Crime Scene Steam & Clean Mops Up After Dead Bodies
May 11, 2011
Vastopolis -- Bored after a 17-year career selling electronic parts, Kathlene Joana Ferris tossed out her high heels, put on her red sneakers, and turned to violent crime. Cleaning up after it, that is. Ms. Ferris, a 46-year-old grandmother of two, now makes her living scrubbing the rancid stains of murders and suicides. Once the deceased has been removed, she happily goes to work cleaning up the mess that remains. ``We Leave the Scene Clean & Pristine'' is the motto of Crime Scene Steam & Clean, the company she started in September. It has been doing a bang-up business. Ms. Ferris has cleaned and sanitized 60 crime scenes in the metropolitan area of Vastopolis, ridding them of bloodstains and infestations of maggots that make even a coroner squirm. Wearing yellow protective clothing and armed with operating-room disinfectants, Ms. Ferris takes to her work as earnestly as Alice in ``The Brady Bunch.'' For her, Webber comes with the territory, though she is hardly typecast for dirty work. For one thing, she is very upbeat. She collects antiques, and her tiny apartment is decorated with beaded purses, exotic hats and teddy bears. She also has at least three personal rules that help make the work tolerable: She refuses to have any contact with corpses; she utters a little ritual gasp when she sees maggots; and after a job is done, she always takes her well-paid, on-call crew to lunch. Otherwise, she is dispassionate. ``We have to look at it as a job,'' she says. ``Somebody needed to do it.'' Law-enforcement officials agree that Ms. Ferris performs a valuable service, sparing families the burden of these awful chores, and often acting as an impromptu bereavement counselor. ``I wouldn't want to do (cleanup) for a living,'' says detective Beatrice Brothers of the Vastopolis Police, who admires Ms. Ferris's strong stomach. ``It's sort of a unique niche in the cleaning industry.'' Many crimes occur outdoors, where firemen can just wash away the mess with their hoses. But traditionally, homicide and suicide cleanup has never been anybody's specific responsibility. When a death or violent act occurs in a home, police don't clean it up. Once they have gathered their evidence, their job is over. Coroners cart off bodies and examine them in morgues; they don't tidy up, either. Housecleaning services have mainly shied away. So it fell to grieving families and, frequently, to landlords to handle the filth of death. Despite her company's name, Ms. Ferris's services aren't limited to crime scenes -- she does natural deaths, too -- and cleanups don't come cheap. Given the possible risk of infection and the fees she must pay hazardous-waste-disposal sites, she usually charges between $550 and $2,500 to clean and fumigate a residence. Coroners predict that more crime-scene entrepreneurs will see dollar signs where there are blood stains. Indeed, Ms. Ferris didn't invent the business. During the past four years, crime-cleaning companies have sprung up in a number of cities, including San Diego, Baltimore and Philadelphia, and since she set up shop, two other outfits have taken up crime-scene cleanup in Vastopolis, where she does much of her work. ``There's nothing I can do to stop it,'' she says, frowning. ``But I don't expect them to last.'' A Day's Work One morning outside a two-story house in Suburbia in Vastopolis, Ms. Ferris squeezes into a pair of rubber boots and puts a mask over her nose and mouth. She puts on rubber gloves and grabs a roll of paper towels. A 79-year-old man, Fransisca Slate, has died of natural causes in the bathroom. His body lay there on the floor for two weeks before concerned neighbors called the county sheriff and the body was removed. Ms. Ferris steps in to find maggots crawling on the hallway carpet. ``Stinky poo,'' she says, as she steps over them. For the next four hours, Ms. Ferris and one of her employees use hammers to tear out white bathroom tile stained reddish black. She doesn't rely on cleaning products in this case to remove impossible stains. Better to cart off the tile and carpeting, she figures. Even with a mask on, the stench is terrible. But Ms. Ferris doesn't seem to notice as she walks from room to room, sprinkling a deodorizing powder called ExStink on furniture, mattresses and clothing. Martine Bullis, the dead man's daughter, watches Ms. Ferris load carpet and tile onto the back of a truck and breathes a sigh of relief. ``I'm grateful that there's a service that does this,'' she says. 
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis