Cornered! (12 page)

And then Billy Quirter stopped. Sam Dickens rolled back, Gloria trying to hold him, but not being able to. Both of them collapsed on the floor across the counter from Billy Quirter. Blood streamed from Sam Dickens’s face.

White-faced with rage, Hugh Stewart was up instantly and moving toward Sam Dickens.

“Sit down, Doc!” Billy snapped, almost screaming.

“Go to hell!” Hugh Stewart, with Gloria, moved Sam Dickens away from the counter and placed him carefully just to the side of one of the tables.

Reverend John Andrews, also white-faced, had gotten up.

“Sit down, Reverend,” Hugh Stewart said. “He’ll kill us all in a minute. I’ll take care of it.”

Billy, face a savage mask of dangerous fury, sat on the stool behind the counter and watched Hugh Stewart get his bag and start working on the cut face of Sam Dickens. Hugh Stewart worked swiftly, not looking at Quirter once, but thinking that in a moment Quirter might start shooting everyone in the room. You didn’t know.

Carefully, Sam Dickens’s face was fixed. Gloria, cradling Sam in her arms, moaned softly in her husband’s ear. Sam Dickens tried a grin, but his lower lip had been split; the attempt, behind the tape, was grotesque. “Shouldn’t have tried it,” he said finally.

Hugh Stewart nodded slowly. “That’s right. Only I was foolish myself, remember? Took a lot of guts, Mr. Dickens. I had a better chance than you did.”

Sam Dickens shook his head faintly, but there was something in his eyes that belied the negative motion. He had the look of a man who had found something in his core that it was not necessary to hate.

“Baby, baby,” Gloria said, kissing his forehead tenderly.

Hugh Stewart stared at both for a moment, understanding somehow what had just occurred between them.

Then Billy Quirter snapped, “All right! You’ve got him patched. Get away from him, Doc. Get back over here. You too, Gloria!”

Slowly Hugh Stewart stood and returned to the counter. But Gloria stared at Quirter with blazing eyes. “You’ll have to come and get me, you stinking little monkey. You’ll have to—”

Billy, enraged once again, straightened, lifting his gun. Hugh Stewart, seated, said softly to Quirter, “Don’t push her, Quirter. You’ll have to kill her to make her move right now. Be sensible.”

Billy Quirter did not continue his insistence that Gloria leave Sam Dickens and return to the counter, but as Hugh Stewart watched him, he knew that if there was anything in the world at that moment that Billy Quirter was not, it was sensible.

Ted Burley, lumbering drunkenly down the street, ran squarely into Luke Wurton, a shabby, ill-clothed man of indefinable old age. Luke had not been employed for years and lived off the charity of Arrow Junction’s church group. He was Arrow Junction’s version of a bum. He appeared downtown promptly at six-thirty in the morning and went right around the clock, in and out of the various places of business, standing on the street until late at night, saying a few choice words here and there with those who saw fit to speak to him, watching everything that transpired in a day with faded gray eyes that somehow had never lost their speculative glitter.

Ted Burley ran straight into Luke on the main street, and Luke (who never drank), smelling the whisky on Ted Burley’s breath, seeing the drunken look of his eyes, suddenly was aware of more excitement than he’d discovered since the flood in the thirties. All that action in Graintown. Now Ted Burley was drinking!

Ted Burley started on, then turned and grabbed Luke roughly by the shoulder. “You seen my wife, Luke?”

Luke had not seen Ted Burley’s wife. But he’d already picked up the news that Bob Saywell, oddly locked up, had been telephoning around for her. He quickly offered that single scrap of knowledge.

“Nope. But it seems like you ain’t the only one looking, Ted. Bob Saywell’s been telephoning all around for her.”

It was all Ted Burley needed. He remembered how Bob Saywell had come out of his house, having been alone with Ann the day before. He’d never liked the fat, quivery-cheeked look of Bob Saywell anyway. Bob Saywell was looking for her. And that meant to Ted Burley that Bob Saywell was somehow mixed up with his wife in a way that he ought not to be.

He staggered down the street to the closed, shade-drawn door of Bob Saywell’s store. He put a great hand on the handle and yanked and bellowed, “Open up in there, Saywell! Do you hear? This is Ted Burley! I’m telling you, by God, to open up this door!”

