Bill Pronzini - Snowbound

It didn’t make any difference whether there was a safe or not; the Hughes’ house was intended to be Brodie’s execution chamber.

But Kubion still hadn’t given him even the smallest of possible openings, and in the two hours since they had started looting the village there hadn’t been any sign of big stupid gutless Loxner, eliminating the last faint hope of help from that quarter. Kubion’s freaked-out head had forgotten all about Loxner-they hadn’t gone anywhere near the church in those two hours-and that was the closest he’d come to any sort of mistake. Brodie kept telling himself that Kubion getting crazier and crazier would work both ways, that it would make him careless as well as more dangerous; he kept telling himself the opening would come, don’t take a last desperate gamble because the opening would come.

He reached the windrow on the eastern side of Sierra, started along it toward the pickup in the next block. The surface snow there was freezing and slick; he walked it with slow, cautious steps, risked a glance over his shoulder. Kubion’s dark face stared back at him: no smile now, lips moving as if in silent monologue. Brodie told himself again that an opening would come.

And one came.

Just like that, with startlingly coeval suddenness, Kubion made the kind of mistake Brodie had been waiting for.

Thoughts and eyes focused elsewhere, he had not been paying any attention to his footing; his right shoe came down on one of the patches of glassy snow, found no traction and slipped, and the leg kicked up rigidly like a football placekicker following through. His left arm flailed at the air and his body jerked into a horizontal plane and he fell bellowing, landing heavily on his buttocks, left leg twisted slightly as he skidded sideways into the snowpack at the curbing.

Brodie’s reaction was almost instantaneous. Instinct obliterated surprise and fatigue, and when he saw that Kubion had managed to hold onto the gun, it rejected any effort of trying to jump him across the ten icy steps which separated them. He spun and ran, diagonally back the way they had come because Kubion’s body was bent toward the south and because Lassen Drive to the west was the nearest release street, the nearest shielded path of escape. He fled in a headlong, weaving crouch through the less treacherous snow which blanketed the middle of the street, coming on the far windrow near the corner of the inn. Another bellow sounded behind him, and then the flat wind-muffled explosion of a shot. Nothing touched him but the flakes of obscuring snow.

He leaped over the windrow, muscles hunched and rippling along his back, head tucked down against his chest. Sliding on the ice-quilted sidewalk, he lunged against the building wall, caught the corner, and heaved himself around it as a second shot echoed dimly and a bullet slapped into the boarding a foot or two to his left. He vaulted the ragged snowpack on Lassen Drive, to evade more sidewalk ice-lost his balance this time and sprawled out prone on the street and planed forward half a dozen yards like a man on an invisible sled before he was able to drag his feet under him again.

There were no more shots, but he did not look back; he stretched his body forward into the wind, summoning reserves of stamina, and kept on running.

Coopersmith was standing at the foot of the vestry ladder, looking up into the belfry, when the door swung open and Frank McNeil came inside.

Pivoting abruptly, he saw the cafe owner bump the door closed with one hip and press back against it. McNeil gaped with frightened, furtive eyes at the wetness on the floor directly under the belfry, at the flakes of snow which sprinkled down and liquefied on Coopersmith’s head and shoulders. Sweat beaded his upper lip like a thinly glistening silver mustache.

Face void of expression, Coopersmith crossed to him and said evenly, “What are you doing in here, Frank?”

“I knew it,” McNeil said, “I knew something was going on. You and John Tribucci and that Cain alone in here before, had to have your heads together about something, and then you with the organ music and hymn singing and neither one of them is out front now, I looked when I saw you slip in here a minute ago and they’re not there and not in here either. They got out, didn’t they? They broke out through one of the belfry windows, didn’t they?”

A tic made Coopersmith’s left eyelid flutter in arhythmic tempo, so that he seemed incongruously to be winking. “Keep your voice down,” he snapped.

“For Christ’s sake why did they do it, why did you help them do it, what’s the matter with you, they’ll be killed out there, they’ll be killed and we’ll be killed too, we’re all going to be killed — ”

Coopersmith slapped him across the face. “Shut up, McNeil, shut up!”

McNeil’s eyes bulged exophthalmically, and his fingertips trembled over the reddened surface of his cheek. He made a soft, choking sound that might have been a sob and turned to fumble the door open. Coopersmith reached for him, caught his shirt sleeve, but the rough material slipped from his grasp; McNeil went through the door, onto the pulpit beyond.

He backed away to the left and leaned up against the curved outer edge of the organ, still touching his cheek. Coopersmith came out grimly and shut the door. The silence in the dim room was funereal now. Maude Fredericks had played eight hymns and said then that she could not do any more; the Reverend Mr. Keyes had stood up immediately, shakily, and offered a long prayer to which Coopersmith only half listened because he was not sure Cain and Tribucci had had enough time to get out. When the minister finally subsided, he had gone instantly into the vestry to make sure. He knew now that he should have gone first to Ann and Vince; knew as well that the open-handed slap he had just given McNeil was a second misjudgment, that he should have hit him with a closed fist instead, knocked him unconscious. McNeil was half out of his head with fear-a coward, something less than a man at this moment-and his eyes and the quivering white slash of his mouth made it plain he was going to tell everyone Tribucci and Cain were gone.

Coopersmith said, “Frank,” sharply, aware that some of the others were looking at the two of them now and sensing the tension between them. He took three quick steps toward the cafe owner, said his name a second time.

And McNeil told them: loudly, running his words together, putting it all in the worst possible perspective.

The immediate reaction was just as Coopersmith had known it would be. There were spontaneous articulations of alarm, a half-panicked stirring as men and women got to their feet-some turning to their neighbors, some pushing forward onto the pulpit. Ellen came up beside him, took his arm, but Coopersmith’s eyes were on Ann Tribucci. She was standing between Vince and Rebecca Hughes in a rear pew, face milk-white, and her lips moved with the words “Johnny, Johnny, oh Johnny!” Vince caught her by the shoulders, steadied her; his features were set in hard lines of concern, but they betrayed little surprise.

Questions, remarks pounded at Coopersmith from several directions. He waved his arms for quiet, shouting, “Listen to me, all of you listen to me!”

The voices ebbed. He faced his friends and neighbors steadily, let them see nothing but assurance and authority and self-control. Then, keeping his voice calm, low-keyed, talking over interruptions, he explained the situation to them: why the decision had been made, why the secrecy, how it was being handled by Tribucci and Cain, exactly what they were now attempting to do.

More apprehensive vocalization; a soft cry from Ann that cut knifelike into Coopersmith and made him wince. The Reverend Mr. Keyes stepped forward, supporting his bloodied, scarf-bandaged right hand in the palm of his left. “ ‘Give them according to their deeds, and according to the wickedness of their endeavors: give them after the work of their hands; render to them their desert.’ ” Then: “ ‘The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth vengeance; he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.’ ” No longer benign, no longer clement, he spoke harshly the passages from Psalms in the Old Testament; his spirit, now, seemed to seek communion not with the God of Love and Charity, but with the God of swift and merciless Wrath.