The Cleaner (7 page)

According to notes in the file, another one hundred and twenty photographs were taken—quite the portfolio—and these pictures detail many of the items in the house, as well as the rooms. The catalog of those photographs is specific: door, stairs, bed, furniture, smudges on the handles. Anything and everything.

I look hard at the pictures, but see nothing. So I look at them harder. I’m trying to imagine myself inside her house. It’s hard, because the pictures I have were all taken in the bedroom. The natural insight I was waiting to experience from my own experience doesn’t come along.

I glance through the report. She was found by her husband, her entire body draped by a sheet. Did her killer feel bad at what he’d done? Was covering her an act of decency?

I read the toxicology report. It takes most of my lunch break
to decipher that the ten-page report says only that I’ve just wasted my time, that there were no drugs in her system. Or any alcohol. Or any poisons.

The postmortem is an even longer report, but less complicated. It makes for easy reading, and I know how it’s going to end even before I finish it. It reveals in an exceptionally unenthusiastic manner what Daniela went through, probably because the pathologist has seen it all before and has got bored with it. The report comes with pre-illustrated diagrams of the female body and its anatomy, and the pathologist has used these to point to where and what was damaged during her ordeal. There were no traces of semen. A condom was used. Her pubic hair had been combed and washed by the killer, removing any hair and skin cells he would have left behind. This isn’t something I’ve been doing, and I won’t do it now—even though it isn’t such a bad idea. It indicates her killer is far from crazy, and has an insight into police forensics.

There were extensive bruises in all the places where there ought to be bruises, and she suffered two cracked ribs. She was punched once in the eye and once in the mouth. There were other, older injuries there—some as recent as two months before she died. Injuries that had not been reported. Injuries, in the opinion of the pathologist, consistent with being beaten. So Daniela was used to what she was getting. Cause of death: strangulation.

The rest of the postmortem is both standard and uninteresting. It’s like reading a mechanic’s report about fixing a car. The body was fully dismantled and tested. The weight of the organs. The size of her brain. Detailed references to photographs taken during the autopsy take up two pages—photos of her hands, of her neck, of her feet. I don’t bother with any of this.

DNA was found at the scene. No fingerprints. The killer used latex gloves, like the type I wear. A residue from the gloves was left on the door handles from the tips of his fingers.
Also there was plenty of residue all over the victim. The only prints found were latent smears on her eyelids, but these were only partial and too badly damaged to be of any use. That’s the beauty about human skin—it’s one thing fingerprints struggle to stick to. They did find hair, though, in other places. And carpet fibers. And shoe prints. So far they have narrowed them down only to the husband who found the body, and the officers and detectives who worked the scene. It’s impossible to keep a crime scene free of any contamination. In order to do that, the room would need to be inside a large plastic bubble that nobody would ever be allowed to go inside to collect the pristine evidence.

The police have their own DNA databases of their people who go to scenes. This way they eliminate evidence left by their own men and women. Next, they take blood from the victim’s family, friends, and neighbors, until they narrow the field right down. Last night, I left plenty of evidence behind: saliva on the two bottles of beer, carpet fibers, hair. But I have no criminal record. Nothing to match my name to these samples. So I’m a free man.

Whoever killed Daniela may have a criminal record. The evidence I leave behind ties my killings together. I don’t know whose decision it was to include Walker among those women, but it was a bad one. Lunchtime is nearly over. I’m still hungry. No eggs today. I keep studying the autopsy report. Her fingernails were clipped after death, so it seems she scratched her killer. I’ve been scratched several times, never in the face, though, and I don’t mind because that would be like a chef complaining about getting burned or a crash-test dummy complaining about being dumb—it comes with the job. I just never roll my sleeves up until those scratches are gone. I’ve never even thought about clipping their nails afterward to hide the evidence. Why would I cut the nails from this victim and wash her pubic hair, and not any of the others? How can the police really toss this death into the same mix?

I put the photographs and files into my briefcase, along with the microcassette tapes from the conference room, lock it, and leave it on the bench. I head up a floor, where there are more rooms and fewer people and no conference room. I repeat the same procedure up here with my mop and my vacuum cleaner. Say hello to everybody. Everyone smiles at me as if I’m their best friend.

