Under the Dome

  Junior came in and dropped the Hummer's keys on Big Jim's desk. He was pale and needed a shave worse than ever, but he no longer looked like death on a cracker. His left eye was red, but not flaming.

  "All set, Son?"

  Junior nodded. "Are we going to jail?" He spoke with an almost disinterested curiosity.

  "No," Big Jim said. The idea that he might go to jail had never crossed his mind, not even when the Perkins witch had shown up here and started making her accusations. He smiled. "But Dale Barbara is."

  "No one's going to believe he killed Brenda Perkins."

  Big Jim continued to smile. "They will. They're frightened, and they will. It's how these things work."

  "How would you know?"

  "Because I'm a student of history. You ought to try it sometime." It was on the tip of his tongue to ask Junior why he had left Bowdoin--had he quit, flunked out, or been asked to leave? But this wasn't the time or the place. Instead he asked his son if he was up to one more errand.

  Junior rubbed at his temple. "I guess. In for a penny, in for a pound."

  "You'll need help. You could take Frank, I suppose, but I'd prefer the Thibodeau lad, if he's able to move around today. Not Searles, though. A good fellow, but stupid."

  Junior said nothing. Big Jim wondered again what was wrong with the boy. But did he really want to know? Perhaps when this crisis was over. In the meantime, he had many pots and skillets on the stove, and dinner would be served soon.

  "What do you want me to do?"

  "Let me check one thing first." Big Jim picked up his cell. Each time he did this, he expected to find it as useless as tits on a bull, but it was still working. At least for in-town calls, which was all he cared about. He selected PD. It rang three times at the cop-shop before Stacey Moggin picked up. She sounded harried, not at all like her usual businesslike self. Big Jim wasn't surprised by that, given the morning's festivities; he could hear quite an uproar in the background.

  "Police," she said. "If this isn't an emergency, please hang up and call back later. We're awfully bus--"

  "It's Jim Rennie, hon." He knew that Stacey hated being called hon. Which was why he did it. "Put on the Chief. Chop-chop."

  "He's trying to break up a fistfight in front of the main desk right now," she said. "Maybe you could call back la--"

  "No, I can't call back later," Big Jim said. "Do you think I'd be calling if this wasn't important? Just go over there, hon, and Mace the most aggressive one. Then you send Pete into his office to--"

  She didn't let him finish, and she didn't put him on hold, either. The phone hit the desk with a clunk. Big Jim was not put out of countenance; when he was getting under somebody's skin, he liked to know it. In the far distance, he heard someone call someone else a thieving sonofabitch. This made him smile.

  A moment later he was put on hold, Stacey not bothering to inform him. Big Jim listened to McGruff the Crime Dog for awhile. Then the phone was picked up. It was Randolph, sounding out of breath.

  "Talk fast, Jim, because this place is a madhouse. The ones who didn't go to the hospital with broken ribs or something are mad as hornets. Everybody's blaming everybody else. I'm trying to keep from filling up the cells downstairs, but it's like half of them want to go there."

  "Does increasing the size of the police force sound like a better idea to you today, Chief?"

  "Christ, yes. We took a beating. I've got one of the new officers--that Roux girl--up to the hospital with the whole lower half of her face broken. She looks like the Bride of Frankenstein."

  Big Jim's smile widened to a grin. Sam Verdreaux had come through. But of course that was another thing about feeling it ; when you did have to pass the ball, on those infrequent occasions when you couldn't shoot it yourself, you always passed it to the right person.

  "Someone nailed her with a rock. Mel Searles, too. He was knocked out for a while, but he seems to be all right now. It's ugly, though. I sent him to the hospital to get patched up."

  "Well, that's a shame," Big Jim said.

  "Someone was targeting my officers. More than one someone, I think. Big Jim, can we really get more volunteers?"

  "I think you'll find plenty of willing recruits among the upstanding young people of this town," Big Jim said. "In fact, I know several from the Holy Redeemer congregation. The Killian boys, for instance."

  "Jim, the Killian boys are dumber than Crackerjacks."

  "I know, but they're strong and they'll take orders." He paused. "Also, they can shoot."

  "Are we going to arm the new police?" Randolph sounded doubtful and hopeful at the same time.

