Under the Dome: A Novel (80 page)

Ginny stood aside so Thurston could go into the tiny WC attached to the room. He closed the door, but the sound of his retching was still loud, the sound of a revving engine with dirt caught in it somewhere.

Ginny felt a wave of faintness rush through her head, seeming to lift her and make her light. She fought it off. When she looked back at Twitch, he was just closing his cell phone. “No answer from Rusty,” he said. “I left a voice mail. Anyone else? What about Rennie?”

“No!” She almost shuddered. “Not him.”

“My sister? Andi, I mean?”

Ginny only looked at him.

Twitch looked back for a moment, then dropped his eyes. “Maybe not,” he mumbled.

Ginny touched him above the wrist. His skin was cold with shock. She supposed her own was, too. “If it’s any comfort,” she said, “I think she’s trying to get clean. She came to see Rusty, and I’m pretty sure that was what it was about.”

Twitch ran his hands down the sides of his face, turning it for a moment into an opéra bouffe mask of sorrow. “This is a nightmare.”

“Yes,” Ginny said simply. Then she took out her cell phone again.

“Who you gonna call?” Twitch managed a little smile. “Ghost-busters?”

“No. If Andi and Big Jim are out, who does that leave?”

“Sanders, but he’s dogshit-useless and you know it. Why don’t we just clean up the mess? Thurston’s right, what happened here is obvious.”

Thurston came out of the bathroom. He was wiping his mouth with a paper towel. “Because there are rules, young man. And under the circumstances, it’s more important than ever that we follow them. Or at least give it the good old college try.”

Twitch looked up and saw Sammy Bushey’s brains drying high on one wall. What she had used to think with now looked like a clot of oatmeal. He burst into tears.

10

Andy Sanders was sitting in Dale Barbara’s apartment, on the side of Dale Barbara’s bed. The window was filled with orange fireglare from the burning
Democrat
building next door. From above him he heard footsteps and muffled voices—men on the roof, he assumed.

He had brought a brown bag with him when he climbed the inside staircase from the pharmacy below. Now he took out the contents: a glass, a bottle of Dasani water, and a bottle of pills. The pills were OxyContin tablets. The label read HOLD FOR A. GRINNELL.
They were pink, the twenties. He shook some out, counted, then shook out more. Twenty. Four hundred milligrams. It might not be enough to kill Andrea, who’d had time to build up a tolerance, but he was sure it would do quite well for him.

The heat from the fire next door came baking through the wall. His skin was wet with sweat. It had to be at least a hundred in here, maybe more. He wiped his face with the coverlet.

Won’t feel it much longer. There’ll be cool breezes in heaven, and we’ll all sit down to dinner together at the Lord’s table.

He used the bottom of the glass to grind the pink pills into powder, making sure the dope would hit him all at once. Like a hammer on a steer’s head. Just lie down on the bed, close his eyes, and then good night, sweet pharmacist, may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Me … and Claudie … and Dodee. Together for eternity.

Don’t think so, brother.

That was Coggins’s voice, Coggins at his most dour and declamatory. Andy paused in the act of crushing the pills.

Suicides don’t eat supper with their loved ones, my friend; they go to hell and dine on hot coals that burn forever in the belly. Can you give me hallelujah on that? Can you say amen?

“Bullspit,” Andy whispered, and went back to grinding the pills. “You were snout-first in the trough with the rest of us. Why should I believe you?”

Because I speak the truth. Your wife and daughter are looking down on you right now, pleading with you not to do it. Can’t you hear them?

“Nope,” Andy said. “And that’s not you, either. It’s just the part of my mind that’s cowardly. It’s run me my whole life. It’s how Big Jim got hold of me. It’s how I got into this meth mess. I didn’t need the money, I don’t even
understand
that much money, I just didn’t know how to say no. But I can say it this time. Nosir. I’ve got nothing left to live for, and I’m leaving. Got anything to say to that?”

It seemed that Lester Coggins did not. Andy finished reducing the pills to powder, then filled the glass with water. He brushed the pink dust into the glass using the side of his hand, then stirred with his
finger. The only sounds were the fire and the dim shouts of the men fighting it and from above, the
thump-thud-thump
of other men walking around on his roof.

