Under the Dome

Rusty motioned her back. It was all a charade, anyway. He knew it, and guessed Linda did, too. Yet he didn't feel depressed. He had wanted a medical career ever since boyhood, would certainly have been a doctor if he hadn't had to leave school to take care of his parents, and what had driven him as a high school sophomore dissecting frogs and cows' eyes in biology class was what drove him now: simple curiosity. The need to know. And he would know. Maybe not everything, but at least some things.

This is where the dead help the living. Did Linda say that?

Didn't matter. He was sure they would help if they could.

'There has been no cosmeticizing of the bodies that I can see, but all four have been embalmed. I don't know if the process has been completed, but I suspect not, because the femoral artery taps are still in place.

'Angela and Dodee - excuse me, Dorothy - have been badly beaten and are well into decomposition. Coggins has also been beaten

-savagely, from the look - and is also into decomp, although not as

far; thfe musculature on his face and arms has just begun to sag. Brenda

-Brenda Perkins, I mean...' He trailed off and bent over her.

'Rusty?' Linda asked nervously. 'Honey?'

He reached out a gloved hand, thought better of it, removed the glove, and cupped her throat. Then he lifted Brenda s head and felt the grotesquely large knot just below the nape. He eased her head down, then rotated her body onto one hip so he could look at her back and bu**ocks.

'Jesus,' he said.

'Rusty? What?'

For one thing, she's still caked with shit, he thought... but that wouldn't go on the record. Not even if Randolph or Rennie only listened to the first sixty seconds before crushing the tape under a shoe heel and burning whatever remained. He would not add that detail of her defilement.

But he would remember.

'What?'

He wet his lips and said, 'Brenda Perkins shows livor mortis on the bu**ocks and thighs, indicating she's been dead at least twelve hours, probably more like fourteen. There's significant bruising on both cheeks. They're handprints. There's no doubt in my mind of that. Someone took hold of her face and snapped her head hard to the left, fracturing the atlas and axis cervical vertebrae, CI and C2. Probably severed her spine as well.'

'Oh, Rusty,' Linda moaned.

CHAPTER 18

Rusty thumbed up first one of Brenda's eyelids, then the other. He saw what he had feared.

'Bruising to the cheeks and scleral petechiae - bloodspots in the whites of this woman's eyes - suggest death wasn't instantaneous. She was unable to draw breath and asphyxiated. She may or may not have been conscious. We'll hope not. That's all I can tell, unfortunately. The girls - Angela and Dorothy - have been dead the longest. The state of decomposition suggests they were stored in a warm place.'

He snapped off the recorder.

'In other words, I see nothing that absolutely exonerates Barbie and nothing we didn't goddam know already'

'What if his hands don't match the bruises on Brenda's face?'

'The marks are too diffuse to be sure. Lin, I feel like the stupidest man on earth.'

He rolled the two girls - who should have been cruising the Auburn Mall, pricing earrings, buying clothes at Deb, comparing boyfriends - back into darkness. Then he turned to Brenda.

'Give me a cloth. I saw some stacked beside the sink. They even looked clean, which is sort of a miracle in this pigsty.'

'What are you - '

'Just give me a cloth. Better make it two. Wet them.'

'Do we have time to - '

'We're going to make time.'

Linda watched silently as her husband carefully washed Brenda Perkins's bu**ocks and the backs of her thighs. When he was done, he flung the dirty rags into the corner, thinking that if the Bowie brothers had been here, he would have stuffed one into Stewart's mouth and the other into f**king Fernald's.

He kissed Brenda on her cool brow and rolled her back into the refrigerated locker. He started to do the same with Coggins, then stopped. The Reverend's face had been given only the most cursory of cleanings; there was still blood in his ears, his nostrils, and grimed into his brow.

'Linda, wet another cloth.'

'Honey, it's been almost ten minutes. I love you for showing respect to the dead, but we've got the living to - '

'We may have something here. This wasn't the same; kind of beating. I can see that even without... wet a cloth.'

She made no further argument, only wet another cloth, wrung it out, and handed it to him. Then she watched as he cleansed the remaining blood from the dead man's face, working gently but without the love he'd shown Brenda.

She had been no fan of Lester Coggins (who had once claimed on his weekly radio broadcast that kids who went to see Miley Cyrus were risking hell), but what Rusty was uncovering still hurt her heart. 'My God, he looks like a scarecrow after a bunch of kids used rocks on it for target practice.'

'I told you. Not the same kind of beating. This wasn't done with fists, or even feet.'

Linda pointed. 'What's that on his temple?'

Rusty didn't answer. Above his mask, his eyes were bright with amazement. Something else, too: understanding, just starting to dawn.

'What is it, Eric? It looks like... I don't know... stitches!

'You bet.' His mask bobbed as the mouth beneath it broke into a smile. Not happiness; satisfaction. And of the grimmest kind. 'On his forehead, too. See? And his jaw. That one broke his jaw.'

'What sort of weapon leaves marks like that?'

'A baseball,' Rusty said, rolling the drawer shut. 'Not an ordinary one, but one that was gold-plated? Yes. If swung with enough force, I think it could. I think it did!

He lowered his forehead to hers.Their masks bumped. He looked into her eyes.

'Jim Rennie has one. I saw it on his desk when I went to talk to him about the missing propane. I don't know about the others, but I think we know - where Lester Coggins died. And who killed him.'