The Cleaner

by Paul Cleave

  “The correct way, you mean?”

  “Yeah. Do you know what it’s like, Joe, to know you’re absolutely right about something-I mean, beyond any doubt-but you can’t get somebody else to agree with you? It’s not that they don’t understand, or that they don’t want to. They’ve become so used to doing the wrong thing that there couldn’t possibly be another way.”

  “Get back to the point, Bob.”

  “We ended up disagreeing, pretty quickly actually, and then we were arguing. In the end she started screaming at me to leave. I asked her to calm down, but she wouldn’t. Then she tried to call the police, so I had to stop her. She slapped me, so then I hit her back. Next thing I knew she was dead and I was standing over her naked body.”

  He stops talking. We both listen to the silent room. Peaceful, but still warmer than I’d like. I believe most of his story, but he’s left something out.

  “Next thing you knew,” I repeat.

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  “A touching story, Bob,” I say, reaching to my eyes with an imitation hanky, wiping away pretend tears. “It seems you’ve gone for a classic defense strategy. Do they teach you that at training college, or did you pick it up being a cop? See, Bob, what you’ve done here is extremely common. You’ve shifted all the blame onto the victim. She’s the one who disagreed, she’s the one being unreasonable, and she’s the one who hit you. If she’d refrained from doing any of those things, then she’d still be alive today. Am I right?”

  No answer.

  “Am I right, Bob?”

  Again the shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Bob, you do know. It’s the whole domestic abuse scenario over again. She deserved to be punished, didn’t she, because she stepped out of line. If she’d done what she was told, if she’d simply obeyed, then she’d be living the contented and happy life. But she didn’t, so you killed her-not that you remember doing so. That’s the second common phase here, Bob. How many killers have you put away who’ve told you they don’t remember anything? How many have told you that if it weren’t for the crazy way this or that particular female acted, then none of this or that would have happened? Now tell me what really happened.”

  “That is what happened.”

  “Yeah, most of it probably did, but I’d bet my life on it. .” I pause, create dramatic effect, then change my mind. “No, I’d bet your life on it that you do remember killing her, and were aware of every second of it.”

  “I can’t remember.”

  He sounds like a whining child. “There’s no such word as can’t, Bob.” I lift the gardening shears to prove my point.

  He says nothing until I start to rise.

  “Okay, okay.” He’d have his hands out in a defensive gesture if he could, waving them in the air like a maniac. “I do remember.”

  “Oh? And what do you remember?” I don’t need to know this for my plan to work. I’m just interested, as a fellow participant in this game of life and death.

  “We argued, like I told you, and she picked up the phone and threatened to call the police. So I hit her, and once I did that, I knew there’d be no way to shut her up.”

  “Come now, Bob. She’s a domestic-abuse victim. She’s used to keeping her trap shut when a man hits her.”

  “Not this time. She told me I was going to lose my job for what I’d done, and she was right too, so I hit her again, this time harder. Then I shoved her onto the bed and. .” He stops, either to think of what to say next, or to invent it. “Well, I needed to make it look like she was one of your victims, Joe.”

  “And you knew just how to do it. You screwed that prostitute I killed the other night. You did to her what your wife won’t let you even think about. And you take that experience from Becky the Whore to Little Miss Domestic Abuse.”

  “I had to make it look real,” he says, and he says it in a defeated tone, not the kind of tone somebody who stands by their work would use.

  “Is that all, Bob? Or did you want to enjoy yourself as well? Come on, you can tell me. I’m not here to judge you. I just want to hear how you’re no better than me.” He stares right at me. His face, tight with rage, spits the answer at me. “Sure, I enjoyed it. Like, I mean, what wasn’t to enjoy? Pure power.”

  “Pure power. Isn’t that the answer, Bob? Isn’t that what we all look for?”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “That’s a question, Bob.”

  “I don’t give a shit, Joe. Just tell me what you want, or fuck off. You’re wasting my time, you little asshole.” I’m not shocked at his sudden outburst. Over the last hour, I’ve touched several nerves. Before all of this is over, a knife is going to touch several more.

  “The requirement is simple. All you need to do is listen.”

  “That simple, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Bullshit,” he says. “What do I have to listen to?”

  “A confession.”

  “Yours?”

  “Funnily enough, no. But it’s your job to be my security, my insurance if you like. You knew from the moment you saw my face I was either going to kill you or make a deal. Well, here’s the deal, Bob. I will give you twenty thousand dollars, in cash, tomorrow night, to listen to a confession. That’s all you have to do. Just sit and listen and remember. Do you think you can handle that?”

  “Then what? You let me go, is that it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “And what’s in it for you?”

  “My freedom. Yours too.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “I’ll kill you. Right now.”

  “I want half the money now.”

  “You’re not really in a situation to ask for anything, Bob.” I stand and walk over to him.

  “What are you doing?” I tilt the chair back and start dragging it across the carpet. It’s damn heavy, and my testicle starts to throb.

  “Joe? What the hell are you up to?”

  “Shut up, Bob.” I continue pulling on the chair, and it makes scuff marks across the carpet, but finally I manage to get Calhoun into the bathroom. “I’m afraid you’ll have to spend the night here.”

