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"Says our sheriff," Lukas said, laughing at his own joke
Juliette s used to that"
She turned back to the wallscreen, and they both enjoyed the silence that forer and somehow ed him as a loner as well, an odd-sized washer that didn’t fit any standard bolt And here he had been, at the extre for stars, while she’d been spending what spare time she could down in thefor pretty rocks
"It’s not going to be a very productive night for either of us, looks like," she eventually said, ending the silence, rubbing the unopened folder in her lap
"Oh, I don’t know," Lukas told her "That depends on what you came up here for"
Juliette smiled And across the wide room, barely audible, the co finally pawed through Holston’s data before spitting out its results
6
The nextto her office, Juliette descended five flights to the upper dirt farm for Marnes’s funeral There would be no folder for her deputy, no investigation, just the lowering of his old and tired body into the deep soil where it would decoht, to stand in that crowd and think of him as a folder or not Less than a week on the job, and she already saw the hosts reside Names and case numbers Lives distilled onto twenty or so sheets of recycled pulp paper, bits of string and darts of random color woven beneath the black ink that jotted their sad tale
The cere, but didn’t feel so The earth nearby was still mounded where Jahns had been buried Soon, the two of thele inside the plants, and these plants would nourish the occupants of the silo
Juliette accepted a ripe to the thick crowd The two of them, draped in red fabric, chanted as they went, their voices sonorous and co a polite amount of juice to spatter her coveralls, chewed and sed She could tell the tomato was delicious, but only in a mechanical way It was hard to truly enjoy it
When it became time for the soil to be shoveled back into the hole, Juliette watched the croo people dead from the up-top in less than a week There had been four deaths total in that ti on who you were She noticed childless couples biting vigorously into their fruit, their hands intertwined, silently doing the math Lotteries followed too closely after deaths for Juliette’s tastes She always thought they should fall on the sa to happen anyhether anyone died or not
But then, the lowering of the body and the plucking of ripe fruit just above the graves was meant to hammer this home: The cycle of life is here It is inescapable It is to be embraced, cherished, appreciated One departs and leaves behind the gift of sustenance, of life They eneration We are born, we are shadoe cast shadows of our own, and then we are gone All anyone can hope for is to be remembered two shadows deep
Before the hole was coe of the farm’s soil and tossed what remained of their fruit into the hole Juliette stepped forward and added the rest of her tomato to the colorful hail of rind and pulp An acolyte leaned on his too-large shovel and watched the last of the fruit fly Those thata s, settle
After the funeral, Juliette began the clihts of stairs in her legs, even though she prided herself as being in shape But walking and cli wrenches or loosening stubborn bolts, and the endurance was of a different kind thanup and alert for an extra shift She decided it was unnatural, this cliineered to travel le level of a silo But then another porter flen the steps past her, a s on his non-winded face, his feet dancing across steel treads, and she wondered if perhaps it was so that just took practice
When she finally made it back to the cafeteria, it was lunchti with noisy chatter and the clinking of metal forks on metal plates The pile of folded notes outside her office door had grown There was a plant in a plastic bucket, a pair of shoes, a small sculpture made of colorful wire Juliette paused over the collection Without any fah it all, to make sure the items went to those ould use them best She bent down and picked up one of the cards The writing was in unsure print, scraith crayon She irade school had spent craft ti cards for Deputy Marnes This saddened Juliette more than any of the ceremonies She wiped tears out of her eyes and daet the kids involved in the nastiness of it all
"Leave them out of it," she whispered to herself
She replaced the card and composed herself Deputy Marnes would have liked to have seen this, she decided He was an easy rown old everywhere but in his heart, that one organ he had never worn out because he’d never dared to use it
Inside her office, she was surprised to find she had coer sat at Deputy Marnes’s desk He looked up from the computer and smiled at her She was about to ask who he hen Bernard--she refused to think of hi cell, a folder in hand, s at Juliette
"Hoere the services?" he asked
Juliette crossed the office and snatched the folder out of his hand "Please don’t tahed and adjusted his glasses "That’s a closed case I was going to take it back to my offices and re-file it"