Only ...
Don't go alone. Barbie had said that, too. And when he'd asked who else she trusted, she'd said Romeo Burpee. But Burpee's was closed too. What did that leave?
The question was whether or not Big Jim would actually hurt her, and Brenda thought the answer was no. She believed she was physically safe from Big Jim, no matter what worries Barbie might have--worries that were, no doubt, partly the result of his wartime experiences. This was a dreadful miscalculation on her part, but understandable; she wasn't the only one who clung to the notion that the world was as it had been before the Dome came down.
16
Which still left the problem of the VADER file.
Brenda might be more afraid of Big Jim's tongue than of bodily harm, but she knew it would be mad to show up on his doorstep with the file still in her possession. He might take it from her even if she said it wasn't the only copy. That she would not put past him.
Halfway up Town Common Hill, she came to Prestile Street, cutting along the upper edge of the common. The first house belonged to the McCains. The one beyond was Andrea Grinnell's. And although Andrea was almost always overshadowed by her male counterparts on the Board of Selectmen, Brenda knew she was honest and had no love for Big Jim. Oddly enough, it was Andy Sanders to whom Andrea was more apt to kowtow, although why anyone would take him seriously was beyond Brenda's understanding.
Maybe he's got some sort of hold on her, Howie's voice spoke up in her head.
Brenda almost laughed. That was ridiculous. The important thing about Andrea was that she had been a Twitchell before Tommy Grinnell married her, and Twitchells were tough, even the shy ones. Brenda thought she could leave the envelope containing the VADER file with Andrea ... assuming her place wasn't also locked and empty. She didn't think it would be. Hadn't she heard from someone that Andrea was down with the flu?
Brenda crossed Main, rehearsing what she'd say: Would you hold this for me? I'll be back for it in about half an hour. If I don't come back for it, give it to Julia at the newspaper. Also, make sure Dale Barbara knows.
And if she was asked what all the mystery was about? Brenda decided she'd be frank. The news that she intended to force Jim Rennie's resignation would probably do Andrea more good than a double dose of Theraflu.
In spite of her desire to get her distasteful errand done, Brenda paused for a moment in front of the McCain house. It looked deserted, but there was nothing strange about that--plenty of families had been out of town when the Dome came down. It was something else. A faint smell, for one thing, as if food were spoiling in there. All at once the day felt hotter, the air closer, and the sounds of whatever was going on at Food City seemed far away. Brenda realized what it came down to: she felt watched. She stood thinking about how much those shaded windows looked like closed eyes. But not completely closed, no. Peeking eyes.
Shake it off, woman. You've got things to do.
She walked on to Andrea's house, pausing once to look back over her shoulder. She saw nothing but a house with drawn shades, sitting gloomily in the mild stink of its decaying supplies. Only meat smelled so bad so soon. Henry and LaDonna must have had a lot put by in their freezer, she thought.
17
It was Junior who watched Brenda, Junior on his knees, Junior dressed only in his underpants, his head whamming and slamming. He watched from the living room, peering around the edge of a drawn shade. When she was gone, he went back into the pantry. He would have to give his girlfriends up soon, he knew, but for now he wanted them. And he wanted the dark. He even wanted the stink rising from their blackening skin.
Anything, anything, that would soothe his fiercely aching head.
18
After three twists of the old-fashioned crank doorbell, Brenda resigned herself to going home after all. She was turning away when she heard slow, shuffling steps approaching the door. She arranged a little Hello, neighbor smile on her face. It froze there when she saw Andrea--cheeks pale, dark circles under her eyes, hair in disarray, cinching the belt of a bathrobe around her middle, pajamas underneath. And this house smelled, too--not of decaying meat but of vomit.
Andrea's smile was as wan as her cheeks and brow. "I know how I look," she said. The words came out in a croak. "I better not invite you in. I'm on the mend, but I still might be catching."
"Have you seen Dr.--" But no, of course not. Dr. Haskell was dead. "Have you seen Rusty Everett?"
