Under the Dome, Page 42

  "Closed up," he repeated. "Both of them. Tight as ticks. And when they reopen, we'll be the ones handing out supplies. Stuff will last longer, and the distribution will be fairer. I'll announce a rationing plan at the Thursday meeting." He paused. "If the Dome isn't gone by then, of course."

  Andy said hesitantly, "I'm not sure we have the authority to close down businesses, Big Jim."

  "In a crisis like this, we not only have the authority, we have the responsibility." He clapped Pete Randolph heartily on the back. The Mill's new Chief wasn't expecting it and gave out a startled squeak.

  "What if it starts a panic?" Andy was frowning.

  "Well, that's a possibility," Big Jim said. "When you kick a nest of mice, they're all apt to come running out. We may have to increase the size of our police force quite a bit if this crisis doesn't end soon. Yes, quite a bit."

  Randolph looked startled. "We're going on twenty officers now. Including--" He cocked his head toward the door.

  "Yep," Big Jim said, "and speaking of those fellers, better bring em in, Chief, so we can finish this and send them home to bed. I think they're going to have a busy day tomorrow."

  And if they get roughed up a little, so much the better. They deserve it for not being able to keep their jackhandles in their pants.

  2

  Frank, Carter, Mel, and Georgia shuffled in like suspects onto a police lineup stage. Their faces were set and defiant, but the defiance was thin; Hanna Compton would have laughed at it. Their eyes were down, studying their shoes. It was clear to Big Jim that they expected to be fired, or worse, and that was just fine with him. Fright was the easiest of emotions to work with.

  "Well," he said. "Here are the brave officers."

  Georgia Roux muttered something under her breath.

  "Speak up, honeybunch." Big Jim cupped a hand to his ear.

  "Said we didn't do nothing wrong," she said. Still in that teacher's-being-mean-to-me mumble.

  "Then exactly what did you do?" And, when Georgia, Frank, and Carter all started to talk at once, he pointed at Frankie. "You." And make it good, for gosh sake.

  "We were out there," Frank said, "but she invited us."

  "Right!" Georgia cried, folding her arms below her considerable bosom. "She--"

  "Shut it." Big Jim pointed a hammy finger at her. "One speaks for all. That's how it works when you're a team. Are you a team?"

  Carter Thibodeau saw where this was going. "Yes, sir, Mr. Rennie."

  "Glad to hear it." Big Jim nodded for Frank to go on.

  "She said she had some beers," Frank said. "That's the only reason we went out. Can't buy it in town, as you know. Anyway, we were sitting around, drinking beers--just a can each, and we were pretty much off-duty--"

  "Completely off-duty," the Chief put in. "Isn't that what you meant?"

  Frank nodded respectfully. "Yes, sir, that's what I meant to say. We drank our beers and then said we'd better go, but she said she appreciated what we were doing, every one of us, and wanted to say thank you. Then she kind of spread her legs."

  "Showing her woofer, you know," Mel clarified with a large and vacant smile.

  Big Jim winced and gave silent thanks that Andrea Grinnell wasn't here. Dope addict or not, she could have gone all politically correct in a situation like this.

  "She took us in the bedroom one by one," Frankie said. "I know it was a bad decision, and we're all sorry, but it was purely voluntary on her part."

  "I'm sure it was," Chief Randolph said. "That girl has quite a reputation. Her husband, too. You didn't see any drugs out there, did you?"

  "No sir." A four-part chorus.

  "And you didn't hurt her?" Big Jim asked. "I understand she's claiming she was punched around and whatnot."

  "Nobody hurt her," Carter said. "Can I say what I think happened?"

  Big Jim flapped an assenting hand. He was beginning to think that Mr. Thibodeau had possibilities.

  "She probably fell down after we left. Maybe a couple of times. She was pretty drunk. Child Welfare should take that kid away from her before she kills it."

  No one picked up on that. In the town's current situation, the Child Welfare office in Castle Rock might as well have been on the moon.

  "So basically, you're all clean," Big Jim said.

  "As a whistle," Frank replied.

  "Well, I think we're satisfied." Big Jim looked around. "Are we satisfied, gentlemen?"

