The Cleaner (15 page)

I remember that the whole way up to my floor in the elevator, and I keep remembering it as I say good-bye to the woman who didn’t bring me any lunch today. Even when I ignore the conference room and go straight to my office I keep thinking about how special I really am. I have to be, right? That’s why I’m down to five suspects and the rest of the department is throwing darts at a phone book.

Five suspects. Travers, McCoy, and Schroder are the local three. Then there are the two that have come from out of town—Calhoun and Taylor. These two are going to be the harder ones to figure out. Calhoun has come from Auckland, and Taylor from Wellington. I’m still doubting Schroder is the guy after the speech from yesterday morning, but I can’t be hasty. And I think I have a way to cross Travers off my list. But until then all five of them will have to remain suspects.

The day drags on, the daily routine cometh. I spend it learning nothing I don’t already know and not eating the sandwiches Sally didn’t make. I clean and mop and vacuum. Live to work. Work to live. McCoy’s coffee cup had it wrong.

When four thirty comes around, rather than going home, I wait for Travers. He’s out in the field interviewing witnesses and doing what he can to find a killer. He’s due back around six o’clock, so rather than sitting outside the station, I head off to a nearby food court. I’m absolutely starving, since I’ve only eaten fruit today. I have Chinese.
Flied lice.
The guy who serves me is Asian, and must figure I am too, since he speaks to me in his language. I feel a little silly still wearing my overalls as I sit eating my chicken fried rice, the food court full of moms with strollers and school students eating the kind of food that will have many of them fifty pounds overweight by the time they hit their twenties.

When I’m done I head into the nearest parking building and I steal a car. I consider a late-model Mercedes, but you
can’t steal expensive European cars and sit around in them outside a police station. I go for a nondescript and hopefully reliable Honda that takes me less than a minute to break into and hotwire. I adjust the seat and open my briefcase and pull out a baseball cap and put it on. When exiting the building I hand over the ticket that was on the dashboard along with some loose change to the guy at the booth on the way out. He hardly notices me.

The car I’ve selected is one of the dirtiest I could find. I drive to a supermarket and use one of the knives in my briefcase to remove the license plates. I switch them with a Mitsubishi, then drive to a nearby service station and take it through the car wash. When the car is clean, I drive back to the police station, satisfied I have taken most—if not all—of the risk out of being caught. No risk means no excitement, but I’m not looking for excitement right now.

It is six sixteen when Travers arrives back. It is another thirty-five minutes before he leaves. I follow him home thinking about the list, the all-important list. He lives in a nice neighborhood. The houses aren’t rusting and the gardens are alive. Shiny homes with clean windows and nice cars parked up paved driveways. His house is a single-story place that’s probably around thirty years old, aluminum windows, well looked after. I wait outside for an hour before he leaves again. He has changed into red jeans and a yellow polo shirt that looks like casualwear for Ronald McDonald. He tosses a sports bag into the passenger seat and pulls out onto the street. Over the last twenty minutes or so the last of the daylight has gone, and it’s almost dark now.

I knew Travers was going out tonight—I’d heard the message on his answering machine. I follow him through a couple of suburbs until he finally arrives outside an attractive two-story house in Redwood, where the houses are shinier and the cars slightly more expensive. He parks in the driveway, drags out his sports bag, and locks the car.

A guy, also in his midthirties, answers the door. When Travers is in, his friend—a fellow with dark brown hair and a small, trimmed mustache—scans the street, like he’s looking for something or somebody. If it’s me, he doesn’t find it. Playing with the collar of his lime silk shirt, he turns and whisks the door closed behind him.

They’re having dinner in tonight.

I’ll have to wait a few hours. I have brought Daniela’s crossword magazine to fill the time and to keep my mind ticking over, using a nearby streetlight so I can see. Four down. An omniscient being. Three letters. Middle letter,
O.

Joe.

Time dribbles. I look for, but can’t find, any active life in this well-kept suburb, and I wonder where everybody is. Maybe they’re all dead. I polish off a few crosswords before the lights finally come on upstairs in the house and the ones downstairs disappear. I wait another ten minutes until the upstairs lights twinkle off. A smaller and dimmer version replaces them. A bedside lamp is my guess. Travers is still inside.

