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December Twenty-First
It might be December the twenty-first, but there is no reason for a Christmas tree this big to be in the arrivals lounge. It’s so tall it scrapes the ceiling of the terminal, and wreathed in oversize red plaid bows and enough tinsel to strangle an entire ocean of sea turtles. The wall behind it bears enormous glittering letters that spell out 'Merry Christmas from Evergreen!'. Hideous.
Dedra reflects on the hypocrisy of this place: they don’t want to allow AOL-Time-Warner-Pepsico-Viacom-Halliburton-Skynet-Toyota-Trader-Joe's to develop fracking in the local nature reserve, but they will happily use the fruits of the oil industry in the name of festive cheer . It would be easier and cheaper for everyone if they would recognise the contradiction. But that’s why Dedra is here: if they won’t voluntarily accept the drilling operation, they will be forced to.
She reviews her case notes as she waits in an interminable queue for passport control. It's a fairly standard case. The ecological report has found endangered newts in the area that will be affected. The locals are worried about noise and pollution (the locals are always worried about noise and pollution). And there are concerns about tourism revenue, most of which comes from hiking in the reserve and local character . If the tree in the airport is representative of that local character, then Dedra will be glad to see it crushed.
Finally, she reaches the head of the queue. "Merry Christmas!" the man in the booth greets her. Dedra immediately hates him for his jumper: it's red and white, with a horrendous geometric pattern of reindeers and snowflakes running around it. She stares him down, but his enthusiasm doesn't dim.
"What brings you to Evergreen?" he asks, in a tone that suggests he’s genuinely interested in the answer..
"Business," she says shortly, hoping to head off any further inane questions.
The man takes the hint. He stamps her passport and waves her through, the cheery smile still pasted to his face. "Have a good trip."
Dedra doesn't respond. She'd already explained to him that the purpose of this trip was business; it will be exactly as good as every other trip she's been on in the last ten years. She gathers her luggage and goes to collect her rental car.
The woman at the rental car concession is similarly cheery, and wears an equally awful jumper: this one sports a llama wreathed in Christmas lights, and for some reason it glitters . "Happy Holidays!" she chirps. "How can I help you?"
"I have a car booked in the name of AOL-Time-Warner-Pepsico-Viacom-Halliburton-Skynet-Toyota-Trader-Joe's."
Jumper Woman busies herself with the computer for a frankly absurd length of time, because this town is as inefficient as it is tacky. Dedra is forced to wait, scowling at the Christmas tree on Jumper Woman's desk: a tiny model of the one in the arrival terminal, complete with miniature plaid bows.
Finally, Jumper Woman looks up. "I can't find..." She frowns slightly. "Whatever you said. The closest we have is Errol Time. Would that be your booking?"
There's no point remarking on how astonishingly useless both the person making the booking and the person taking it must have been for AOL-Time-Warner-Pepsico-Viacom-Halliburton-Skynet-Toyota-Trader-Joe's to translate to Errol Time. "I expect so."
The woman seems to have finally sensed how irritated Dedra is, because her tone is subdued when she speaks again. "I'll just get your key." She turns away to rummage in a metal cabinet of keys, which of course is wreathed in tinsel and covered in paper snowflakes. Like using the computer, finding the key takes a frankly absurd length of time. Dedra thinks she could have obtained a second law degree in the time it's taken to obtain a pre-booked rental car in this backwater, but finally the key is in her hand. She turns to leave without further pleasantries.
December Twenty-Second
The sheriff is busy all week. Today, apparently, he's helping judge the local Christmas tree competition. Why this requires the sheriff- and why it needs to happen at all - is unclear, and Dedra doesn't bother to ask. In his place, she gets Deputy Inspector Karn.
Karn looks up from his computer desk when she meets him in the near-deserted police department, and she’s relieved to see that he's the only person she's met so far who isn't wearing a Christmas jumper. Instead, he wears a smart dark blue suit. Every other desk in this place is covered in piles of junk: jumbled papers, family photos, miniature Christmas trees, half-drunk cups of coffee in cups with images of gingerbread men. Tinsel wreaths the computer monitors. But DI Karn's desk is clear, with only a single neatly-stacked pile of papers. Perhaps she has finally found someone useful in this pointless town.
She dives straight into her request, not giving him time to greet her with the customary holiday greetings. "Deputy Inspector Karn, I assume? I'm Dedra Meero." She holds out a hand to shake, and he takes it. His eyes widen slightly at the firmness of her grip, but Dedra has been doing this long enough to know what will intimidate small town sheriffs. Or Deputy Inspectors, in this case.
"I apologise for the sheriff’s unavailability," he says. "Evergreen tends to shut down around the holidays." A slight grimace that suggests he finds the unproductivity almost as annoying as Dedra does.
Even so, Dedra doesn’t acknowledge the apology. That’s not why she’s here. "I need some documentation from you regarding an oil development case."
"Absolutely. Just tell me what you need."
She does, listing the documentation that’s standard in a case like this: the environmental report, the park licence, a map of the newts' habitat that Dedra intends to immediately shred.
He nods briefly and disappears into a side room, returning a few minutes later with a folder. It takes less than half the time it took to procure the rental car. A quick glance shows that it has all the papers she needs. "Good."
