The Laughterhouse A Thriller

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

At one thirty me and Officer Split-Lip meet an armed response unit two blocks from the target. If Donald Shrugs kidnapped the doctor and his family, then he’s a dangerous man. That’s what the armed backup is for. It’s to stop anybody from getting shot who doesn’t deserve to be shot. They’re just about to go in when Schroder calls.

“Got an update on Erin Stanton,” he says. “She left her husband for a guy by the name of Brian West. He’s a musician with a wife and a couple of kids that he walked out on roughly the same time. They moved to Australia two months ago so he could play in a band with a bunch of guys he used to know. They’re there now and it’s unlikely they’re involved in any of this. No reason for them to be. They’re flying in later today. Call me back once the team has gone in,” he says, and hangs up.

The man leading the team is dressed in black and is wearing a bulletproof vest and seems a lot calmer than I would be if I were about to do his job. I hang back by the cars while the team moves forward. It only takes one minute for them to go through the house and give it an initial all-clear, then two more minutes to go through it again to make sure. I walk down to the house. It’s a brick home around forty years old with a low iron roof and large windows. The driveway is lined with cracks that have weeds pushing through, except where oil stains have killed them. I walk through the house. Nothing out of the ordinary. It’s a family home with ugly carpet but nice furniture. Some of the doors stick a little. There are toys on the floor and memos on the fridge. There are photographs on the walls and none of them contain the man from the cemetery.

I head into the lounge. There’s a cordless phone lying on the armrest of the couch. It has a digital display on it. I scroll down the menu. One of them says Mary’s work, and another says Don’s work. I dial Don’s work. It’s picked up after four rings.

“Jeff speaking.”

“Yeah, hi, Jeff, is Donald around?”

“Should be, hang on a second. . . .” He puts the phone down and I can hear footsteps, people talking, the noise of a photocopier nearby. A minute later Jeff comes back. The phone drags across the desk and is picked up. “Err, actually he’s just left. Some kind of emergency.”

“He’s been there all day?”

“Yeah, why? Who is this?”

I figure the emergency Donald left for is this. I figure one of his neighbors called him at work and told him his house has been stormed into. “Detective Inspector Theodore Tate,” I tell him. “I need you to give me Don’s cell phone number.”

“Oh, shit, has something happened? Is his family okay?”

“They’re fine,” I tell him, “but I need that number.”

He gives me the number and I write it down, then realize it was probably in the phone’s memory anyway. I hang up on Jeff while he’s mid-sentence, dial the number, and a man answers on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Donald Shrugs?”

“Is this the police?”

“It’s Detective Theo—”

“Are you at my house?”

“Yes.”

“What are you doing there? You broke in? Who the hell gave you the right to break in?”

“Calm down, sir.”

“Calm down? You calm the f*ck down. I’m on my way there right now and I’ve already called my lawyer. You are in so much f*cking trouble, man.”

“Listen, sir, you need to calm down or you’re going to make things worse.”

“F*ck you,” he says, and he hangs up.

I head outside. I stand by the patrol cars and wait. Five minutes later a car comes speeding down the street. It stops at the cars and the door flies open and at least six officers point their guns at him and his body seems to make six different sounds, among them a high-pitched whine that comes from this throat. The anger drops out of him and he takes a step back.

“Down on the ground now,” one of the men yells at him, and that’s exactly what he does. Another man handcuffs him, then they drag him up. Somebody reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a wallet. He flicks it open and pulls out the driver’s license and hands it to me.

“I told you to calm down, Donald,” I say, looking from the license up to Donald and Donald isn’t who I helped last night. Instead Donald is an overweight guy in his late forties with a shaved head and a diamond earring in his right ear and a nose that is one size too small to fit his features.

“What are you doing in my house?”

“You own a Toyota Corolla?” I ask him.

“You have no right!” he yells, the anger coming back now that the guns have been lowered.

“The car, Donald.”

“What? No, no, I . . .” then he stops. He’s figuring something out.

“What?”

“Shit,” he says. “Listen, it’s not me,” he says. “Whatever you think I did, I didn’t do. I sold that car three days ago. It was an old backup car and we didn’t need it anymore. I put an ad in the paper and some guy came around and bought it. The paperwork is still being filed, man, but I don’t own that car anymore. I promise you.”

“You get a name from him? Any ID?”

“Just a name. James somebody. I can’t remember exactly. But I filed the papers. It’ll be on record.”

“What did James look like?”

“What? Jesus, I don’t know. Scary looking, I guess.”

“Scary how?”

Suddenly he becomes animated again. He’s eager to help, eager to get out of the handcuffs. “Oh, shit, real scary. He looked like he’d been beaten up really badly, and lots too. I didn’t even want to get into the car with him for the test drive.”

“How’d he pay?”

“Cash. It was only five hundred bucks,” he says, talking quickly.

“Uncuff him,” I say, turning toward one of the officers. “Don’t suppose you still have any of the money?”

“Why?”

“So we can fingerprint it.”

“No. It’s all gone. Five hundred bucks doesn’t last long.”

He’s got that right.

An officer uncuffs him and he starts rubbing at his wrists. “What did this guy do anyway?” he asks. “Kill somebody?”

“Thanks for your time, Donald,” I say to him, and leave him leaning against his car. I can hear him complaining to anybody who’s listening, which doesn’t seem to be anybody, so he just talks louder. I find the officer I got a lift with and convince him to let me use his car, telling him he can get a lift back to the station with somebody else. He doesn’t seem that happy about it but doesn’t put up an argument.

I call Schroder. I tuck the phone between my shoulder and ear and drive carefully around the blockade that’s slowly being disassembled. Media vans are approaching for what for them is going to be a nonevent.

“There are hundreds of files here,” Schroder says, “any one of them could be relevant.”

“Shrugs said he sold the car to a man named James. Apparently James hasn’t filed his ownership papers,” I say. Both buyer and seller must complete ownership forms whenever a car is sold privately. “Shrugs filed his. That’ll give us a last name, assuming he used his real name, which is doubtful.”

“I’ll make the call.”

“No files with the name James?”

“I’ll check, but it’s probably not even the guy’s real name. The car has arrived back at the station. Apparently it’s been wiped clean. No prints anywhere on it.”

“Shit. There must be.”

“Well, there aren’t.”

“Wait, wait, hang on a second. Check under the hood.”

“What?”

I tell him about helping the driver jump-start his car. “There might be prints around the battery, or at least there should be something around the latch.”

“I’ll get it done. Where are you heading?”

“Back to the station,” I tell him, “but first I’m going to go and get our suspect’s real name.”