The Introvert

by Michael Paul Michaud

  I nodded to the officer and went up the elevator to get Molly and then took her out for her walk. As we returned through the lobby, there was a second officer along with the first, and he asked if he could take a statement from me and I said that would be fine, and I asked him if he would like to come up to my apartment, but he said that wouldn’t be necessary and that he could take the statement right there in the entryway.

  “Sir, could you give me your name and address?”

  I provided them easily.

  “Could you tell me the last time you saw the landlord?”

  “This weekend. I asked him to fix my sink.”

  “When exactly was this?”

  “I think it was Friday or Saturday.”

  “Can you be any more precise, sir?”

  “Saturday then,” I said.

  “Can you tell me what time that was?”

  “I think it was daytime. Maybe close to dinner.”

  It made me hungry to think about it because I’d been so hungry when I’d gone to him to ask him to fix my sink, and I really had no thoughts of killing him when I went there and was only thinking of getting my faucet fixed so I could make some dinner and then what happened had happened and I hadn’t been able to eat until I met up with Donna at the bar close to her apartment at nine.

  “Have you seen anyone around here who looked suspicious or looked like they didn’t belong?”

  To me those seemed like they were two different things but still I answered no to both.

  “Did you know him well?”

  “Not very.”

  “One of the neighbors said he had a dog. Have you seen the dog around?”

  “I heard the dog died,” I said.

  The officer didn’t say anything but just scratched some words down on his notepad.

  “What sort of a relationship did you have with him?”

  “I didn’t know him that well. He liked to drink a lot.”

  “I see,” said the officer.

  “My sink still needs to be fixed,” I said and then explained that no water came out of the faucet and that I had been forced to get my water from the bathroom sink and that it didn’t seem right to make dinner with water from the bathroom.

  The officer just nodded but didn’t write anything down. He took my phone number, and finally Molly and I stepped back into the elevator and as the doors closed I could still see him scribbling things in his notebook and looking in our direction.

  CHAPTER 15

  By Thursday he had been reported in the newspaper as a missing person.

  “Isn’t that your building?” asked Donna when she saw me reading the story.

  “Yes.”

  “Crazy,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think happened to him?”

  “Could have been a lot of things. He drank a lot.” It didn’t bother me to say these things because both of them were true.

  “Are you scared?”

  “Why should I be?”

  “I guess you shouldn’t.”

  She’d taken my hand in her own and it made me uncomfortable because Mr. Peters was floating around and Donna had already put two lay-downs through to my line that day.

  “The police asked me some questions,” I said.

  Donna looked at me as if with suspicion, though maybe it was just concern.

  “Why were they talking to you?”

  “I suppose they were talking to everyone in the building,” I said, and her look of concern or suspicion mostly went away.

  I could see Mr. Peters staring at us, so I told Donna she should probably get back to her own cubicle and so she did but only after another minute of chatting, then I spent the rest of the day making calls and sold three vacuums, which wasn’t too bad, especially when considering that my mind was mostly occupied with what had happened on Saturday.

  Donna called me later that night and asked if I’d like to meet her for a drink and I said I didn’t want to because I was tired although the real reason was that I just didn’t want to, but then she asked me again and hinted that she’d probably help me to achieve it, and I decided that maybe I wanted to go after all, so I got dressed and left my apartment.

  I was stepping out of my building when I saw the same police officer who’d taken my statement. He was speaking to another tenant of my building on the sidewalk by his police cruiser, but when he saw me his face changed, and I saw him say something quickly to the man he’d been talking to, and then he walked briskly in my direction.

  “Sir...”

  I figured he was probably talking to me, but I ignored him and kept walking toward the side of the building where I parked my car.

  “Sir, if I could have a word with you...”

  He’d caught up to me sufficiently that I felt I couldn’t ignore him any longer, so I stopped and turned around and asked him if he was talking to me, and he said that he was so I asked him what he wanted.

  “Do you remember talking to me earlier this week, in the lobby?”

  I told him that I remembered. He didn’t say anything after that and so it seemed as if maybe that was his only question, so I started to walk away but then he called for me again.

  “You in a hurry to get somewhere?” He said it with a sharper tone than he’d used before.

  “I’m going to see Donna,” I said.

  “Who’s that?”

  “A girl I date. We went to the new Italian restaurant. Have you been?”

  The officer shook his head.

  “I’m supposed to meet her now,” I added.

  “I see. Well, if you could just spare a few minutes?”

  I told him that I could.

  “I just wanted to ask you about something, about your dog...”

  “Molly,” I said.

  “Yes, well about that. How long would you say that you’ve had Molly?”

  I told him that I’d had Molly for close to two years.

  “I see.”

  He removed his notepad from his pocket and scribbled something down in it, presumably that I’d had Molly for two years since that was what I had just said, but then I suppose he could have written something else about me, or something different altogether, like what he might like for supper tomorrow.

