Cleanup on Aisle Six

by Daniel Stallings

“Who is it?”

  “Dr. Reynolds.”

  Detective Hughes let the muscles around his heart relax. “Good. Rick’s sound. Doesn’t keep us waiting. Let’s get this over with. It’s a foul night to be out.”

  Detective Hughes and his partner strode past the checkout stands, where customers and staff clumped around with spaceship eyes and rubber necks. They didn’t have to go far. The crime scene—if it was a crime—splashed out before them like an ugly piece of pop art. Cleanup on Aisle Six, it would be called. Flashy and trashy.

  A young man wrapped in a black turtleneck sweater and bootcut Levi’s crouched next to the body, shaking his head. A frown pinched together his dark, high-arched eyebrows.

  “Whatcha got for me, Rick?”

  Dr. Eric Reynolds, Shorewood medical examiner, spared a glance at the detective. “Glad it’s you, Tony. I wouldn’t want a rookie to mess this one up.”

  “Spare the barbs, Rick. I’ve got a fresh one with me.”

  Dr. Reynolds peered around Detective Hughes, where Adam scribbled notes in a palm-sized notebook. “Adam’s good. He keeps clean, has a nose for trouble, and has no agenda. Better than most.”

  “Got a name for this one?” He thrust his chin at the man on the floor.

  “Oscar Lindstrom. I recognized him from his picture in The Shorewood Gazette. He writes the Tough Bites column.”

  “Oh … the food critic guy. Heard he’s kind of nasty.”

  “Let’s just say the ugliness wasn’t confined to his looks.”

  “Harsh. Well, what happened?”

  Dr. Reynolds swung his eyes back to the blood-rimmed body. “I think it speaks for itself.”

  It certainly did. The man lay on his back, arms flopped open. A bushy, black pelt of an overcoat swallowed his body. Insulted eyes glared at the stuttering fluorescent lights overhead. Blood leaked out of his head. Detective Hughes glanced at his partner. This kid held up extremely well. No sign of nausea or even horror. Just strict and professional. He approved.

  He inspected the rest of the scene. A five-pound bag of sugar swam in the blood, an island in an ugly sea. One of those longhandled dusters lay farther down the aisle. Nearby, several spice shakers crumbled in a heap on the floor. Detective Hughes sniffed. Yep. The spices were in the air, mixing with the vinegary tang of blood. He had the flavor of blood and clove on his tongue. A unique experience.

  “So how long has he been dead, Rick?”

  “Not very long. An hour. Hour and a half tops.”

  “What killed him?”

  “A big-ass crack in his skull.” Dr. Reynolds used his rubber-sheathed hands to maneuver the head. A fat bruise bloomed on the scalp, followed by a bloody depression smashed into the skull. Not pretty.

  “How do you suppose that happened?”

  “Tough to say. When I get him over to the lab, I’ll be able to examine him more thoroughly. But it’s an interesting wound. Not a sharp edge, but … I would say a rounded one. And something square or rectangular.”

  “Care to put that in more plain terms?”

  “I’d say you’re looking for something hard and square with rounded corners. That should be enough to get you started.”

  “Like that bag of sugar?”

  Dr. Reynolds glared at the bag lounging in the man’s blood. “Oh, I hate that sugar …”

  “Because it’s bad for your health?”

  “It may have been. You see … superficially, it fits the criteria. Square with rounded corners. But I don’t think it’s strong enough. Look at the wound.” He drew a gloved finger over the crack. “This was a single blow. And I mean a hard blow. Whatever hit him had done so with enough force to split open his skull. The bag of sugar wouldn’t hold up. The paper would tear, and there’d be sugar everywhere.”

  “So something else hit him hard enough that it could be in a million pieces for all we know?”

  “I’ll check the wound for particulate matter, but I’d say the instrument that hit him held up afterwards. So we’re talking thick, chunky, and hard.”

  “So why is the sugar even there?”

  “I have no idea. And I hate that.”

  Adam cut in. “Maybe it fell from the top shelf. See?” He pointed with his pen.

  Reynolds and Hughes followed the pen to the riser above a four-foot section of spices. Lined like teeth, bags of sugar matching the delinquent spanned the shelf, a gap marking where one had fallen. Detective Hughes saw that the shelf rose directly overhead where the body lay.

