Under the Dome, Page 73

  Big Jim was fully dressed and sitting by the window with his phone to his ear, even though the sign on the wall showed a bright red cell phone with a red X over it for the reading-impaired. Rusty thought it would give him great pleasure to order Big Jim to terminate his call. It might not be the most politic way to start what was going to be a combination exam-discussion, but he meant to do it. He started forward, then stopped. Cold.

  A clear memory arose: not being able to sleep, getting up for a piece of Linda's cranberry-orange bread, hearing Audrey whining softly from the girls' room. Going down there to check the Js. Sitting on Jannie's bed beneath Hannah Montana, her guardian angel.

  Why had this memory been so slow in coming? Why not during his meeting with Big Jim, in Big Jim's home study?

  Because then I didn't know about the murders; I was fixated on the propane. And because Janelle wasn't having a seizure, she was just in REM sleep. Talking in her sleep.

  He has a golden baseball, Daddy. It's a bad baseball.

  Even last night, in the mortuary, that memory hadn't resurfaced. Only now, when it was half-past too late.

  But think what it means: that gadget up on Black Ridge may only be putting out limited radiation, but it's broadcasting something else. Call it induced precognition, call it something that doesn't even have a name, but whatever you call it, it's there. And if Jannie was right about the golden baseball, then all the kids who've been making Sybil-like pronouncements about a Halloween disaster may be right, too. But does it mean on that exact day? Or could it be earlier?

  Rusty thought the latter. For a townful of kids overexcited about trick-or-treating, it was Halloween already.

  "I don't care what you've got on, Stewart," Big Jim was saying. Three milligrams of Valium didn't seem to have mellowed him out; he sounded as fabulously grumpy as ever. "You and Fernald get up there, and take Roger with y ... huh? What?" He listened. "I shouldn't even have to tell you. Haven't you been watching the cotton-picking TV? If he gives you any sass, you--"

  He looked up and saw Rusty in the doorway. For just a moment Big Jim had the startled look of a man replaying his conversation and trying to decide how much the newcomer might have overheard.

  "Stewart, someone's here. I'll get back to you, and when I do, you better tell me what I want to hear." He broke the connection without saying goodbye, held the phone up to Rusty, and bared his small upper teeth in a smile. "I know, I know, very naughty, but town business won't wait." He sighed. "It's not easy to be the one every-body's depending on, especially when you're not feeling well."

  "Must be difficult," Rusty agreed.

  "God helps me. Would you like to know the philosophy I live by, pal?"

  No. "Sure."

  "When God closes a door, He opens a window."

  "Do you think so?"

  "I know so. And the one thing I always try to remember is that when you pray for what you want, God turns a deaf ear. But when you pray for what you need, He's all ears."

  "Uh-huh." Rusty entered the lounge. On the wall, the TV was tuned to CNN. The sound was muted, but there was a still photo of James Rennie, Sr., looming behind the talking head: black-and-white, not flattering. One of Big Jim's fingers was raised, and so was his upper lip. Not in a smile, but in a remarkably canine sneer. The super beneath read WAS DOME TOWN DRUG HAVEN? The picture switched to a Jim Rennie used car ad, the annoying one that always ended with one of the salespeople (never Big Jim himself) screaming "You'll be WHEELIN, because Big Jim's DEALIN!"

  Big Jim gestured to it and smiled sadly. "You see what Barbara's friends on the outside are doing to me? Well, what's the surprise? When Christ came to redeem mankind, they made him carry His own cross to Calvary Hill, where He died in blood and dust."

  Rusty reflected, and not for the first time, what a strange drug Valium was. He didn't know if there really was veritas in vino, but there was plenty of it in Valium. When you gave it to people--especially by IV--you often heard exactly what they thought of themselves.

  Rusty pulled up a chair and readied the stethoscope for action. "Lift your shirt." When Big Jim put down his cell phone to do it, Rusty slipped it into his breast pocket. "I'll just take this, shall I? I'll leave it at the lobby desk. That's an okay area for cell phones. The chairs aren't as well padded as these, but they're still not bad."