"Indeed I have," Andrea said. "All will soon be well, I'm told."
"You're perspiring."
"Still a little touch of fever, but it's almost gone. Can I help you with something, Bren?"
She almost said no--she didn't want to saddle a woman who was still clearly sick with a responsibility like the one in her carrier-bag--but then Andrea said something that changed her mind. Great events often turn on small wheels.
"I'm so sorry about Howie. I loved that man."
"Thank you, Andrea." Not just for the sympathy, but for calling him Howie instead of Duke.
To Brenda he'd always been Howie, her dear Howie, and the VADER file was his last work. Probably his greatest work. Brenda suddenly decided to put it to work, and with no further delay. She dipped into the carrier-bag and brought out the manila envelope with Julia's name printed on the front. "Will you hold this for me, dear? Just for a little while? I have an errand to run and I don't want to take it with me."
Brenda would have answered any questions Andrea asked, but Andrea apparently had none. She only took the bulky envelope with a sort of distracted courtesy. And that was all right. It saved time. Also, it would keep Andrea out of the loop, and might spare her political blowback at some later date.
"Happy to," Andrea said. "And now ... if you'll excuse me ... I think I'd better get off my feet. But I'm not going to sleep!" she added, as if Brenda had objected to this plan. "I'll hear you when you come back."
"Thank you," Brenda said. "Are you drinking juices?"
"By the gallon. Take your time, hon--I'll babysit your envelope."
Brenda was going to thank her again, but The Mill's Third Selectman had already closed the door.
19
Toward the end of her conversation with Brenda, Andrea's stomach began to flutter. She fought it, but this was a fight she was going to lose. She blathered something about drinking juice, told Brenda to take her time, then closed the door in the poor woman's face and sprinted for her stinking bathroom, making gutteral urk-urk noises deep down in her throat.
There was an end table beside the living room couch, and she tossed the manila envelope at it blindly as she rushed past. The envelope skittered across the polished surface and fell off the other side, into the dark space between the table and the couch.
Andrea made it to the bathroom but not to the toilet ... which was just as well; it was nearly filled with the stagnant, stinking brew that had been her body's output during the endless night just past. She leaned over the basin instead, retching until it seemed to her that her very esophagus would come loose and land on the splattery porcelain, still warm and pulsing.
That didn't happen, but the world turned gray and teetered away from her on high heels, growing smaller and less tangible as she swayed and tried not to faint. When she felt a little better, she walked slowly down the hall on elastic legs, sliding one hand along the wood to keep her balance. She was shivering and she could hear the jittery clitter of her teeth, a horrible sound she seemed to pick up not with her ears but with the backs of her eyes.
She didn't even consider trying to reach her bedroom upstairs but went out onto the screened-in back porch instead. The porch should have been too cold to be comfortable this late in October, but today the air was sultry. She did not lie down on the old chaise longue so much as collapse into its musty but somehow comforting embrace.
I'll get up in a minute, she told herself. Get the last bottle of Poland Spring out of the fridge and wash that foul taste out of my mou ...
But here her thoughts slipped away
. She fell into a deep and profound sleep from which not even the restless twitching of her feet and hands could wake her. She had many dreams. One was of a terrible fire people ran from, coughing and retching, looking for anyplace where they might find air that was still cool and clean. Another was of Brenda Perkins coming to her door and giving her an envelope. When Andrea opened it, a never-ending stream of pink OxyContin pills poured out. By the time she woke up it was evening, and the dreams were forgotten.
So was Brenda Perkins's visit.
20
"Come into my study," Big Jim said cheerfully. "Or would you like something to drink, first? I have Cokes, although I'm afraid they're a little warm. My generator died last night. Out of propane."
"But I imagine you know where you can get more," she said.
He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
"The methamphetamine you're making," she said patiently. "My understanding--based on Howie's notes--is that you've been cooking it in large batches. 'Amounts that boggle the mind' is how he put it. That must take a lot of propane gas."
