I have gone to the hospital. There has been a shooting there.

Julia started to make the keening noise again, and when Horace began to whine as if trying to harmonize, she made herself stop. She put the Prius in reverse, then put it back in Park long enough to return the note to where she had found it, in case some other parishioner with the weight of the world on his shoulders (or hers) might come by looking for The Mill's remaining spiritual advisor.

So now where? Rosie's after all? But Rosie might already have turned in. The hospital? Julia would have forced herself to go there in spite of her shock and her weariness if it had served a purpose, but now there was no newspaper in which to report whatever had happened, and without that, no reason to expose herself to fresh horrors.

She backed out of the driveway and turned up Town Common Hill with no idea where she was going until she came to Prestile Street. Three minutes later, she was parking in Andrea Grinnell's driveway. Yet this house was also dark. There was no answer to her soft knocks. Having no way of knowing that Andrea was in her bed upstairs, deeply asleep for the first time since dumping her pills, Julia assumed she had either gone to her brother Dougie's house or was spending the night with a friend.

Meanwhile, Horace was sitting on the welcome mat, looking up at her, waiting for her to take charge, as she had always done. But Julia was too hollowed out to take charge and too tired to go further. She was more than half convinced that she would drive the Prius off the road and kill them both if she tried going anywhere.

What she kept thinking about wasn't the burning building where her life had been stored but of how Colonel Cox had looked when she'd asked him if they had been abandoned.

Negative, he'd said. Absolutely not. But he hadn't quite been able to look at her while he said it.

There was a lawn glider on the porch. If necessary, she could curl up there. But maybe—

She tried the door and found it unlocked. She hesitated; Horace did not. Secure in the belief that he was welcome everywhere, he went inside immediately. Julia followed on the other end of the leash, thinking, My dog is now making the decisions. This is what it's come to.

'Andrea?' she called softly. 'Andi, are you here? It's Julia.'

Upstairs, lying on her back and snoring like a truck driver at the end of a four-day run, only one part of Andrea stirred: her left foot, which hadn't yet given up its withdrawal-induced jerking and tapping.

It was gloomy in the living room, but not entirely dark; Andi had left a battery-powered lamp on in the kitchen. And there was a smell. The windows were open, but with no breeze, the odor of vomit hadn't entirely vented. Had someone told her that Andrea was ill? With the flu, maybe?

Maybe it is the flu, but it could just as easily be withdrawal if she ran out of the pills she takes.

Either way, sickness was sickness, and sick people usually didn't want to be alone. Which meant the house was empty. And she was so tired. Across the room was a nice long couch, and it called to her. If Andi came in tomorrow and found Julia there, she'd understand.

'She might even make me a cup of tea,' she said. 'We'll laugh about it,'Although the idea of laughing at anything, ever again, seemed out of the question to her right now. 'Come on, Horace.'

She undipped his leash and trudged across the room. Horace watched her until she lay down and put a sofa pillow behind her head. Then he lay down himself and put his snout on his paw.

'You be a good boy,' she said, and closed her eyes. What she saw when she did was Cox's eyes not quite meeting hers. Because Cox thought they were under the Dome for the long haul.

But the body knows mercies of which the brain is unaware. Julia fell asleep with her head less than four feet from the manila envelope Brenda had tried to deliver to her that morning. At some point, Horace jumped onto the couch and curled up between her knees. And that was how Andrea found them when she came downstairs on the morning of October twenty-fifth, feeling more like her true self than she had in years.

16

There were four people in Rusty's living room: Linda, Jackie, Stacey Moggin, and Rusty himself. He served out glasses of iced tea, then summarized what he had found in the basement of the Bowie Funeral Home. The first question came from Stacey, and it was purely practical.

'Did you remember to lock up?'

'Yes,' Linda said.

'Then give me the key. I have to put it back.'

Us and them, Rusty thought again. That's what this conversation is going to be about. What it's already about. Our secrets. Their power. Our plans. Their agenda.

Linda handed over the key, then asked Jackie if the girls had given her any problems.