Sheriff-elect Jenkins stood up from his
desk, feeling his knees begin to tremble the instant he put his full weight on them. The telephone call from Emma Mae Bireley, transferring Ann Burley’s message to him, had been completed. Sheriff-elect Jenkins had related the information to Deputy Wade Miles as well as to Reverend Maynard Styles, who had been in the office when the call had come in. The sheriff had told the State Police, who were ready to escort him to Arrow Junction.

Deputy Miles had taken the submachine gun from the closet and stood waiting impatiently at the door beside Reverend Maynard Styles.

“We’re going to get that squirrel now,” Deputy Miles said, thin-lipped and hard-eyed. He had the look of a man who had tasted blood, a man who was eager. It made Harvey Jenkins sick to his stomach.

“May the Lord have mercy on his soul,” Reverend Styles pronounced. He, too, looked a little pale around the jowls. Jenkins had asked the reverend to join them. He’d done so in the personal hope that God would travel nearer that way and so protect him personally. But what he’d said aloud was that perhaps some innocent soul might need the services of Reverend Styles before this was over. Himself, he thought now.

Reverend Maynard Styles really had no choice but to accept, but he already looked badly shaken, less imposing, less the leader, even in his smart clothes and habitually proud bearing.

“Let’s go!” Deputy Miles exploded.

“Take it easy!” Jenkins snapped. Then, hating it, he led the way out of the office, hoping desperately that the road to Arrow Junction was still blocked with snow. That last hope fizzled when Paul Jackson, an appointed deputy, called up the stairway, “Road’s open, Harvey. There ain’t anything to stop us now!”

“There!” Bob Saywell shouted, as Ted Burley pounded on the door of his store. “There’s the husband of that woman you’re after!”

Billy Quirter, Sam Dickens’s try fresh in his mind, looked as though his nerves had been stretched so tightly that each rattle and bang of the door brought him a little closer to maximum tension. He thinned his eyes, glancing from the closed, shade-drawn door to Bob Saywell.

“You see?” Bob Saywell said. “You see?”

“Shut up, fatty. Go over there and let him in. And that’s all—just him. If anybody’s trying anything funny out there, you’ll be the first to go, fats. Hurry up!”

Bob Saywell got up from the counter stool and jounced across the room. Hands shaking, he unlocked, the door. That was enough to allow Ted Burley to lurch inside, stumbling as the door gave way in his hand. Billy motioned with his gun, and Bob Saywell shut the door and locked it. He turned to see Ted Burley fall drunkenly to hands and knees a half dozen feet from the door.

Unaware of anyone else in the room but Bob Saywell, Ted Burley, like a large animal viewed in slow motion, rested on his hands and knees for several long seconds. Then, glowering, he slowly pushed himself to his knees, swaying; finally he got to his feet, weaving back and forth. His eyes were murderous, brutelike.

Slowly he turned, believing that only he and Bob Saywell were in the room. He was thinking that he would not ask questions, but simply smash one great paw into Bob Saywell’s face. He was not reasoning at that moment, only hungry for a physical release for his resentments. He turned half around, menacingly, slowly. And when he was three-quarters around, as Bob Saywell stood with his trembling back against the closed door, Ted Burley realized that something was very wrong.

“Stop,” Billy Quirter said, his whispery voice carrying clearly. “Just like that.”

Ted Burley did. He froze, seeing everyone in the room now. The final person he focused on was Billy Quirter—and Billy’s gun.

“Back here and sit down, Farouk,” Quirter said to Bob Saywell. Then to Ted Burley, “Over here, bumpkin. Behind the counter. What’s his name again, fatty?”

Bob Saywell dropped heavily onto a stool, gasping, “Ted Burley.”

Quirter nodded. “Over here where we can talk, Burley.”

Ted Burley, sobering fast, stood staring, not moving.

“Well, move it!” Quirter said, mouth twisting.

Ted Burley nodded dumbly, all the savage look gone from him. He came around the counter, half tripping, regaining his balance clumsily, then stopping in front of Quirter behind the counter. Hugh Stewart looked at the man carefully and saw that though he had looked drunk when he’d come in, he did not look so drunk now. He was instead the most frightened man in the room, Bob Saywell included. His mouth opened and closed. His eyes bugged.

Quirter faintly grinned, sensing the fear as well as Hugh Stewart. “Where’s your wife, Burley?”

Burley shook his head, unable to answer.

