Page 98 of Shhh…It’s A Killer Story

"I'll admit..."

He looked down at his freshly polished boots.

"I am rather handsome."

"You always think you're handsome."

"Because I am."

Frank rolled his eyes.

"No, you're shiny, there's a difference."

Laughing, I carried the two freshly scrubbed gnomes outside and carefully placed them on the porch railing, where the morning sun spilled across the wood in warm golden strips.

"There," I said, dusting my hands together. "Dry yourselves."

Ignoring their increasingly passionate debate over Gerald's resemblance to root vegetables, I smiled to myself and headed back inside.

Cleaning supplies waited patiently by the sink. I lifted the bucket in one hand, tucked a stack of microfiber cloths beneath my arm, hooked two sponges over the rim, and grabbed the spray bottles with my free hand.

"Right," I murmured to the empty cottage.

"Off we go."

Scrub

Did You know…When you clean a crime scene, your biggest enemy isn't the horror. It’s chemistry. Well in hindsight for some of you, chemistry is horror. Don’t worry I’ll make it easy to understand

Scrub.

If you ever find yourself looking down at a hardwood floor that has absorbed the worst of a human being, you need to understand that organic material binds to cells at a molecular level basically down to the smallest detail.

Scrub.

People think you can just throw some bleach on a stain and watch it disappear. They are wrong. Bleach simply oxidizes (discolour) the pigment; it doesn't actually destroy the underlying proteins or cellular structure. If the police walk into a room with a high-intensity ultraviolet light or an advanced luminol spray (in other words a black light), the treated area will glow a violent, unnatural blue because the chemical reacts with the residual iron trapped inside the wood grain.

Scrub

When dealing with a heavy fluid, you never use warm water. Heat cooks the haemoglobin as I explained before. It bakes the proteins directly into the porous fibers of the wood, locking the stain into the grain forever. You use freezing, ice water mixed with a heavy enzymatic cleaner, something specifically formulated to tear apart organic chains without causing a chemical reaction that fizzes (basically any stain remover). If you see foam, you are rushing. You have to work the paste in slow, rhythmic circles, drawing the shadow out of the grooves with the patience of an artist.

Swish.

Remember to always start from the back of the room, and work your way out backwards. Why? Because footprints are a signature. If you walk forward, your boots compress the fibers of the rug or leave microscopic traces of dampness on the floor (floor), creating a clear map of your timeline for a forensic technician to read. You vacuum in reverse, smoothing the pile as you go.

Pssht

Always check the corners where the floorboards meet the baseboards. Fluid naturally wicks into those tiny gaps, drying much darker around the threads of the screw heads where it thickens into a hidden, crusty ridge.

Buff... buff...

You always check beneath the legs of the furniture. You change your heavy latex gloves before you touch a doorknob, because a single ridgeline of sweat or grease left on a brass fixture can hold your DNA for ten years.

Vrrrrrr

Honestly. It’s all about attention to detail. Every scratch, every smell, every fiber leaves a trail…

I wrung out the last cloth, emptied the cloudy bucket into the sink, and watched the dirty water swirl down the drain. One by one, I packed everything away. The spray bottles lined up with their labels facing forward. The sponges squeezed dry and left to air out. Fresh clothes folded into perfect squares. Gloves hung over the tap to dry. Everything back where it belonged.