  He expected Big Jim to protest, maybe explode, but he didn't so much as peep, only exposed a bulging Bhudda-belly and large soft manbreasts above it. Rusty bent forward and had a listen. It was far better than he'd expected. He would have been happy with a hundred and ten beats a minute plus moderate premature ventriculation. Instead, Big Jim's pump was loping along at ninety, with no misbeats at all.

  "I'm feeling a lot better," Big Jim said. "It was stress. I've been under terrible stress. I'm going to take another hour or two to rest right here--do you realize you can see all of downtown from this window, pal?--and I'm going to visit with Junior one more time. After that I'll just check myself out and--"

  "It isn't just stress. You're overweight and out of shape."

  Big Jim bared his upper teeth in that bogus smile. "I've been running a business and a town, pal--both in the black, by the way. That leaves little time for treadmills and StairMasters and such."

  "You presented with PAT two years ago, Rennie. That's paroxysmal atrial tachycardia."

  "I know what it is. I went to WebMD and it said healthy people often experience--"

  "Ron Haskell told you in no uncertain terms to get your weight under control, to get the arrhythmia under control with medication, and if medication wasn't effective, to explore surgical options to correct the underlying problem."

  Big Jim had begun to look like an unhappy child imprisoned in a highchair. "God told me not to! God said no pacemaker! And God was right! Duke Perkins had a pacemaker, and look what happened to him!"

  "Not to mention his widow," Rusty said softly. "Bad luck for her, too. She must have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time."

  Big Jim regarded him, little pig eyes calculating. Then he looked up at the ceiling. "Lights are on again, aren't they? I got you your propane, like you asked. Some people don't have much gratitude. Of course a man in my position gets used to that."

  "We'll be out again by tomorrow night."

  Big Jim shook his head. "By tomorrow night you'll have enough LP to keep this place running until Christmas if it's necessary. It's my promise to you for having such a wonderful bedside manner and being such an all-around good fellow."

  "I do have trouble being grateful when people return what was mine to begin with. I'm funny that way."

  "Oh, so now you're equating yourself with the hospital?" Big Jim snorted.

  "Why not? You just equated yourself with Christ. Let's return to your medical situation, shall we?"

  Big Jim flapped his large, blunt-fingered hands disgustedly.

  "Valium isn't a cure. If you walk out of here, you could be firing misbeats again by five PM. Or just vaporlock completely. The bright side is that you could be meeting your savior before it gets dark here in town."

  "And what would you recommend?" Rennie spoke calmly. He had regained his composure.

  "I could give you something that would probably take care of the problem, at least short-term. It's a drug."

  "What drug?"

  "But there's a price."

  "I knew it," Big Jim said softly. "I knew you were on Barbara's side the day you came to my office with your give me this and give me that."

  The only thing Rusty had asked for was propane, but he ignored that. "How did you know Barbara had a side then? The murders hadn't been discovered, so how did you know he had a side?"

  Big Jim's eyes gleamed with amusement or paranoia or both. "I have my little ways, pal. So what's the price? What would you like me to trade you for the drug that will keep me from having a heart attack?" And before Rusty could respond: "Let me guess. You want Barbara's freedom, don't you?"

  "No. This town would lynch hi
m the minute he stepped outside."

  Big Jim laughed. "Every now and then you show a lick of sense."

  "I want you to step down. Sanders, too. Let Andrea Grinnell take over, with Julia Shumway to help her out until Andi kicks her drug habit."

  Big Jim laughed louder this time, and slapped his thigh for good measure. "I thought Cox was bad--he wanted the one with the big tiddies to help Andrea--but you're ever so much worse. Shumway! That rhymes-with-witch couldn't administrate herself out of a paper bag!"

  "I know you killed Coggins."

  He hadn't meant to say that, but it was out before he could pull it back. And what harm? It was just the two of them, unless you counted CNN's John Roberts, looking down from the TV on the wall. And besides, the results were worth it. For the first time since he had accepted the reality of the Dome, Big Jim was rocked. He tried to keep his face neutral and failed.

  "You're crazy."

  "You know I'm not. Last night I went to the Bowie Funeral Home and examined the bodies of the four murder victims."

  "You had no right to do that! You're no pathologist! You're not even a cotton-picking doctor !"

