Wool (18 page)

“And so you’re making a schematic of them?” Juliette gestured toward the large sheet of paper.

“Trying to. It’ll probably take a few lifetimes.” He tucked his charcoal behind his ear, pulled a rag from his overalls, and wiped his fingers clean of black residue.

“And then what?” Juliette asked.

“Well, hopefully I’ll infect some shadow with my sickness and they’ll pick up wherever I leave off.”

“So literally, like, several lifetimes.”

He laughed, and Juliette realized it was a pleasant one. “At least,” he said.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” she said, suddenly feeling guilty for talking to him. She stood and reached out her hand, and he took it warmly. He pressed his other palm to the back of her hand and held it a moment longer than she would have expected.

“Pleasure to meet you, Sheriff.”

He smiled up at her. And Juliette didn’t understand a word of what she muttered in return.

The next morning, Juliette arrived early at her desk having stolen little more than four hours of sleep. Beside her computer, she saw a package waiting for her: a small bundle wrapped in recycled pulp paper and encircled with white electrical ties. She smiled at this last touch and reached into her overalls for her multi-tool. Pulling out the smallest pick from the tool, she stuck it into the clasp of one of the electrical ties and slowly pulled the ratcheting device apart, keeping it intact for future use. She remembered the trouble she’d gotten into as a mechanic’s shadow the day she’d been caught cutting a plastic tie from an electrical board. Walker, already an old crank those decades ago, had yelled at her for the waste and then shown her how to tease the little clasp loose to preserve the tie for later use.

Years had passed, and when she was much older, she had found herself passing this lesson on to another shadow named Scottie. He had been a young lad at the time, but she had had a go at him when he had made the same careless mistake she once had. She remembered frightening the poor boy white as a cinder block, and he had remained nervous around her for months after. Maybe because of that outburst, she had paid him more attention as he continued his training, and eventually, the two had grown close. He quickly grew up to become a capable young man, a whiz with electronics, able to program a pump’s timing chip in less time than it took her to break one down and put it back together.

She loosened the other tie crossing the package and knew the bundle was from him. Several years ago, Scottie had been recruited by IT and had moved up to the thirties. He had become “too smart for Mechanical,” as Knox had put it. Juliette set the two electrical straps aside and pictured the young man preparing this package for her. The request she’d wired down to Mechanical the night before must’ve bounced back up to him, and he had spent the night dutifully doing this favor for her.

She pried the paper apart carefully. Both it and the plastic ties would need to be returned; they were both too dear for her to keep and light enough to porter on the cheap. As the package came apart, she noticed that Scottie had crimped the edges and had folded these tabs under each other, a trick children learned so they could wrap notes without the expense of glue or tape. She disassembled his meticulous work with care, and the paper finally came loose. Inside, she found a plastic box like the kind used to sort nuts and bolts for small projects down in Mechanical.

She opened the lid and saw that the package wasn’t just from Scottie—it must’ve been hurried up to him along with a copy of her request. Tears came to her eyes as the smell of Mama Jean’s oatmeal and cornflour cookies drifted out. She plucked one, held it to her nose, and breathed deeply. Maybe she imagined it, but she swore she noted a hint of oil or grease emanating from the old box—the smells of home.

Juliette folded the wrapping paper carefully and placed the cookies on top. She thought of the people she would have to share them with. Marnes, of course, but also Pam in the cafeteria, who had been so nice in helping her settle into her new apartment. And Alice, Jahns’s young secretary, whose eyes had been red with grief for over a week. She pulled the last cookie out and finally spotted the small data drive rattling around in the bottom of the container, a little morsel baked special by Scottie and hidden among the crumbs.

Juliette grabbed it and set the plastic case aside. She blew into the little metal end of the drive, getting any debris out, before slotting it into the front of her computer. She wasn’t great with computers, but she could navigate them. You couldn’t do anything in Mechanical without submitting a claim, a report, a request, or some other piece of nonsense. And they were handy for logging in to pumps and relays remotely to shut them on or off, see their diagnostics, all of that.

