Cleanup on Aisle Six

by Daniel Stallings

  The only small blessing was that these terrorists weren’t armed. However, on Hate Night, no one knew for sure and spent those tense hours clutching their loved ones close to their hearts, waiting for the darkness to end.

  The houses formed a pattern. They were homes of the chefs who worked at Bauer when the place shut down. Oscar’s blog post incited lunatic men to enact a horrifying ethnic cleansing, swarming the streets like rabid beasts, desiring a holocaust. Hate Night was a hate crime of natural disaster proportions.

  “I was just a beat cop that night.”

  Detective Hughes, reliving the nightmare through the reports, glanced up to see Adam leaning on the visitor’s chair. Adam’s face was old and his eyes haunted. He slumped into the seat. “It was my worst night as a cop. I still have nightmares sometimes. Felix was a family friend. We were so proud of all his hard work. He raised his chefs to be superstars. And that kitchen was spotless. I had a buddy in the health department who said he would eat off Bauer’s floors. Felix and his staff took the business seriously. Everything was clean and fresh and handled with laser precision. So whatever Kathryn Lindstrom got sick from, it definitely wasn’t food poisoning. I’ve been trying to find out what it was, but no dice so far.” His eyes hardened. “It wasn’t Felix. It wasn’t his team. None of them deserved that torture. I was partnered with Bianca at the time. When the call came in, she recognized one of the addresses as her fiancé’s brother’s house. I remember getting there when those insane assholes lit the house on fire. We helped the family escape. As the mother carried her baby out the back door, one of the terrorists hiding in the bushes hit her baby with a blood balloon. The baby screamed. I don’t mean cried. Screamed. And soaked in blood. The memory is burned on my brain forever.”

  There were dozens of stories like this. Hate Night challenged the strength and character of every woman and man. Many left town afterwards, unable to feel safe. Chef Felix, accused by the terrorists of being a Nazi due to his German heritage and losing his home and restaurant to fire, abandoned California. Current whereabouts listed as Massachusetts. And he never again worked as a chef of any stripe.

  Detective Hughes had called his wife two dozen times that night, always assuring the safety of his own family. He hadn’t known how thorough the lunatics intended to be.

  The madmen were subdued, arrested, and carted to prison for a long stay. No one died on Hate Night, an enormous blessing. But the scars ran deep. You couldn’t stay a rookie after that night. Detective Hughes and his colleagues all had the war-weary eyes of battle-scarred veterans.

  Adam reached out a hand and stroked the edge of a framed photograph with his finger. Was he thinking of his own family waiting by the phone that night to hear whether or not he died on duty? “It was the only night where I questioned being a policeman. It was ugly. And my friends and colleagues were hurt. Gott im Himmel, I wondered if I would survive this job. But if someone doesn’t fight for what’s right, who will?” He jerked to his feet, again trying to mask the pain of the memory with the firm, professional set of his face. “I’m going to see if I can trace that package Oscar received. We need to resolve some of these mysteries.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll look over these documents. And Adam … you’re going to be a great detective. You care about people. You care about the team. We couldn’t do this without you.” Detective Hughes grinned. “Don’t worry, Wolf. We’ll figure this out.”

  At the sound of his nickname, Adam smiled. “Thanks, Tony. Couldn’t do this without you either.” With a gleam of renewed determination in his eyes, he left the cubicle.

  Detective Hughes began examining the list of former Bauer employees. His eyebrow arched. That was a familiar name. He grabbed the witness statements taken at Esther’s Family Grocery. Yes, there was the name again. But it was a common name. No definitive connection, but it did open a line of inquiry. He felt he was edging closer to the heart of Liam Johnson’s secret, the knowledge he was withholding.

  A frown creased the space between his eyes. Who was Liam? Detective Hughes had faced off with many an amateur detective in his time, but this kid was beyond all of them. He knew far more than he told. He always seemed to be up-to-date with information and had access to suspects that made the back of the detective’s neck prickle. And there was the look in Liam’s eyes, unconscious probably, of suffering and grief. Perhaps the reason Detective Hughes cared so much about this boy was that he was someone’s child, lost and lonely. He could see the potent pain that scarred the kid’s face with wrinkles and lines.

