Something Missing_ A Novel - Matthew Dicks [51]
As he was processing, Martin also conducted a visual inspection of each item, looking for distinguishing marks that might indicate the location, date, or time at which the item was originally purchased. Deli meat, for example, often had a tag that indicated the store’s name, time, and date of purchase, and smaller, noncorporate grocery stores often used price tags that could be easily identified by a store employee. Occasionally, Martin would also find that a client had marked a product with a particular identifying characteristic. For example, he once acquired a box of cereal from a client who had completed the crossword puzzle on the back, and another time someone had turned the image of Aunt Jemima on a bottle of maple syrup into a devil, complete with horns and a forked tail. These identifying tags and marks would either be removed from the item, or the item would be transferred into a new container before being brought into the house.
Martin peeled the price tags from a pound of hamburger and a chicken breast, each indicating the date and store of purchase, and stuck both tags to a blank sheet of computer paper stored on a shelf over the workbench. With the tags firmly attached, he ran the sheet of paper through the shredder, destroying the tags in the process. In all it took Martin a little over thirty minutes to enter the data on all of his newly acquired items, and looking at the total at the bottom of the screen, saw that he had earned a total profit of $156.36 from his day’s work, a slightly below-average day considering the number of clients he had visited.
Of course, the incident at the Claytons’ house (he had already begun to think of it as the incident) had prevented Martin from finishing his work. There had been several items in the Claytons’ linen closet scheduled for acquisition, but these would have to wait for another day. The more he thought about Cindy Clayton’s voice and her desperate plea for attention, the more he began to believe that fate had intervened. His less-than-expected profit was no surprise.
What did surprise Martin was the thought that, less than three hours ago, he had been contemplating bashing in a client’s skull with a lamp. Had he not been so nimble-minded, he might right now be hiding in the wooded area between the Claytons’ house and the nursing home, trying to evade a platoon of policemen carrying flashlights, batons, and Taser guns.
Maybe even dogs.
Had Martin been exceptionally unlucky, it was entirely possible that he could have found himself sitting behind bars at this very minute instead of relishing the orderliness of his garage. With a life built upon predictability and routine, Martin marveled at how quickly his circumstances had changed in the span of a couple hours.
Refocusing on the task at hand, Martin saved his work, shut down his computer, and entered the six-digit combination (randomly generated with dice) that deactivated the state-of-the-art alarm system protecting his home. He had purchased this system within a week after moving back into the house, never understanding why his parents hadn’t made the investment themselves but pleased that they had not.
He might have ended up in a very different career had his parents been more cautious.
Martin returned the hard drive to its hiding place in the basement, first enclosing it in a watertight bag and then placing that bag in a large sack of fertilizer for additional concealment, and then began moving the newly acquired items inside the house to their assigned locations. As he moved through the rooms, he was careful to avoid allowing his pants to touch furniture, walls, or any other part of his body. He was almost counting the seconds until they could be removed.
Martin’s house was a large, two-story Colonial centered on