmer than outside. There’s a heat pump still blowing warm air in the living room. It’s working hard to combat the cold air coming through the open door. There’s a big-screen TV showing a live news report. The sound has been muted, there’s a reporter at the scene and in the background I can see my car. Maybe a viewer out there will feel sorry enough to donate a later model with more working parts. The car is coming through in HD, as is the reporter, as is every line and wrinkle on her face. The camera is adding ten pounds to the reporter and twenty years to my car.

One of the bedrooms has been turned into a study. There are photos on the wall of family with various degrees of happiness on their faces. There’s a framed poster-sized movie print on the wall with an alien holding a woman in his arms, the background full of 1950s tanks and 1950s soldiers acting the way they all did back in B movies when army tanks never solved problems but added to them. I figure nothing has changed. I switch on the computer and while it loads up I go through the drawers and the desk and start stacking things on top of it, an address book, folders containing work, a list of bank accounts and social networking sites all with passwords written next to them. The computer comes to life and I spend time going through the history folder, bank accounts, all websites this family has visited and find nothing useful. If Brad was having an affair, there isn’t any evidence of hotel room charges or flowers. The names from the address book and the shop receipts will be cross-referenced with anything found from the first two scenes.

I head back into the garage. Brad’s keys are still hanging in the ignition. It’s a much nicer car than mine and I wonder if the wife would mind me borrowing it since I’d be using it to help find her husband’s killer. I figure if I asked I’d be adding to the body count in the morgue. I open the door and can immediately smell perfume. It’s strong, and even stronger against the passenger seat. There are some dirty blond hairs caught in the fabric of the headrest, about twice the length of the wife’s hair and a different color. I go through the glove box, the trunk, and check under the seats. There are plenty of gas receipts tossed about, two empty drink bottles, a pair of socks, and some candy bar wrappers. I close up the car and head into the bedroom. I look through the wife’s cosmetics, sniff the perfumes, and don’t find anything to match.

“Looking for a new fragrance?” Schroder asks, holding onto his phone.

“Can’t a man just want to smell nice?”

“So what are you doing?”

I tell him about the car.

“And?”

“And none of these match. Add that to the hairs I found, and-”

“And somebody else was in his car.”

“Perfume’s still strong. Had to have been tonight.”

“Could be he dropped off a colleague,” Schroder says.

“You spoken to his boss?”

“Not yet. Look, Tate, this is crazy, completely fucking insane, but. . but a fourth body has just shown up,” he says, shaking his phone as if trying to rid it of the bad news.

I feel like throwing the perfumes over my shoulder and slapping my arms against my sides, and just saying Well, I guess that’s it then, because all we’re doing is chasing some psychopath across the city and the night still has a bunch of hours left in it, and we got no way of knowing the killings are even going to stop by morning light. This time tomorrow we could be neck-deep in bodies.

“No,” I say, shaking my head, trying to refute his statement.

“Four bodies,” he says. “It’s like. . hell, I don’t know what it’s like.”

“It’s like the world has gone mad.” I put down the perfume and something turns inside my stomach. “Jesus,” I say, my voice sounding weak. Four people. At least four families. Dozens and dozens of people about to have the world pulled out from under them, parents, friends, family-that’s a whole lot of pain.

“It’d go easier if He were on the case,” he says.

“So who’s our new victim?”

“Her name is Victoria Brown,” he says. “She’s a lawyer and, shit, get this,” he says, shaking his head and letting me know it’s going to be bad, “but she’s been in a coma for seven years.”

“What? Did you just say-”

“A coma. Yeah, I know. It’s fucked up. Listen, I’m heading there now. I want you to go and talk to Brad Hayward’s boss, see what you can learn.”

“You don’t want me to come with you?”

“Here’s the thing. Look, Tate, I don’t want you to react badly, okay?” he says, and now my mouth goes dry.

“Carl. .”

“Reason I don’t want you coming with me is because you’re going to overreact. But your wife is okay.”

I actually shake my head, the movement brief, as I pull back at the same time. “My wife? What?”

“Our fourth victim is a patient at your wife’s nursing home, Tate, but Bridget is fine. Absolutely fine.”

I take a step forward. “What the fuck are you telling me? Somebody tried to hurt her?”

“No, no, nothing like that. She just happens to be at the same nursing home as our victim.”

“I’m going there.”

“Tate. .”

But I move past him and race outside to my car.