Once the light on the drive winked on, she navigated to it on her screen. Inside, she found a host of folders and files; the little drive must’ve been stuffed to the brim with them. She wondered if Scottie had gotten any sleep at all the night before.

At the top of a list of primary folders was a file named “Jules.” She clicked this one, and up popped a short text file obviously from Scottie, but noticeably unsigned:

J—

Don’t get caught with this, okay? This is everything from Mr. Lawman’s computers, work and home, the last five years. A ton of stuff, but wasn’t sure what you needed and this was easier to automate.

Keep the ties—I got plenty.

(And I took a cookie. Hope you don’t mind.)

Juliette smiled. She felt like reaching out and brushing her fingers across the words, but it wasn’t paper and wouldn’t be the same. She closed the note and deleted it, then cleared out her trash. Even the first letter of her name up there felt like too much information.

She leaned away from her desk and peered into the cafeteria, which appeared dark and empty. It was not yet five in the morning, and she would have the upper floor to herself for a while. She first took a moment to browse through the directory structure to see what kind of data she was dealing with. Each folder was neatly labeled. It appeared she had an operating history of Holston’s two computers, every keystroke, every day, going back a little more than five years, all organized by date and time. Juliette felt overwhelmed by the sheer
amount
of information—it was far more than she could hope to weed through in a lifetime.

But at least she had it. The answers she needed were in there, somewhere, among all those files. And somehow it felt better,
she
felt better, just knowing that the solution to this riddle, to Holston’s decision to go to cleaning, could now fit in the palm of her hand.

She was several hours into sifting through the data when the cafeteria crew staggered in to clean up last night’s mess and prepare for breakfast. One of the most difficult things to get used to about the up top was the exacting schedule everyone kept. There was no third shift. There was barely a second shift, except for the dinner staff. In the down deep, the machines didn’t sleep, and so the workers barely did either. Work crews often stayed on into extra shifts, and Juliette had gotten used to surviving on a handful of hours of rest a night. The trick was to pass out now and then from sheer exhaustion, to just rest against a wall with one’s eyes closed for fifteen minutes, long enough to hold the tiredness at bay.

But what had once been necessary for survival was now a luxury. The ability to forgo sleep gave her time in the morning and at night to herself, time to invest in frivolous pursuits on top of the cases she was supposed to be working. It also gave her the opportunity to teach herself how to do the blasted job, since Marnes had become too depressed to help get her up to speed.

Marnes—

She looked at the clock over his desk. It was ten minutes after eight, and the vats of warm oatmeal and corn grits were already filling the cafeteria with the smells of breakfast. Marnes was late. She’d been around him less than a week, but she had yet to see him late to anything, ever. This break in the routine was like a timing belt stretching out of shape, a piston developing a knock. Juliette turned her monitor off and pushed away from her desk. Outside, first-shift breakfast was beginning to file in, food tokens clinking in the large bucket by the old turnstiles. She left her office and passed through the traffic spilling from the stairwell. In the line, a young girl tugged on her mother’s overalls and pointed to Juliette as she passed. Juliette heard the mother scolding her child for being rude.

There had been quite a bit of chatter the past few days over her appointment, this woman who had disappeared into Mechanical as a child and who had suddenly reemerged to take over from one of the more popular sheriffs in memory. Juliette cringed from the attention and hurried into the stairwell. She wound her way down the steps as fast as a lightly loaded porter, her feet bouncing off each tread, faster and faster, at what felt like an unsafe pace. Four flights down, after squeezing around a slow couple and between a family heading up for breakfast, she hit the apartment landing just below her own and passed through the double doors.

The hallway beyond was busy with morning sights and sounds: a squealing teapot, the shrill voices of children, the thunder of feet overhead, shadows hurrying to meet their casters before trailing behind them to work. Younger children were lumbering reluctantly off to school; husbands and wives kissed in doorways while toddlers tugged at their overalls and dropped toys and plastic cups.