“Where is she?” Billy said.

“I don’t know!”

“I won’t take much time with you, bumpkin. Where is she?”

“Please—”

Billy placed his gun in his lap. His hand flicked out, snapping against Ted Burley’s left cheek with the back of the fingers. “Where is she?”

“I swear to God, I—”

“One thing! Where is she?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!”

The back of the whipping hand cracked again against Ted Burley’s face. Ted Burley seemed ready to give way entirely out of the purest fright.

“Where’s your wife, Burley?”

“I don’t know!”

The entire action happened with split-second swiftness. Ted Burley did not know why this man wanted his wife, nor, by now, did he care. He knew only that though he was no longer really drunk, his mind was clouded and befuddled. And so it was only by instinct that he realized that this man in front of him was deadly.

Once again Ted Burley reverted to his childhood, a big oxlike figure with great hands, the dark masculine face flushed with fear and the remnants of drinking. He wanted only for Billy Quirter to understand that he would co-operate, that he was friendly and pleasant, that he wanted to be loved the way his mother had once loved him.

So he came toward Billy Quirter, waving his hamlike hands, mouth working in undecipherable sounds, one thing paramount in his wretched heart: to make Billy understand that he was a nice fellow and willing to help, willing—if he had only known
why
Billy wanted his wife—to throw his wife in a heap in front of Billy’s feet, because he was a nice boy grown to manhood.

But Billy Quirter had been accosted twice that morning. This looked like a third attempt to him. He saw only that the great bulk of Ted Burley was coming at him in threatening steadiness, hands clutching, mouth working.

Billy’s hand, in lightning motion, picked up his gun. He shot Ted Burley three times in the stomach.

When the large figure had stumbled, flailing with arms and legs splayed awkwardly and loosely, the great tree of a body coming down finally and taking with it glasses and plates and cups from the shelves behind the counter, striking the floor with a shaking thump—then Billy fired once again. This time he put a bullet straight through Ted Burley’s temple, as accurate and deadly a shot as Billy had put through the head of Corly Adams.

The three shots quickly together were like cannon roars in the room. The last seemed even louder. Then there was a shocked, terrible silence. Outside, where Sheriff-elect Jenkins, Deputy Miles, and members of the State Police stopped their wary approach to Bob Saywell’s store, there was a similar silence. All of them stood locked, knowing quite positively that they had indeed discovered Billy Quirter.

For a long moment Sheriff-elect Jenkins
stood frozen, pressed against the cold brick of the north side of the building. Then, fear sweeping through him, shouting as though to release the awful tension, he yelled, “Give it up, Quirter! We’ve got you surrounded!”

What he got for that were two bullets smashing through the glass of the front door. The slugs whined across the street.

Harvey Jenkins turned to Wade Miles and the State Police patrolman who stood just behind Miles. His face was deathly white. He didn’t know what to say. The cars they had come in were parked well down the street. Ann Burley, whom they had picked up from Hugh Stewart’s office, was in one of them. Jenkins ran a nervous tongue over dry lips.

“It’s up to you, Sheriff,” the patrolman said. “We’re leaving this up to you.”

“What do you say, Harvey?” Wade Miles asked.

Jenkins forcibly swallowed his fear for a moment. “We’ll set up a loudspeaker. Tell him he isn’t going to get out of there alive if he doesn’t walk out, no gun, with nobody hurt in there.”

“Let’s go,” Deputy Miles said. As they hurried back to the cars parked down the street, Deputy Miles added, “Let’s just hope he hasn’t done some hurting already—four shots he just tripped off when we were coming up. That squirrel don’t need more than one.”

Wade Miles took it upon himself to speak to Ann in the car. “You just sit tight, ma’am, unless you want to get farther away—”

“No.” She sat motionless beside a patrolman. She looked up the block to the opposite side of the street and the front of Bob Saywell’s store.

She knew, from the collected information gleaned from residents of Arrow Junction questioned downtown, that Ted was in there. She also knew that Hugh Stewart was in there. And that very probably Reverend Andrews and Lottie along with someone who owned that Chrysler were in there too. Martha Saywell had been informed of possible danger and brought downtown. She now sat in another State Patrol car, sniffling, knowing now that the danger was not only possible, but already very real.

“No,” Ann said to Wade Miles, “I’ll stay here. This is all my responsibility anyway—”