'No seizures, if that's what you're worried about. Slept like lambs the whole time you were gone.'

'What are we going to do about this?' Stacey asked. She was a little thing, but determined. 'If you want to arrest Rennie, the four of us will have to convince Randolph to do it. We three women as officers, Rusty as the acting pathologist.'

'No!'Jackie and Linda said it together, Jackie with decisiveness, Linda with fright.

'We have a hypothesis but no real proof,' Jackie said. 'I'm not sure Pete Randolph would believe us even if we had surveillance photos of Big Jim snapping Brenda's neck. He and Rennie are in it together now, sink or swim. And most of the cops would come down on Pete's side.'

'Especially the new ones,' Stacey said, and tugged at her cloud of blond hair.'A lot of them aren't very bright, but they're dedicated. And they like carrying guns. Plus'—she leaned forward—'there's six or eight more of them tonight. Just high-school kids. Big and stupid and enthusiastic. They scare the hell out of me. And something else. Thibodeau, Searles, and Junior Rennie are asking the newbies to recommend even more. Give this a couple of days and it won't be a police force anymore, it'll be an army of teenagers.'

'No one would listen to us?' Rusty asked. Not disbelieving, exactly; simply trying to get it straight. 'No one at all?'

'Henry Morrison might,'Jackie said.'He sees what's happening and he doesn't like it. But the others? They'll go along. Partly because they're scared and partly because they like the power. Guys like Toby Whelan and George Frederick have never had any; guys like Freddy Denton are just mean.'

'Which means what?' Linda asked.

'It means for now we keep this to ourselves. If Rennie's killed four people, he's very, very dangerous.'

'Waiting will make him more dangerous, not less,'Rusty objected.

'We have Judy and Janelle to worry about, Rusty,' Linda said. She was nipping at her nails, a thing Rusty hadn't seen her do in years. 'We can't risk anything happening to them. I won't consider it, and I won't let you consider it.'

'I have a kid, too,' Stacey said. 'Calvin. He's just five. It took all my courage just to stand guard at the funeral home tonight. The thought of taking this to that idiot Randolph…' She didn't need to finish; the pallor of her cheeks was eloquent.

'No one's asking you to,' Jackie said.

'Right now all I can prove is that the baseball was used on Coggins,' Rusty said. 'Anyone could have used it. Hell, his own son could have used it.'

'That actually wouldn't come as a total shock to me,' Stacey said. 'Junior's been weird lately. He got kicked out of Bowdoin for fighting. I don't know if his father knows it, but there was a police call to the gym where it happened, and I saw the report on the wire. And the two girls… if those were sex crimes…'

'They were,' Rusty said. 'Very nasty. You don't want to know.'

'But Brenda wasn't sexually assaulted,' Jackie said. 'To me that suggests Coggins and Brenda were different from the girls.'

'Maybe Junior killed the girls and his old man killed Brenda and Coggins,' Rusty said, and waited for someone to laugh. No one did. 'If so, why?'

They all shook their heads.

'There must have been a motive,' Rusty said, 'but I doubt if it was sex.'

'You think he has something to hide,'Jackie said.

'Yeah, I do. And I have an idea of someone who might know what it is. He's locked in the Police Department basement.'

'Barbara?' Jackie asked. 'Why would Barbara know?'

'Because he was talking to Brenda. They had quite a little heart-to-heart in her backyard the day after the Dome came down.'

'How in the world do you know that?' Stacey asked.

'Because the Buffalinos live next door to the Perkinses and Gina BufFalino's bedroom window overlooks the Perkins backyard. She saw them and mentioned it to me.' He saw Linda looking at him and shrugged.'What can I say? It's a small town. We all support the team.'

'I hope you told her to keep her mouth shut,' Linda said.

'I didn't, because when she told me I didn't have any reason to suspect Big Jim might have killed Brenda. Or bashed Lester Coggins's head in with a souvenir baseball. I didn't even know they were dead.'

'We still don't know if Barbie knows anything,' Stacey said.'Other than how to make a hell of a mushroom-and-cheese omelet, that is.'