  "After what happened today? Of course. I was thinking ten or a dozen good trustworthy young people to start with. Frank and Junior can help pick them out. And we'll need more if this thing isn't sorted out by next week. Pay em in scrip. Give em first dibs on supplies, when and if rationing starts. Them and their families."

  "Okay. Send Junior down, will you? Frank's here, and so's Thibodeau. He got banged around some at the market and he had to get the bandage on his shoulder changed, but he's pretty much good to go." Randolph lowered his voice. "He said Barbara changed the bandage. Did a good job, too."

  "That's ducky, but our Mr. Barbara won't be changing bandages for long. And I've got another job for Junior. Officer Thibodeau, too. Send him up here."

  "What for?"

  "If you needed to know, I'd tell you. Just send him up. Junior and Frank can make a list of possible new recruits later on."

  "Well ... if you say s--"

  Randolph was interrupted by a fresh uproar. Something either fell over or was thrown. There was a crash as something else shattered.

  "Break that up!" Randolph roared.

  Smiling, Big Jim held the phone away from his ear. He could hear perfectly well, just the same.

  "Get those two ... not those two, you idiot, the OTHER two.... NO, I don't want em arrested! I want em the hell out of here! On their asses, if they won't go any other way!"

  A moment later he was speaking to Big Jim again. "Remind me why I wanted this job, because I'm starting to forget."

  "It'll sort itself out," Big Jim soothed. "You'll have five new bodies by tomorrow--fresh young bucks--and another five by Thursday. Another five at least. Now send young Thibodeau up here. And make sure that cell at the far end downstairs is ready for a fresh occupant. Mr. Barbara will be using it as of this afternoon."

  "On what charge?"

  "How about four counts of murder, plus inciting a riot at the local supermarket? Will that do?"

  He hung up before Randolph could reply.

  "What do you want me and Carter to do?" Junior asked.

  "This afternoon? First, a little reconnaissance and planning. I'll assist with the planning. Then you take part in arresting Barbara. You'll enjoy that, I think."

  "Yes I will."

  "Once Barbara's in the jug, you and Officer Thibodeau should eat a good supper, because your real job's tonight."

  "What?"

  "Burning down the Democrat office--how does that sound?"

  Junior's eyes widened. "Why?"

  That his son had to ask was a disappointment. "Because, for the immediate future, having a newspaper is not in the town's best interest. Any objections?" "Dad--has it ever occurred to you that you might be crazy?" Big Jim nodded. "Like a fox," he said.

  7

  "All the times I've been in this room," Ginny Tomlinson said in her new foggy voice, "and I never once imagined myself on the table."

  "Even if you had, you probably wouldn't have imagined being worked on by the guy who serves you your morning steak and eggs." Barbie tried to keep it light, but he'd been patching and bandaging since arriving at Cathy Russell on the ambulance's first run, and he was tired. A lot of that, he suspected, was stress: he was scared to death of making someone worse instead of better. He could see the same worry on the faces of Gina Buffalino and Harriet Bigelow, and they didn't have the Jim Rennie clock ticking in their heads to
make things worse.

  "I think it will be awhile before I'm capable of eating another steak," Ginny said.

  Rusty had set her nose before seeing any of the other patients. Barbie had assisted, holding the sides of her head as gently as he could and murmuring encouragement. Rusty plugged her nostrils with gauze soaked in medicinal cocaine. He gave the anesthetic ten minutes to work (using the time to treat a badly sprained wrist and put an elastic bandage on an obese woman's swollen knee), then tweezed out the gauze strips and grabbed a scalpel. The PA was admirably quick. Before Barbie could tell Ginny to say wishbone, Rusty had slid the scalpel's handle up the clearer of her nostrils, braced it against her septum, and used it as a lever.

  Like a man prying off a hubcap, Barbie had thought, listening to the small but perfectly audible crunch as Ginny's nose came back to something approximating its normal position. She didn't scream, but her fingernails tore holes in the paper covering the examination table, and tears poured down her cheeks.

  She was calm now--Rusty had given her a couple of Percocets--but tears were still leaking from her less swollen eye. Her cheeks were a puffy purple. Barbie thought she looked a little like Rocky Balboa after the Apollo Creed fight.

  "Look on the bright side," he said.

  "Is there one?"

  "Definitely. The Roux girl is looking at a month of soup and milkshakes."

