The Laughterhouse A Thriller

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Ariel Chancellor’s house smells of wet cat and wet dog and I stay away from the walls to keep my clothes dry. I look down at my shoes to make sure they’re not squelching into the carpet and bringing up water. We walk through to the living room, where there are large stains in the ceiling with plaster and paint flaking away, the center of it bowing outward with the weight of rainwater trapped in the roof, a bucket on the floor collecting the drips. The light has no bulb in it and with all that moisture up there it must be a fire hazard. Ariel doesn’t offer me any tea or coffee or heroin. She sits down in a couch that tries to swallow her and works away at her drink, getting through half of it. I stay standing, wanting to get out of here quickly, hoping she can tell me something useful before I leave.

“How long’s it been since your last drink?” she asks me.

“I had coffee a few hours ago.”

“Huh, that’s good,” she says. “Really funny.”

“How long have you been doing this?” I ask, looking around the living room.

“Doing what?” she asks. “F*cking men for money or having nothing to show for it?”

“Both.”

“Since I was thirteen.”

“Jesus,” I say.

“You almost look sorry for me.” She lights up a cigarette, then offers me one again, and I am sorry for her, who wouldn’t be? I shake my head at the proffered cigarette. “Life is what it is, right?” she says, the end of the cigarette catching her attention for a few seconds. “This may look bad, but others I’ve known have gone through worse.”

There are pictures on the walls, prints of white tigers, posters of muscle cars and horses, a vase on top of the mantelpiece with a long-dead rose in it. The TV has buttons and dials to prove how old it is, and if I checked the back the serial number would probably only be two digits long. There are photographs of friends with blank looks, but there are other pictures too—her as a child, her face full of innocence, family or friends in the photos, her dad or uncle in them too, family snapshots of a normal looking family with normal looking smiles, and I wonder where they are now, what they did wrong for their daughter to want to take this path.

“You’re wondering how?” she asks.

I turn back toward her.

“You’re wondering how I became this way,” she says.

“Yes.”

“The universe f*cked me,” she tells me, “it f*cked me for free. So ask me what you came to ask and let me finish my drink and get to bed.”

I get the photograph of Brad Hayward out. It was taken two months ago. His wife has been cropped out of the picture. He’s happy and that could be because he’s had a good summer, or because he has a coupon card and he’s nailed ten prostitutes and his eleventh one is free.

“You saw him last night.”

“Yes.”

“Have you seen him before?”

She shrugs. “They all look the same,” she says. “What I remember more is whether or not they are a showerer. This guy—he didn’t shower beforehand. Then again, nor did I,” she says, holding eye contact with me.

“What time did you see him last night?” I ask, hoping she just sticks to the facts.

“I don’t know. I don’t keep a schedule.”

“Did he seem like he knew what he was doing? Was he nervous? First-time user? Experienced?”

“I can’t remember. All of that I guess. None of it. Whatever,” she says, losing interest in the questions.

“It’s important.”

She takes a drink and swirls it around in her mouth for a few seconds before swallowing it. “It wasn’t his first time with a hooker,” she says, staring at the ice cubes. “I doubt it was his second or third either.”

She sucks on the cigarette and blows the smoke into the cold air, where it hangs in front of her face and doesn’t go anywhere, her face behind it like a mask. I get the feeling I could come back in an hour and that mask would still be there. I have the urge to shake her. Every few seconds or so when she blinks, her eyes seem to open a little less than the time before.

“Where do you work?”

“Normally corner of Manchester and Hereford.”

“That’s where you were last night?”

“Pretty much.”

“And you got into his car. Where did he drive you?”

“About half a block away. There’s an alleyway further up Hereford Street.”

“That’s where you normally go?”

“You have no idea what normal is in my kind of work,” she says. “But yeah, the alley is a favorite spot. Driving is the last thing they’re thinking about.”

“How long were you with him?”

“I don’t know. Why does all this matter?”

“It matters because somebody murdered him and it’s my job to find out.”

“And I should care?”

“Yes. People ought to care when somebody gets murdered.”

She shrugs. “Whatever. I don’t know. Five minutes. Maybe ten. I’ve told you everything I know. I’m tired.”

I’m tired too. “Just another couple of questions. Two minutes and I’m gone.”

She sighs, like I’ve just told her she has to help me move next weekend.

“Make it quick,” she says.

“How long were you with him?” I ask again.

“Five minutes.”

“You recognize any of these people?” I ask, and I show her photographs of the other three victims. They’re all before shots—no need to traumatize any witnesses with photos of bloody corpses. I lay them out on the coffee table side by side.

