Sparkle (6 page)

There was a lot to be thankful for. But the Silver girl rankled.

But when Mr. Silver had cut the killer off on the I-5 onramp, driving like a maniac, driving like he owned the fucking freeway, he’d sealed his fate. He was known, he was on the list; but fate, if such a thing existed, intervened and sealed itself around him.

Fucking road rage. It could make anyone do crazy things time to time.

Still, there were higher standards.

But once that trigger had been pulled there had been no holding back.

And the craziness lingered.

Because the Silver’s blood was barely dry, and the killer was getting ready to do another job. Why? It was barely conscious, but it was conscious. It was to wash the taste of Lucy Silver away. The little girl’s aggravatingly peaceful, pretty face was not a pleasant memory at all. And each new job always made the last one fade into a peaceful, sepia blur.

This would be a record short time between jobs. It would have to be as different as possible.

Actually, the idea for the job had come a long time ago. The target was a cardroom in Chinatown. There were two primary victims who needed taking care of, but everyone there would be fair game.

There could be anywhere from two to eight or nine victims. The thought was slightly daunting—and thrilling.

There would be no time to play around. Go in, blow some people away, and get out. Do it now, tonight. Two crimes so different and so close together would not be pinned on the same perp. It was big and audacious. The public frenzy factor would be high. The cops and media would be kept busy for a long time figuring out a motive—the wrong one, of course.

No one would ever suspect it was mostly just to forget one little girl.

Chapter 8

Joe stopped to get takeout at their regular Friday night Chinese-Vietnamese joint on Rainier Avenue. Eddie sat quietly in the van for the fifteen minutes it took to get the same stuff Joe always got.

The restaurant was only five minutes from the house, and as soon as the brothers got home Joe sat down at the kitchen table. Eddie carefully laid out silverware and plates, and opened the containers of sticky fried rice and gooey chow mein before sitting down.

A game was on. Joe set up his thirteen-inch television on the kitchen table, watching and gulping away at a Redhook ale, his favorite local beer, brewed across town in Ballard. Eddie drank his second Sparkle meditatively, ignoring the TV.

Eddie seemed smaller, farther away, and less able than he had earlier in the day, which is what always happened to him after work. As if being at home sapped him in some way. Joe hardly noticed. It happened to him, too.

After the fifteen-minute meal, Eddie mechanically and thoroughly cleaned up. He carefully washed their few dishes as he popped the top on his third Sparkle. Joe drank his second Redhook and smoked his twentieth Pall Mall.

The long harsh smokes were the same brand Joe and Eddie’s dad had constantly sucked. Most grocery stores didn’t even sell them anymore. Joe’s habit had started when he was fifteen. He’d found an ancient unopened pack in some of the old man’s stuff. Despite his disgust from the first nasty stale puff, he’d gotten a head rush that he kind of liked. It took a while, but he perversely stuck with it until he was completely hooked.

Ten years later, Joe smoked with as little consciousness as it took to walk and breathe. The only time he thought about smoking was when he wasn’t smoking. Just now, he was thoroughly absorbed in the game, making an occasional note to himself.

After peeing in the half-bath off the kitchen, Eddie stood quietly by the kitchen table and waited for a commercial break. He was holding two cans of Sparkle, one in each hand. Joe got up and followed Eddie downstairs to the basement.

Eddie’s basement was an ode to Shiny Gold, done up in shades of white and cream. Everything in it looked like it was from 1976, except Eddie’s seventy-two-inch, wide-screen home theater. The television was a make-nice gift from Joe over a dispute they’d had a couple of years back. Joe still watched his own shows on the tiny portable. He liked the fact that he could haul it up to his room, or into the kitchen, or even perch it lifethreateningly on the sink while he tipped ashes into a long hot bath.

Joe didn’t have to do much for Eddie in the basement, just turn on the lights. “You cool, Eddie?” he said to his brother’s back.

“Uh-huh,” Eddie said. “Okay.”

Joe clomped back up the stairs.

