Snowbound (25 page)

Coopersmith was not surprised that the three men were professionals; despite the madman’s actions, they had taken over the church in a phlegmatic, businesslike manner with which he was all too familiar after forty years of law enforcement. But the fact that the Mule Deer Lake cabin had been an established hideout for the criminal element was an unexpected and galling revelation. Right under our noses, he thought. Right under the nose of a retired old fool of a county sheriff named Lew Coopersmith, who kept bemoaning a severed involvement in his profession while God knew how many wanted felons camped with impunity in his backyard and maybe drank Saturday afternoon beer with him m the Valley Inn bar. The knot in his chest tightened again, and he felt now every one of his sixty-six years; he felt incredibly tired and used-up and incompetent.

Tribucci asked, “Do you know about Matt Hughes?”

“He’s . . . dead,” Donnelly answered, purse-lipped.

“We were hit with that much, but not where or how or why.”

Markham and Donnelly exchanged silent glances.

“Have you got any idea how it happened?”

“I guess we do,” Donnelly said.

“How, then?”

“Better if we don’t talk about it,” Markham said.

“We’ve got to know, Sid.”

“There’s enough on everybody’s mind as it is.”

Doris Markham—a thin, shrewish woman whose hands jumped and fluttered as if wired to invisible electrodes—swung around to look at her husband. She said stridulously, “Oh for Lord’s
sake
, Sid, what’s the use of trying to hide the truth? They’ll find it out anyway, sooner or later. Tell them and have done with it.”

“Doris—”

“All right then, I will. Matt was killed at the Taggart cabin. He was with Peggy and the crazy found them together and shot Matt and then brought her to Martin’s and tied her up with the rest of us. She saw Matt killed; that’s why she’s the way she is now. There—it’s all out in the open.”

Audible intakes of breath, murmurs. A gaseous sourness bubbled in Coopersmith’s stomach.

Maude Fredericks said, “You can’t mean they were—I don’t believe it! Matt . . . Matt wouldn’t have. . . .”

“Well I couldn’t believe it either at first, but it’s true. The crazy told us how he found them”—her mouth twisted—“and told us exactly what they’d been doing. He laughed about it. He stood there and laughed—”

“He was lying!” Agnes Tyler, on her feet now, stared at the other woman saucer-eyed. “Not Peggy . . . Peggy’s a good girl, Matt was a good man . . . no!”

Doris looked away. Markham started to say something to her, changed his mind, and spread his hands toward Agnes in a gesture of mute deprecation.

“No, no, no, no,” she said and began to sob, one hand fisted against her mouth. The sound of her weeping and the susurration of voices grated corrosively at Coopersmith’s nerves; he turned on legs that, always strong, now felt enervated and frail-boned, and returned to the forward pew and sank onto it and stared at his liver-spotted hands.

Matt Hughes: paragon of virtue, energetic and benevolent community leader, the man everyone looked up to and wanted their sons to emulate. Matt Hughes: unfaithful husband, hypocrite—and dead because of it. The Reverend Mr. Keyes was still unconscious, but he would learn the harsh truth about the murdered head of his flock eventually. And so would poor Rebecca. Everything seemed to be crumbling around them on this cataclysmic day—secrets revealed, illusions shattered, beliefs shaken, and no one spared in the least. All for the Greater Good? Could they still believe in that now and in their collective salvation?

Coopersmith looked up again at the crucifix above the altar. And a passage from Proverbs in the Old Testament flickered into his mind:
Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. For the LORD shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.

“All right,” he murmured aloud. “All right.”

Peggy Tyler lay quiescent on the hard wooden pew bench, tangled blond hair swept away from her face. A small part of her was aware that she was inside the church, that her mother and Dr. Edwards were beside her, but a much larger part was still in the Taggart cabin at Mule Deer Lake. It was as if she were coexisting in two separate realities, two separate time streams. Jumbled voices from both seemed to whisper distantly, hollowly in her ears, images from both were strangely superimposed on one another.

Shivering, she said, “I’m cold, I’m cold.”

