Hugh Howey - Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1-5)

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’ 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 Deputies’ weight. The 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’ neck. The flesh was purple beneath it. She felt for a pulse, remembering Roger 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’ 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.

As her mind roamed, she glanced occasionally out the door, watching the clouds slide across the distant wallscreen. She debated with herself on whether they appeared light or dense, if tonight would be a good one for viewing stars. It was another guilt-ridden thought, but she felt powerfully alone, a woman who prided herself on needing no one.

She played some more with the maze of files while the light of an unseen sun diminished in the cafeteria, while two shifts of lunch and two shifts of dinner vibrated and then subsided around her, all the while watching the roiling sky and hoping, for no real logical reason, for another chance encounter with the strange star hunter from the night before.

And even sitting there, with the sounds and scents of everyone on the upper forty-eight eating, Juliette forgot to. It wasn’t until the second shift staff was leaving, the lights cut down to quarter power, that Pam came in with a bowl of soup and a biscuit. Juliette thanked her and reached into her coveralls for a few chits, but Pam refused. The young woman’s eyes—red from crying—drifted to Marnes’ empty chair, and Juliette realized the cafeteria staff had probably been as close to the deputy as anyone.

Pam left without a word, and Juliette ate with what little appetite she could manage. She eventually thought of one more search she could try on Holston’s data, a global spellcheck to look for names that might offer clues, and eventually figured out how to run it. Meanwhile, her soup grew cold. While her computer began to churn through the hills of data, she took her bowl and a few folders and left her office to sit at one of the cafeteria tables near the wallscreen.

She was looking for stars on her own when Lukas appeared silently at her side. He didn’t say anything, just pulled up a chair, sat down with his board and paper, and peered up at the expansive view of the darkened outside.

Juliette couldn’t tell if he was being polite to honor her silence, or if he was being rude not to say hello. She finally settled on the former, and eventually the quiet felt normal. Shared. A peace at the end of a horrible day.

Several minutes passed. A dozen. There were no stars and nothing was said. Juliette held a folder in her lap, just to give her fingers something to do. There was a sound from the stairwell, a laughing group moving between the apartment levels below, and then a return to the quiet.

“I’m sorry about your partner,” Lukas finally said. His hands smoothed the paper on the board. He had yet to make a single mark or note.

“I appreciate that,” Juliette said. She wasn’t sure what the appropriate response was, but this seemed the least wrong.

“I’ve been looking for stars, but haven’t seen any,” she added.

“You won’t. Not tonight.” He waved his hand at the wallscreen. “These are the worst kinds of clouds.”

Juliette studied them, barely able to make them out with the last of twilight’s distant glow. They looked no different to her than any others.

Lukas turned almost imperceptibly in his seat. “I have a confession, since you’re the law and all.”

Juliette’s hand groped for the star on her chest. She was often in danger of forgetting what she was.

“Yeah?”

“I knew the clouds were gonna be bad tonight. But I came up anyway.”

Juliette trusted the darkness to conceal her smile.

“I’m not sure the Pact has much to say on such duplicity,” she told him.

Lukas laughed. It was strange how familiar it already sounded, and how badly she needed to hear it. Juliette had a sudden urge to grab him, to tuck her chin into his neck, and to cry. She could almost feel her body begin to piece the moves together—even though her skin would not budge. It could never happen. She knew this, even as the sensation vibrated within her. It was just the loneliness, the horror of holding Marnes in her arms, of feeling that lifeless heft of a body removed of whatever animates it. She was desperate for contact, and this stranger was the only person she knew little enough to want it from.

“What happens now?” he asked, his laughter fading.

Juliette almost blurted out, inanely, Between us? but Lukas saved her:

“Do you know when the funeral will be? And where?” he asked.

She nodded in the darkness.

“Tomorrow. There’s no family to travel up, no investigation to make.” Juliette choked back the tears. “He didn’t leave a will, so they left it up to me to make arrangements. I decided to lay him to rest near the Mayor.”

Lucas looked to the wallscreen. It was dark enough that the bodies of the cleaners couldn’t be seen, a welcome relief. “As he should be,” he said.

“I think they were lovers in secret,” Juliette blurted out. “If not lovers, then just as close.”

“There’s been talk,” he agreed. “What I don’t get is why keep it a secret. Nobody would’ve cared.”

Somehow, sitting in the darkness with a complete stranger, these things were more easily aired than in the down deep among friends.

“Maybe they would have minded people knowing,” she thought out loud. “Jahns was married before. I suspect they chose to respect that.”

“Yeah?” Lukas scratched something on his paper. Juliette looked up, but was sure there hadn’t been a star. “I can’t imagine loving in secret like that,” he said.

“I can’t imagine needing someone’s permission, like the Pact or a girl’s father, to be in love in the first place,” she replied.