“Down the hatch,” he said … but didn’t drink. His hand was on the glass, but that cowardly part of him—that part that didn’t want to die even though any meaningful life was over—held it where it was.

“No, you don’t win this time,” he said, but he let go of the glass so he could wipe his streaming face with the coverlet again. “Not every time and not this time.”

He raised the glass to his lips. Sweet pink oblivion swam inside. But again he put it down on the bed table.

The cowardly part, still ruling him. God
damn
that cowardly part.

“Lord, send me a sign,” he whispered. “Send me a sign that it’s all right to drink this. If for no other reason than because it’s the only way I can get out of this town.”

Next door, the roof of the
Democrat
went down in a stew of sparks. Above him, someone—it sounded like Romeo Burpee—shouted:
“Be ready, boys, be on the goddam ready!”

Be ready.
That was the sign, surely. Andy Sanders lifted the glassful of death again, and this time the cowardly part didn’t hold his arm down. The cowardly part seemed to have given up.

In his pocket, his cell phone played the opening phrases of “You’re Beautiful,” a sentimental piece of crap that had been Claudie’s choice. For a moment he almost drank, anyway, but then a voice whispered that
this
could be a sign, too. He couldn’t tell if that was the voice of the cowardly part, or of Coggins, or of his own true heart. And because he couldn’t, he answered the phone.

“Mr. Sanders?” A woman’s voice, tired and unhappy and frightened. Andy could relate. “This is Virginia Tomlinson, up at the hospital?”

“Ginny, sure!” Sounding like his old cheery, helpful self. It was bizarre.

“We have a situation here, I’m afraid. Can you come?”

Light pierced the confused darkness in Andy’s head. It filled him
with amazement and gratitude. To have someone say
Can you come.
Had he forgotten how fine that felt? He supposed he had, although it was why he’d stood for Selectman in the first place. Not to wield power; that was Big Jim’s thing. Only to lend a helping hand. That was how he’d started out; maybe it was how he could finish up.

“Mr. Sanders? Are you there?”

“Yes. You hang in, Ginny. I’ll be right there.” He paused. “And none of that Mr. Sanders stuff. It’s Andy. We’re all in this together, you know.”

He hung up, took the glass into the bathroom, and poured its pink contents into the commode. His good feeling—that feeling of light and amazement—lasted until he pushed the flush-lever. Then depression settled over him again like a smelly old coat. Needed? That was pretty funny. He was just stupid old Andy Sanders, the dummy who sat on Big Jim’s lap. The mouthpiece. The gabbler. The man who read Big Jim’s motions and proposals as if they were his own. The man who came in handy every two years or so, electioneering and laying on the cornpone charm. Things of which Big Jim was either incapable or unwilling.

There were more pills in the bottle. There was more Dasani in the cooler downstairs. But Andy didn’t seriously consider these things; he had made Ginny Tomlinson a promise, and he was a man who kept his word. But suicide hadn’t been rejected, only put on the back burner. Tabled, as they said in the smalltown political biz. And it would be good to get out of this bedroom, which had almost been his death chamber.

It was filling up with smoke.

11

The Bowies’ mortuary workroom was belowground, and Linda felt safe enough turning on the lights. Rusty needed them for his examination.

“Look at this mess,” he said, waving an arm at the dirty, foot-tracked
tile floor, the beer and soft drink cans on the counters, an open trashcan in one corner with a few flies buzzing over it. “If the State Board of Funeral Service saw this—or the Department of Health—it’d be shut down in a New York minute.”

“We’re not in New York,” Linda reminded him. She was looking at the stainless steel table in the center of the room. The surface was cloudy with substances probably best left unnamed, and there was a balled-up Snickers wrapper in one of the runoff gutters. “We’re not even in Maine anymore, I don’t think. Hurry up, Eric, this place stinks.”

“In more ways than one,” Rusty said. The mess offended him—hell,
outraged
him. He could have punched Stewart Bowie in the mouth just for the candy wrapper, discarded on the table where the town’s dead had the blood drained from their bodies.

On the far side of the room were six stainless steel body-lockers. From somewhere behind them, Rusty could hear the steady rumble of refrigeration equipment. “No shortage of propane here,” he muttered. “The Bowie brothers are livin large in the hood.”

