Under the Dome: A Novel Read online

  Joe, Norrie, and Benny lay twitching on the Black Ridge Road in sunlight that was too diffuse. Heat that was too hot blared down on them. A crow, not in the least suicidal, landed on a telephone wire and gazed at them with bright, intelligent eyes. It cawed once, then flapped away through the strange afternoon air.

  “Halloween,” Joe muttered.

  “Make them stop screaming, ” Benny groaned.

  “No sun,” Norrie said. Her hands groped at the air. She was crying. “No sun, oh my God, there’s no more sun.”

  At the top of Black Ridge, in the apple orchard that overlooked all of Chester’s Mill, a brilliant mauve light flashed.

  Every fifteen seconds, it flashed again.

  21

  Julia hurried up the police station steps, her face still puffy from sleep, her hair standing up in back. When Pete made to fall in beside her, she shook her head. “Better stay here. I may call you in when I get the interview.”

  “Love the positive thinking, but don’t hold your breath,” Pete said. “Not long after Andy showed up, guess who?” He pointed at the Hummer parked in front of a fire hydrant. Linda Everett and Jackie Wettington were standing near it, deep in conversation. Both women looked seriously freaked out.

  Inside the station, Julia was first struck by how warm it was—the air-conditioning had been turned off, presumably to save juice. Next, by the number of young men who were sitting around, including two of the God-knew-how-many Killian brothers—there was no mistaking those long beaks and bullet heads. The young men all seemed to be filling out forms. “What if you didn’t have no last place of employment?” one asked another.

  There was tearful shouting from downstairs: Andy Sanders.

  Julia headed toward the ready room, where she had been a frequent visitor over the years, even a contributor to the coffee-and donuts fund (a wicker basket). She had never been stopped before, but this time Marty Arsenault said, “You can’t go back there, Miz Shumway. Orders.” He spoke in an apologetic, conciliatory voice he probably had not used with Pete Freeman.

  Just then Big Jim Rennie and Andy Sanders came up the stairs from what Mill PD officers called the Chicken Coop. Andy was crying. Big Jim had an arm around him and was speaking soothingly. Peter Randolph came behind them. Randolph’s uniform was resplendent, but the face above it was that of a man who has barely escaped a bomb-blast.

  “Jim! Pete!” Julia called. “I want to talk to you, for the Democrat !”

  Big Jim turned around long enough to give her a glance that said people in hell wanted icewater, too. Then he began leading Andy toward the Chief’s office. Rennie was talking about praying.

  Julia tried to bolt past the desk. Still looking apologetic, Marty grabbed her arm.

  She said, “When you asked me to keep that little altercation with your wife last year out of the paper, Marty, I did. Because you would have lost your job otherwise. So if you’ve got an ounce of gratitude in you, let me go. ”

  Marty let her go. “I tried to stop you but you wouldn’t listen,” he muttered. “Remember that.”

  Julia trotted across the ready room. “Just a damn minute,” she said to Big Jim. “You and Chief Randolph are town officials, and you’re going to talk to me.”

  This time the look Big Jim gave her was angry as well as contemptuous. “No. We’re not. You have no business back here.”

  “But he does?” she asked, and nodded to Andy Sanders. “If what I’m hearing about Dodee is right, he’s the last person who should have been allowed downstairs.”

  “That sonofabitch killed my precious girl!” Andy bawled.

  Big Jim jabbed a finger at Julia. “You’ll get the story when we’re ready to give it out. Not before.”

  “I want to see Barbara.”

  “He’s under arrest for four murders. Are you insane?”

  “If the father of one of his supposed victims can get downstairs to see him, why not me?”

  “Because you’re neither a victim nor a next of kin,” Big Jim said. His upper lip rose, exposing his teeth.

  “Does he have a lawyer?”

  “I’m done talking to you, wom—”

  “He doesn’t need a lawyer, he needs to be hung! HE KILLED MY PRECIOUS GIRL!”

  “Come on, pal,” Big Jim said. “We’ll take it to the Lord in prayer.”