  “Would you mind telling me where you got her?” he asked.

  I told him that I’d found her in the street. That she was cold and hungry and I fed her and that she followed me home and that I decided to take care of her and took her to the veterinarian to get her shots and that I named her Molly, but for all I knew Molly wasn’t her real name, but how it would have been a nice coincidence if it actually was her name, and probably a coincidence that Molly would have appreciated.

  The officer just looked at me and didn’t say anything except “I see,” which seemed to be something he liked to say.

  “Can you tell me exactly where you found her?”

  I thought it over for a moment then answered, “Not much more than four or five blocks from here--in that direction.”

  After I pointed, he scribbled something else in his notepad and again said, “I see.”

  “There are too many stray dogs,” I said. “It’s not safe or sanitary for us or for the dogs themselves.”

  He said, “I see” once again but didn’t scribble anything down that time.

  “What kind of a dog is it?”

  “The veterinarian told me that she was a Cocker Spaniel mix but didn’t tell me what she was mixed with.”

  More scribbling.

  “She’s a pretty good dog, only sometimes she’ll leave me a surprise on the kitchen floor if I don’t get home in time to walk her.”

  No scribbling.

  The officer paused at that moment and I considered walking away again, only it seemed as if he wanted to say something else, and eventually he did.

  “Sir, if I say the name ‘Sherman Dempsey,’ does that mean anything to you?”

  I told him that it didn’t. He just stare
d at me for a few seconds after that as if he was trying to read my face or perhaps hoping that my answer would change, but I couldn’t change my answer because it was the truth.

  “Mr. Dempsey died not too far from here. Reports are that he had a brown Cocker Spaniel.”

  “I see,” I said, then I laughed because I realized I’d just said the same two words the officer had kept saying, and I must have laughed very loud because the officer looked at me rather suspiciously, just like Donna had looked at me when I told her that the police had been questioning me, only with the officer there was no concern mixed in.

  “Is something funny, sir?”

  I explained what it was, but he didn’t seem to think it was as funny as I did because he didn’t laugh at all.

  “Do you think Molly is Mr. Dempsey’s dog?” I asked.

  “Possibly,” he responded.

  “Do you think there might be a reward in it for me?” I said.

  “A reward?” asked the officer.

  “Yes, because I found the missing dog.”

  “The owner of the dog is dead, sir.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but maybe there still might be some reward to be had.”

  “Mr. Dempsey was murdered, sir. Not more than six blocks from here.”

  “I see,” I said then managed to keep from laughing, even though I had a great urge to do so.

  “You wouldn’t know anything about that would you, son?”

  He wasn’t much older than me so I found it odd he would call me “son.”

  “How could I possibly?” I said.

  One of the things we learned when we sold vacuums was to turn the conversation around and put the other person on the defensive with a question when necessary. This was the eighth rule of The Company Culture Handbook: “Control the Conversation.”

  The officer didn’t answer, but then he also didn’t ask me any further questions, so I figured I’d controlled the conversation about as well as I could have. I then told him I had to leave or else Donna would be mad at me and I went to my car and drove away.

  CHAPTER 16

  The first rule of The Company Culture Handbook is to “Always Stay Positive.” By this they meant that you should always remain upbeat and that good things will inevitably flow from this, so on the ride over I tried to think of all the good things in my life like Molly and my apartment and my job and how Donna had been helping me to achieve it on a regular basis, but no matter how hard I tried I still couldn’t help thinking about the first incident and how I’d found the man in the alley and how that man must have been Sherman Dempsey because it would have been too big of a coincidence for another man to have been killed six blocks from my apartment who also happened to have a brown Cocker Spaniel.

  When I’d told the officer that the name Sherman Dempsey didn’t mean anything to me it was the truth because it didn’t mean anything to me when he first said it. If he had asked me again after I’d made the connection then it would have been a lie for me to say it didn’t mean anything to me, but he didn’t ask me again so I was happy not to have had to lie to the officer.

  The incident was two years earlier, and I remember the time very well because I’d sold twenty vacuums to a company earlier that week and on Friday when I received my paycheck it was the biggest one that I’d ever seen.

  I’d gone out to celebrate and sat at a bar and shared my story and people seemed genuinely interested in my sale of the twenty vacuums.

  I also kept buying their drinks, but I think they would have wanted to hear about the vacuums all the same. I don’t remember how many beers I had that night but I do remember that it was a lot more than normal and that I had to leave my car there and take a taxi or else walk home, and I remember feeling so good and the weather being so nice that I decided to walk home and so I did.

  The streets were mostly deserted as I got closer to my neighborhood and it was quiet too, so when I walked past the alleyway I could easily hear the noises that were coming from inside so I staggered into the alley and found the man who I now know to be Sherman Dempsey and I saw him beating on Molly, though her name may not have been Molly back then.