I do my job and I do it well, and I finish it at four thirty, earlier than anybody else. This enables me to catch an earlier bus home. I say hello to those I pass on my way out, and they tell me to have a nice night. I tell them I intend to. Sally calls out a good-bye, but I pretend I can’t hear her.

Christchurch is buzzing with life. Traffic blocks the roads. Pedestrians block the sidewalks. I walk among them and none of them knows who I am. They look at me and all they see is a man in overalls with a happy-go-lucky look about him. Their lives are in my hands, but I’m the only one who knows it. It’s both a lonely and a powerful feeling. A little bit of the day’s heat has ebbed away, but not much. There’s still going to be sun for a couple of more hours. I start to think about what I might want to do tonight. I reach the bus stop. I wait for only a few seconds with a bunch of nondescript people I could kill right now if I wanted to before the bus shows up. As usual, my briefcase is in my right hand, my ticket in my left. I hand it over.

“Hi there, Joe.” She gives me a big smile.

“Hi, Miss Selena. How are you?”

“Very well, Joe,” she answers, punching my ticket. “Missed you yesterday, Joe.”

I couldn’t exactly catch the bus to Angela’s house. “I was late, Miss Selena.”

She hands back my ticket. I study how she moves, how she sounds, the way her eyes look me up and down. She smells like soap and perfume and makes me think of other women I’ve been with. Her shoulder-length black hair is slightly damp,
and I can only assume she has showered with seeing me in mind, and since I’m in the process of assuming that, I like to assume she was in pretty good spirits as she soaped herself down. All that assuming makes the front of my overalls go a little tight. Her olive skin gives her a slightly exotic look, and she talks with an accent that’s erotic. She has a nice tight body and firm skin. Her dark blue eyes look into mine, and they see me differently from how Mr. Stanley sees me. He sees a defunct personality caught inside a healthy body. Miss Selena sees me as a man who can satisfy her. Her fingers deliberately brush against my hand. She wants me. Unfortunately, I like her too much as a bus driver to indulge her. Perhaps I’ll wait until she changes jobs.

I walk down the aisle. The bus isn’t packed, but I’m forced to sit next to some young guy dressed as a punk. He looks like he couldn’t make conversation about the weather unless it included beating the shit out of a weatherman. He’s dressed entirely in black, with a black studded collar around his neck. He has red hair, spikes in his nose, and faucet washers stretching his earlobes. Another regular citizen of this fine city. A chain runs from his lower lip to his throat. I consider pulling on it to see if I can flush his mind. His T-shirt says
Don’t worry, I know the hymen maneuver.

It’s five thirty when I get home, by which time the front of my building is in complete shade. Somebody has tipped over some trash bins, so the sidewalk right outside is covered in old food and lawn clippings, and the old food and lawn clippings are themselves covered in flies. I climb the steps to the top floor and the first thing I do when I get into my apartment is open the window, then the second thing I do is close it because something out there smells bad.

I turn on an electric fan that looks just like the one at work and, I must confess, actually came from work. I open my briefcase on the sofa, take out the microcassette tape, and listen to it while I change out of my overalls. The tape contains
nothing interesting. Inside the conference room they admit to themselves they have nothing. Outside to the media, they have several leads.

I stifle a laugh and toss the tape back into the briefcase. I’ll swap them again tomorrow.

I sit on the sofa and watch my goldfish. I give them some food and they swim up and start eating. Five-second memories or not, they always recognize food. They also recognize me. When I put my finger on the edge of the bowl, they follow it. I sometimes think that society would be great if we all had five-second memories. I could kill as many people as I wanted. Of course, maybe I wouldn’t remember that I liked killing people, so maybe it wouldn’t be that great after all. I could be right in the middle of tying somebody up when I’d forget why I was there. A five-second-memory society would just be full of awkward moments like that.

When Pickle and Jehovah have eaten and are back into their happy routine of swimming around and around, I lock up and head downstairs, keeping a tight grip on my briefcase.

