'Ginny, sure!' Sounding like his old cheery, helpful self. It was bizarre.
'We have a situation here, I'm afraid. Can you come?'
Light pierced the confused darkness in Andy's head. It filled him with amazement and gratitude. To have someone say Can you come. Had he forgotten how fine that felt? He supposed he had, although it w^s why he'd stood for Selectman in the first place. Not to wield power; that was Big Jim's thing. Only to lend a helping hand. That was how he'd started out; maybe it was how he could finish up.
'Mr Sanders? Are you there?'
'Yes. You hang in, Ginny I'll be right there.' He paused. 'And none of that Mr Sanders stuff. It's Andy We're all in this together, you know.'
He hung up, took the glass into the bathroom, and poured its pink contents into the commode. His good feeling - that feeling of light and amazement - lasted until he pushed the flush-lever. Then depression settled over him again like a smelly old coat. Needed? That was pretty funny. He was just stupid old Andy Sanders, the dunimy who sat on Big Jim's lap. The mouthpiece. The gabbler. The man who read Big Jim's motions and proposals as if they were his own. The man who came in handy every two years or so, electioneering and laying on the cornpone charm. Things of which Big Jim was I either incapable or unwilling.
There were more pills in the bottle. There was more Dasani in the cooler downstairs. But Andy didn't seriously consider these things; he had made Ginny Tomlinson a promise, and he was a man who kept his word. But suicide hadn't been rejected, only put on the back burner. Tabled, as they said in the smalltown political biz. And it would be good to get out of this bedroom, which had almost been his death chamber.
It was filling up with smoke.
11
The Bowes' mortuary workroom was belowground, and Linda felt safe enough turning on the lights. Rusty needed them for his examination.
'Look at this mess,' he said, waving an arm at the dirty, foot-tracked tile floor, the beer and soft drink cans on the counters, an open trashcan in one corner with a few flies buzzing over it. 'If the State Board of Funeral Service saw this - or the Department of Health - it'd be shut down in a New York minute.'
'We're not in New York,' Linda reminded him. She was looking at the stainless steel table in the center of the room. The surface was cloudy with substances probably best left unnamed, and there was a balled-up Snickers wrapper in one of the runoff gutters. 'We're not even in Maine anymore, I don't think. Hurry up, Eric, this place stinks.'
'In more ways than one,' Rusty said. The mess offended him - hell, outraged him. He could have punched Stewart Bowie in the mouth just for the candy wrapper, discarded on the table where the town's dead had the blood drained from their bodies.
On the far side of the room were six stainless steel body-lockers. From somewhere behind them, Rusty could hear the steady rumble of refrigeration equipment.'No shortage of propane here,'he muttered. 'The Bowie brothers are livin large in the hood.'
There were no names in the card slots on the fronts of the lockers - another sign of sloppiness - so Rusty pulled the whole sixpack. The first two were empty, which didn't surprise him. Most of those who had so far died under the Dome, including Ron Haskell and the Evanses, had been buried quickly. Jimmy Sirois, with no close relatives, was still in the small morgue at Cathy Russell.
The next four contained the bodies he had come to see. The smell of decomposition bloomed as soon as he pulled out the rolling racks. It overwhelmed the unpleasant but less aggressive smells of preservatives and funeral ointments. Linda retreated farther, gagging.
'Don't you vomit, Linny,' Rusty said, and went across to the cabinets on the far side of the room. The first drawer he opened contained nothing but stacked back issues of Field & Stream, and he cursed. The one under it, however, had what he needed. He reached beneath a trocar that looked as if it had never been washed and pulled out a pair of green plastic face masks still in their wrappers. He handed one mask to Linda, donned the other himself. He looked into the next drawer and appropriated a pair of rubber gloves. They were bright yellow, hellishly jaunty.
'If you think you're going to throw up in spite of the mask, go upstairs with Stacey.'
'I'll be all right. I should witness.'
'I'm not sure how much your testimony would count for; you're my wife, after all.'
She repeated, 'I should witness. Just be as quick as you can.'
The body-racks were filthy. This didn't surprise him after seeing the rest of the prep area, but it still disgusted him. Linda had thought to bring an old cassette recorder she'd found in the garage. Rusty pushed RECORD, tested the sound, and was mildly surprised to find it was not too bad. He placed the little Panasonic on one of the empty racks. Then he pulled on the gloves. It took longer than it should have; his hands were sweating. There was probably talcum or Johnson's Baby Powder here somewhere, but he had no intention of wasting time looking for it. He already felt like a burglar. Hell, he was a burglar.
'Okay, here we go. It's ten forty-five p.m., October twenty-fourth. This examination is taking place in the prep room of the Bowie Funeral Home. Which is filthy, by the way. Shameful. I see four bodies, three women and a man. Two of the women are young, late teens or early twenties. Those are Angela McCain and Dodee Sanders.'
'Dorothy,' Linda said from the far side of the prep table. 'Her name is... was... Dorothy'
'I stand corrected. Dorothy Sanders. The third woman is in late middle age. That's Brenda Perkins. The man is about forty. He's the Reverend Lester Coggins. For the record, I can identify all these people.'
He beckoned his wife and pointed at the bodies. She looked, and her eyes welled with tears. She raised the mask long enough to say, 'I'm Linda Everett, of the Chester's Mill Police Department. My badge number is seven-seven-five. I also recognize these four bodies.' She put her mask back in place. Above it, her eyes pleaded.