The Dead Town

Chapter 59

At the Snyder house, Chief Rafael Jarmillo and his Communitarian equal, Deputy Kurt Nevis, found Warren Snyder, general manager of KBOW radio, in an armchair in his living room. The wife, Judy Snyder, and their nineteen-year-old son, Andrew, sat on the sofa. They were still because they had been told to remain so, though their eyes jittered with terror. Much earlier, they should have been picked up and taken away to be rendered by a Builder at one of the warehouses. But here they were. The son appeared to have urinated on the sofa.

Judy Snyder’s replicant had been left here to oversee these three, but she was not with them. Jarmillo and Nevis found her nude in the kitchen.

The unclothed replicant was on her hands and knees beside a bucket of pine-scented cleaning solution, scrubbing the floor with a brush and various sponges. She did not look up at them but remained focused on the floor tiles.

“What’re you doing?” Jarmillo asked.

She said, “There was no neatness in this house. Where there is no neatness, there can be no order. They have a cat. It sheds enough for a dozen cats. Hair, hair, hair everywhere. I’m glad we’re killing all the cats, too. I swept and I swept, and finally there wasn’t any more hair, though I haven’t looked on the upper floor yet. I’m sure it’s a mess. I threw the litter box in the trash, it was disgusting. But cat hair and kitty litter isn’t the half of it. These kitchen counters needed to be scrubbed. Especially the grout. The grout was filthy. And the refrigerator, and now these floors. I’m going to be hours on these floors. Especially the grout.”

“Why are you nude?” Jarmillo asked.

“I noticed my clothes were wrinkled. It really bothered me. I couldn’t get my mind off my wrinkled clothes. I couldn’t think, so I stripped out of them and ironed them, made them perfect, and put them back on. But you know what happened then? I hardly did anything, just a little more sweeping, and I could see a few wrinkles in them again. I had to take them off and iron them, and then they were wrinkled again, so I took them off and ironed them and didn’t put them on, just hung them so they’ll stay wrinkle-free.”

“Does Warren have spare keys to the radio station? Where does he keep them?”

Vigorously scrubbing the soiled grout between the floor tiles, Communitarian Judy said, “I don’t know. I didn’t download the stupid bitch’s memories. I didn’t need to because I didn’t have to pass for the stupid bitch except to set her idiot son up to be nailed by his replicant.”

Jarmillo returned to the living room while Deputy Nevis remained to watch Judy scrub the floor.

“Warren,” the chief said to the KBOW general manager, “do you have spare keys to the radio station?”

Warren Snyder’s mouth trembled, but he didn’t reply.

“You can’t avoid answering me,” Jarmillo said. “You have no will to resist.”

Haltingly, Warren told him where to find the keys. They were in a utility drawer in the kitchen.

When Chief Jarmillo returned to the kitchen, Deputy Nevis was on his hands and knees, using a sponge to help Judy clean the floors.

“What’re you doing?” Jarmillo asked.

“The only virtue is efficiency,” Nevis said. “The only sin is inefficiency. You can’t have efficiency in a disordered environment.”

“Yes, but this isn’t your environment. Get up and come with me.”

The utility drawer contained numerous keys. Fortunately they were labeled, although not in a consistent fashion. In forty-nine seconds, the chief found the KBOW keys. In an organized drawer, he would have snatched them up in one second, two at most. He was tempted to put things right here, but then he closed the drawer.

Deputy Kurt Nevis, being Chief Jarmillo’s equal in all ways as a Communitarian, decided not to accompany him to the radio station but instead to remain at the Snyder residence to scrub the baseboards. He had noticed they were in urgent need of attention.