Under the Dome

A picture was forming. Not a pretty one. A lot of new cops, very young cops, sworn in less than forty-eight hours ago and already running wild. The sort of license they had exhibited with Sammy Bushey and Thurston Marshall wouldn’t spread to veteran cops like Henry Morrison and Jackie Wettington—at least she didn’t think so—but to Fred Denton? Toby Whelan? Maybe. Probably. With Duke in charge, those guys had been all right. Not great, the kind of guys apt to lip you unnecessarily after a traffic stop, but all right. Certainly the best the town’s budget could afford. But her mother had been wont to say, “You buy cheap, you get cheap.” And with Peter Randolph in charge—

Something had to be done.

Only she had to control her temper. If she didn’t, it would control her.

She took the leash from the peg by the door. Clover was up at once, tail swishing, ears perked, eyes bright.

“Come on, you big lug. We’re going to lodge a complaint.”

Her shepherd was still licking Fig Newton crumbs from the side of his muzzle as she led him out the door.

8

Walking across the town common with Clover heeling neatly to her right, Piper felt she did have her temper under control. She felt that way until she heard the laughter. It came as she and Clove were approaching the police station. She observed the very fellows whose names she had gotten out of Sammy Bushey: DeLesseps, Thibodeau, Searles. Georgia Roux was also present, Georgia who had egged them on, according to Sammy: Do that bitch. Freddy Denton was there too. They were sitting at the top of the stone PD steps, drinking sodas, gassing among themselves. Duke Perkins never would have allowed such a thing, and Piper reflected that if he could see them from wherever he was, he’d be rolling in his grave fast enough to set his own remains on fire.

Mel Searles said something and they all broke up again, laughing and backslapping. Thibodeau had his arm around the Roux girl, the tips of his fingers on the sideswell of her breast. She said something, and they all laughed harder.

It came to Piper that they were laughing about the rape—what a goldurn good old time it had been—and after that, her father’s advice never had a chance. The Piper who ministered to the poor and the sick, who officiated at marryings and buryings, who preached charity and tolerance on Sundays, was pushed rudely to the back of her mind, where she could only watch as though through a warped and wavery pane of glass. It was the other Piper who took over, the one who had trashed her room at fifteen, crying tears of rage rather than sorrow.

There was a slate-paved square known as War Memorial Plaza between the Town Hall and the newer brick PD building. At its center was a statue of Ernie Calvert’s father, Lucien Calvert, who had been awarded a posthumous Silver Star for heroic action in Korea. The names of other Chester’s Mill war dead, going all the way back to the Civil War, were engraved on the statue’s base. There were also two flagpoles, the Stars and Stripes at the top of one and the state flag, with its farmer, sailor, and moose, at the top of the other. Both hung limp in the reddening light of oncoming sunset. Piper Libby passed between the poles like a woman in a dream, Clover still heeling behind her right knee with his ears up.

The “officers” atop the steps burst into another hearty roar of laughter, and she thought of trolls in one of the fairy stories her dad had sometimes read her. Trolls in a cave, gloating over piles of ill-gotten gold. Then they saw her and quieted.

“Good evenin, Rev’run,” Mel Searles said, and got up, giving his belt a self-important little hitch as he did so. Standing in the presence of a lady, Piper thought. Did his mother teach him that? Probably. The fine art of rape he probably learned somewhere else.

He was still smiling as she reached the steps, but then it faltered and grew tentative, so he must have seen her expression. Just what that expression might be she didn’t know. From the inside, her face felt frozen. Immobile.

She saw the biggest of them watching her closely. Thibodeau, his face as immobile as hers felt. He’s like Clover, she thought. He smells it on me. The rage.

“Rev’run?” Mel asked. “Everything okay? There a problem?”

She mounted the steps, not fast, not slow, Clover still heeling neatly behind her right knee. “You bet there’s a problem,” she said, looking up at him.

“What—”

“You,” she said. “You’re the problem.”