The Cleaner

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The graveyard is mostly deserted. It’s late to be out here, but Sally wanted somewhere quiet to think. She parks next to a car that has a guy inside it slowly drinking from a bottle wrapped in a paper bag. He looks at her and she can see pain in his eyes and for a moment she wants to help him, to tell him that things will get better, but she isn’t so sure it’s true, not for this guy. She’s seen him out here before, and she’s seen him around the police station a few times too, talking mostly to Detective Schroder. She thinks he used to work there. She doesn’t know his story, and doesn’t want to ask.

She makes her way to her brother’s grave. Long blades of grass, those close to the gravestones missed by the lawn mower, are bending under the weight of the dew. Other than going to church, she feels like the cemetery is the closest place to God.

Last night, rather than having some of her questions answered, Sally was only led further down the path of her confusion. No, further into the world of Joe’s fiction. Just how much is he lying about? Did he attack himself?

She thinks about the blood on the stairs at his apartment building. If Joe attacked himself, he must have done it outside. It doesn’t seem likely. As unlikely as Joe driving? She knows she needs to confront him. She was going to today at work, but she’d become scared. She didn’t want to lose Joe. Though, really, that has probably already happened. Maybe his mother hasn’t told him yet of her visit, but she soon will.

She wipes the back of her hand across her face, streaking the tears across her cheeks. Her breath is forming a mist in front of her face. She doesn’t want to let Joe down.

The same way you let down your brother?

The tears start to come more freely. Nobody blames her for what happened to Martin, at least that’s what they say, but she knows they do. She certainly does. Her parents must do. As for Martin and God, well, one day she’ll find out. She pulls out a tissue from her pocket and dries her face. Across the graveyard, mist looks as though it’s seeping out of the ground. Fog is hanging around the gravestones but doesn’t have the strength to climb any higher. By the time she gets back to her car her legs feel damp.

She turns the heater on to full as she drives to Joe’s apartment. The hot air dries her legs and her face. Sometimes on the way home from seeing her dead brother, she can’t stop the tears.

She parks in the same spot she parked in the first time she came here. She grabs the first-aid kit from the backseat. She will help Joe by removing the stitches before she will help him by confronting him.

Nobody appears as she makes her way up to the top floor. The small splotches of blood are still on the stairs. Some of them have been smeared to the size of a watch face. She knocks, but nobody answers. A cat appears at the end of the hallway and walks down to her. It has a slight limp. She squats down next to it and starts petting it.

“Hey, little one, aren’t you just the cutest?”

The cat meows as if to agree, then starts purring. She knocks on the door again, still hunched down next to the cat. Joe doesn’t answer. Is it possible he has passed out again? Or been attacked? She knocks louder. Most likely he isn’t home, but what if he is? What if he is lying on his bed, bleeding, the other testicle removed?

She reaches into her first-aid kit, where the copy of Joe’s key has been since the day she had it cut. She stands up and inserts it into the lock. She realizes the chances are higher that she’s looking for an excuse to enter rather than Joe being in trouble inside. This realization doesn’t stop her from turning the handle and pushing the door open.

“Joe?”

Joe doesn’t answer, because Joe isn’t home. She closes the door behind her. The cat sits down on the table next to the goldfish bowl. The bowl is empty. Did Joe not feed them? Has he bought a cat to replace them? His clothes are scattered across the floor again, though this time there aren’t any patches of blood on any of them. The pile of latex gloves she had made has become smaller. There are dishes in the sink, exposed food on the table. The bed is unmade, and has possibly been that way since the attack. Would Martin have lived like this?

Sally starts to walk around the apartment. This isn’t right, being here, but whatever’s happening to Joe isn’t right either.

Happening to Joe?

She looks through the folders he has brought home from the police station-there are extra ones now. The photos are disgusting, and she can bear only to look at them for a few seconds. She replaces them. Why would Joe have these here?

Perhaps a more important question would be what he’d say if he came home and found her looking around his apartment. Yes, it’s best that she goes. She is about to pick up the cat when it races under the bed.

“Come on, little one, come on. You can’t stay under there.”

But the cat thinks that it can. When she gets onto her hands and knees and looks under the bed, the cat is right in the middle. Next to it is a small piece of paper. Curious, Sally reaches under and grabs it.

It’s a ticket from a parking building. The time and date printed across it are several months old. It doesn’t make sense to still have the ticket, because the ticket gets handed back on the way out of the parking building so the guy in the booth knows how much to charge you. She reaches under the bed and puts the ticket back on the floor.

She clicks her fingers for the cat, which a moment later is purring in her arms. She carries it into the hallway, sets it down, then heads back outside.