I walk a few blocks, studying all the cars parked along the side of the road. Fifteen minutes later I’m driving to the address on page two of the folder I picked up earlier. I’m in a Honda that’s ten years old and has the aroma of cigarette smoke stained into the seats and carpet, but despite that it’s a pretty nice ride. I find them easier to steer without the weight of a body in the trunk. I drive slowly past Daniela Walker’s house. It is a two-story town house that looks like it was built only yesterday—bright red brick, dark brown steel roof, aluminum window framing. I’m surprised there’s no price tag hanging off one of the corners. The garden is looking scruffy, not that it’s very extensive: a few shrubs, a couple of baby trees, clumps of flowers that have wilted in the sun. No price tags on those either. The driveway is paved with paving stones. A pathway to the front door is cobbled with cobblestones. The lawn is dry and long. The mailbox is full of circulars. A garden
gnome with painted red pants and a painted blue shirt is lying on its side in the garden. It looks like it’s been shot.

I circle the block and come back, then, satisfied nobody is watching, I pull up outside. I hop out of the car, straighten my tie, adjust my jacket, then realize the back of my pants have been tucked into my socks on the left side. I flick it out. I take my briefcase to the front door with me. I seldom leave it behind.

Knock.

Wait.

Knock again.

Wait. Again.

Nobody home. Just as the report confirmed. Since the murder, the husband—who I have already chalked up as suspect number one—hasn’t been back in the house. His mail has been redirected to his parents’ house, where he’s now staying with the kids.

The police tape crisscrossing the front door was taken down two days after the murder. That’s the sort of thing that invites trouble. Invites vandalism. It’s like putting up a large button with a sign saying
Don’t Push.
I figure it’ll be a miracle if I walk inside and don’t find giant penises painted all over the walls and the furniture not nailed down missing. I fish into my pocket and find my keys hiding beneath my handkerchief. Fumble with the lock for maybe ten seconds. I’m good at this.

I take a quick glance over my shoulder into the street. I’m all alone.

I open the door and walk inside.

CHAPTER NINE

Sally leaves work the same time Joe does, and though she tries to catch up to him, even calls out to him more than once, he doesn’t hear her. He reaches the bus stop, and a moment later the bus pulls away, spitting out a cloud of diesel fumes, some of which stick to the back of the bus, the rest disappearing into the air. She’s curious about where Joe goes. Sometimes he walks, sometimes he catches the bus. Does he live with his parents? Does he live with others like him? One of the things she likes the most about Joe is that he appears independent, and it wouldn’t surprise her if he lived in a flat or an apartment somewhere, fending for himself. Does he even have family? He’s never spoken of them. She hopes he does. The idea of Joe being all alone in this world is unsettling. She must make more of an effort to involve herself in his life, the same way she would want people to involve themselves in Martin’s life. If he were still alive.

He would be twenty-one today. What would they have been doing to celebrate? They would have thrown a party,
invited family and friends, strung up a bunch of balloons and stabbed twenty-one candles into a chocolate cake shaped like a racing car.

She walks toward the parking building where she keeps her car. She ought to offer Joe rides home—he might like that. And she’d get to know him better too. Tomorrow she’ll ask him.

Christchurch is beautiful, she thinks, and she especially loves walking alongside the Avon River with its dark waters and lush, green banks—a strip of nature running through the city. Though the banks aren’t quite as lush as normal because of the lasting summer, but they’re still pretty green close to the waterline. Sometimes she eats her lunch out here, sitting on the grass, watching the ducks, throwing them pieces of bread as they play and feed in the water. She ought to ask Joe to join her. She’s sure he would like it. More and more he reminds her of her brother, and since she can no longer help Martin, perhaps she can help Joe. Is that such a crazy idea?

There is a homeless man sitting a few yards from the doorway into the parking building. He’s wearing a dark-blue tracksuit jacket that you only see in TV shows that came out of the ’80s. He’s got on a pair of plastic sunglasses with green arms, and a baseball cap with so much paint splashed on it she can’t read the team. He has a few days worth of stubble, which means somehow he’s still finding a way to shave. It makes Sally happy to know he still thinks appearances are important. She smiles at him and he smiles back, and she hands him a small plastic bag jammed full with sandwiches.