  But still … Liam was a suspect. An extremely bright suspect with an ability to collect and process information. A suspect with backstory. Adam said something about Oscar Lindstrom not being the kid’s first body. Could it be? Detective Hughes called Leilani, the station’s internet and tech guru, and asked for a background check on one Liam Andrew Johnson.

  Adam stuck his head back into the cubicle, breaking the reverie. “Hey, Tony. Staci Belmont, the Lindstroms’ neighbor, just phoned in a statement. She heard from Kathryn Lindstrom about the package left on Oscar’s doorstep, and said she saw the person who dropped it off.” He gave Staci’s description of the man.

  Detective Hughes’ eyes gleamed. Very familiar indeed. Particularly the description of the uniform. Yes … Now he was certain they were reaching the heart of a secret.

  Liam’s secret.

  Ugh. Dumpster duty. Worst part of any job, along with cleaning public restrooms. After finishing the latter (where he concluded that the toilet would be the only reasonable place for the murderer to hide the fatal scanner), Li hauled two huge, stuffed trash bags down the hallway past the restrooms, through their receiving area, and out the back doors. The alley behind the supermarket was drab. Slums in Victorian England had more charm. Rainwater from the storm stagnated in muddy pools threaded down the center of the alley. Graffiti screamed obscenities on the back walls of businesses like hieroglyphics of hate. A withered alley cat with matted orange fur made a bed for itself out of a crumpled, chocolate-brown apron, one probably balled up and tossed aside by a disgruntled employee of Esther’s Family Grocery.

  Li dragged his payload to the dented dumpster. The perfume of rotted food coming from it, mixing with the odor of fresh mud, forcibly reminded him of the scent of spices and blood on the night Oscar died. Details from the scene flared in his head, big bright spotlights on each one. The bag of sugar lying in a pool of blood. The clatter of the dropped broom. The dead, angry stare. Eyes staring. Eyes like Medusa. Turning, stumbling, slipping on that patch of water …

  Wait. Water. Li stopped mid-toss, the weight of the garbage bag nearly hurtling him to the muddy ground. What was water doing in the aisle that night? Oscar came into the store before the rain started. So had the night shift employees. And no one mopped the aisles yet. So why was there a puddle of water in the aisle where Oscar died?

  An unwanted memory teased him. Reuben mopped the pasta aisle. Li saw him with that Wet Floor sign. But hold on … why would Reuben suddenly decide to mop the spice aisle? He had to do the pasta aisle because that stoner smashed a can of spaghetti with his boot. There was no need to mop the spice aisle.

  Unless he wanted an excuse to get close to Oscar.

  Li let out a growl as he heaved the trash bag into the dumpster, wishing the burden on his mind was as easily disposed as that burden had been. Why couldn’t his brain just—?

  “Shut up, Reuben.”

  The whisper Li heard was sharp, like the sudden release of high-pressure air. Li ducked behind the dumpster, acting on instinct. The whisperer sounded angry. And scared out of his wits.

  Li saw two figures emerge from the back doors of Esther’s Family Grocery. One was Reuben, twisting and knotting the corner of his apron, his round face drawn tight over the bones of his skull. The other was taller, thinner, and older than Reuben, but there was a faint resemblance in the cut and line of his features. A rose tattoo with curling vines wound its way up the man’s biceps.


  Reuben’s hands trembled as they squeezed the apron. Li had to lean closer to catch the weak, warbling words. “Fern, you’re not listening to me!”

  “Maybe I don’t want to! Maybe I want to forget it!”

  “Fern, this is serious!”

  “It didn’t have to be!” Fern rubbed the back of his neck with a huge hand, making the rose on his biceps pulsate. “It … It was a joke!”

  “No, it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. We were furious. Angelo always said that would get us in trouble.” Reuben swallowed. “And now it has. Oh God, what are going to do?”

  “Pipe down! Do you know how to whisper or not?” Fern tossed a glance over each shoulder. For a split second, Li could see the terror of a hunted animal in his eyes.

  Reuben pulled Fern back. “There’s no one here except Bill.”

  “Bill?”

  “That orange cat. He’s a stray I feed sometimes. Whenever I can. He won’t rat us out.”

