Snowbound (24 page)

I need to talk to someone, he thought, like I talked to Rebecca Hughes last night. I need—I
need
....

He made a sandwich and forced himself to eat it. He could not think of anything else to do after that, and spent five minutes smoking six cigarettes and coughing up as much smoke as he exhaled normally before he remembered that there wasn’t any more kindling. He got the hatchet then and came around here to the lean-to and began splitting logs.

There was, now, enough kindling lying in the snow at his feet to last him for weeks.

Cain buried the hatchet blade in the stump, wiped perspiration from his forehead with one gloved hand. Take all this inside, come back and carry in more halved logs to stack by the fireplace; keep busy, keep finding things to do. Stooping, he gathered up an armful of the kindling; straightened again, turned, took two steps—and came to a standstill.

Rebecca Hughes and two men he did not recognize were standing in the falling snow just outside the lean-to.

Cain opened his mouth to speak, closed it when he saw that the darker of the men, positioned well apart, was grinning oddly and holding a gun. The other one had his arms down at his sides, fingers curled in against the palms. As still and pale as a piece of marble statuary, Rebecca looked at Cain with eyes that were wide circles of fear. A feeling of unreality fled through him, as though the three of them had been conjured up from his subconscious—a kind of snow mirage.

“Drop that wood and get over here,” Kubion said.

Cain found words, pushed them out. “Who are you? What’s going on here?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Now shut up and do what you’re told.”

“What do you want with me, with Mrs. Hughes?”

“Get the fuck over here, I said!”

Cain sensed, incredulously, that the man would not hesitate to shoot him if he failed to comply; the feeling of unreality modulated into one of surreality. He let the kindling fall out of his arms in automatic reaction, walked forward stiffly and came out from under the roof and stopped again. Kubion’s eyes followed him, and when Cain stared into them he saw unmistakable dementia shining there. His stomach contracted, and a brassy taste came into his mouth; he could not seem to think clearly.

“That’s better, that’s fine,” Kubion said. “Now we go for a ride.”

He gestured with the gun, and the second man—tight-mouthed, sane-looking—prodded Rebecca’s shoulder. She moved forward, paused in front of Cain, and there was bewilderment commingled with the fright in her expression; she seemed to have no more idea than he of the two men’s motive or intent. Her dread was palpable; he could feel it as he could feel the knife-edge of the wind blowing along the cabin’s side wall, and a rush of anger took away some of his own confusion—caring anger, an emotion (like the brassiness in his mouth) he had not experienced in a great long time.

He did not want her to be hurt; he did not want to be hurt himself.

I don’t want to die, he thought almost detachedly. It’s true, I really
don’t
want to die. . . .

“Step out!” Kubion yelled at them. “Move!”

Rebecca edged close to Cain as they trudged forward through the snow. He said in a low voice, “Are you all right? They haven’t hurt you?”

“No. No. But God, I—”

“Shut the hell up,” from behind them. “I don’t want to have to tell anybody again, you understand?”

Cain clamped his teeth together; Rebecca stared straight ahead, walking like a life-size windup toy. They went around to the front and across the yard to where an old Ford pickup was parked nose downhill on Lassen Drive. Brodie half circled it and got into the cab on the driver’s side, and Kubion came forward then and said, “Both of you now, woman in the middle.”

When Cain had pulled the door open Rebecca climbed awkwardly onto the front seat, drawing up a full twelve inches away from Brodie. The door slapped against Cain’s hip as he wedged in after her, then latched under the pressure of Kubion’s hand. Kubion swung onto the running board, over into the bed, and his face appeared in the broken-out rear window. He said to Brodie, “Nice and slow, Vic, you know how to do it.”

“Yeah,” Brodie said, and reached out to switch on the ignition.

Like a child huddling impersonally for warmth and support, Rebecca leaned against Cain with hip and thigh and shoulder and one breast—soft, yielding flesh through the parka she wore and despite the trembling tension in her. It was the first time he had been in physical contact with, conscious of, a woman’s body since Angie, and defensively he felt his muscles stiffen.

But he did not withdraw from her as the truck glided forward and down through the empty afternoon.