  Andy and Randolph nodded, looking relieved.

  "Good," Big Jim said. "Now, it's been a long day--an eventful day--and we all need some sleep, I'm sure. You young officers especially need it, because you'll report back for duty at seven AM tomorrow. The supermarket and the Gas and Grocery are both going to be closed for the duration of this crisis, and Chief Randolph thought that you'd be just the ones to guard Food City in case the people who show up there don't take kindly to the new order of things. Think you're up to that, Mr. Thibodeau? With your ... your war wound?"

  Carter flexed his arm. "I'm okay. Her dog didn't rip the tendon none."

  "We can put Fred Denton with them, too," Chief Randolph said, getting into the spirit of the thing. "Wettington and Morrison at the Gas and Grocery should be enough."

  "Jim," Andy said, "maybe we should put the more experienced officers at Food City, and the less experienced ones at the smaller--"

  "I don't think so," Big Jim said. Smiling. Feeling it. "These young folks are the ones we want at Food City. The very ones. And another thing. A little bird told me that some of you folks have been carrying weapons in your cars, and a couple have even been wearing them on foot patrol."

  Silence greeted this.

  "You're probationary officers," Big Jim said. "If you've got personal handguns, that's your right as Americans. But if I hear that any of you are strapped while standing out in front of Food City tomorrow and dealing with the good folks of this town, your police officer days are over."

  "Absolutely right," Randolph said.

  Big Jim surveyed Frank, Carter, Mel, and Georgia. "Any problems with that? Any of you?"

  They didn't look happy about it. Big Jim hadn't expected that they would be, but they were getting off easy. Thibodeau kept flexing his shoulder and his fingers, testing them.

  "What if they weren't loaded?" Frank asked. "What if they were just there, you know, as a warning?"

  Big Jim raised a teacherly finger. "I'm going to tell you what my father told me, Frank--there's no such thing as an unloaded gun. We've got a good town here. They'll behave, that's what I'm banking on. If they change, we'll change. Got it?"

  "Yessir, Mr. Rennie." Frank didn't sound happy about it. That was fine with Big Jim.

  He rose. Only instead of leading them out, Big Jim extended his hands. He saw their hesitation and nodded, still smiling. "Come on, now. Tomorrow's going to be a big day, and we don't want to let this one go without a word of prayer. So grab on."

  They grabbed on. Big Jim closed his eyes and bowed his head. "Dear Lord--"

  It went on for some time.

  3

  Barbie mounted the outside steps to his apartment at a few minutes to midnight, his shoulders sagging with weariness, thinking that the only thing in the world he wanted was six hours of oblivion before answering the alarm and going up to Sweetbriar Rose to cook breakfast.

  The weariness left him as soon as he snapped on the lights--which, courtesy of Andy Sanders's generator, still worked.

  Someone had been in here.

  The sign was so subtle that at first he couldn't isolate it. He closed his eyes, then opened them and let them swing casually about his combination living-room/kitchenette, trying to take in everything. The books he'd been planning to leave behind hadn't been moved around on the shelves; the chairs were where they had been, one under the lamp and the other by the room's only window, with its scenic view of the alley outside; the coffee cup and the toast plate were still in the dish drainer beside the tiny sink.

  Then it clicked home, as such thin
gs usually did if you didn't push too hard. It was the rug. What he thought of as his Not Lindsay rug.

  About five feet long and two wide, Not Lindsay was a repeating diamond pattern in blue, red, white, and brown. He had bought it in Baghdad, but had been assured by an Iraqi policeman he trusted that it was of Kurdish manufacture. "Very old, very beautiful," the policeman had said. His name was Latif abd al-Khaliq Hassan. A good troop. "Look Turkey, but no-no-no." Big grin. White teeth. A week after that day in the marketplace, a sniper's bullet had blown Latif abd al-Khaliq Hassan's brains right out through the back of his head. "Not Turkey, Iraqi!"

  The rug-merchant wore a yellow tee-shirt that had said DON'T SHOOT ME, I'M ONLY THE PIANO PLAYER. Latif listened to him, nodding. They laughed together. Then the merchant had made a startlingly American jackoff gesture and they laughed even harder.