When she looks up, he is regarding her with intensely blue eyes. "I think it'll be a good thing for the town. Oil exploration, I mean. There's been a lot of complaining about the plans, but the local economy needs it.” He has a stiff, overly formal way of speaking. “Let me know if there's anything else I can do to assist you."
Dedra nods sharply, unsure what to say to that. In the ten years she's been working as a lawyer at AOL-Time-Warner-Pepsico-Viacom-Halliburton-Skynet-Toyota-Trader-Joe's, she's never cared what anyone thinks of oil development plans- but nor has anyone ever bothered to go out of their way to tell her they like the plans. Nobody ever wants fracking in the nature reserve next to their town. Except Deputy Inspector Karn, it seems. "I won't waste any more of your time," she says, standing to leave.
"I mean it. I could be a valuable asset going forwards."
Her eyes flick over the neat desk, the sharply cut suit, the slicked-back hair. For a moment she almost believes it. And then she recovers herself. She doesn't need a valuable asset . She has the power of the law, in all its crushing glory.
December Twenty-Third
Every single radio station is playing the same carols, and Dedra is driving too fast. It's two days before Christmas, and she'd assumed that no-one in this hopeless town would be bothering to give speeding tickets. They're barely bothering to keep anything else functioning- every document she needs has been more difficult to acquire than it should have been, and even locating a cup of coffee at 6am was a challenge.
But about the speeding tickets, she was wrong.
She pulls over at the sight of blue lights behind her. She's briefly surprised when she recognises the man who strides out of the car that pulls in behind her. It's Deputy Inspector Karn, and surely a Deputy Inspector should have better things to do than traffic duty. But of course it's him. Who else in this place would be bothering to do speed checks over the festive period?
She winds her window down. He's wearing a smart suit again- maybe it's a different one, or maybe it's the same. She didn't pay enough attention the first time. But at least it's still not a Christmas jumper.
His eyes go wide. "Ms Meero. I'm Deputy Inspector Karn- we met when-"
"I know who you are." There's no point dragging out this irritating interaction any longer than necessary. AOL-Time-Warner-Pepsico-Viacom-Halliburton-Skynet-Toyota-Trader-Joe's will cover the cost of the ticket without even noticing. She never uses her full expense budget, anyway.
He's staring at her far too intently. "Were you going somewhere important?"
"That's none of your concern." For some reason, he's determined to drag this out. "Are you going to give me a ticket?"
He hesitates, clearly wavering. She suspects Syril Karn doesn't often waver in the application of the law. Just like her. But his indecision is wasting time. She scowls at him, and that's enough to push him to a decision. "Yes. I have to."
"Then be quick about it."
He writes the ticket.
December Twenty-Fourth
Snow is falling. It's Christmas Eve, so of course snow is falling. God forbid anyone have a chance to do some work in this terrible town. But as it turns out, the snow is not the main impediment to work: Christmas Eve is the day of the annual Evergreen Christmas Parade. All roads going through the centre of town are closed, and it's likely the town record office is also closed. Even so, Dedra decides she will walk there. The quicker she gets what she needs, the quicker she can leave and the quicker the town can be absorbed into the AOL-Time-Warner-Pepsico-Viacom-Halliburton-Skynet-Toyota-Trader-Joe oil empire and become useful .
She trudges through the knee-high snow. She'd had the foresight to bring high black boots, but the snow is deep enough that it starts to seep into her boots anyway. The clear whiteness of it reflects the lights that hang on every single house she passes. Deputy Inspector Karn must live in this town somewhere, and she catches herself wondering if he, too, has wreathed his eaves and windows in colourful lights and planted a plastic reindeer in the middle of his yard. Not that it matters. Karn's snow-buried lawn has no bearing on her case, and thus is of no interest to her.
She'd assumed the parade would be limited to the centre of town, but she was wrong. She's chosen to take the sidestreets specifically to avoid it, although even here there is no escaping the festive ornamentation that is omnipresent in Evergreen. All the tiny shops she passes have a festive-themed display, each stupider than the last. The bakery window is full of gingerbread; the pharmacy has a tree decked in packets of painkillers, thermometers and band-aids; and the toy store has gone all-out with a display of elves holding toys. Sickening . The risks of fracking are terribly overblown, but in this case Dedra thinks she would be happy for the whole town to be swallowed by a sinkhole.
She's just scowling at an estate agent's window full of lights when the parade rounds the corner. It's just as awful as she expected. It's led by a marching band, dressed in red and blaring one of the carols that she couldn't escape on the radio yesterday. And then she finally reaches the town record office, just as a horde of children wearing reindeer costumes appear behind the marching band. Just as she’d expected, the record office is closed, with an excessively jolly sign bearing a picture of Santa saying "Ho ho ho! We'll return in the New Year!"
Her heart sinks. Now she either has to remain here for another week, or leave and return. She has no need to go home, but she'd hoped to leave this place behind in a cloud of jet exhaust by the end of the day and return to the fast-paced life of the city, where coffee can be bought around the clock. As she contemplates it, more of the parade is rounding the corner: the reindeer-children were leading a sleigh-shaped float that contains "Santa". She shudders, transfixed by the awfulness of it all, as the band bears down on her.
Suddenly, someone appears beside her, guiding her into an uninhabited Santa's grotto that for some reason has been set up in a side street. She reaches into her bag for pepper spray, and then she recognises him.
"You! How? "
"I work here," he says simply.
They stare at each other, the only two people in this town not dressed for Christmas, and outside the snow falls.