Under the Dome

There was a lawn glider on the porch. If necessary, she could curl up there. But maybe -

She tried the door and found it unlocked. She hesitated; Horace did not. Secure in the belief that he was welcome everywhere, he went inside immediately. Julia followed on the other end of the leash, thinking, My dog is now making the decisions. This is what it's come to.

'Andrea?' she called softly. 'Andi, are you here? It's Julia.'

Upstairs, lying on her back and snoring like a truck driver at the end of a four-day run, only one part of Andrea stirred: her left foot, which hadn't yet given up its withdrawal-induced jerking and tapping.

It was gloomy in the living room, but not entirely dark; Andi had left a battery-powered lamp on in the kitchen. And there was a smell. The windows were open, but with no breeze, the odor of vomit hadn't entirely vented. Had someone told her that Andrea was ill? With the flu, maybe?

Maybe it is the flu, but it could just as easily be withdrawal if she ran out of the pills she takes.

Either way, sickness was sickness, and sick people usually didn't want to be alone. Which meant the house was empty. And she was so tired. Across the room was a nice long couch, and it called to her. If Andi came in tomorrow and found Julia there, she'd understand.

'She might even make me a cup of tea,' she said. 'We'll laugh about it,'Although the idea of laughing at anything, ever again, seemed out of the question to her right now. 'Come on, Horace.'

She undipped his leash and trudged across the room. Horace watched her until she lay down and put a sofa pillow behind her head. Then he lay down himself and put his snout on his paw.

'You be a good boy,' she said, and closed her eyes. What she saw when she did was Cox's eyes not quite meeting hers. Because Cox thought they were under the Dome for the long haul.

But the body knows mercies of which the brain is unaware. Julia fell asleep with her head less than four feet from the manila envelope Brenda had tried to deliver to her that morning. At some point, Horace jumped onto the couch and curled up between her knees. And that was how Andrea found them when she came downstairs on the morning of October twenty-fifth, feeling more like her true self than she had in years.

16

There were four people in Rusty's living room: Linda, Jackie, Stacey Moggin, and Rusty himself. He served out glasses of iced tea, then summarized what he had found in the basement of the Bowie Funeral Home. The first question came from Stacey, and it was purely practical.

'Did you remember to lock up?'

'Yes,' Linda said.

'Then give me the key. I have to put it back.'

Us and them, Rusty thought again. That's what this conversation is going to be about. What it's already about. Our secrets. Their power. Our plans. Their agenda.

Linda handed over the key, then asked Jackie if the girls had given her any problems.

'No seizures, if that's what you're worried about. Slept like lambs the whole time you were gone.'

'What are we going to do about this?' Stacey asked. She was a little thing, but determined. 'If you want to arrest Rennie, the four of us will have to convince Randolph to do it. We three women as officers, Rusty as the acting pathologist.'

'No!'Jackie and Linda said it together, Jackie with decisiveness, Linda with fright.

'We have a hypothesis but no real proof,' Jackie said. 'I'm not sure Pete Randolph would believe us even if we had surveillance photos of Big Jim snapping Brenda's neck. He and Rennie are in it together now, sink or swim. And most of the cops would come down on Pete's side.'

'Especially the new ones,' Stacey said, and tugged at her cloud of blond hair.'A lot of them aren't very bright, but they're dedicated. And they like carrying guns. Plus' - she leaned forward - 'there's six or eight more of them tonight. Just high-school kids. Big and stupid and enthusiastic. They scare the hell out of me. And something else. Thibodeau, Searles, and Junior Rennie are asking the newbies to recommend even more. Give this a couple of days and it won't be a police force anymore, it'll be an army of teenagers.'

'No one would listen to us?' Rusty asked. Not disbelieving, exactly; simply trying to get it straight. 'No one at all?'

'Henry Morrison might,'Jackie said.'He sees what's happening and he doesn't like it. But the others? They'll go along. Partly because they're scared and partly because they like the power. Guys like Toby Whelan and George Frederick have never had any; guys like Freddy Denton are just mean.'

'Which means what?' Linda asked.

'It means for now we keep this to ourselves. If Rennie's killed four people, he's very, very dangerous.'

'Waiting will make him more dangerous, not less,'Rusty objected.

'We have Judy and Janelle to worry about, Rusty,' Linda said. She was nipping at her nails, a thing Rusty hadn't seen her do in years. 'We can't risk anything happening to them. I won't consider it, and I won't let you consider it.'

'I have a kid, too,' Stacey said. 'Calvin. He's just five. It took all my courage just to stand guard at the funeral home tonight. The thought of taking this to that idiot Randolph...' She didn't need to finish; the pallor of her cheeks was eloquent.

'No one's asking you to,' Jackie said.

'Right now all I can prove is that the baseball was used on Coggins,' Rusty said. 'Anyone could have used it. Hell, his own son could have used it.'

'That actually wouldn't come as a total shock to me,' Stacey said. 'Junior's been weird lately. He got kicked out of Bowdoin for fighting. I don't know if his father knows it, but there was a police call to the gym where it happened, and I saw the report on the wire. And the two girls... if those were sex crimes...'

'They were,' Rusty said. 'Very nasty. You don't want to know.'

'But Brenda wasn't sexually assaulted,' Jackie said. 'To me that suggests Coggins and Brenda were different from the girls.'