Eddie took off his clothes, folded them carefully, and got in the shower. He could usually shower and put on his pajamas without any help. Once in a while, though, he’d get something screwed up. Showering and dressing was a great time to think. But not about showering and dressing. His most frequent goof was forgetting to turn off the water after he got out. And once or twice, when he was particularly far away, he had put his underwear on over his pants.

Tonight, even though his head was full of Jolie and tomorrow’s trip to the zoo, and working extra hard to keep any review of the day’s more disturbing events at bay, everything went without a hitch. Once Eddie was clean, dry, and dressed in his Friday night white pajamas, he sat down straight-backed on his white couch. Later, covered with a sheet and blanket, it would double as his bed. He liked sleeping on the narrow space, with no room wasted, walled in on one side by the couch’s back. He found it comforting.

Eddie picked up the remote, pushed play, and turned on his tape of the Shiny Gold and Sparkle commercials from 1976. Watch and rewind. Watch and rewind. Watch and rewind. He’d replay the same two minutes over and over until bedtime. In many ways it was more restful than sleep.

Joe wanted to get Eddie a DVD player and at least have the old tape transferred, but Eddie wouldn’t even let Joe touch it. Joe tried to tell Eddie that one day the tape was going to break from all the rewinding, but Eddie was apparently ready to cross that bridge when he came to it. Joe had no real memory of where Eddie had gotten the old VCR tape; only that it had been one of his few prized possessions ever since they were kids. There had been entire years when he had never watched the thing once. But wherever they were and whatever happened to them, Eddie always managed to keep the tape with him.

When Joe and Eddie were small, every kid was obsessed with TV, even though there wasn’t all that much of it. In 1976, when the boys were six and eight, there were only six stations in the city and no cable. One thing every show had in common, though, was commercials. Lots of commercials, shown over and over. Though they didn’t pay that much attention to them, in time Joe and Eddie could sing just about any jingle or spout any slogan. At least the catchy ones.

Joe’s favorite show was Starsky & Hutch. It didn’t start until nine o’clock on Saturday night, so it was a special treat when he got to stay up and watch the whole thing. Eddie, being two years younger, never got to stay up for Starsky & Hutch. Except for one time when he found himself alone down in the family room during the show, pajama botttoms soaked through, sweating and panting in mortal fear.

That was when the two commercials that were to be his salvation had come on the air, one right after the other. The first was the frothy, smoochy ad for Sparkle Soda. The other was for—thank God—Shiny Gold allpurpose cleaner:

The lovely young Mrs. Shiny scrubbed away at the already immaculate countertops in her spacious kitchen.

“As a mom,” Mrs. Shiny said, “I know what it’s like to deal with tough messes.”

Two little boys, looking a lot like Joe and Eddie, wearing baseball uniforms and carrying gloves and bats, burst in. They were muddy all over and cute as could be. They chased each other around and around, immediately turning the kitchen into a disaster area.

After watching them in mock consternation for a couple of seconds, Mrs. Shiny said, “Boys! You stop right there!”

The boys stopped in their dirty tracks, frozen in time.

Mrs. Shiny held up a bottle of Shiny Gold. She tapped each boy on the head, as if knighting him.

A cartoon whirlwind transformed them, the kitchen, and Mrs. Shiny into amazingly bright flawless versions of themselves.

Music began. “If you’ve got a mess too big to hold, just grab a bottle of Shiny Gold!”

Then came the best part. Just when you thought the commercial was over, Mr. Shiny, a grimy, hunky construction worker, came in, dirty and unannounced. He mutely threatened to upset the perfect gleaming world. But Mrs. Shiny knew what to do.

“It works,” she said, “even when your messes are man-sized!”

She tapped her husband. He too became spotless. The family stood together, happy and proud: “Shiny Goooold…”

“Bye-bye, stains!” they all said happily.

“Shiny Gold!” the announcer said. “Now that’s what I call clean!”

Chapter 9

At age fifty-three, Detective George Louis was at the height of his career and abilities. He loved his work. Besides the fact that he was good at it, it was pretty much all he had in his life. No family, no clubs, no hobbies—except a little poker occasionally, bowling with other cops, and, in the year or so they’d been thrown together as partners, an occasional drink with Pinky. Somehow, though, things never really clicked between them socially. One gin and tonic, and Pinky would head for home, leaving Louis staring into the second round alone.

