Sparkle (5 page)

Eddie forced himself to breathe. He willed the Shiny Gold music louder to keep from thinking about what had happened. It was going to be okay. Something strange, something deeply unsettling and unfamiliar had happened—but thank goodness he’d done his job. His mind had let him down, but his body had gone on without him. There was no other explanation. He’d had bad dreams about his mom and dad before, lots of times. He accepted the unpleasant fact that he couldn’t control what happened when he was asleep.

This was like that. Somehow he’d fallen asleep. That had to have been what had happened. Maybe there had been something in his sandwich.

You never know.

He looked everywhere, but his heightened senses couldn’t detect a speck of gore. Blood was powerful stuff, no question. It had a strong effect on him every time. Sometimes it was almost overwhelming, and this was the strangest and most disturbing job ever. But Eddie had won again. The room was clean. That was the important thing. The other stuff wasn’t going to matter.

“Uh-huh,” he said to himself. “Okay.”

Then he remembered what Lucy had said and something started buzzing ominously. It took everything Eddie could muster to push what had happen into the back of his mind.

Joe shuffled up the mansion’s front steps, a smoke dangling from his mouth. He carried a six-pack of Sparkle Soda in a plastic grocery bag. The rain had stopped. He was feeling surprisingly good for a change. He’d been relieved to hear Jolie’s news, and was actually looking forward to seeing the results of Eddie’s work.

Joe took a last deep drag, ground his cigarette into the porch and checked his watch. He put his head close to the door and knocked gently.

“Eddie! It’s five! You ready?”

Eddie opened the door. Joe came inside and let out a soft whistle. Regardless of his expectations, the reality of the thing got to Joe every time. He put his grocery bag on the floor. For a brief moment he felt good. The place was clean.

“Whoa. Another home run, Eddie. Nice.” He took a few steps inside, glanced quickly around the living room, and then headed back to the foyer, ready to go. Despite the transformation, there was no need to hang around for one second longer than absolutely necessary.

“Shiny Gold, Joe.” Eddie always gave credit where he thought it was due. He glanced around, repressing the thought that the little girl might materialize again and blow the whole job out of the water.

“Yeah, just like a miracle. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

Eddie looked at his brother and waited. “Say it, Joe,” he finally said.

Joe had already turned his back and was trying to look totally absorbed in what he was doing, but he definitely heard Eddie’s quiet demand. In fact, he’d known it was coming—and that it was useless to try to avoid it.

This was one of Joe’s least favorite parts of their end-of-job ritual. He’d said it once, half sarcastically, and now Eddie wouldn’t let up on him until he said it every time.

No use turning it into a hassle. Joe turned around and looked right at his brother. “Now that’s what I call clean!” he said, mimicking the voice on the Shiny Gold TV commercial.

Given what had just happened, Eddie wasn’t so sure. “Sparkle, Joe,” he said.

“Yeah, right.” Joe pulled the six-pack of Sparkle out of the plastic sack and handed it to Eddie. This was a Friday night, rather than end-of-job, ritual. Eddie would drink all six before going to bed.

“Here’s to a job well done.” Joe was careful not to touch his brother as he handed off the soda. Eddie didn’t like being touched. No matter how silly these little rituals made Joe feel, he realized he was still getting the better end of the deal when it came to work. At least he didn’t have to deal with the blood.

Eddie was slightly jolted by the fact that Joe had, once again, brought cans instead of bottles. At least he’d remembered it was Friday. Joe’s lack of competence when it came to these simple important details agitated Eddie. Still, they only deepened Eddie’s sense of how much his brother needed him. The ordinariness of Joe’s incompetence was actually a huge relief. Something to focus on.

“Bottles, Joe.”

“Oh yeah.” Joe hoped Eddie wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it. He knew damn well that Eddie preferred bottles, but they weren’t always easy to find. Cans were usually something he could skate by on without Eddie completely melting down.

Eddie silently turned away and carefully placed the six-pack in his canvas Mariners bag, to Joe’s relief. He went to work loading up the van.