I open my briefcase. Take out the Glock. I stuff the gun into the pocket of my overalls. Ideally I would like to scale a nearby tree to see, unfortunately, what needs seeing. I’ve seen some pretty strange things in my time, but never this. I suck in a deep breath. Focus on the job at hand. I only have to see it.

You don’t need to
do
it.
It’s my mother’s voice, coming from nowhere.

Fumble with the lock. My hands are shaking. Fifteen seconds.

The house is so neat it looks like a show home. I walk softly through the downstairs living area, pausing at the big-screen TV, wishing there was a way I could take it home. I’d like to take the lounge suite too, if I could fit the damn thing in my apartment. The large rug in the middle of the room ties everything together and would tie everything together back at my place too. Everything in here is colorful: the sofas are
bright red, the carpet tan brown, the walls a sunburst orange. I realize I’m stalling for time.

Gun pointing ahead, I make my way to the stairs and slowly start climbing. I keep my feet near the carpeted edges to minimize any sound and it works well. When I get to the top the grunting I hear means any sound I would have made would have gone unnoticed. I stand still and think of the list. Five names. A simple peek into the bedroom will make it four. The grunting gets louder.

The hallway branches into maybe four rooms up here, but it’s the closest one I’m concerned with. I reach the master bedroom where the sounds are coming from. It sounds like somebody is having a pillow stuffed down their throat. The door is slightly ajar. Doesn’t matter. If it had been closed I could have opened it undetected. If not, I still have my gun. I poke my head forward and try to see through the small gap. All I need to do is take a glimpse, and then I’m out of here. Downstairs and into the night, and my list will be smaller. But I can’t see much. The bed isn’t in sight. I lean further around until things come into view.

Suddenly I feel sick. Nauseous. I pull away, nearly dropping to my knees. I suck in a deep breath and try to control the urge to vomit, but I’m not sure I can. My legs become jelly, and my mind is spinning. I saw what I expected to see, but I didn’t count on feeling this way. My stomach is trying to escape up through my throat. I push a hand against it and lean against the wall. More deep breaths, then I hold it for half a minute. The urge to throw up on the carpet slowly fades.

I’m down to four suspects, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.

I hobble to the stairs and grab hold of the banister to keep myself from tumbling to the ground floor. I pause to think about what I’ve just seen. I think of my mother and how she keeps asking me if I’m gay. Is this why I feel sick? Because she thinks that what I just saw is the sort of thing I do?

Something else is banging around in my thoughts too. Something I can’t quite get a firm grip on. I can see the edges of it floating back there, but when I try to haul the damn thing in, I lose my grip on it and it falls completely away. Will it come back if I take another peek? No way in hell am I going to find out.

I raise my hand to my mouth and bite my knuckle. I can hardly feel a damn thing. My hand tastes of sweat. I wonder if Dad ever thought I was gay.

Should I go back and shoot these two men for making me feel this way? I look up at the ceiling and nearly lose balance. My knuckle is still in my mouth. What would Jesus do? It would be rather Christian of me to go in there and shoot them. Abnormal acts like that only mock Him.

What would Dad want me to do?

I have no idea why I even consider his outlook on this. So now I’m standing here with another dilemma. I’m sure God won’t mind if I shoot them, but Dad will. In fact, God’s probably urging me to. I’ll be doing both Him and humanity a favor. But do I feel like doing God a favor? I try to think of one favor He’s done me, but all He’s ever done is take away my father and give me my mother. No, I owe Him nothing.

I turn back toward the bedroom. I can hear Dad telling me that they’re just people doing what people do, and I should leave them be. People are allowed to be happy. Nobody has the right to judge people who fall in love with the same gender. That’s what he’d say. Only I’m not listening to him, because he’s dead, and dead people’s opinions don’t really account for much, and even so Dad is wrong because this isn’t what people do.

That’s enough for the night. It’s time to focus on the positives. It’s time to be Optimistic Joe. When I call in Candy’s body tomorrow there will only be four people to watch closely. It’s getting late. If I don’t get home soon, I might sleep in again tomorrow. I should have been out the damn door by now.