  “So this bag fell from the riser and clocked the guy?” he asked.

  “It’s possible.” Dr. Reynolds scowled at the sugar. “But it’s still not hard enough to crack his skull like that.”

  “Enough for the bruise?”

  Dr. Reynolds let his eyebrows merge over his nose, his forehead creased. “Yes … I think so. Provided that it fell and hit him. It won’t work the other way.”

  “Other way?”

  “Have you ever tried swinging a bag of sugar in your hand? It’s really awkward.”

  “So you don’t think this could be an accident?”

  Dr. Reynolds challenged him with a higher-arched eyebrow. “Would you?”

  “Murder?”

  “Murder.”

  Detective Hughes unloaded a sigh and ran his palm over his hair. A few stray drops of water pelted the floor. “Okay, boys, we got a homicide. Let’s round these folks up and start the legwork. Get that photographer, Adam. Anyone mind telling me what happened over there?” He pointed to the duster and broken spice shakers. “Who found the body?”

  Dr. Reynolds hitched a thumb at a young man waiting near the endcap. “Kid who works here found him. I gathered he had a bit of a panic attack. We’re lucky he didn’t puke. I brought out a bucket just in case he couldn’t hold it in, but I think he’s holding up okay.”

  “Must not be his first body,” Adam said.

  Detective Hughes cursed Adam and his ability to echo his thoughts.

  “Hey, kid,” he called out. “Come over here.”

  If Adam and Dr. Reynolds were kids to Detective Hughes, this one was practically a baby. Hardly out of his teens. Smooth, pale skin contrasted with a hard set in his chin and jaw. Stress lines—old ones, too—wreathed his mouth and eyes. Short, sharply groomed black hair crowned his head. The boy had a remarkable pair of eyes, a mottled silver-blue that reminded Detective Hughes of mountain lakes on overcast days. They were wide, searching, intense with … fear? Yes, he supposed there was fear in them, but it wasn’t the terror of a nameless evil a kid never encountered before. These eyes had knowledge in them. They knew evil. It was fear with roots.

  Interesting.

  “What’s your name?”

  The boy’s mouth trembled. “Liam, sir. Liam Johnson.”

  “You work here?”

  “Yes, sir. Evening shift today. I’m a new hire, sir.”

  Polite kid. Respected authority. Point in his favor.

  “How did you come to find the body?”

  Liam told his tale, exact in his details. Detective Hughes summed it up: “So you were asked to sweep the floors. You turned the back corner from aisle five and accidentally ran into the body. You saw him, dropped the duster, and retreated into the shelves, knocking off the spices. Then you turned him onto his back, saw he was dead, and called for help.”

  “I also slipped on some water that was on the floor.” The boy massaged his elbow. “Right after I saw that … he was dead. I slipped, hit the floor, and then scrambled out to get help.”

  “Where did you slip?”

  “Maybe a couple feet from the body. Towards the front of the store.”

  “Who phoned it in?”

  “My boss, Leonard Lewitski. He goes by Leo Lewis around here. He thinks it sounds better.” Liam blushed. “Sorry, didn’t mean to talk like that. Anyway, he ran up when he heard me shout, saw the the body, and ran to the phone.”

  “Where did he come from?”

  Liam frowned and narr
owed his eyes. “From the direction of the bakery, I think. That’s just to the right of the big doors when you enter the store.”

  “All right. Now back to the body. You said you turned the body over to see who it was. So that means the body is not in the same position when you originally found it. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay. Where’s that photographer?” A uniformed officer cradling a Nikon in his callused hands materialized at his side. “Good. Take a few pictures of the scene as is. Then we’ll have Liam here put it back the way it was when he found it. Make sure we label these pictures properly, boys.”

  After a few explosions of light from the camera’s flash, Liam turned Oscar’s body onto its right side, a tight grimace crimping his mouth shut. The camera flashed away again.

  Detective Hughes nodded slowly. “So he’s standing here at the spice shelves, scanning for an ingredient, let’s say. Maybe someone knocks into the shelves on the other side, tipping the sugar bag over. It hits him on the head, bruising him.” Now the mental picture started to grow fuzzy. “Does it knock him out? Stun him? Is that when the killer walks by, sees his advantage, and bludgeons him with some impossible weapon? What do you think, Rick?”