  "Georgia? I heard she took a hit. How bad?"

  "She'll live, but it's going to be a long time before she's pretty."

  "That one was never going to be Miss Apple Blossom." And, in a lower voice: "Was it her screaming?"

  Barbie nodded. Georgia's yowls had filled the whole hospital, it seemed. "Rusty gave her morphine, but she didn't go down for a long time. She must have the constitution of a horse."

  "And the conscience of an alligator," Ginny added in her foggy voice. "I wouldn't wish what happened to her on anybody, but it's still a damned good argument for karmic retribution. How long have I been here? My darn watch is broken."

  Barbie glanced at his own. "It's now fourteen thirty. So I guess that puts you about five and a half hours on the road to recovery." He twisted at the hips, heard his back crackle, and felt it loosen up a little. He decided Tom Petty was right: the waiting was the hardest part. He reckoned he would feel easier once he was actually in a cell. Unless he was dead. It had crossed his mind that it might be convenient for him to be killed while resisting arrest.

  "What are you smiling about?" she asked.

  "Nothing." He held up a set of tweezers. "Now be quiet and let me do this. Soonest begun, soonest done."

  "I ought to get up and pitch in."

  "If you try it, the only pitching you'll do will be straight down to the floor."

  She looked at the tweezers. "Do you know what you're doing with those?"

  "You bet. I won a gold medal in Olympic Glass Removal."

  "Your bullshit quotient is even higher than my ex-husband's." She was smiling a little. Barbie guessed it hurt her, even with painkillers on board, and he liked her for it.

  "You're not going to be one of those tiresome medical people who turns into a tyrant when it's her turn for treatment, are you?" he asked.

  "That was Dr. Haskell. He ran a big splinter under his thumbnail once, and when Rusty offered to take it out, The Wiz said he wanted a specialist." She laughed, then winced, then groaned.

  "If it makes you feel any better, the cop who punched you took a rock in the head."

  "More karma. Is he up and around?"

  "Yep." Mel Searles had walked out of the hospital two hours ago with a bandage wrapped around his head.

  When Barbie bent toward her with the tweezers, she instinctively turned her head away. He turned it back, pressing his hand--very gently--against the cheek that was less swollen.

  "I know you have to," she said. "I'm just a baby about my eyes."

  "Given how hard he hit you, you're lucky the glass is around them instead of in them."

  "I know. Just don't hurt me, okay?"

  "Okay," he said. "You'll be on your feet in no time, Ginny. I'll make this quick."

  He wiped his hands to make sure they were dry (he hadn't wanted the gloves, didn't trust his grip in them), then bent closer. There were maybe half a dozen small splinters of broken spectacle-lens peppered in her brows and around her eyes, but the one he was worried about was a tiny dagger just below the corner of her left eye. Barbie was sure Rusty would have taken it out himself if he'd seen it, but he had been concentrating on her nose.

  Do it quick, he thought. He who hesitates is usually fucked.

  He tweezed the shard out and dropped it into a plastic basin on the counter. A tiny seed-pearl of blood welled up where it had been. He let out his breath. "Okay. Nothing to the rest of these. Smooth sailing."

  "From your lips to God's ear," Ginny said.

  He had just removed the last of the splinters when Rusty opened the door of the exam room and told Barbie he could use a little help. The PA was holding a tin Sucrets box in one hand.

  "Help with what?"

  "A hemorrhoid that walks like a man," Rusty said. "This anal sore wants to leave with his ill-gotten gains. Under normal circumstances I'd be delighted to see his miserable backside going out the door, but right now I might be able to use him."

  "Ginny?" Barbie asked. "You okay?"

  She made a waving gesture at the door. He had reached it, following after Rusty, when she called, "Hey, handsome." He turned back and she blew him a kiss.

  Barbie caught it.

  8

  There was only one dentist in Chester's Mill. His name was Joe Boxer. His office was at the end of Strout Lane, where his dental suite offered a scenic view of Prestile Stream and the Peace Bridge. Which was nice if you were sitting up. Most visitors to said suite were in the reclining position, with nothing to look at but several dozen pictures of Joe Boxer's Chihuahua pasted on the ceiling.

