Chapter 7: Graveyard Shift

I was in the elevator in my pajama pants and work boots before she finished the sentence.

The sub-basement smelled like sawdust and motor oil and cold air from the alley.

The workshop door hung open. The lock plate was bent.

Bex stood in the middle of the floor with her arms wrapped around herself.

Behind her lay Window Seven.

Eight reindeer had taken eight months.

I'd built the frames out of bent conduit.

Bex had carved every antler out of basswood.

The painter had done their eyes one hair at a time, with a brush the size of an eyelash.

Somebody had gone through them with a sledgehammer.

Their heads were split open and their legs snapped at the knee.

The tin skyline behind them was folded in half.

The lead reindeer lay on its side by the paint sink.

Its head was off.

The little motor that turned its head wasn't broken.

It was gone.

"They knew which part mattered," Bex said. Her voice cracked. "They took the part that mattered."

I knelt down beside the lead reindeer and picked up its head.

One glass eye was cracked. The other was looking at me.

I didn't cry.

I couldn't feel my hands well enough to cry.

The crew came in one by one. Bex had texted them all.

The old electrician arrived in a parka over his pajamas.

The two carpenters came together, still smelling of the bar they'd been in.

The painter walked in and looked at her reindeer's faces.

Then she walked right back out into the hall to sob where we couldn't see.

The apprentice was nineteen.

He sat down on an upturned bucket and stared.

"Who would do this?" he kept saying. "Who would do this to reindeer?"

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