The Cleaner

CHAPTER TEN

The first thing I notice is how stuffy the house is. It’s like the inside of a dryer. The summer heat has built up. I wish I could leave the door open. The second thing is that miracles do sometimes happen-no genitalia have been painted on the walls, there are no indications anything has been stolen. A quick flick of a light switch shows even the power is still on.

Time for a casual stroll. I find a few bottles of beer in the fridge. I also find several foods that have gone past their expiration date, chunks of furry mold growing from wet-looking surfaces. It’s almost enough to put me off the beer-but only almost. It doesn’t have a twist-top cap, but there’s a bottle opener in one of the drawers. The beer is refreshing as I sit down and glance back through Daniela’s file. When I finish, I put the bottle in my briefcase, along with the cap and the bottle opener, and head upstairs.

Up here it’s even hotter. It’s as if the heat from last summer and the one before that is being stored up here too. I take off my jacket and lay it on a small upstairs table, knocking the vase onto the floor to make room for it. It breaks. Oh well. The body was found in the master bedroom. Rather than wasting any more time, I head directly there.

The windows face west, and the lowering sun is coming right in. The bedroom is around the same size as any other I’ve broken into. The dark carpet looks both blue and green, but probably looks gray to anybody colorblind. Spread across the floor are more than a dozen plastic markers, each of them numbered. They’re bigger versions of ones some restaurants and cafés hand out to keep track of who ordered the salmon or the latte. In the file, the numbers represent things that were found on those points, things like hair, blood, and underwear. Spare evidence bags are littered here and there. No wonder the police can’t stick to a budget. Each time I kill somebody, that’s more money they have to come up with. Hopefully this doesn’t end up affecting my wages.

The walls are covered in red textured wallpaper that’s slightly too bright for this room, making it feel, if you can believe it, even hotter. The smell of death hasn’t left. It’s soaked into the carpet pile and will probably always be there. The windows take up most of the opposite wall, and beside me is a walk-in closet. A print of some foreign landscape that could be African or Australian hangs above the bed, and I think about taking it home for Mom. A bedside table has the usual ensemble of crap resting on it: a packet of painkillers; a small, smooth jar of night cream, whatever that is; an alarm clock; and a box of tissues. The alarm clock is still keeping accurate time. There’s a similar table on the other side of the bed. Scattered across the room, as it’s been scattered everywhere else in the house, is white fingerprinting powder. It looks like Detective Schroder and his pals had a cocaine party.

I take a look at the sketch map of the bedroom that was in the file. There’s also one of the entire floor. Can’t get lost in here. The purpose of the map is to show in an even perspective where everything was found. It tells me that on the far side of the bed is a door leading to a bathroom. I follow the map and see it speaks the truth.

The body was found on the bed. There’s no tape or chalk outline of where her body was, because that’s only a TV thing. It’s a shame, because that would be a pretty sweet job to have. I can imagine the interview: Well, if you can trace an outline around this orange, the job is yours.

I pick my way across the floor, stepping over the plastic numbers and evidence bags. I sit on the corner of the bed. The duvet sags and moves a little. So far, my effort has consisted of knocking over a vase and sitting on a comfortable bed, yet already I’m sweating. When I wipe my shirtsleeve across my forehead, it comes away wet. I roll up my sleeves and rest the briefcase on the bed. I open it so the gun is easily accessible. I see the empty bottle of beer and fight the temptation to go back downstairs for a fresh one.

I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for, so I decide to break my evening up into goals. Baby steps. My short-term goal has to be simple: find something to work with, work with it, then turn it into a long-term goal. Set this guy up for the entire seven killings, and the eighth one too, if she ever gets found. I still have the ticket from the parking garage as evidence that I can plant. I close my eyes and imagine it all unfolding, then open them because I’m jumping ahead. I need to reach the short-term goal first.

I begin looking around. Nice place. I could live here. A nice twenty-inch flatscreen TV in the corner that would look good in my place. It’s been turned off, though in the photographs it’s on. Maybe the killer watched TV while he was attacking her. Or maybe she watched. I wonder what was on at the time, if Walker was being raped to boring British theme music. The generic photographs of her family where they all fake smiles for the camera fill the room. There are some on the bedside tables; others hang on the walls. If their eyes are looking at me, I don’t feel it here.

