The Laughterhouse by Paul Cleave Read Free Book Online

face like he can’t quite believe he’s caused all this fuss. You didn’t care enough. Care about what? Or who?
    Schroder is talking on his cell phone, his spare hand rubbingat his face. There are more patrol cars outside now along with a few station wagons. The cabs have disappeared, along with ninety percent of the people that came here in them. There are forensic techs heading toward the porch. They’re wearing white nylon suits so as to not contaminate the scene like the rest of us already have. Another station wagon pulls up and Tracey Walter, the medical examiner, climbs out. She stands next to the wagon and ties her black hair up into a tight ponytail. I stand in the kitchen and listen to Schroder on his cell phone as the newcomers take over the scene. Nobody talks to me or pays me any attention. There’s a sense of authority here that was certainly lacking ten minutes ago. People are carrying aluminum suitcases full of forensic tools. Alternate sources of light are being set up, bright halogens chasing away every shadow. Within moments I’m standing in the only living room visible from outer space. Tracey approaches the body carefully, as if scared it’s about to jump up and run from her cold hands.
    Schroder hangs up. Before he can say anything, his phone starts to ring again. He rolls his eyes and gives an apologetic smile. I head out onto the porch where the crowd has swelled. I learn one of them is Bernard Walsh, the man who found the body. He’s wearing a shirt and tie, and either Bernard is magnetic or he loves badges because there are at least two dozen of them attached to the lapel of his suit jacket. I introduce myself and lead him further from the porch, to where there’s no angle of the view inside. We stand beneath an oak tree that’s three storeys high with a trunk the width of a compact car. It shelters us from the few spits of rain coming down. Walsh is holding a cup of tea that is half gone and looks stone cold. He’s shaken up and tells me he hasn’t seen anything like this since the war—and he’s old enough to be talking about any war in the last century.
    “I mean, Jesus, it makes no sense. It just makes no sense,” Walsh says. “Herb, Herb was a good guy. A real gentleman. Who the hell would want to hurt Herb?”
    “Run through it for me.”
    “Run through what for you?”
    “You finding him. What happened? He didn’t show up somewhere? Why’d you go inside? You always go inside, or was his door open?”
    “This place, don’t you for one second think we don’t know what this is. I used to be a photographer, came out of the war and needed something to do that didn’t involve people screaming. I worked for plenty of papers, saw plenty of things. Once I had to do a photo shoot of a slaughterhouse, and the cows were lined up for hundreds of feet, and at the head of that line they were getting shot in the forehead, you know? And the cows, each time they heard that cattle bolt gun go off, they knew. They were braying and panicking because they each knew their buddies were getting killed and they were next to get butchered. That feeling is here too, not in the same sense, and maybe one day in forty years you’ll know what I mean. This place, it’s like a lottery out here, you know what I mean? All of us gambling on who’s going to be the next to go. All of us losing our buddies and knowing we’re the next to go, but slap me seven ways from stupid, the way Herb went, ah hell, we know we’re all cattle facing the bolt gun but this . . .’
    He doesn’t finish, he gives it a few seconds of thought before moving on, and I let him talk and burn off the tension. “We play chess against each other. There’s a few of us—we have an ongoing tournament in the community. We’re all about as good as each other, or about as bad as each other depending on who you ask. Mick, Mick was the best, but he don’t know it anymore. He don’t know much, his mind has turned to mush. Hell, he