Serial Experiment

Wilson had mixed feelings as he left the station. He really did understand, it certainly couldn’t be easy in a city this size. Crimes probably went unsolved all the time. And it helped that Officer Davies seemed genuinely upset by this fact. He wished that there was more he could do, some way that he could help the officer out. It just really didn’t seem right. But he also realized that his concern would have to wait. There was nothing he could do about it at the moment, possibly nothing he could do about it at all. In the meantime he had other things that needed to be addressed.

He had made a promise to himself that he would at least try to keep the Read it and Weep open. It had already been sitting empty for a week, it was high time to change that. He really didn’t know where to begin, but at least he had keys. Tooth’s letter had mentioned a box, and he needed to get his hands on it. He couldn’t find Tooth’s killer, but he could at least protect his legacy. In order to do that though, he would need time. There was no way he would be able to reopen the shop, much less run it, if he was busy with his garbage route. And that meant talking to management.

Wilson was the sort of person that rarely spoke to management. They planned out the routes, set the schedules, and maintained the workforce to ensure that the streets of Denid, or at least the Miner’s Quarter, were properly tended to. Wilson was content to let others handle that entirely, and was really happiest leaving them to do so far away from him. He had worked the exact same routes on the exact same schedule for years, and since he was mildly terrified of talking to his bosses, did so with as little interaction as possible. Occasionally they would have a runner leave a note on his door, requesting that he pick up an extra shift to cover for a sick coworker, or to inform him of changes to his pay. He never really had to respond, he just did what was needed. Today was going to have to be one of those rare exceptions where he actually went into the office.

As most of the sanitation workers in the Quarter operated in more or less the same fashion he did, the offices were generally unused by anyone other than management, and thus consisted of only a small section of a slightly dilapidated office block on the south side of town. Wilson was worried that he would not make it there in time, but he knew that the managers tended to work later hours to accommodate the worker’s shifts and general remoteness. Sure enough, when he got there just before dark there was a light on in the window. He made his way into the building and knocked on the door of James Hersh, sanitation manager. He had a feeling that James was about to be terribly upset at him for what he was about to do.