Eddie carefully removed, folded, and bagged his personal gear. He fished a business card out of the breast pocket of his white short-sleeved shirt and placed it gingerly and precisely on a table by the front door. Eddie and Joe’s names and address were on the back. The front read:

Sparkle Cleaners

Someone has to do it.

206-666-GORE

Chapter 6

On the drive home, Joe and Eddie listened to the Mariners game on the van’s tinny radio. Joe listened, anyway. Eddie was even more distant than usual. Even after simple jobs, it took time for him to drift completely back into the physical world. He had put on his sunglasses, a clear signal that he didn’t feel like interacting. That was fine with Joe.

Thoughts about the little girl kept trying to intrude on Eddie’s consciousness. He knew there was a part of him that wanted to question, to analyze, to parse out the strange event in every way possible. It was a dangerous situation. There had been times when a compelling problem had immobilized him for days, and he couldn’t allow that to happen today. Today was Friday, which meant that tomorrow was zoo day—just like every Saturday, rain or shine—and nothing was going to interfere with that.

The job was done. He’d helped that family get to the good place, to where they needed to go. How they’d died was none of his business. He didn’t want to know anything more than that he had done his job, and the whole thing was over. There was no why to answer. He’d somehow fallen asleep, and seen things that weren’t real, but his body had been smart enough to go on and finish the job by itself. That thought was powerfully reassuring and pleasant, and while the small lump in his pocket was an annoying contradiction to it, it helped him shift his consciousness to where he needed it to be: zoo day. Sparkle day. The best day of the week.

Cleaning was good. It was deeply satisfying. But zoo day gave a different kind of good feeling. The animals made Eddie feel calm yet energized. They were so much easier to deal with than people. Living people, anyway. Animals never had hidden agendas. They didn’t make meaningless small talk. They didn’t tell lies to smooth things over. They didn’t waste their energy. Eddie could smell it on them and see it in their eyes.

They were clean.

Just being around them was enough to wash away any bad energy or crazy thoughts that might be hanging around after a tough cleanup like today’s.

And of course there was Jolie.

Eddie sipped gingerly and hopefully at his number-one can of Sparkle. He cradled his canvas bag holding the other five in his lap. If he focused on the sweet, bubbly, citrusy taste hard enough and thought about the job just right, it would seem as if it had happened long ago.

Eddie noticed that he was tired. The work had been hard. He willed himself to float, to drift through the zoo-day world of Sparkle Soda. The world where love ruled. The world where anything was possible.

The world he shared with Jolie.

Jolie wasn’t like anyone else. When she talked to Eddie her soft, even voice never grated or burned. She rarely asked him stupid questions or made incomprehensible demands. When he spoke, she simply listened and acknowledged what he had said. She shared his simple, deep appreciation for the animals and was content to enjoy it with him quietly.

With Jolie, it made little difference if Eddie didn’t always quite understand what she was saying or say much himself. Their communication was real and meaningful. Jolie understood and accepted him, whether he tried to talk or not. She had a lot of sparkle.

In fact, Jolie was inextricably linked in Eddie’s mind with Sparkle Soda—especially the Sparkle commercial. If Shiny Gold all-purpose cleaner reassured Eddie that any mess could be cleaned up as though it had never happened, Sparkle Soda promised that once the mess was gone and everything was okay again, there was a way to go even higher. “You never know what might happen when you Sparkle.”

You never know.

Sparkle was the place where magically good things happened. If Shiny Gold was Eddie’s shield, Sparkle was his secret weapon.

Eddie’s reverie was jolted slightly when the news came on the van radio. Joe clicked the thing off immediately, as always. He hated the news and Eddie knew it.

Joe hadn’t looked at any part of a newspaper, other than the occasional sports page, for more than five years. He never watched TV news of any kind. He’d had a weird revelation once, a long time ago, and it had stuck: the news was really the same two or three stories repeated endlessly. He knew them all well enough to know he never wanted to hear them again. He dropped an ash on the floor and jerked the steering wheel to get the van back in line.

