Free The Cleaner by Paul Cleave Page A

obvious why. So many good people. Caring people. She just wishes that sometimes they could show it a little more.
    By the time she climbs three flights of stairs, she’s puffing. She could take the elevator, but she’s been taking the elevator all day at work and this is her best chance for exercise. Lord knows she would be thankful to lose a pound or two. She reaches her car—a twenty-year-old sedan that doesn’t have much in the way of features but has plenty in the way of rust, but every day the engine keeps on ticking over and Lord knows she’s thankful for that too.
    The building exits on a different street from which she came in. Traffic is thickening, and in an hour, some of these streets will almost grind to a halt. She smiles as she strikes a string of green traffic lights. The sun is still out, there’s a warm breeze, and everywhere around her people are happy. She winds down the passenger window, but the one on her side doesn’t work, but that’s okay because enough of a breeze still makes it inside. She keeps smiling as she drives. There are so many flower beds, so many trees, a river flowing through the center of town—who would want to live anywhere else?

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 thevase 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.