  “Dammit, Reuben! You’re making it sound like we broke the law!”

  “But Fern, Oscar’s dead.”

  “I know, I know. You told me. This has turned into a big mess. You haven’t told anyone, have you?”

  Reuben’s eyes dropped to his shoes. “Fern, I can’t keep this up. I’m going crazy. I never hide things from Noah. He knows I’m not telling him something. And there’s this new guy at work who scares me. He … He asks things I wish he wouldn’t ask. He asks all the right questions. He’s suspicious too. I’m starting to crack, Fern. I’m not built for the third degree.”

  “Well, find a way to hold out longer, bro. It’s got to blow over sometime, right?”

  “Can’t we just confess?”

  Fern shook his head wildly. “No! Never! I don’t want to risk it!”

  Reuben’s eyes widened and his expression softened. “You’re worried about Sarah, aren’t you?”

  A shadow crossed Fern’s face, his mouth tightening. “She’s got enough on her mind with all those treatments. So we did something stupid. We’ve come too far now. I … I can’t get taken away from her right now. I just can’t. I can’t hurt her like that. She needs me.” There was a glassy glint in his eyes. “Just hold out a little longer. It’ll be okay. It has to be okay. It has to …”

  Eyes uncertain, faces strained, the two men slipped back inside the supermarket.

  Li slid out from his impromptu hiding spot, staring at the doors where two frightened souls had passed through, staring at them as if he was alive and had watched two people slip through the threshold between life and death. His silver-softened baby blues fell to the sleeping orange ball nuzzled inside the soiled apron. Bill. A poor creature kept alive through Reuben’s actions. How had he looked when Reuben found him? Skeletal? Starving? Cold? Lonely? Just as Li had been. Li had been a stray saved by Reuben Rodriguez.

  Whatever Reuben and the mysterious “Fern” did, it was backfiring. And Li could sense the first glimmers of what that secret could be.

  “We can’t rat them out, can we, Bill?” Li said to the fuzzy orange ball.

  The cat purred.

  It was well past quitting time. The keyboards were silent. The computers were dark. The phones slept. But in the office of the editor-in-chief, a light still burned, and Frank Dixon sliced wide swathes in the floor with his nervous pacing.

  What are we going to do? What am I going to do?

  What could he do? Oscar was dead. Very, very, very dead. Murdered. Frank had covered dozens of murders in his career, his emotions detached from them, each one treated as a curiosity or a statistic. But this one … this one plunged right into the core of his soul. He could picture—sometimes even feel—his hands molded around the handle of the weapon. That thought always opened a cold vacuum in his stomach.

  Because he knew the victim. Because he wanted him dead.

  The more he paced, the deeper the lines around his eyes and mouth sank.

  Was it too late to back out? To give up the threadbare charade? Yes. Oh yes, it was way too late now. Frank could wallpaper The Gazette’s parking garage with bills, overdraft notices, demands for raises, and resignations. Maryann was spending more and more time on the phone with her sister and had left a brochure for a marriage counselor on his side of the bed. And he could feel the large ears, long nose, and curious fingers of law enforcement creep and crawl closer and closer toward him. Like dogs sniffing in places they shouldn’t, digging for bones buried in the basement.

  Frank tugged at his shirt collar. It was suddenly boiling in that room.

  He wondered vaguely if suicide was a resolution. But he remembered he feared the frigid, sterile vacuum on the other side of the veil as much as he feared the one in his stomach. And as his thoughts careened down spiraling roads, always crashing into dead ends, he realized that empty feeling in his stomach was growing larger and larger, a tumor of terror.

  Should he wait for further instructions? Was there anything any of them could accomplish now? Would it all just fade away in time?

  He felt like laughing in hysterics and sobbing in a corner at the same time.

  His rage, balking at the doom and depression, spiked. He seized one of the glass paperweights and smashed it on the floor. A perfect metaphor for his life. Death. Waste. Destruction. He felt no better, just more exhausted.

  What am I going to do?

  Frank tore off his necktie, wishing it didn’t feel so much like a noose.

  “Domination? Bondage? Escapism? What kind of English class are you taking anyway?”

