Under the Dome Read online

  "I want my binkie," Aidan said morosely.

  Alice said, "You're too old for a binkie," and elbowed him.

  Aidan's face scrunched, but he didn't quite cry.

  "Alice," Carolyn Sturges said, "that's mean. And what do we know about mean people?"

  Alice brightened. "Mean people suck!" she cried, and collapsed into giggles. After considering a moment, Aidan joined her.

  "I'm sorry," Carolyn said to Andy. "I had no one to watch them, and Thurse sounded so distraught when he called...."

  It was hard to believe, but it seemed possible the old guy was bumping sweet spots with the young lady. The idea was only of passing interest to Andy, although under other circumstances he might have considered it deeply, pondering positions, wondering about whether she frenched him with that dewy mouth of hers, etc., etc. Now, however, he had other things on his mind.

  "Has anyone told Sammy's husband that she's dead?" he asked.

  "Phil Bushey?" It was Dougie Twitchell, coming down the hall and into the reception area. His shoulders were slumped and his complexion was gray. "Sonofabitch left her and left town. Months ago." His eyes fell on Alice and Aidan Appleton. "Sorry, kids."

  "That's all right," Caro said. "We have an open-language house. It's much more truthful."

  "That's right," Alice piped up. "We can say shit and piss all we want, at least until Ma gets back."

  "But not bitch," Aidan amplified. "Bitch is ex -ist."

  Caro took no notice of this byplay. "Thurse? What happened?"

  "Not in front of the kids," he said. "Open language or no open language."

  "Frank's parents are out of town," Twitch said, "but I got in touch with Helen Roux. She took it quite calmly."

  "Drunk?" Andy asked.

  "As a skunk."

  Andy wandered a little way up the hall. A few patients, clad in hospital johnnies and slippers, were standing with their backs to him. Looking at the scene of the slaughter, he presumed. He had no urge to do likewise, and was glad Dougie Twitchell had taken care of whatever needed taking care of. He was a pharmacist and a politician. His job was to help the living, not process the dead.

  And he knew something these people did not. He couldn't tell them that Phil Bushey was still in town, living like a hermit out at the radio station, but he could tell Phil that his estranged wife was dead. Could and should. Of course it was impossible to predict what Phil's reaction might be; Phil wasn't himself these days. He might lash out. He might even kill the bearer of bad tidings. But would that be so awful? Suicides might go to hell and dine on hot coals for eternity, but murder victims, Andy was quite sure, went to heaven and ate roast beef and peach cobbler at the Lord's table for all eternity.

  With their loved ones.

  15

  In spite of the nap she'd had earlier in the day, Julia was more tired than ever in her life, or so it felt. And unless she took Rosie up on her offer, she had nowhere to go. Except her car, of course.

  She went back to it, unclipped Horace's leash so he could jump onto the passenger seat, and then sat behind the wheel trying to think. She liked Rose Twitchell just fine, but Rosie would want to rehash the entire long and harrowing day. And she'd want to know what, if anything, was to be done about Dale Barbara. She would look to Julia for ideas, and Julia had none.

  Meanwhile Horace was staring at her, asking with his cocked ears and bright eyes what came next. He made her think of the woman who had lost her dog: Piper Libby. Piper would take her in and give her a bed without talking her ear off. And after a night's sleep, Julia might be able to think again. Even plan a little.

  She started the Prius and drove up to the Congo church. But the parsonage was dark, and a note was tacked to the door. Julia pulled the tack, took the note back to the car, and read it by the dome light.

  I have gone to the hospital. There has been a shooting there.

  Julia started to make the keening noise again, and when Horace

  began to whine as if trying to harmonize, she made herself stop. She put the Prius in reverse, then put it back in park long enough to return the note to where she had found it, in case some other parishioner with the weight of the world on his shoulders (or hers) might come by looking for The Mill's remaining spiritual advisor.

  So now where? Rosie's after all? But Rosie might already have turned in. The hospital? Julia would have forced herself to go there in spite of her shock and her weariness if it had served a purpose, but now there was no newspaper in which to report whatever had happened, and without that, no reason to expose herself to fresh horrors.