'Somebody will have to ask him,'Jackie said. 'I nominate me.'

'Even if he does know something, will it do any good?' Linda asked.'This is almost a dictatorship now. I'm just realizing; that. I guess that makes me slow.'

'It makes you more trusting than slow,'Jackie said,'and normally trusting's a good way to be. As to Colonel Barbara, we won't know what good he might do us until we ask.' She paused. 'And that's really not the point, you know. He's innocent. That's the point.'

'What if they kill him?' Rusty asked bluntly. 'Shot while trying to escape.'

T'm pretty sure that won't happen,' Jackie said. 'Big Jim wants a show-trial. That's the talk at the station.' Stacey nodded.'They want to make people believe Barbara's a spider spinning a vast web of conspiracy. Then they can execute him. But even moving at top speed, that's days away. Weeks, if we're lueky.'

'We won't be that lucky,' Linda said, 'Not if Rennie wants to move fast.'

'Maybe you're right, but Rennie's got the special town meeting to get through on Thursday first. And he'll want to question Barbara. If Rusty knows he's been with Brenda, then Rennie knows.'

'Of course he knows,' Stacey said. Sounding impatient. 'They were together when Barbara showed Jim the letter from the President.'

They thought about this in silence for a minute.

'If Rennie's hiding something,' Linda mused,'he'll want time to get rid of it.'

Jackie laughed. The sound in that tense living room was almost shocking. 'Good luck on that. Whatever it is, he can't exactly put it in the back of a truck and drive it out of town.'

'Something to do with the propane?' Linda asked.

'Maybe; Rusty said. 'Jackie, you were in the service, right?'

'Army. Two tours. Military Police. Never saw combat, although I saw plenty of casualties, especially on my second tour. Wiirzburg, Germany, First Infantry Division.You know, the Big Red One? Mostly I stopped bar fights or stood guard outside the hospital there. I knew guys like Barbie, and I would give a great deal to have him out of that cell and on our side. There was a reason the President put him in charge. Or tried to.' She paused. 'It might be possible to break him out. It's worth considering.'

The other two women—police officers who also happened to be mothers—said nothing to this, but Linda was nibbling her nails again and Stacey was—worrying her hair.

'I know,'Jackie said.

Linda shook her head. 'Unless you have kids asleep upstairs and depending on you to make breakfast for them in the morning, you don't.'

'Maybe not, but ask yourself this: If we're cut off from the outside world, which we are, and if the man in charge is a murderous nut-ball, which he may be, are things apt to get better if we just sit back and do nothing?'

'If you broke him out,' Rusty said, 'what would you do with him? You can't exactly put him in the Witness Protection Program.'

'I don't know,' Jackie said, and sighed. 'All I know is that the President ordered him to take charge and Big Jim Fucking Rennie framed him for murder so he couldn't.'

'You're not going to do anything right away,' Rusty said. 'Not even take the chance of talking to him. There's something else in play here, and it could change everything.'

He told them about the Geiger counter—how it had come into his possession, to whom he had passed it on, and what Joe McClatchey claimed to have found with it.

'I don't know,' Stacey said doubtfully. 'It seems too good to be true. The McClatchey boy's… what? Fourteen?'

'Thirteen, I think. But this is one bright kid, and if he says they got a radiation spike out on Black Ridge Road, I believe him. If they have found the thing generating the Dome, and we can shut it down…'

'Then this ends!' Linda cried. Her eyes were bright. 'And Jim Rennie collapses like a… a Macy's Thanksgiving Day balloon with a hole in it!'

'Wouldn't that be nice,' Jackie Wettington said.'If it was on TV, I might even believe it.'

17

'Phil?' Andy called. 'Phil?'

He had to raise his voice to be heard. Bonnie Nandella and The Redemption were working through 'My Soul is a Witness' at top volume. All those ooo-oohs and whoa-yeahs were a little disorienting. Even the bright light inside the WCIK broadcast facility was disorienting; until he stood beneath those fluorescents, Andy hadn't really realized how dark the rest of The Mill had become. And how much he'd adapted to it. 'Chef?'