  Dr. Reynolds stuffed his now gloveless hands into his jeans pockets. “Too soon to tell, Tony.”

  Liam fidgeted and fussed with his black necktie. “Excuse me, Detective, but I don’t think he was standing when it happened.”

  Detective Hughes drummed his fingers against his leg, biting back the urge to check his watch. “And why do you think that, son?”

  Liam wrung his hands together for a second or two. He released a breath and walked up to the edge of the shelves. “I’m about the same height as Oscar, right? See how the top of my head is almost in line with the riser? It’s not very high up. Makes it easier for customers to reach it.”

  “Get to the point, son.”

  “Erm … yes, sorry. Anyway, if the bag of sugar fell while he was standing, it would only fall over about two or three inches before hitting him. Hardly enough to bruise him as badly as he appears to be.” An odd ripple of light, like sunshine off a knight’s helmet, worked across the boy’s blue eyes. “Unless …”

  “Unless?”

  “Unless he was squatting.” Here Liam squatted in front of the shelves, shrinking into the linoleum. “Now the distance between his head and the shelf increases exponentially. When the bag falls, it has time to build up momentum and hit him harder than it would have if he stood.”

  “Sound reasonable. Rick?”

  Dr. Reynolds’s dark eyebrows almost disappeared into his hairline. He laughed. “I’d say it’s spot-on, Tony! Nice bit of headwork, kid. I was thinking along those lines myself. I believe that’s a sound explanation for the bruise.”

  Detective Hughes wasn’t inclined to look as impressed. “So Oscar was squatting when the bag hit him. What was he looking at?”

  Liam swept a hand along one of the lower shelves. “Spices and seasonings. We’ve got everything from allspice to cinnamon to dried sage to pepper to cumin to thyme to—”

  “Yes. Thanks for your help, kid. Stick around for a while. I’ll have more questions later. And keep your little discoveries to yourself.”

  “But I—”

  “Did you get his statement, Adam?”

  “Every bit, Tony.”

  “Good. Then we don’t need to have him linger near the crime scene.” He shooed Liam out of the spice aisle, then wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Let’s keep our findings to ourselves, boys. I don’t want a bunch of little Sherlocks tramping all over my evidence. How’s the search? Find anything good?”

  Adam handed his superior a slip of paper zipped into an evidence bag. “I think you might want to see this, sir. We found it in … kind of a strange place.”

  Li fumbled over his feet when the detective shoved him out of the spice aisle. He jerked his apron to straighten it and overcorrected his tie. Of course, it wasn’t his problem. The police could handle it. He didn’t have any reason to care about Oscar’s death. He could ignore the odd motion sickness and the tight threads of fear around his throat and just focus on—

  A flutter of neon yellow disappeared down an aisle. Li caught the barest ripple of motion out of the corner of his eye. His thoughts took him to regions he wanted to avoid.

  Reuben?

  He shuffled into the neighboring aisle—pasta. Empty. Not a soul in sight. But Reuben worked here just before Li found Oscar. By himself. His only witness was too stoned to remember him. He was close enough to see something. Hear something.

  Do something.

  Li remembered those warm, friendly eyes smoldering like two lethal beds of tar. The fingers throttling the corner of an apron. A man on the verge of assault.

  Li shivered and tucked his arms around his body.

  “You complete moron!”

  Voices. Heated, tense, muffled into whispers. Li’s thoughts screeched to a halt. He peeked through the perforated backing of the canned pasta shelves. Two silhouettes loitered in the juice aisle. Two voices floated through the perforation. One was female, brusque, efficient, sharp. One was male, apologetic, frantic.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Frank?”

  “Honestly, Connie, I didn’t know you were here!”

  “I know that. Don’t you think I realized that?”

  “I wouldn’t imply—”

  “Stop talking, Frank. The plan was that you stayed away from my husband and me.”

  “I wasn’t following you, Connie! I swear! I followed Oscar!”

  Li sucked in his breath. Someone here hunted Oscar.

  Connie shushed him. “I suggest you keep that little confession to yourself, Frank. You don’t want to tip the police off, do you?”