  “What kind of evidence do you have? Has he confessed? If he hasn’t, what kind of alibi has he offered? How does it match up with the times of death? Do you even know the times of death? If the bodies were just discovered, how can you? Were they shot, or stabbed, or—”

  “Pete, get rid of this rhymes-with-witch,” Big Jim said without turning around. “If she won’t go on her own, throw her out. And tell whoever’s on the desk that he’s fired.”

  Marty Arsenault winced and passed a hand over his eyes. Big Jim escorted Andy into the Chief’s office and closed the door.

  “Is he charged?” Julia asked Randolph. “You can’t charge him without a lawyer, you know. It isn’t legal.”

  And although he still didn’t look dangerous, only stunned, Pete Randolph said something that chilled her heart. “Until the Dome goes away, Julia, I guess legal is whatever we decide it is.”

  “When were they killed? Tell me that much, anyhow.”

  “Well, it looks like the two girls were fir—”

  The office door opened, and she had no doubt at all that Big Jim had been standing on the other side, listening. Andy was sitting behind what was now Randolph’s desk with his face in his hands.

  “Get her out !” Big Jim snarled. “I don’t want to have to tell you again.”

  “You can’t hold him incommunicado, and you can’t deny information to the people of this town!” Julia shouted.

  “You’re wrong on both counts,” Big Jim said. “Have you ever heard that saying, ‘If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem?’ Well, you’re not solving anything by being here. You’re a tiresome noseyparker. You always were. And if you don’t leave, you’re going to be arrested. Fair warning.”

  “Fine! Arrest me! Stick me in a cell downstairs!” She held out her hands with the wrists together, as if for handcuffs.

  For one moment, she thought Jim Rennie was going to hit her. The desire to do so was clear on his face. Instead, he spoke to Pete Randolph. “For the last time, get this noseyparker out of here. If she resists, throw her out.” And he slammed the door.

  Not meeting her eyes and with his cheeks the color of freshly fired brick, Randolph took her arm. This time, Julia went. As she passed the duty desk, Marty Arsenault said—more in disconsolation than anger—“Now look. I lost my job to one of these thuds, who don’t know their asses from their elbows.”

  “You won’t lose your job, Marts,” Randolph said. “I can talk him around.”

  A moment later, she was outside, blinking in the sunlight.

  “So,” Pete Freeman said. “How’d that go?”

  22

  Benny was the first to come out of it. And aside from being hot—his shirt was stuck to his less-than-heroic chest—he felt okay. He crawled to Norrie and shook her. She opened her eyes and looked at him, dazed. Her hair was clumped to her sweaty cheeks.

  “What happened?” she asked. “I must have fallen asleep. I had a dream, only I can’t remember what it was. It was bad, though. I know that.”

  Joe McClatchey rolled over and pushed himself to his knees.

  “Jo-Jo?” Benny asked. He hadn’t called his friend Jo-Jo since fourth grade. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. The pumpkins were on fire.”

  “What pumpkins?”

  Joe shook his head. He couldn’t remember. All he knew was that he wanted to grab some shade and drink the rest of his Snapple. Then he thought of the Geiger counter. He fished it out of the ditch and saw with relief that it was still working—they’d built things tough in the twentieth century, it seemed.

  He showed Benny the +200 reading, and tried to show Norrie, but she wa
s looking up the slope of Black Ridge to the orchard at the top.

  “What’s that?” she asked, and pointed.

  Joe initially saw nothing. Then a bright purple light flashed out. It was almost too bright to look at. Shortly thereafter, it flashed again. He looked down at his watch, wanting to time the flashes, but his watch had stopped at 4:02.

  “I think it’s what we were looking for,” he said, getting to his feet. He expected his legs to feel rubbery, but they didn’t. Except for being too hot, he felt pretty much okay. “Now let’s get the hell out of here before it makes us sterile, or something.”

  “Dude,” Benny said. “Who wants kids? They might turn out like me.” Nevertheless, he mounted his bike.

  They rode back the way they came, not stopping to rest and drink until they were over the bridge and back to Route 119.

  SALT

  1

  The female officers standing by Big Jim’s H3 were still talking—Jackie now nervously puffing a cigarette—but they broke off as Julia Shumway stalked past them.