  Li jumped, his train of thought derailed. His flinching fingers struck the keyboard haphazardly, adding an articulate “dfsarew” to the sentence “Mrs. Boynton’s style of mental domination and torture included examples of free will subversion, isolation techniques, and—”.

  Reuben stepped back. “Whoa. Didn’t mean to scare you. I was just curious. I didn’t realize you were so jumpy.”

  Li’s cheeks burned pink. “Sorry. I kind of lose myself when I write. It’s like I forget where I am.”

  “Ah. In the zone. I get it.”

  Silence. Dead, awkward silence. The bubbling of the soup stock in the kitchen behind them rose to an ominous volume. Like hearing the gurgle of a bog just before you stepped in it and drowned.

  Li deleted his creative spelling. “So, um, did you need the computer?”

  Now Reuben blushed. “No, no, I was just … trying to make conversation.”

  More silence. Noah’s regimented carrot chopping, the firm patter of blade to cutting board, became the never-ending slicing of a guillotine. Thop thop thop. Off with their heads.

  “How’s your class?”

  “It’s okay.” This is insanity! We’re both too afraid to say anything! I don’t know what’s worse. The silences or the struggling conversation.

  Reuben knotted his fingers together, and a bulge that must have been his tongue bowed out his cheek. Like he was tasting his words before he spoke them. “So … erm … What are you writing about? Looks … very different.”

  Li tried to relax. This was a safe topic. He wouldn’t talk about work. He wouldn’t talk about Oscar. He wouldn’t mention the scene he saw at the dumpster. And Reuben was trying, so Li could try too. He didn’t want to lose the few friends he had. “I’ve got Mallowan for English 102. The theme of our class is emotional bondage, domination, escapism, and the illusions of freedom. Not especially cheery, but it does force us to think critically. Mallowan likes to use popular genre fiction along with classics in his courses.” Li turned back to the computer and typed “financial control” to cap off the sentence. “We’re writing an essay explaining our interpretation of this quote from Agatha Christie’s Appointment with Death: ‘He knew that no race, no country, and no individual could be described as free. But he also knew that there were different degrees of bondage.’”

  Reuben let out a low whistle. “Deep stuff. What line are you taking?”

  Li felt the tension knots in his shoulders start to untie themselves. Maybe th
is would turn out okay. Maybe they could put this Oscar fiasco behind them. “Emotional bondage, especially that caused by mental abuse. I guess you can say I was inspired from my time as a waiter on the Howard Line.” He fingered the escape key. “But it’s a sensitive topic. Someone in my class is writing something similar, and I think it’s extremely personal. Not a happy home life.”

  Reuben tugged at the sleeve of his shirt, his eyes suddenly very interested in the apartment floor. “Yeah, probably. You’re … You’re very perceptive, aren’t you?”

  Uh-oh. Dangerous waters. Li, perceptive as he was, could sense the explosives deeply submerged, dormant but not dead. “It’s not something I relish. Not anymore.”

  “Anymore?”

  “My dad used to be really proud of it. He liked that I was curious and asked a bunch of questions. Now it just gets me in trouble. It’s like I don’t know how to stay out of people’s business.”

  “I noticed.” Reuben’s eyes shot up, and he bit his lip. “I’m sorry. That was a bit harsh. I meant … well … you are really invested in people.” A tattered sigh pushed through his lips. “Man, I suck at this. I meant … ugh, I don’t know what I mean. I guess I see a lot of myself in you. An interest in other people. I personally can’t stand it if someone is in pain or suffering. I have to find a way to help them.”

  Li watched Reuben’s face. There didn’t seem to be any spark of anger. Just sadness. “I understand. Noah … Noah has an idea that that’s why I pester you so much. You’re suffering, and I want to help.”

  A whisper of a smile. “Noah always knows best. He’s more practical than me when it comes to emotions. I take things personally. I once brought home a stray cat I found in the alley behind the store. He looked like a skeleton in fur. I couldn’t bear to watch him starve. I fed him and gave him a place to sleep. I … I grew to care about him. After two months, he ran away.” Reuben hung his head. “I know he was just a cat, but it felt like betrayal. It hurt. It was like he took advantage of me. It was silly to think like that, but I took it to heart.”