Chapter Twelve

Willie Lee Speck had told her to meet him at a rundown motel in the Bottoms. Painted a dirty yellow, the building was square, squat and solid in the way of motels for the poor. As she walked toward it, a boy in a neon-green shirt rode past her on a bicycle, white earbuds in his ears and an iPhone in one hand.

“Lay it down,” he sang repeatedly in a melody too big for just those three small words. His intent gaze on the phone and the repetition told Raven that he didn’t sing for pleasure but for practice. She heard the phrase two more times, first sweet and clear and then fading as he rode out of sight.

“Lay it down,” he sang. “Lay it down.”

She watched the boy for a few seconds before turning her attention toward the motel. A tall man with a broad chest and big hands walked out of one of the rooms on the first floor. He emanated an energy so strong that it was a wonder that his body just didn’t fly apart from its constraining center. His glittery eyes were narrow, and his left hand jumpy. His mouth worked like a washing machine with what she knew to be a huge glob of red Bubble Yum to help mask the smell of whatever job he was working at the moment. Willie Lee Speck, one of the town’s only two trauma scene cleaners, at your service.

She scanned the parking lot until she saw the familiar faded brown and white VW truck. The ancient VW was a fixture at Speck’s cleanup scenes. The homeless man who owned the truck scavenged from Speck’s jobs. His treasure hanging from the flatbed railings consisted of cracked belts, tinkling wind chimes, and several faded bath towels tied to the railing so they wouldn’t fly away when the VW was in motion. The flatbed was filled with dishes, toasters, and anything that couldn’t be slung over the railings. The VW’s owner, a withered man in short pants and a straw cowboy hat too big for his peanut-sized head, came toward her. He held a length of ceramic onions strung along a frayed rope.

“I’m pretty sure that’s a biohazard, Ozy,” Raven said to him as she waved to Speck, who was making his way toward her with a merry glint in his tiny eyes.

The old man looked at the blood droplets spattered on the onions. His tongue worked in and out of his mouth as if his brain were trying to say something but his tongue was too slow to cooperate.

“Willie Lee said I can have it,” he finally managed. “You reckon I can wipe it off?”

“Willie Lee’s a son-of-a-robber,” she said. “Wear gloves when you do it.”

His gummy eyes wandered toward the VW, back to the onions and back to her.

She shook her head.

“Here,” Willie Lee said, his voice jaunty.

He tossed her a box of latex gloves and she reached up reflexively to catch it. She gave it to Ozy, who took it and held it to his chest. As he shuffled to the VW with the rope of ceramic onions in one hand and the box of latex gloves clasped to his chest with the other, Raven stuffed her own hands in the back pockets of her jeans. They itched as she thought of what else might be clinging to that box.

“What’s shaking, Detective?” Willie Lee said, still chewing.

“Don’t call me that.”

She headed toward the back of his van parked near the open door of the motel room. He fell into step beside her.

“Still hate my guts, huh?”

“I don’t hate your guts,” she said. “I just prefer it if you call me by my name. I’m not a detective anymore.”

And she meant it. She didn’t hate Speck’s guts, but she sure didn’t like him very much. Willie Lee Speck owned The Cleanup Man. He was usually hired by those who didn’t have the money for a more caring and thorough cleaner to sanitize trauma scenes. The other service in town, the reputable one, was too busy to help her.

“And what would that name be since it’s not Detective anymore?” he asked.

“Just Raven.”

She jerked her head to the open door of the room from where he had emerged. She needed to think. Maybe there was another way of cleaning up Oral’s house rather than hiring this slime bucket.

“What’s it this time?” she asked him.

“Suicide,” he said, smiling as wide as he could with a mouth much too small for his head and oversized body. “Shotgun. Gloriously bloody. Do you know what I thought when I saw it?”

“I can guess,” Raven said dryly.

“I thought that’s fresh, green money, baby.”

“You’re a prince among men, Willie Lee.”

“Somebody’s got to do it, right?”

“Who was it?” Raven asked, lightly probing for the humanity that she thought was there, that had to be there.

“Don’t know and don’t care.”

She resisted the urge to call him a maggot. That would only make the smirk smeared across his face wider. She made sure that she didn’t blink while she looked at him. She wanted to stare him down. She wanted to shame him.

“What?” he asked, his hands out. He rubbed the tips of his fingers together. “It’s all about getting paid.”

She said nothing.

“Okay, some teenager I think, an addict. Put Daddy’s shotgun between her legs and under her chin, and ba-boom.” He held his hands out to mimic an explosion.

“That’s sad,” Raven tried.