Coopersmith was one of the first to move when the three gunmen left the church and the key turned in the outside lock. He hurried to where Webb Edwards was bending over the still-unconscious form of the Reverend Mr. Keyes and holding his limp left wrist between thumb and forefinger.

“How is he, Webb?”

“Pulse is holding steady,” Edwards answered shortly. “Get me a couple of coats, Lew. Only thing we can do is keep him warm.”

At the front wall, Coopersmith dragged two heavy winter coats off the canted wooden pegs. Others were milling about now, as if in a kind of posthypnotic confusion. You could smell the sour odor of fear, Coopersmith thought; and you could feel the ripplings of panic like a dark undercurrent beneath the surface of sound and movement. Voices shrill and questioning assailed his ears as he took the coats to Edwards.

Judy Tribucci: “How can a thing like this happen, how can it happen to us. . . . ”

Minnie Beckman: “A spawn of the devil, did you see his eyes, those terrible eyes. . . .”

Harry Chilton: “Why are they doing it? Why, for God’s sake, why, why....”

Verne Mullins: “Who are they, they’re not businessmen, where did the third one come from. . . .”

Maude Fredericks: “Matt can’t be dead, he can’t be. . . .”

June Novak: “Oh my Lord please don’t let Greg be harmed, please....”

Sharon Nedlick: “Dave, Mother’s heart won’t stand any kind of shock, if they break into the house and try to bring her here even after what we told them. . . .”

Agnes Tyler: “Peggy
has
to be all right, they haven’t hurt her, they haven’t hurt her. . . . ”

Edwards’ nurse, Sally Chilton, had joined him at the minister’s side. She took one of the coats from Coopersmith, folded it, and carefully pillowed Keyes’ head; Edwards covered him with the second and then began unwrapping the blood-soaked handkerchief from his torn right hand, telling Sally to find a clean scarf or something to use as another makeshift bandage.

Coopersmith pivoted away—and Ellen was there, coming into his arms, pressing her wet face against his shoulder. He held her clumsily, felt the tremors fluttering through her body, and had no words to comfort her. Acrimony, helplessness formed an acidulated knot in his chest.

After a moment he lifted her chin with gentle fingers, brushed his lips across her forehead, took her slowly back to where they had been located in the right front pew. Opposite, on the left forward bench, Ann Tribucci was still sitting in the graceless, spread-legged, flat-footed posture of the pregnant woman in her final month; her abdomen, moving with the quickened tempo of her breathing, seemed enormous. Tie pulled loose, shirt unbuttoned at the throat, John Tribucci squatted in front of her.

He was saying, “You’re
sure
you’re okay, honey?”

“A little queasy, that’s all.”

“It’s not the baby. . . .”

“No. No.”

“Do you want to lie down?”

“Not just yet. Johnny—”

“What, honey?”

“If. . . Matt has been killed, do you think Becky—”

Inadequately he said, “Shh, now, try not to worry about Becky or anything else.”

“How can I help it? I’m so frightened—for all of us, for the baby. . . . ”

Tribucci took her hands in his and held them tightly. “I know,” he said, “I know, I know. But nothing will happen to any more of us; we’re all going to come out of this just fine.”

There’s no conviction in his voice, Coopersmith thought —and I don’t think I believe it either, not after the things that homicidal lunatic said and has done already. He looked at Ellen and then swiftly averted his gaze again; he did not want her to see on his face what was in his mind. Spontaneously, he went up onto the pulpit and stared at the wooden crucifix on the wall above the prayer cloth-draped altar. The constriction in his chest had tightened, and he realized that he was short of breath. A new apprehension tugged at him. He had had a physical checkup three months before, and Webb Edwards had pronounced his heart as strong as ever; but he was sixty-six years old—
old
, not young —and an old man’s heart could give out at any time under stress, wasn’t that a medical fact?

Knock it off, he told himself sharply. You’re not going to have a stroke. Whatever else will happen today, you’re not going to have a stroke.