A crossword-puzzle magazine sits on the second bedside table, along with a telephone. The phone is no good, though. It’s been torn from the wall. On the floor by the bedside table is the remote to the TV. It has white fingerprinting powder on all the buttons. I put the crossword magazine in my briefcase, then check out the closet. Nice clothes. Hers aren’t my type. The husband’s are the wrong size. I rummage through a chest of drawers and find nothing. Her underwear smells like fabric softener and feels soft against my face. I drop a pair of panties inside my briefcase.

There is nothing of interest in the bathroom. The husband’s electric razor, sitting above the sink, looks nicer than mine. It’s one of many things the husband has left behind. Back in the bedroom, I sit down on the same corner of the bed and put the razor into my briefcase, first wrapping it in the underwear to protect my knives. Red walls. Blue-green carpet. I’ve never known what fashion is in or out, so I’m not sure whether these colors are on their way in for the first time or are already too old, or if they’re coming back in fashion. I’m not sure whether I should like them.

Concentrate.

I think back to the autopsy report. Daniela was able to scratch her killer, and since there were marks on her wrists from being bound, she must have scratched him before he started to strangle her. Once my chest was scratched so badly I needed stitches, but because I couldn’t go to the doctor, I went to the supermarket and bought those Band-Aid stitches. Used half a dozen to close the wound. Healed up nicely. Except for the infection.

The only blood found at the scene was hers. He didn’t stab her-just punched her in the face a few times. The drops of blood on the pillow from having her face pressed into it look like tears, as if a sad clown wept into it. More droplets have been sprinkled over the floor. On the handle to the front door, accompanying one of the latex smudges, is a smudge of her blood.

I read through the reports once more, then check the statements. Putting my money on the husband isn’t looking like a safe bet-he has an exceptionally good alibi. Her body was found with her arms folded across her chest, and a sheet was pulled up over her. Her eyes were open, but the smears on her eyelids suggest the killer closed them before he put his gloves on to clean up. If so, they opened by themselves. Again I think maybe he felt bad at what he had done. I spend a few seconds wondering what that would feel like-about feeling bad-but can’t get a feel for it. That doesn’t mean others don’t understand it. Maybe the guy who did this was deluded enough to think giving her some dignity in death made up for killing her. It looks like a classic domestic homicide, except for the alibi. Plus I saw the husband at the station the morning after the murder, and he looked genuinely messed up, as if he couldn’t believe anybody could do this to his wife.

I look back down at the report. It’s getting harder to read as it gets darker outside. Nothing has been reported stolen: no pieces of missing jewelry, no missing cash. In most cases the guilty husband would have tried to make it look like a burglary gone wrong. I never take anything when I kill, and since this person was trying to copy me, he never took anything either. How did he know that? Not through the media, that’s for sure. Is it just a coincidence?

I don’t know. All I do know is that I’ve been here for nearly forty minutes and still don’t have any answers. I’m starting to think more and more of the beers downstairs. I should have opened a window. The air’s still stuffy, but the sun is no longer as strong. I loosen my grip on the thick file and the contents spill onto the bed. My ideas are starting to dissolve. Time keeps passing and I realize my mind has stagnated. I start running my eyes over the scene, imagining what happened here, putting myself in the killer’s mind. Getting inside is easy for a guy like me. So that’s what I do-I get inside his mind, I imagine her dying, and for a few minutes I can almost feel her beneath me.

Still-no great insights, no flashing sirens or ringing bells to signify a great breakthrough in the case. There are no breakthroughs, just one sloppy coincidence and a sweat-soaked shirt. I thought it would be easier. Hell, it should be easier. Only things never are. Not when it’s something you really want. I want to help this dead woman as much as I want to help myself, but does that matter? Does that make the answers any easier to find? Of course not. The only thing I feel like doing is taking my free electric shaver and crossword puzzles out of here and never coming back. Go home, feed my fish, and take a nap. Put this episode behind me, like I have other episodes in my life, like I have with all of them. Move on. To what, I’m not sure.

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.