Under the Dome

“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 top 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 Sweet-briar 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.

“Clover only attacked him”—she raised her chin to Carter—“after he pushed me down the stairs. The push caused me to lose hold of the leash. What my dog did was justified. He was protecting me from a criminal assault.”

“She attacked us!” Georgia cried. “Crazy bitch attacked us! Came up the steps spouting all this shit—”

“Shut up,” Barbie said. “All of you, shut the hell up.” He looked at Piper. “This isn’t the first time you’ve dislocated your shoulder, is it?”

“I want you out of here, Mr. Barbara,” Randolph said… but he spoke with no great conviction.

“I can deal with this,” Barbie said. “Can you?”

Randolph made no reply. Mel Searles and Frank DeLesseps stood outside the door. They looked worried.

Barbie turned back to Piper. “This is a subluxation—a partial separation. Not bad. I can pop it back in before you go to the hospital—”

“Hospital?” Fred Denton squawked. “She’s under arr—”

“Shut up, Freddy,” Randolph said. “Nobody’s under arrest. At least not yet.”

Barbie held Piper’s eyes with his own. “But I have to do it now, before the swelling gets bad. If you wait for Everett to do it at the hospital, they’ll have to give you anesthesia.” He leaned close to her ear and murmured, “While you’re out, they’ll be telling their side and you won’t be telling yours.”

“What are you saying?” Randolph asked sharply.