Paul Cleave - The Cleaner

I dump the teeth and fingers into a separate plastic bag, along with his wallet and identification. Then I douse the rest of the corpse with the last of the gas, use the car lighter again to light another rag, then toss it in with the corpse. It smells like a barbecue. After fifteen minutes most of him has burned away and I’m feeling hungry. Whistling again, I fill the hole in, stamp it flat, then drag some leaves and dead grass over it. I walk back to the car and toss Daniela Walker’s spade into the trunk.

I stop a half mile or so from home, soak the car in gas, and set it on fire. In this part of town nobody will care enough to call the fire department. I walk the rest of the way to my apartment, carrying the video camera and the plastic bag.

It’s nine thirty. I still have half an hour.

I make two copies of the videotape, though I need only one. I store one in my apartment. The second I put in my briefcase to store later in a safe place. I strip the detective’s wallet of cash and fold it into my pocket, then toss the wallet into the plastic bag. The fingers I’ll grind up later and feed to the neighborhood dogs. The teeth I’ll take a hammer to.

At nine fifty, I walk to the park. It’s still a warm night and the moon is out in full and the stars unusually bright, but maybe I’m just seeing things clearer now. What’s definitely clear is that it’s a perfect evening for romance and death. In the waistband of my pants is the dead man’s firearm, which I’ve no intention of using. Also tucked into a sheath in the back of my pants is my small knife with the two-inch blade.

The park is completely empty when I get there. I step onto the grass and walk to the place where I lost my testicle. It feels colder here. The trees stand out in the moonlight and point at me with dark fingers, covering most of the stars. I stand by the patch of grass where my life changed forever. I wonder if it’s still stained with my blood, but it’s too dark to tell.

At ten o’clock, a lone figure walks toward me.

She’s in bed when they come for her. In bed thinking about Joe. Wondering where he was tonight when she went to his apartment and knocked on the door. She hadn’t gone inside. Hadn’t driven to his mother’s in case he was there. Hadn’t driven to the house where she saw him last night, even though she supposed she should’ve.

The last time the police came to her house was five years ago. They came two days after Martin had died. Back then it had been one police car. They had come to take statements in the most gentle way they could. This time several of them are parked right outside. They have their lights flashing, but their sirens are muted. The banging on the door, however, is not. The lights send red and blue patterns racing left and right across her wallpaper through thin gaps around the curtains. There is nothing gentle about this.

She hears her mother and father asking what’s going on, then her name. She climbs out of bed and puts on a robe just as the door opens. Detective Schroder is there, looking stressed and tired and pissed off. He’s looking at her as if she’s guilty of something.

“What’s going on?”

“You’re going to have to come with us, Sally,” he says, and she’s never heard him sound like this.

“What?”

“Come on, Sally.”

“Can I change?”

He stalls, obviously wanting to say no, but then calls for a female officer, who comes into the room. “Make it quick,” he says, then closes the door behind him.

The officer doesn’t talk to her as she changes into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She recognizes the woman, has seen her around at the station and even spoken on occasion, but right now this woman is acting like a stranger. She tugs on a jacket, some socks, and her shoes.

“Let’s go,” the woman says, and opens the door.

Half a dozen policemen stand in the hallway. They’re asking her parents questions and not answering the questions her parents are asking them. She tries to tell them everything’s okay, but she doesn’t know if that’s true. They don’t handcuff her, but they put her in the back of a squad car and rush her away. She notices that over half of the police cars stay at her house. If they’re searching her room, she hopes they’ll tidy it up afterward. Almost all her neighbors are standing on their front lawns watching. She doesn’t know what’s going on. She’s scared and confused. Has she done something wrong at work? Do they think she’s stolen something? Have they decided, five years later, to charge her for her brother’s death?

The drive to the police station is the quickest she’s ever had. The urgency to get her there seems undermined when they take her into an interrogation room, leave her alone, close the door, and disappear for half an hour. She paces the room, sits down, then paces it again. Her heart’s racing, her hands are shaking slightly, and she’s becoming more frightened with every passing minute She’s never been in here before. The room is cold and she’s thankful for her jacket. The chairs are uncomfortable. The table is marked with the passages of other people’s time. Fingernails, keys, coins, anything they could find to scrape messages into the wood.

She doesn’t know the man who comes into the room at the thirty-minute mark. Just an average-looking guy with average features, but he frightens her. He asks her to hold out her hands and she does. He takes swabs of her skin and when she asks why, he doesn’t tell her. Then he leaves.

It’s another ten minutes before Detective Schroder comes into the room, by which point she’s crying. He sits down opposite her and places a folder on the desk. He doesn’t open it.

“Sorry for all the drama, Sally, but this is important,” he says, and smiles at her as he slides a coffee across the table toward her. It’s as if he’s suddenly become her best friend. But there isn’t any trace of warmth in that smile.

“What’s going on?”

“How well do you know Detective Calhoun?”

The detective who went missing? What has that got to do with her? “Not well. Why?”

“Do you ever socialize with him?”

“Socialize with him?” She shakes her head. “Never.”

“Never been for a drink with him? Never run into him at a restaurant? At a shopping mall?”

She glances at the coffee, but doesn’t touch it. “I already told you never,” she says, annoyed that Schroder thinks she’s lying.

“Ever been in his car?”

“What?”

“His car, Sally. Ever been for a ride with him?”

“No. I’ve never seen him outside of this building. I’ve never had dinner with him, never had a drink with him,” she says, her voice growing a little stronger now, but inside she’s just about ready to break down.

“Seen him today at all?”

“You asked me that this morning.”

“I’m asking you again.”

“Why don’t you believe me?” she asks.

“Answer the question, Sally.”

“No. I don’t know the last time I saw him. Yesterday, maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“I see everybody here all the time. I don’t even know if I saw you yesterday but I’m sure I probably did.”

He nods, accepting her answer. “Do you like fire, Sally?”

“Fire?” As confused as she was a moment ago, this question makes even less sense. “I don’t understand.”

“Fire. There was a fire tonight. That’s why your hands were swabbed. We were looking for signs of any accelerants.”

“But you didn’t find any, did you,” she says, not as a question but as a statement.

“You could have worn gloves.”

“But I didn’t set fire to anything!” she says, her voice raising.

“It was a house.”