Under the Dome

As he went up the stairs, Barbie observed that Junior was limping a tiny bit—or dragging. That was it, dragging to the left and pulling on the banister with his right hand to compensate. He wondered what Rusty Everett would think about such symptoms. He wondered if he’d ever get a chance to ask.

Barbie considered the unsigned confession. He would have liked to tear it up and scatter the pieces on the floor outside the cell, but that would be an unnecessary provocation. He was between the cat’s claws now, and the best thing he could do was be still. He put the paper on the bunk and the pen on top of it. Then he picked up the glass of water. Salt. Seeded with salt. He could smell it. Which made him think about how Chester’s Mill was now… only hadn’t it already been this way? Even before the Dome? Hadn’t Big Jim and his friends been seeding the ground with salt for some time now? Barbie thought yes. He also thought that if he got out of this police station alive, it would be a miracle.

Nonetheless, they were amateurs at this; they had forgotten the toilet. Probably none of them had ever been in a country where even a little ditchwater could look good when you were carrying ninety pounds of equipment and the temperature was forty-six Celsius. Barbie poured out the salt water in the corner of the cell. Then he pissed in the glass and set it under the bunk. Then he knelt in front of the toilet bowl like a man at his prayers and drank until he could feel his belly bulging.

13

Linda was sitting on the front steps when Rusty pulled up. In the backyard, Jackie Wettington was pushing the Little Js on the swings and the girls were urging her to push harder and send them higher.

Linda came to him with her arms out. She kissed his mouth, drew back to look at him, then kissed him again with her hands on his cheeks and her mouth open. He felt the brief, humid touch of her tongue, and immediately began to get hard. She felt it and pressed against it.

“Wow,” he said. “We should fight in public more often. And if you don’t stop that, we’ll be doing something else in public.”

“We’ll do it, but not in public. First—do I need to say again that I’m sorry?”

“No.”

She took his hand and led him back to the steps. “Good. Because we’ve got stuff to talk about. Serious stuff.”

He put his other hand over hers. “I’m listening.”

She told him about what had happened at the station—Julia being turned away after Andy Sanders had been allowed down to confront the prisoner. She told about going to the church so she and Jackie could talk to Julia in private, and the later conversation at the parsonage, with Piper Libby and Rommie Burpee added to the mix. When she told him about the beginning rigor they had observed in Brenda Perkins’s body, Rusty’s ears pricked up.

“Jackie!” he called. “How sure are you about the rigor?”

“Pretty!” she called back.

“Hi, Daddy!” Judy called. “Me’n Jannie’s gonna loop the loop!”

“No you’re not,” Rusty called back, and stood to blow kisses from the palms of his hands. Each girl caught one; when it came to kiss-catching, they were aces.

“What time did you see the bodies, Lin?”

“Around ten-thirty, I think. The supermarket mess was long over.”

“And if Jackie’s right about the rigor just setting in… but we can’t be absolutely sure of that, can we?”

“No, but listen. I talked with Rose Twitchell. Barbara got to Sweetbriar at ten minutes to six. From then until the bodies were discovered, he’s alibied. So he would’ve had to kill her when? Five? Five thirty? How likely is that, if rigor was just setting in five hours later?”

“Not likely but not impossible. Rigor mortis is affected by all sorts of variables. The temperature of the body-storage site, for one. How hot was it in that pantry?”

“Warm,” she admitted, then crossed her arms over her breasts and cupped her shoulders. “Warm and smelly. ”

“See what I mean? Under those circumstances, he could have killed her someplace at four AM, then taken her there and stuffed her into the—”

“I thought you were on his side.”

“I am, and it’s really not likely, because the pantry would have been much cooler at four in the morning. Why would he have been with Brenda at four in the morning, anyway? What would the cops say? That he was boffing her? Even if older women—much older—were his thing… three days after her husband of thirty-plus years was killed?”

“They’d say it wasn’t consensual,” she told him bleakly. “They’d say it was rape. Same as they’re already saying for those two girls.”

“And Coggins?”

“If they’re framing him, they’ll think of something.”

“Is Julia going to print all this?”

“She’s going to write the story and raise some questions, but she’ll hold back the stuff about rigor being in the early stages. Randolph might be too stupid to figure out where that information came from, but Rennie would know.”

“It could still be dangerous,” Rusty said. “If they muzzle her, she can’t exactly go to the ACLU.”