by Jeff Klima
* * *
It was my fault, I knew that, and the last month or so had been an icy tribute to it. If my phone even rang, it was only Dirk lamenting our current position with the Public Guardian's office. Their unofficial disregard of us had been like a vise clamp on our jugular vein, and all work even unrelated to them had ceased. It was as if all of Southern California had stopped dying.
Of course, the news spelled otherwise. In addition to the usual deaths from gangs, police, suicide, and old age, a Vietnamese man had taken a rifle and laid waste to the rest of his family, two little kids and his wife, right up the road from the frat. A multiple murder involving children—it was my dream job.
I'd once admitted to Kim that in doing my job I wanted to achieve three events: I wanted to clean up a multiple murder; I wanted to clean up a celebrity; and I wanted to clean up a child.
It's not that I wished for a child to die…or anyone really. But as a crime scene cleaner, there was a stigma hanging over my head. You see, at parties people often asked me what it was like to clean up children and were they worse than cleaning up adults. But I'd never actually had to clean up after a child's death.
"Yes," I'd tell them, feeding into their schadenfreude. "Cleaning up children is the worst part of my job." It was as much a part of my need to appear "normal" as it was to feed their morbid curiosity. I wanted to believe that cleaning up a child would be worse than cleaning up a splattered, rotting adult.
Adults, for me, had grown as stale as wiping jam off the front of the dishwasher. I was tired of ordinary death; it was all so pedestrian. I wanted something new, something spicy, and this Vietnamese man, in his insane, honor-bound way had seemingly provided it.
I began to create excuses to drive by the condo, frothing over the potential that lay past the wreaths, flowers, and burning candles left by well-wishers. The truly warped had even left toys outside the front door, somehow believing that the toys might make it up to the kids in heaven or something far-fetched like that. Yeah, that and they might see a naked lady walking around with only high heels and a designer purse.
Of course, when we learned of the multiple murders, we didn't comprehend the Public Guardian's enmity toward us and were still deluding ourselves with the idea that Orange County was just unnaturally safe those days.
Dirk had even gotten word through his inner-office connections that June, the P.G. liaison on the Dollhouse gig, was heading up the case on the government side. This should have been great news. I had gotten along great with June, and in a world where redneck deadbeats and their shitty kids didn't steal wills, O.C. Crime Scene Cleaners would have sewn the gig up.
I was certain in the days preceding the murders that bygones would be bygones and that the Public Guardian's office would call "their guys" in. Those murders were practically our birthright. But as the flowers in front of the house began to wilt, and an ordinary government seal along the door frame replaced the flashy yellow police tape, reality set in. I even called June on both her desk line and cell phone at Dirk's request, placing a friendly reminder message that "her guys" were available for "any and all jobs in the next few weeks," but she never picked up or called back.
And so I got drunk. Stewed and miserable, I figured the company had run aground and that we were, professionally speaking, doomed. I was tired of being the downer of the party that night, so I cast my cigar at the nearest trash can, missed, and stumbled upstairs for bed. It was after one in the morning; I was soused; and it had been a very long and frustrating day full of nothingness, empty nothingness (which in frat speak is essentially quaffing afternoon beers and trying to bounce a basketball into a fellow drinker's nutsack).
I patted my pockets and relieved myself of my keys, wallet, and cigar paraphernalia and reached down to take my cell phone out of the cargo pocket on my shorts. It wasn't there where it always was; I lived with it at my side, always answering it with a gruff, but polite, business tone. No, I'd left it sitting beside my bed, unnoticed for the day, a sure sign of my disbelief in ever working again.
I picked it up to turn off any alarm I might have set, having no pretenses about what the next day held. As soon as I picked the phone up, though, the jarring spasms of vibration coupled with a tonal bleat in the twinning effort of a ring. I stared at it, my eyes half-lidded, unsure whether reality was intruding on my drunkenness or vice versa.
The logline said it was Dirk calling, which wouldn't have been too unusual. He'd made the commitment to our police contacts that we were at their beck and call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, no matter how big or how small the job was. The job was always small, miserably small.
Typically, a late-night call involved my climbing out from the comfort of my soft bed, driving across two towns mired in the headlights of other tired commuters to spray Simple Green on a splotch of puke no bigger than a pizza slice (and often it was a regurgitated pizza slice!), a quick wipe with a paper towel. Fifteen minutes later I'd be driving back home to my bed with a whopping $37.50 for my effort.
Meanwhile Dirk, who literally lived right up the street from Orange PD, slumbered happily. It was a frustrating situation in that I was supposed to be the daytime guy while he covered nights and weekends, but I needed the money. He didn't. And so it had become me, without the additional sources of income that he had, as the day guy, the night guy, and the weekend guy.
I continued to let the phone ring until it went to voicemail, figuring that I would take the night off. I was hurting for cash flow, but $37.50 wasn't going to solve my financial issues—and it certainly wouldn't cover the DUI ticket I would get driving into a police station shitfaced.