  “Why?”

  “Safer that way.”

  “For who?”

  “For me.”

  I pull out some duct tape. “Anything else before I seal you up for the night?”

  “You’re a real psycho, Joe, do you know that?”

  “I know lots of things, Detective Inspector.”

  I run the tape across his mouth. Then I head back into the bedroom and take the parking ticket from my briefcase. I squat down behind Bob, grab the skin on the back of his hand, and start twisting until he unclenches it, then I push his fingertips against the ticket.

  “No going anywhere, Bob. Oh, and the toilet’s there if you need it.” I grin at him, then walk back into the bedroom, closing the door behind me. I put the ticket into an evidence bag, then into my briefcase.

  I lock the house before leaving. It’s dark when I get outside. I feel like I’m suffering from heat exhaustion, but after a minute in the cool air that problem disappears. The streetlights throw a pale glow into the black night. I drive Calhoun’s car into town and grab the ticket from the machine at the entrance to the parking building. I head up the ramps-the number of cars getting fewer the higher I drive-until I reach the very top, where there is only one. I don’t turn the car sharply enough, and end up scraping the corner of the front bumper all along the side of the other car, leaving a deep graze and a line of small dents. I notice that the tires on the other car have half deflated over time. I climb out. The smell coming from the trunk of the abandoned car is barely noticeable.

  With nothing else to do, I head toward home and toward the end of another long night.

  Another phase completed.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  She doesn’t know this is where she is driving to until she pulls up the long, twisting driveway lined with bea
utiful trees, which is ironic because she wanted to come here earlier and found herself driving in a different direction. She can’t park in her usual spot because the church has become a crime scene, so she parks out on the street and uses a smaller entrance to walk through.

  Sally makes her way to her brother’s grave and crouches down next to it, not over it. She’s always careful about that. She has a whirlwind of scenarios racing through her head, but she can’t comprehend any of them, and the ones she can almost grasp keep floating away from her.

  Joe and the second man had been inside for at least an hour. She had been relieved when Joe came out okay, and tempted to follow him, but she was more curious about who the second man was. She’d waited another half hour, but he hadn’t shown up. Most likely he lived there.

  She starts brushing her hands back and forth through the grass, letting the soft textures tickle her palms. The grass is wet. She had written down the address before leaving. What she would do with that information she wasn’t sure. Probably just leave it scrawled across the notepad in her front seat for the next few weeks before balling it up and tossing it out.

  Joe driving different cars. Joe with files at his house. Joe with a missing testicle. Joe secretly meeting people.

  Well, okay, Joe went to somebody’s house, the same way she’s gone to other people’s houses. Gone there and had coffee, played some cards, killed some time, ate some dinner. What is so suspicious about that?

  Nothing. Except Joe parked two blocks away and left in a different car. Plus the house-somehow she knows that house.

  “So what do I do, Martin?”

  If her brother could reach out from his grave and offer her some advice, it wouldn’t be Do nothing. It was her doing nothing that had got Martin killed five years ago. It has been her lack of responsibility, her laziness, her unawareness. She was doing nothing five years ago when she should have been doing something. She should have been doing anything to stop Martin from being hit at forty miles an hour in a thirty-mile zone. It wasn’t the school’s fault. It wasn’t even really the driver’s fault. It was her fault. She knows some people would blame God, and she suspects her parents split the blame between her and Him.

  That’s why her mother flinches when she puts an arm around her. That’s why her parents didn’t try to convince her to stay at nursing school, and allowed her to give up her career to help them pay the bills.

  It was difficult not to hate God. It was His fault for making Martin intellectually handicapped. It was easy to lay blame with her, though. It was her fault that Martin had run out into traffic. Her fault for forgetting how excitable he could be when she finished her studies early and got the chance to pick him up from school. She’d rung home to say she could pick Martin up. Her mother had told her not to worry, but Sally had gone ahead and worried. She loved the look on Martin’s face when he stepped out of school and saw her waiting there for him.

  The rules were always simple. Her parents had told Martin a thousand times. He was never to cross the road. And she knew the rules too. She was never to park across the road and wait for him there; she either parked on his side of the road, or she walked over. Her parents reminded her time and time again, but the problem when people remind you so often is that you start to ignore it. The words go in, but they don’t settle anywhere. The other problem was she was late. Only by two minutes. How many times has she remembered the route she took to his school that day? A red light there that could have been green. A person towing a trailer ahead of her at twenty-five instead of thirty miles an hour. A pedestrian crossing with people taking their time to cross it. It all added up, and in the end it came to two minutes. It all added up the same way all the ages in the graveyard add up and divide to get an average of sixty-two. Just simple mathematics combining to end a life.

  She’d pulled up outside the school two minutes later than she should have. She’d opened her car door two minutes after she should have opened it. And Martin had seen her from across the road. It all came down to mathematics, basic physics, and human dynamics. Martin getting excited. Martin running over the road to meet her while she was getting out of her car. Martin getting in the way of an object moving much faster than he was, weighing much more than he did. She’d run to him and knelt by his side. He was alive, but that had changed two days later. She’d let her brother down when he’d needed her most.

