He was three steps from the corner when the dark figure came running at fly speed out of Lassen Drive.
Startled, Tribucci stood immobile for an instant; then, instinctively, he took a step back hard against the building, embracing the heavy darkness there. The running man crossed Placer-not looking back, not looking anywhere except straight ahead of him. When he reached the low picket fence enclosing the front yard of Webb Edwards’ house, he jumped it without slowing and disappeared around the screened-in side porch.
It all happened so quickly that Tribucci had been able to distinguish nothing of the fleeing man’s physical characteristics; but he had been hatless, and that meant it couldn’t have been Cain, wasn’t Cain. One of the looters… running from the psycho? You ran that way when somebody was after you, and maybe the maniac had tried to kill him-already killed the third one? — and he had broken away somehow. Was the psycho in close pursuit then? Was he just around the corner on Lassen? Tribucci worked saliva through his dry mouth, momentarily indecisive. Retreat or stay where he was? He might be seen either way, and this wasn’t the place for a fight; he had to get back to Cain and the church A new movement caught his eye through the storm, kept him hugging the garage wall: an indistinct shape running through the yard of the Beckman property adjacent to Edwards’; cutting back across Placer at an angle, obscured white face turned to the north but with the screening snow and the ebon shadows, not seeing him, Tribucci, from that distance; vanishing once again into the Modoc Street corner lot belonging to the Chiltons.
Urgency tugged commandingly at Tribucci’s mind, vanquishing the indecision. Get away from here, he thought. Get away from here now.
And the second figure appeared in the middle of Lassen fifteen feet away, oblong pointing finger of an automatic darkly defined in one hand, stalking-limping-in the runner’s snowtracks.
Tribucci stiffened again; his ears seemed suddenly filled with the thrumming of his pulse. The second one stopped, looked across at Edwards’ house-and then, as if with sixth sense, turned and stared north along Placer, stared right at him, could not miss seeing him across that short a span of ground. Tribucci recognized the charred, savage face immediately, confirmation of what he already knew, and a mixture of fear and hatred and fury constricted his anus and opened his jaws in a wolflike rictus. He had waited too long, it was too late to run, and he had no place to run to; he had to fight now.
Kubion took two steps toward him, gun arm leveled. Tribucci fired from in close to his chest, missed in his haste, saw the other jerk to a halt as if in surprise and then lunge to one side, onto his right knee with his favored left leg dragging. Moving sideways, Tribucci snapped his arm out and locked the elbow and braced his body; fired again-missed again, snow kicking up like a puff of white dust near the trailing leg. Damn you to hell damn you damn you! and started to squeeze off a third time, but the automatic in Kubion’s hand flashed then and stab! in his chest, and flashed again and stab! in his chest, the shock of the bullets’ impact driving away his breath-no no I blew it-and his legs buckled, the nerves in his gloved right hand were like filaments of ice. The revolver fell free, he felt his body slumping and heard the wind and the vague echoes of the shots as he toppled loosely into the half-frozen snow. I blew it good but oh please God don’t let me have blown it completely-and a congealing red-black haze formed and thickened inside his head, spinning him, spinning him, obliterating all sound and all feeling and the sudden bright image of Ann that clung to his last shred of consciousness….
Seventeen
Kubion stared down at the snow-spattered form of the man he had shot, recognized him as the one brother from the Sport Shop. Savagely he said, “You fucking hick Eskimo son of a bitch!” and drove the point of his shoe into yielding flesh just below the ribs, did it a second time. Then he backed up against the wall of the garage and probed the night around him with slitted, restless eyes.