“Jolie called today,” Joe said to Eddie. “She wanted to make sure you were coming to see her tomorrow. Said to tell you she was looking forward to it.”

Eddie took an extra-large gulp of Sparkle. Joe must have known he was thinking about Jolie. Eddie was used to Joe reading his thoughts. Most of the time Joe got at least part of them wrong, but that was okay. Especially today. The last thing he wanted his big brother to know was that something upsetting had happened at a job site.

“Even better,” Joe went on, “she said she was going to get to keep doing it for a long time.”

“I know,” Eddie said.

Joe didn’t doubt that he did.

Eddie closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was safe. The job and the trouble with the little girl who didn’t want to leave was getting further behind with every second. He could hear the Sparkle music rise up, and the commercial began in his head.

There they were: a groovy young ’70s guy and gal at the zoo. They leaned against the railing and laughed at a silly mugging chimpanzee in its cage. The giddy couple held glinting bottles of Sparkle Soda.

“Nothing brings out the fun like Sparkle!” the announcer gushed, as a close-up caught an animated flash of sunlight off green glass. “Its lemony goodness takes you places you’ve never been before!”

The rambunctious chimp jumped up and down. Groovy Guy put down his soda, turned to Groovy Gal, and mocked the chimp’s antics.

Then the singing started. “Sparkle…Shine your love light, Sparkle! You got the taste we love, that’s why we love to love you when you Sparkle…”

The chimp reached through the bars, grabbed Groovy Guy’s unguarded Sparkle bottle, threw his head back, and drank deeply. The couple laughed and smooched.

The announcer said, “You never know what might happen when you Sparkle!”

Chapter 7

The killer was not happy.

Things had gone wrong at the Silvers. There had been impatience and insufficient homework. The killer had no interest in doing kids. And this fuckup, this uncharacteristic lack of control, this for once irresistible temper, had forced a situation where a kid had to die.

It was the dad’s fault, of course. A fucking Assistant District Attorney, no less. He’d brought it on himself. He of all people should have known better. But the ADA’s lapse that got him killed wasn’t that different from what got him on the list in the first place.

The killer accepted that part of the responsibility. Never follow a momentary, overwhelming passion. Should have waited. Done more serious research. Shut off the rare display of messy emotion. The man and his wife could have been done somewhere else, some other time.

Oh well. No use crying over it. It had been unpleasant but necessary.

The ADA had been in the sights for a while.

On the list of things to do, definitely. But low priority.

The wife, not so much—but there was the whole guilt by association thing.

There should not have been the hurry, though. There should never be any hurry. Urgency when necessary. Purpose, definitely. But not hurry. Hurry was messy. Hurry made mistakes.

Hurry got caught.

And there would never, ever be a capture.

But the child was a problem. There had been eye contact. It was the strangest, most innocent look. She was expecting someone good when she answered the door. What else would she expect? She’d likely never experienced anything else.

The girl was surprised in a way that caused a deep, twisting nausea.

There was some kind of recognition, some flash. Silent acknowledgement of universes colliding.

She’d only seen good.

What a bunch of bullshit.

Well, the killer was good. Good at exacting retribution on those who deserved it. Good in ways the Silver girl would never grow up to develop the reasoning powers to understand.

Which was too bad. Children understood things. Things adults could never seem to fathom.

Yes. The little girl was spooky.

So spooky that incriminating evidence might have been left behind. But only maybe.

Was it possible?

The emotion. It was awful. It made things cloudy.

Twenty-one victims.

Twenty the world was better off without.

The one exception rankled—but it was only five percent. Too much, but, mathematically speaking, it was a percentage that would go down as the body count went up.

Ten of these killings that had been ruled “natural.” Five remained unsolved.

The rest had been blamed on the wrong person.

Shocking, but helpful.

The losers who took a rap for something they didn’t do were bonus victims.

Usually, they were not too much less deserving of their fates than the original victims. They were family members or business associates of the deceased, or drifters, or petty or serious criminals who happened to be too close to the action without an alibi. A handful of them were now behind bars for life. Two were awaiting execution—which, when it arrived, would be an especially delicious bonus.