Under the Dome

She laughed as she had spoken: softly. “Hope I didn’t scare you.”

“A little. I was silencing my cell phone, and then there you were.”

“Sorry. Come on inside. Linda’s waiting. We don’t have much time. I’m going to stand watch out front. I’ll give Lin a double-click on her walkie if someone comes. If it’s the Bowies, they’ll park in the side lot and we can drive out on East Street unnoticed.” She cocked her head a little and smiled. “Well… that’s a tad optimistic, but at least unidentified. If we’re lucky.”

Rusty followed her, navigating by the cloudy beacon of her hair. “Did you break in, Stacey?”

“Hell, no. There was a key at the cop-shop. Most of the businesses on Main Street give us keys.”

“And why are you in on this?”

“Because it’s all fear-driven bullshit. Duke Perkins would have put a stop to it long ago. Now come on. And make this fast.”

“I can’t promise that. In fact, I can’t promise anything. I’m not a pathologist.”

“Fast as you can, then.”

Rusty followed her inside. A moment later, Linda’s arms were around him.

9

Harriet Bigelow screamed twice, then fainted. Gina Buffalino only stared, glassy with shock. “Get Gina out of here,” Thurse snapped. He had gotten as far as the parking lot, heard the shots, and come running back. To find this. This slaughter.

Ginny put an arm around Gina’s shoulders and led her back into the hall, where the patients who were ambulatory—this included Bill Allnut and Tansy Freeman—were standing, big-eyed and frightened.

“Get this one out of the way,” Thurse told Twitch, pointing at Harriet. “And pull her skirt down, give the poor girl some modesty.”

Twitch did as he was told. When he and Ginny reentered the room, Thurse was kneeling by the body of Frank DeLesseps, who had died because he’d come in place of Georgia’s boyfriend and over-stayed visiting hours. Thurse had flapped the sheet over Georgia, and it was already blooming with blood-poppies.

“Is there anything we can do, Doctor?” Ginny asked. She knew he wasn’t a doctor, but in her shock it came automatically. She was looking down at Frank’s sprawled body, and her hand was over her mouth.

“Yes.” Thurse rose and his bony knees cracked like pistol shots. “Call the police. This is a crime scene.”

“All the ones on duty will be fighting that fire downstreet,” Twitch said. “Those who aren’t will either be on their way or sleeping with their phones turned off.”

“Well call somebody, for the love of Jesus, and find out if we’re supposed to do anything before we clean up the mess. Take photographs, or I don’t know what. Not that there’s much doubt about what happened. You’ll have to excuse me for a minute. I’m going to vomit.”

Ginny stood aside so Thurston could go into the tiny WC attached to the room. He closed the door, but the sound of his retching was still loud, the sound of a revving engine with dirt caught in it somewhere.

Ginny felt a wave of faintness rush through her head, seeming to lift her and make her light. She fought it off. When she looked back at Twitch, he was just closing his cell phone. “No answer from Rusty,” he said. “I left a voice mail. Anyone else? What about Rennie?”

“No!” She almost shuddered. “Not him.”

“My sister? Andi, I mean?”

Ginny only looked at him.

Twitch looked back for a moment, then dropped his eyes. “Maybe not,” he mumbled.

Ginny touched him above the wrist. His skin was cold with shock. She supposed her own was, too. “If it’s any comfort,” she said, “I think she’s trying to get clean. She came to see Rusty, and I’m pretty sure that was what it was about.”

Twitch ran his hands down the sides of his face, turning it for a moment into an opéra bouffe mask of sorrow. “This is a nightmare.”

“Yes,” Ginny said simply. Then she took out her cell phone again.

“Who you gonna call?” Twitch managed a little smile. “Ghost-busters?”

“No. If Andi and Big Jim are out, who does that leave?”

“Sanders, but he’s dogshit-useless and you know it. Why don’t we just clean up the mess? Thurston’s right, what happened here is obvious.”

Thurston came out of the bathroom. He was wiping his mouth with a paper towel. “Because there are rules, young man. And under the circumstances, it’s more important than ever that we follow them. Or at least give it the good old college try.”

Twitch looked up and saw Sammy Bushey’s brains drying high on one wall. What she had used to think with now looked like a clot of oatmeal. He burst into tears.

10

Andy Sanders was sitting in Dale Barbara’s apartment, on the side of Dale Barbara’s bed. The window was filled with orange fireglare from the burning Democrat building next door. From above him he heard footsteps and muffled voices—men on the roof, he assumed.