Under the Dome

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 galoriurn 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 eventually - 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 Cafe. 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.'

'I don't have a husband,' Jackie said - quite reasonably, Julia thought, and lucky for her; husbands were so often a complicating factor. 'But I do know a place we can go. It's private, and always unlocked.' She considered. 'At least it was. Since the Dome, I dunno.'

Julia, who had just been considering whom to interview first, had no intention of letting these two slip away. 'Come on,' she said. 'We'll walk on opposite sides of the street until we're past the police station, shall we?'

At this, Linda managed a smile. 'What a good idea,' she said.

2

Piper Libby lowered herself carefully in front of the altar of the First Congo Church, wincing even though she had put down a pew-pad for her bruised and swollen knees. She braced herself with her right hand, holding her recently dislocated left arm against her side. It seemed okay - less painful than her knees, in fact - but she had no intention of testing it unnecessarily. It would be all too easy to get it out of joint again; she had been informed of that (sternly) after her soccer injury in high school. She folded her hands and closed her eyes. Immediately her tongue went to the hole where there; had been a tooth up until yesterday. But there was a worse hole in her life.

'Hello, Not-There,' she said. 'It's me again, back for another helping of Your love and mercy.' A tear trickled from beneath one swollen eyelid and ran down one swollen (not to mention colorful) cheek, 'Is my dog anywhere around? I only ask because I miss him so much. If he is, I hope you'll give him the spiritual equivalent of a chewbone. He deserves one.'

More tears now, slow and hot and stinging.

'Probably he's not. Most major religions agree that dogs don't go td heaven, although certain offshoot sects - and the Reader's Digest, I believe - disagree.'