Mrs. Tyler tucked the heavy fur coat tighter beneath Peggy’s chin; then, tears still trickling along her cheeks, she leaned down and said imploringly, “It’s not true, is it, baby? You weren’t sinning with Matt Hughes, tell me you weren’t....”

“Stop it, Agnes,” Edwards said. “I told you, she doesn’t seem to be able to comprehend anything we say to her. You’re not doing either of you any good.”

Matt? Peggy thought. Matt—Matt? You killed him! You shot him in the face, his face is gone, oh the blood the blood

. . . no, don’t touch me! Don’t touch me, don’t you touch me!

“Mother?” she said.

“I’m here, baby, I’m here.” Mrs. Tyler lifted her entreating gaze to Edwards. “Can’t you do something for her?”

“If they bring me my bag, I’ll give her a sedative. There’s nothing else I can do, Agnes, I’m only a village doctor. She needs hospitalization. And, the way it looks, psychiatric care.”

“
Psychiatric
care?”

Edwards said gently, “What she saw last night seems to have had an unbalancing effect on her mind. It may only be temporary, but—”

“I won’t listen to that kind of talk. There’s nothing wrong with her mind, she didn’t see Matt Hughes killed, she wasn’t with him at the Taggart cabin or anywhere else.”

“Agnes. . . .”

“No. She was captured by those murderers and had a terrible experience and she’s in shock, that’s all, just simple shock. She’ll be fine in a little while—won’t you, baby? Won’t you?”

He took my money, Peggy thought, he took my thousand dollars. Give it back, it’s mine. I earned it, I need it, I almost have enough to leave now. Leave these mountains forever, go to Europe, lie under a hot sun by a bright blue ocean. Warm places, snowless places. Soon. Matt? Soon.

“I’m so cold,” she said.

The next two and a half hours passed in grim cycle.

“Stand back in there!” the voice outside would shout, and talk would instantly fade, and eyes would fasten on the entrance; the lock would click, the door would open—

Frank McNeil, sweating, shaking, face and eyes like those of a woman on the brink of hysteria; in sharp contrast, Sandy and Larry McNeil following as if narcotized.

—and the door would close, the lock would click; vocalization and constrained activity would commence again, questions would be asked, questions would be answered; the waiting tension would mount; and then it would all begin anew:

“Stand back in there!”

Walt Halliday, rubber-legged, sniffling and coughing into a mucus-spotted handkerchief; Lil Halliday, lower jaw paroxysmic, hands clasped in front of her as if in prayer.

“Stand back!”

Joe Garvey, face bloody, clothing bloody, staggering slightly but waving away the proffered assistance and attention of Webb Edwards; Pat Garvey, lachrymose and looking as if she were near collapse.

“All right, stand back in there!”

The Stallings family.

“Stand back!”

Bert Younger, Enid Styles, Jerry Cornelius.

“You people stand back in there!”

Greg Novak, more dazed than frightened, immediately enfolded in the tearful embrace of his father and mother.

Through it all John Tribucci was in constant prowling motion, like a panther in a zoo cage. He paced from back to front, from side to side, pausing only to make sure Ann was still all right or to exchange brief dialogue with his brother or Lew Coopersmith or one of the new arrivals. Veins pulsed along his forehead, on one temple; impotent frustration was toxic within him. Trapped, trapped, no way out, nothing any of them could do, no way out—

Abruptly, near the lectern on the left side of the pulpit, he came to a standstill. His head snapped up, and he stared at and mentally beyond the high, wood-raftered ceiling.

The belfry, he thought; the belfry.

And the voice outside shouted, “Stand back in there!”

Waiting beside the Ford half-ton, Brodie watched Kubion lock the last two valley residents—Hughes’ wife and the big bearded man—inside the church. His mind was still sharply alert, but physically he had begun to feel the effects of the long sleepless night, the constant tension; his eyes were sandy and his neck ached and fatigue leadened his arms and legs. The chill mountain weather made it worse. The wind was up now, and it kept getting colder, and snow fell in turbulent swirls of fat, dry flakes. Night shadows, thickened by the density of the bloated gray clouds overhead, crept rapidly through the village and across the valley.

