Stephen King - Under the Dome

Rusty pulled up a chair and readied the stethoscope for action. “Lift your shirt.” When Big Jim put down his cell phone to do it, Rusty slipped it into his breast pocket. “I’ll just take this, shall I? I’ll leave it at the lobby desk. That’s an okay area for cell phones. The chairs aren’t as well padded as these, but they’re still not bad.”

He expected Big Jim to protest, maybe explode, but he didn’t so much as peep, only exposed a bulging Bhudda-belly and large soft manbreasts above it. Rusty bent forward and had a listen. It was far better than he’d expected. He would have been happy with a hundred and ten beats a minute plus moderate premature ventriculation. Instead, Big Jim’s pump was loping along at ninety, with no misbeats at all.

“I’m feeling a lot better,” Big Jim said. “It was stress. I’ve been under terrible stress. I’m going to take another hour or two to rest right here—do you realize you can see all of downtown from this window, pal?—and I’m going to visit with Junior one more time. After that I’ll just check myself out and—”

“It isn’t just stress. You’re overweight and out of shape.”

Big Jim bared his upper teeth in that bogus smile. “I’ve been running a business and a town, pal—both in the black, by the way. That leaves little time for treadmills and StairMasters and such.”

“You presented with PAT two years ago, Rennie. That’s paroxysmal atrial tachycardia.”

“I know what it is. I went to WebMD and it said healthy people often experience—”

“Ron Haskell told you in no uncertain terms to get your weight under control, to get the arrhythmia under control with medication, and if medication wasn’t effective, to explore surgical options to correct the underlying problem.”

Big Jim had begun to look like an unhappy child imprisoned in a highchair. “God told me not to! God said no pacemaker! And God was right! Duke Perkins had a pacemaker, and look what happened to him!”

“Not to mention his widow,” Rusty said softly. “Bad luck for her, too. She must have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Big Jim regarded him, little pig eyes calculating. Then he looked up at the ceiling. “Lights are on again, aren’t they? I got you your propane, like you asked. Some people don’t have much gratitude. Of course a man in my position gets used to that.”

“We’ll be out again by tomorrow night.”

Big Jim shook his head. “By tomorrow night you’ll have enough LP to keep this place running until Christmas if it’s necessary. It’s my promise to you for having such a wonderful bedside manner and being such an all-around good fellow.”

“I do have trouble being grateful when people return what was mine to begin with. I’m funny that way.”

“Oh, so now you’re equating yourself with the hospital?” Big Jim snorted.

“Why not? You just equated yourself with Christ. Let’s return to your medical situation, shall we?”

Big Jim flapped his large, blunt-fingered hands disgustedly.

“Valium isn’t a cure. If you walk out of here, you could be firing misbeats again by five PM. Or just vaporlock completely. The bright side is that you could be meeting your savior before it gets dark here in town.”

“And what would you recommend?” Rennie spoke calmly. He had regained his composure.

“I could give you something that would probably take care of the problem, at least short-term. It’s a drug.”

“What drug?”

“But there’s a price.”

“I knew it,” Big Jim said softly. “I knew you were on Barbara’s side the day you came to my office with your give me this and give me that.”

The only thing Rusty had asked for was propane, but he ignored that. “How did you know Barbara had a side then? The murders hadn’t been discovered, so how did you know he had a side?”

Big Jim’s eyes gleamed with amusement or paranoia or both. “I have my little ways, pal. So what’s the price? What would you like me to trade you for the drug that will keep me from having a heart attack?” And before Rusty could respond: “Let me guess. You want Barbara’s freedom, don’t you?”

“No. This town would lynch him the minute he stepped outside.”

Big Jim laughed. “Every now and then you show a lick of sense.”

“I want you to step down. Sanders, too. Let Andrea Grinnell take over, with Julia Shumway to help her out until Andi kicks her drug habit.”

Big Jim laughed louder this time, and slapped his thigh for good measure. “I thought Cox was bad—he wanted the one with the big tiddies to help Andrea—but you’re ever so much worse. Shumway! That rhymes-with-witch couldn’t administrate herself out of a paper bag!”

“I know you killed Coggins.”

He hadn’t meant to say that, but it was out before he could pull it back. And what harm? It was just the two of them, unless you counted CNN’s John Roberts, looking down from the TV on the wall. And besides, the results were worth it. For the first time since he had accepted the reality of the Dome, Big Jim was rocked. He tried to keep his face neutral and failed.

“You’re crazy.”

“You know I’m not. Last night I went to the Bowie Funeral Home and examined the bodies of the four murder victims.”

“You had no right to do that! You’re no pathologist! You’re not even a cotton-picking doctor !”

“Relax, Rennie. Count to ten. Remember your heart.” Rusty paused. “On second thought, fuck your heart. After the mess you left behind, and the one you’re making now, fuck your heart. There were marks all over Coggins’s face and head. Very atypical marks, but easily identifiable. Stitch marks. I have no doubt they’ll match the souvenir baseball I saw on your desk.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.” But Rennie glanced toward the open bathroom door.

“It means plenty. Especially when you consider the other bodies were dumped in the same place. To me that suggests the killer of Coggins was the killer of the others. I think it was you. Or maybe you and Junior. Were you a father-and-son tag-team? Was that it?”

“I refuse to listen to this!” He started to get up. Rusty pushed him back down. It was surprisingly easy.

“Stay where you are!” Rennie shouted. “Gosh-dammit, just stay where you are!”

Rusty said, “Why did you kill him? Did he threaten to blow the whistle on your drug operation? Was he part of it?”

“Stay where you are!” Rennie repeated, although Rusty had already sat back down. It did not occur to him—then—that Rennie might not have been speaking to him.

“I can keep this quiet,” Rusty said. “And I can give you something that will take care of your PAT better than Valium. The quid pro quo is that you step down. Announce your resignation—for medical reasons—in favor of Andrea tomorrow night at the big meeting. You’ll go out a hero.”

There was no way he could refuse, Rusty thought; the man was backed into a corner.

Rennie turned to the open bathroom door again and said, “Now you can come out.”

Carter Thibodeau and Freddy Denton emerged from the bathroom where they had been hiding—and listening.

“Goddam,” Stewart Bowie said.

He and his brother were in the basement workroom of the funeral parlor. Stewart had been doing a makeup job on Arletta Coombs, The Mill’s latest suicide and the Bowie Funeral Home’s latest customer. “Goddam sonofabitch fucking shitmonkey. ”

He dropped his cell phone onto the counter, and from the wide front pocket of his rubberized green apron removed a package of peanut butter–flavored Ritz Bits. Stewart always ate when he was upset, he had always been messy with food (“The pigs ate here,” their dad was wont to say when young Stewie left the table), and now Ritz crumbs showered down on Arletta’s upturned face, which was far from peaceful; if she’d thought quaffing Liquid-Plumr would be a quick and painless way to escape the Dome, she had been badly deceived. Darn stuff had eaten all the way through her stomach and out through her back.