Juliette took several turns, winding through the hallways and around the central staircase to the other side of the level. The deputy’s apartment was on the far side, way in the back. She surmised that Marnes had qualified for several upgrades over the years but had passed on them. The one time she had asked Alice, Mayor Jahns’s old secretary, about Marnes, she had shrugged and told Juliette that he had never wanted or expected anything more than second fiddle. Juliette assumed she meant that he never wanted to be sheriff, but she had begun to wonder in how many other areas of his life that philosophy applied.

As she reached his hall, two kids ran by holding hands, late for school. They giggled and squealed around the corner, leaving Juliette alone in the hallway. She wondered what she would say to Marnes to justify coming down, to explain her worry. Maybe now was a good time to ask for the folder that he couldn’t seem to be without. She could tell him to take the day off, let her handle the office while he got some rest, or maybe fib a little and say she was already in the area for a case.

She stopped outside his door and lifted her hand to knock. Hopefully he wouldn’t see this as her projecting authority. She was just concerned for him. That was all.

She rapped on the steel door and waited for him to call her inside—and maybe he did. His voice over the last few days had eroded into a dull and thin rasp. She knocked again, louder this time.

“Deputy?” she called. “Everything okay in there?”

A woman popped her head out of a door down the hallway. Juliette recognized her from school recess time in the cafeteria, was pretty sure her name was Gloria.

“Hey, Sheriff.”

“Hey, Gloria, you haven’t seen Deputy Marnes this morning, have you?”

She shook her head, placed a metal rod in her mouth, and started wrapping her long hair into a bun. “I haben’t,” she mumbled. She shrugged her shoulders and jabbed the rod through her bun, locking her hair into place. “He was on the landing last night, looking as whipped as ever.” She frowned. “He not show up for work?”

Juliette turned back to the door and tried the handle. It clicked open with the feel of a well-maintained lock. She pushed the door in. “Deputy? It’s Jules. Just checkin’ in on ya.”

The door swung open into the darkness. The only light spilling in was from the hallway, but it was enough.

Juliette turned to Gloria. “Call Doc Hicks— No, shit …” She was still thinking down deep. “Who’s the closest doctor up here? Call him!”

She ran into the room, not waiting for a reply. There wasn’t much space to hang oneself in the small apartment, but Marnes had figured out how. His belt was cinched around his neck, the buckle lodged into the top of the bathroom door. His feet were on the bed, but at a right angle, not enough to support his weight. His butt drooped below his feet, his face no longer red, the belt biting deep into his neck.

Juliette hugged Marnes’s waist and lifted him up. He was heavier than he looked. She kicked his feet off the bed, and they flopped to the floor, making it easier to hold him. There was a curse at the door. Gloria’s husband ran in and helped Juliette support the deputy’s weight. Both of them fumbled for the belt, trying to dislodge it from the door. Juliette finally tugged the door open, freeing him.

“On the bed,” she huffed.

They lifted him to the bed and laid him out flat.

Gloria’s husband rested his hands on his knees and took deep breaths. “Gloria ran for Doctor O’Neil.”

Juliette nodded and loosened the belt from around Marnes’s neck. The flesh was purple beneath it. She felt for a pulse, remembering George looking just like this when she’d found him down in Mechanical, completely still and unresponsive. It took her a moment to be sure that she was looking at the second dead body she had ever seen.

And then she wondered, as she sat back, sweating, waiting for the doctor to arrive, whether this job she had taken would ensure it wasn’t the last.

After filling out reports, discovering Marnes had no next of kin, speaking with the coroner at the dirt farm, and answering questions from nosy neighbors, Juliette finally took a long and lonely walk up eight flights of stairs, back to her empty office.

She spent the rest of the day getting little work done, the door to the cafeteria open, the small room much too crowded with ghosts. She tried repeatedly to lose herself in the files from Holston’s computers, but Marnes’s absence was incredibly sadder than his moping presence had been. She couldn’t believe he was gone. It almost felt like an affront, to bring her here and then leave her so suddenly. And she knew this was a horrible and selfish thing to feel and even worse to admit.