Bill Pronzini: Snowbound

Coopersmith, as some of the others had already done, looked away; he had fathered two sons but had seen neither of them born, and he’d never realized that childbirth could be quite so messy-a messiness that only added fuel to the sick terror in the room. Facing the side wall, he heard Ann say, “I want to hold her, please let me hold her,” and he thought: Life and death, in the midst of one you have the other, you can’t separate them; one Tribucci born and one ready to die, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away…

The tightness had returned to his chest, the sourness like trapped gas to his stomach. He passed a hand over his face. And standing there that way, with his ear close to the joining of the two doors, he heard something else, something outside-a faint cracking sound thinned by the storm. He knew immediately that it was a shot, strained to pick up further sounds; there were none. He turned his head to see if anyone else had heard the report. Each of their attentions, he saw, was centered on Ann and Edwards and the cries of the baby, or turned within.

Let it be Cain or Johnny who fired that shot, he thought fervently. Let them stay alive and do what they have to do-so all these people can live, so Johnny’s baby can live. You’ve given, but don’t take away; let Cain and Tribucci live…

John Tribucci was still alive.

He was alive because the bullets which had entered his chest had both missed vital organs-one chipping the left collarbone and one lodging against a right upper rib-and because of the two vicious kicks in the side Kubion had delivered just after the shooting. Shock had been responsible for the red-black haze, the initial unconsciousness; but if it had not been for the kicks, the freezing wind and snow would have prevented him from coming to and eventually have done the job the bullets failed to do.

The sudden pain in his side brought him out of it gradually, into a vague awareness of where he was and what had happened, and he did not move perceptibly or make any sound. He lay there at first feeling only the cold and the pain in his side where he had been kicked and a bitter hollow helplessness, half expecting a final bullet, the coup de grace, that he would never really feel or hear. Instead, there was the audible crunching of steps going away from him-not far, it seemed, just up to the garage wall a few yards distant, but far enough for Tribucci to begin to taste faint hope. His thoughts cleared somewhat then, and he clung with silent desperation to the threads of consciousness, giving thanks that he had fallen with his face turned downward against one arm, so that each thin expulsion of breath went into the snow and did not dilate upward in a telltale white vapor.

In his wounded and cold-stiffened condition, he knew it would be suicidal to go after the second. 22 revolver in his left coat pocket or the knife strapped to his leg, or to make any sort of movement at all, while the psycho remained in the vicinity. He waited, playing dead-and kept on waiting. Pain began to seep through the numbness in his chest, muted at first but gathering a pulsing intensity; he was aware of the faint cold stickiness of blood on his upper torso.

And then, above the cry of the wind, he thought he heard steps crackling again, retreating to the south. But he was not completely sure, and still he kept his body immobile. One or five or ten more minutes ebbed away. He began to feel a kind of torpid warmth, lying there in the snow, and that was a certain sign you were on your way to freezing to death; he could not wait any longer, if he didn’t move very soon now he would never move at all.

Tribucci forced his eyes open into slits, blinking the lids free of ice flakes, and then turned his head slowly up and around. He could see all right; the haziness was gone. It was snowing less heavily now, giving him greater visibility than he had had earlier, and there was no one at the garage wall and appeared to be no one to the south along Placer. When he had worked his head around to look to the north, he saw nothing in that direction either.

He got his hands under him and lifted himself slowly, weakly, into a kneeling position, setting his teeth against the rising agony in his chest. The depression in the snow where he had lain was spotted darkly with blood, but most of the fluid had been contained inside his clothing, caking his undershirt to his body. Trembling with cold and enervation, he lifted one leg and planted his shoe firmly and heaved upward onto his feet; staggered, fell to one knee again; pushed upward a second time and groped his way to the garage wall. He leaned against it heavily, panting.

How much time had passed? Tribucci dragged his left arm up and looked at his watch, and it was seven thirty-seven. More than an hour since he had left Cain, three-quarters of an hour since he had come out of Vince’s house across Eldorado. He swallowed into a constricted throat and tried to collect his thoughts into coherent order.

The psycho knew now that at least one person had got out of the church, and he had to be thinking that maybe there were more as well. He would head there, then, he wouldn’t keep on reconning the partner who’d been running away from him-and maybe that one would make for the church as well. Cain would have realized by now that something had happened, too much time had elapsed for him to think otherwise, and he would be extra-cautious; but so would the runner and so would the psycho, particularly the psycho.

Tribucci sleeved snow and chilled sweat from his face, breathing rackingly. I’ve got to get to the church, he thought, and I’ve got to get there fast: warn Cain, join him in a stand. There might still be a little time, but not enough for him to attempt the trek on foot; too dangerous with the psycho’s whereabouts unknown, the runner’s whereabouts unknown, and the frigid wind and snow would sap too much of his remaining strength. He had to do something overt, then; there just wasn’t any other choice.

Take a car; a car was fast and direct, and it would give him some protection as well. Vince’s Buick? It was in the garage across Eldorado-but God he didn’t have a key for it, and he wasn’t enough of a mechanic to be able to jump the ignition wires. His own car was at the church, he and Ann and Vince and Judy had gone in that this morning. Was there another vehicle in the village somewhere that might have the keys in it? He could not think of one, there might not be any, and he would waste precious time, too much time, if he Snowmobile, he thought.

Vince’s snowmobile.

It, too, was in his brother’s garage, and the key for it was kept in a storage compartment under the cowl; friends were always borrowing the machine with Vince’s carte blanche permission and he felt it was simpler to keep the key there than on his person. It was as good as a car in that it could travel just as quickly, better than a car because it was smaller and more maneuverable in the snow and would not be noticed as soon from a distance. He would be fully exposed driving it, a moving target, but there was nothing to be done about that; he had to get to the church, he had to get to Cain.

Tribucci pushed away from the wall, located the dropped. 22, and bent for it. The motion made his head spin dizzily and sickness funnel into his throat, but when he straightened again the nausea receded. He shoved the gun into his free pocket, went back toward Eldorado Street with his left arm pressed hard across his chest, running drunkenly on legs which felt as if they had been rubberized. He fell once, dragged himself up; he could not seem to get enough of the biting cold air into his lungs. The pain in his chest was a fiery, pulsing counterpoint to the hammerlike tempo of his heart.

He went down twice more crossing to Vince’s front yard, willed his body up again both times. Fresh blood welled from the two bullet wounds, and it was like a coating of viscid oil on his skin. He wondered dimly if he were bleeding to death. No. He wouldn’t bleed to death and he wouldn’t freeze to death, remember Ann, remember the baby, remember Vince and Judy and seventy of his friends and neighbors locked inside the church-and Cain, remember Cain.