Free Under the Dome: A Novel by Stephen King

if Mr. Dale Barbara would still have been in town to cause trouble today. In fact, Mr. Barbara might have been behind bars over in The Rock. Which would have suited Rennie fine.
    Meanwhile, the man from Homeland Security—did they have the nerve to call themselves agents?—was still jabbering away.
    Rennie interrupted him. “Thank you for your interest, Mr. Wozner, but we’ve got this handled.” He pushed the END button without saying goodbye. Then he tossed the phone back to Ernie Calvert.
    “Jim, I don’t think that was wise.”
    Rennie ignored him and watched Randolph stop behind the Wettington gal’s cruiser, bubblegum bars flashing. He thought about walking down to meet Randolph, and rejected the idea before it was fully formed in his mind. Let Randolph come to him. That was how it was supposed to work. And how it
would
work, by God.
    2

    “Big Jim,” Randolph said. “What’s happened here?”
    “I believe that’s obvious,” Big Jim said. “Chuck Thompson’s airplane got into a little argument with a pulp-truck. Looks like they fought it to a draw.” Now he could hear sirens coming from Castle Rock. Almost certainly FD responders (Rennie hoped their own two new—and horribly expensive—firewagons were among them; it would play better if no one actually realized the new trucks had been out of town when this clustermug happened). Ambulances and police would be close behind.
    “That ain’t what happened,” Alden Dinsmore said stubbornly. “I was out in the side garden, and I saw the plane just—”
    “Better move those people back, don’t you think?” Rennie asked Randolph, pointing to the lookie-loos. There were quite a few on the pulp-truck side, standing prudently away from the blazing remains, and even more on The Mill side. It was starting to look like a convention.
    Randolph addressed Morrison and Wettington. “Hank,” he said, and pointed at the spectators from The Mill. Some had begun prospecting among the scattered pieces of Thompson’s plane. There were cries of horror as more body parts were discovered.
    “Yo,” Morrison said, and got moving.
    Randolph turned Wettington toward the spectators on the pulp-truck side. “Jackie, you take …” But there Randolph trailed off.
    The disaster-groupies on the south side of the accident were standingin the cow pasture on one side of the road and knee-deep in scrubby bushes on the other. Their mouths hung open, giving them a look of stupid interest Rennie was very familiar with; he saw it on individual faces every day, and en masse every March, at town meeting. Only these people weren’t looking at the burning truck. And now Peter Randolph, certainly no dummy (not brilliant, not by a long shot, but at least he knew which side his bread was buttered on), was looking at the same place as the rest of them, and with that same expression of slack-jawed amazement. So was Jackie Wettington.
    It was the smoke the rest were looking at. The smoke rising from the burning pulper.
    It was dark and oily. The people downwind should have been darned near choking on it, especially with a light breeze out of the south, but they weren’t. And Rennie saw the reason why. It was hard to believe, but he saw it, all right. The smoke
did
blow north, at least at first, but then it took an elbow-bend—almost a right angle—and rose straight up in a plume, as if in a chimney. And it left a dark brown residue behind. A long smudge that just seemed to float on the air.
    Jim Rennie shook his head to clear the image away, but it was still there when he stopped.
    “What is it?” Randolph asked. His voice was soft with wonder.
    Dinsmore, the farmer, placed himself in front of Randolph. “
That
guy”—pointing at Ernie Calvert—“had Homeland Security on the phone, and
this
guy”—pointing at Rennie in a theatrical courtroom gesture Rennie didn’t care for in the least—“took the phone out of his hand and hung up! He shun’t’a done that, Pete. Because