Wild applause interrupted him, and most of the assembly rose to its feet. Big Jim leaned into the microphone.
“—but only after we get
Now almost all of them were up. Not Andi, though; she sat in the third row next to the center aisle, looking up at him with eyes that should have been soft and hazy and confused but were not.
Meanwhile, he basked in the applause.
20
“Now?” Rommie asked. “What you t’ink, Jackie?”
“Wait a little longer,” she said.
It was instinct, nothing else, and usually her instincts were dependable.
Later she would wonder how many lives might have been saved if she had told Rommie
21
Looking through his crack in the sidewall of the Peace Bridge, Junior saw that even the people on the benches outside had risen to their feet, and the same instinct that told Jackie to stay a little longer told him it was time to move. He limped from beneath the bridge on the Town Common side and cut across to the sidewalk. When the creature who had sired him resumed speaking, he started toward the Police Department. The dark spot on the left side of his field of vision had expanded again, but his mind was clear.
22
“These people are masters of disinformation,” Big Jim continued, “and when you go out to the Dome to visit with your loved ones, the campaign against me will kick into high gear. Cox and his surrogates will stop at nothing to blacken me. They’ll call me a liar and a thief, they may even say I ran their drug operation myself—”
It was Andrea Grinnell. Every eye fixed upon her as she rose, a human exclamation point in her bright red dress. She looked at Big Jim for a moment with an expression of cool contempt, then turned to face the people who had elected her Third Selectwoman when old Billy Cale, Jack Cale’s father, had died of a stroke four years ago.
“You people need to put your fears aside for a moment,” she said. “When you do, you’ll see that the story he’s telling is ludicrous. Jim Rennie thinks you can be stampeded like cattle in a thunderstorm. I’ve lived with you all my life, and I think he’s wrong.”
Big Jim waited for cries of protest. There were none. Not that the townspeople necessarily believed her; they were just stunned by this sudden turn of events. Alice and Aidan Appleton had turned all the way around and were kneeling on their benches, goggling at the lady in red. Caro was equally stunned.
“A secret experiment? What bullshit! Our government has gotten up to some pretty lousy stuff over the last fifty years or so, and I’d be the first to admit it, but holding a whole town prisoner with some sort of force field? Just to see what we’ll do? It’s idiotic. Only terrified people would believe it. Rennie knows that, so he’s been orchestrating the terror.”
Big Jim had been momentarily knocked off his stride, but now he found his voice again. And, of course, he had the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, Andrea Grinnell is a fine woman, but she’s not herself tonight. She’s as shocked as the rest of us, of course, but in addition, I’m sorry to say that she herself has a serious drug-dependency problem, as a result of a fall and her consequent use of an extremely addictive drug called—”
“I haven’t had anything stronger than aspirin for days now,” Andrea said in a clear, carrying voice. “And I have come into possession of papers which show—”
“Melvin Searles?” Big Jim boomed. “Will you and several of your fellow officers gently but firmly remove Selectwoman Grinnell from the room and escort her home? Or perhaps to the hospital for observation. She’s not herself.”
There were some approving murmurs, but not the clamor of approbation he’d expected. And Mel Searles had taken only a single step forward when Henry Morrison swept a hand into Mel’s chest and sent him back against the wall with an audible thump.
“Let’s let her finish,” Henry said. “She’s a town official too, so let her finish.”
Mel looked up at Big Jim, but Big Jim was watching Andi, almost hypnotized, as she drew a brown manila envelope from her big bag. He knew what it was the instant he saw it.
As Andi held the envelope up, it began to waver back and forth.
The shakes were coming back, the fucking shakes. They couldn’t have picked a worse time, but she wasn’t surprised; in fact, she might have expected it. It was the stress.
“The papers in this envelope came to me from Brenda Perkins,” she said, and at least her voice was steady. “They were compiled by her husband and the State Attorney General. Duke Perkins was investigating James Rennie for a laundry list of high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Mel looked at his friend Carter for guidance. And Carter was looking back, his gaze bright and sharp and almost amused. He pointed at Andrea, then held the side of his hand against his throat:
Marty Arsenault and Freddy Denton joined Mel as he hurried along the front of the stage, bent over like a man running in front of a movie screen. From the other side of the Town Hall, Todd Wendlestat and Lauren Conree were also in motion. Wendlestat’s hand was on a sawed-off piece of hickory cane he was carrying as a nightstick; Conree’s was on the butt of her gun.
Andi saw them coming, but didn’t stop. “The proof is in this envelope, and I believe it’s proof—”…
Clearly, heard by everyone in the now silent hall, Aidan Appleton said: “Wow! That lady has a gun!”
Another instant of thunderstruck silence followed. Then Carter Thibodeau leaped from his seat and ran in front of his boss, screaming
Aidan slipped into the aisle to investigate more closely.
It put a hole in the polished wood floor right in front of Carolyn Sturges’s nose. Splinters flew up. One struck her just below the right eye and blood began to pour down her face. She was vaguely aware that everyone was screaming now. She knelt in the aisle, grabbed Aidan by the shoulders, and hiked him between her thighs like a football. He flew back into the row where they’d been sitting, surprised but unhurt.
