The Cleaner

by Paul Cleave

  I circle the block and come back, then, satisfied nobody is watching, I pull up outside. I hop out of the car, straighten my tie, adjust my jacket, then realize the back of my pants have been tucked into my socks on the left side. I flick it out. I take my briefcase to the front door with me. I seldom leave it behind.

  Knock.

  Wait.

  Knock again.

  Wait. Again.

  Nobody home. Just as the report confirmed. Since the murder, the husband-who I have already chalked up as suspect number one-hasn’t been back in the house. His mail has been redirected to his parents’ house, where he’s now staying with the kids.

  The police tape crisscrossing the front door was taken down two days after the murder. That’s the sort of thing that invites trouble. Invites vandalism. It’s like putting up a large button with a sign saying Don’t Push. I figure it’ll be a miracle if I walk inside and don’t find giant penises painted all over the walls and the furniture not nailed down missing. I fish into my pocket and find my keys hiding beneath my handkerchief. Fumble with the lock for maybe ten seconds. I’m good at this.

  I take a quick glance over my shoulder into the street. I’m all alone.

  I open the door and walk inside.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Sally leaves work the same time Joe does, and though she tries to catch up to him, even calls out to him more than once, he doesn’t hear her. He reaches the bus stop, and a moment later the bus pulls away, spitting out a cloud of diesel fumes, some of which stick to the back of the bus, the rest disappearing into the air. She’s curious about where Joe goes. Sometimes he walks, sometimes he catches the bus. Does he live with his parents? Does he live with others like him? One of the things she likes the most about Joe is that he appears independent, and it wouldn’t surprise her if he lived in a flat or an apartment somewhere, fending for himself. Does he even have family? He’s never spoken of them. She hopes he does. The idea of Joe being all alone in this world is unsettling. She must make more of an effort to involve herself in his life, the same way she would want people to involve themselves in Martin’s life. If he were still alive.

  He would be twenty-one today. What would they have been doing to celebrate? They would have thrown a party, invited family and friends, strung up a bunch of balloons and stabbed twenty-one candles into a chocolate cake shaped like a racing car.

  She walks toward the parking building where she keeps her car. She ought to offer Joe rides home-he might like that. And she’d get to know him better too. Tomorrow she’ll ask him.

  Christchurch is beautiful, she thinks, and she especially loves walking alongside the Avon River with its dark waters and lush, green banks-a strip of nature running through the city. Though the banks aren’t quite as lush as normal because of the lasting summer, but they’re still pretty green close to the waterline. Sometimes she eats her lunch out here, sitting on the grass, watching the ducks, throwing them pieces of bread as they play and feed in the water. She ought to ask Joe to join her. She’s sure he would like it. More and more he reminds her of her brother, and since she can no longer help Martin, perhaps she can help Joe. Is that such a crazy idea?

  There is a homeless man sitting a few yards from the doorway into the parking building. He’s wearing a dark-blue tracksuit jacket that you only see in TV shows that came out of the ’80s. He’s got on a pair of plastic sunglasses with green arms, and a baseball cap with so much paint splashed on it she can’t read the team. He has a few days worth of stubble, which means somehow he’s still finding a way to shave. It makes Sally happy to know he still thinks appearances are important. She smiles at him and he smiles back, and she hands him a small plastic bag jammed full with sandwiches.

  “How are you feeling today, Henry?”

  “Better now, Sally,” he says, standing up and tucking his T-shirt into too large, too worn jeans. “Better now. How’s your dad doing?”

  “He’s doing okay,” she answers, but of course he isn’t. He’s doing badly. That’s what happens with Parkinson’s disease. You never get any better. It gets into your body and sets up a home and has no intention of ever leaving. Doing okay is the best anybody can hope for. “It’s his birthday this week. We’re going to take him out to dinner,” she says, but it won’t be fun. His birthday never is, not since Martin died. Maybe it would be if it had been a month before or a month after, but having it the same week. .