  She backed out of the driveway and turned up Town Common Hill with no idea where she was going until she came to Prestile Street. Three minutes later, she was parking in Andrea Grinnell's driveway. Yet this house was also dark. There was no answer to her soft knocks. Having no way of knowing that Andrea was in her bed upstairs, deeply asleep for the first time since dumping her pills, Julia assumed she had either gone to her brother Dougie's house or was spending the night with a friend.

  Meanwhile, Horace was sitting on the welcome mat, looking up at her, waiting for her to take charge, as she had always done. But Julia was too hollowed out to take charge and too tired to go further. She was more than half convinced that she would drive the Prius off the road and kill them both if she tried going anywhere.

  What she kept thinking about wasn't the burning building where her life had been stored but of how Colonel Cox had looked when she'd asked him if they had been abandoned.

  Negative, he'd said. Absolutely not. But he hadn't quite been able to look at her while he said it.

  There was a lawn glider on the porch. If necessary, she could curl up there. But maybe--

  She tried the door and found it unlocked. She hesitated; Horace did not. Secure in the belief that he was welcome everywhere, he went inside immediately. Julia followed on the other end of the leash, thinking, My dog is now making the decisions. This is what it's come to.

  "Andrea?" she called softly. "Andi, are you here? It's Julia."

  Upstairs, lying on her back and snoring like a truck driver at the end of a four-day run, only one part of Andrea stirred: her left foot, which hadn't yet given up its withdrawal-induced jerking and tapping.

  It was gloomy in the living room, but not entirely dark; Andi had left a battery-powered lamp on in the kitchen. And there was a smell. The windows were open, but with no breeze, the odor of vomit hadn't entirely vented. Had someone told her that Andrea was ill? With the flu, maybe?

  Maybe it is the flu, but it could just as easily be withdrawal if she ran out of the pills she takes.

  Either way, sickness was sickness, and sick people usually didn't want to be alone. Which meant the house was empty. And she was so tired. Across the room was a nice long couch, and it called to her. If Andi came in tomorrow and found Julia there, she'd understand.

  "She might even make me a cup of tea," she said. "We'll laugh about it." Although the idea of laughing at anything, ever again, seemed out of the question to her right now. "Come on, Horace."

  She unclipped his leash and trudged across the room. Horace watched her until she lay down and put a sofa pillow behind her head. Then he laid down himself and put his snout on his paw.

  "You be a good boy," she said, and closed her eyes. What she saw when she did was Cox's eyes not quite meeting hers. Because Cox thought they were under the Dome for the long haul.

  But the body knows mercies of which the brain is unaware. Julia fell asleep with her head less than four feet from the manila envelope Brenda had tried to deliver to her that morning. At some point, Horace jumped onto the couch and curled up between her knees. And that was how Andrea found them when she came downstairs on the morning of October twenty-fifth, feeling more like her true self than she had in years.

  16

  There were four people in Rusty's living room: Linda, Jackie, Stacey Moggin, and Rusty himself. He served out glasses of iced tea, then summarized what he had found in the
basement of the Bowie Funeral Home. The first question came from Stacey, and it was purely practical.

  "Did you remember to lock up?"

  "Yes," Linda said. "Then give me the key. I have to put it back."

  Us and them, Rusty thought again. That's what this conversation is going to be about. What it's already about. Our secrets. Their power. Our plans. Their agenda.

  Linda handed over the key, then asked Jackie if the girls had given her any problems.

  "No seizures, if that's what you're worried about. Slept like lambs the whole time you were gone."

  "What are we going to do about this?" Stacey asked. She was a little thing, but determined. "If you want to arrest Rennie, the four of us will have to convince Randolph to do it. We three women as officers, Rusty as the acting pathologist."

  "No!" Jackie and Linda said it together, Jackie with decisiveness, Linda with fright.

  "We have a hypothesis but no real proof," Jackie said. "I'm not sure Pete Randolph would believe us even if we had surveillance photos of Big Jim snapping Brenda's neck. He and Rennie are in it together now, sink or swim. And most of the cops would come down on Pete's side."