“Nope.”

“You want to take a closer look?”

“No.”

“None of them were clients?”

“I don’t do chicks.”

“The other two?”

“I don’t do men who look like they might die in the process. I don’t need that kind of trouble.”

I run their names by her and she keeps shaking her head. “I don’t know. Maybe. Are they famous?”

“No,” I say, scooping the pictures back up.

“The last one, isn’t she a lawyer?”

I pause with my hand on the photographs. I slide the one of Victoria Brown back out and put it on the table. “You know her?”

“When was this photo taken?” she asks.

“Ten years ago,” I say, the hint of a connection forming, a hint of excitement growing inside me.

“Jesus, I can’t remember anything from ten years ago. I got into some trouble with some drugs three years ago, which I’m sure you know about and the fines are the reason I’m living in this shithole and not the slightly better shithole I used to live in. I think she was my lawyer.”

My excitement fades. “She was in a coma three years ago.”

“That’d explain the job she did.”

“You must know her from somewhere else. Take another look,” I say, tapping the picture.

“You said this was only going to take a few minutes.”

“Please.”

“I don’t know,” she says, and I’m losing her again.

“What about these other two men?” I ask. “This one, he was a lawyer too,” I say, showing her the first photograph again.

“Never seen him,” she says.

“You sure about that?”

“No, of course I’m not sure. I go out. I buy stuff. Clothes and food. Maybe I’ve walked past him in a supermarket or on the street. How the hell would I know?”

“And this one?” I ask, back to victim number two.

“I don’t remember him.”

“But you remember her,” I say, pointing toward Victoria Brown. “She’s been in a coma for seven years. It means you remember her from before then. You ever need a lawyer before that?”

“Needed one, sure, but could never afford one.”

“This guy here wasn’t your teacher?” I ask, pointing at McFarlane.

“What? I don’t know. I can’t remember my teachers.”

“He taught at Papanui High School, you go there?”

“Of course not. You must really think my parents hated me.”

“You knew she was a lawyer,” I say, tapping Victoria’s picture again. “You have to know her from somewhere.”

“Jesus, enough about the lawyer, okay? I don’t know where I know her from.” She yawns and makes no effort to cover her mouth, then finishes off her drink. “Maybe I saw her on TV. Maybe she had some big case that made the news. You think of that?”

It’s a good point.

“You see anything suspicious?” I ask her. “Anybody follow you? Anybody watching?”

“What? When, last night?”

“Yes, last night. Or any other night.”

She shrugs. “Nothing like that.”

“What can you tell me about your other clients last night?”

“About as much as I told you about that one,” she says, and nods toward the photograph of Hayward on the coffee table next to the other three. “You show me some photos and I can tell you who did and didn’t shower, but that’s about it.”

I thank her for her time, scoop up the pictures, and replace them with my card.

“I thought you were a cop,” she says, looking at the card.

“I am,” I tell her. “But that’s my number,” I say, looking down at the card, which says I’m a private investigator.

“I don’t get it,” she says, and I get the idea there’s a lot of things she doesn’t get. Simple logic, for one. A maid, for another.

“Call me if you can think of anything, okay? We’re trying to get a killer off the streets.”

“And I’m trying to get through this,” she says, holding up an almost empty bottle of vodka, “before going to bed and living the dream all over again in about nine hours.”

I leave her to her drink and her dreams. I drive to the hospital hoping to still meet Schroder in time. Half of the parking lot has been shut down due to construction, the workers all on a coffee break and not one of them without a cigarette in his hand. It seems like some smokers do it just to have something to do with their hands in social situations. I park in a section for staff parking where they have dedicated a few spaces for the police department, right next to Schroder who is sitting in his car on the phone. He looks over at me and nods. A couple of doctors are standing outside and smoking, chatting to a nurse with long blond hair who looks like she just stepped off the set of porno. She keeps flicking her hair over her shoulder and laughing at everything they say, and I get the idea she would flutter her eyelids and laugh all through surgery too to keep their attention. I step past a dumpster with a biohazard sign on it, which might be full of needles or, just as equally, full of body parts. I have to sign in to get past a security guard with no neck who gives me directions to the only elevator in sight, and I wait for Schroder before stepping in.

“What’s wrong?” I ask him, when he catches up, his face creased into a frown.

“Maybe I should drink more,” he tells me. “That way I can get fired, and getting fired is probably the only thing that’s going to stop my wife from leaving me. You know,” he says, looking at me with a thoughtful look, “I’m always telling her things are going to get better, but then another case comes along and . . . and I’m gone. She said it’s like being married to a ghost. And with the new baby . . . things are just stressed, that’s all.”

