Under the Dome

“I thought Rennie was actually going to have our new Chief arrest you,” Pete said. He was big-eyed and at that moment looked much younger than his thirtysomething years.

“I was hoping.” Julia framed an invisible headline with her hands. “DEMOCRAT REPORTER SCORES EXCLUSIVE JAILHOUSE INTERVIEW WITH ACCUSED MURDERER.”

“Julia? What’s going on here? Aside from the Dome, that is? Did you see all those guys filling out forms? It was kinda scary.”

“I saw it,” Julia said, “and I intend to write about it. I intend to write about all this. And at town meeting on Thursday night, I don’t think I’ll be the only one with serious questions for James Rennie.”

She laid a hand on Pete’s arm.

“I’m going to see what I can find out about these murders, then I’ll write what I have. Plus an editorial as strong as I can make it without rabble-rousing.” She uttered a humorless bark of laughter. “When it comes to rousing rabble, Jim Rennie’s got the home court advantage.”

“I don’t understand what you—”

“That’s okay, just get busy. I need a couple of minutes to get hold of myself. Then maybe I can figure out who to talk to first. Because there isn’t a helluva lot of time, if we’re going to go to press tonight.”

“Photocopier,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Go to photocopier tonight.”

She gave him a shaky smile and shooed him on his way. At the door to the newspaper office he looked back. She tossed him a wave to show she was okay, then peered through the dusty window of the bookstore. The downtown movie theater had been shut for half a decade, and the drive-in outside of town was long gone (Rennie’s auxiliary car lot stood where its big screen had once towered over 119), but somehow Ray Towle had kept this dirty little emporium galorium crutching along. Part of the window display consisted of self-help books. The rest of the window was heaped with paperbacks featuring fogbound mansions, ladies in distress, and barechested hunks both afoot and on horseback. Several of said hunks were waving swords and appeared to be dressed in just their underpants. GET THE HOTS FOR DARK PLOTS! the sign on this side read.

Dark plots indeed.

If the Dome wasn’t bad enough, weird enough, there’s the Selectman from Hell.

What worried her the most, she realized—what scared her the most—was how fast this was happening. Rennie had gotten used to being the biggest, meanest rooster in the farmyard, and she would have expected him to try to strengthen his hold on the town even-tually—say after a week or a month cut off from the outside world. But this was only three days and change. Suppose Cox and his scientists cracked through the Dome tonight? Suppose it even disappeared on its own? Big Jim would immediately shrink back to his former size, only he’d have egg on his face, too.

“What egg?” she asked herself, still looking in at the DARK PLOTS. “He’d just say he was doing the best he could under trying circumstances. And they’d believe him.”

That was probably true. But it still didn’t explain why the man hadn’t waited to make his move.

Because something went wrong and he had to. Also—

“Also, I don’t think he’s completely sane,” she told the heaped-up paperbacks. “I don’t think he ever was.”

Even if true, how did you explain people who still had fully stocked pantries rioting at the local supermarket? It made no sense, unless—

“Unless he instigated it.”

That was ridiculous, the Blue Plate Special at the Paranoid Café. Wasn’t it? She supposed she could ask some of the people who’d been at Food City what they’d seen, but weren’t the murders more important? She was the only real reporter she had, after all, and—

“Julia? Ms. Shumway?”

Julia was so deep in thought she almost lifted out of her loafers. She wheeled around and might have fallen if Jackie Wettington hadn’t steadied her. Linda Everett was with her, and it was she who had spoken. They both looked scared.

“Can we talk to you?” Jackie asked.

“Of course. Listening to people talk is what I do. The downside is that I write what they say. You ladies know that, don’t you?”

“But you can’t use our names,” Linda said. “If you don’t agree to that, forget the whole thing.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” Julia said, smiling, “you two are just a source close to the investigation. Does that work?”

“If you promise to answer our questions, too,” Jackie said. “Will you?”

“All right.”

“You were at the supermarket, weren’t you?” Linda asked. Curiouser and curiouser.

“Yes. So were you two. So let’s talk. Compare notes.”

“Not here,” Linda said. “Not on the street. It’s too public. And not at the newspaper office, either.”

“Take it easy, Lin,” Jackie said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“You take it easy,” Linda said. “You’re not the one with the husband who thinks you just helped railroad an innocent man.”