Thurston smiled ruefully. "We were all excited. Having fun."
When it came to possible lodging, Piper first thought of the McCain house, which was close by. Only she didn't know where their spare key might be hidden.
Alice Appleton was on the floor, feeding Fig Newton crumbs to Clover. The shepherd was doing the old my-muzzle's-on-your-ankle-because-I'm-your-best-friend routine in between offerings. "This is the best dog I've ever seen," she told Piper. "I wish we could have a dog."
"I've got a dragon," Aidan offered. He was sitting comfortably on Carolyn's lap.
Alice smiled indulgently. "That's his invisible F-R-E-I-N."
"I see," Piper said. She supposed they could always break a window at the McCain place; needs must when the devil drives.
But as she got up to check on the coffee, a better idea occurred. "The Dumagens'. I should have thought of them right away. They went to Boston for a conference. Coralee Dumagen asked me to water her plants while they're gone."
"I teach in Boston," Thurston said. "At Emerson. I edited the current issue of Ploughshares. " And sighed.
"The key is under a flowerpot to the left of the door," Piper said. "I don't believe they have a generator, but there's a woodstove in the kitchen." She hesitated, thinking City people. "Can you use a woodstove to cook on without setting the house on fire?"
"I grew up in Vermont," Thurston said. "Was in charge of keeping the stoves lit--house and barn--until I went off to college. What goes around comes around, doesn't it?" And sighed again.
"There'll be food in the pantry, I'm sure," Piper said.
Carolyn nodded. "That's what the janitor at the Town Hall said."
"Also Joooon-yer, " Alice put in. "He's a cop. A foxy one." Thurston's mouth turned down. "Alice's foxy cop assaulted me," he said. "Him or the other one. I couldn't tell them apart, myself."
Piper's eyebrows went up.
"Punched Thurse in the stomach," Carolyn said quietly. "Called us Massholes--which, I suppose, we technically are--and laughed at us. For me, that was the worst part, how they laughed at us. They were better once they had the kids with them, but ..." She shook her head. "They were out of control."
And just like that, Piper was back to Sammy. She felt a pulse beginning to beat in the side of her neck, very slow and hard, but she kept her voice even. "What was the other policeman's name?"
"Frankie," Carolyn said. "Junior called him Frankie D. Do you know these guys? You must, huh?"
"I know them," Piper said.
7
She gave the new, makeshift family directions to the Dumagens'--the house had the advantage of being near to Cathy Russell if the boy had another seizure--and sat awhile at her kitchen table after they were gone, drinking tea. She did it slowly. Took a sip and set the cup down. Took a sip and set it down. Clover whined. He was tuned in to her, and she supposed he could sense her rage.
Maybe it changes my smell. Makes it more acrid or something.
A picture was forming. Not a pretty one. A lot of new cops, very young cops, sworn in less than forty-eight hours ago and already running wild. The sort of license they had exhibited with Sammy Bushey and Thurston Marshall wouldn't spread to veteran cops like Henry Morrison and Jackie Wettington--at least she didn't think so--but to Fred Denton? Toby Whelan? Maybe. Probably. With Duke in charge, those guys had been all right. Not great, the kind of guys apt to lip you unnecessarily after a traffic stop, but all right. Certainly the best the town's budget could afford. But her mother had been wont to say, "You buy cheap, you get cheap." And with Peter Randolph in charge--
Something had to be done.
Only she had to control her temper. If she didn't, it would control her.
She took the leash from the peg by the door. Clover was up at once, tail swishing, ears perked, eyes bright.
"Come on, you big lug. We're going to lodge a complaint."
Her shepherd was still licking Fig Newton crumbs from the side of his muzzle as she led him out the door.
8
Walking across the town common with Clover heeling neatly to her right, Piper felt she did have her temper under control. She felt that way until she heard the laughter. It came as she and Clove were approaching the police station. She observed the very fellows whose names she had gotten out of Sammy Bushey: DeLesseps, Thibodeau, Searles. Georgia Roux was also present, Georgia who had egged them on, according to Sammy: Do that bitch. Freddy Denton was there too. They were sitting at the top of the stone PD steps, drinking sodas, gassing among themselves. Duke Perkins never would have allowed such a thing, and Piper reflected that if he could see them from wherever he was, he'd be rolling in his grave fast enough to set his own remains on fire.