  "In one of them, the goddam dog looks like he's unloading," Dougie Twitchell told Rusty after one visit. "Maybe it's just the way that kind of dog sits down, but I don't think so. I think I spent half an hour looking at a dishrag with eyes take a shit while The Box dug two wisdom teeth out of my jaw. With a screwdriver, it felt like."

  The shingle hung outside Dr. Boxer's office looked like a pair of basketball shorts large enough to fit a fairy-tale giant. They were painted a gaudy green and gold--the colors of the Mills Wildcats. The sign read JOSEPH BOXER, DDS. And, below that: BOXER IS BRIEF! And he was fairly speedy, everyone agreed, but he recognized no medical plans and accepted only cash. If a pulpcutter walked in with his gums suppurating and his cheeks puffed out like those of a squirrel with a mouthful of nuts and started talking about his dental insurance, Boxer would tell him to get the money from Anthem or Blue Cross or whoever and then come back to see him.

  A little competition in town might have forced him to soften these Draconian policies, but the half a dozen who'd tried to make a go of it in The Mill since the early nineties had given up. There was speculation that Joe Boxer's good friend Jim Rennie might have had something to do with the paucity of competition, but no proof. Meantime, Boxer might be seen on any given day cruising around in his Porsche, with its bumper sticker reading MY OTHER CAR IS ALSO A PORSCHE!

  As Rusty came down the hall with Barbie trailing after, Boxer was heading for the main doors. Or trying to; Twitch had him by the arm. Hung from Dr. Boxer's other arm was a basket filled with Eggo waffles. Nothing else; just packages and packages of Eggos. Barbie wondered--not for the first time--if maybe he was lying in the ditch that ran behind Dipper's parking lot, beaten to a pulp and having a terrible brain-damaged dream.

  "I'm not staying!" Boxer yapped. "I have to get these home to the freezer! What you're proposing has almost no chance of working, anyway, so take your hands off me."

  Barbie observed the butterfly bandage bisecting one of Boxer's eyebrows and the larger bandage on his right forearm. The dentist had fought the good fight fo
r his frozen waffles, it seemed.

  "Tell this goon to take his hands off me," he said when he saw Rusty. "I've been treated, and now I'm going home."

  "Not just yet," Rusty said. "You were treated gratis, and I expect you to pay that forward."

  Boxer was a little guy, no more than five-four, but he drew himself up to his full height and puffed out his chest. "Expect and be damned. I hardly see oral surgery--which the State of Maine hasn't certified me to do, by the way--as a quid pro quo for a couple of bandages. I work for a living, Everett, and I expect to be paid for my work."

  "You'll be paid back in heaven," Barbie said. "Isn't that what your friend Rennie would say?"

  "He has nothing to do with th--"

  Barbie took a step closer and peered into Boxer's green plastic shopping basket. The words PROPERTY OF FOOD CITY were printed on the handle. Boxer tried, with no great success, to shield the basket from him.

  "Speaking of payment, did you pay for those waffles?"

  "Don't be ridiculous. Everybody was taking everything. All I took were these." He looked at Barbie defiantly. "I have a very large freezer, and I happen to enjoy waffles."

  " 'Everyone was taking everything' won't be much of a defense if you're charged with looting," Barbie said mildly.

  It was impossible for Boxer to draw himself up any further, and yet somehow he did. His face was so red it was almost purple. "Then take me to court! What court? Case closed! Ha!"

  He started to turn away again. Barbie reached out and grabbed him, not by the arm but by the basket. "I'll just confiscate this, then, shall I?"

  "You can't do that!"

  "No? Take me to court, then." Barbie smiled. "Oh, I forgot--what court?"

  Dr. Boxer glared at him, lips drawn back to show the tips of tiny perfect teeth.

  "We'll just toast those old waffles up in the caff," Rusty said. "Yum! Tasty!"

  "Yeah, while we've still got some electricity to toast em with," Twitch muttered. "After that we can poke em on forks and cook em over the incinerator out back."

  "You can't do this!"

  Barbie said, "Let me be perfectly clear: unless you do whatever it is Rusty wants you to do, I have no intention of letting go your Eggos."

  Chaz Bender, who had a Band-Aid on the bridge of his nose and another on the side of his neck, laughed. Not very kindly. "Pay up, Doc!" he called. "Isn't that what you always say?"