He kept on standing there, staring at the crucifix. A minute or two passed, and John Tribucci came up beside him. Some of the younger man’s control had clearly begun to slip; his normally amiable face was dark-flecked with an admixture of anxiety and savage fury. “Lew,” he said in a voice liquid with feeling. “
God
, Lew.”

“Easy, son.”

Tribucci closed his eyes, released a heavy shuddering breath and opened them again. “I’ve never hated anybody or anything in my life, but those three men, that maniac. . . .”

Coopersmith knew what he was thinking: exactly the same thing he himself had thought when the dark gunman ordered him to reveal which valley residents were not present inside the church. He did not speak.

“It’s so
senseless,
” Tribucci said. “Reverend Keyes wounded and Matt Hughes murdered and maybe others dying, maybe all our lives in jeopardy—for what? For what, Lew? There isn’t any money or valuables in Hidden Valley worth stealing.”

“Johnny, don’t try to find reason in the actions of a madman.”

“All three of them can’t be crazy.”

“No, but it was obvious who’s running the whole show. I can’t figure why the other two are in it. Maybe for some other cause than what little the valley can be looted for.”

“Well alone or not, that psycho has been planning it for days. He came into the Sport Shop on Thursday and asked me a lot of questions about snowmobiles and ways to get out of the valley. I believed the excuse he gave, told him everything he wanted to know. He looked all right then, I didn’t suspect anything to be wrong. . . .”

“How could you? How could any of us? We—”

“
Stand back in there, you’ve got company!
”

The shouted command from outside sliced off conversation, jerked heads around, turned Tribucci and Coopersmith and brought them down off the pulpit. There was the sound of the key in the lock, and then one of the door halves swung open and the Donnelly and Markham families, and Peggy Tyler, filed inside. The door banged shut, and the key scraped again.

Agnes Tyler cried, “Peggy!” and rushed down the center aisle. The blond-haired girl had stopped just inside the entrance and was standing as immobile and expressionless as a mannequin. When her mother reached her and flung arms around her, moaning her name, she blinked several times but did not otherwise move; she seemed only vaguely aware of where she was. Coopersmith saw, as he and Tribucci approached, that the others seemed in better condition and apparently unharmed, although the adults were all haggard and eviscerated and shaking with cold or fear or both. The two Donnelly children clung to each other like waifs lost in the night.

Webb Edwards pushed his way forward and swept each of them with a clinical glance that concluded only Peggy Tyler was in immediate need of medical attention. He stepped to her, disengaged Mrs. Tyler’s enfolding arms, and probed the damp ivory face, the vacuous eyes. His mouth thinned; he took one of her lax hands.

“What is it, what’s the matter with her?” Agnes Tyler said frantically. “God in heaven, what did they do to you, baby, what did they
do
to you!”

Taking Peggy’s other arm, Sally Chilton helped Edwards steer her to one of the rear pews; her mother hovered nearby, hands clenched together at her breast, teeth biting deeply into a tremulous lower lip. The Markhams and Donnellys found benches near the south-side wall heater, and Coopersmith and Tribucci and Harry Chilton brought extra coats for the women and children.

Minutes later, in subdued and exhausted tones, Sid Markham and Martin Donnelly related some of the grim details of their ordeal. When they were finished, Coopersmith said, “So it was just the lunatic at first.”

Markham nodded. “I don’t think the other two knew anything about it. He didn’t bring them around until he had us all tied up in Martin’s living room, and they were shook when they saw us—plenty angry.”

“Why did they join in with him, then?”

“They didn’t have much choice. For one thing, the crazy had his gun out and they didn’t seem to be armed, and he looked like he’d use it on them if they gave him any trouble. For another, he’d told us everything about the three of them except their names—and I guess told them that he had. He sat there grinning after he had us tied and said how he planned to take over the valley and that they’re professional thieves and that they tried to rob some place called Greenfront in Sacramento last Monday and killed a security guard and didn’t get any money. He said that lake cabin where they’ve been staying is what he called a safe house.” Markham’s foxlike face remained desolate, but his words took on a sardonic edge. “We’ve had criminals hiding out in Hidden Valley off and on for years, seems like. Right under our noses the whole time.”