I set the phone down and flopped onto my bed, determined to pass out and wake up hungover many, many hours later. Immediately the phone rang again, and my head popped up, checking the logline. It was Dirk again, being persistent. This also meant little to me, as his latest trick involved exactly this sort of sleight of hand.
Knowing full well that I knew he lived right up the road from Orange PD, Dirk had become creative in his methods to get me out of bed late at night to scrub puke, piss, shit, or all three. If he sensed hesitation in my voice at the prospect of doing a night job for the police department, he would quickly tack on that it wasn't just some bullshit cop car or jail cell; it was three cop cars, or two cars, a detention cell, and a jail cell, and also an interrogation room.
Suddenly that $37.50 gig was worth several hundred dollars to me, and I'd cave in. Then, when I got down to the police station, I'd question the police about the "crazy mess in multiple locations" only to have the befuddled desk sergeant explain that it was just a small spot of urine on the backseat of a single cruiser. Dirk had pulled this stunt on me more than once, and I was determined not to fall for it again.
Drunk or not, though, I was curious to see what he said. I answered the phone on its last ring, affecting a thick, growly sort of speech that fell somewhere between sleepy and sick.
"Hi, this is Jeff," I bleated, drunkenly overdoing my confused invalid state.
"What's up, homey? It's Dirk," he added, as if that weren't the only way he ever started a phone conversation with me in all the time I knew him. "Look, I need you here, buddy… We got a bad one."
I started to beg off, making up some bullshit excuse that sounded exactly like one he'd use when he didn't want to work, but then I thought better of it.
"What do you mean 'a bad one'?"
"Dude, I need you out here…It's a multiple murder involving a kid."
"We got that one? The Vietnamese family?" I asked excitedly, dropping the croaky throat effect.
"No, this is different. This is a white guy out in LA County who kicked open the back door of his wife's house and shot up his family. Killed a kid, killed the grandma, shot another kid, and capped himself."
"When was this?"
"Right now! I just got to the scene. Coroners are still on site, and we're waiting for the clearance to enter."
"We?"
"Yeah, you and me…I told the officers that my team was on its way, so get out here."
I scribbled down directions and threw on shorts and my work polo. I couldn't stop for coffee, because the last thing I needed was to be shitting my brains out in some dead person's bathroom while cops stood around, disgusted. I drank a big glass of water, though, and hoped I was sober enough to make the trip. I couldn't miss out on a dead kid.
I had to be careful leaving Frat Row; cops were always cruising around the area, sharklike, waiting for some drunken asshole to try to make a taco run. Driving drunk around cops is like a chess match. You have to see the moves they're playing as well as the moves they think you're playing.
Do you drive fast and loose, betting that the cops will think the guy blaring his radio and pounding out the beat of the song on his car door is clearly too drunk-seeming to actually be drunk? Or do you go cautiously, keeping to the speed limit, window up, hands on the wheel at the ten-and-two model of a perfect driver? To me, this is what cops are looking for—the guy who at two in the morning is driving just a little too well.
Instead, I hummed along at just above the speed limit, arm resting casually out the window and head back against the seat, looking exhausted. I was the poster child of the late-night commuter, the bouncer just getting off work, the driver who's winding down his long, sober night of not partying. If nothing else, I was drunk enough to try to explain to the police that as a crime scene cleaner, I was really just one of them…a compadre in the line of justice, and that they should let me be.
I didn't need to try that line of reasoning, though, as I rolled through the cruisers untouched and edged the Red Rocket onto the freeway. Torrance, where the shooting had occurred, was about an hour away from me under normal conditions, but with the aid of alcohol and using the knuckles on my left hand like a gun sight to keep me lined on the road, I was able to reach the off ramp in thirty-eight minutes.
I spent the next hour driving up and down neighborhood streets, angry…futilely trying to read the directions that Dirk had described to me over the phone. I was beginning to sober up, and what may have once seemed crystal clear during my drunken haze now seemed illegible and incoherent. I was at the edge of giving up when my eyes were suddenly drawn skyward. A blossoming bulb of lights lit up the night sky before me, something akin to being in the presence of a UFO, and I was drawn mothlike to its presence.
Driving several neighborhoods east, I turned the corner and found myself in the sphere of the media presence. The glowing beams were massive light towers extending from news vans, illuminating the dark of the night in a snow-globe bulb of false daylight. Competing reporters scurried; men with both mounted and portable cameras were panning and tracking; and a multitude of uniformed peace officers stood around attempting a semblance of control.
It was the usual circus, colorful and crass, with no ringmaster to rein in the antics. Parking awkwardly, I popped a mint that had been wallowing in my cup holder for at least two years, exited my car, and walked into the center ring.
Dirk had been hanging out outside to the west of the cameras, nervously awaiting my arrival. If the newsmen so much as looked in my direction, I put on a stern stare of contempt, playing the role of the disgusted professional. Once we had the okay signal from the on-scene lieutenant who was running the show, Dirk gave me the tour.