But this is an opportunity. I’m already inside the house. I
already have a gun. And neither of them is aware of my presence. They’re both too wrapped up in each other. Does that mean they deserve to die? The only thing I know for sure is they’ve brought this confusion over me, this nausea, and for that I should get even. Nobody does this to me. Nobody.

Yet is it really their fault?

My God! How can I even question this? What sort of person am I becoming?

I’m Joe.
J
is for
Joe. J
is for
judge.
I’m strong and I’m in control, and what I decide is my decision—not God’s. Not Dad’s. I don’t care what either of them thinks.

I make my way to the bedroom. Stop at the door. Point my gun directly ahead. But I’m not pulling the trigger. Instead I’m thinking about the technical side. The ballistics of the bullets will match against one of the victims I shot. The serial killer strikes again, and this will confuse them. It will blind them to any real motive. Why has the killer targeted a gay policeman? But how ideal is it if the other detectives become conscious that somebody is after them? How easily could I go through their houses if I needed to? Or their motel rooms?

I take a step back just as the grunting from the bedroom gets louder, as if I’ve given the sound waves more room to travel and amplify. The creaking bedsprings sound like they’re screaming in fear. I push my hands against the sides of my head, but it isn’t working. I jam the barrel of my Glock into my right ear, and stuff my middle finger into my left, but it doesn’t help me think. The sound is still there. And the only way to get rid of it is to either shoot myself, or to shoot them. But I don’t have to shoot them. I’m not an animal. I have the ability to think this out. I know right from wrong. I’m not insane. An insane person would jump in there and start firing because they wouldn’t be able to control themselves. The interesting thing about insanity is that
Insanity
is strictly a legal term, not a medical one. Patients like me are not insane—we just plead it if we’re caught. The reality is if we really were
insane, we wouldn’t be trying to evade conviction—we’d be caught at the scene smeared in blood and peanut butter and singing Barry Manilow tunes.

I lower my gun. I could kill them just for the hell of it, just because I’m here. In life you take what comes along in this crazy mixed-up world. Other times you need to let it pass you by in case something better comes your way. Life is like a highway with many dirt roads veering off it.

I’m at a junction right now, standing in the hallway of some guy I have never met. A memory in my mind that I can’t reach. A headache coming on. Pounding. Sweat running down the sides of my body. Trickling. Grunting filling my ears. Pounding. Do I kill them? Throw a few of those red herrings into the investigation? Or does it only make things worse?

I make my way downstairs. The kitchen is full of stainless-steel appliances that cost more than I make in a year. I sit at the breakfast bar on a bar stool and rest the Glock in front of me. Tagging Travers for gay was simple—it was the calendars.
Overcompensation
was the key word there. Knowing I’ll think better on a stomach that isn’t so empty, I open up the fridge and rummage around inside for some food. I end up making myself a corned beef sandwich—Travers’s boyfriend is an excellent cook. I grab a can of Coke—it’s on special after all—to wash it down. The fizz burns away any fantasy I hold that what I am listening to could be anything other than two men having the time of their lives.

Upstairs, the bed is slamming the bedroom wall, like it too wants to have bolted out the front door half an hour ago. I sit down at the bar and start tracing my finger along the edge of it, flicking some of the crumbs from the sandwich while doing my best to dismiss the thought that because I ate from the same food these people ate from that I’m gay now, but of course that’s silly, it’s silly, but the thought stays with me as I consider what to do next.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The restaurant is full of conversation, nice smells, good people, decent music, and a warm atmosphere. The waitresses all have perfect hair and trim bodies, shown off by tight clothing. Everybody else has gone to a lot of effort to look casual—jeans, tidy T-shirts, smart shoes.

Sally’s father is working away at a chicken dish, her mother tackling a salad, while Sally pushes a fork back and forth in her tortellini. The day has gone well. For the first time in ages, her father, fifty-five now, looks close to his age rather than several years beyond it. The DVD player went down well; it was no problem for her to install it, and her father spent ten minutes playing with the remote, learning how to drive it. The buttons were difficult to push with his shuddery hands, yet his frustration stayed at a minimum. Whether that will still be the case in another year, or even another few weeks, is anybody’s guess.