Mel Searles said something and they all broke up again, laughing and backslapping. Thibodeau had his arm around the Roux girl, the tips of his fingers on the sideswell of her breast. She said something, and they all laughed harder.
It came to Piper that they were laughing about the rape--what a goldurn good old time it had been--and after that, her father's advice never had a chance. The Piper who ministered to the poor and the sick, who officiated at marryings and buryings, who preached charity and tolerance on Sundays, was pushed rudely to the back of her mind, where she could only watch as though through a warped and wavery pane of glass. It was the other Piper who took over, the one who had trashed her room at fifteen, crying tears of rage rather than sorrow.
There was a slate-paved square known as War Memorial Plaza between the Town Hall and the newer brick PD building. At its center was a statue of Ernie Calvert's father, Lucien Calvert, who had been awarded a posthumous Silver Star for heroic action in Korea. The names of other Chester's Mill war dead, going all the way back to the Civil War, were engraved on the statue's base. There were also two flagpoles, the Stars and Stripes at the top of one and the state flag, with its farmer, sailor, and moose, at the top of the other. Both hung limp in the reddening light of oncoming sunset. Piper Libby passed between the poles like a woman in a dream, Clover still heeling behind her right knee with his ears up.
The "officers" atop the steps burst into another hearty roar of laughter, and she thought of trolls in one of the fairy stories her dad had sometimes read her. Trolls in a cave, gloating over piles of ill-gotten gold. Then they saw her and quieted.
"Good evenin, Rev'run," Mel Searles said, and got up, giving his belt a self-important little hitch as he did so. Standing in the presence of a lady, Piper thought. Did his mother teach him that? Probably. The fine art of rape he probably learned somewhere else.
He was still smiling as she reached the steps, but then it faltered and grew tentative, so he must have seen her expression. Just what that expression might be she didn't know. From the inside, her face felt frozen. Immobile.
She saw the biggest of them watching her closely. Thibodeau, his face as immobile as hers felt. He's like Clover, she thought. He smells it on me. The rage.
"Rev'run?" Mel asked. "Everything okay? There a problem?"
She mounted the steps, not fast, not slow, Clover still heeling neatly behind her right knee. "You bet there's a problem," she said, looking up at him.
"What--"
"You," she said. "You're the problem."
She pushed him. Mel wasn't expecting it. He was still holding his cup of soda. He went tumbling into Georgia Roux's lap, flailing his arms uselessly for balance, and for a moment the soda was a dark manta ray hanging against the reddening sky. Georgia cried out in surprise as Mel landed on her. She sprawled backward, spilling her own soda. It went running across the wide granite slab in front of the double doors. Piper could smell either whiskey or bourbon. Their Cokes had been spiked with what the rest of the town could no longer buy. No wonder they'd been laughing.
The red fissure inside her head opened wider.
"You can't--" Frankie began, starting to get up himself. She pushed him. In a galaxy far far away, Clover--ordinarily the sweetest of dogs--was growling.
Frankie
went on his back, eyes wide and startled, for a moment looking like the Sunday school boy he once might have been.
"Rape is the problem!" Piper shouted. "Rape!"
"Shut up," Carter said. He was still sitting, and although Georgia was cowering against him, Carter remained calm. The muscles of his arms rippled below his short-sleeved blue shirt. "Shut up and get out of here right now, if you don't want to spend the night in a cell downstai--"
"You're the one who'll be going into a cell," Piper said. "All of you."
"Make her shut up," Georgia said. She wasn't whimpering, but she was close. "Make her shut up, Cart."
"Ma'am--" Freddy Denton. His uniform shirt untucked and bourbon on his breath. Duke would have taken one look and fired his ass. Fired all their asses. He started to get up and this time he was the one who went sprawling, a look of surprise on his face that would have been comical under other circumstances. It was nice that they had been sitting while she was standing. Made it easier. But oh, how her temples were thudding. She returned her attention to Thibodeau, the most dangerous one. He was still looking at her with maddening calm. As though she were a freak he'd paid a quarter to see in a sideshow tent. But he was looking up at her, and that was her advantage.