It was a sad scene, sadder than I expected it to be, and made worse by the fact that nobody else seemed to find it as sad.
Entering through the gunman's point of entry, the garage door, Dirk gave me the tour he himself had been given by the police only moments before I arrived. It was easy to visualize the gunman's rampage, the trails of blood crisscrossing through the one-story house as the killer had shot his own family. He was upset about a restraining order his wife had filed against him and came back packing heat.
From what Dirk traced out in front of me, the man had shot the grandma, his mother-in-law, first, killing her instantly. The threeyear-old boy was next, dying in the foyer of the living room, guts splashed over his toy fire truck.
"My son has that same fire truck," Dirk said softly.
The gunman shot his five-year-old daughter in the leg, but her mom managed to grab her and run out of the house through the front door and down the block to safety. Daddy, realizing that his wife had gotten away, stomped bloody footprints through several rooms looking for someone else to shoot before giving up and blasting his own head off in the dining room. It was still all so fresh.
"This is definitely a several-man job," I said, incredulous.
"I've got some bad news," Dirk said, and I had to work to take my eyes off the blood-mottled floor where the little boy had breathed his last. "Because the news is here filming, they've probably got footage of me on camera. I can't call in sick to work today; my boss might see me on TV…so I've got to go. I've got to get some sleep."
"What would you have done if I hadn't picked up the phone?" I hissed, furious but mindful of the milling cops and not-too-distant media boom mikes. This was exactly the kind of shit I was beginning to expect from him.
"I'll try to call Kim or Misty to help you out. I can stay for maybe forty-five minutes, but after that you're on your own."
Between the sheer amount of carpeting that needed to be removed, and walls and floor that required sanitizing, not to mention children's toys and furniture, it was a tall order for several people, let alone one man. One drunken man who was in desperate need of sleep.
Our suiting up got the attention of the cameras, and straightfaced, I looked past them.
Dirk and I started in on the dead kid, scrubbing at the shaped smears of blood that hinted at his tiny outline. The coroner had taken the little boy's body only minutes before I had arrived, and his blood still had its vibrant freshness. It was nice when we were able to deal with fresh blood—it requires a lot less elbow grease. Dirk wanted to clean the dead kid's fire truck, while I was of the opinion of "fuck it, chuck it." But it seemed he felt some sort of emotional victory in saving the toy.
It took him awhile, but he got it all cleaned up and looking like its owner's blood hadn't been splashed all over it. Not that it mattered much; the kid would probably be buried with the thing if it fit in his tiny coffin.
Once the fire truck looked innocent again, Dirk had to go. He promised to keep calling Kim and Misty, though, neither of whom had picked up.
I gave him the keys to my car, needing to keep the truck for all the work I had left to do. I was completely sober by that point, and my head was throbbing, begging me for water and sleep, neither of which it had coming.
Using my razor blade, which had dulled from cutting apart many a mattress in times past, I had to saw through the carpeting, enduring "Looks like you need a new razor" comments from any cop who wandered by.
As the hours passed and I worked in silence, the police presence began to dissipate. The more work I did, the less the house looked like an interesting crime scene. The higher-ranking officers got bored or tired and departed. And as they left, some of the media followed, to my relief. It was awkward having them filming and making commentary every time I lugged something out to the truck. ("He's bringing something out of the house, Jim…It looks like…more carpeting… We've got another section of carpeting.")
By the time I started cleaning up the dad's outline smear, which was the worst mess of the lot, the attitude at the house had lightened up considerably as the remaining cops hung around watching the news footage on a large TV in the den.
"Wanna see me become a TV star?" one of the grinning cops asked me. He briskly walked out through the garage door, unhooking his flashlight from his belt. Sure enough, a moment later there he was on the big TV screen, anxiously training his flashlight through the planters in the front of the house, his face one of intense police seriousness.
The news cameras, of course, ate it up, filming him as if he were on the trail of something hot. ("Jim, I can only speculate what they're looking for out there
…He looks intent on finding something. Perhaps it's some sort of clue that will shed some light on this gruesome scene!")
When he came back inside, the cops were all enjoying their camaraderie, laughing it up like some tight-knit club, and I felt the envy scorch me from my place on the floor.
"They should make you guys a reality show," I said with a shuckand-jive grin, indicating that I was in on the joke. But instead of laughing, they turned back into serious policemen and went back to their work. I returned to scrubbing, reminded that I was just a lowly janitor.
Miraculously, at 6:00 a.m. Misty showed up, looking tired, and I tried to convey to her how I hadn't slept all fucking night. The work was mostly complete by then, but she had arrived in time to help scour some baseboards and furniture of residual splatter. At that point I was exhausted and my head was throbbing; I needed sleep. And then Dirk called.
"Hope you're not too tired," he said, sounding cheerful and rested, the bastard. "A Motel 6 in Compton called. They've got a suicide."
I approached Misty delicately, hoping that now, after the three or four crime scenes she'd helped with, she'd be game to tackle one alone.