  “Well, you have a good time,” Henry says, interrupting her thoughts. “And say hi to him for me. And remember, Sally, that Jesus loves you.”

  She smiles at Henry. She knows that Jesus loves her, and that Jesus loves Henry too, and at the end of the day that makes everything okay. When she first started to make Henry sandwiches (she would never give him money, which would surely go toward substances that would make him sin) she used to be the one telling him that Jesus loved him, and his reply was never positive. He used to tell her that God and Jesus hated him. God had made him unemployed. God had made him homeless. She pointed out it was more likely that Henry himself had been the cause of that. He had replied by telling her that God had given him his gambling habit-or at the very least hadn’t taken it away. She asked if Henry still gambled now, to which Henry said no, to which Sally pointed out that God had indeed helped him.

  “Then God has a bad sense of timing,” Henry had said, and even though Sally didn’t like it, she certainly recognized there was an element of truth to that. Henry then went on to point out that if man was made in God’s image and man was doing nothing to help him, then God would be doing nothing too. If God came down to walk about the earth, Henry said, and saw him sitting there outside the parking building, begging for change and food, then God would look right through him and just walk on by. The same way everybody else did.

  Sally could almost see his point, but at the same time found it easy to dismiss, mainly because Sally never walked past Henry without helping him. After months of bringing him sandwiches, he finally allowed her to teach him more about God’s will. She knows it’s possible he only says these things to her so she will continue to bring him food, but she likes hearing it.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Henry. Take care now.”

  Henry sits back down and goes about taking care of himself the way she suggested, starting by reaching into the plastic bag. She walks inside and takes the elevator up to her car.

  A moment later her car is mingling with the town traffic. It really is a beautiful city, she thinks. Voted friendliest in the world. It’s obvious why. So many good people. Caring people. She just wishes that sometimes they could show it a little more.

  By the time she climbs three flights of stairs, she’s puffing. She could take the elevator, but she’s been taking the elevator all day at work and this is her best chance for exercise. Lord knows she would be thankful to lose a pound or two. She reaches her car-a twenty-year-old sedan that doesn’t have much in the way of features but has plenty in the way of rust, but every day the engine keeps on ticking over and Lord knows she’s thankful for that too.

  The building exits on a different street from which she came in. Traffic is thickening, and in an hour, some of these streets will almost grind to a halt. She smiles as she strikes a string of green traffic lights. The sun is still out, there’s a warm breeze, and everywhere around her people are happy. She winds down the passenger window, but the one on her side doesn’t work, but that’s okay because enough of a breeze still makes it inside. She keeps smiling as she drives. There are so many flower beds, so many trees, a river flowing through the center of town-who would want to live anywhere else?

  CHAPTER TEN

  The first thing I notice is how stuffy the house is. It’s like the inside of a dryer. The summer heat has built up. I wish I could leave the door open. The second thing is that miracles do sometimes happen-no genitalia have been painted on the walls, there are no indications anything has been stolen. A quick flick of a light switch shows even the power is still on.

&n
bsp; Time for a casual stroll. I find a few bottles of beer in the fridge. I also find several foods that have gone past their expiration date, chunks of furry mold growing from wet-looking surfaces. It’s almost enough to put me off the beer-but only almost. It doesn’t have a twist-top cap, but there’s a bottle opener in one of the drawers. The beer is refreshing as I sit down and glance back through Daniela’s file. When I finish, I put the bottle in my briefcase, along with the cap and the bottle opener, and head upstairs.

  Up here it’s even hotter. It’s as if the heat from last summer and the one before that is being stored up here too. I take off my jacket and lay it on a small upstairs table, knocking the vase onto the floor to make room for it. It breaks. Oh well. The body was found in the master bedroom. Rather than wasting any more time, I head directly there.

