Snowbound

by Bill Pronzini

  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.

  McNeil pointed a spasmodic, accusatory finger at Coopersmith. His face was lacquered with sweat. “You had no right, you had no right to make a decision that might cost me my life!”

  “The decision was the Lord’s,” the Reverend Mr. Keyes said. “The Lord granted them the wisdom and the courage to do what must be done, and the Lord will grant them the strength to carry it through.”

  “The Lord, the Lord, I’ve heard enough about your Lord-”

  The Reverend Mr. Keyes started toward McNeil angrily. Webb Edwards restrained him. Eyes touched the minister, touched McNeil, returned to Coopersmith; the preponderence of expressions revealed a vacillation between hope and deepening terror.

  Joe Garvey, his nose puffed into a discolored blob from the pistol whipping he had taken earlier, said thickly, “Lew, I can understand why Johnny would risk his life for us, and I can trust him and believe in him. But what about this Cain? He’s an outsider, a man who’s made it plain all along he wanted nothing to do with any of us. How could you and Johnny be sure of what he’ll do out there?”

  “That’s right,” McNeil cried, “that’s right, that’s right! A bird like that, a lousy vandal, he’ll run away and try to save himself the first chance he gets. Oh you crazy old man, you crazy old fool!”

  Blood surged hotly in Coopersmith’s temples. “What right have you got to judge and condemn a man you don’t know anything about-a man with guts enough to fight for your miserable life and everybody else’s life here? Cain won’t run away, any more than Johnny will. And he isn’t the one who broke into the cafe; whoever it was, it wasn’t Zachary Cain.”

  “The hell it wasn’t, he’s the one all right-”

  “That’s enough!” a voice shouted suddenly. “I won’t listen to any more against Mr. Cain, I’m the one who broke into the cafe, I’m the one.”

  The voice belonged to McNeil’s son, Larry.

  Coopersmith stared down at the youth; of all the Hidden Valley residents who might have been responsible for the breaking and entering, Larry was one of the last he-or any of the others-would have suspected. Sandy McNeil said something to her son in a hushed voice, but he shook his head and pushed out into the center aisle. She came after him, one arm extended as if beseeching, as he stepped up onto the pulpit and approached his father.

  McNeil was looking at him incredulously. “You, boy — you?”

  “Me, Pa.” To Coopersmith, Larry’s thin face seemed for the first time to contain maturity, a kind of determined manliness. “I slipped out of the house around 3 A.M. both mornings, when everyone in the village was asleep, and used an old tire iron you had in the garage to jimmy the door. Then I propped it wide with the orange crates so the snow could blow in and ruin as much stock as possible. I’d have owned up to it sooner or later anyway, with you threatening to have Mr. Cain arrested; but now that I know he’s gone out there to try to save us, I just can’t hold it inside me anymore.”

  McNeil’s lips worked soundlessly for a moment. Then, in a low voice that cracked as brittly as thin ice: “My own son, Jesus, my own son.”

  “Always talking about Ma,” Larry said, “always talking about her in front of other people, putting her down, saying dirty things. And the way you treated her, both of us, like we were nothing to you and we’re not, all you care about is yourself. That’s why I did it. I thought it would be a way to hurt you. I’m sorry for it now, I wish I hadn’t done it-not only because it was wrong but because I was thinking and acting the way you do, I was being just like you. And I don’t ever want to be like you, Pa, not ever…”

  His voice trailed off, and the silence which followed was thick and uneasy. Sandy McNe
il looked at her husband, at her son, and then she moved closer to Larry and took his hand; the gesture, the stolidity of her expression told Coopersmith she had made a decision for the future, if there was to be one for the two of them, which she would not compromise.

  McNeil’s cheeks were gray and damp and hollow. He watched his wife and son walk away from him; searched the eyes of the others and found no sympathy, found nothing at all for him. He seemed to fold in on himself, to shrivel and age perceptibly until he became like a gnome whose eyes glistened wetly with the cancer of cowardice and self-pity. He groped his way to the organ bench and sat on it and put his head in his hands.