  "Relax, Rennie. Count to ten. Remember your heart." Rusty paused. "On second thought, fuck your heart. After the mess you left behind, and the one you're making now, fuck your heart. There were marks all over Coggins's face and head. Very atypical marks, but easily identifiable. Stitch marks. I have no doubt they'll match the souvenir baseball I saw on your desk."

  "That doesn't mean anything." But Rennie glanced toward the open bathroom door.

  "It means plenty. Especially when you consider the other bodies were dumped in the same place. To me that suggests the killer of Coggins was the killer of the others. I think it was you. Or maybe you and Junior. Were you a father-and-son tag-team? Was that it?"

  "I refuse to listen to this!" He started to get up. Rusty pushed him back down. It was surprisingly easy.

  "Stay where you are!" Rennie shouted. "Gosh-dammit, just stay where you are!"

  Rusty said, "Why did you kill him? Did he threaten to blow the whistle on your drug operation? Was he part of it?"

  "Stay where you are!" Rennie repeated, although Rusty had already sat back down. It did not occur to him--then--that Rennie might not have been speaking to him.

  "I can keep this quiet," Rusty said. "And I can give you something that will take care of your PAT better than Valium. The quid pro quo is that you step down. Announce your resignation--for medical reasons--in favor of Andrea tomorrow night at the big meeting. You'll go out a hero."

  There was no way he could refuse, Rusty thought; the man was backed into a corner.

  Rennie turned to the open bathroom door again and said, "Now you can come out."

  Carter Thibodeau and Freddy Denton emerged from the bathroom where they had been hiding--and listening.

  8

  "Goddam," Stewart Bowie said.

  He and his brother were in the basement workroom of the funeral parlor. Stewart had been doing a makeup job on Arletta Coombs, The Mill's latest suicide and the Bowie Funeral Home's latest customer. "Goddam sonofabitch fucking shitmonkey. "

  He dropped his cell phone onto the counter, and from the wide front pocket of his rubberized green apron removed a package of peanut butter-flavored Ritz Bits. Stewart always ate when he was upset, he had always been messy with food ("The pigs ate here," their dad was wont to say when young Stewie left the table), and now Ritz crumbs showered down on Arletta's upturned face, which was far from peaceful; if she'd thought quaffing Liquid-Plumr would be a quick and painless way to escape the Dome, she had been badly deceived. Darn stuff had eaten all the way through her stomach and out through her back.

  "What's wrong?" Fern asked.

  "Why did I ever get involved with fucking Rennie?"

  "For money?"

  "What good's money now?" Stewart raved. "What'm I gonna do, go on a fuckin shopping spree at Burpee's Department Store? That'd give me a fuckin hardon for sure!"

  He yanked open the elderly widow's mouth and slammed the remaining Ritz Bits inside. "There you go, bitch, it's fucking snack-time."

  Stewart snatched up his cell, hit the CONTACTS button, and selected a number. "If he isn't there," he said--perhaps to Fern, more likely to himself--"I'm going to go out there, find him, and stick one of his own chickens right up his fucking a--"

  But Roger Killian was there. And in his goddam chickenhouse. Stewart could hear them clucking. He could also hear the swooping violins of Mantovani coming through the chickenhouse sound system. When the kids were out there, it was Metallica or Pantera.

  "Lo?"

  "Roger. It's Stewie. Are you straight, brother?"

  "Pretty," Roger agreed, which probably meant he'd been smoking glass, but what the fuck.

  "Get down here to town. Meet me n Fern at the motor pool. We're gonna take two of the big trucks--the ones with the hoists--out there to WCIK. All the propane's got to be moved back to town. We can't do it in one day, but Jim says we gotta make a start. Tomorrow I'll recruit six or seven more guys we can trust--some of Jim's goddam private army, if he'll spare em--and we'll finish up."

  "Aw, Stewart, no--I got to feed these chickens! The boys I got left has all gone to be cops!"

  Which means, Stewart thought, you want to sit in that little office of yours, smoking glass and listening to shit music and looking at lesbian makeout videos on your computer. He didn't know how you could get horny with the aroma of chickenshit so thick you could cut it with a knife, but Roger Killian managed.

  "This is not a volunteer mission, my brother. I got ordered, and I'm ordering you. Half an hour. And if you do happen to see any of your kids hanging around, you shanghai em along."