  "What was that about?" Barbie had asked.

  "He says American senator bought five like these. Lindsay Graham. Five rug, five hundred dollar. Five hundred out front, for press. More on the down-low. But all senator rug fake. Yes-yes-yes. This one not fake, this one real. I, Latif Hassan, tell you this, Barbie. Not Lindsay Graham rug."

  Latif had raised his hand and Barbie slapped him five. That had been a good day. Hot, but good. He had bought the rug for two hundred dollars American and an all-territories Coby DVD player. Not Lindsay was his one souvenir of Iraq, and he never stepped on it. He always stepped around it. He had planned to leave it behind when he left The Mill--he supposed down deep his idea had been to leave Iraq behind when he left The Mill, but fat chance of that. Wherever you went, there you were. The great Zen truth of the age.

  He hadn't stepped on it, he was superstitious about that, he always detoured around it, as if to step on it would activate some computer in Washington and he would find himself back in Baghdad or fucking Fallujah. But somebody had, because Not Lindsay was mussed. Wrinkled. And a little crooked. It had been perfectly straight when he left this morning, a thousand years ago.

  He went into the bedroom. The coverlet was as neat as always, but that sense that someone had been here was equally strong. Was it a lingering smell of sweat? Some psychic vibe? Barbie didn't know and didn't care. He went to his dresser, opened the top drawer, and saw that the pair of extra-faded jeans which had been on top of the pile was now on the bottom. And his khaki shorts, which he'd laid in with the zippers up, were now zippers-down.

  He went immediately to the second drawer, and the socks. It took less than five seconds to verify that his dog tags were gone, and he wasn't surprised. No, not surprised at all.

  He grabbed the disposable cell he had also been planning to leave behind and went back into the main room. The combined Tarker's-Chester's telephone directory was sitting on a table by the door, a book so skinny it was almost a pamphlet. He looked for the number he wanted, not really expecting it to be there; Chiefs of Police did not make a practice of listing their home phone numbers.

  Except, it seemed, in small towns, they did. At least this one had, although the listing was discreet: H and B Perkins 28 Morin Street. Even though it was now past midnight, Barbie punched in the number without hesitation. He couldn't afford to wait. He had an idea that time might be extremely short.

  4

  Her phone was tweeting. Howie, no doubt, calling to tell her he was going to be late, to just lock up the house and go to bed--

  Then it came down on her again, like unpleasant presents raining from a poison pinata: the realization that Howie was dead. She didn't know who could be calling her at--she checked her watch--twenty past midnight, but it wasn't Howie.

  She winced as she sat up, rubbing her neck, cursing herself for falling asleep on the couch, also cursing whoever had wakened her at such an ungodly hour and refreshed her recollection of her strange new singularity.

  Then it occurred to her that there could be only one reason for such a late call: the Dome was either gone or had been breached. She bumped her leg on the coffee table hard enough to make the papers there rattle, then limped to the phone beside Howie's chair (how it hurt her to look at that empty chair) and snatched it up. "What? What ?"

  "It's Dale Barbara."

  "Barbie! Has it broken? Has the Dome broken?"

  "No. I wish that's why I was calling, but it's not."

  "Then why ? It's almost twelve-thirty in the morning!"

  "You said your husband was investigating Jim Rennie."

  Brenda paused, getting the sense of this. She had put her palm against the side of her throat, the place where Howie had caressed her for the last time. "He was, but I told you, he had no absolute--"

  "I remember what you said," Barbie told her. "You need to listen to me, Brenda. Can you do that? Are you awake?"

  "I am now."

  "Your husband had notes?"

  "Yes. On his laptop. I printed them." She was looking at the VADER file, spread out on the coffee table.

  "Good. Tomorrow morning, I want you to put the printout in an envelope and take it to Julia Shumway. Tell her to put it in a safe place. An actual safe, if she's got one. A cash strongbox or a locked file cabinet, if she doesn't. Tell her she's only to open it if something happens to you or me or both of us."

  "You're scaring me."

  "She is not to open it otherwise. If you tell her that, will she do it? My instincts say she will."