  "Especially the new ones," Stacey said, and tugged at her cloud of blond hair. "A lot of them aren't very bright, but they're dedicated. And they like carrying guns. Plus"--she leaned forward--"there's six or eight more of them tonight. Just high-school kids. Big and stupid and enthusiastic. They scare the hell out of me. And something else. Thibodeau, Searles, and Junior Rennie are asking the newbies to recommend even more. Give this a couple of days and it won't be a police force anymore, it'll be an army of teenagers."

  "No one would listen to us?" Rusty asked. Not disbelieving, exactly; simply trying to get it straight. "No one at all?"

  "Henry Morrison might," Jackie said. "He sees what's happening and he doesn't like it. But the others? They'll go along. Partly because they're scared and partly because they like the power. Guys like Toby Whelan and George Frederick have never had any; guys like Freddy Denton are just mean."

  "Which means what?"

  Linda asked. "It means for now we keep this to ourselves. If Rennie's killed four people, he's very, very dangerous."

  "Waiting will make him more dangerous, not less," Rusty objected.

  "We have Judy and Janelle to worry about, Rusty," Linda said. She was nipping at her nails, a thing Rusty hadn't seen her do in years. "We can't risk anything happening to them. I won't consider it, and I won't let you consider it."

  "I have a kid, too," Stacey said. "Calvin. He's just five. It took all my courage just to stand guard at the funeral home tonight. The thought of taking this to that idiot Randolph ..." She didn't need to finish; the pallor of her cheeks was eloquent.

  "No one's asking you to," Jackie said.

  "Right now all I can prove is that the baseball was used on Coggins," Rusty said. "Anyone could have used it. Hell, his own son could have used it."

  "That actually wouldn't come as a total shock to me," Stacey said. "Junior's been weird lately. He got kicked out of Bowdoin for fighting. I don't know if his father knows it, but there was a police call to the gym where it happened, and I saw the report on the wire. And the two girls ... if those were sex crimes ..."

  "They were," Rusty said. "Very nasty. You don't want to know."

  "But Brenda wasn't sexually assaulted," Jackie said. "To me that suggests Coggins and Brenda were different from the girls."

  "Maybe Junior killed the girls and his old man killed Brenda and Coggins," Rusty said, and waited for someone to laugh. No one did. "If so, why?"

  They all shook their heads. "There must have been a motive," Rusty said, "but I doubt if it was sex."

  "You think he has something to hide," Jackie said. "Yeah, I do. And I have an idea of someone who might know what it is. He's locked in the Police Department basement."

  "Barbara?" Jackie asked. "Why would Barbara know?"

  "Because he was talking to Brenda. They had quite a little heart-to-heart in her backyard the day after the Dome came down."

  "How in the world do you know that?" Stacey asked. "Because the Buffalinos live next door to the Perkinses and Gina Buffalino's bedroom window overlooks the Perkins backyard. She saw them and mentioned it to me." He saw Linda looking at him and shrugged. "What can I say? It's a small town. We all support the team."

  "I hope you told her to keep her mouth shut," Linda said. "I didn't, because when she told me I didn't have any reason to suspect Big Jim might have killed Brenda. Or bashed Lester Coggins's head in with a souvenir baseball. I didn't even know they were dead."

  "We still don't know if Barbie knows anything," Stacey said. "Other than how to make a hell of a mushroom-and-cheese omelet, that is."

  "Somebody will have to ask him," Jackie said. "I nominate me."

  "Even if he does know something, will it do any good?" Linda asked. "This is almost a dictatorship now. I'm just realizing that. I guess that makes me slow."

  "It makes you more trusting than slow," Jackie said, "and normally trusting's a good way to be. As to Colonel Barbara, we won't know what good he might do us until we ask." She paused. "And that's really not the point, you know. He's innocent. That's the point."

  "What if they kill him?" Rusty asked bluntly. "Shot while trying to escape."

  "I'm pretty sure that won't happen," Jackie said. "Big Jim wants a show-trial. That's the talk at the station." Stacey nodded. "They want to make people believe Barbara's a spider spinning a vast web of conspiracy. Then they can execute him. But even moving at top speed, that's days away. Weeks, if we're lucky."

  "We won't be that lucky," Linda said. "Not if Rennie wants to move fast."

