I got the Beretta out and in front with the safety off. The guy was dressed in a hazard suit, the kind of head-to-toe, hooded gloved and booted gear that you see in disaster footage. He would have been right at home in a movie about Chernobyl, or a chemical spill, or an alien invasion. Except there he was crouched in the back of a refrigerated truck sawing off someone’s leg. All I could make out were two narrow blue eyes through the glass lens of his chemical protection hood. I put a round between them, which spidered the glass around the bullet hole. The shell casing popped up and clinked underneath the truck. I managed to get a foot on it before it rolled away.

In the back of the cleaning van I found a roll of thick plastic sheeting, duct tape, and a cutting knife in a handy tool caddy. I cut two big lengths of plastic. Back in the office, I rolled each cleaner into a section of plastic sheeting. It was the thick polymer kind that you struggle to puncture with a thumb. I lifted the plastic-wrapped and taped bodies over my shoulder and down the hall one at a time, then did a controlled slide down the stairs for each. Opened the door to check. Shifted the corpse to the refrigerated section. Repeat.

I took everything out of the office. The cleaning supplies and the bodies. Supplies went into the Ford, bodies got refrigerated. The guy in the hazard suit had a key ring in his pocket. It held a bronze skeleton key, a regular door key, and a black plastic fob for the meat truck. I locked the meat truck and jumped into the cleaning van and took a look around. Old Ford van, everything manual. Manual gear shift and a manual radio with an old cassette player. There was no tape. There was nothing in the back except cleaning stuff. Nothing on the dash. Nothing in the fold-out ashtray. Nothing in the glove compartment. Nothing on the floor, or under the front seat. Nothing under the floor mats. Nothing under the visors. It was clean.

I drove the Ford around the corner and pulled into the auto-repair yard. I left the key in the ignition and stepped out. A big dog was chained to an engine block. He was a sleepy-looking mutt. I looked around for the boss. A guy with both hands deep into a wheel well used his chin to point. I followed his chin and found a small dark wiry guy with pens in his dirty overall pockets.