“I’m sure it’ll be okay,” I tell him, but the only thing I’m sure about is how lame that sounded.

“Yeah, well . . . f*ck it,” he says, and stabs at the button to take us down into the bowels of the hospital.

The one thing reliable in life is this—the feeling in a morgue always stays the same. People come and go—staff, medical examiners, cleaners, victims—and the equipment is updated ever so subtly over the years, probably handpicked out of catalogues brought to the hospital by sales reps. The atmosphere is one thing that can’t be upgraded—it’s bleak, it’s depressing, every time you catch the elevator here you’re taking a ride down to a well of misery.

The morgue is full of shiny surfaces that look cold, they reflect the harsh white light and make the sterile environment look even more sterile. There are gurneys with bodies lying on them—four of them I can identify, two more I can’t, all of them with the same look on their faces.

Normally there are two medical examiners who work here, but the second, Sheldon, is away. His daughter is getting married in Fiji on a beach, so he’s away with his family soaking up the sun and drinking cocktails and all of us, including the dead people in here, would much rather be with Sheldon than with Tracey, even though Tracey is the more attractive and lively of the two. Her current caseload has aged her since seeing her a few hours ago.

“Come on, guys, give me a chance,” she says, not even looking up at us, she’s so preoccupied with a file in her hands. “I know you’re desperate, but unless you want to join these people,” she says, nodding toward the victims, “you need to give me some time.”

“Just your general impressions,” Schroder says, trying to sound calming.

“Sure, my first impression is that I need to get paid more. Second impression is Sheldon chose the right week to go on holiday. And, if you like, I can do a really good impression of a really short-tempered medical examiner who snaps and attacks one police officer and one . . .” she looks at me, “just what the hell are you now anyway?”

“Your impression of a medical examiner going nuts would have to include two police officers,” I say.

She looks at Schroder, and Schroder nods. “It’s true,” he says, then he reaches out and puts a hand on her arm. “Look, Tracey, I know we’re asking a lot, and I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t important, but please, what do you have?”

Slowly she nods and for a moment there is a small smile. “Okay,” she says, “this way,” and we gather around the body of Victoria Brown. “First of all, you were right about the stab wounds,” she says, looking at Schroder. “Nineteen exactly,” she says. “Three of them into the same wound, each taking different angles beneath the surface. But our man over there has only the one,” she says, nodding toward Brad Hayward, who doesn’t react to the sound of his name.

“I can confirm the same knife was used on each victim,” she says, “and that victim number two also has the same amount of wounds.”

I feel a chill run up my spine. Three victims with nineteen wounds. That has to mean something.

“Victim number one was dying anyway—lung cancer had been toying with him for years,” she confirms. “Victim number four wasn’t dying, but she wasn’t really living either. And like I said a few hours ago, there are indications victim number three had just had sex. And his wife should get tested,” she adds. “For syphilis.”

That’s not a conversation that is going to go well.

She hands over an impression of the blade used to kill these people. She’s isolated one of the wounds and poured thick liquid into it that’s taken the shape of the wound and then hardened. It gives us the dimensions of the knife. It looks like a kitchen knife, something a chef would slice onions with, or something Hitchcock would put into the hands of a madman. Knowing what kind of weapon it is doesn’t bring us any closer to knowing who’s using it, especially when there’s a million identical knives out there, but the nineteen stab wounds does. How it does, we don’t know—not yet.

“I’ll call you when I know more,” she says.

Catching the elevator to the world above ground doesn’t reverse the feeling of misery and depression I caught when catching it down, it just gives it more contrast. It always takes a few minutes to shake that bleakness away. Coffee break is over and we stand in the parking lot surrounded by the dust of construction and roadwork, construction workers yelling at each other over the pounding of equipment and engine noise. The doctors and nurse are off playing doctors and nurses. The day is bright and I yawn into my hand, go to say something to Schroder, then yawn again, this time into my other hand. I don’t like to play favorites. Schroder starts to yawn too, then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small white cardboard box with Wake-E stenciled across it in orange letters.

“Caffeine tablets,” he says, and chucks one into his mouth. “Want one?”

I do want one, but what I don’t need is an addiction. Aside from the one to coffee . . . which is one I need to break anyway. I shake my head. We walk over to our cars. Schroder looks at the addition of the broken headlight on mine, seems about to mention how it just adds character, or some other joke, but can’t come up with anything.