  “Connie, what are we going to do? Oscar’s dead. I mean … are all of our problems over? Are we free?”

  “Of course not. Oscar was murdered. Tony Hughes isn’t the kind of man that shirks his duty. Keeping him from the truth will be an uphill war. And his partner, Schafer-Schmidt, is no weakling. Nickname at the station is Wolf. Known to be relentless, a hunter.”

  “How do you know all of this?”

  Yes, Li thought. How do you know?

  “I have my sources, reliable as any reporter’s.”

  There was a faint lilt of irony in her voice. Li suspected that meant Frank was a reporter or worked on a newspaper. Did he work with Oscar?

  “Here’s what you’re going to say, Frank. You were buying last-minute groceries for a staff party you’re holding this week. It would help if you actually had the party. I’m sure Maryann can throw something together. Where did you spend most of your time here?”

  “Seafood.”

  “Damn. That’s a harder sell. No matter. Use your imagination. Whatever you do, do not mention Oscar in any way. Don’t get overly maudlin about his death. That’s a red flag for any cop. Just pretend you were ignorant that Oscar was here. Simple. Straightforward. And if you say anything about Marshall or me, I’ll see you hanged as a horse thief. Understand?”

  One of the silhouettes bobbed its head wildly. A nervous nod.

  “Good. See that you do that. I’ll do what I can to smooth things over with Tony. Won’t be easy. He’s not like Roy. Roy is butter in my hands.”

  Smoothing things over with the police. Li’s stomach twisted into knots.

  “We need to discuss what you’re going to say about his death on Monday, Frank.”

  Frank’s voice didn’t sound so weak now. It was dull and harsh. “I can just print the basics. Oscar’s resignation won’t come into it at all.”

  Li lifted an eyebrow and leaned farther into the shelf. Oscar resigned? From what? From The Shorewood Gazette?

  “Perfect. If anything, you could suggest that Oscar was killed by some maniac drug fiend or something. I think I saw a whacked-out punk shuffling around here tonight.”

  “I’ll save the speculation fo
r later. Just the basics will be enough to disarm—”

  “Wait a minute. I thought I saw something in the next aisle.”

  Air evacuated from Li’s lungs. He jerked backward, accidentally grazing a can of SpaghettiOs with his arm. It whistled against the metal shelf.

  Connie swore. “I think someone’s listening to us. Get him.”

  Li fled from the shelves and collided with Reuben’s belly. He bounced off and crashed to the floor, landing on his injured elbow.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Li?”

  Massaging the new bump, Li craned his neck over his shoulder and caught a blur of yellow and black, like a giant wasp, flit down the back aisle of the store. His gaze swung to Reuben’s face. Dark eyes like black ice bored into his. A frown tugged at Reuben’s mouth, pushing out his bottom lip. His helpful hand was slow to react.

  That look on Reuben’s face, cold, hostile, solidified the vague, wispy fears in Li’s heart. Reuben, his coworker. Reuben, his new friend. Reuben, his savior. Could it be? Did he—?

  Li brushed invisible dust off his apron and avoided that cold, dark glare. “I … um … I was just …” All his arguments crumbled before reaching his lips.

  Reuben knotted his arms across his chest. “’Cuz it looks like you’re snooping to me. Or do you always stuff your head into shelves?”

  “I … uh … I thought I heard something.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, it … it’s not important.”

  Reuben’s eyes whittled into tight slits. “So you’re eavesdropping on something boring?”

  Li wiped the veneer of sweat on his palms onto his pants. “I … uh …”

  “You know, Hughes hates snoops. I don’t think it’s smart to play detective while he’s on the case.” He waved a hand at the security cameras stationed around the perimeter. “Don’t you think the cameras will catch your little Sherlock act?”

  “Cameras,” Li muttered. His eyes sprang wide open. “Reuben … the security cameras! The police can watch the tapes and find out who killed Oscar!”

  Reuben broke out in applause, his smile snide. “Oh, brilliant deduction, Holmes! I’m sure Hughes hasn’t even thought of that yet!” His smile withered into a scowl. “Unless the cameras shorted out like they did during our last little drizzle. The electrical here is shoddy at best. And those cameras are dirt cheap. For all we know, the police will be treated to a late show of white noise.”