  He hung up before Roger could recommence his whiny shit and for a moment just stood there, fuming. The last thing on earth he wanted to do with what remained of this Wednesday afternoon was muscle propane tanks into trucks ... but that was what he was going to be doing, all right. Yes he was.

  He snatched the spray hose from the sink, stuck it between Arletta Coombs's dentures, and triggered it. It was a high-pressure hose, and the corpse jumped on the table. "Wash them crackers down, gramma," he snarled. "Wouldn't want you to choke."

  "Stop!" Fern cried. "It'll squirt out the hole in her--"

  Too late.

  9

  Big Jim looked at Rusty with a see what it gets you smile. Then he turned to Carter and Freddy Denton. "Did you fellows hear Mr. Everett try to coerce me?"

  "We sure did," Freddy said.

  "Did you hear him threaten to withhold certain lifesaving medication if I refused to step down?"

  "Yeah," Carter said, and favored Rusty with a black look. Rusty wondered how he ever could have been so stupid.

  It's been a long day--chalk it up to that.

  "The medication in question might have been a drug called verapamil, which that fellow with the long hair administered by IV." Big Jim exposed his small teeth in another unpleasant smile.

  Verapamil. For the first time, Rusty cursed himself for not taking Big Jim's chart from its slot on the door and examining it. It would not be the last.

  "What kind of crimes have we got here, do you suppose?" Big Jim asked. "Criminal threatening?"

  "Sure, and extortion," Freddy said.

  "Hell with that, it was attempted murder," Carter said.

  "And who do you suppose put him up to it?"

  "Barbie," Carter said, and slugged Rusty in the mouth. Rusty had no sense of it coming, and didn't even begin to get his guard up. He staggered backward, hit one of the chairs, and fell into it sideways with his mouth bleeding.

  "You got that resisting arrest," Big Jim remarked. "But it's not enough. Put him on the floor, fellows. I want him on the floor."

  Rusty tried to run but barely got out of the chair before Carter grabbed one of his arms and spun him around. Freddy put a foot behind his legs. Carter pushed. Like kids in the schoolyard, Rusty thought as he toppled over.r />
  Carter dropped down beside him. Rusty got in one blow. It landed on Carter's left cheek. Carter shook it off impatiently, like a man ridding himself of a troublesome fly. A moment later he was sitting on Rusty's chest, grinning down at him. Yes, just like in the schoolyard, only with no playground monitor to break things up.

  He turned his head to Rennie, who was now on his feet. "You don't want to do this," he panted. His heart was thudding hard. He could barely get enough breath to feed it. Thibodeau was very heavy. Freddy Denton was on his knees beside the two of them. To Rusty he looked like the ref in one of those put-up-job wrestling matches.

  "But I do, Everett," Big Jim said. "In fact, God bless you, I have to. Freddy, snag my cell phone. It's in his breast pocket, and I don't want it getting broken. The cotton-picker stole it. You can add that to his bill when you get him to the station."

  "Other people know," Rusty said. He had never felt so helpless. And so stupid. Telling himself that he wasn't the first to underestimate James Rennie Senior did not help. "Other people know what you did."

  "Perhaps," Big Jim said. "But who are they? Other friends of Dale Barbara, that's who. The ones who started the food riot, the ones who burned down the newspaper office. The ones who set the Dome going in the first place, I have no doubt. Some sort of government experiment, that's what I think. But we're not rats in a box, are we? Are we, Carter?"

  "No."

  "Freddy, what are you waiting for?"

  Freddy had been listening to Big Jim with an expression that said Now I get it. He took Big Jim's cell phone from Rusty's breast pocket and tossed it onto one of the sofas. Then he turned back to Rusty. "How long have you been planning it? How long you been planning to lock us up in town so you could see what we'd do?"

  "Freddy, listen to yourself," Rusty said. The words came out in a wheeze. God, but Thibodeau was heavy. "That's crazy. It makes no sense. Can't you see th--"

  "Hold his hand on the floor," Big Jim said. "The left one." Freddy did as he was ordered. Rusty tried to fight, but with Thibodeau pinning his arms, he had no leverage.

  "I'm sorry to do this, pal, but the people of this town have to understand we're in control of the terrorist element."