Now that she was actually into this, she found her jitters had melted away. She even took a certain cold pleasure in watching the color mount in his cheeks and go dashing across his forehead.
"I have no idea what you're talking about. I think your grief ..." He sighed, spread his blunt-fingered hands. "Come inside. We'll discuss this and I'll set your mind at rest."
She smiled. That she could smile was sort of a revelation, and it helped more to imagine Howie watching her--from somewhere. Also telling her to be careful. That was advice she planned to heed.
On the Rennie front lawn, two Adirondack chairs sat amid the fallen leaves. "It's nice enough out here for me," she said.
"I prefer to talk business inside."
"Would you prefer to see your picture on the front page of the Democrat ? Because I can arrange that."
He winced as if she had struck him, and for just a moment she saw hate in those small, deepset, piggy eyes. "Duke never liked me, and I suppose it's natural that his feelings should have been communicated to--"
"His name was Howie !"
Big Jim threw up his hands as if to say there was no reasoning with some women, and led her to the chairs overlooking Mill Street.
Brenda Perkins talked for almost half an hour, growing colder and angrier as she spoke. The meth lab, with Andy Sanders and--almost certainly--Lester Coggins as silent partners. The staggering size of the thing. Its probable location. The mid-level distributors who had been promised immunity in exchange for information. The money trail. How the operation had gotten so big the local pharmacist could no longer safely supply the necessary ingredients, necessitating import from overseas.
"The stuff came into town in trucks marked Gideon Bible Society," Brenda said. "Howie's comment on that was 'too clever by half.'"
Big Jim sat looking out at the silent residential street. She could feel the anger and hate baking off him. It was like heat from a casserole dish.
"You can't prove any of this," he said at last.
"That won't matter if Howie's file turns up in the Democrat. It's not due process, but if anyone can understand bypassing a little thing like that, it would be you."
He flapped a hand. "Oh, I'm sure you had a file, " he said, "but my name is on nothing."
"It's on the Town Ventures paperwork," she said, and Big Jim rocked in his chair as if she had lashed out with her fist and hit him in the temple. "Town Ventures, incorporated in Carson City. And from Nevada, the money trail leads to Chongqing City, the pharma capital of the People's Republic of China." She smiled. "You thought you were smart, didn't you? So smart."
"Where is this file?"
"I left a copy with Julia this morning." Bringing Andrea into it was the last thing she wanted to do. And thinking it was in the newspaper editor's hands would bring him to heel that much quicker. He might feel that he or Andy Sanders could jawbone Andrea.
"There are other copies?"
"What do you think?"
He considered a moment, then said: "I kept it out of the town."
She said nothing.
"It was for the good of the town."
"You've done a lot of good for the town, Jim. We've got the same sewer system we had in nineteen sixty, Chester Pond is filthy, the business district is moribund...." She was sitting straight now, gripping the arms of her chair. "You fucking self-righteous turdworm."
"What do you want?" He was staring straight ahead at the empty street. A large vein beat in his temple.
"For you to announce your resignation. Barbie takes over as per the President's--"
"I'll never resign in favor of that cotton-picker." He turned to look at her. He was smiling. It was an appalling smile. "You didn't leave anything with Julia, because Julia's at the market, watching the food fight. You might have Duke's file locked away somewhere, but you didn't leave a copy with anyone. You tried Rommie, then you tried Julia, then you came here. I saw you walking up Town Common Hill."
"I did," she said. "I did have it." And if she told him where she had left it? Bad luck for Andrea. She started to get up. "You had your chance. Now I'm leaving."
"Your other mistake was thinking you'd be safe outside on the street. An empty street." His voice was almost kind, and when he touched her arm, she turned to look at him. He seized her face. And twisted.
Brenda Perkins heard a bitter crack, like the breaking of a branch overloaded with ice, and followed the sound into a great darkness, trying to call her husband's name as she went.