No answer. He glanced at the TV (CNN with the sound off), then looked through the long window into the broadcast studio. The lights were on in there, too, and all the equipment was running (it gave him the creeps, even though Lester Coggins had explained with great pride how a computer ran everything), but there was no sign of Phil.

All at once he smelled sweat, old and sour. He turned and Phil was standing right behind him, as if he had popped out of the floor. He was holding what looked like a garage door-opener in one hand. In the other was a pistol. The pistol was pointed at Andy's chest. The finger curled around the trigger was white at the knuckle and the muzzle was trembling slightly.

'Hello, Phil,' Andy said. 'Chef, I mean.'

'What are you doing here?' Chef Bushey asked. The smell of his sweat was yeasty, overpowering. His jeans and WCIK tee-shirt were grimy His feet were bare (probably accounting for his silent arrival) and caked with dirt. His hair might last have been washed a year ago. Or not. His eyes were the worst, bloody and haunted. 'You better tell me quick, old hoss, or you'll never tell anyone anything again.'

Andy, who had narrowly cheated death by pink water not long before, received Chef's threat with equanimity, if not good cheer. 'You do what you have to do, Phil. Chef, I mean.'

Chef raised his eyebrows in surprise. It was bleary but genuine. 'Yeah?'

'Absolutely.'

'Why you out here?'

'I come bearing bad news. I'm very sorry.'

Chef considered this, then smiled, revealing his few surviving teeth. 'There is no bad news. Christ is coming back, and that's the good news that swallows all bad news. That's the Good News Bonus Track. Do you agree?'

'I do, and I say hallelujah. Unfortunately—or fortunately, I guess; you'd have to say fortunately—your wife is with Him already'

'Say what?'

Andy reached out and pushed the muzzle of the gun floorward. Chef made no effort to stop him. 'Samantha's dead, Chef. I regret to say she took her own life earlier tonight.'

'Sammy? Dead?' Chef dropped the gun into the OUT basket on a nearby desk. He also lowered the garage door-opener, but kept hold of it; for the last two days it had not left his hand, even during his increasingly infrequent periods of sleep.

'I'm sorry, Phil. Chef.'

Andy explained the circumstances of Sammy's death as he understood them, concluding with the comforting news that 'the child' was fine. (Even in his despair, Andy Sanders was a glass-half-full person.)

Chef waved away Little Walter's wellbeing with his garage door opener. 'She offed two pigs?'

Andy stiffened at that. 'They were police officers, Phil. Fine human beings. She was distraught, I'm sure, but it was still a very bad thing to do. You need to take that back.'

'Say what?

'I won't have you calling our officers pigs.'

Chef considered. 'Yeah-yeah, kay-kay, I take it back.'

'Thank you.'

Chef bent down from his not-inconsiderable height (it was like being bowed to by a skeleton) and peered into Andy's face. 'Brave little motherfucker, ain't you?'

'No,' Andy said honestly. 'I just don't care.'

Chef seemed to see something that concerned him. He grasped Andy's shoulder. 'Brother, are you all right?'

Andy burst into tears and dropped onto an office chair under a sign advising that CHRIST WATCHETH EVERY CHANNEL, CHRIST LISTENETH EVERY WAVELENGTH. He rested his head on the wall below this strangely sinister slogan, crying like a child who has been punished for stealing jam. It was the brother that had done it; that totally unexpected brother.

Chef drew up a chair from behind the station manager's desk

and studied Andy with the expression of a naturalist observing some

rare animal in the wild. After awhile he said,'Sanders! Did you come

out here so I'd kill you?'•

'No,' Andy said through his sobs. 'Maybe. Yes. I can't say. But everything in my life has gone wrong. My wife and daughter are dead. I think God might be punishing me for selling this shit—'

Chef nodded. 'That could be.'

'-and I'm looking for answers. Or closure. Or something. Of course, I also wanted to tell you about your wife, it's important to do the right thing—'

Chef patted his shoulder. 'You did, bro. I appreciate it. She wasn't much shakes in the kitchen, and she didn't keep house no better than a hog on a shitheap, but she could throw an unearthly fuck when she was stoned. What did she have against those two blueboys?'

