by Stephen King
“But it won’t be a cell downstairs,” she said, speaking directly to Thibodeau. “It’ll be in Shawshank, where they do to little play-yard bullies like you what you did to that girl.”
“You stupid bitch,” Carter said. He spoke as if remarking on the weather. “We weren’t anywhere near her house.”
“That’s right,” Georgia said, sitting up again. There was Coke splattered on one of her cheeks, where a virulent case of teenage acne was fading (but still holding onto a few final outposts). “And besides, everyone knows Sammy Bushey is nothing but a lying lesbo cunt.”
Piper’s lips stretched in a smile. She turned it on Georgia, who recoiled from the crazy lady who had appeared so suddenly on the steps while they’d been having a nice sunsetter or two. “How did you know the lying lesbo cunt’s name? I didn’t say it.”
Georgia’s mouth dropped into an O of dismay. And for the first time something flickered beneath Carter Thibodeau’s calm. Whether fear or just annoyance, Piper didn’t know.
Frank DeLesseps got cautiously to his feet. “You better not go around spreading accusations you can’t back up, Reverend Libby.”
“Nor assaulting police officers,” Freddy Denton said. “I’m willing to let it go this time—everyone’s under stress—but you have to cease and desist these accusations right now.” He paused, then added lamely: “And the pushing, of course.”
Piper’s gaze remained fixed on Georgia, her right hand curled so tightly around the black plastic grip of Clover’s leash it was throbbing. The dog stood with his forepaws spread and his head lowered, still growling. He sounded like a powerful outboard motor set to idle. The fur on his neck had bushed out enough to hide his collar.
“How’d you know her name, Georgia?”
“I … I … I just assumed …”
Carter gripped her shoulder and squeezed it. “Shut up, babe.” And then, to Piper, still not standing (Because he doesn’t want to be pushed back down, the coward ), he said: “I don’t know what kind of bee you’ve got in your Jesus bonnet, but we were all together last night, at Alden Dinsmore’s farm. Trying to see if we could get anything out of the soldier-boys stationed on 119, which we couldn’t. That’s on the other side of town from Busheys’.” He looked around at his friends.
“Right,” Frankie said.
“Right,” Mel chimed in, looking at Piper distrustfully.
“Yeah!” Georgia said. Carter’s arm was around her again and her moment of doubt was gone. She looked at Piper defiantly.
“Georgie-girl assumed it was Sammy you were yelling about,” Carter said with that same infuriating calm. “Because Sammy’s the biggest lying scumbucket in this town.”
Mel Searles yodeled laughter.
“But you didn’t use protection,” Piper said. Sammy had told her this, and when she saw Thibodeau’s face tighten, she knew it was true. “You didn’t use protection and they rape-kitted her.” She had no idea if this was true, and didn’t care. She could see from their widening eyes that they believed it, and their belief was enough. “When they compare your DNA to what they found—”
“That’s enough,” Carter said. “Shut it.”
She turned her furious smile on him. “No, Mr. Thibodeau. We are only getting started, my son.”
Freddy Denton reached for her. She pushed him down, then felt her left arm caught and twisted. She turned and looked into Thibodeau’s eyes. No calm there now; they were shining with rage.
Hello, my brother, she thought incoherently.
“Fuck you, you fucking bitch,” he remarked, and this time she was the one who was pushed.
Piper fell backward down the stairs, trying instinctively to tuck and roll, not wanting to hit her head on one of those stone risers, knowing they could smash her skull in. Kill her or—worse—leave her a vegetable. She struck on her left shoulder instead, and there was a sudden howl of pain there. Familiar pain. She had dislocated that one playing high school soccer twenty years ago, and damned if she hadn’t just done it again.
Her legs flew over her head and she turned a back somersault, wrenching her neck, coming down on her knees and splitting the skin on both. She finally came to rest on her stomach and breasts. She had tumbled almost all the way to the bottom of the steps. Her cheek was bleeding, her nose was bleeding, her lips were bleeding, her neck hurt, but ah God, her shoulder was the worst, humped up all crooked in a way she remembered well. The last time she’d seen a hump like that, it had been in a red nylon Wildcats jersey. Nevertheless, she struggled to her feet, thanking God she still had the power to command her legs; she could also have been paralyzed.
