by Frank Zafiro
I switched the chemical towel to a damp one, which soaked up the blood that hadn’t dried yet or that the chemical shook loose of the fibers. While that soaked, I took the wine glass to the kitchen. I sniffed the white wine. It had a fruity bouquet that I liked and I wondered what brand it was. Not that I’d ever be able to afford a bottle of it.
I dumped out the glass, washed it, dried it and put it on the rack of wine glasses near the refrigerator. Then I stared at it for a moment, wondering why the cops didn’t take it as evidence.
Camille was reading Dostoevsky, I learned. She was on page 147 of The Brothers Karamazov. I wondered if it were any good.
The puddle of blood took a while. I had to make a trip out to my van for more disposable towels, but eventually I got all of it.
I brought in my heated fan, plugged it in and started the drying process. It took almost an hour. I read the first part of Camille Oster’s book. It was pretty slow. I understood why she decided to drink some wine while reading it.
Once everything was dry, I brought in the vacuum. I used the upright to clean the center of the room and switched to the hose to get along the edge of the furniture, the hearth and walls.
That’s when I came across the loose cover on the heating vent.
I wouldn’t have noticed except I bumped it with the end of the hose and it seemed to give more than it should if it had been screwed in. I turned off the vac and knelt down to examine it. The cover sat about a quarter inch away from the wall. Both screws were missing.
Strange.
I tugged at it and it slid easily toward me. Fresh flakes of plaster fell away, but that didn’t catch my attention.
The blood did.
There was just a small, dried smear on the cover that could have been easily mistaken for paint, but I’d seen enough blood to know what I was looking at.
I swallowed and set the cover aside. I tried to look into the vent, but it went down and then curved away. All I could see was darkness.
I reached down and patted around. Nothing. I reached deeper. Still nothing. I buried my arm inside the grate up to my armpit and felt around.
My fingers grazed something hard.
Maybe it was just a joint in the ductwork, I thought for a second, but when my probing fingers grasped onto it, I knew I was wrong about that. It was a knife.
I drew the blade slowly toward me, pinching it between my thumb and forefinger. The blade scraped against thin sheet metal of the ductwork, raising my hackles.
I pulled the knife clear of the heating vent. It was a hunting knife, about six inches long and without the serrated edge. The blade and the handle were streaked with blood. At least one fingerprint was emblazoned on the handle in dried crimson.
“Holy shit,” I murmured, staring at it. This had to be it. The murder weapon. That’s why the blood drops from the entry, I realized. Not a bloody nose. Stab wounds while she backed up. And the large puddle didn’t come from her being moved at all. She’d probably been stabbed in the torso and bled out.
I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry and I couldn’t.
I had the murder weapon.
The cops didn’t.
I’d solved the case.
Not the cops.
“Holy shit,” I said again.
Then I heard a car pull into the driveway.
Without thinking, I replaced the vent cover. I wrapped the knife in a disposable towel and stashed it in my cleaning supply box. I didn’t know if it was the cops or Mr. Oster, but I needed to think this through a little more before I said anything to anybody.
The Coffee Cup detective was right. Something didn’t add up.
I kicked on the vacuum and sucked up the stray pieces of plaster near the vent and moved on to the hearth. I couldn’t hear the locks over the roar of the vacuum, but the slam of the door registered. I shut off the machine and glanced over my shoulder.
Gary Oster stood in the entryway. His eyes were sunken and red, his expression grief-stricken. “I thought you’d be finished by now,” he said in a hollow voice.
“Sorry,” I said. “Just about there.”
He took a deep, heaving breath and let it out. “Okay. I need a drink. Let yourself out. And send me your bill.”
“Yes, sir.”
He glanced at the fireplace hearth and his eyes welled up with tears. His lip trembled. He forced his mouth into a tight line and strode away.
I vacuumed for five more minutes and called it good. As I packed up my gear, I watched for him to return, but wherever he went to get that drink, he never came back.
That night, I lay in my bed, thinking things through.
The cops missed the knife. They didn’t know about it.
The killer stashed the knife there. Why? Why not take it with him?
It had to be someone she knew, or was comfortable with. Someone familiar with the house. Gary Oster?
It made sense. Husbands killed their wives all the time.
Of course, so do lovers. If she had one.
Or if he did. Maybe he had a mistress and she did it.
I stared at the crack in my ceiling. There was no way to know.
Of course, if it was the husband, he probably knew the knife was missing from the heating vent by now. Or would he let it sit there for months, until everyone had stopped mourning and stopped watching?
If the mistress had killed Camille, would she ever tell him she did it?
I played through scenarios in my head, but they became more disjointed as I grew sleepy, and eventually I drifted off.
The next day I went to the library to do research. I started with the local paper, which was as slanted as usual. The reporters seemed to slam the police every chance they got, and subsequently the police shared little if anything with the newspaper.
The article listed no suspect information, but did characterize the murder as a “blitz attack” and “apparent stabbing.” Whether that came from the cops or not, I couldn’t tell. There was no word of any life insurance on Camille.
