The Cleaner (40 page)

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 and 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.

“How long have you known him?”

“I heard his son killed himself.”

“Has anybody checked his hotel?”

“Where else can he be staying?”

“How many do you think he’s killed?”

“And you knew him.”

“And you had dinner with him.”

“And you were working with him.”

They’re looking for Calhoun. Hunting him. I close the door to my office. I’m only alone for ten seconds before Schroder knocks and walks in.

“Morning, Joe.”

“Morning, Detective Schroder.”

“Have you heard?”

I shake my head. “Heard what, Detective Schroder?”

“When was the last time you saw Detective Inspector Calhoun?”

I think about it. “Yesterday at work,” I tell him. “Didn’t
you see him, Detective Schroder? He’s the guy with the gray hair.”

“Did he say anything to you yesterday at all? Anything out of character?” I think about our conversation, his description of killing Daniela Walker. “Not that I can think of.”

“You sure?”

“Umm . . .” I give my thought process around ten seconds, which is a long time when someone’s staring at you. I’m going for that dramatic effect thing, and then finally I repeat my original answer. “No, Detective Schroder. When was the last time you saw him?” I ask.

“Let me know if you think of anything,” Schroder says, ignoring my question.

Without waiting for an answer, he turns and hurries off, as if he needs to be everywhere else at the same time. He doesn’t tell me why they’re looking for Calhoun.

I start my working day by cleaning the toilets, which is one of those jobs that makes anybody reflect on the decisions they’ve made in life. By the time I finish, over half the people on the crowded fourth floor have gone. The rest are paying no attention to me. Are any of them checking the house where I left him? Apparently not. Why would they? Because he left two victims there?

With plenty of officers out there searching, with plenty of detectives thinking of places for them to go, it’s possible they’ll stumble across him. And if they do, what will Calhoun tell them? Can he risk telling them about me? No, he can’t, because then I’ll tell on him. I take some small relief that the police are thinking he’s in hiding, probably planning on leaving the country, not reminiscing about his crimes by hovering around old scenes.

I lug the vacuum cleaner into the conference room. The room is a mess. Folders, photographs, statements. Cigarette butts squashed into full ashtrays, food wrappers balled on the table, empty take-out containers stuffed into the trash. Files
litter the floor, and among them—lying in the center of the huge table—are two murder weapons. The first is mine, which Melissa used. The second is from Calhoun’s hotel room. Both are covered in a thin, white powder.

I look up at the composite drawing Melissa detailed for them a few mornings earlier. Pinned up next to it is the photograph of Calhoun. It’s a stretch to find any real similarity between the two, but that doesn’t matter, because they have fingerprints now, and that’s as good as a confession at this stage in the game. His absence today only helps make him look guiltier. He knew the murder weapon had been found, knew he had to get the hell out of Dodge.

I sit at the table, pick up each of the plastic bags in turn, and study the knives. I don’t take them out, rather just admire them through the bags. Actually,
admire
is the wrong word. What I do is remember. Mine has a history. Calhoun’s has a story. Short story, perhaps, but oh so important.

After cleaning the room then grabbing my cassette recorder (not just the tape), I go back to my office and have lunch. The rest of the day is hectic for everybody but me. For me, it’s only stressful. I watch every person as though they’re watching me, ready to put me under arrest because they’ve found Calhoun tied and taped to a chair in Daniela Walker’s house.

At four thirty, making sure nobody is looking, I hide the parking ticket with Calhoun’s fresh fingerprints on it behind his desk. I can’t just put it in one of the drawers—the desk will have been searched already. This way it could have been overlooked, and when they search his cubicle again, they’ll find it. If not, I’ll find it when I vacuum and hand it to Schroder. I let it slip out of the evidence bag without touching it.

I’m twenty-five minutes into my stroll to the Walker house, on what is becoming a lovely Friday evening, when my cell phone rings. It plays a small tune that makes me cringe. I slip it from my pocket and flip it open.

“Hello, Melissa.”

“Hello, Joe. Having a nice evening are you?”

“I was.”

“Oh, come now, Joe, that’s not very nice. I’ve been thinking about you, you know. Thinking I’d like to take you back to the park once more and show you the other half of a good time.”

“What do you want?”

“My money. Have you got it?”

“Not all of it.”

“No? Well, that’s not really good enough, Joe, is it? I said a hundred grand. Anything less is wasting my time.”

“I’ve got eighty, and I can get the remaining twenty next week,” I lie, knowing it sounds far more realistic. She goes silent for a minute. That’s okay, she’s paying for the call.

“Eighty grand will do for the weekend, Joe, but since you’ve let me down, it’s going to cost you another forty next week.”

“I can’t get forty.”

“That’s what you said about the hundred, and look how well you’ve done.”

“Fine.”

“Where do you want to meet?” she asks.

“You’re leaving it up to me?”

“Of course not. I just wanted to give you some hope. That’s all.”

“I’m not leaving it up to you. If you want the money, then it’s on my terms.”

“If you don’t want to go to jail, Joe, then the terms are mine.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you too, Joe.”

Look at that. Just like a married couple.

“Listen, you’ve got my gun,” I tell her. “You shouldn’t be too concerned with where we meet.”

“I don’t trust you, Joe.”

“It’s a house where I killed somebody.”

“They still there?” Her voice picks up an octave. I shake my head, even though I’m on the phone.

“Previous victim. The place smells like death, though. I can even give you a guided tour.”

“Is this the place you took the whore to the other night?”

“That’s the one,” I say, knowing she followed me there and killed the hooker I had in the trunk of the car while I was inside.

She seems to like this idea. “I’ll meet you there at six o’clock, Joe. Don’t make me wait.”

She hangs up. Damn it, that doesn’t give me long. I catch the bus. Don’t want to steal a car. Of all the times to be caught, today would be it. I can sense it. The day is warming up, as if summer is making one last stand and it’s doing it this evening. Christchurch weather. Schizophrenic heat and all that.

I reach the house and enter my final evening as the Christchurch Carver.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

I decide to pass the house and keep walking. It’s five forty-five. I walk to the end of the block, then come back. I don’t spot any odd-looking vehicles. No signs of a stakeout. No Melissa. It’s suburbia at the height of normalcy.

Walking the front path to the doorstep feels like coming home. I’ve been here so many times over the last few weeks it’s becoming a regular part of my life. The husband of the dead woman will probably start charging me rent. At least this will be my final time here. I take the sights in without any feelings of nostalgia. No tears to be shed.

The house is still warm. Seems it will stay that way until winter kills off every green thing in sight. If the police have been here today, now will be the time they burst in to apprehend me. Not that they will, of course. They’re not here. I’m sure of it. However . . .

I close my eyes. Wait. Count off a slow minute in which I listen to every sound in the house and in the street. A lawn mower, some woman shouting to her son to hurry up, a car
moving by. Inside all I can hear is my own breathing. If the cops are here, I’ll tell them that I thought it was part of my job to clean this place. That I thought it was an extension of police headquarters since dozens of detectives have been here a few times now. I’ll mispronounce
extension
and pause for a few seconds looking for a replacement.