Marshal Orb had a secret.
In the basement beneath his station, music came through a rusted pipe from somewhere beyond Hood County. Orb had discovered that certain notes behaved differently underground. They shimmered. They moved. If he opened his notebook at the right moment, he could trap them between the pages.
He did not understand the science.
He understood what the notes could do.
Some sharpened a rhyme. Some altered a chip. Some made an average performer sound dangerous.
And some hurt.
Hip Hoppity found the notebook beneath Orb’s desk.
By the time Orb returned, his deputy had read enough to understand that Hood County’s cleanest lawman was not clean at all.
“Boosted rhymes,” Hoppity said. “Fixed chips. Solder loans. You been swimming in the same mud as everybody else.”
Orb’s hand shook.
Hoppity smiled.
He wanted access to the basement.
Orb agreed.
Then, halfway down the steps, Orb hit him across the face with his pistol.
Hoppity woke chained to a pipe.
Orb retrieved the notebook.
He should have taken it and left.
Instead, fear and anger made the next decision for him.
He struck a match.
The paper caught slowly.
The trapped notes screamed.
Hoppity stopped cursing.
The notes changed shape as the pages burned. Their edges glowed red. They spilled from the notebook and moved toward him.
“What the hell is that?”
Orb backed toward the stairs.
He had never seen the music behave this way.
The first note touched Hoppity’s chest.
His scream followed Orb all the way upstairs.
Later, long after dark, Marshal Orb carried a heavy black bag into the Slop Yards and pushed it beneath the toxic muck.
He told himself he had done what was necessary.
Then a rifle barrel touched the back of his head.
“Marshal Orb,” Lethargic Bill said. “Fancy meeting you here.”