Brodie turned his head to look toward the car parked sixty yards distant, and through the snow and the rimed windows Loxner was a blackish outline behind the wheel. He’d been visible there each of the times they’d brought prisoners back here to the church, probably hadn’t even got out of the car in all that time; no guts and no brains, Brodie couldn’t have asked for any worse an ally. Well, he hadn’t expected Loxner to try to take Kubion, had thought that if Duff did anything at all, it would be to run his ass into the woods somewhere and hide. The only way Brodie was going to get out of Hidden Valley alive was to handle Kubion himself.

He’d been in tight situations before, been under the gun before, but making a move against an armed man and making a move against an armed supercrazy and superdeadly psycho were two different things entirely. You just didn’t want to gamble, because when you got desperate around a maniac, you got dead—period. So you hung on grimly to your cool, and you waited for a mistake or some other clear-cut opportunity. Only Kubion hadn’t made any mistakes—his whip hand had been unbreakable so far—and there just hadn’t been any openings. What had seemed like one when Kubion pistol-whipped the pockmarked guy had turned out to be a blind corner instead, and he’d been within a half step, a half second of taking a bullet for his effort. Since then he’d been able to do nothing except to wait and keep on waiting.

And now maybe he had waited too long.

They’d rounded up all the valley people, and Kubion didn’t need him or Loxner to loot the village. It could be he intended to let them both keep on living a while longer; but he was totally unpredictable, and there was no way you could second-guess him. If this
was
it, Brodie’s only option was that desperate gamble; he wasn’t going to die a frozen target, any way but a frozen target. The only other thing he could do was to try to buy himself time, and the way to do that was to remind Kubion of the Mercantile’s safe.

When they’d first taken Hughes’ wife, Kubion had asked her for the combination; she’d said she didn’t have any idea what it was, no one knew it except her husband and he had committed it to memory. Too scared to be lying, even Kubion had seen that. So the safe had to be cracked—and Kubion was no jugger, he didn’t know the first thing about busting a box. Brodie did, though. Jugging was a nowhere business these days, owing to modern improvements in safe-and-vault manufacturing: drill-and acetylene-resistant steel alloys and self-contained alarm systems and automatic relocking devices to help guard against lock blowing with nitro or plastic gelatine; but there were still a few old hands around, and Brodie had worked a couple of scores with one of them, Woody Huggins. Kubion was aware of that and had to be aware, too—made aware, convinced—that Brodie could open that box a hell of a lot quicker and surer than he could do it himself. . . .

Kubion returned to the pickup, which straddled the front walk thirty feet from the church entrance, and stopped by the tailgate. He said, “All of them now, all of them, didn’t I tell you the way it would be? You should have listened, you and Duff should’ve listened from the start.”

“That’s right, Earl,” Brodie said, “we should’ve listened from the start.”

“Now the gravy, eh Vic? Now the gravy.”

“The safe in the Mercantile first?”

Kubion gave him a sly look. “Could be.”

“I hope it’s one I can jug without any sweat.”

“Maybe I could jug it myself, you know?”

“Maybe you couldn’t, Earl,” Brodie said slowly. He watched the automatic the way you would watch a coiled rattlesnake.

“Yeah, maybe not,” Kubion agreed, and laughed.

“Do we move out now?”

“How come you’re so anxious, Vic, how come?”

“I just want to see how much is in that safe.”

The slyness vanished. “Well so do I. Let’s get to cracking.” He paused, realizing what he’d said, and found it to be funny; his laughter this time was loud and shrill, echoing on the wind. “Pretty good, hey? Let’s get to cracking.”

Brodie relaxed a little, not much. “Pretty good, Earl,” he said.

He watched Kubion go around to the passenger door, open it; they got into the cab simultaneously. So Kubion wasn’t worried about Loxner any more than Brodie was counting on him; he was giving them
both
some extra time. Well, screw Loxner, Loxner just didn’t figure to matter at all. What mattered was an opening, a mistake. And it would come, he had to keep telling himself that; it would come, it would come.