Under the Dome

“And no earlier. Because the riot was going on. You heard it.”

“Yeah,” Norrie said. “It was really loud.”

“And you’re positive it was Brenda Perkins? It couldn’t have been some other woman?” Rusty’s heart was thumping. If she had been seen alive during the riot, then Barbie was indeed in the clear.

“We all know her,” Norrie said. “She was even my leader in Girl Scouts before I quit.” The fact that she’d actually been kicked out for smoking did not seem relevant, so she omitted it.

“And I know from Mom what people are saying about the murders,” Joe said. “She told me all she knew. You know, the dog tags.”

“Mom did not want to tell all she knew,” Claire said, “but my son can be very insistent and this seemed important.”

“It is,” Rusty said. “Where did Mrs. Perkins go?”

Benny answered this one. “First to Mrs. Grinnell’s, but whatever she said must not have been cool, because Mrs. Grinnell slammed the door in her face.”

Rusty frowned.

“It’s true,” Norrie said. “I think Mrs. Perkins was delivering her mail or something. She gave an envelope to Mrs. Grinnell. Mrs. Grinnell took it, then slammed the door. Like Bennie said.”

“Huh,” Rusty said. As if there’d been any delivery in Chester’s Mill since last Friday. But what seemed important was that Brenda had been alive and running errands at a time when Barbie was alibied. “Then where did she go?”

“Crossed Main and walked up Mill Street,” Joe said.

“This street.”

“Right.”

Rusty switched his attention to Claire. “Did she—”

“She didn’t come here,” Claire said. “Unless it was while I was down cellar, seeing what I have left for canned goods. I was down there for half an hour. Maybe forty minutes. I… I wanted to get away from the noise at the market.”

Benny said what he’d said the day before: “Mill Street’s four blocks long. Lot of houses.”

“To me that’s not the important part,” Joe said. “I called Anson Wheeler. He used to be a thrasher himself, and he sometimes still takes his board to The Pit over in Oxford. I asked him if Mr. Barbara was at work yesterday morning, and he said yes. He said Mr. Barbara went down to Food City when the riot started. He was with Anson and Miz Twitchell from then on. So Mr. Barbara’s alibied for Miz Perkins, and remember what I said about if not A, then not B? Not the whole alphabet?”

Rusty thought the metaphor was a little too mathematical for human affairs, but he understood what Joe was saying. There were other victims for whom Barbie might not have an alibi, but the same body-dump argued strongly for the same killer. And if Big Jim had done at least one of the victims—as the stitch marks on Coggins’s face suggested—then he had likely done them all.

Or it might have been Junior. Junior who was now wearing a gun and carrying a badge.

“We need to go to the police, don’t we?” Norrie said.

“I’m scared about that,” Claire said. “I’m really, really scared about that. What if Rennie killed Brenda Perkins? He lives on this street, too.”

“That’s what I said, yesterday,” Norrie told her.

“And doesn’t it seem likely that if she went to see one selectman and got the door slammed in her face, she’d then go on and try the next one in the neighborhood?”

Joe said (rather indulgently), “I doubt if there’s any connection, Mom.”

“Maybe not, but she still could have been going to see Jim Rennie. And Peter Randolph…” She shook her head. “When Big Jim says jump, Peter asks how high.”

“Good one, Mrs. McClatchey!” Benny cried. “You rule, o mother of my—”

“Thank you, Benny, but in this town, Jim Rennie rules.”

“What do we do?” Joe was looking at Rusty with troubled eyes.

Rusty thought of the smudge again. The yellow sky. The smell of smoke in the air. He also spared a thought for Jackie Wettington’s determination to break Barbie out. Dangerous as it might be, it was probably a better chance for the guy than the testimony of three kids, especially when the Police Chief receiving it was just about capable of wiping his ass without an instruction booklet.

“Right now, nothing. Dale Barbara’s safe right where he is.” Rusty hoped this was true. “We’ve got this other thing to deal with. If you really found the Dome generator, and we can turn it off—”

“The rest of the problems will just about solve themselves,” Norrie Calvert said. She looked profoundly relieved.

“They actually might,” Rusty said.

7

After Petra Searles went back to the drugstore (to do inventory, she said), Toby Manning asked Rommie if he could help with anything. Rommie shook his head. “Go on home. See what you can do for your dad and mom.”

“It’s just Dad,” Toby said. “Mom went to the supermarket over in Castle Rock Saturday morning. She says the prices at Food City are too high. What are you going to do?”

“Nothin much,” Rommie said vaguely. “Tell me somethin, Tobes—why you an Petra wearin those blue rags around your arms?”

Toby glanced at it as if he’d forgotten it was there. “Just showing solidarity,” he said. “After what happened last night at the hospital… after everything that’s been happening…”

Rommie nodded. “You ain’t deputized, nor nothin?”

“Heck, no. It’s more… you remember after nine-eleven, when it seemed like everybody had a New York Fire Department or Police Department hat and shirt? It’s like that.” He considered. “I guess if they needed help, I’d be glad to pitch in, but it seems like they’re doing fine. You sure you don’t need help?”

“Yuh. Now scat. I’ll call you if I decide to open this afternoon.”

“Okay.” Toby’s eyes gleamed. “Maybe we could have a Dome Sale. You know what they say—when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.”

“Maybe, maybe,” Rommie said, but he doubted there would be any such sale. This morning he was much less interested than he had been in unloading shoddy goods at prices that looked like bargains. He felt that he had undergone big changes in the last three days—not so much of character as of perspective. Some of it had to do with fighting the fire and the camaraderie afterward. That had been the real town at work, he thought. The town’s better nature. And a lot of it had to do with the murder of his once-upon-a-time lover, Brenda Perkins… whom Rommie still thought of as Brenda Morse. One hot ticket she’d been, and if he discovered who had cooled her off—assuming that Rusty was right about it not being Dale Barbara—that person would pay. Rommie Burpee would see to that personally.

At the back of his cavernous store was the Home Repairs section, conveniently located next to the Do-It- Yourself section. Rommie grabbed a set of heavy-duty metal snips from the latter, then entered the former and proceeded to the farthest, darkest, and dustiest corner of his retail kingdom. Here he found two dozen fifty-pound rolls of Santa Rosa lead sheeting, ordinarily used for roofing, flashing, and chimney insulation. He loaded two of the rolls (and the metal snips) into a shopping cart and rolled the cart back through the store until he reached the sports department. Here he set to work picking and choosing. Several times he burst out laughing. It was going to work, but yes, Rusty Everett was going to look tres amusant.

When he was done, he straightened up to stretch the kinks out of his back and caught sight of a deer-in- the-crosshairs poster on the far side of the sports department. Printed above the deer was this reminder: HUNTING SEASON’S ALMOST HERE—TIME TO GUN UP!

Given the way things were going, Rommie thought that gunning up might be a good idea. Especially if Rennie or Randolph decided that confiscating any weapons but those belonging to the cops would be a good