Bill Pronzini - Snowbound

The hymn was “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”

When Cain emerged into the belfry behind Tribucci, he saw that there were four obelisk-shaped windows: two set side by side in the western and eastern walls. They were a foot and a half wide, of plain glass puttied into wooden frames. The church bell itself was not visible, exposed high above, but its four heavy redwood supports slanting outward to the walls beneath the windows filled most of the enclosure. The bell rope hung down between the supports.

He stepped from the ladder onto the narrow catwalk which hugged all four walls, and peered through one of the frosted panes, westward. There was nothing to see except snow-embroidered darkness, the vague shapes of the cottage at the rear and the rising line of red fir well beyond.

Opposite him, Tribucci was looking through an eastern window. Cain asked, “Can you see the church front?”

“No. Too much roof. Lights in half a dozen buildings on Sierra and in a few of the houses, but the house lights have probably been burning since the roundup. It figures at least the psycho is still somewhere along Sierra.”

Cain gloved his hands. “We’d better break the window first.”

“Right.”

“I’ll punch a hole low center, so most of the glass stays in the frame. Then we can work it loose and set the shards in here on the catwalk.”

“Good,” Tribucci said. He had come around the catwalk and was drawing on his own gloves. “We don’t want to be dropping down onto jagged glass in the snow.”

Standing in close to the window, Cain started to draw his arm back. Tribucci caught it and said, “No, wait, the hymn,” and Cain realized the organ was crescendoing through the last few bars of “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” He nodded and sleeved sweat from his forehead, thinking: Close-go slow, no mistakes, no mistakes.

There was silence for a full fifteen seconds, and then the organ began playing “Cross of Jesus,” and the singing voices lifted once more. Cain waited another ten seconds, held a breath, and jabbed his fist against the pane. The single, measured blow was enough; he had had just the right amount of force behind it. In the narrow confines of the belfry, the sound of the glass breaking seemed overly loud-but there was no cessation of the organ or the singing. The hole in the pane was jagged but clean, webbing the remaining glass into fragments that held the frame.

Carefully, Cain slipped fingers into the hole and wiggled one of the shards until the old, stiff putty yielded and the splinter came loose; he set it to one side. Tribucci followed suit with another fragment, and together they managed to clear the opening in something less than two minutes. The last section of glass that Cain jerked free was razor sharp, and in the darkness he gripped it wrong; the spine sliced through his glove, cut deeply into his right palm. He felt blood gush warmly and set his teeth against the lancing pain.

Wind-driven snow pelted through the aperture-icy pinpoints against their faces-and fluttered down into the vestry below. But there was nothing to be done about that. Tribucci leaned out of the window, checking both ways along the rear of the church; then he put his head back inside, dipped his chin to Cain, and began pulling up the bell rope, coiling it around his left arm. When he had all of it, he used his knife to saw through it as high up as he could reach.

The organ now, after another brief pause, was playing “Faith of Our Fathers.”

Tribucci looped the cut end of the rope over one of the thick supports at its juncture with the wall, tied it securely, and tested the strength of the knot. He dipped his chin again, to indicate that he was satisfied it would hold their weight, and played the coiled length out and down the outer wall.

“Doesn’t reach all the way to the ground,” he said. “There’ll be a drop of six or seven feet, but the snow’ll help cushion our landing.”

“You’d better go first,” Cain said. “I cut my right palm on a piece of glass, sliced a tear in the glove, and blood leaking through will make the rope slippery.”

“Can you hold onto it? Is the cut deep?”

“I’ll manage somehow. Go ahead.”

Tribucci climbed onto the windowsill, facing into the belfry, and gathered up slack in the rope and made a loop around his right wrist; then he leaned back and swung out against the steeple wall. Shoes sliding on the snow-slick boards, body stretched back into an almost horizontal plane, he went down with quick agility. When he reached the last foot of rope, he hung for an instant and then let go. His feet disappeared ankle-deep into the surface snow, and he went to one knee; but he was up again immediately, thrusting his right thumb upward, moving in close to the wall and toward the north corner.

Cain ran his right gloved palm gingerly along one trouser leg, to clear away some of the blood. The organ stopped again as he stood up into the frame, and he waited tense-bodied until it resumed with “God of Mercy.” He wiped his right glove a second time, took up the rope and looped it around his left wrist. And went out the way Tribucci had.

The pressure of the rope against his palm made the glass cut burn hellishly; long-unused muscles strained, wrenched, in his armpits and across his shoulders. He felt his grip begin slipping before he had gone halfway, held on desperately until he was ten or twelve feet above the ground. The instant he felt the rope slide irreclaimably through his knotted fingers. he willed his body to relax. There was a moment of giddying free fall, then solid impact that stabbed pain upward through both legs to his groin and hips. He toppled forward, sprawling. Snow clogged his nose and mouth, and he spat it out soundlessly as he pulled himself up onto hands and knees. The pain in his legs had begun to decrease; he had not broken or sprained anything.

Tribucci caught his arm and helped him upright. He asked urgently, “Okay?”

“Okay,” Cain said.

A short exhalation of breath plumed like smoke from between Tribucci’s lips. He said, “North and south walls are clear. So far, so good.”

“I’ll follow your lead.”

As he trailed Tribucci along the side of the cottage, its attached garage, Cain flexed his arms and shoulders to loosen the taut-stretched musculature; his right glove seemed filled with flowing, sticky-cold blood. The line of trees began a hundred yards beyond, and they crossed the sloping open space at a shuffle-stepped run. The storm lashed at them, surrounded them with dancing skeins of whiteness as nearly impenetrable as the curtain of night itself. Cain’s face started to numb, and his feet were wet and chilled inside his boots; his ears ached, his eyes burned.

They reached the wood finally, and its density cut off some of the storm’s tumult. There was no movement along their backtrail-or at least none visible through the flurries. Tribucci set a lateral course a few short yards inside the timber, so that the church and the village buildings remained dimly perceptible on their right. Minutes later they reached a point from which they could look down the two-block length of Shasta Street. Most of the houses were dark, but two showed lights; the illumination there and on Sierra was blurred by the fluxing snow. They went farther north, until they were on a line with the side wall of the nearest, completely dark house, and then followed the line down and across a bare yard to a rose trellis at the house’s front corner.

The neighboring dwelling was one of those that showed light in some of its windows. Tribucci said against Cain’s ear, “That’s Joe Garvey’s place.”

“Doesn’t seem to be any tracks out front.”

“The Garveys were among those picked up in the canvass. It should be empty.”