Chapter 236

Anna decided that just because someone’s fashion and hairstyle were tacky didn’t mean their interior sense had to be. Cradling the morning coffee Rachel had poured to the brim in a mug, she walked slowly through the house, taking in the traces of the woman’s life.

The wallpaper was a little faded and the floorboards lifted slightly underfoot, but otherwise the place was spotless and cozy. Beneath a wall hung with deer antlers was a tapestry Rachel had woven herself from wool yarn; on the dining table were a hand-sewn table runner and tablecloth.

By the fireplace sat a small rocking chair. Folded neatly on it were a thick knit blanket, a copy of The Valley of Fear from the Sherlock Holmes series, and the sweater Rachel picked up to knit whenever she had a spare moment. It was a pity, really—here in always-warm Helso, snug sweaters and chunky blankets rarely saw any use.

If Rachel was a picky reader, she was picky toward classics: most of the books on the shelves were classic detective fiction, and the furniture matched—antiques. The house brimmed with a vintage, naturalist mood, and only one object spoiled the harmony: a large frame on the wall beside the TV, the size of four LP sleeves.

“What’s this?”

Anna pointed at the black-and-white photograph. It looked like a shot taken in the middle of a construction site.

Rachel, busy fixing breakfast in the kitchen, leaned back just enough to glance at it.

“Oh, that? My man took that picture.”

“Is it Hoover Dam? It looks great.”

“Not Hoover Dam.”

“Then what is it?”

“A deep-level tributary drainage tunnel.”

Anna scrunched her face, as if she’d heard an alien language.

“...Sorry?”

“A stormwater drainage system. A massive culvert runs eighty meters under the very center of Baggers City.”

“Eighty meters down?”

“Mm-hmm. Deep, and eleven kilometers long.”

“Wow... I never imagined there was something like that under Baggers City. And that drainage system was Garrett’s work?”

Rachel smiled, homespun and wistful.

“Yeah. Sixteen years building it, then five more working it after. From his twenties to his fifties—most of his life—spent underground like the legendary dwarf Durin. Ugh, thinking how he lived like that and went so early... poor man. Oh, listen to me—I’m about to cry.”

She fan-waved at the tears brightening her eyes. It was a busy morning, and neither woman wanted to spend precious minutes licking each other’s wounds and sobbing together; Anna did her best to offer comfort.

“Don’t cry. Most people lose their jobs because they get laid off. Garrett was good at his work—that’s why the employer recognized it.”

“Mercy, I’m being ridiculous.”

Blinking back her tears, Rachel brightened her tone and shifted the mood.

“You’re right. He started as an assistant laborer in the early phase, then got promoted to foreman as he kept working on site. After the build finished they hired him for tunnel maintenance, so he stayed on for years. People aren’t often that diligent.”

Anna nodded along, then turned back to the photograph.

“The scale of that stormwater tunnel is beyond what I pictured.”

“Looks just like Moriarty’s secret lair, doesn’t it? Helso gets hit by hurricanes every so often. Thanks to this, the smaller rivers stopped overflowing.”

Anna thought it over.

“Now that you mention it, I haven’t heard of floods near the Linhart Park stream in a long time. But if the system’s that good, why does this area still flood?”

“Couldn’t do the work in South Baggers because of budget issues. Cheaper to pay for flood damage around the streams than to build the thing.”

“Oh, come on. And they don’t even fund proper recovery?”

Rachel gave a bitter smile.

“My point exactly. If a flood wrecks all the buses, put more temporary buses on the road.”

“The governor seems interested in nothing but executing criminals.”

Anna had spent the night at Rachel’s place. With Rachel’s help, she’d checked the last travel log south of the Nathan River for the white Ford van carrying Siron and Baekgyeong; by coincidence, the spot was less than a kilometer from Rachel’s home. Anna had agreed to drop her off nearby, and one thing led to another—she’d spent the night.

After a simple breakfast, Anna drove Rachel to work early, then headed for Police Headquarters. Today was the last day of her retraining at the HQ Education Center. Officers in retraining didn’t have to wear uniforms, but Anna put on hers anyway. To retrieve the bug she’d planted in the chief’s vehicle, she needed a natural excuse to approach the car.

She loitered near the underground garage elevators, waiting for the Commissioner. He usually arrived at 8:30 and parked his Cadillac in the VIP area. Fortunately, today was no different—though whatever had happened overnight had left deep shadows under his eyes as he stepped out.

Once he disappeared through the entrance, Anna hurried to the Cadillac before the driver got out. She rapped lightly on the driver’s window; he lowered it and regarded her warily.

“What is it?”

Anna held up the box she’d prepared.

“Yes. The Commissioner asked me to put this in the trunk. Could you pop it?”

Maybe she hadn’t masked her nerves—the driver eyed her with suspicion.

“The Commissioner just arrived.”

“Exactly. He asked on his way to the elevator... Or should I just leave it outside?”

The driver hesitated, then let his suspicion go and hit the trunk release. Anna moved to the rear and checked the cigarette lighter socket. The plug she’d installed was out.

They found the bug.

Her skin prickled, her heart dropping. She’d accomplished nothing and had only risked arousing the driver’s suspicion. She swallowed, took a spare shirt from the box, and placed it in the trunk. The driver had gotten out at some point and watched her closely from the side.

“Weren’t you leaving the whole box?”

“Oh, the box is mine. The Commissioner said just to leave an extra shirt.”

“Put the shirt under the trunk floor. That’s where he keeps the spares.”

Anna did exactly as told and withdrew quickly. She could only hope stocking the Commissioner’s spare clothes was routine enough that the driver would think nothing of today and forget it.

They must know it was me who planted the bug. So why is it this quiet?

Anxious, she attended the final retraining session. She wasn’t the only one barely meeting the attendance requirement. Sitting in the far back corner of the now-sparse classroom, she half-listened to the instructor’s lifeless lecture and surfed the web on her laptop. Even searching for “Lewis McCarthy” brought nothing she needed. If she saw even a scrap of rumor about a man who looked like Lewis, she’d race there—yet there was nothing.

Next week, Anna would have to return to the Linhart Precinct. The thought that she’d wasted time with no results—without even knowing whether Lewis was alive—was unbearable. Sinking into gloom, she snapped alert at the chime of a laptop notification.

The instructor, writing something on the whiteboard, turned and shot her a sharp glare, but Anna didn’t notice—she was opening the new message.

A new PeopleBook Messenger note had arrived—the app Siron had installed on her laptop.

[Kelly Welch]: 거롸두ㅛㅔ료 데잫 사고ㅕ 리쿄러료

It was from the sister of the missing homeless man.

What the...?

It didn’t feel like a prank. It looked more like she’d mis-hit the keyboard and sent it by mistake—or fired it off in a hurry during an urgent moment, with no time to correct typos.

Anna pasted the text into a notepad and copied it letter for letter, mimicking her keystrokes. After repeating the exercise several times, her fingers got a feel for it. Following the keyboard layout, she shifted her left hand one key to the right as she typed out the sentence—and realized why Kelly’s message looked garbled.

Her right hand had hit the correct keys, but her left had shifted one column to the right, turning every character into nonsense.

When Anna fixed the hand positions and completed the sentence, her heart pounded.

please help me please i’m trapped

Something bad had definitely happened to her.