Paul Cleave - The Cleaner

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.

I start grinning. I almost can’t believe my luck. But of course it isn’t luck. Well, some of it is, I guess-because in an other ten minutes it would have been too dark to see anything unless I turned on the light. So sure, it’s luck, but it’s brilliance too. And insight. Yeah, it’s especially about insight.

I grab the photographs and begin flicking through them until I find one that shows the wall and the doorway to the hallway. I hold up the picture. Study it. Hold it away. Study the scene. The doorway is in each of them. Same walls. Same carpet. Same décor. A potted plant that looks lushly green in the picture is brown and disheveled in real life. In the photograph-lying against the base of the wall, next to the live plant-there is a fountain pen. In reality, lying next to the plant is a ballpoint pen. Sure, it’s only a pen, minor in the scheme of things, but what makes it interesting is the fact that it hasn’t been cataloged and taken away, meaning it was considered irrelevant.

Well, it’s pretty relevant all right. Was the original pen a weapon? Was it mightier than the sword? I move over to the plant, crouch down, and peer at the wall. It’s hard to see the small mark embedded in it, but not impossible. I lean in closer. I can see a tiny dot of ink in the center. Was the original pen thrown against the wall? Where’s that pen now? Why the swap? Did Daniela cut him with it? Is that why it was thrown over here? If so, it has her attacker’s DNA on it. It’s a map to her killer. The pen is the sort of thing that would have its own individual photograph. Probably two or three. It would even have had its own individual report.

I pick up the ballpoint pen in my gloved hand. It’s coated in a thin film of white dust. It has been printed and put back down, but nothing of interest came from it. I line it up with the small indent in the wall but can’t find anyway for it to fit. The pens were switched at some point after the photograph was taken, and before the fingerprinting took place. So who switched the pens?

The answer is obvious. The killer. That’s who. And the only people in this room during that time frame were people who worked the scene. Her killer has to be a cop. That’s obvious too. Even more obvious, now that I think about what I’ve read, about their knowledge in police procedures. For a few seconds I close my eyes and visualize what happened. He came here. Attacked her. Hit her in the face. Then she stabbed him with the pen. Not seriously, but enough to anger him into throwing it against the wall. The nib chewed into it. He threw her onto the bed. He hadn’t planned on killing her, but he had to prevent her from identifying him. It was spontaneous. Unplanned. He had to use items in this house to bind her. He used her nail clippers to cut away any skin evidence from beneath her fingernails. He used her comb to rake through her pubic hair. He didn’t bring any of this with him because it wasn’t part of the plan. When she was dead, he felt immediate guilt. He did what he could to hide any evidence he left behind, then he covered her body, closing her eyes first. But he had to get out of here. Fast. Maybe he said a prayer for her. Maybe he didn’t. But what he did do was forget about the pen-until he came back to investigate her death. Then he saw the pen on the floor and remembered. The photographs had already been taken. He couldn’t just pick it up. But he didn’t have another fountain pen to switch it with. So he took the gamble that nobody would notice the difference and, for a while, nobody did. I’m nobody, and nobody’s perfect. It’s just a pen, a pen in the corner of the room next to a potted plant. In the center of the room was a dead body. The corpse ended up being a classic case of misdirection. Look at one thing and miss another.

I open my eyes. That’s how I see it, but of course that may not be what happened. It feels right, though, and I’m sure some, if not most of it, will be. It doesn’t really matter how it happened, what matters is who made it happen. I’ve been here for an hour and already I know her killer is a policeman. What’s more, I know for sure I’m right. In all the books I’ve read, the serial killer is always the policeman. Or the coroner, or some forensic officer. So why not now? Why should this be any different? Perhaps clichés in fiction come from clichés in real life? In some weird way it’s disappointing to find that police work in the end is pretty simple. If the killer isn’t a husband or boyfriend, just get a witness to view a lineup of cops and pick one.

I leave the pen where it is since it can’t offer me any more help. I turn away and pack up my briefcase. I have an urge to shout, to sing, to dance, to hunt for those sirens and bells and whistles that ought to accompany a moment like this. By the time I reach the front door, via the kitchen and the fridge, it’s dark outside. I face the hallway and rooms as if to say good-bye to this house. I have no reason to return.

No reason at all.

Unless. .

Grinning, I put the beers and the bottle opener back and rush upstairs.

When she gets home from work, Sally finds her mother upstairs, crying. At first she pauses at the door, unsure whether to enter her parents’ bedroom. Her mother cried a lot after Martin died, and these days she’s crying a lot too.

“Sally?”

“Hi, Mom. Are you okay?” Sally asks, thinking that for her mom, okay ended a long time ago.

“I’m fine,” her mother says, offering a smile that she doesn’t quite get right, and of course Sally hasn’t seen one that has fitted right and she knows it’s because her parents blame her for what happened to Martin. “I don’t really know why I’m like this.”

When Sally puts an arm around her mother’s shoulders, she flinches at first, then relaxes. The room smells of incense and the warm air is slightly stale. She knows exactly why her mother gets like this, and her mother knows too. Martin’s birthday. She bought her dead brother a birthday card, filled it out, then buried it deep in her drawer beneath a pile of clothing. She isn’t sure if her parents do the same or similar things, and suspects it may not actually be that healthy if they do. Of course they never dare talk about it. To talk about it would allow their grief to take on more life, to continue to rise above them and push them down. In some ways she envies Joe. She wants to be as simple as him, not having to worry about the pain in the world, just moving along from A to B, keeping people happy, staying out of their way, making a life for herself that is good.

“It’s okay, Mom,” she says, and there’s that word again. “I think Dad’s looking forward to his birthday.”

Her mother nods, and they begin talking about how nice it’s going to be to go out for dinner. Her father’s birthday will be a challenge too. In the last year he has stepped outside the house for doctors’ appointments and graveyard visits and nothing else. Whether they make it to dinner on Thursday night is still something of a gamble.