Under the Dome

Piper got the bottle of Poland Spring out of the center console and took off the cap. The woman snatched it from her before Piper could offer it, and drank greedily, water overspilling the neck and dripping off her chin to darken the top of her tee-shirt.

“What’s your name?” Piper asked.

“Sammy Bushey.” And then, even as her stomach cramped from the water, that black rose began to open in front of Sammy’s eyes again. The bottle dropped out of her hand and fell to the floormat, gurgling, as she passed out.

Piper drove as fast as she could, which was pretty fast, since Motton Road remained deserted, but when she got to the hospital, she discovered that Dr. Haskell had died the day before and the physician’s assistant, Everett, was not there.

Sammy was examined and admitted by that famed medical expert, Dougie Twitchell.

8

While Ginny was trying to stop Sammy Bushey’s vaginal bleeding and Twitch was giving the badly dehydrated Little Walter IV fluids, Rusty Everett was sitting quietly on a park bench at the Town Hall edge of the common. The bench was beneath the spreading arms of a tall blue spruce, and he thought he was in shade deep enough to render him effectively invisible. As long as he didn’t move around much, that was.

There were interesting things to look at.

He had planned to go directly to the storage building behind the Town Hall (Twitch had called it a shed, but the long wooden building, which also housed The Mill’s four snowplows, was actually quite a bit grander than that) and check the propane situation there, but then one of the police cars pulled up, with Frankie DeLesseps at the wheel. Junior Rennie had emerged from the passenger side. The two had spoken for a moment or two, then DeLesseps had driven away.

Junior went up the PD steps, but instead of going in, he sat down there, rubbing his temples as if he had a headache. Rusty decided to wait. He didn’t want to be seen checking up on the town’s energy supply, especially not by the Second Selectman’s son.

At one point Junior took his cell phone out of his pocket, flipped it open, listened, said something, listened some more, said something else, then flipped it closed again. He went back to rubbing his temples. Dr. Haskell had said something about that young man. Migraine headaches, was it? It certainly looked like a migraine. It wasn’t just the temple-rubbing; it was the way he was keeping his head down.

Trying to minimize the glare, Rusty thought. Must have left his Imitrex or Zomig home. Assuming Haskell prescribed it, that is.

Rusty had half-risen, meaning to cut across Commonwealth Lane to the rear of the Town Hall—Junior clearly not being at his most observant—but then he spotted someone else and sat down again. Dale Barbara, the short-order cook who had reputedly been elevated to the rank of colonel (by the President himself, according to some), was standing beneath the marquee of the Globe, even deeper in the shadows than Rusty was himself. And Barbara also appeared to be keeping an eye on young Mr. Rennie.

Interesting.

Barbara apparently came to the conclusion that Rusty had already drawn: Junior wasn’t watching but waiting. Possibly for someone to pick him up. Barbara hustled across the street and—once he was blocked from Junior’s potential view by the Town Hall itself—paused to scan the message board out front. Then he went inside.

Rusty decided to sit where he was awhile longer. It was nice under the tree, and he was curious about whom Junior might be waiting for. People were still straggling back from Dipper’s (some would have stayed much longer had the booze been flowing). Most of them, like the young man sitting on the steps over yonder, had their heads down. Not in pain, Rusty surmised, but in dejection. Or maybe they were the same. It was certainly a point to ponder.

Now here came a boxy black gas-gobbler Rusty knew well: Big Jim Rennie’s Hummer. It honked impatiently at a trio of townsfolk who were walking in the street, shunting them aside like sheep.

The Hummer pulled in at the PD. Junior looked up but didn’t stand up. The doors opened. Andy Sanders got out from behind the wheel, Rennie from the passenger side. Rennie, allowing Sanders to drive his beloved black pearl? Sitting on his bench, Rusty raised his eyebrows. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone but Big Jim himself behind the wheel of that monstrosity. Maybe he’s decided to promote Andy from dogsbody to chauffeur, he thought, but when he watched Big Jim mount the steps to where his son still sat, he changed his mind.