She’d lost hold of the leash halfway down and Clover jumped at Thibodeau, his teeth snapping at the chest and belly under his shirt, tearing the shirt open, knocking Thibodeau backward, going for the young man’s vitals.
“Get him off me!” Carter screamed. Nothing calm about him now. “He’s gonna kill me!”
And yes, Clover was trying. His front paws were planted on Carter’s thighs, going up and down as Carter thrashed. He looked like a German shepherd on a bicycle. He shifted his angle of attack and bit deep into Carter’s shoulder, eliciting another scream. Then Clover went for the throat. Carter got his hands on the dog’s chest just in time to save his windpipe.
“Make him stop!”
Frank reached for the trailing leash. Clover turned and snapped at his fingers. Frank skittered backward, and Clover returned his attention to the man who had pushed his mistress down the steps. His muzzle opened, revealing a double line of shining white teeth, and he drove at Thibodeau’s neck. Carter got his hand up, then shrieked in agony as Clover seized on it and began to shake it like one of his beloved rag toys. Only his rag toys didn’t bleed, and Carter’s hand did.
Piper came staggering up the steps, holding her left arm across her midriff. Her face was a mask of blood. A tooth clung to the corner of her mouth like a crumb of food.
“GET HIM OFF ME, CHRIST, GET YOUR FUCKIN DOG OFF ME!”
Piper was opening her mouth to tell Clover to stand down when she saw Fred Denton drawing his gun.
“No!” she screamed. “No, I can make him stop!”
Fred turned to Mel Searles, and pointed at the dog with his free hand. Mel stepped forward and kicked Clover in the haunch. He did it high and hard, as he had once (not so long ago) punted footballs. Clover was whipped sideways, losing his hold on Thibodeau’s bleeding, shredded hand, where two fingers now pointed in unusual directions, like crooked signposts.
“NO!” Piper screamed again, so loud and so hard the world went gray before her eyes. “DON’T HURT MY DOG!”
Fred paid no attention. When Peter Randolph burst out through the double doors, his shirttail out, his pants unzipped, the copy of Outdoors he had been reading on the crapper still held in one hand, Fred paid no attention to that, either. He pointed his service automatic at the dog, and fired.
The sound was deafening in the enclosed square. The top of Clover’s head lifted off in a spray of blood and bone. He took one step toward his screaming, bleeding mistress—another—then collapsed.
Fred, gun still in hand, strode forward and grabbed Piper by her bad arm. The hump in her shoulder roared a protest. And still she kept her eyes on the corpse of her dog, whom she had raised from a pup.
“You’re under arrest, you crazy bitch,” Fred said. He pushed his face—pale, sweaty, the eyes seeming ready to pop right out of their sockets—close enough to hers for her to feel the spray of his spittle. “Anything you say can and will be used against your crazy ass.”
On the other side of the street, diners were pouring out of Sweet-briar Rose, Barbie among them, still wearing his apron and baseball cap. Julia Shumway arrived first.
She took in the scene, not seeing details so much as a gestalt summation: dead dog; clustered cops; bleeding, screaming woman with one shoulder higher than the other; bald cop—Freddy goddam Denton—shaking her by the arm connected to that shoulder; more blood on the step
s, suggesting that Piper had fallen down them. Or had been pushed.
Julia did something she had never done before in her life: reached into her handbag, flipped her wallet open, and climbed the steps, holding it out, yelling “Press! Press! Press!”
It stopped the shaking, at least.
9
Ten minutes later, in the office that had been Duke Perkins’s not so long ago, Carter Thibodeau sat on the sofa under Duke’s framed pictures and certificates, with a fresh bandage on his shoulder and paper towels around his hand. Georgia was sitting beside him. Large beads of painsweat stood out on Thibodeau’s forehead, but after saying “I don’t think nothin’s broken,” he was silent.
Fred Denton sat in a chair in the corner. His gun was on the Chief’s desk. He had surrendered it willingly enough, only saying, “I had to do it—just look at Cart’s hand.”
Piper sat in the office chair that was now Peter Randolph’s. Julia had mopped most of the blood off Piper’s face with more paper towels. The woman was shivering with shock and in great pain, but she was as silent about it as Thibodeau. Her eyes were clear.