  The windows face west, and the lowering sun is coming right in. The bedroom is around the same size as any other I’ve broken into. The dark carpet looks both blue and green, but probably looks gray to anybody colorblind. Spread across the floor are more than a dozen plastic markers, each of them numbered. They’re bigger versions of ones some restaurants and cafés hand out to keep track of who ordered the salmon or the latte. In the file, the numbers represent things that were found on those points, things like hair, blood, and underwear. Spare evidence bags are littered here and there. No wonder the police can’t stick to a budget. Each time I kill somebody, that’s more money they have to come up with. Hopefully this doesn’t end up affecting my wages.

  The walls are covered in red textured wallpaper that’s slightly too bright for this room, making it feel, if you can believe it, even hotter. The smell of death hasn’t left. It’s soaked into the carpet pile and will probably always be there. The windows take up most of the opposite wall, and beside me is a walk-in closet. A print of some foreign landscape that could be African or Australian hangs above the bed, and I think about taking it home for Mom. A bedside table has the usual ensemble of crap resting on it: a packet of painkillers; a small, smooth jar of night cream, whatever that is; an alarm clock; and a box of tissues. The alarm clock is still keeping accurate time. There’s a similar table on the other side of the bed. Scattered across the room, as it’s been scattered everywhere else in the house, is white fingerprinting powder. It looks like Detective Schroder and his pals had a cocaine party.

  I take a look at the sketch map of the bedroom that was in the file. There’s also one of the entire floor. Can’t get lost in here. The purpose of the map is to show in an even perspective where everything was found. It tells me that on the far side of the bed is a door leading to a bathroom. I follow the map and see it speaks the truth.

  The body was found on the bed. There’s no tape or chalk outline of where her body was, because that’s only a TV thing. It’s a shame, because that would be a pretty sweet job to have. I can imagine the interview: Well, if you can trace an outline around this orange, the job is yours.

  I pick my way across the floor, stepping over the plastic numbers and evidence bags. I sit on the corner of the bed. The duvet sags and moves a little. So far, my effort has consisted of knocking over a vase and sitting on a comfortable bed, yet already I’m sweating. When I wipe my shirtsleeve across my forehead, it comes away wet. I roll up my sleeves and rest the briefcase on the bed. I open it so the gun is easily accessible. I see the empty bottle of beer and fight the temptation to go back downstairs for a fresh one.

  I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for, so I decide to break my evening up into goals. Baby steps. My short-term goal has to be simple: find something to work with, work with it, then turn it into a long-term goal. Set this guy up for the entire seven killings, and the eighth one too, if she ever gets found. I still have the ticket from the parking garage as evidence that I can plant. I close my eyes and imagine it all unfolding, then open them because I’m jumping ahead. I need to reach the short-term goal first.

  I begin looking around. Nice place. I could live here. A nice twenty-inch flatscreen TV in the corner that would look good in my place. It’s been turned off, though in the photographs it’s on. Maybe the killer watched TV while he was attacking her. Or maybe she watched. I wonder what was on at the time, if Walker was being raped to boring British theme music. The generic photographs of her family where they all fake smiles for the camera fill the room. There are some on the bedside tables; others hang on the walls. If their eyes are looking at me, I don’t feel it here.

  A crossword-puzzle magazine sits on the second bedside table, along with a telephone. The phone is no good, though. It’s been torn from the wall. On the floor by the bedside table is the remote to the TV. It has white fingerprinting powder on all the buttons. I put the crossword magazine in my briefcase, then check out the closet. Nice clothes. Hers aren’t my type. The husband’s are the wrong size. I rummage through a chest of drawers and find nothing. Her underwear smells like fabric softener and feels soft against my face. I drop a pair of panties inside my briefcase.

  There is nothing of interest in the bathroom. The husband’s electric razor, sitting above the sink, looks nicer than mine. It’s one of many things the husband has left behind. Back in the bedroom, I sit down on the same corner of the bed and put the razor into my briefcase, first wrapping it in the underwear to protect my knives. Red walls. Blue-green carpet. I’ve never known what fashion is in or out, so I’m not sure whether these colors are on their way in for the first time or are already too old, or if they’re coming back in fashion. I’m not sure whether I should like them.