"But it won't be a cell downstairs," she said, speaking directly to Thibodeau. "It'll be in Shawshank, where they do to little play-yard bullies like you what you did to that girl."
"You stupid bitch," Carter said. He spoke as if remarking on the weather. "We weren't anywhere near her house."
"That's right," Georgia said, sitting up again. There was Coke splattered on one of her cheeks, where a virulent case of teenage acne was fading (but still holding onto a few final outposts). "And besides, everyone knows Sammy Bushey is nothing but a lying lesbo cunt."
Piper's lips stretched in a smile. She turned it on Georgia, who recoiled from the crazy lady who had appeared so suddenly on the steps while they'd been having a nice sunsetter or two. "How did you know the lying lesbo cunt's name? I didn't say it."
Georgia's mouth dropped into an O of dismay. And for the first time something flickered beneath Carter Thibodeau's calm. Whether fear or just annoyance, Piper didn't know.
Frank DeLesseps got cautiously to his feet. "You better not go around spreading accusations you can't back up, Reverend Libby."
"Nor assaulting police officers," Freddy Denton said. "I'm willing to let it go this time--everyone's under stress--but you have to cease and desist these accusations right now." He paused, then added lamely: "And the pushing, of course."
Piper's gaze remained fixed on Georgia, her right hand curled so tightly around the black plastic grip of Clover's leash it was throbbing. The dog stood with his forepaws spread and his head lowered, still growling. He sounded like a powerful outboard motor set to idle. The fur on his neck had bushed out enough to hide his collar.
"How'd you know her name, Georgia?"
"I ... I ... I just assumed ..."
Carter gripped her shoulder and squeezed it. "Shut up, babe." And then, to Piper, still not standing (Because he doesn't want to be pushed back down, the coward ), he said: "I don't know what kind of bee you've got in your Jesus bonnet, but we were all together last night, at Alden Dinsmore's farm. Trying to see if we could get anything out of the soldier-boys stationed on 119, which we couldn't. That's on the other side of town from Busheys'." He looked around at his friends.
"Right," Frankie said.
"Right," Mel chimed in, looking at Piper distrustfully.
"Yeah!" Georgia said. Carter's arm was around her again and her moment of doubt was gone. She looked at Piper defiantly.
"Georgie-girl assumed it was Sammy you were yelling about," Carter said with that same infuriating calm. "Because Sammy's the biggest lying scumbucket in this town."
Mel Searles yodeled laughter.
"But you didn't use protection," Piper said. Sammy had told her this, and when she saw Thibodeau's face tighten, she knew it was true. "You didn't use protection and they rape-kitted her." She had no idea if this was true, and didn't care. She could see from their widening eyes that they believed it, and their belief was enough. "When they compare your DNA to what they found--"
"That's enough," Carter said. "Shut it."
She turned her furious smile on him. "No, Mr. Thibodeau. We are only getting started, my son."
Freddy Denton reached for her. She pushed him down, then felt her left arm caught and twisted. She turned and looked into Thibodeau's eyes. No calm there now; they were shining with rage.
Hello, my brother, she thought incoherently.
"Fuck you, you fucking bitch," he remarked, and this time she was the one who was pushed.
Piper fell backward down the stairs, trying instinctively to tuck and roll, not wanting to hit her head on one of those stone risers, knowing they could smash her skull in. Kill her or--worse--leave her a vegetable. She struck on her left shoulder instead, and there was a sudden howl of pain there. Familiar pain. She had dislocated that one playing high school soccer twenty years ago, and damned if she hadn't just done it again.
Her legs flew over her head and she turned a back somersault, wrenching her neck, coming down on her knees and splitting the skin on both. She finally came to rest on her stomach and breasts. She had tumbled almost all the way to the bottom of the steps. Her cheek was bleeding, her nose was bleeding, her lips were bleeding, her neck hurt, but ah God, her shoulder was the worst, humped up all crooked in a way she remembered well. The last time she'd seen a hump like that, it had been in a red nylon Wildcats jersey. Nevertheless, she struggled to her feet, thanking God she still had the power to command her legs; she could also have been paralyzed.
