Paul Cleave - The Cleaner

I wonder if the ballpoint pen that was left behind was his. I look into his black eyes, searching for the evil that fiction suggests should be there, but I can’t see any of it.

He tells me to do a good job, says he’ll be back after lunch. That gives me plenty of time. So it’s just me in his office, me and Mr. Vacuum Cleaner. I sweep it around the carpet like it makes a difference, looking left and right for any information that will help. Like the conference room, Stevens’s office looks out onto the fourth floor, meaning people can look in if the blinds are open, as they are. Ten minutes of sucking the same piece of carpet go by, and it’s not getting any cleaner. I drop a rag behind his desk, bend down, and use the chance to peek into his desk drawers. I rummage through them, finding a roster of everybody involved in the case in the third drawer I check. I slip it into my overalls. Then I start coughing. Yep, Joe the retard needs a drink. I head to the water cooler. On the way back I pass the photocopying room. It’s empty, so I step inside and photocopy the roster. Walk back to the office. Place the document back into the folder. Finish vacuuming in time for lunch.

The sun is shining through my office window, so I sit in front of it and pretend I’m getting a tan. I’d have to pretend really hard for other people to see it. Sally knocks on my door, then steps in and hands me a small parcel of food. I give her a small thank you in return. She asks me again if I want to join her outside, and I make the mistake of saying maybe next time. She positively beams at this before she leaves. I stare out the window on the chance I might see her out there, but my view doesn’t overlook the river so the only people I see are strangers. On the horizon I see something I haven’t seen in weeks-rain clouds. They’re too far away to tell which direction they’re moving.

I eat my sandwiches while looking at the list. With over ninety names on it, ninety-four to be exact, it’s pretty big. I don’t know what I expected-maybe half a dozen or so-but ninety-four suggests a lot of people running around not knowing what’s going on. Dozens more officers took statements, but it’s only the detectives who work the scene. Only the detectives who see the body.

I begin to panic: this could take me forever. The feeling that this is going to be a big waste of time is creeping deep into my thoughts. But not all of the people on this list would have been to each of the crime scenes, right? Maybe half of them at each one, maybe not even that. The trick is to figure out which of these ninety-four people went to Daniela Walker’s house.

Call sheets.

Daniela was discovered late on a Friday night. Therefore, several phone calls had to have been made to the people who are on this list. None of the detectives would have been working that late. They were off eating with their wives or girlfriends and were interrupted with the news that dinner was over. Only one of them already knew, because one of them had built up an appetite by strangling Daniela and throwing her pen across the wall. Lunch isn’t over yet, but I’m too excited to keep eating. I head into the records room and give it a good spring cleaning. I take extra time near the hard copy of the phone records, giving the area around it an extremely thorough polishing.

On the night Daniela Walker was killed, fifteen phone calls out of twenty were successfully made. These are the people who showed up. Fifteen people, plus however many officers showed up on the scene to report it.

The original phone call made from the victim’s husband to police dispatch is here too. I start reading, but find it has little interest.

Dispatch sent the nearest car to the scene to begin controlling things before the cavalry arrived. Two officers. Their names are on my list. I circle them. I also circle the fifteen called that night-including the pathologist, the photographer, and Detective Superintendent Stevens with the jet-black eyes.

This means I’ve just cut nearly eighty people off my suspect list. The fear I have of this being a waste of time creeps away. I’m down to seventeen people. I doubt the two officers who first responded to the husband’s call have anything to do with her death. First of all, they were together for the previous six hours on their shift, and the body was discovered only an hour after she was killed. Second, what are the chances that the person who killed her was the very officer called to the scene? Pretty low, that’s what. I cross their names off the list.

Fifteen people.

I think about the pathologist. He found several differences between this body and the others. Because he works alone, he could have easily manufactured evidence to make the residues and fibers on this victim identical to the others, but he didn’t. Who was going to check his work? Nobody. That’s who. If he had killed her, the results would be identical to the others. But they’re not.

So it isn’t him.

Fourteen people.

Could this be any easier?

I glance at my watch. It is nearly four o’clock. I have been in here all afternoon, cleaning the room for most of that. The smell of furniture polish is close to making me gag, and I’m getting concerned about how my lungs are looking after breathing in a couple of cans. I head back to my office, grabbing a coffee on the way and pausing in the conference room to switch audiotapes.

Back in my office the sun is no longer streaming in, instead one of the rain clouds is covering it, but the cloud is still holding onto its payload. I can’t remember the last time I saw rain. When I sit and look at the list again, I see something obvious I missed while in the records room. Of the fourteen left, four are women. I cross them off the list. I could have narrowed down the original ninety-four the same way, but it doesn’t matter now. Ten people. I write their names onto a fresh piece of paper, then sit there staring at them until four thirty comes along and says hello. I say good-bye to everybody who crosses my path on the way out of the building. Sally isn’t among them. On the way to the bus stop I remember the feeling I had this morning that something was wrong with my mother, and I chide myself for being foolish. If something had happened I would have got the bad news by now.

I catch the bus home. The trash outside my house has been collected. I lie down on my bed. Stare at the ceiling. I’ve narrowed down the suspects to ten people. The police have narrowed theirs down to about ten phone directories. I glance at my watch. I can’t lie down on the bed forever. Ceiling isn’t interesting enough for that. I get to my feet and grab my briefcase. There’s still plenty of work to do.

The smile has been with her all day. From the moment the elevator doors closed on Joe’s smile, she’s been able to think of little else. She’s always thought his big, expressionistic smiles were so natural, so pure, because they were the same as Martin’s. But this morning’s smile was something different. Pure? She thinks so. Joe has a pure soul, but there is something about it, something she is struggling to recognize. In those few seconds Joe was more of a man than a boy, more sophisticated than clumsy. There was a spark there that suggested Joe is more of everything else than she had thought.

But what, exactly?

She likes to think that it means Joe likes her, that their friendship is moving along the way she wants. Of course, it might have been a fluke. Joe might have been staring off into space as he is apt to do when she is around him.

Yet there is no denying that it didn’t only make him look grown-up, it made him more. . more. . attractive?

Sadly, the answer is yes. Joe is attractive, and she had never noticed it before. She doesn’t want to think about it now, either, because she finds it confusing.