'Devil take your orders,' Julia said, with more weariness than defiance. She took Rose by the arm and led her down the sidewalk, stopping only when she felt the shimmer against her face rise from preheat to bake.
The Democrat was an inferno. The dozen or so cops weren't even trying to put it out, but they had plenty of Indian pumps (some still bearing stickers she could read easily in the firelight: ANOTHER BURPEE'S SALE DAYS SPECIAL!) and they were wetting down the drugstore and the bookstore. Given the windless conditions, Julia thought they might save both… and thus the rest of the business buildings on the east side of Main.
'Wonderful that they turned out so quick,' Rose said.
Julia said nothing, only watched the flames whooshing up into the dark, blotting out the pink stars. She was too shocked to cry.
Everything, she thought. Everything.
Then she remembered the one bundle of newspapers she had tossed in her trunk before leaving to meet with Cox and amended that to Almost everything.
Pete Freeman pushed through the ring of police who were currently dousing the front and north side of Sanders Hometown Drug. The only clean spots on his face were where tears had cut through the soot.
'Julia, I'm so sorry!' He was nearly wailing. 'We almost had it stopped… would have had it stopped… but then the last one… the last bottle the bastards threw landed on the papers by the door and…' He wiped his remaining shirtsleeve across his face, smearing the soot there. 'I'm so goddam sorry!'
She took him in her arms as if he were a baby, although Pete was six inches taller and outweighed her by a hundred pounds. She hugged him, trying to mind his hurt arm, and said: 'What happened?'
'Firebombs,' he sobbed. 'That fucking Barbara.'
'He's in jail, Pete.'
'His friends! His goddam friendsl They did it!'
'What?You saw them?'
'Heard em,' he said, pulling back to look at her. 'Would've been hard not to. They had a bullhorn. Said if Dale Barbara wasn't freed, they'd burn the whole town.' He grinned bitterly.'Free him? We ought to hang him. Give me a rope and I'll do it myself.'
Big Jim came strolling up. The fire painted his cheeks orange. His eyes glittered. His smile was so wide that it stretched almost to his earlobes.
'How do you like your friend Barbie now, Julia?'
Julia stepped toward him, and there must have been something on her face, because Big Jim fell back a step, as if afraid she might take a swing at him. 'This makes no sense. None. And you know it.'
'Oh, I think it does. If you can bring yourself to consider the idea that Dale Barbara and his friends were the ones who set up the Dome in the first place, I think it makes perfect sense. It was an act of terrorism, pure and simple.'
'Bullshit. I was on his side, which means the neivspaper was on his side. He knew that.'
'But they said—' Pete began.
'Yes,' she said, but she didn't look at him. Her eyes were still fixed on Rennie's firelit face. ' They said, they said, but who the hell is they? Ask yourself that, Pete. Ask yourself this: if it wasn't Barbie—who had no motive—then who did have a motive? Who benefits by shutting Julia Shumway's troublesome mouth?'
Big Jim turned and motioned to two of the new officers—identifiable as cops only by the blue bandannas knotted around their biceps. One was a tall, hulking bruiser whose face suggested he was still little more than a child, no matter his size. The other could only be a Killian; that bullet head was as distinctive as a commemorative stamp. 'Mickey. Richie. Get these two women off the scene.'
Horace was crouched at the end oi" his leash, growling at Big Jim. Big Jim gave the little dog a contemptuous look.
'And if they won't go voluntarily, you have my permission to pick them up and throw them over the hood of the nearest police car.'
"This isn't finished,' Julia said, pointing a finger at him. Now she was beginning to cry herself, but the tears were too hot and painful to be those of sorrow. 'This isn't done, you son of a bitch.'
Big Jim's smile reappeared. It was as shiny as the finish on his Hummer. And as black. 'Yes it is,' he said. 'Done deal.'
6
Big Jim started back toward the fire—he wanted to watch it until there was nothing left of the noseyparker's newspaper but a pile of ashes—and swallowed a mouthful of smoke. His heart suddenly stopped in his chest and the world seemed to go swimming past him like some kind of special effect. Then his ticker started again, but in a flurry of irregular beats that made him gasp. He slammed a fist against the left side of his chest and coughed hard, a quick-fix for arrhythmia that Dr Haskell had taught him.
At first his heart continued its irregular galloping (beat.. . pause… beatbeatbeat… pause), but then it settled back to its normal rhythm. For just a moment he saw it encased in a dense globule of yellow fat, like a living thing that has been buried alive and struggles to get free before the air is all gone. Then he pushed the image away.