21
Big Jim went inside and got a Jim Rennie's Used Cars gimme cap from the front hall closet. Also some gloves. And a pumpkin from the pantry. Brenda was still in her Adirondack chair, with her chin on her chest. He looked around. No one. The world was his. He put the hat on her head (pulling the brim low), the gloves on her hands, and the pumpkin in her lap. It would serve perfectly well, he thought, until Junior came back and took her to where she could become part of Dale Barbara's butcher's bill. Until then, she was just another stuffed Halloween dummy.
He checked her carrier-bag. It contained her wallet, a comb, and a paperback novel. So that was all right. It would be fine down cellar, behind the dead furnace.
He left her with the hat slouched on her head and the pumpkin in her lap and went inside to stash her bag and wait for his son.
IN THE JUG
1
Selectman Rennie's assumption that no one had seen Brenda come to his house that morning was correct. But she was seen on her morning travels, not by one person but by three, including one who also lived on Mill Street. If Big Jim had known, would the knowledge have given him pause? Doubtful; by then he was committed to his course and it was too late to turn back. But it might have caused him to reflect (for he was a reflective man, in his own way) on murder's similarity to Lay's potato chips: it's hard to stop with just one.
2
Big Jim didn't see the watchers when he came down to the corner of Mill and Main. Neither did Brenda as she walked up Town Common Hill. This was because they didn't want to be seen. They were sheltering just inside the Peace Bridge, which happened to be a condemned structure. But that wasn't the worst of it. If Claire McClatchey had seen the cigarettes, she would have shit a brick. In fact, she might have shit two. And certainly she never would have let Joe chum with Norrie Calvert again, not even if the fate of the town hinged upon their association, because it was Norrie who supplied the smokes--badly bent and croggled Winstons, which she had found on a shelf in the garage. Her father had quit smoking the year before and the pack was covered with a fine scrim of dust, but the cigarettes inside had looked okay to Norrie. There were just three, but three was perfect: one each. Think of it as a good-luck rite, she instructed.
"We'll smoke like Indians praying to the gods for a successful hunt. Then we'll go to work."
"Sounds good," Joe said. He had always been curious about smoking. He couldn't see the attraction, but there m
ust be one, because a lot of people still did it.
"Which gods?" Benny Drake asked.
"The gods of your choice," Norrie answered, looking at him as if he were the dumbest creature in the universe. "God god, if that's the one you like." Dressed in faded denim shorts and a pink sleeveless top, her hair for once down and framing her foxy little face instead of scrooped back in its usual sloppin-around-town ponytail, she looked good to both boys. Totally awesome, in fact. "I pray to Wonder Woman."
"Wonder Woman is not a goddess," Joe said, taking one of the elderly Winstons and smoothing it straight. "Wonder Woman is a superhero." He considered. "Maybe a superher-ette. "
"She's a goddess to me," Norrie replied with a grave-eyed sincerity that could not be gainsaid, let alone ridiculed. She was carefully straightening her own cigarette. Benny left his the way it was; he thought a bent cigarette had a certain coolness factor. "I had Wonder Woman Power Bracelets until I was nine, but then I lost them. I think that bitch Yvonne Nedeau stole them."
She lit a match and touched it first to Scarecrow Joe's cigarette, then to Benny's. When she tried to use it to light her own, Benny blew it out.
"What did you do that for?" she asked.
"Three on a match. Bad luck."
"You believe that?"
"Not much," Benny said, "but today we're going to need all the luck we can get." He glanced at the shopping bag in the basket of his bike, then took a pull on his cigarette. He inhaled a little and then coughed the smoke back out, his eyes watering. "This tastes like panther-shit!"
"Smoked a lot of that, have you?" Joe asked. He dragged on his own cigarette. He didn't want to look like a wuss, but he didn't want to start coughing and maybe throw up, either. The smoke burned, but in sort of a good way. Maybe there was something to this, after all. Only he already felt a little woozy.
Go easy on the inhaling part, he thought. Passing out would be almost as uncool as puking. Unless, maybe, he passed out in Norrie Calvert's lap. That might be very cool indeed.