  Concentrate.

  I think back to the autopsy report. Daniela was able to scratch her killer, and since there were marks on her wrists from being bound, she must have scratched him before he started to strangle her. Once my chest was scratched so badly I needed stitches, but because I couldn’t go to the doctor, I went to the supermarket and bought those Band-Aid stitches. Used half a dozen to close the wound. Healed up nicely. Except for the infection.

  The only blood found at the scene was hers. He didn’t stab her-just punched her in the face a few times. The drops of blood on the pillow from having her face pressed into it look like tears, as if a sad clown wept into it. More droplets have been sprinkled over the floor. On the handle to the front door, accompanying one of the latex smudges, is a smudge of her blood.

  I read through the reports once more, then check the statements. Putting my money on the husband isn’t looking like a safe bet-he has an exceptionally good alibi. Her body was found with her arms folded across her chest, and a sheet was pulled up over her. Her eyes were open, but the smears on her eyelids suggest the killer closed them before he put his gloves on to clean up. If so, they opened by themselves. Again I think maybe he felt bad at what he had done. I spend a few seconds wondering what that would feel like-about feeling bad-but can’t get a feel for it. That doesn’t mean others don’t understand it. Maybe the guy who did this was deluded enough to think giving her some dignity in death made up for killing her. It looks like a classic domestic homicide, except for the alibi. Plus I saw the husband at the station the morning after the murder, and he looked genuinely messed up, as if he couldn’t believe anybody could do this to his wife.

  I look back down at the report. It’s getting harder to read as it gets darker outside. Nothing has been reported stolen: no pieces of missing jewelry, no missing cash. In most cases the guilty husband would have tried to make it look like a burglary gone wrong. I never take anything when I kill, and since this person was trying to copy me, he never took anything either. How did he know that? Not through the media, that’s for sure. Is it just a coincidence?

  I don’t know. All I do know is that I’ve been here for nearly forty minutes and still don’t have any answers. I’m starting to think more and more of the beers downstairs. I should have opened a window. The air’s still stuffy, but the sun is no longer as strong. I loosen my grip on the thick file and the contents spill onto the bed. My ideas are starting to dissolve. Time keeps p
assing and I realize my mind has stagnated. I start running my eyes over the scene, imagining what happened here, putting myself in the killer’s mind. Getting inside is easy for a guy like me. So that’s what I do-I get inside his mind, I imagine her dying, and for a few minutes I can almost feel her beneath me.

  Still-no great insights, no flashing sirens or ringing bells to signify a great breakthrough in the case. There are no breakthroughs, just one sloppy coincidence and a sweat-soaked shirt. I thought it would be easier. Hell, it should be easier. Only things never are. Not when it’s something you really want. I want to help this dead woman as much as I want to help myself, but does that matter? Does that make the answers any easier to find? Of course not. The only thing I feel like doing is taking my free electric shaver and crossword puzzles out of here and never coming back. Go home, feed my fish, and take a nap. Put this episode behind me, like I have other episodes in my life, like I have with all of them. Move on. To what, I’m not sure.

  I start stretching and yawning, ready to leave, ready to give up. The warm air is only helping to maintain this feeling of despondency. The yawning leads to blinking, quick, rapid-fire blinking, and this in turn increases the blood flow to my eyes. They begin to sharpen, the room taking focus again, the objects standing out like 3-D images. .

  And there it is!

  In an instant I’m overcome with several different thoughts and emotions. First of all I feel disgust. I’m ashamed with myself for being here so long and not seeing it until now. I’m excited that I’m suddenly looking at something-or not looking at something, to be exact-that may be crucial. And most of all, I’m relieved. I’m thankful I can move forward again, thankful I don’t have to give up the investigation-at least not yet, and relieved that Daniela may get the justice she deserves.