Even in his grief, Andy had no intention of bringing up the rape accusation. 'I suppose she was upset about the Dome. Do you know about the Dome, Phil? Chef?'

Chef waved his hand again, apparently in the affirmative. 'What you say about the meth is correct. Selling it is wrong. An affront. Making it, though—that is God's will.'

Andy dropped his hands and peered at Chef from his swollen eyes. 'Do you think so? Because I'm not sure that can be right.'

'Have you ever had any?'

'No!'Andy cried. It was as if Chef had asked him if he had ever enjoyed sexual congress with a cocker spaniel.

'Would you take medicine if the doctor prescribed it?'

'Well… yes, of course… but…'

'Meth is medicine.' Chef looked at him solemnly, then tapped Andy's chest with a finger for emphasis. Chef had nibbled the nail all the way to the bloody quick. 'Meth is medicine. Say it.'

'Meth is medicine,' Andy repeated, agreeably enough.

'That's right.' Chef stood up. 'It's a medicine for melancholy. That's from Ray Bradbury. You ever read Ray Bradbury?'

'No.'

'He's a fucking head. He knew. He wrote the motherfucking hook, say hallelujah. Come with me. I'm going to change your life.'

18

The First Selectman of Chester's Mill took to meth like a frog to flies.

There was a ratty old couch behind the ranked cookers, and here Andy and Chef Bushey sat under a picture of Christ on a motorcycle (title: Your Unseen Road Buddy), passing a pipe back and forth. While burning, meth smells like three-day-old piss in an uncovered thunderjug, but after his first tentative puff, Andy felt positive that the Chef was right: selling it might be Satan's work, but the stuff itself had to be God's. The world jumped into an exquisite, delicately trembling focus he had never seen before. His heart rate spiked, the blood vessels in his neck swelled to throbbing cables, his gums tingled, and his balls crawled in the most delightfully adolescent way. Better than any of these things, the weariness that had lain on his shoulders and muddled up his thinking disappeared. He felt he could move mountains in a wheelbarrow.

'In the Garden of Eden there was a Tree,' Chef said, passing him the pipe. Tendrils of green smoke drifted from both ends. 'The Tree of Good and Evil. Dig that shit?'

'Yes. It's in the Bible.'

'Bet your jackdog. And on that Tree was an Apple.'

'Right, right.' Andy took a puff so small it was actually a sip. He wanted more—he wanted it all— but feared that if he helped himself to a deep lungful, his head would explode off his neck and fly around the lab like a rocket, shooting fiery exhaust from its stump.

'The flesh of that Apple is Truth, and the skin of that Apple is Meth,' Chef said.

Andy looked at him. 'That's amazing.'

Chef nodded. 'Yes, Sanders. It is.' He took back the pipe. 'Is this good shit or what?'

'Amazing shit.'

'Christ is coming back on Halloween,' Chef said. 'Possibly a few days earlier; I can't tell. It's already the Halloween season, you know. Season of the motherfucking witch.' He handed Andy the pipe, then pointed with the hand holding the garage door opener. 'Do you see that? Up at the end of the gallery. Over the door to the storage side.'

Andy looked. 'What? That white lump? Looks like clay?'

'That's not clay,' Chef said. 'That's the Body of Christ, Sanders.'

'What about those wires coming out of it?'

'Vessels with the Blood of Christ running through em.'

Andy considered this concept and found it quite brilliant.'Good.' He considered some more. 'I love you, Phil. Chef, I mean. I'm glad I came out here.'

'Me too,' Chef said. 'Listen, do you want to go for a ride? I've got a car here somewhere—I think—but I'm a little shaky'

'Sure,' Andy said. He stood up. The world swam for a moment or two, then steadied. 'Where do you want to go?'

Chef told him.