  "Maybe you're right, but Rennie's got the special town meeting to get through on Thursday first. And he'll want to question Barbara. If Rusty knows he's been with Brenda, then Rennie knows."

  "Of course he knows," Stacey said. Sounding impatient. "They were together when Barbara showed Jim the letter from the President."

  They thought about this in silence for a minute.

  "If Rennie's hiding something," Linda mused, "he'll want time to get rid of it."

  Jackie laughed. The sound in that tense living room was almost shocking. "Good luck on that. Whatever it is, he can't exactly put it in the back of a truck and drive it out of town."

  "Something to do with the propane?" Linda asked.

  "Maybe," Rusty said. "Jackie, you were in the service, right?"

  "Army. Two tours. Military Police. Never saw combat, although I saw plenty of casualties, especially on my second tour. Wurzburg, Germany, First Infantry Division. You know, the Big Red One? Mostly I stopped bar fights or stood guard outside the hospital there. I knew guys like Barbie, and I would give a great deal to have him out of that cell and on our side. There was a reason the President put him in charge. Or tried to." She paused. "It might be possible to break him out. It's worth considering."

  The other two women--police officers who also happened to be mothers--said nothing to this, but Linda was nibbling her nails again and Stacey was worrying her hair.

  "I know," Jackie said.

  Linda shook her head. "Unless you have kids asleep upstairs and depending on you to make breakfast for them in the morning, you don't."

  "Maybe not, but ask yourself this: If we're cut off from the outside world, which we are, and if the man in charge is a murderous nut-ball, which he may be, are things apt to get better if we just sit back and do nothing?"

  "If you broke him out," Rusty said, "what would you do with him? You can't exactly put him in the Witness Protection Program."

  "I don't know," Jackie said, and sighed. "All I know is that the President ordered him to take charge and Big Jim Fucking Rennie framed him for murder so he couldn't."

  "You're not going to do anything right away," Rusty said. "Not even take the chance of talking to him. There's something else in play here, and it could change everything."

  He told them about the Geiger c
ounter--how it had come into his possession, to whom he had passed it on, and what Joe McClatchey claimed to have found with it.

  "I don't know," Stacey said doubtfully. "It seems too good to be true. The McClatchey boy's ... what? Fourteen?"

  "Thirteen, I think. But this is one bright kid, and if he says they got a radiation spike out on Black Ridge Road, I believe him. If they have found the thing generating the Dome, and we can shut it down ..."

  "Then this ends!" Linda cried. Her eyes were bright. "And Jim Rennie collapses like a ... a Macy's Thanksgiving Day balloon with a hole in it!"

  "Wouldn't that be nice," Jackie Wettington said. "If it was on TV, I might even believe it."

  17

  "Phil?" Andy called. "Phil?"

  He had to raise his voice to be heard. Bonnie Nandella and The Redemption were working through "My Soul is a Witness" at top volume. All those ooo-ooh s and whoa-yeah s were a little disorienting. Even the bright light inside the WCIK broadcast facility was disorienting; until he stood beneath those fluorescents, Andy hadn't really realized how dark the rest of The Mill had become. And how much he'd adapted to it. "Chef?"

  No answer. He glanced at the TV (CNN with the sound off), then looked through the long window into the broadcast studio. The lights were on in there, too, and all the equipment was running (it gave him the creeps, even though Lester Coggins had explained with great pride how a computer ran everything), but there was no sign of Phil.

  All at once he smelled sweat, old and sour. He turned and Phil was standing right behind him, as if he had popped out of the floor. He was holding what looked like a garage door-opener in one hand. In the other was a pistol. The pistol was pointed at Andy's chest. The finger curled around the trigger was white at the knuckle and the muzzle was trembling slightly.

  "Hello, Phil," Andy said. "Chef, I mean."

  "What are you doing here?" Chef Bushey asked. The smell of his sweat was yeasty, overpowering. His jeans and WCIK tee-shirt were grimy. His feet were bare (probably accounting for his silent arrival) and caked with dirt. His hair might last have been washed a year ago. Or not. His eyes were the worst, bloody and haunted. "You better tell me quick, old hoss, or you'll never tell anyone anything again."