  “Julia?” Linda asked hesitantly. “What did—”

  Julia kept on. The last thing she wanted while she was still boiling was to talk to any more representatives of law and order as it now seemed to exist in Chester’s Mill. She walked halfway to the Democrat ’s office before she realized that anger wasn’t all she was feeling. It wasn’t even most of what she was feeling. She stopped under the awning of Mill New & Used Books (CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, read the hand-lettered sign in the window), partly to wait for her racing heart to slow, mostly to look inside herself. It didn’t take long.

  “Mostly I’m just scared,” she said, and jumped a little at the sound of her own voice. She hadn’t meant to speak aloud.

  Pete Freeman caught up with her. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine.” It was a lie, but it emerged stoutly enough. Of course, she couldn’t tell what her face was saying. She reached up and tried to flatten the sleepstack of hair at the back of her head. It went down … then sprang up again. Bed head on top of everything else, she thought. Very nice. The finishing touch.

  “I thought Rennie was actually going to have our new Chief arrest you,” Pete said. He was big-eyed and at that moment looked much younger than his thirtysomething years.

  “I was hoping.” Julia framed an invisible headline with her hands. “DEMOCRAT REPORTER SCORES EXCLUSIVE JAILHOUSE INTERVIEW WITH ACCUSED MURDERER.”

  “Julia? What’s going on here? Aside from the Dome, that is? Did you see all those guys filling out forms? It was kinda scary.”

  “I saw it,” Julia said, “and I intend to write about it. I intend to write about all this. And at town meeting on Thursday night, I don’t think I’ll be the only one with serious questions for James Rennie.”

  She laid a hand on Pete’s arm.

  “I’m going to see what I can find out about these murders, then I’ll write what I have. Plus an editorial as strong as I can make it without rabble-rousing.” She uttered a humorless bark of laughter. “When it comes to rousing rabble, Jim Rennie’s got the home court advantage.”

  “I don’t understand what you—”

  “That’s okay, just get busy. I need a couple of minutes to get hold of myself. Then maybe I can figure out who to talk to first. Because there isn’t a helluva lot of time, if we’re going to go to press tonight.”

  “Photocopier,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “Go to photocopier tonight.”

  She gave him a shaky smile and shooed him on his way. At the door to the newspaper office he looked back. She tossed him a wave to show she was okay, then peered through the dusty window of the bookstore. The downtown movie theater had been shut for half a decade, and the drive-in outside of town was long gone (Rennie’s auxiliary car lot stood where its big screen had once towered over 119), but somehow Ray Towle had kept this dirty little emporium galorium crutching along. Part of the window display consisted of self-help books. The rest of the window was heaped with paperbacks featuring fogbound mansions, ladies in distress, and barechested hunks both afoot and on horseback. Several of said hunks were waving swords and appeared to be dressed in just their underpants. GET THE HOTS FOR DARK PLOTS! the sign on this side read.

  Dark plots indeed.

  If the Dome wasn’t bad enough, weird enough, there’s the Selectman from Hell.

  What worried her the most, she realized—what scared her the most—was how fast this was happening. Rennie had gotten used to being the biggest, meanest rooster in the farmyard, and she would have expected him to try to strengthen his hold on the town even-tually—say after a week or a month cut off from the outside world. But this was only three days and change. Suppose Cox and his scientists cracked through the Dome tonight? Suppose it even disappeared on its own? Big Jim would immediately shrink back to his former size, only he’d have egg on his face, too.

  “What egg?” she asked herself, still looking in at the DARK PLOTS. “He’d just say he was doing the best he could under trying circumstances. And they’d believe him.”

  That was probably true. But it still didn’t explain why the man hadn’t waited to make his move.

  Because something went wrong and he had to. Also—

  “Also, I don’t think he’s completely sane,” she told the heaped-up paperbacks. “I don’t think he ever was.”

  Even if true, how did you explain people who still had fully stocked pantries rioting at the local supermarket? It made no sense, unless—

  “Unless he instigated it.”