19

Ginny Tomlinson was asleep at the reception desk with her head on the cover of a People magazine—Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie frolicking in the surf on some horny little island where waiters brought you drinks with little paper parasols stuck in them. When something woke her up at quarter of two on Wednesday morning, an apparition was standing before her: a tall, scrawny man with hollow eyes and hair that stuck out in all directions. He was wearing a WCIK tee-shirt and jeans that floated low on his meager hips. At first she thought she was having a nightmare about walking corpses, but then she caught a whiff of him. No dream had ever smelled that bad.

'I'm Phil Bushey,' the apparition said. 'I've come for my wife's body. I'm gonna bury her. Show me where it is.'

Ginny didn't argue. She would have given him all the bodies, just to get rid of him. She led him past Gina BufFalino, who stood next to a gurney, watching Chef with pale apprehension. When he turned to look at her, she shrank back.

'Got your Halloween costume, kid?' Chef inquired.

'Ves…'

'Who you gonna be?'

'Glinda,' the girl said faintly 'Although I guess I won't be going to the party, after all. It's in Motton.'

'I'm coming as Jesus,' Chef said. He followed Ginny, a dirty ghost in decaying Converse Hi-Tops. Then he turned back. He was smiling. His eyes were empty. 'And am I pissed.'

Chef Bushey came out of the hospital ten minutes later bearing Sammy's sheet-wrapped body in his arms. One bare foot, the toenails painted with chipped pink polish, nodded and dipped. Ginny held the door for him. She didn't look to see who was behind the wheel of the car idling in the turnaround, and for this Andy was vaguely grateful. He waited until she'd gone back inside, then got out and opened one of the back doors for Chef who handled his burden easily for a man who now looked like no more than skin wrapped on an armature of bone. Perhaps, Andy thought, meth conveys strength, too. If so, his own was flagging. The depression was creeping back in. The weariness, too.

'All right,' Chef said. 'Drive. But pass me that, first.'

He had given Andy the garage door opener for safekeeping. Andy handed it over. 'To the funeral parlor?'

Chef looked at him as if he were mad. 'Back out to the radio station, That's where Christ will come first when He comes back.'

'On Halloween.'

'That's right,' Chef said.'Or maybe sooner. In the meantime, will you help me bury this child of God?'

'Of course,' Andy said. Then, timidly: 'Maybe we could smoke a little more first.'

Chef laughed and clapped Andy on the shoulder.'Like it, don't you? I knew you would.'

'A medicine for melancholy' Andy said.

'True-dat, brother. True-dat.'

21

Barbie lay on the bunk, waiting for dawn and whatever came next. He had trained himself during his time in Iraq not to worry about what came next, and although this was an imperfect skill at best, he had mastered it to some degree. In the end, there were only two rules for living with fear (he had come to believe conquering fear was a myth), and he repeated them to himself now as he lay waiting.

I must accept those things over which I have no control.

I must turn my adversities into advantages.

The second rule meant carefully husbanding any resources and planning with those in mind.

He had one resource tucked into the mattress: his Swiss Army knife. It was a small one, only two blades, but even the short one would be capable of cutting a man's throat. He was incredibly lucky to have it, and he knew it.

Whatever intake routines Howard Perkins might have insisted upon had fallen apart since his death and the ascension of Peter Randolph. The shocks the town had endured over the last four days would have knocked any police department off its pins, Barbie supposed, but there was more to it than that. What it came down to was Randolph was both stupid and sloppy, and in any bureaucracy the rank-and-file tended to take their cues from the man at the top.

They had fingerprinted him and photographed him, but it had been five full hours before Henry Morrison, looking tired and disgusted, came downstairs and stopped six feet from Barbie's cell. Well out of grabbing distance.

'Forget something, did you?' Barbie asked.

'Dump out your pockets and shove everything into the corridor,' Henry said. 'Then take off your pants and put em through the bars.'

'If I do that, can I get something to drink I don't have to slurp out of the toiletbowl?'

'What are you talking about? Junior brought you water. I saw him.'

'He poured salt in it.'

'Right. Absolutely.' But Henry had looked a little unsure. Maybe there was a thinking human being still in there somewhere. 'Do what I tell you, Barbie. Barbara, I mean.'