  The collective gazes turned from him and settled again on Coopersmith. Quietly, he told them about Cain-who the man was, why he had come to the valley, why he had volunteered to join Tribucci. And when he was finished, he saw a grudging acceptance of the situation on the majority of faces. The palpable, fear-heavy tenseness was more acute than ever, but there would be no panic, no chaotic infighting. Things in here, at least, appeared to again be under control…

  “Webb!”

  The cry came from Vince Tribucci, jerked heads around once more, brought Dr. Edwards running down the center aisle in immediate response. Vince was leaning anxiously over his sister-in-law, helping her into a supine position on the pew bench; Rebecca held her head, pillowed it gently on one thigh. Ann’s swollen abdomen heaved, convulsed, and her face was contorted with pain. She had her lower lip clenched deeply between her teeth, as though to keep herself from screaming.

  Ellen clutched at Coopersmith’s jacket. “She’s gone into labor; the shock put her into labor. Dear heaven, Lew, she’s going to have her baby…”

  Fifteen

  At the approximate point where he and Tribucci had first entered the wind-combed trees, Cain stopped against the bole of one fir and studied the area. The tracks they had made coming across the sloping snowfield had been partially obliterated by the storm; through the flurries he could make out nothing except the dark outlines of cottage and church, the vague illumination of the church’s stained-glass side windows.

  With his gloved fingers opening and closing steadily, agitatedly, around the butt of the Walther PPK, he started down and across the open area. The wind shoved harshly at his back, bending him forward from the waist, and the tails of his coat flapped against his legs like the wings of a fettered bird. Firn crackled and crunched beneath his boot soles. He kept his head up, watching the cottage looming ahead, breathing shallowly.

  Long moments later he reached the rear of the attached garage, took the gun out of his pocket, and went along the building’s southern, front wall. Icicles hung from its eaves like pointed giant’s teeth; shutters closed across one of the facing windows rattled loudly above the storm’s querulous skirling. Cain stopped at the forward corner, and from there he could see the gray-black opening of the glassless belfry window and the ice-coated rope hanging down out of it; but neither was discernible from any distance.

  Crossing to the church, he edged slowly and carefully toward the front. When he had come midway, he could see all of the near third of the parking lot. Three cars, each of them shrouded in white, were parked nose up against log brakes set on a line with the church’s southern wall. Snow had built little ledges on the sills of their windshields and near passenger windows, and was frozen to the glass itself in streaks and spatters.

  Cain went another dozen steps, and two more cars came within range of his vision-both parked with their front bumpers extending to the edge of the church walk, one in the center of the lot and the other down near Sierra Street. Their windows, too, were like blind white eyes. Within a foot of the corner, he squatted and leaned his left shoulder on the icy boarding and stretched out just enough so that he was able to see the area immediately fronting the church. One last car, as frozen and abandoned-looking as the other five.

  A muscle in his left leg began to cramp with cold, and Cain straightened up again. A guard in one of those cars would logically keep at least one window facing the church clear of snow and ice, so he could watch the entrance doors; too, it was likely he’d have the engine running and the heater and defroster on, with a wing open or window rolled partway down to circumvent the threat of carbon monoxide poisoning. There were no puffs of exhaust smoke, no sounds above the wind, no car windows open or clear. No other sheltered place in the vicinity. No tracks anywhere.

  No guard.

  Okay, Cain thought. Okay.

  He craned his head forward a second time and swept his gaze over the parking lot, Sierra Street and the wind-shaped drifts in the meadow beyond. The lights shining farther into the village were all there was for him to see; the snow flurries continued to place visibility in a constant flux. Pulling back, he tugged the fur hat down tighter over his ears and rubbed at his cold-deadened face. The wiry beard hairs were like brittle threads of ice, and he imagined that in the rubbing he had depilitated part of the growth. He swallowed a nervously humorless laugh, shook himself mentally to keep his thoughts in tight check.

  How do we deploy when Tribucci gets back? he asked himself. One of us here, one of us by that car nearest the entrance? That seemed the best way to do it, all right. They would be separated, but not so far apart that one would be unable to offer protection for the other or to minimize the potential advantage of a crossfire. And they would be positioned at the closest possible points to the doors, so as to guard the entrance fully and effectively. They’d have to figure a way to cover the tracks from here to the car, though; they couldn’t afford to wait for the storm to do it. Maybe there was something they could use in the cottage-a whisk broom, a trowel, something.

