The Cleaner (18 page)

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.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Christchurch at night. My city. My playground. Where people who hate you will still call you “buddy.” The air is warm, alive with activity, a light breeze coming from the northwest. Not too hot, but muggy. Full of sound as much as moisture. Full of fluorescent light as much as hormones. To the south of the city, on the Port Hills, a million lights twinkle in the distance. In the other directions, just flat landscape with buildings dotted across it. The town itself is full of neon lights—pinks, purples, reds, and greens. All possible colors dazzle the eyes from all possible angles.

The red-light district of Christchurch straddles Manchester and Colombo streets, which run parallel through the heart of the city. On any of these corners you can buy a personal party for twenty, sixty, or a hundred bucks. Circling these streets are two types of people. The first are the boys in their teens and twenties, driving with no destination in mind except to be somewhere else, always on the move like a shark. Modified engines that make more noise than a jumbo jet. Mag wheels
shiny and fat. Exhaust pipes wide enough to put your fist into. These are the boy-racers. I couldn’t really say how they came into being, but they just did, one day thousands of teenagers driving expensive-looking Japanese imported cars, some of the cars have subwoofers installed in the backs with bass as loud as cannon fire, some cars have neon strips stuck along the base of them, some cars are painted so bright they could cause an onlooker to suffer a brain embolism, all of the cars are a burden on society. Windows in the nearby shops vibrate with the sound of them passing by. Some peel rubber at every set of lights as their tweaked motors lurch into action. Kids trying their hardest to be cool in an uncool world, they’re winding down their busy week of cashing welfare checks by impressing everybody with their taste in music.

At the other end of the spectrum is the second type of people. There are the guys who used to do the same thing ten years ago, only back then they’d only cruise up and down the same street. Now these guys are still driving the same cars; older bigger cars that don’t get as much mileage. These are guys who wear tight black jeans and black T-shirts with holes in them and the names of heavy metal bands or whisky brands printed across them. They have long hair or shaved heads, nothing in between. Cigarettes or joints hang from their mouths. Their windows are tinted, the side ones wound down so we can all enjoy their presence. They think women who see them will instantly fall in love, and the crazy part is that some of them do. The sluts who wear the tie-dyed dresses and jars of face paint covering their skin—they wear their hearts on their arms along with colorful but cheap tattoos.

The Oxford Terrace line of bars and cafés is known as The Strip. It’s a meat market where skanky girls tease a few dozen men for every one they end up sleeping with. Seven or eight of these bars are packed tightly within this block, all of them with a riverside view. On the other side of the river and on a slight diagonal, a few hundred feet away from the closest
bar, is the police station. On a Friday night the urine-water mix in the Avon is about fifty-fifty. Eels float along belly up. Ducks pick at used condoms left on the banks. Small fish flop from the water figuring they have a better chance in the air than they do breathing in the same stuff they’re swimming in. Every ten meters or so somebody has passed out drunk. As I get closer to The Strip, I take the gun from my waistband and zip it inside my jacket pocket, then take off my jacket and carry it. The night isn’t as hot as it’d been over the last week, but sweat still trickles down the sides of my body. I’ve applied enough aftershave and deodorant to hide any smell my body can come up with, though there’s more than enough aftershave and perfume already hanging in the air. Walking down this street has me scented for free within seconds.

It’s after midnight and The Strip is getting livelier. All week long women are heading straight home from work and locking their doors, afraid that what has been happening to their counterparts in the news might happen to them. Any other day of the week, there is a general awareness that things are not as safe as they ought to be. Yet come Friday and Saturday nights, all those fears are pushed aside so that the good times can roll. Here, most of the women are young and underdressed. They try to cram their way into clubs they think must be popular because of the lines of people waiting outside. Bouncers stand with their arms crossed and their muscles bulging. They have attitude problems they like everyone to know about.

The Strip is the highlight of town for most locals. Already the drum ’n’ bass, the techno, and the hip-hop deafen me. The only thing I know about hip-hop is that I hate it, and I figure that’s all anybody knows about it. We may have evolved from something that crawled out of a swamp and continued to evolve as monkeys became men, but boy-racers and hip-hop music are proof we’ve hit our peak and are now heading backward.

It could take at least thirty minutes to get inside any of these places, so I head deeper into the city, walking down Cashel Mall passing shoe shops and clothing stores in search of another club or bar. Perhaps one that’s quieter. I find it eventually—a club with an open front where the music isn’t quite so loud and a lot more bearable and there’s room to sit. The crowd seems to be made up of people from their midtwenties through to their late thirties. Guess that makes me average.

I make my way inside, sidestepping the bouncer with a smile and without a comment from either of us. There’s a sea of people to greet me, but not an ocean. I push my way through, keeping a tight grip on my jacket. At the bar I’m served by a delicious blonde—tight white top, short black skirt, great tits. I order myself a gin and tonic. Expensive, but you can’t go into town on a Friday or Saturday night and not expect to spend a small fortune. I could have stayed at home and had the same drink for a quarter of the price, but there would be nobody to watch. I sit at the bar, nurse my drink, and watch the crowd around me. Mostly men wearing expensive clothing they can’t afford, attempting to look richer and more impressive than they really are. Caretakers, laborers, plumbers, shop assistants—all dressed to look like lawyers. Whereas the lawyers are at other bars, dressed to look like casual guys. The women, even the fat chicks, dress to look like sluts. Not that I’m complaining. It’s here where men flock to get a glance at potential bedtime stories to tell their friends on Monday morning. Women come here to be easy. To be free.

From all corners of the club, lights flicker and dance and throb and pulse at my eyes. I finish my drink, order another. I look up at the roof and check for any surveillance cameras covering the bar. Nothing. The music is getting louder. My ears are humming.

In a place like this, women only speak to you for one of three reasons: you’re either extremely good-looking, you look
extremely rich, or they’re telling you to get lost and stop bothering them. Tonight I’m wearing expensive clothing. Money’s no object when it comes to clothes, because a few of my victims have had husbands my size. I’m also wearing a rather expensive wristwatch—a Tag Heuer that cost victim number three’s husband three thousand dollars. It has a sapphire crystal face that can’t be scratched and a metal bracelet strap. Not as costly as a Rolex, but Rolexes don’t retain a high market value; they’re ugly, worn only by old men and Asians.

It takes thirty minutes and three drinks for a woman to come up to me. Out of the overalls, I don’t look like the simple guy the guys at the station think I am. Clothes make all the difference. She forces her way to the bar and stands next to me. She turns and smiles. Acknowledges my existence. A good start. She orders a drink. Just one.