“Something happened to me last year,” he says, “which could have ended me up in there,” he says, nodding back toward the doors. “Down in the morgue. Not many people know about it. I mean, I had to get checked out by some doctors, but there wasn’t any damage.”

I want to ask him what kind of something, but I let him take his time.

“You think it’s going to rain?” he asks, looking out at the clouds.

I shrug. “Maybe. Ariel Chancellor sure thought so.”

“Yeah, I think it might too,” he says, his thoughts still somewhere else.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“Not really,” he says. “It was just before Christmas, back when I came to see you in jail to help me out with that Hunter case. I was in a house and a perp came up behind me. I thought he was going to shoot me. I thought the last thing I was going to see was my chest all over the bathroom wall. Anyway, he didn’t shoot me, but he made Hunter push me into a bathtub full of water and keep me in there until I died.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah, exactly. It gets worse too. The thing is, I did die. I was under that water and I was panicking and I’m thinking whoever the f*ck said drowning is a peaceful way to die didn’t die from it, didn’t have his hands cuffed behind him and his head stuffed into a bath full of water. When you’re sucking water in instead of air, it’s the worst thing in the world. Everything burns. Everything goes dark. Then there’s just nothing. Then I was just gone. Thing is, a few minutes later Hunter pulled me out of that bathtub. He breathed life back into me and pounded on my chest until I started coughing up water. I remember lying on the bathroom floor with no idea what in the hell was going on, I remember being pissed off that somebody had just done that to me, and I remember being scared because from the three or four minutes I was dead, I remember nothing at all. All this work we put into making the world a better place, I don’t know . . . I mean, I don’t really believe in God, but I like to think that there is one, you know? And for four minutes I was closer to God than I’ve ever been and got nothing. So maybe my wife is right, maybe it’s time I move on.”

“You want me to argue with you? You want me to tell you what a loss that would be to the department? To the people of this city?”

“Not as big a loss as it would be the next time if there’s nobody there to breathe life into me,” he says.

“So what are you saying?”

He looks up at the sky, then wipes a hand over his face. “I’m not saying anything,” he says. “I’m just tired, that’s all. Tired and mad and just . . . just nothing. You nailed it with those nineteen stab wounds,” he says, moving on, but he’s wrong—it was Jonas who nailed it, not me, and we’d have known soon anyway; Tracey would have made the connection. How the hell did Jonas know? Even Tracey didn’t know, so nobody tipped him off.

“Carl . . .”

“Look, Tate, I’m fine. Let’s just focus on the case. How was your visit with Ariel Chancellor?”

“It was interesting,” I tell him, then fill him in on the details.

“And she has no idea how she recognizes Victoria Brown?” Schroder asks when I’m done, talking loudly to be heard over a jackhammer that has just fired up.

“That’s what I’m saying. She might have seen her on TV. We need to check if she had any high-profile cases. If she did, that could be how Chancellor knows her. If she did, maybe that high-profile case is related to what’s going on. If she didn’t, then Chancellor knows her in some other way. She was no help though, she was still high from something and drinking something and was remembering less the longer we talked. It’s looking like she was just a random prostitute Hayward picked up on his way home and has nothing to do with what’s going on.”

“We’ll have the warrant for Brown’s caseload soon,” Schroder says, “but I can already tell you we’ve checked the news archives and found nothing with her name in it. That doesn’t mean she hasn’t had a case in the news because more often than not the media focuses on the suspect and victims and rarely mention the name of the lawyer. We’re in the process of checking court records but, like any government-run department, nobody has really heard of the word efficient. Between that and the law firm she worked for, we should have something by the end of the day, but it’s frustrating—you’d think everybody would be wanting to work together to catch this bastard.”

“I’ll take another run at Chancellor later on today when she’s fresher. How are the criminal records panning out?”

“Nobody recently released has been in jail for nineteen years,” he says.

“What about nineteen months?”

“We have something there—the list is about a hundred names long for people who have been released this year alone. But jail may have nothing to do with it,” he says.

“All of this is revenge motivated. Where’s our guy been all these years? Why not kill these people a long time ago? Victoria Brown couldn’t have pissed him off in the last seven years, so where’s he been if not jail?”

“Hospital? Overseas? The army?”

“It’s jail,” I say, and Schroder nods.

“It’s what I’m thinking too,” he says. “He just hasn’t been inside for nineteen years. It must mean something else. We’ll go through all released prisoners from across the country in the last six months and start there, and if we get nothing, we’ll work our way backward until we do.”