When Rusty and Romeo Burpee got to the department store, Toby Manning was already there, waiting to open up and serve the public, if that was Rommie’s pleasure. Petra Searles, who worked across the street in the drugstore, was sitting with him. They were in lawn chairs with tags reading END OF SUMMER BLOWOUT SALE hanging from the arms.
“Sure you don’t want to tell me about this radiation suit you’re going to build before”—Rusty looked at his watch—“ten o’clock?”
“Better not,” Rommie said. “You’d call me crazy. Go on, Doc. Get those gloves and goggles and the apron. Talk to the kids. Gimme some time.”
“We opening, boss?” Toby asked when Rommie got out.
“Dunno. Maybe this afternoon. Gonna be a l’il busy dis mornin, me.”
Rusty drove away. He was on Town Common Hill before he realized that both Toby and Petra had been wearing blue armbands.
He found gloves, aprons, and one pair of lead-lined goggles in the back of the X-ray closet, about two seconds before he was ready to give up. The goggles’ strap was busted, but he was sure Rommie could staple it back together. As a bonus, he didn’t have to explain to anyone what he was doing. The whole hospital seemed to be sleeping.
He went back out, sniffed at the air—flat, with an unpleasant smoky undertang—and looked west, at the hanging black smear where the missiles had struck. It looked like a skin tumor. He knew he was concentrating on Barbie and Big Jim and the murders because they were the human element, things he sort of understood. But ignoring the Dome would be a mistake—a potentially catastrophic one. It had to go away, and soon, or his patients with asthma and COPD were going to start having problems. And they were really just the canaries in the coal mine.
That nicotine-stained sky.
“Not good,” he muttered, and threw his salvage into the back of the van. “Not good at all.”
All three children were at the McClatchey house when he got there, and oddly subdued for kids who might be acclaimed national heroes by the end of this Wednesday in October, if fortune favored them.
“You guys ready?” Rusty asked, more heartily than he felt. “Before we go out there we have to stop at Burpee’s, but that shouldn’t take l—”
“They’ve got something to tell you first,” Claire said. “I wish to God they didn’t. This just keeps getting worse and worse. Would you like a glass of orange juice? We’re trying to drink it up before it goes spunky.”
Rusty held his thumb and forefinger close together to indicate just a little. He’d never been much of an OJ man, but he wanted her out of the room and sensed she wanted to go. She looked pale and sounded scared. He didn’t think this was about what the kids had found out on Black Ridge; this was something else.
When she was gone he said, “Spill it.”
Benny and Norrie turned to Joe. He sighed, brushed his hair off his forehead, sighed again. There was little resemblance between this serious young adolescent and the sign-waving, hell-raising kid in Alden Dinsmore’s field three days ago. His face was as pale as his mother’s, and a few pimples—maybe his first—had appeared on his forehead. Rusty had seen such sudden outbreaks before. They were stress-pimples.
“What is it, Joe?”
“People say I’m smart,” Joe said, and Rusty was alarmed to see the kid was on the verge of tears. “I guess I am, but sometimes I wish I wasn’t.”
“Don’t worry,” Benny said, “you’re stupid in lots of important ways.”
“Shut up, Benny,” Norrie said kindly.
Joe took no notice. “I could beat my dad at chess when I was six, and my mom by the time I was eight. Get A’s in school. Always won the Science Fair. Been writing my own computer programs for two years. I’m not bragging. I know I’m a geek.”
Norrie smiled and put her hand on his. He held it.
“But I just make connections, see? That’s all it is. If A, then B. If
“What exactly are we talking about, Joe?”
“I don’t think the cook did those murders. That is,
He seemed relieved when Norrie and Benny both nodded. But that was nothing to the look of gladness (mixed with incredulity) that came over his face when Rusty said, “Neither do I.”
“Told you he had major chops,” Benny said. “Gives awesome stitches, too.”
Claire came back with juice in a tiny glass. Rusty sipped. Warm but drinkable. With no gennie, by tomorrow it wouldn’t be.
“Why don’t
“You guys first.” The generator on Black Ridge had momentarily slipped to the back of Rusty’s mind.
“We saw Mrs. Perkins yesterday morning,” Joe said. “We were on the Common, just starting to prospect with the Geiger counter. She was going up Town Common Hill.”
Rusty put his glass on the table next to his chair and sat forward with his hands clasped between his knees. “What time was this?”