  She won’t let Joe down. He needs her. He needs somebody to look out for him, to protect him from whatever madness he’s got himself involved in.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  The walk home takes me through streets that smell like wet dog. My clothes stick to me, my underwear keeps on bunching up into my ass. When I get home, I bury the murder weapon and the gloves in the yard. I make my way upstairs, pulling my keys from my pocket to. .

  For fuck’s sake!

  On the floor directly outside my apartment door is Pickle. Or Jehovah. It’s too damn difficult to tell. I spin around, looking for the fluffy bastard that did this, but it’s gone. I crouch down, and touch my dead fish with my finger. It feels rubbery.

  I find an evidence bag in the kitchen. I’m bending over the fish when I hear the meowing. I look up, and at the end of the hall is the Goddamn cat. On the floor ahead of it is the other goldfish. Slowly the cat reaches forward with its paw, pushes the fish a few inches toward me, then pulls its paw back. He tilts his head, then meows at me. I take a knife from my briefcase, which is still by the door. Keeping his eyes on me, the cat reaches forward and pushes the fish even further toward me. Then it sits. What the hell is it trying to do? I get hold of the biggest knife I can find.

  “Come on, pussycat. Come on.”

  It starts toward me, covers half the distance, stops, turns back toward the fish, stops, then turns back toward me. It meows. I tighten my grip on the knife. Then it moves slowly back to the fish, picks it up softly between its teeth, and carries it toward me. It stops a few feet away, lowers the fish to the floor, then takes a few steps back. Once again it meows. I get on my hands and knees so I can slowly crawl forward. I keep the blade of the knife ahead of me.

  And then I understand what it’s doing. It’s offering my fish back to me. It meows again, but this time it is more of a whispering whine.

  “There’s a good boy,” I say in my friendly voice, happy to lull it into believing I no longer have any urge to see it skinned.

  “Come on, fella. I’m not going to kill you, boy. I’m not going to break your neck.”

  It meows and comes another few steps closer. I keep moving toward it. Closer now. Less than an arm’s length away. Closer still. .

  We reach each other, and it pushes its head down and head-butts my fist.

  Then the bastard starts purring.

  And me? What do I do?

  I start petting the damn thing. I’m tickling it beneath its chin as if it’s just the greatest little cat in the world.

  I look to the floor where my two dead goldfish are. I’m going to have to bury them again. I tighten the grip on my knife, then use the tip of it to start scratching the top of the cat’s head. It tilts its face sideways to get a better scratching position for itself.

  All I have to do is thrust down, and this little cat that I saved will. .

  Saved. Now that’s the key word. I saved this thing, I spent money on it, I brought it into my home, it repaid me by killing my goldfish, and after all of this I’m saving it again. Saving it by not killing it. I put the knife away.

  Under the observing eyes of the cat, I put the two goldfish into an evidence bag. I will bury them later.

  Back inside I sit down on the sofa. The cat jumps onto my knee and I keep petting it. After a few minutes it falls asleep.

  Before I go to bed, I stare at the coffee table and wonder if I will buy any more fish. Maybe when all of this is over. Without them, I feel like a piece of my life is missing. I feel empty. Though not as empty as I felt yesterday.

  When I wake the next morning, I’m sweating an
d the cat’s on the end of my bed. I’ve had another dream. I can remember Melissa. We were together somewhere, I think a beach or an island, and I realized I’d formed a misconception about our violent relationship. Rather than killing her, I was lying with her, both of us enjoying the sand, the sound of the sea, and the sun. It was as though we were having a good time.

  A nightmare.

  The smell of the sea comes with me from the dream and lingers in the room for a few minutes. I get away from it by climbing into the shower. I wash away the night, the tackiness, and the dregs of the dream. When I come out, the cat’s sitting on the kitchen floor cleaning itself. I find something in the fridge that looks like meat and the cat seems happy enough to believe it.

  Before leaving for work, and after making myself some toast, I check through the briefcase and study my assortment of tools. More importantly I check to make sure the Glock I took from Calhoun is fully loaded. It is. All fifteen rounds ready to react to the tip of my finger pulling in the mechanical trigger. The first cartridge ready to be introduced to the chamber, ready to be struck by the firing pin, the powder inside ready to be ignited. The gas, the pressure, the explosion.

  The power.

  It takes less than a quarter of a second for the trigger finger to obey the command of the shooter. Milliseconds later, the firing pin is hitting. For the whole cycle to progress from nerve impulse to firing of the cartridge, I’m looking at a third of a second. The bullet travels at nearly a thousand feet per second. The target can be dead in less than a second.

  I place the gun back in the briefcase. Let the cat out of my apartment. Go to work.

  The place is a madhouse.

  I step into a flurry of detectives and officers. The buzz is much bigger than any of the previous days. The men have their sleeves rolled up, their ties loosened. Conversations are spilling from every corner, every cubicle, every office. Excitement hangs in the air like a half-deflated balloon. I don’t hear any full conversations as I make my way through the clusters of people to my office, but I pick up on several snippets.