Step one: fill one's sink with cold water, and soak the item for a few minutes.
His nerves were buzzing in great waves across his body, lungs shivering and fingers shaking. He assumed this was much like the feeling one would get before performing in front of an audience. He wouldn't really know. He was never the sort to make himself so widely available. But his stomach was tying knots and his arms were already aching and he was running off an adrenaline rush.
Step two: after the item has soaked, apply household hydrogen peroxide. The stain should bubble, and one should dab the area gently with a paper towel.
The worst part, he found, was how immediately afterwards he felt a strange pull inside him to report to the man he considered his teacher. He would have to work to rid himself of that sensation. It made his eyes sting at the corners.
He had his suit jacket off and his hands pushed wrist-deep in freezing water and he really wasn't focused on anything at all. His face was stinging hard. That would wait, though. He really rather needed this jacket. He pulled the jacket out, laid it flat on the nearby counter, and twisted open the bottle of hydrogen peroxide.
The way it bubbled reminded him too much of the movement of liquid over pale skin.
Step three: wash in cold water with detergent.
It was a very nice jacket. He wasn't about to just throw it away because he'd bled on it.
The situation crashed into him from behind and he almost toppled over, did find the bathroom and empty his stomach. He caught the reflection of the other room in the small mirror over the sink. Dead man sprawled in the middle of the room, limbs skewed, blood still pumping weakly out of the various cuts at the base of his neck. Carpet beneath him staining black in the poor lighting of the room. Bathroom light glinting off the knife in his hand.
They were fond of knives.
There was blood on his own neck and he nearly jumped out of his skin but it wasn't there that he was bleeding. The blood was coming out in sheets from a long vertical slice down his face, neatly dividing the natural symmetry of his features. He raised a tentative hand and pulled at the skin near the edge of the cut and it opened, a slice of pain spreading from the spot.
He did not get trained as a doctor, he said to himself, running water again. He got trained as an assassin and this was completely the opposite of that.
Washing the cut was the most painful thing he had ever done. He had done a good number of painful things.
There was a drawer full of clanging metal objects and sealed plastic bags just under the sink, and he opened it and removed from it a particular bag. He laid the contents in a perfect line in an attempt to keep his hands from shaking.
Step one: click the lighter.
Step two: hold the needle over the flame.
Step three.
Hours later, he finally addressed the body sitting in his living room. It would not get a proper burial, because he did not know this man. This man had never been his mentor, though he did remove all the contents of his pockets. This man had never been important, though he was wearing a suit of fine material that he mourned the loss of. This man was not de Killer.
Shelly was.