She'd lost hold of the leash halfway down and Clover jumped at Thibodeau, his teeth snapping at the chest and belly under his shirt, tearing the shirt open, knocking Thibodeau backward, going for the young man's vitals.
"Get him off me!" Carter screamed. Nothing calm about him now. "He's gonna kill me!"
And yes, Clover was trying. His front paws were planted on Carter's thighs, going up and down as Carter thrashed. He looked like a German shepherd on a bicycle. He shifted his angle of attack and bit deep into Carter's shoulder, eliciting another scream. Then Clover went for the throat. Carter got his hands on the dog's chest just in time to save his windpipe.
"Make him stop!"
Frank reached for the trailing leash. Clover turned and snapped at his fingers. Frank skittered backward, and Clover returned his attention to the man who had pushed his mistress down the steps. His muzzle opened, revealing a double line of shining white teeth, and he drove at Thibodeau's neck. Carter got his hand up, then shrieked in agony as Clover seized on it and began to shake it like one of his beloved rag toys. Only his rag toys didn't bleed, and Carter's hand did.
Piper came staggering up the steps, holding her left arm across her midriff. Her face was a mask of blood. A tooth clung to the corner of her mouth like a crumb of food.
"GET HIM OFF ME, CHRIST, GET YOUR FUCKIN DOG OFF ME!"
Piper was opening her mouth to tell Clover to stand down when she saw Fred Denton drawing his gun.
"No!" she screamed. "No, I can make him stop!"
Fred turned to Mel Searles, and pointed at the dog with his free hand. Mel stepped forward and kicked Clover in the haunch. He did it high and hard, as he had once (not so long ago) punted footballs. Clover was whipped sideways, losing his hold on Thibodeau's bleeding, shredded hand, where two fingers now pointed in unusual directions, like crooked signposts.
"NO!" Piper screamed again, so loud and so hard the world went gray before her eyes. "DON'T HURT MY DOG!"
Fred paid no attention. When Peter Randolph burst out through the double doors, his shirttail out, his pants unzipped, the copy of Outdoors he had been reading on the crapper still held in one hand, Fred paid no attention to that, either. He pointed his service automatic at the dog, and fired.
The sound was deafening in the enclosed square. The to
p of Clover's head lifted off in a spray of blood and bone. He took one step toward his screaming, bleeding mistress--another--then collapsed.
Fred, gun still in hand, strode forward and grabbed Piper by her bad arm. The hump in her shoulder roared a protest. And still she kept her eyes on the corpse of her dog, whom she had raised from a pup.
"You're under arrest, you crazy bitch," Fred said. He pushed his face--pale, sweaty, the eyes seeming ready to pop right out of their sockets--close enough to hers for her to feel the spray of his spittle. "Anything you say can and will be used against your crazy ass."
On the other side of the street, diners were pouring out of Sweetbriar Rose, Barbie among them, still wearing his apron and baseball cap. Julia Shumway arrived first.
She took in the scene, not seeing details so much as a gestalt summation: dead dog; clustered cops; bleeding, screaming woman with one shoulder higher than the other; bald cop--Freddy goddam Denton--shaking her by the arm connected to that shoulder; more blood on the steps, suggesting that Piper had fallen down them. Or had been pushed.
Julia did something she had never done before in her life: reached into her handbag, flipped her wallet open, and climbed the steps, holding it out, yelling "Press! Press! Press!"
It stopped the shaking, at least.
9
Ten minutes later, in the office that had been Duke Perkins's not so long ago, Carter Thibodeau sat on the sofa under Duke's framed pictures and certificates, with a fresh bandage on his shoulder and paper towels around his hand. Georgia was sitting beside him. Large beads of painsweat stood out on Thibodeau's forehead, but after saying "I don't think nothin's broken," he was silent.
Fred Denton sat in a chair in the corner. His gun was on the Chief's desk. He had surrendered it willingly enough, only saying, "I had to do it--just look at Cart's hand."
Piper sat in the office chair that was now Peter Randolph's. Julia had mopped most of the blood off Piper's face with more paper towels. The woman was shivering with shock and in great pain, but she was as silent about it as Thibodeau. Her eyes were clear.