On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field.
Авторы: King Stephen Edwin
necessary came into conflict.
‘I’d like us to bow our heads for a minute,’ Piper said. ‘I’m not going to pray because I’m no longer sure just who I’m talking to when I do that. But you might want to say a word to the God of your understanding, because tonight we need all the help we can get.’
They did as she asked. Some still had their heads down and their eyes closed when Piper raised her own head to look at them: two recently fired lady cops, a retired supermarket manager, a newspaperwoman who no longer had a newspaper, a librarian, the owner of the I local restaurant, a Dome-widow who couldn’t stop spinning the wedding ring on her finger, the local department store tycoon, and three uncharacteristically solemn-faced kids sitting scrunched together on the sofa.
‘Okay, amen,’ Piper said. ‘I’m going to turn the meeting over to Jackie Wettington, who knows what she’s doing.’
‘That’s probably too optimistic,’ Jackie said. ‘Not to mention hasty. Because I’m going to turn the meeting over to Joe McClatchey’
Joe looked startled. ‘Me?’
‘But before he gets going,’ she went on, ‘I’m going to ask his friends to serve as lookouts. Norrie in front and Benny in back.’ Jackie saw the protest on their faces and raised a hand to forestall it. ‘This isn’t an excuse to get you out of the room—it’s important. I don’t need to tell you it might not be good if the powers that be caught us in conclave.You two are the smallest. Find some nice deep shadows and slide in. If you see someone coming who looks suspicious, or any of the town police cars, clap your hands like this.’ She clapped once, then twice, then once more. ‘You’ll be filled in on everything later, I promise you. The new order of the day is pooled information, no secrets.’
When they were gone, Jackie turned to Joe. ‘This box you told Linda about. Tell everyone. From beginning to end.’
Joe did it on his feet, as if reciting in school. ‘Then we came back to town,’ he finished.’And that bastard Rennie had Rusty arrested.’ He iwiped sweat from his forehead and sat back down on the couch.
Claire put an arm around his shoulders. ‘Joe says it would be bad for Rennie to find out about the box,’ she said. ‘He thinks Rennie might want it to keep on doing what it’s doing instead of trying to turn it off or destroy it.’
‘I think he’s right,’Jackie said.’So its existence and location are oun first secret.’
‘I don’t know…’Joe said.
‘What?’ Julia asked. ‘You think he should know?’
‘Maybe. Sort of. I need to think.’
Jackie pushed on without questioning him further. ‘Here’s the second order of business. I want to try and break Barbie and Rusty out of jail. Tomorrow night, during the big town meeting. Barbie’s the guy the President designated to take over the town administration—’
‘Anybody but Rennie,’ Ernie growled.’Incompetent sonofabitch thinks he owns this burg.’
‘He’s good at one thing,’ Linda said. ‘Stirring up trouble when it suits him. The food riot and the newspaper being burned… I think both of those were done according to his orders.’
‘Of course they were,’ Jackie said. ‘Anyone who could kill his own pastor—’
Rose goggled at her. ‘Are you saying Rennie killed Coggins?’
Jackie told them about the basement workroom in the funeral parlor, and how the marks on Coggins’s face matched the gold baseball Rusty had seen in Rennie s study. They listened with dismay but no disbelief.
‘The girls, too?’ Lissa Jamieson said in a small, horrified voice.
‘I’ve got his son down for that.’ Jackie spoke almost briskly. ‘And those murders were probably not related to Big Jim’s political machinations. Junior collapsed this morning. At the McCain house, incidentally, where the bodies were found. By him.’
‘What a coincidence,’ Ernie said.
‘He’s in the hospital. Ginny Tomlinson says it’s almost certainly a brain tumor. Which can cause violent behavior.’
‘A father-son murder team?’ Claire was hugging Joe more tightly than ever.
‘Not a team, exactly,’Jackie said. ‘Call it the same wild strain ot behavior—something genetic—coming out under pressure.’
Linda said, ‘But the bodies being in the same place strongly suggests that if there were two murderers, they were working together. The point is, my husband and Dale Barbara are almost certainly being held by a killer who’s using them to build a grand conspiracy theory. The only reason they haven’t already been killed in custody is because Rennie wants to make an example of them. He wants them executed in public’ Her face cramped for a moment as she fought off tears.
‘I can’t believe he’s gotten as far as he has,’ Lissa said. She was twisting the ankh she wore back and forth. ‘He’s