Barbie emptied his pockets: wallet, keys, coins, a little fold of bills, the St Christopher's medal he carried as a good luck charm. By then the Swiss Army knife was long gone into the mattress. 'You can still call me Barbie when you put a rope around my neck and hang me, if you want. Is that what Rennie's got in mind? Hanging? Or a firing squad?'

'Just shut up and shove your pants through the bars. Shirt, too.' He sounded like a total smalltown hardass, but Barbie thought he looked more unsure than ever. That was good. That was a start.

Two of the new kiddie-cops had come downstairs. One held a can of Mace; the other a Taser. 'Need any help, Officer Morrison?' one asked.

'No, but you can stand right there at the foot of the stairs and keep an eye out until I'm done here,' Henry had said.

'I didn't kill anybody.' Barbie spoke quietly, but with all the honest sincerity he could muster. 'And I think you know it.'

'What I know is that you better shut up, unless you want a Taser enema.'

Henry had rummaged through his clothes, but didn't ask Barbie to strip down to his underpants and spread his cheeks. A late search and piss-poor, but Barbie gave him some points for remembering to do one at all—no one else had.

When Henry had finished, he kicked the bluejeans, pockets now empty and belt confiscated, back through the bars.

'May I have my medallion?'

'No.'

'Henry, think about this. Why would I—'

'Shut up.'

Henry pushed past the two kiddie-cops with his head down and Barbie's personal effects in his hands. The kiddie-cops followed, one pausing long enough to grin at Barbie and saw a finger across his neck.

Since then he'd been alone, with nothing to do but lie on the bunk and look up at the little slit of a window (opaque pebbled glass reinforced with wire), waiting for the dawn and wondering if they would actually try to waterboard him or if Searles had just been gassing out his ass. If they took a shot at it and turned out to be as bad at boarding as they had been at prisoner intake, there was a good chance they'd drown him.

He also wondered if someone might come down before dawn. Someone with a key. Someone—who might stand a little too close to the door. With the knife, escape was not completely out of the question, but once dawn came, it probably would be. Maybe he should have tried for Junior when Junior passed the glass of salt water through the bars… only Junior had been very eager to use his sidearm. It would have been a long chance, and Barbie wasn't that desperate. At least not yet.

Besides… where would I go?

Even if he escaped and disappeared, he could be letting his friends in for a world of hurt. After strenuous 'questioning' by cops like Melvin and Junior, they might consider the Dome the least of their problems. Big Jim was in the saddle now, and once guys like him were in it, they tended to ride hard. Sometimes until the horse collapsed beneath them.

He fell into a thin and troubled sleep. He dreamed of the blonde in the old Ford pickemup. He dreamed that she stopped for him and they got out of Chester's Mill just in time. She was unbuttoning her blouse to display the cups of a lacy lavender bra when a voice said: 'Hey there, fuckstick. Wakey-wakey'

22

Jackie Wettington spent the night at the Everett house, and although the kids were quiet and the guest-room bed was comfortable, she lay awake. By four o'clock that morning, she had decided what needed to be done. She understood the risks; she also understood that she couldn't rest with Barbie in a cell under the Police Department. If she herself had been capable of stepping up and organizing some sort of resistance—or just a serious investigation of the murders—she thought she would have started already. She knew herself too well, however, to even entertain the thought. She'd been good enough at what she did in Guam and Germany—rousting drunk troops out of bars, chasing AWOLs, and cleaning up after car crashes on the base was what it mostly came down to—but what was happening in Chester's Mill was far beyond a master sergeant's pay grade. Or the only full-time female street officer working with a bunch of smalltown men who called her Officer Bazooms behind her back. They thought she didn't know this, but she did. And right now a little junior high-school-level sexism was the least of her worries. This had to end, and Dale Barbara was the man the President of the United States had picked to end it. Even the pleasure of the Commander in Chief wasn't the most important part. The first rule was you didn't leave your guys behind. That was sacred, the Fabled Automatic.