  That was ridiculous, the Blue Plate Special at the Paranoid Café. Wasn’t it? She supposed she could ask some of the people who’d been at Food City what they’d seen, but weren’t the murders more important? She was the only real reporter she had, after all, and—

  “Julia? Ms. Shumway?”

  Julia was so deep in thought she almost lifted out of her loafers. She wheeled around and might have fallen if Jackie Wettington hadn’t steadied her. Linda Everett was with her, and it was she who had spoken. They both looked scared.

  “Can we talk to you?” Jackie asked.

  “Of course. Listening to people talk is what I do. The downside is that I write what they say. You ladies know that, don’t you?”

  “But you can’t use our names,” Linda said. “If you don’t agree to that, forget the whole thing.”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Julia said, smiling, “you two are just a source close to the investigation. Does that work?”

  “If you promise to answer our questions, too,” Jackie said. “Will you?”

  “All right.”

  “You were at the supermarket, weren’t you?” Linda asked. Curiouser and curiouser.

  “Yes. So were you two. So let’s talk. Compare notes.”

  “Not here,” Linda said. “Not on the street. It’s too public. And not at the newspaper office, either.”

  “Take it easy, Lin,” Jackie said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  “You take it easy,” Linda said. “You’re not the one with the husband who thinks you just helped railroad an innocent man.”

  “I don’t have a husband,” Jackie said—quite reasonably, Julia thought, and lucky for her; husbands were so often a complicating factor. “But I do know a place we can go. It’s private, and always unlocked.” She considered. “At least it was. Since the Dome, I dunno.”

  Julia, who had just been considering whom to interview first, had no intention of letting these two slip away. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll walk on opposite sides of the street until we’re past the police station, shall we?”

  At this, Linda managed a smile. “What a good idea,” she said.

  2

  Piper Libby lowered herself carefully in front of the altar of the First Congo Church, wincing even though she had put down a pew-pad for her bruised and swollen knees. She braced herself with her right hand, holding her recently dislocated left arm against her side. It seemed okay—less
painful than her knees, in fact—but she had no intention of testing it unnecessarily. It would be all too easy to get it out of joint again; she had been informed of that (sternly ) after her soccer injury in high school. She folded her hands and closed her eyes. Immediately her tongue went to the hole where there had been a tooth up until yesterday. But there was a worse hole in her life.

  “Hello, Not-There,” she said. “It’s me again, back for another helping of Your love and mercy.” A tear trickled from beneath one swollen eyelid and ran down one swollen (not to mention colorful) cheek. “Is my dog anywhere around? I only ask because I miss him so much. If he is, I hope you’ll give him the spiritual equivalent of a chewbone. He deserves one.”

  More tears now, slow and hot and stinging.

  “Probably he’s not. Most major religions agree that dogs don’t go to heaven, although certain offshoot sects—and The Reader’s Digest, I believe—disagree.”

  Of course if there was no heaven, the question was moot, and the idea of this heavenless existence, this heavenless cosmology, was where what remained of her faith seemed more and more at home. Maybe oblivion; maybe something worse. A vast trackless plain under a white sky, say—a place where none was always the hour, nowhere the destination, and nobody your companions. Just a big old Not-There, in other words: for bad cops, lady preachers, kids who accidentally shot themselves, and galoot German shepherds who died trying to protect their mistresses. No Being to sort the wheat from the chaff. There was something histrionic about praying to such a concept (if not downright blasphemous), but occasionally it helped.

  “But heaven’s not the point,” she resumed. “The point right now is trying to figure out how much of what happened to Clover was my fault. I know I have to own some of it—my temper got the best of me. Again. My religious teaching suggests You put that short fuse in me to begin with, and it’s my job to deal with it, but I hate that idea. I don’t completely reject it, but I hate it. It makes me think of how, when you take your car to get repaired, the guys in the shop always find a way to blame the problem on you. You ran it too much, you didn’t run it enough, you forgot to release the handbrake, you forgot to close your windows and the rain got in the wiring. And you know what’s worse? If You’re Not-There, I can’t shove even a little of the blame off on You. What does that leave? Fucking genetics?”