I delved into back issues, looking for anything on Mr. Gary Oster. I found a couple of small articles buried in the business section. They weren’t much help. Oster was an importer/exporter of sports equipment. He supported local youth sports generously, which was easy to do when his business was valued at over two million dollars.
I sat at the library table and drummed my fingers. If Oster did it, why? Was there another woman? Was Camille heavily insured?
I didn’t get any answers at the library.
I brewed over it for a week, watching the newspaper for anything new and making several trips to the library. I got nothing, and all the while, the bloody knife sat wrapped up in a disposable towel, hidden under a floorboard in my closet.
Finally, I decided it was time to deliver the bill to Oster. I thought long and hard about how I wanted to play things. I thought of the risks and my loyalties and I realized a couple of things. Number one, the cops had their chance to get me on their side fourteen years ago. They decided back then that I didn’t have the heart for the work. Maybe they were right, because the second thing I realized was that I was sick and tired of being poor.
Oster had a warehouse near my West Central home, which surprised me at first. After I thought about it, though, it made sense. Property in so-called Felony Flats was relatively inexpensive, so if he was willing to invest in the security measures to protect the business, it was probably worth it.
I found the office, a small addition attached to the front end of the warehouse itself. The bell dinged quietly when I entered. An empty reception desk sat behind a counter in the waiting room. A few yards behind that was a door with a picture of Gary Oster’s smiling face hanging next to it. I stared at his hawk-like features and hard eyes and I waited.
After a few moments, the office door opened and a thin brunette woman strolled out, smoothing her skirt. The lipstick at the corner of her mouth was smeared.
He did it, I thought suddenly and instinctively.
My confidence grew.
“Can I help you?” she asked me with a practiced smile.
I smiled back and admired her thin frame, which curved in all the right places. “I hope so. I’m here to see Mr. Oster.”
She took her seat. The nameplate at the front of her desk read ‘Wanda.’ “May I ask what this is concerning?”
I held up the invoice. “My bill.”
“I can take that,” she said, and reached out her hand. “I handle all billing.”
I shook my head. “Nah, I need to give this one to him personally.”
Wanda frowned slightly. “Mr. Oster is going through a difficult time. I don’t know if it’s a good idea—”
“It’s a good idea,” I said. “Just tell him the cleaner is here.”
“Cleaner?”
I gave her my card. Her cheeks reddened. “You…were there?”
I nodded.
“That’s awful,” she said. “What a horrible job you have.”
“Sometimes. But it pays the bills.”
Her lips pressed together and her eyes hardened. “Of all the bills Mr. Oster doesn’t need to see right now, this probably ranks the highest.”
Even higher than one with the cost of her coffin? I thought darkly. But less so than the life insurance premium, I bet.
“He’ll want to see me,” I said.
Wanda stared at me for a long moment and I stared back. I tried to gauge in her eyes how much she knew. Was she just the mistress? Or did she help plan things? Did she do the actual deed herself? I couldn’t tell, though. She could’ve been a conspirator or just loyal to her boss and lover.
Our stare-down ended when she rose and held out her hand again. “I think it’s very cruel, but give it to me. I’ll take it in.”
I gave her the invoice. She glanced down at it as she turned away and stopped mid-turn. When she looked sideways at me, her expression registered somewhere between confused and angry.
“Wha—”
“Just give it to him.”
Her eyes narrowed. She snapped her head around and stalked into the office. I noticed that she didn’t pause at the door, not even to give a courtesy knock.
I waited.
There were no outbursts from inside the office and no arguing. I found that interesting and put it in the column that suggested she was in on it.
Less than a minute later, Wanda returned. “Mr. Oster will see you,” she said in a curt tone.
I thanked her and walked around the counter and past her desk. When I passed by her, I caught a whiff of her perfume and it made me think of lacy pillows.
Gary Oster’s office was spare and utilitarian, except for the large, leather chair he sat in. The expression he regarded me with bore no resemblance to the hollow-eyed, tear-stained face I’d encountered a week ago in his living room.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, waving the bill at me.
I settled into the chair opposite his desk. It wasn’t as luxurious as the one he sat in, but it was surprisingly comfortable.
“What don’t you understand?” I asked him.
“Don’t play games with me,” Oster said. “This invoice is for two hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
“That’s right.”
“It shouldn’t be more than two hundred fifty dollars.”
I shrugged. “Things got complicated.”
“Complicated?”
I nodded. “About a thousand times more complicated. In fact, that’s where I came up with that figure.”
He glared at me, but I noticed a light sheen of sweat on his forehead. “You better get to the point before I shove this invoice up your ass.”
I smiled. “Then you’d go to jail for assault and murder.”
He blanched. Blinked. Swallowed. “What are you talking about?” he finally managed to sputter out.
“It’s simple,” I said. “You pay your bill, in cash, and I don’t tell the police about the knife I found in your heating vent.”
I didn’t think it possible for him to turn any whiter, but he did. A moment later, his face flared red. “You piece of shit!” he snarled at me.