Louis’s solid record was not based on any special genius. He had good intuition, he was tenacious, and experience had taught him patience. He knew how to conduct the type of plodding, thorough, quiet investigation that led to a successful prosecution.

The main thing was not to make stupid mistakes. Stupid mistakes opened loopholes; loopholes let killers go free.

Pinky had a contrasting personality, but it provided a good balance. Although she didn’t have Louis’s seemingly infinite attention span, Pinky was perfectly able to doggedly dot all her I’s and cross all her T’s. You couldn’t work homicide if you didn’t. True, she was a bit more excitable. She could get downright emotional at times—a trait she blamed on her Irish mother—but she was much quicker-witted than Louis, and her willingness to look at things from every angle under the sun was helpful at times when Louis had a tendency to get stuck in a rut.

That emotional side had caused trouble with the Silver case. Forensics was making a conscious effort not to make a huge deal out of it. In fact, they were basically covering for her. The serious contamination of evidence was noted, but it was couched in some very technical, equivocal language that skirted the obvious. There wasn’t going to be any formal mark against Pinky for her lapse of judgement. But those things didn’t get forgotten.

“I’m fucked,” Pinky muttered. She’d been saying it intermittently, in ten different ways, since they’d left the Silvers.

“You’re not fucked,” Louis said, not bothering to look up from his stack of reports. “But you’re fucking starting to annoy me. Why don’t you go get us a couple of lattés.”

“Fuck you,” Pinky said. But she got up, pulled on his nondescript gray sport coat, and headed for the door.

Personally, Louis didn’t think Pinky’s lapse was going to make any difference in the investigation. Three victims, and only one had been compromised as far as evidence. There was still plenty to work with. He was ready to forget it and move on. Louis wasn’t the kind of guy who spent much time thinking about psychology, but he had a feeling her arranging the little girl had something to do with the fact her own sister had been murdered when she was young. But he’d eat seagull shit before he brought it up with Pinky. She’d bite his head off if he got all weird with her. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to let anyone else know. Besides, it was all going to blow over. A small mark against her in the scheme of things. Just as long as it didn’t become a habit.

Maybe he’d fuck up one day and Pinky would have to cut him some slack.

Louis laughed to himself. He hadn’t fucked up yet and he wasn’t about to start now.

Louis actually had his first brush with Joe and Eddie nearly twenty-five years earlier, shortly after he first took off his patrol uniform and went to work in homicide. Tragedies like the one the Jones boys went through, though not so uncommon these days, had been a real rarity in the much-smaller Seattle of the time.

Louis never actually saw the brothers when they were little, but he had been through the crime scene, and he’d been as touched as everyone else by the story of little Eddie. Pinky had, too. It had been a strange puzzle at first, until they managed to piece together the fact that the child had tried to clean up the entire crime scene all by himself to erase any trace of what had happened.

Some kind of pathetic attempt to make things all right.

As odd as the whole case was, the strangest details never made the news. Things were different back then. But of course everyone in homicide knew about it. Something, Louis realized, that neither his bosses at the time nor the prosecutors wanted to look at too closely.

He had never known what to think about it himself.

Then, 25 years later, a grown-up Joe, flustered and unprofessional, began pestering the cops about getting crime-scene work for his janitorial business. After getting shuttled around for a while, he somehow ended up at Louis’s desk.

Rambling, stumbling Joe started babbling on about his developmentally disabled brother, Eddie, who seemed to have a special knack and a strong desire to clean up blood. Louis had no idea what Joe was talking about. He was about to shuttle him out of the office when Pinky walked over to the desk and started asking questions.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Joe.”

“Joe what?”

“Joe Jones.”

“And your brother wants to clean up crime scenes.”

“We have a janitorial business already. We’re licensed and bonded and—”

“What’s his name?”

“Sparkle Cleaners.”

“No, son, what’s your brother’s name?”

“Eddie. Eddie Jones.” Joe fumbled for a cigarette.

“You know you can’t smoke that here, right? Listen…everything’s going to be alright. Hang tight here a minute, would you? I need to talk to Detective Louis. George?”