“Clover only attacked him”—she raised her chin to Carter—“after he pushed me down the stairs. The push caused me to lose hold of the leash. What my dog did was justified. He was protecting me from a criminal assault.”
“She attacked us !” Georgia cried. “Crazy bitch attacked us ! Came up the steps spouting all this shit—”
“Shut up,” Barbie said. “All of you, shut the hell up.” He looked at Piper. “This isn’t the first time you’ve dislocated your shoulder, is it?”
“I want you out of here, Mr. Barbara,” Randolph said … but he spoke with no great conviction.
“I can deal with this,” Barbie said. “Can you?”
Randolph made no reply. Mel Searles and Frank DeLesseps stood outside the door. They looked worried.
Barbie turned back to Piper. “This is a subluxation—a partial separation. Not bad. I can pop it back in before you go to the hospital—”
“Hospital?” Fred Denton squawked. “She’s under arr—”
“Shut up, Freddy,” Randolph said. “Nobody’s under arrest. At least not yet.”
Barbie held Piper’s eyes with his own. “But I have to do it now, before the swelling gets bad. If you wait for Everett to do it at the hospital, they’ll have to give you anesthesia.” He leaned close to her ear and murmured, “While you’re out, they’ll be telling their side and you won’t be telling yours.”
“What are you saying?” Randolph asked sharply.
“That it’s going to hurt,” Barbie said. “Right, Rev?”
She nodded. “Go on. Coach Gromley did it right on the sidelines, and she was a total dope. Just hurry. And please don’t screw it up.”
Barbie said: “Julia, grab a sling from the first aid kit, then help me lie her down on her back.”
Julia, very pale and feeling ill, did as she was told.
Barbie sat down on the floor to Piper’s left, slipped off one shoe, and then grasped her forearm just above her wrist with both hands. “I don’t know Coach Gromley’s method,” he said, “but this is how a medic I knew in Iraq did it. You’re going to count to three and then yell wishbone.”
“Wishbone,” Piper said, bemused in spite of the pain. “Well okay, you’re the doctor.”
No, Julia thought—Rusty Everett was now the closest thing the town had to a doctor. She’d contacted Linda and gotten his cell phone number, but her call had been immediately shunted to voicemail.
The room was silent. Even Carter Thibodeau was watching. Barbie nodded to Piper. Beads of sweat stood out on her forehead, but she had her game-face on, and Barbie respected the shit out of that. He slipped his sock-foot into her left armpit, snugging it tight. Then, while pulling slowly but steadily on her arm, he applied counter pressure with his foot.
“Okay, here we go. Let’s hear you.”
“One … two … three … WISHBONE! ”
When Piper shouted, Barbie pulled. Everyone in the room heard the loud thunk as the joint went back into place. The hump in Piper’s blouse magically disappeared. She screamed but didn’t pass out. He slipped the sling over her neck and around the arm, immobilizing it as well as he could.
“Better?” he asked.
“Better,” she said. “Much, thank God. Still hurts, but not as bad.”
“I’ve got some aspirin in my purse,” Julia said.
“Give her the aspirin and then get out,” Randolph said. “All of you except for Carter, Freddy, the Reverend, and me.”
Julia looked at him unbelievingly. “Are you kidding? The Reverend is going to the hospital. Can you walk, Piper?”
Piper stood up shakily. “I think so. A little way.”
“Sit down, Reverend Libby,” Randolph said, but Barbie knew she was already gone. He could hear it in Randolph’s voice.
“Why don’t you make me?” She gingerly lifted her left arm and the sling holding it. The arm trembled, but it was working. “I’m sure you can dislocate it again, very easily. Go on. Show these … these boys … that you’re just like them.”
“And I’ll put it all in the paper!” Julia said brightly. “Circulation will double!”
Barbie said, “Suggest you defer this business until tomorrow, Chief. Allow the lady to get some painkillers stronger than aspirin, and have those knee lacerations checked by Everett. Given the Dome, she’s hardly a flight risk.”
“Her dog tried to kill me,” Carter said. In spite of the pain, he sounded calm again.