“Maybe sad for her, but good for me,” he said. “I charge a lot more for a kiss from a bullet than an overdose. And anyway, she was a junkie. Who cares?”

“I don’t know,” Raven said. “Maybe her family?”

“I’m sure they don’t give a shit. You should see these people. Pigs behave better.”

“What people?” Raven challenged.

“Keep your pants on,” Willie Lee said. “I’m not talking about ‘people of color’. I’m talking about people, people who let their lives get like this.” He gestured toward the hotel.

“You mean poor people? Hurt people?”

“Fucking losers.”

“How are the kids, Willie Lee?”

“Good,” he said. “Lucy just started kindergarten, got JoeJoe signed up for baseball. Life’s good.”

“I bet,” she said. “Probably even better since you have a few more scenes to clean up with those boys turning up dead.”

“Are you kidding me?” he said. “They won’t let me anywhere near that. They think that their boys are too good for me and my guys to clean up. Like those poor fucks would care who swept the last of their leavings into a lawn and leaf bag. Anyway, those scenes are pristine. Not much to clean up.”

Raven looked at him for a long moment. She wanted to punch him in his smirking face.

“Anyway, what can I do you for?” he asked.

Raven sucked in her breath. She couldn’t imagine Speck in Oral’s house with his flip attitude and bad jokes.

“Never mind.”

“No, what?” he asked, following her back to her car. “You came here for a reason. What is it? You got a job for me?”

She turned to face him. “I might.”

“I thought you were waitressing for that gimpy cop.”

She said nothing. When he realized that he wouldn’t get a rise out of her, he pressed. “No, what is it?”

“I need help cleaning up Oral Justice’s house,” she said.

“You mean that murder that happened last year? The man with the fucking scythe? That place has been shut for a long time.” Another grin. “I’d love to do that house.”

Raven strode over to him until she was close enough to smell his stale breath and sweet remnants of his bubble gum. When she spoke again, her voice was cold and frozen.

“You are not doing that house,” she said. “And if I allow you to help me, there are some rules you’ll need to follow. You don’t go into the house without me there. I do as much work as you do. And you keep your nasty little rat-mouth shut. No sick jokes, no snarky remarks, and you do the job right. By the regs. You understand me?”

He smirked again. God, she thought. She’d love to see him when he didn’t have that grin on his face.

“You got yourself a deal. But you better be ready to pay me.”

She looked at him for a moment longer before turning away.

As she strode back toward the Mustang, he shouted, “When do we start?”

She said nothing.

“I may be too busy, you know.”

She still didn’t turn around. If he were too busy, he wouldn’t have jumped on her offer so quickly.

“You know you gotta tell me something if you want me to help you.”

“I’ll call you.”

Standing next to the driver’s side door of the Mustang, she watched Ozy hang the ceramic onions next to the wind chimes. He then started rearranging the junk in the flatbed, probably to make room for whatever he could scavenge from that poor girl’s motel room. Something moved in the sunlight and she swore that it was a bear’s paw, the long sharp claws out as if it were in mid-lunge.

She shook her head. Get with it, Raven. Get out of your head.

Maybe Billy Ray was right. She should just sell the place. But no. Oral deserved better. And her work with Speck would be the last thing she would do that involved blood and murder. That’s what this bright morning was telling her, the music in the air, the boy practicing for a band he was probably just starting to imagine. They were telling her to lay it down. Lay it all down.

As she watched Ozy a little longer, it started to rain again, a hot, uncomfortable rain even this late in the year that trickled down her face like tears, like the water dropping from the sky was really coming from inside her own body. Rain in this much sunlight, Floyd would tell her, means that the devil’s beating his wife. She looked up as drops fell into her eyes. Well, she thought, he must be beating the hell out of her.

Back in the car she didn’t bother wiping the rain away. Instead she leaned her head against the headrest and took one long breath. I’m doing the right thing, I’m doing the right thing, she told herself repeatedly until her phone rang.

Her heart froze.

Billy Ray. She could tell by the ringtone, no longer Buckwheat’s ‘Walking to New Orleans’, but zydeco, nonetheless. Something cold moved in her heart when she heard it. Billy Ray never called her on her days off. Don’t answer it, a voice said, her voice. And for some reason the vision of the man standing in the fog appeared to her, and she heard Floyd’s voice, I’m thinking that you don’t have much of a choice, Birdy Girl.

She pressed the answer button, “Yeah,” she said, swallowing down the lump in her throat.

“You need to get down here,” Billy Ray said without preamble.

“Where?”

“BLPD,” he answered in a flat, disconnected voice.

“Why?”

“Noe’s missing.”