Chapter 1
He looked in the rearview mirror again, heart beating rapidly. He struggled to control his breathing and suppress his body’s panic responses so that he could think straight and would not look suspicious if they pulled him over. Sweat prickled on his temples despite the cool night air.
The cop car had been behind him for several blocks and two turns. He didn’t think he had done anything suspicious, and there was nothing about his car that should have attracted the attention of the police. It was not stolen. No taillights out. The registration was current. He hadn’t blown through any stop signs or been going too fast. Maybe he had gone a few miles over the speed limit before he had noticed them behind him, but that wasn’t enough for the cops to detain him. They hadn’t turned on their lights and pulled him over; they had just been following him.
They probably weren’t even following him; it was totally possible that they had just coincidentally taken the same turns as he had. He wasn’t doing anything suspicious. They might have just been going to Holes for a late-night snack.
But he drove past the donut shop, and they didn’t turn in.
They couldn’t have recognized him. It was dark and they hadn’t been close enough for that. And he didn’t have any outstanding warrants. No one wanted him for anything.
He compulsively looked in his mirror again, and they were still there. Stupid cops. What reason did they have to be tailing him?
He took a random turn down an unfamiliar street and avoided looking in the mirror for as long as he could, but eventually, he just had to check. They were gone. They hadn’t taken the turn after him.
He blew out his breath and swore in relief. It was nothing. He was just being paranoid. He’d always laughed at his father for getting so upset any time he saw a cop car behind him. The old man had always thought that the cops were after him for something. By the way the guy reacted, you woulda thought he was a wanted serial killer. America’s most wanted.
But then, as he checked his mirror once more, he saw a flash of white a few blocks back as the squad car turned the corner to trail him once more.
He felt like his heart was going to burst out of his chest. Sweat dripped down his back even though the night was cool. He couldn’t be caught. Not with that in the car. If they pulled him over, recognized that he’d had a little something, and had cause to search the vehicle, he was sunk.
He was just the courier, but that wouldn’t matter to the cops. This would put him right in the middle of the operation, the only person the evidence could be tied to. They could send him to the state pen for a long time. That, or he would have to turn on a bigger fish for a reduced sentence, and that would put his life in danger.
He swore and hit the steering wheel hard with the heel of his hand. How could this be happening? Ninety percent of the time, there was nothing suspicious in the car. Ninety-five. Nothing that the cops could find if they searched him or his car. But the one time that he had something in the car, there they were creeping up on him like a cat getting ready to pounce.
“Come on, come on, come on,” he moaned, watching the squad car and looking for a way to get away from them for long enough to ditch his cargo. He only needed a few minutes out of their sight, but he needed to be able to stash it somewhere safe, where the police would not stumble across it, but he could return for it later.
He swallowed. His mouth was so dry his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, but he couldn’t work up any spit. He needed to cool down. If they pulled him over, he needed to be calm and collected so that he would not give himself away.
All he needed was a few minutes. He didn’t suppose God granted the prayers of desperate criminals, but he hadn’t actually committed a crime. He just wanted to stay out of prison. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?
Chapter 2
There were some jobs that Graham thought he should charge danger pay for. He should have raised his quote as soon as he saw the place, but he didn’t have the heart to charge Fischer any more than he had originally quoted on the phone. It was obvious that the man didn’t have much to spare.
Fischer had the pale complexion of a Midwesterner who had just made it through a long winter, out of the sun for five or six months. He was heavyset, probably spent the winter largely in front of the TV. Nearly bald. Retired or close to it. And the guy had been through the wringer with his kid.
Fischer didn’t say much about the circumstances. He gave the cold, hard facts. His son had died, and he needed to have his apartment cleaned out and fixed up before the landlord saw it and decided to charge them extra for cleaning and repairs. They needed to get it in showable condition as soon as possible. If the landlord could get someone new in there, they wouldn’t have to pay for the damages and rent for an extra month or two. It was obvious to Fischer that whatever damage deposit his son had paid, it would not be large enough to cover the work that the landlord would have to do.
But if he hired Graham, he could control the costs. And any other repercussions.
No indication of what those repercussions might be.
Fischer said his wife was sick, too frail to be exposed to the mess that had been left at the apartment. The boy’s death was enough of a shock. She didn’t need to know how he had been living. If she didn’t see, she could preserve the memories of better days.
Graham had known when he got into the junk removal business that he would walk into some disaster areas. He had heard stories from other experts in online groups about some of the houses they had dealt with and the horrific things they had found during clean-outs, unimaginable to a normal human being. Stories of deathtraps and biohazards abounded in the community, and Graham knew that sooner or later, he would have such stories of his own to share. Bleeding Hearts Valley was a small, quiet town, but it had its share of secret horrors.
The younger Fischer, Desmond, had been a hoarder, or maybe just someone who couldn’t pick up after himself and had to keep adding to his possessions because he could never find what he was looking for, buried under two feet of trash. He had apparently never thrown out a takeout meal or washed a dish. The apartment was filled with rotting and petrified foodstuffs, was crawling with insect life, and there were signs of larger vermin sharing the space.
Desmond had a mental illness. That was the only explanation that made any sense, and the only way Graham could make himself carry on. It hadn’t been Desmond Fischer’s fault he lived the way he did. He’d not had the diagnosis or support that he needed to help him live a healthy lifestyle. Instead, he had been forced to fend for himself the only way that a person like him could. In squalor. He had done the best that he could, and it wasn’t for Graham to judge.
But he did, despite the lecture he gave himself on the matter. His logical, reasonable brain was understanding and objective. His impulsive brain was judgmental, angry, and squigged out.
He didn’t have a full hazmat suit, but he did the best he could, with two layers of gloves, hair and shoe coverings, and coveralls that made him feel like he was working inside a sauna. He would have to force himself to down a bottle of water every hour to avoid dehydration.
He didn’t use the same sorting bins as he did at most clean-outs. He knew when he first looked at the apartment that there was going to be very little there that was salvageable, whether keepsakes for Desmond’s grieving parents or items that Graham could sell or repurpose to increase his profit margin. Most of what he found in the apartment would go straight into the dumpster, and the landlord might have to call the waste management guys to empty his bin a couple of times before they were scheduled to pick it up again.
Graham did set aside a bin for potential biohazard waste and one for chemicals that had to be disposed of properly and not just dumped into the landfill where they would leach out into the water table. A lot of people thought that flushing pills or chemicals down the toilet was a safe way to get rid of them. But the municipality didn’t want that stuff in the water system. Their treatment procedure didn’t remove antidepressants or the many other contaminants that were finding their way into municipal water systems all over the country.
At least Graham didn’t have to put much time and energy into sorting.
Once everything was cleared from the space, he would assess what needed to be done with the floors and walls. If rats had eaten away at the linoleum or holes had been punched through the drywall, he would have to strip out what was there and reinstall new tile and wallboard. Then tape, prime, sand, and repaint. It would be a big job, but he had committed to it, and in the end, Desmond Fischer’s parents would be happy and at peace, knowing that it had been taken care of. They could remember Desmond as a young boy and the clean apartment he left behind, instead of the disaster area.
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