The Laughterhouse A Thriller

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Caleb was halfway to the house when it unfolded. It was breaking news. The media and the police had shown up at the house where he had left Octavia. He had pulled over and listened to the report come in, then he had done a U-turn and come back.

In the bedroom now with the TV going, he’s in time to see two cars pull up outside Tabitha’s house. Seven people step out the front door and climb into them. At first he doesn’t realize what has taken them so long, but then he figures out that it’s a replay. All of this happened twenty minutes earlier.

So, the police had lied after all. But he had never thought of the possibility of a trap. Somehow they had found Octavia. They were using her to draw Caleb back to the scene. They were using children to try and get to him, and he understood that because he too was using the kids as tools.

He’s relived that Octavia is fine. And just as equally, he’s concerned. How did the police find her? Is he leaving a trail? If so, will the police come here? Or did Tabitha manage to escape? Should he move to a new location? Where would he go? What difference would it make?

He stares at the TV, studying the man he recognizes from his earlier fight and from the cemetery last night. There’s another detective he’s seen on the news over the last few days, and then there’s Jonas Jones, the psychic he’s seen on morning breakfast shows, the psychic he’s wanted to see more than any of the others. When he started seeing them, Caleb contacted Jones only to learn the man was backlogged with clients and also charged more than Caleb could afford.

He sits on the edge of the bed with the knife back in his hand. He watches the news as it goes back in time, showing men running out of the house and approaching Jonas Jones. He is fascinated with Jones—is it possible he is looking at a true psychic? There is a confrontation. Jones starts explaining why he’s there.

Caleb tightens his grip on the knife at the sound of his daughter’s name.

Jonas Jones is saying it was Jessica that sent him there!

Why would Jessica do that?

As if to answer his thought, Jonas tells the police and the cameras that Jessica sent him there to protect the girl.

Caleb lowers the knife onto the bed. Would she really do that? He thinks that she would. Jessica was hurt—and the last thing she would want would be for another girl to be hurt too. Jesus, has he slipped so far that even his own daughter doesn’t have any faith in him?

Jones is put into handcuffs and dragged back into the house. The police look angry enough that Caleb spends the next ten seconds waiting for a gunshot and a flash of light, but it doesn’t come. The camera cuts away, and the scene is given a live update. He listens to what the reporter has to say, then switches between channels to get different perspectives on what happened, but the reporters are all saying the same thing—Jonas Jones led them to Octavia Stanton through a vision he had had where Jessica Cole, the ten-year-old girl who was murdered fifteen years ago, came to him.

Jessica. His daughter is trying to protect a girl from him.

It makes him feel sad at the thought.

And if Jonas is like the other psychics, then it makes him angry if he is using Jessica’s name to gain publicity.

But what if he’s not like the others?

There is no word on Octavia Stanton’s condition. The reporters have not seen her come out of the house, and with the police obviously having wound down the operation, there is doubt that she was ever there. Yet Jonas certainly got something right—just not the timing. On this the reporters also agree.

Caleb isn’t sure if that makes him any less genuine.

“It’s not a science,” one of the reporters says, “it’s a gift.”

Then it goes back to footage of the man he fought with. Theodore Tate. The anchor goes on to tell the country a little bit about Theodore Tate, which includes a drunk-driving conviction for which he spent four months in jail, the apprehension and deaths of two serial killers, and the loss of his own daughter. The man who killed Tate’s daughter fled the country.

Caleb turns off the TV. Exhausted, he strips down to his underwear and climbs into bed. He stares up at the ceiling, exhausted but unable to fall asleep as he thinks about Jonas Jones, Mrs. Whitby, and most of all he thinks about Theodore Tate.