There were no names in the card slots on the fronts of the lock-ers—another sign of sloppiness—so Rusty pulled the whole sixpack. The first two were empty, which didn’t surprise him. Most of those who had so far died under the Dome, including Ron Haskell and the Evanses, had been buried quickly. Jimmy Sirois, with no close relatives, was still in the small morgue at Cathy Russell.

The next four contained the bodies he had come to see. The smell of decomposition bloomed as soon as he pulled out the rolling racks. It overwhelmed the unpleasant but less aggressive smells of preservatives and funeral ointments. Linda retreated farther, gagging.

“Don’t you vomit, Linny,” Rusty said, and went across to the cabinets on the far side of the room. The first drawer he opened contained nothing but stacked back issues of
Field & Stream,
and he cursed. The one under it, however, had what he needed. He reached beneath a trocar that looked as if it had never been washed and pulled out a pair of green plastic face masks still in their wrappers. He handed one mask to Linda, donned the other himself. He looked
into the next drawer and appropriated a pair of rubber gloves. They were bright yellow, hellishly jaunty.

“If you think you’re going to throw up in spite of the mask, go upstairs with Stacey.”

“I’ll be all right. I should witness.”

“I’m not sure how much your testimony would count for; you’re my wife, after all.”

She repeated, “I should witness. Just be as quick as you can.”

The body-racks were filthy. This didn’t surprise him after seeing the rest of the prep area, but it still disgusted him. Linda had thought to bring an old cassette recorder she’d found in the garage. Rusty pushed RECORD, tested the sound, and was mildly surprised to find it was not too bad. He placed the little Panasonic on one of the empty racks. Then he pulled on the gloves. It took longer than it should have; his hands were sweating. There was probably talcum or Johnson’s Baby Powder here somewhere, but he had no intention of wasting time looking for it. He already felt like a burglar. Hell, he
was
a burglar.

“Okay, here we go. It’s ten forty-five PM, October twenty-fourth. This examination is taking place in the prep room of the Bowie Funeral Home. Which is filthy, by the way. Shameful. I see four bodies, three women and a man. Two of the women are young, late teens or early twenties. Those are Angela McCain and Dodee Sanders.”

“Dorothy,” Linda said from the far side of the prep table. “Her name is … was … Dorothy.”

“I stand corrected. Dorothy Sanders. The third woman is in late middle age. That’s Brenda Perkins. The man is about forty. He’s the Reverend Lester Coggins. For the record, I can identify all these people.”

He beckoned his wife and pointed at the bodies. She looked, and her eyes welled with tears. She raised the mask long enough to say, “I’m Linda Everett, of the Chester’s Mill Police Department. My badge number is seven-seven-five. I also recognize these four bodies.” She put her mask back in place. Above it, her eyes pleaded.

Rusty motioned her back. It was all a charade, anyway. He knew it, and guessed Linda did, too. Yet he didn’t feel depressed. He had wanted a medical career ever since boyhood, would certainly have been a doctor if he hadn’t had to leave school to take care of his parents, and what had driven him as a high school sophomore dissecting frogs and cows’ eyes in biology class was what drove him now: simple curiosity. The need to know. And he
would
know. Maybe not everything, but at least
some
things.

This is where the dead help the living. Did Linda say that?

Didn’t matter. He was sure they would help if they could. “There has been no cosmeticizing of the bodies that I can see, but all four have been embalmed. I don’t know if the process has been completed, but I suspect not, because the femoral artery taps are still in place.

“Angela and Dodee—excuse me, Dorothy—have been badly beaten and are well into decomposition. Coggins has also been beaten—savagely, from the look—and is also into decomp, although not as far; the musculature on his face and arms has just begun to sag. Brenda—Brenda Perkins, I mean …” He trailed off and bent over her.

“Rusty?” Linda asked nervously. “Honey?”

He reached out a gloved hand, thought better of it, removed the glove, and cupped her throat. Then he lifted Brenda’s head and felt the grotesquely large knot just below the nape. He eased her head down, then rotated her body onto one hip so he could look at her back and buttocks.

“Jesus,” he said.

“Rusty? What?”

For one thing, she’s still caked with shit,
he thought … but that wouldn’t go on the record. Not even if Randolph or Rennie only listened to the first sixty seconds before crushing the tape under a shoe heel and burning whatever remained. He would not add that detail of her defilement.