  "Of course she will, but why not let her look?"

  "Because if the editor of the local paper sees what your husband had on Big Jim and Big Jim knows she's seen it, most of the leverage we have will be gone. Do you follow that?"

  "Ye-es ..." She found herself wishing desperately that Howie were the one having this post-midnight conversation.

  "I said I might be arrested today if the missile strike didn't work. Do you remember me telling you that?"

  "Of course."

  "Well, I wasn't. That fat sonofabitch knows how to bide his time. But he won't bide it much longer. I'm almost positive it's going to happen tomorrow--later today, I mean. If, that is, you can't put a stop to it by threatening to air whatever dirt your husband dug up."

  "What do you think they're going to arrest you for?"

  "No idea, but it won't be shoplifting. And once I'm in jail, I think I might have an accident. I saw plenty of accidents like that in Iraq."

  "That's crazy." But it had the horrid plausibility she had sometimes experienced in nightmares.

  "Think about it, Brenda. Rennie has something to cover up, he needs a scapegoat, and the new Police Chief is in his pocket. The stars are in alignment."

  "I was planning to go see him anyway," Brenda said. "And I was going to take Julia with me, for safety's sake."

  "Don't take Julia," he said, "but don't go alone."

  "You don't actually think he'd--"

  "I don't know what he'd do, how far he'd go. Who do you trust besides Julia?"

  She flashed back to that afternoon, the fires almost out, standing beside Little Bitch Road, feeling good in spite of her grief because she was flush with endorphins. Romeo Burpee telling her she ought to at least stand for Fire Chief.

  "Rommie Burpee," she said.

  "Okay, then he's the one."

  "Do I tell him what Howie had on--"

  "No," Barbie said. "He's just your insurance policy. And here's another one: lock up your husband's laptop."

  "Okay ... but if I lock up the laptop and leave the printout with Julia, what am I going to show Jim? I guess I could print a second copy--"

  "No. One of those floating around is enough. For now, at least. Putting the fear of God into him is one thing. Freaking him out would make him too unpredictable. Brenda, do you believe he's dirty?"

  She did not hesitate. "With all my heart." Because Howie believed it--that's good enough for me.

  "And you remember what's in the file?"

  "Not the exact figures and the names of all the banks they used, but enough."

  "Then he'll believe you," Barbie said. "With or without a second
copy of the paperwork, he'll believe you."

  5

  Brenda put the VADER file in a manila envelope. On the front she printed Julia's name. She put the envelope on the kitchen table, then went into Howie's study and locked his laptop in the safe. The safe was small and she had to turn the Mac on its side, but in the end it just fit. She finished by giving the combination dial not just one but two spins, as per her dead husband's instructions. As she did, the lights went out. For a moment some primitive part of her was certain she had blown them just by giving the dial that extra spin.

  Then she realized that the generator out back had died.

  6

  When Junior came in at five minutes past six on Tuesday morning, his pale cheeks stubbly, his hair standing up in haystacks, Big Jim was sitting at the kitchen table in a white bathrobe the approximate size of a clipper ship's mainsail. He was drinking a Coke.

  Junior nodded at it. "A good day starts with a good breakfast."

  Big Jim raised the can, took a swallow, and set it down. "There's no coffee. Well, there is, but there's no electricity. The generator's out of LP. Grab yourself a pop, why don't you? They're still fairly cold, and you look like you could use it."

  Junior opened the fridge and peered into its dark interior. "Am I supposed to believe you couldn't score some bottled gas anytime you wanted it?"

  Big Jim started a little at that, then relaxed. It was a reasonable question, and didn't mean Junior knew anything. The guilty man flees where none pursueth, Big Jim reminded himself.

  "Let's just say it might not be politic at this point in time."

  "Uh-huh."

  Junior closed the refrigerator door and sat down on the other side of the table. He looked at his old man with a certain hollow amusement (which Big Jim mistook for affection).

  The family that slays together stays together, Junior thought. At least for the time being. As long as it's ...

  "Politic," he said.

  Big Jim nodded and studied his son, who was supplementing his early-morning beverage with a Big Jerk beefstick.