“Maybe,” I said. “But I didn’t kill my wife.”
Oster opened his desk drawer and withdrew a small pistol. Sweat trickled down my back and sides when he pointed it at me, but I kept up my outward appearance as best I could. “That won’t do you any good. If anything bad happens to me, my cousin takes a package to the police, along with a detailed, signed letter.”
Oster clenched his jaw. “You’re bluffing.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m not. And you know it. Who else could have found the knife? If the police had discovered it, you’d be in jail right now. So put the gun away and let’s talk business.”
The pistol wavered in his hand. I stared back at him, trying to radiate confidence. After a few seconds, he cursed and let the gun fall into the open drawer and slammed it shut.
“You son of a bitch,” he said.
I smiled, letting some of my nervous energy escape in a light chuckle. “I suppose I am.”
“I don’t have that kind of money laying around,” he said, gesturing at the invoice.
“What about life insurance?”
“What about it?”
“Your wife was insured, wasn’t she?”
He shrugged.
I took that as a yes. “You’ll get the cash from that. Besides, I’ve got an idea to make it easy on you.”
“What’s that?” he sneered, and his expression told me that he didn’t think anyone who mopped up blood for a living was smart enough to come up with anything worthwhile.
I could’ve been a cop! I felt like yelling at him.
Instead, I said, “I will sell you my business for the two hundred fifty grand.”
“Your business? What the hell does that mean?”
“My cleaning business. The name, the van, the supplies, all of it.”
“What’s that really worth?”
I grinned darkly. “I read once that something is worth whatever someone else is willing to pay for it.” I let him fume for a long, silent moment, then continued. “This is the best way. The money I get is legit, the transfer is legit and no one asks any questions. You get what you want and I get what I want.”
He shook his head. “Two hundred fifty thousand for your little piss-ant business is going to raise eyebrows.”
I shrugged. “That’s your problem. Tell the IRS you’re planning on franchising.”
He stared holes into me. I stared some back at him.
“Fine,” he said after a while. “But I need a few days to get the money together.”
“Cash,” I reminded him. “Not any kind of check.”
“I heard you the first time.”
I nodded and rose from my chair. I thought about offering my hand. It only seemed proper, since we’d just concluded a business deal. Oster’s expression told me my hand would just hang empty across the top of his desk while he continued to stare at me, though, so I bagged the idea and left his office, closing the door behind me.
Wanda glared at me as I walked past. “I hope you’re happy,” she said a low voice.
“I am,” I assured her, and breathed in her perfume.
I spent the next few days planning what to do with my newfound fortune. There were many possibilities, but I kept coming back to Mexico as the best one. The down side was that as I checked into the logistics of it, two hundred fifty thousand bucks didn’t go as far as I thought it would.
Still, it was better than scrubbing brain matter off a ceiling.
My days were lazy ones. I slept in and took long, late breakfasts at Dolly’s Café, where I perused the newspaper. After a couple of follow-up stories on the Oster murder, coverage disappeared. The police weren’t saying much, other than they had no suspects. I guessed that Oster’s receptionist probably gave him a solid alibi. I’m sure he was ‘working late.’
Afternoons I passed at Cannon Park, watch
ing the kids play and the dogs run. I let myself dream a little during those trips, thinking of sandy beaches, blue water and dark-haired senoritas. Occasionally, Wanda’s face popped up in those fantasies and I didn’t do much to push it away.
On the afternoon of the third day after my meeting with Oster, I stopped off at a used car lot.
“I want something reliable,” I told the salesman.
He nodded. “Of course. That’s smart.”
He continued to flatter me and finally got me into a six-year-old Toyota with only twenty-five thousand miles on it.
“That’ll drive to hell and back,” he said, “and not even need an oil change.”
I didn’t need it to make to it to hell, just Mexico.
I went out for a nice steak dinner at Spencer’s, then returned home. When I reached for the knob on the front door, I realized it was slightly ajar.
Adrenaline shot through me. I’d lived in Felony Flats for over fifteen years and I’d never been burglarized before. The van got prowled a couple of times before I started keeping it in the garage, but that was the extent of my victimization.
I considered calling the police, but then a second thought hit me. Oster! If he were involved in this, the last thing I wanted was the police.
I nudged the door and it creaked open. The doorjamb was shattered with surgical precision right where the deadbolt entered. I swallowed and stepped inside.
Light or no light? I made the decision almost immediately. Light was my friend and if someone were still inside, light was his enemy. I flicked the main switch.
My living room was a disaster. The cushions of the couch were cut to ribbons and lay on the floor. The couch itself bore long slash marks along the side and beneath where the cushions normally sat. My small bookshelf had been toppled and my books were scattered across the floor. The TV lay among them, the screen cracked.
I shook my head in disbelief and moved to the kitchen. All the drawers and cabinets were wide open, their contents on the floor and counter in disarray. The bathroom was the same.
I pushed open the door to my bedroom and flicked on the light.
The bed had been tossed and then cut open. My dresser drawers were ripped out and the clothing spilled onto the floor. The closet door stood open.
