Paul Cleave - The Cleaner

It’s the woman from the veterinary clinic. She identifies herself as Jennifer, and tells me the cat is doing fine. She tells me they’ve had no luck in finding the cat’s owner. She asks me to call her, and adds that she’ll be at work until two in the morning.

I finish the beer and say good-bye to my fish and am just heading out the door when I suddenly remember I have done nothing about Candy-haven’t made the anonymous call I was supposed to make. I’ll wait now until I narrow down my list. It will be easier to watch for Daniela’s killer when there are only a few names left.

Because the police have no leads, I have no time limit for solving my own case. I can take days or weeks. However, I have this competitive streak inside me. Right now it’s ordering me around, telling me to keep focused and sort out this investigation. I want to prove to myself I can do this, and do it well. I want to prove I’m better than the police, not just at eluding them, but at solving their own case. What sort of man doesn’t try to better himself? What sort of man doesn’t test himself?

Another part of me, the more recreational side, is suggesting why not make it harder for the police? Throw in another victim to investigate? When investigations deal with only one victim, the police can take statements from two or three hundred people, even a thousand. They cross-reference these statements in an attempt to draw a map of the person’s activities that day. Toss in another victim, and the number of statements doubles, and so does the workload. They spend less time with the people from the previous killing, and close to none with the people before that. One trail is fresh while the others get cold. Soon they stop focusing on the evidence, and wait for the next victim, hoping that will be where they catch a break in their case. They become increasingly understaffed and overworked. A stressed detective is a sloppy detective. Kill two people in a row, and all previous statements are tossed into a pile beneath a conference room table in a large box.

I vacuum around them every couple of days or so.

I catch the bus into town. Getting into a police station is easy when you work there and have a swipe card to open one of the side doors. I do just that, and step into a rear stairwell. I know a record is taken each time an ID card is swiped, but there is no reason for the records to ever be checked. If they are, and I get asked, I’ll simply say I got confused about the time, or that I came to get my lunchbox. I make my way to the fourth floor, taking the stairs. Less risky this way. I encounter nobody. Detectives, unlike beat patrol officers, work gentlemen’s hours. Unless a homicide is reported, or one is in the process of being solved, the detectives work from nine o’clock until five thirty. After that they go home, and the cubicles, the conference room, and the offices are close to empty.

I take another look at the conference room wall. The prostitute I killed last night is still to be discovered. Same with the woman I stuffed into the trunk at the long-term parking garage. Not wanting to hang around, I quickly swap the cassette tapes and leave. The microcassette recorder I use has a voice-activated system. This allows the unit to be left on standby mode, where it won’t actually start recording until it hears sound. When the sound stops, it stops, so I can leave it on and there will be no wasted tape. I also replace the batteries.

Of the ten names on my list, only a few work on this floor. Some of the others don’t even work in this building, but have come here from other cities to help with the investigation. The chances are high that it’s going to be one of these men-taking the opportunity of killing while away from the wife and family is pretty hard to turn down.

I decide to begin with the first name on my list.

Detective Wilson Hutton has been a detective far, far longer than I’ve been cleaning, and he has been overeating far, far longer than he’s been a detective. He, like the others, likes me. I move down the aisle, glancing at the cubicles to my left and right, double-checking that I’m alone. Most of the ceiling lights have been turned off. Only every fifth one is going, so it’s pretty dim, like being outside under a quarter moon. This gives the place a slight look of life, while also saving power. It also enables staff to come here and not knock themselves out on furniture. I can hear the slight humming of the lights. The ticking of the air-conditioning. But I can’t hear a single person. The floor has the feeling of an empty house. Like a tomb. No glowing desk lamps, no squeaking office chairs, no shifting of weight, or a cough, or a yawn. Things look tidier in this light. Cleaner. That’s because an hour and a half after I leave, a team of cleaners comes in and spends two hours doing all the things they think I’m too stupid to manage. Nobody has ever mentioned it to me. Maybe they think I think a team of magic trash fairies comes in and makes things sparkly and clean.

I find Hutton’s cubicle and sit down. He’s a big guy, and the ass groove in his reinforced office chair reflects this as I try to get comfortable. At forty-eight years old, he’s a candidate for a heart attack, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he has already had several minor ones. The only exercise I’ve ever seen him do is chew junk food. I feel nauseous just sitting in his chair. I also feel like I’m putting on weight.

I turn on his lamp. Staring at me is a name plaque sitting on his desk, probably a gift from his wife. It says Detective Inspector Wilson Q. Hutton. I don’t know what the Q stands for. Probably queer. I look at the photographs of his family that he’s pinned to the inside wall. His wife has similar weight issues, but her problems don’t end there. The hair on her arms and legs, and the small splashes on her face, look like wool. The couple looks happy together. I cross his name off the list and flick off the lamp. Mr. Doughnut didn’t do this. It isn’t possible. He would have come close to dying just chasing the victim up those stairs, and I doubt his ability to gain an erection-something the killer repeatedly used. Though he must have used one at least twice: there are two overweight children in the photographs.

Nine people left.

I push the chair back into the position it had been in, which isn’t hard to find. The carpet is nearly worn through where the casters normally sit. So is the floor beneath it. I move into the opposite cubicle.

Detective Anthony Watts has been with the police department for twenty-five years, a detective for the last twelve. I’m considering him as my next suspect as I sit down and flick on his lamp. There’s a photograph here. Watts and his wife sharing a happy moment together. Jesus, these people get happy and some prick has to take a picture as proof.

Once again I begin to see things for what they are. Watts has that wrinkled look that comes with being sixty. He has gray hair, but not a lot of it left. I’m trying to imagine him having the strength to fight Daniela, let alone strangle her, but I can’t do it. So I try to imagine him raping her in the way she’d been raped. Can’t see him doing that either. Watts just doesn’t have it in him. Daniela didn’t have him in her.

I cross him off the list. Turn off his lamp. Push his chair back into place.

Eight suspects. I’m beginning to enjoy myself.

The center aisle, once it reaches the end of this floor, branches into a T formation. I go left, directly to Detective Shane O’Connell’s cubicle.

Here I don’t even bother sitting down. O’Connell, a forty-one-year-old detective with the ability to solve cases that involve signed confessions and not much more, broke his arm three weeks before the murder. His arm had been in a cast when Walker was killed. Even if he did have the strength to do this, there were no suggestions of plaster fibers found on the body or on the bed.