  The wind began to gust, whistling mournfully, sweeping snow in misty sheets down close to the ground. Cain bunched the collar of his coat tighter against his throat with his left hand, repocketed the gun with his right. Minutes passed. Again he checked the area fronting the church; again he saw nothing. His feet were so achingly chilled now that he had almost no feeling in his toes; he lifted first one leg and then the other, like a man doing calisthenics in slow motion, to keep the blood circulating. The movement of time seemed to have slowed down to an inert crawl, as if the bitterly cold night had managed to wrap it, too, in a cloak of ice Time, Cain thought.

  Abruptly he pushed back the left sleeve of his coat and squinted at the luminous numerals of his watch. It was seven five. Tribucci had said it would take him less than half an hour to get the guns from his brother’s house and return here, but it was nearly forty-five minutes since they had parted in the wood. If nothing had happened, he should have been here by now. If nothing had happened…

  The clot of anxiety under Cain’s breastbone expanded. He made one last quick and fruitless reconnaissance of Sierra Street and then hurried back to the rear corner and across to the cottage and along its facade again to the garage corner. He stared beyond the snowfield at the trees: black-and-white emptiness everywhere.

  Where was he?

  Where was Tribucci?

  Sixteen

  Moving through the familiar darkness inside his brother’s home, John Tribucci went from the rear porch into the downstairs study. At an antique sideboard along one wall, he bent and opened the facing doors and rummaged through the interior until his fingers located the cowhide case he knew Vince kept there. He took the case out, set it on top of the sideboard, and worked the catches to lift the lid.

  Inside was a matched set of. 22 caliber, nine-shot Harrington amp; Richardson revolvers-a gift from Vince’s father-in-law some three years earlier. One of Vince’s favorite all-weather pastimes was target shooting, and he preferred Western-style pistols such as these to automatic target weapons like the Colt Woodsman. Tribucci had done some shooting with his brother, with these guns, and knew the feel and action of the model. Both were loaded, safeties on; he put one into the left pocket of his coat, clutched the second firmly, and went out of the study and started back through the house.

  As he came
into the kitchen, he grew aware for the first time of the subtle, homely fragrances which lingered in the warm black: his wife’s Lanvin perfume, Vince’s after-breakfast cigar, the batch of Christmas pfeffernusse cookies Judy had baked just before the four of them left for church. A vivid image of Ann entered his mind then, and his throat closed and his stomach twisted with a rush of emotion that was almost vertiginous. He leaned against the refrigerator for a moment, holding onto the image, trying to think of her laughing and happy instead of the way he had left her in church, the way she would be now that Coopersmith had surely told her what he and Cain were doing. Then, deliberately, he forced his mind blank of everything but his immediate purpose and stepped out onto the wide back porch.

  He pushed through the door there-it had been customarily unlocked, and he’d come in that way initially-and hurried around to the front yard, into the deep shadows beneath one of the twin fir trees flanking the walk. The house was located on Eldorado Street, slightly more than half a block off Sierra; he peered eastward, then down the length of Shasta Street. The falling snow was like a huge, wind-billowed lace curtain that combined with the darkness to obscure anything more than fifty yards distant. A thin haze of light from the buildings on Sierra tinged the sky in that direction.

  Tribucci moved out from beneath the fir and ran in long, light strides across Eldorado, coming up against the broad entrance doors of the building which fronted Placer on the east; owned by Joe Garvey, it served as a garage for extensive automobile and truck repairs and also as a storage shed for the village snowplow. On the opposite side of the street was a wide, bare hummock of ground, deep-drifted, that extended south to Lassen Drive and north to the beginnings of the pass cliffs-a shorter path into the wood higher up, but a slow and precarious one because of the snow depth. He would follow the longer but quicker route by which he had come: first down to the corner, to make sure Lassen was clear, and then traverse Placer and traverse Lassen and go up slantingly into the trees.