Bill Pronzini - Snowbound

The house-a two-story frame with green shutters-was set back from the road, inside a diamond-pattern, split-log fence. It was shrouded in darkness. Brodie stopped the car where he had been told, and the three of them got out, Kubion hanging back slightly. They stood at the open front gate.

“Go up there and look inside, both of you,” Kubion said. “The door’s not locked, and the light switch is on the left.”

They stopped through the gate opening and made their way slowly along the ice-slick front path; Kubion again followed at a distance. Brodie climbed the porch steps first, stopped at the door, and Loxner said, “I don’t want to do it, I don’t want no part of what’s in there.

…”

Not listening to him, Brodie spun the knob and pushed the door inward. There was nothing immediate to see except darkness. He reached inside and felt along the wall and found the switch and snapped it upward; light spilled into the room, forcing the night back into crouching corner shadows.

Loxner said, “Oh Christ! ”

There were seven people in the room-two men, three women, a boy of nine or ten, and a girl a few years older. All of them were tightly bound hand and foot with heavy-duty clothesline, gagged with torn strips of bedsheeting, lying on the carpeted floor near a tinseled Christmas tree with a nativity scene and several brightly wrapped presents at its cotton-draped base. They were all alive and apparently unharmed. Their eyes blinked against the sudden illumination, wide with terror. Two of the women whimpered; one of the men made a strangulated retching sound.

Cold fury knotted the muscles in Brodie’s stomach, and he had difficulty pulling air into lungs. He slammed the door violently, spun around. Kubion had come up the path and was standing at the foot of the porch steps; he held the. 38 automatic with deceptive looseness.

“It took me about four hours,” he said through his fixed smile. “Duck soup, taking them over, but I had to bring the two from the house down the way to this place and that took a little extra time. Then I shook both houses down. I was just getting ready to start back when I made out this car without lights pulling into the first cabin on the lake, and I went to have a look. You know who it was? The banker, Matt Hughes; he’s been getting a little on the side from that blond bitch in there. So I had to bring her over here, too.”

He stopped speaking, watching them. Brodie said, “What about Hughes?”

“Well, he gave me a little trouble. You don’t have to worry about him anymore, not a bit you don’t.”

“You killed him, is that it?”

“That’s it. I killed him, all right.”

Brodie began to rub the palms of his hands along his trouser legs: a gesture of suppressed rage. Loxner said in a kind of whine, “Why? Why all of this?”

“The two of you made it nice and clear yesterday how you felt about ripping off the valley, and I knew I couldn’t talk you into it, right? But you didn’t know how bad I want this one, I want it like I never wanted any other score, it’s the cat’s nuts. The only thing is, I don’t figure I can make it alone, so I had to force you into it, you see? It’s simple.”

He paused, and his smile became sly. “Those people inside, I did a little talking to them. I told them all about the ripoff, and that’s not all I told them. I told them we were the ones who did the Greenfront job, I told them everything except our names-what do you think of that?”

Loxner had the same look on his face-that of a kid about to cry-that he had had after the security guard shot him at Greenfront. “Crazy cocksucker,” he muttered under his breath, “oh you crazy cock sucker!”

If Kubion heard him, he gave no indication. The smile still sly, he said, “I know what you’re thinking now, both of you, you’re thinking you want to put a bullet in me, maybe you’ve been thinking it ever since yesterday and that’s why I took the guns out of the suitcase in the car if you don’t already know about that and why I watched you like a goddamn hawk every minute I was at the cabin, I did you know. But suppose you could do it, suppose somehow you’re able to jump me, take this gun away, put one in my head? Where would it leave you? These hicks here know who you are but say you had the guts to kill seven people, three women and two kids, say you had the guts, well the rest of the hicks and the cops would figure damned quick who had to’ve done it and you know what kind of heat you’d have then, right? So you let them live and then you cut and run, use one of the snowmobiles to get out of the valley, but that’s the same situation as if we do the job only worse because these Eskimos would be found almost immediately and even if you took the time to bury Hughes’ body and cut the telephone lines and put the second snowmobile out of commission, even if you could do all of that without being hassled, you still wouldn’t have a clear jump. And you wouldn’t have any bread either, that’s the other important thing, you’d have to knock over a place for ready cash, you’d have to shag a car, you’d be taking risks every time you turned around and all with Murder One heat ready to blow you on your asses at any time.”

Kubion paused again and studied them cunningly. Brodie said in a flat, soft voice, “Keep talking, Earl.”

“Okay, you’re getting it now. You do things my way, you help me make the score, and we come out fine just like I told you yesterday. Bread in our pockets and two full days’ jump, time to travel, time and money to get a long way from Hidden Valley before the lid comes off.” Kubion used his left hand to take a roll of currency from his coat pocket. “Listen, you think there’s no money in this place? Nine hicks out of seventy-five and only two of the occupied buildings so far and I’ve already picked up fifteen hundred, two bills from the Eskimos that live in this house and eighty from the ones down the way and a hundred and twenty from Banker Hughes’ wallet, and that blond bitch, she had a thousand in her purse, just sitting there in her purse all nice and crisp in her purse for Christ’s sake. Fifteen hundred already and we haven’t even started.”

He shoved the money back into his coat and made a sweeping gesture with the gun. “So what do you say? I say we go inside the house here and work over the details again, and this time you listen good. I say we do the job tomorrow, just as I told it to you. I say when it’s done and we’ve made the split, we leave on separate snowmobiles and you go your way and I go mine, we’re quits. Well? Do we get it on together or what? You tell me, you tell me.”

There was a long, brittle silence. Loxner looked at Brodie to keep from looking at Kubion. And Brodie said finally in his flat, soft voice, “You haven’t left us any choice, Earl. We do it your way.”

At eleven fifty-five Sunday morning, in the vestry behind the candlelit altar, the Reverend Peter Keyes released the bell rope and ended the resonant summons in the steeple belfry above. Then, opening the vestry door, he stepped out onto the pulpit and went to stand behind the lectern on the far right, to watch the last of the congregation file into All Faiths Church. Opposite him on the pulpit, Maude Fredericks sat waiting at the old wood-pipe organ, a hymnal propped open in front of her.

Seven of the twelve pews on each side of the center aisle were completely full, but the last five on either side were only partially taken. The Reverend Mr. Keyes had entertained little hope for a capacity attendance, but he had expected a larger turnout than this. He scanned the congregation-the women and girls in their warm, brightly colored winter finery (you did not see somber hues in church these days, which was, he thought, as it should be); the men and boys in carefully pressed suits and bright ties, to which they were for the most part unaccustomed-and a small frown tugged at the corners of his mouth. He did not see Matthew Hughes, and Matthew never missed Sunday services, was in fact always one of the first to arrive; very odd indeed that he was not present on this particular Sunday, two days before Christmas. He also did not see the Markhams or the Donnelly family, who rarely failed to attend as well; nor the San Francisco businessman, Charley Adams, to whom he had spoken on Thursday afternoon.