  I remember how he was yelling at her and how he was punching her in the side of her head and how Molly would sometimes yelp and sometimes growl but mostly how she just shook and curled. I remember stepping farther into the alley and asking the man what he was doing, but the man just told me to mind my own business and used some words that I don’t much like repeating and I remember that was when I knew that I needed to make him red and open.

  I was still wearing my best suit which was my blue pin-stripe one, and even though we didn’t come face-to-face with many customers unless we worked in the retail locations, the fourth rule of The Company Culture Handbook was “Dress the Part,” which meant that if you wanted to be considered a professional then you should dress like one and smile and stay well-groomed even if the customers couldn’t actually see you.

  Sherman Dempsey had started yelling at Molly again with some of the same words that I don’t much like repeating, and by the way he was speaking and moving it seemed like he was probably drunk, though perhaps not as drunk as I was.

  I felt around in my blue suit for my Swiss army knife with the Polar Bear on the handle that I always carried, and I thought I’d opened up the largest of the two knife options, but only after I’d first flipped out the scissors because I could hardly tell which was which since it was so dark and because I was so drunk. I walked up behind Mr. Dempsey and told him again that he should stop doing what he was doing and again he told me to mind my own business so I stabbed him seventeen times in the neck with the big knife and only realized after the fact that it was the file I’d used and that I’d never actually opened up the big knife at all because it was so dark and because I was so drunk and I remember how I’d wondered if I would have needed to stab him seventeen times if I’d been using the big knife instead of the file but then figured that I would never know the answer for sure.

  He’d fallen to the ground after about the fourth or fifth stab so I delivered the rest while he was flailing on the ground next to Molly who was still shaking and curled. I hadn’t bothered with any of my breathing exercises at that point because I knew that he had to be red and open or else he might make Molly red and open and I wanted to ensure that never happened, and though maybe there were other ways I could have ensured it, this was the most immediate and the most certain.

  After it was over I left him there and I carried Molly back to my apartment and was glad it was so late and we were so close because my suit was covered in blood and it would have been bad if anyone had seen me, but I don’t think that anyone did.

  I set Molly on the floor and removed all of my clothing and stepped into the shower and by the time I got out of the shower I could hear banging on my front door where Molly was howling, so I hurried to put on clothing and ran to open the door to find the landlord whom I would later murder with a wrench beneath my sink.

  “What the hell is going on in here?”

  I was still drunk and slightly shaken by the incident so I asked him what he was referring to.

  “The dog,” he said. “The fucking dog is howling at the door. Do you know what time it is?”

  “I do not,” I said. I said it because it was true.

  “And since when did you get a fucking dog?” he said.

  I didn’t much like his attitude, but then it pleased me that he was interested in the dog so I started to tell him that I found the dog wandering loose on the way home, which was mostly the truth, but then he told me he didn’t care where I got the dog and only cared that I keep it quiet and that it not disturb the neighbors.

  Once he left I managed to calm Molly down and after a while she stopped shaking and even fell asleep and then I used some bleach to wash my Swiss army knife and though I thought maybe I should throw it into a garbage bag with my bloody suit, I also thought that maybe it would be dumb to put the murder weapon along with the
murder clothes in the same bag, and I also liked that knife because I’d won it in one of our contests, and even if it wasn’t much of a knife it worked well enough and had a Polar Bear on the handle so I decided to keep it.

  And that was the incident that I thought about on the car ride over to see Donna. I mostly tried not to think of it, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped and as it turned out this was one of the sometimes that it couldn’t.

  CHAPTER 17

  I met Donna at a bar called Rodion’s which was close to where she lived and we took up a booth and drank some beer. She told me that she’d started putting lay-downs through to my extension when people called in for vacuums even though they were supposed to go to whoever wasn’t busy because she’d been insulted that Mr. Peters had insinuated that she would show favoritism in my direction. I told her that it might not be good to get back at the boss by doing exactly what he said she might do and also told her that the other salesmen might complain and that she might get in trouble.

  “It’s a shitty job anyway,” she said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You’ve read the company handbook, haven’t you? Such brainwashing company bullshit. ‘The Company is Your Friend?’ Jesus Christ!”

  “The Company is Your Friend” was the tenth and final rule of The Company Culture Handbook. I’d actually been rather fond of the company culture up to that point, but then “Nobody Likes a Challenger” was the ninth rule and meant that you shouldn’t undermine people’s beliefs, no matter how wrong or irrational they might be. We were taught to just agree with them but then later to try to change their view without them actually knowing it, so I didn’t say anything more about it to Donna at that time.

  We drank some more beer and Donna asked me if I loved her, but I was still thinking of the incident from two years ago and didn’t much feel like talking about love so I said I didn’t want to talk about it.