Under the Dome

'Forget something, did you?' Barbie asked.

'Dump out your pockets and shove everything into the corridor,' Henry said. 'Then take off your pants and put em through the bars.'

'If I do that, can I get something to drink I don't have to slurp out of the toiletbowl?'

'What are you talking about? Junior brought you water. I saw him.'

'He poured salt in it.'

'Right. Absolutely.' But Henry had looked a little unsure. Maybe there was a thinking human being still in there somewhere. 'Do what I tell you, Barbie. Barbara, I mean.'

Barbie emptied his pockets: wallet, keys, coins, a little fold of bills, the St Christopher's medal he carried as a good luck charm. By then the Swiss Army knife was long gone into the mattress. 'You can still call me Barbie when you put a rope around my neck and hang me, if you want. Is that what Rennie's got in mind? Hanging? Or a firing squad?'

'Just shut up and shove your pants through the bars. Shirt, too.' He sounded like a total smalltown hardass, but Barbie thought he looked more unsure than ever. That was good. That was a start.

Two of the new kiddie-cops had come downstairs. One held a can of Mace; the other a Taser. 'Need any help, Officer Morrison?' one asked.

'No, but you can stand right there at the foot of the stairs and keep an eye out until I'm done here,' Henry had said.

'I didn't kill anybody.' Barbie spoke quietly, but with all the honest sincerity he could muster. 'And I think you know it.'

'What I know is that you better shut up, unless you want a Taser enema.'

Henry had rummaged through his clothes, but didn't ask Barbie to strip down to his underpants and spread his cheeks. A late search and piss-poor, but Barbie gave him some points for remembering to do one at all - no one else had.

When Henry had finished, he kicked the bluejeans, pockets now empty and belt confiscated, back through the bars.

'May I have my medallion?'

'No.'

'Henry, think about this. Why would I - '

'Shut up.'

Henry pushed past the two kiddie-cops with his head down and Barbie's personal effects in his hands. The kiddie-cops followed, one pausing long enough to grin at Barbie and saw a finger across his neck.

Since then he'd been alone, with nothing to do but lie on the bunk and look up at the little slit of a window (opaque pebbled glass reinforced with wire), waiting for the dawn and wondering if they would actually try to waterboard him or if Searles had just been gassing out his ass. If they took a shot at it and turned out to be as bad at boarding as they had been at prisoner intake, there was a good chance they'd drown him.

He also wondered if someone might come down before dawn. Someone with a key. Someone - who might stand a little too close to the door. With the knife, escape was not completely out of the question, but once dawn came, it probably would be. Maybe he should have tried for Junior when Junior passed the glass of salt water through the bars... only Junior had been very eager to use his sidearm. It would have been a long chance, and Barbie wasn't that desperate. At least not yet.

Besides... where would I go?

Even if he escaped and disappeared, he could be letting his friends in for a world of hurt. After strenuous 'questioning' by cops like Melvin and Junior, they might consider the Dome the least of their problems. Big Jim was in the saddle now, and once guys like him were in it, they tended to ride hard. Sometimes until the horse collapsed beneath them.

He fell into a thin and troubled sleep. He dreamed of the blonde in the old Ford pickemup. He dreamed that she stopped for him and they got out of Chester's Mill just in time. She was unbuttoning her blouse to display the cups of a lacy lavender bra when a voice said: 'Hey there, f**kstick. Wakey-wakey'

22

Jackie Wettington spent the night at the Everett house, and although the kids were quiet and the guest-room bed was comfortable, she lay awake. By four o'clock that morning, she had decided what needed to be done. She understood the risks; she also understood that she couldn't rest with Barbie in a cell under the Police Department. If she herself had been capable of stepping up and organizing some sort of resistance - or just a serious investigation of the murders - she thought she would have started already. She knew herself too well, however, to even entertain the thought. She'd been good enough at what she did in Guam and Germany - rousting drunk troops out of bars, chasing AWOLs, and cleaning up after car crashes on the base was what it mostly came down to - but what was happening in Chester's Mill was far beyond a master sergeant's pay grade. Or the only full-time female street officer working with a bunch of smalltown men who called her Officer Bazooms behind her back. They thought she didn't know this, but she did. And right now a little junior high-school-level sexism was the least of her worries. This had to end, and Dale Barbara was the man the President of the United States had picked to end it. Even the pleasure of the Commander in Chief wasn't the most important part. The first rule was you didn't leave your guys behind. That was sacred, the Fabled Automatic.

It had to begin with letting Barbie know he wasn't alone. Then he could plan his own actions accordingly.

When Linda came downstairs in her nightgown at five o'clock, first light had begun to seep in through the windows, revealing trees and bushes that were perfectly still. Not a breath of breeze was stirring.

'I need a Tupperware,' Jackie said. 'A bowl. It should be small, and it needs to be opaque. Do you have anything like that?'

'Sure, but why?'

'Because we're going to take Dale Barbara his breakfast,' Jackie said. 'Cereal. And we're going to put a note in the bottom of it.'

'What are you talking about? Jackie, I can't do that. I've got kids.'

'I know. But I can't do it alone, because they won't let me go down there on my own. Maybe if I was a man, but not equipped with jthese.' She indicated her br**sts. 'I need you.'