The Laughterhouse

CHAPTER TWENTY

We head downstairs together, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, either to save power like we’re all supposed to be doing all over the world to save on resources, or for the exercise. We get to the bottom. Schroder goes out a door to the parking lot and I head into the foyer and down the front steps to the street. There’s a crowd of reporters forming a semicircle, and in the center of it is Superintendent Stevens, shaved head gleaming in the sunlight. He has the attention of everybody there, except for Jonas Jones, who breaks away from the group. I don’t hang around for the speech and the questioning. Jones follows me. I figure I could try and lose him, but a man of his abilities will already know where I’m parked.

I reach my car half a block away and somebody has backed into it, the front left headlight is busted and there’s glass on the ground and no note left behind. I sweep the glass into the curb with my foot. Traffic is backed up from traffic light to traffic light, people flocking to start the workday.

“Let me guess,” I say, turning toward Jonas, “you woke up this morning knowing somebody was going to damage my car?”

“That’s funny, Detective. Do I have that right? You’re a detective inspector again?”

“You tell me.”

“I can help you, Detective. We can help each other. I have a gift, and you’re wasting time by denying that.”

“You’re unbelievable,” I tell him. “Twice in a morning. You must be desperate.”

“Don’t dismiss me, Theodore. I can help. There is an opportunity here for us both to do some good.”

“And you’ll write a book about it?”

“You would get some credit. And paid, of course, and looking at your car I can tell getting paid isn’t something you’re used to.”

“No, thanks,” I tell him.

“I can help you, Theodore.”

“Yeah? Then why don’t you help me and tell me what the stab wounds mean?”

“Why don’t you help me, and tell me about the case? Whether you think I’m a fake or not, we can help each other. I know how people think. You must at least know that’s true.”

“Then you must know what I’m thinking right now,” I tell him, and I pull away, leaving him to stare at my car for a few seconds before he turns back the way we walked.

The day is still warming up. I take my jacket off at the first set of lights I stop at. My body clock is a little out of whack from daylight savings-for some reason every year daylight savings feels like we’re jumping forward or backward six hours instead of just the one. I stop off at a café and grab another coffee, figuring I can afford it now, figuring if I don’t take a few minutes to do this I’ll end up falling over in a gutter. I get the feeling I’m going to need two cups an hour just to stay alert through the day. I sit at a table and watch the city through the window, people passing by, cars doing the same thing, and everything looks normal and now, right now in this moment, Christchurch is the city it used to be.

The clouds from the south creep over the top of the café and start to cover the city. Somebody toots at another car and there’s an exchange of hand gestures and obscenities. A teenager in a hoodie walks past the window and sees me looking out. He takes the time to inhale a big wad of snot and spits it at me. It hits the window and slides down slowly, mostly green but with a bit of blood in there too, and he carries on looking angry at the footpath ahead of him. A man in the café behind me calls the waitress a whore and tells her coffee should be cheaper before storming out, and Christchurch is back.

I finish my coffee and drive to Ariel Chancellor’s house. It’s the kind of neighborhood I’d certainly never want to live in, with houses looking near collapse and gardens that have been eaten alive by bacteria. The street has potholes every thirty feet. The sidewalks are cracked and broken from pushed up tree roots. I park outside Ariel’s house safe in the knowledge nobody will think I’m a cop because of my car, safe in the knowledge my car isn’t worth stealing. The house is in rough condition, with a tarpaulin over part of the roof. I walk up the pathway to the front door, where paint is peeling off the walls and resting in flaky puddles on the porch. I knock, half expecting my hand to disappear, that the door will be full of rot and held together only by termites.

A woman answers, squinting at the bright light and holding her hand up to her face. Her skin is pale and there are cold sores around the sides of her mouth. It takes me a few seconds to come to the conclusion that it’s Ariel because this version is different from the photograph. She’s older and thinner and looks as though six hours ago she may have been strung out on whatever it is that made those needle holes in her arm. She’s holding onto a glass half full of golden fluid and ice cubes. She has dyed her hair black and it’s about half the length it was before, coming down to the top of her neck.

I hold up my badge. “Ariel Chancellor?”

I can see in her features that once, before life crushed her, Ariel Chancellor was an extremely attractive girl.

Her voice sounds like a cigarette butt is jammed down her throat. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“I’m Detective Inspector Tate,” I say, introducing myself, and it’s good to say those words again and not be lying about it.

Her eyes snap into focus. “You don’t look like a cop,” she says, hooking her hair over her ears.

“No?”

“No. Cops wear cheap suits. Your suit is worse than cheap.”

“You recognize this man?” I ask, holding up a photo of Brad Hayward.

“No,” she answers, without even looking at it. She starts to close the door, and I put my hand out and stop her.

“You want to reconsider?”

“Not really, no. You want to get the hell off my porch?”

“Your fingerprints were found in his car.”

“My fingerprints have a way of getting found in lots of cars,” she says. “He say I took something from him? If so, he’s a liar. You can’t trust men who pay for sex.”

“So he was one of your clients.”

“If that’s the label you want to give them, sure.”

“He was murdered last night.”

“And what, I’m supposed to care? You think your buddy there would give a shit if I showed up dead in an alleyway?”

“He had a wife and two kids.”

“And they’re better off without him.” She lets go of the door, conceding she’s going to have to talk to me. She reaches into her pocket for a packet of cigarettes.

“You’re wrong about that,” I tell her.

“Am I? You have a crystal ball? He could have turned into a bad father, a drunk, somebody who’d hit his kids.”

“Please. He was killed in front of his children,” I tell her, which is close enough to the truth.

She lights one of the cigarettes. She holds the packet in my direction and I shake my head. “They’re better off without him,” she says. “They just don’t know it.”

“You may be right,” I say, doubting that she is.

“I am right. I’m good at reading men, Detective, it’s what I do.”

“At least help them get some closure and talk to me.”

She looks up at the sky and squints against the glary light, staring up for about five seconds as if that’s where the answers are. “It’s going to rain,” she says. “Business is always slow when it rains.” She looks back at me. “Fifty bucks,” she says. “Give me fifty bucks and I’ll talk to you.”

“I don’t have fifty bucks,” remembering the guy at the hotel yesterday morning with his baseball bat.

She looks out at my car. “No, I don’t suppose you do,” she says.

“But if you like, I can arrest you, throw you in a cell for a few hours, and let you sober up a bit. Now that I can do for free.”

“I suppose you could,” she says, and takes a sip at her drink. “Fine, you may as well come in.” She rattles the ice in her glass and holds it up to eye level. “Fix you a drink?”

“It’s too early.”

“No, it’s not that, I can tell,” she says, smirking at me. “Remember what I said about reading men? I can see it in your eyes. You’re battling a demon.”

“Maybe it’s too early for you too,” I tell her.

She shrugs. “It’s always happy hour somewhere,” she says, and I can’t imagine the last time she spent an hour being truly happy.