The Cleaner

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Detective Harvey Taylor. Forty-three years old. Married. Four kids. Been on the police force for eighteen years. Became a detective in the burglary squad at the age of twenty-eight. Promoted to homicide at the age of thirty-four. Has been assigned to some of the biggest homicide cases New Zealand has ever seen. He’s a part of the team tracking the guy who left all the bodies in the cemetery lake-a guy the media are calling the Burial Killer. He’s a part of the team trying to track me too.

I’m reading through Taylor’s history, seeing he was a straight-A student at school. Several outstanding sporting achievements. High IQ. The type of guy I hated when I was at school. The type of guy I wanted to be.

Listed in the folder are results from his school days. Results from the Royal New Zealand Police College. Results from psychological tests. I look through the questions for Have you ever strangled a woman to death after raping her? but it’s not there. I figure he would have ticked No. Most of the questions are pretty lame. What is your favorite color? What is your favorite number? Would you steal if you were desperate? Have you ever smoked drugs? Ever killed a pet? Ever beaten anybody up at school? Ever been beaten up? Do you like setting fires?

The yes-or-no questions take up five pages before the tests move on to questions that require written answers instead of ticks in boxes. What should we do with murderers? How did it feel being beaten up at school? What did you do about it? Why this and why that. Big fucking deal this and big fucking deal that. They’re designed to make up a psychological profile. Something like “I was beaten up at school, but my favorite color is blue, which means I can’t be gay. Right?” Yeah, right.

I stop looking at the questions and go to the results. Taylor was basically rubber-stamped sane. No further explanation than that. The “insane” graduates become parking attendants.

I continue reading through his record from officer to detective: the arrests he’s made, the cases he’s solved. The guy has put in several of his own hours into these cases. You don’t get compensated for those hours, but you do gain some respect. They help you get promoted, so you can do even more work that you won’t get compensated for. The report indicates the man is dedicated, to his work and to his family. I don’t know what the balance is, but so far he still has both.

This doesn’t eliminate him as a suspect. For all I know he’s missing his wife so much his imagination and right hand can’t accommodate him any longer. Maybe he seeks sexual release with a stranger. I have no way of knowing. All I do know is that besides the burglary cases, which have such an extremely low solution rate it’s appalling, Taylor has solved nearly every one of his investigations. That’s why he’s here. Not that his being here has helped either investigation.

The photograph supplied with the file is probably ten years old, taken when he was in his early thirties. Even then Taylor looked ten years older than he was. Now, he looks twenty years older. These days his hair is ash gray with peaks at the corners of his forehead that threaten to see him bald within a few years. He doesn’t have the black eyes of a killer. Instead his friendly blue eyes mask an intelligence I don’t associate with many detectives. His face is lined with wrinkles from age and from the sun. His skin is weathered and tanned, and it’s easy to imagine him on a surfboard in the middle of the ocean.

The picture in the folder is in color and shows the sort of fashions we were all wearing back then. I can only hope no photographs exist of me anywhere wearing similar clothes.

I put his folder down. Yawn. Stretch. And glance at my watch. It’s already eight o’clock. Somehow I’ve already been home for nearly three hours. Where does the time go?

If only I knew. My internal alarm sure isn’t telling me.

It’s Friday night. Party night. Yet here I am, stuck inside my cramped home, my mind elsewhere and my eyes gliding over information that isn’t helping. I knock back my coffee. I can’t even remember making it, but it’s still warm. Reading all this information must have put me into a fugue. I figure it’d put anybody into one. As I take off my overalls, I pull Sally’s phone number from the pocket. I’m about to crunch it up into a tiny little ball when I decide to hang on to it. It’s nice having somebody’s phone number here other than my mother’s and work. I use a magnet that looks like a miniature banana to stick it onto the front of the fridge. It makes me feel as though I have friends, and it isn’t such a bad feeling.

I take a break. I finally get around to ringing Jennifer at the vet’s and I can tell that just hearing my voice has made her day. I ask about the cat. The cat is doing about as well as it can, but is still in bad condition. I ask about the cat’s owners. She says there’s been no joy there. I ask what they’re going to do with the cat if he lives. She says it will go to a shelter. I don’t ask what will happen at the shelter. I ask her to keep me updated, and she tells me she will.

I head back to the couch to grab a towel hanging over the arm, but end up picking up another folder. I’m naked, my armpits smell like homeless people, yet I sit back on the couch and continue reading.

Detective Inspector Robert Calhoun. Fifty-four years old. Married. The photograph was taken a year or so before his son visited the big suicide house in the sky. The report is all here. Timothy Calhoun. Little Timmy. I can’t imagine having a cop as a parent. That’s probably why he hanged himself in their garage. Or maybe his old man was playing doctor and nurse with him.

Want to see a magic trick, little Timmy?

Calhoun entered the police force at twenty-two and was on the beat ten years before becoming a detective. Originally from Dunedin, he was based in Wellington, spent a few years there, and was then transferred to Auckland. The police force is like that. They’ll give you a job, train you up, then separate you from your family and friends by giving you a home anywhere in the country where you don’t know anybody.

Calhoun worked serious assaults, including rape, for twelve years. After that he was given the opportunity to work homicide. There are no dedicated homicide departments in this country. Not yet. When somebody gets killed, they pull experienced detectives from other areas-generally from sexual assaults, sometimes burglary-to investigate. So when these guys have been working homicide for five years or whatever, they’re still first and foremost burglary or fraud cops until opportunity knocks. I figure working rape cases and other assaults for twelve years would surely give anybody a few ideas. It could easily be here that Calhoun learned a thing or two about what women really want.

I look at his photograph. In the passing years, he has aged three years for every one that’s passed. His black hair, full and in the shape of a God-fearing mullet, is gray now and receding. His face is long and he looks tired, his eyes and mouth surrounded by tiny wrinkles. No black eyes here either. Instead his are dark brown. They’re sad looking, like the eyes of a lost puppy. He has a narrow jawline that’s still the same, except for the gray stubble he always has now.

What do we have? A dead son. A wife who probably hasn’t touched her husband since then. Assaults. A man who sported a mullet. All these rape cases. The reason the tally of rape cases in this country is so high and only getting higher is that the justice system has never placed a big enough deterrent not to commit them.

I study Calhoun’s psychological profile. Nothing too different from Taylor’s. I take a look at his college records. Not brilliant, but pretty good. Top twenty percent of his class, but that also makes him in the bottom eighty percent. He hasn’t solved all his cases, but not many people do. There are a large number of unsolved sexual assaults that I’d like to believe Calhoun committed, but know he couldn’t have-too risky. If a cop does something like that he needs to ensure that his victim can’t identify him afterward, for which only one method is truly guaranteed.

Time is flying. My head is spinning. I look down at my lap and see the reason for the blood loss to my brain. All this reading about sexual assault has perked me up. I stand up and grab the towel, but suddenly the idea of a cold shower isn’t enough to get me through till tomorrow, not when the night has so much to offer. My body is wound tight and my mind even tighter, and as much fun as it’s been being a detective, I deserve a reward for all that hard work-and what better reward is there than letting me be myself again?

I skip the shower. Thoughts of seizing the night pull me away from the files. I get dressed. I have a closet full of nice clothes that belong to men who now have dead wives. I tuck my Glock into the waistband of my jeans and make sure my leather jacket will cover it. I slip one of my blades into the inside pocket.

Dressed to kill. Essential items only.