“Chief Randolph, DeLesseps, Searles, and Thibodeau are guilty of rape.” Piper was swaying now—Julia put an arm around her—but her voice was firm and clear. “Roux is an accessory to rape.”
“The hell I am!” Georgia squawked.
“They need to be suspended immediately.”
“She’s lying,” Thibodeau said.
Chief Randolph looked like a man watching a tennis match. He finally settled his gaze on Barbie. “Are you telling me what to do, kiddo?”
“No, sir, just making a suggestion based on my enforcement experience in Iraq. You’ll make your own decisions.”
Randolph relaxed. “Okay, then. Okay.” He looked down, frowning in thought. They all watched him notice his fly was still unzipped and take care of that little problem. Then he looked up again and said, “Julia, take Reverend Piper to the hospital. As for you, Mr. Barbara, I don’t care where you go but I want you out of here. I’ll take statements from my officers tonight, and from Reverend Libby tomorrow.”
“Wait,” Thibodeau said. He extended his crooked fingers to Barbie. “Can you do anything about these?”
“I don’t know,” Barbie said—pleasantly enough, he hoped. The initial ugliness was over, and now came the political aftermath, which he remembered well from dealing with Iraqi cops who were not all that different from the man on the couch and the others crowding the doorway. What it came down to was making nice with people you wished you could spit on. “Can you say wishbone ?”
10
Rusty had turned his cell phone off before knocking on Big Jim’s door. Now Big Jim sat behind his desk, Rusty in the seat before it—the chair of supplicants and applicants.
The study (Rennie probably called it a home office on his tax returns) had a pleasant, piney smell, as if it had recently been given a good scrubbing, but Rusty still didn’t like it. It wasn’t just the picture of an aggressively Caucasian Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount, or the self-congratulatory plaques, or the hardwood floor that really should have had a rug to protect it; it was all those things and something else as well. Rusty Everett had very little use for or belief in the supernatural, but nevertheless, this room felt almost haunted.
It’s because he scares you a little, he thought. That’s all it is.
Hoping that how he felt didn’t show in his voice or face, Rusty told Rennie about the hospital’s missing propane tanks. About how he had found one of them in the suppl
y shed behind the Town Hall, currently running the Town Hall’s generator. And how it was the only one.
“So I have two questions,” Rusty said. “How did a tank from the hospital supply wander downtown? And where did the rest go?”
Big Jim rocked back in his chair, put his hands behind his neck, and looked up at the ceiling meditatively. Rusty found himself staring at the trophy baseball sitting on Rennie’s desk. Propped in front of it was a note from Bill Lee, once of the Boston Red Sox. He could read the note because it was turned outward. Of course it was. It was for guests to see, and marvel over. Like the pictures on the wall, the baseball proclaimed that Big Jim Rennie had rubbed elbows with Famous People: Look on my autographs, ye mighty, and despair. To Rusty, the baseball and the note turned outward seemed to sum up his bad feelings about the room he was in. It was window-dressing, a tinny testimonial to smalltown prestige and smalltown power.
“I wasn’t aware you had anyone’s permission to go poking around in our supply shed,” Big Jim remarked to the ceiling. His hammy fingers were still laced together behind his head. “Perhaps you’re a town official, and I wasn’t aware of it? If so, my mistake—my bad, as Junior says. I thought you were basically a nurse with a prescription pad.”
Rusty thought this was mostly technique—Rennie trying to piss him off. To divert him.
“I’m not a town official,” he said, “but I am a hospital employee. And a taxpayer.”
“So?”
Rusty could feel blood rushing to his face.
“So those things make it partly my supply shed.” He waited to see if Big Jim would respond to this, but the man behind the desk remained impassive. “Besides, it was unlocked. Which is all beside the point, isn’t it? I saw what I saw, and I’d like an explanation. As a hospital employee.”
“And a taxpayer. Don’t forget that.”
Rusty sat looking at him, not even nodding.
“I can’t give you one,” Rennie said.
Rusty raised his eyebrows. “Really? I thought you had your fingers on the pulse of this town. Isn’t that what you said the last time you ran for Selectman? And now you’re telling me you can’t explain where the town’s propane went? I don’t believe it.”