The Laughterhouse

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The day is moving quicker than it should, partly because of the unfolding events, partly because of daylight savings, mostly because that’s what happens in a murder investigation when things start to fall in place. The day is still light, but with the sun heading toward the horizon a little quicker every day it’s only a matter of weeks until it’s dark by five o’clock. I’ve been given the use of an unmarked patrol car that doesn’t struggle to start and has a heater and window wipers that work.

While Schroder takes a team out to the slaughterhouse, I drive to Ariel Chancellor’s house and park out front. It’s taken me a little longer than I’d have hoped, the first of the boy-racers that Schroder warned us about are already warming up the streets for later on tonight. I don’t have Detective Kent with me because I don’t need help asking a bunch of questions, and I need to get through it quickly so I can see my wife. I have twenty minutes before my five o’clock appointment with Dr. Forster, and from here it’s a twenty-minute drive, longer if the boy-racers decide to circle the nursing home. I figure I can be ten minutes late, maybe even twenty. It’ll take Forster half an hour or so to look over my wife. So that gives me ten minutes to talk to Chancellor.

I knock but nobody answers. If I were still a private investigator, then right now I’d consider breaking in. I weigh that up against my responsibilities as a policeman, then I weigh those up against my responsibilities as a human being who’s trying to save the lives of three young girls and their father. All that weighing pulls me around the side of the house where my feet sink halfway into the boggy lawn. There are patches of mold growing around the edges of the back door. I use a lock-pick set that has come in handy over the years and will continue to do so in the future, even in my role as a policeman.

I call out a hello before making my way inside. The air temperature drops a few degrees. Any damper and I’d need swimming trunks. I step into the living room. To the right is a kitchen with rinsed dishes forming a pile next to the sink. There’s mouse shit along the floor near the oven, and beside a rubbish bin is a dead mouse broken in half in a spring trap. On the dining room table are a couple of fantasy paperbacks that possibly help Ariel escape her past and present. Next to them is a small plastic bag with half a dozen white tablets in it, all on display for somebody to steal-or in this case eat, because there are holes in the base of the first bag and some of the tablets are scratched up and there’s a dead mouse on the table that got high really quickly and OD’d before he could share the find with his friends.

I take a look at the photographs I saw here earlier today. The edges have curled over the years, the colors have faded from the memories. I pick up one that has Caleb Cole in it, along with Jessica and Ariel. It can’t have been taken long before James Whitby destroyed all their lives. Ariel looks happy. There is life in her eyes that has since been extinguished. Back then she was a ten-year-old girl who dreamed of ponies and rainbows and watched cartoons on TV. Back then she had a best friend and the world was bright and happy and she was a princess. Then a crazy man made that world dark.

Even at ten Ariel would have understood what happened. At eleven she would have understood it more. By high school it was probably ruining her life. The guilt, the shame, the knowledge she got away and her best friend didn’t. In this photo is a girl that never knew what lay ahead, would never need to know a world of drugs and prostitution, would never need to live in a run-down home with mouse shit on the floor and holes in the ceiling. James Whitby may not have killed her, but he took away her life.

I move through to the bedroom. My cell phone rings. It’s Schroder.

“Got an update for you,” he says.

“You’re at the slaughterhouse?”

“About five minutes away. You spoke to Ariel?”

“Just pulling onto her street now. So what’s the news?”

“It’s pretty moot now,” he says, “but fingerprints found under the hood came back as a match to Caleb Cole. And the court records have arrived. Want to have a guess at who was the jury foreman?”

“Albert McFarlane?”

“Try again.”

“Herbert Poole.”

“Bingo. Victoria Brown said Whitby had the mental age of a ten-year-old and wasn’t responsible for himself. Dr. Stanton was a critical piece of her defense. And, get this, she also had some character witnesses.”

“McFarlane?”

“Exactly. He used to be Whitby’s teacher. He spoke about how much Whitby had changed since the attack that hospitalized him. He told the jury that Whitby was basically a good kid, and everything he did was a result of the abuse.”

“Brad Hayward?”

“No mention of him. Has to be what you said earlier-he was just a random guy Ariel Chancellor worked last night, which must have upset Cole. Listen, we’ve got people sitting on the other jury members making sure they’re safe, along with everybody else listed in the case. We got Cole’s mug shot out to the media-everybody by the end of the day is going to know who Caleb Cole is. We’ll find him soon. Look, I gotta go-we’re pulling up at the slaughterhouse.”

“Good luck,” I tell him, and he hangs up.

I tuck the phone into my pocket and Schroder is right about finding Caleb Cole soon, because when I turn around he’s standing right in front of me. Before I can react, he swings a fist and punches me in the face.