It is hot, but not that bad, inside the tiny kitchen. Still, Neal Smither and Jason Hodgdon are soaked with sweat as they swiftly pitch every pot, pan, dish and jar into huge plastic bags with latex-gloved hands. The full-length disposable suits covering their clothes and feet barely conceal the red company logo on their white T-shirts.
"Crime Scene Cleaners Inc. Homicide. Suicide. Accidental Death."Today, they're cleaning up after a slaying. Purple spray used by police to find fingerprints coats the floor and parts of the doorway. The phone is gone. In a nearby room, blood spatters smear one wall.
"People don't want us until they need us, but when they need us, they really want us," said Smither, who at age 31 is president of the 3-year-old company he founded in Orinda, Calif.
The firm has landed corporate accounts for prominent hotel chains, a grocery chain and restaurants, and also does residential and apartment cleaning after someone has died. It cleans up meth labs, does hantavirus prevention work and rehabilitates what it terms "distressed property."
Other disaster cleanup businesses in Utah also have disposed of crime and death scenes. Some have come. Some have gone. Crime Scene Cleaners apparently is the newest operation to start up in Utah.
The business has thrived in California and now does 300 to 400 death scene cleanup jobs per year.
Smither is using Utah as a test area for his goal to expand to a 12-state Western region in a year. In operation since July, the firm has done nine Utah jobs so far. He ultimately wants to build a national company that has so much work it must either issue stock or be acquired by someone else.
He said natural death is by far the largest part of the business in California and is perhaps the most unsavory, especially if a body has been awhile in hot weather.
The work seems gruesome to most people, but Smither and Hodgdon handle it matter-of-factly.
"It's just a job," said Hodgdon, 27, who heads the firm's new Utah division.
"I disassociate. I've done so many," said Smither, who is simultaneously brisk-talking, cheery, businesslike and candid almost to a fault. Ask him anything about his business and he'll tell you. He'll even tell you how much he makes.
When he's on a job, "I try to make sure the family is safe initially if they're there. I make sure they're out of the way, maybe have grief counseling onsite. Then we get under way. My job is to clean it and get out of the way. If it was my mom, could I do it? Not at all, but my company could."
Smither carries a briefcase filled with phone lists for grief counselors, funeral homes and other services that a family might need. He also submits insurance claims for families and tries to speed up the payments to them. "We don't have to be polite."
Smither, whose company is paid on the spot, said the firm makes follow-up phone calls to ensure that customers are happy with the job once it's done. If not, Crime Scene Cleaners will return as often as needed until the customer is happy.
He describes his relationship with the police as "excellent."
"They have a tough job. I respect what they do. We want to be their knee-jerk company, the one they think of first. We'll do anything needed to accomplish that."
Smither also has made friends with police by tidying up squad cars -- usually for free -- if someone inside has vomited, urinated or otherwise made it disgusting.
So far, he's never turned down a job.
The kind of people who do this work are "Type A personalities who can stomach it," Smither said. "You have to be task-oriented. You're in this two or three hours, sweating to death, sometimes you can't take your respirator off; it's easy to quit. Most of my people are extremely Type A, extremely clean. They're also educated -- most have bachelor's degrees."
The company has three full-time managers, a range of 18-28 employees and about 200 freelance workers.
Smither expects total commitment from his managers, who are on call 24 hours a day. His goal is to get to a crime or death scene within one hour after a call. The freelancers, who can turn down an assignment if they want, work for $80 to $150 per job. They have a high turnover rate.
Smither prides himself on exceeding the strict new law that California enacted in 1998 that requires death scenes to be cleaned up by a registered blood-borne pathogen mitigation company.
"I like regulations," Smither said. "It puts all the Mom-and-Pop operators who are dumping illegally out of business."
Utah prohibits illegal dumping but doesn't have the same kind of law as California. Instead, federal OSHA regulations apply here.
