"Why, Mr. Blue looks like one of them troll dolls, only not as cute," Inez Garcia said, after
catching her breath.
A pretty Hispanic woman about thirty-five, Inez barely topped five feet, but she fearlessly stepped right up to get a better look at the dead man. She held on to her long, black braid to protect it from the dye.
Like most of the other workers, Inez was dressed as if for summer: shorts and a thin cotton top. The shearing machines, the washers, dyers, and dryers pumped out heat and made the factory almost tropical inside, in sharp contrast to the bleak Virginia winter outside. It must have been almost ninety degrees in the dye house.
"That looks like a goat-sucking chupacabra to me," Sykes said.
"That's no chupacabra. It's a coyote with mange," Inez responded. "Blue mange."
"I always wondered what'd happen if you fell in the dye vat," observed Hank Richards, the maintenance chief. "Now we know. I guess he's been in there a while."
Richards appeared to be in his late forties, tall and fit with a soldier’s bearing but an aging surfer dude's shaggy blond hair, mustache, and goatee. He wore a navy short-sleeve polo shirt with dark blue slacks, which were neat and tidy. He had sad brown eyes that watched everything, and he had reached out to Kira Evans when she screamed.
Everyone fell silent for a moment. They seemed to know who the dead man was, but no one was quite ready to say so. Perhaps because he was so changed from life? The velvet factory workers had never seen anything like the blue body before, and they were unlikely to again. Not just because murder was rare in that rural part of Virginia, but also because their jobs in the factory were lost and gone forever.
A pretty Hispanic woman about thirty-five, Inez barely topped five feet, but she fearlessly stepped right up to get a better look at the dead man. She held on to her long, black braid to protect it from the dye.
Like most of the other workers, Inez was dressed as if for summer: shorts and a thin cotton top. The shearing machines, the washers, dyers, and dryers pumped out heat and made the factory almost tropical inside, in sharp contrast to the bleak Virginia winter outside. It must have been almost ninety degrees in the dye house.
"That looks like a goat-sucking chupacabra to me," Sykes said.
"That's no chupacabra. It's a coyote with mange," Inez responded. "Blue mange."
"I always wondered what'd happen if you fell in the dye vat," observed Hank Richards, the maintenance chief. "Now we know. I guess he's been in there a while."
Richards appeared to be in his late forties, tall and fit with a soldier’s bearing but an aging surfer dude's shaggy blond hair, mustache, and goatee. He wore a navy short-sleeve polo shirt with dark blue slacks, which were neat and tidy. He had sad brown eyes that watched everything, and he had reached out to Kira Evans when she screamed.
Everyone fell silent for a moment. They seemed to know who the dead man was, but no one was quite ready to say so. Perhaps because he was so changed from life? The velvet factory workers had never seen anything like the blue body before, and they were unlikely to again. Not just because murder was rare in that rural part of Virginia, but also because their jobs in the factory were lost and gone forever.
Lacey Smithsonian had never witnessed anything like the
blue man either. She'd seen a few dead bodies—bloody ones, cold ones, and ones with terminally bad haircuts—but none like this. She
held her breath, her heart beating wildly. It was a last day of work no one here would ever forget. The ruined velvet was more than
the last batch of the day: It was the last batch. The final spool of Dominion Velvet ever to be dyed at this factory. And now Lacey
had missed her chance to see how the dyeing process actually worked from start to finish. This was the finish.
As Dominion Velvet General Manager Tom Nicholson had put it earlier, "The world keeps on getting smaller.
You see, Ms. Smithsonian, making velvet isn't just a manufacturing operation. It's more of an art, and very labor-intensive. It's
expensive to produce." [cont.]
Shot Through Velvet, Chapter 1, continued
Another woman gasped, "Oh my God. Is he dead?"
"Is he dead?!" A workman named Dirk Sykes answered. "Inez, honey, he is dead blue."
Sykes looked fierce, even in his bright turquoise Hawaiian shirt, which revealed a scorpion tattoo crawling up his right forearm. He wore his black hair pulled back in a ponytail, but with a finely clipped Julius Caesar fringe around the nape of his neck. He was definitely dancing to the beat of a different fashion drummer. Lacey had just learned his now-defunct job was shearing the fabric. The velvet was woven with the soft nap connecting two heavier sheets of backing material. Sykes had been the one who sheared the woven material in half, producing two sheets of velvet with the nap exposed. Scars on Sykes's hands and face testified to the sharpness of the huge blades he used.
Sykes looked fierce, even in his bright turquoise Hawaiian shirt, which revealed a scorpion tattoo crawling up his right forearm. He wore his black hair pulled back in a ponytail, but with a finely clipped Julius Caesar fringe around the nape of his neck. He was definitely dancing to the beat of a different fashion drummer. Lacey had just learned his now-defunct job was shearing the fabric. The velvet was woven with the soft nap connecting two heavier sheets of backing material. Sykes had been the one who sheared the woven material in half, producing two sheets of velvet with the nap exposed. Scars on Sykes's hands and face testified to the sharpness of the huge blades he used.
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