If waste from a death scene is wet, OSHA rules say it must be incinerated, and the company has an agreement with a North Salt Lake facility to do that. If the material is dry, it must be sent to a landfill.
"If you have a bloody mattress, you cut the gore out of it and dispose of the parts separately. You burn the bloody portions and take the rest to the landfill," Smither said.
Workers also toss their protective clothing, gloves and cleaning materials, and they frequently back out of a scene, removing clothes and sometimes even shoes as they go. Often they ditch the shorts and T-shirts worn underneath -- and sometimes need to change these once or twice on a particularly hot, sweaty job. Workers also wipe their hands with special disinfectant before driving a company vehicle.
"You don't want any cross contamination," Smither said. "Pathogens are dangerous."
They always wear respirators when working around blood. "It's not AIDS that's our worry but hepatitis and tuberculosis, which are airborne when you start scrubbing them. AIDS has a shelf life of about three hours," Smither said.
They begin by sizing up the scene, removing any furniture, carpeting or other items that the next-of-kin or police have not taken, and then start cleaning.
"Sharps," or hypodermic needles, are an occupational hazard. So is dehydration, so the teams usually keep bottled water in the truck.
At one crime scene in Utah, someone suggests that unscrupulous operators could pick over the possessions of the dead and sell the stuff. For the first time in a three-hour, matter-of-fact discussion about his business, Smither shudders.
"That's creepy. That's bad karma. I plan on going to heaven, and I'm not going to mess it up with bad karma," Smither said.
"All this stuff goes," he said, sweeping his arm over the kitchen utensils in the murder victim's place.
He hadn't planned this career.
Downsized from his job as a mortgage banker, Smither said he was "wallowing in unemployment self-pity" and had decided to become a mortician.
"I was literally waiting for the San Francisco College of Mortuary Science to call when I saw 'Pulp Fiction,' " Smither said. The character played by actor Harvey Keitel who cleans up after organized crime murders gave Smither the idea that this could be a business for other types of disaster cleaning.
"I knew I could sell it. I didn't know if I could clean it," Smither said. "I got a business license, put together some inexpensive literature, did some marketing and it hit. I changed my sales strategy to (appeal to) corporate (accounts) and did what I'm good at. I sell."
At first, he used commercial cleaning materials and tiny brushes, a knuckle busting and tedious combination. But he learned as he kept working and soon incorporated special enzyme fluids, steam cleaning machines and power drills with rotating cleaning mats and plastic splatter guards.
He also took a 40-hour class on handling hazardous materials.
Today, his employees are trained in handling hazardous materials, and Utah workers might have to go to California to get microbiological mitigation courses. Meth labs require other special knowledge and often require apartments or hotel rooms to be nearly gutted to make them clean and safe.
Prices for death scene cleanup range from $200 to $800, although some have cost thousands depending on what needed to be done. Typically, it's about $500.
Discounts are given to some people through victim assistance programs. "We're not going to leave you with a bloody house," Smither said.
Critics might say the prices are too high, but Smither said supplies alone cost $50,000 in California and waste disposal costs there are about $20,000 a year. He also has to maintain vehicles, keep licenses and insurance up to date, pay employees and stay on top of taxes.
Both Hodgdon and Smither discourage relatives from doing this kind of mop up themselves because it's too emotionally wrenching for those who knew the person who died.
"There's no reason to subject your neighbors or ward members to such a traumatic experience," Hodgdon said.
Smither said starting the company has "absolutely changed my life."
"It's letting me run my own business. I'm not rich, but I make enough to live, and it's very rewarding. When we get to a house (where there has been a suicide or overdose), Mom and Dad are spinning out of their minds. We help with their problems," he said. "I've had people pay me a check, hug me and tip me on the way out."
Hodgdon, as he cleaned out the bathroom of a recent death scene, echoed those sentiments.
"This job in a way is kind of therapeutic," Hodgdon said. "That sounds sick, but you're just glad to be alive and not committing suicide or messed up on drugs."