Despite the direction of the snow tracks, he’d thought at first it was Brodie there in the building shadows and then the bastard had plugged away at him with that horse gun and Brodie hadn’t had time to locate a weapon but Christ on a crutch he’d almost walked into it, the first bullet had missed him by a foot but the second had almost gotten him but he was ten feet tall and nobody could kill him least of all a lousy hick, but still it had been close. Goddamn it he’d been positive none of them would try to get out of the church and here this one was stupid stupid, not through the locked front doors not that stupid but maybe some other exit he’d overlooked when he’d examined the interior on Thursday or by breaking out the glass in one of the windows, and how many others were there? Oh there’d be at least one more that was certain because one alone was too much of a risk even for stupid Eskimo hicks but now Tribucci was a dead hero and he’d make the other one or two dead heroes too. And Brodie, he’d kill Brodie slow and painful when he found him the fag shit, all that crap about safes but the urge telling him no and he’d thought he had everything nailed down and then that lousy ice and not watching his footing and falling and twisting his ankle, sprained and hurting and swelling up and hobbling him, and Brodie getting away and things all of a sudden screwing up just like the Greenfront job, things you couldn’t figure ahead of time. But there was no way things were going to screw him out of this score no way because there’d be a fruit jar somewhere with the big money he knew it, and it was only a matter of time before he was back on top and killed Brodie and killed them all…
The urge moaned and trembled inside him, softly, softly. He opened his mouth and pulled freezing air and flakes of snow into his lungs. Things screwing up sure but Tribucci was dead, and it was a good thing he’d had the shoot-out because now he knew some of them were free; coming after Brodie with the idea he could spot him on the run had been smart then but not now, no point in trying to trail him like a goddamn Indian and maybe walking into an ambush. Maybe Brodie’d try for the Sport Shop, he’d be after a weapon first thing all right, but it was too obvious and maybe he’d go somewhere else; still, the thing to do was check it out quick and careful and even if he couldn’t flush him he knew what Brodie would do after he was armed no question about that. He knew what the other hick heroes would be doing too, they’d want to protect those in the church and too many men running around in the village would increase chances of discovery and they’d be smart enough to understand that so they’d be waiting by or near the church for Tribucci to come with the guns that he wouldn’t be bringing. The church was the lay okay, all the way all the way.
Not looking at the motionless figure in the snow, Kubion sidestepped to the corner and went around it and ran limpingly back along Lassen Drive to Sierra Street.
Eighteen
As soon as he was sure the immediate area was clear, Brodie climbed over a five-foot boundary fence into the north-south alley bisecting the block between Modoc and Lassen and kicked open the back door of the Valley Inn. The wind muffled the sounds of splintering wood and snapping metal, sent swirls of snow into the heavily shadowed storeroom ahead of him. Directly opposite and to one side, he could make out a narrow corridor leading into the front of the building. He ran down there, came out in the restaurant kitchen, and crossed to a swing door in the far wall. When he had pushed through, he was in the inn’s darkened dining room.
Lights burned a pale amber in the lounge area beyond the center partitions. On the wall behind the far end of the bar, Brodie could see the glass-fronted guncase he had noticed earlier-and the twin, ornately scrolled shotguns shining dully within. Spread across the bottom of the interior shelf, just as he remembered, were boxes of shells.
He ran around into the lounge and swung his body up onto the bar, over behind it. With a heavy decanter from the backbar display, he broke the glass out of the guncase door and cleared clinging shards from the opening. The shotguns were. 12 gauge pumps with 26-inch barrels, three-shot Savages. Brodie pulled one of them loose from its clip fastenings, pawed open a box of cartridges, fed three into the magazine, and worke
d the slide to jack the first into firing position.
Despite the deadliness of the piece, it was cumbersome-and the storm would retard accurate shooting at any range over twenty yards. There were plenty of handguns in the Sport Shop, but once Brodie was certain he’d made good his escape and could think calculatingly again, he had decided against that objective. Kubion had to know that his first consideration would be to get himself a weapon and that the Sport Shop was the one sure place to pick up on guns and ammunition. Maybe Kubion would be following snow tracks, the way you’d expect, but then again, since Brodie hadn’t seen any sign of him when he’d looped around and doubled back across Placer Street, it could be he had gone to the Sport Shop instead. Christ, he could be anywhere, doing anything.
Brodie dropped a handful of extra shells into his coat pocket, went over the bar again, and ran through the dining room and kitchen. He slowed there and entered cautiously into the dark corridor, bringing the shotgun up so that the stock butted hard against his shoulder, moving to where he could see the open rear door. Snow still churned inside, blanketing a section of floor in an unbroken swath. He edged into the storeroom, circled silently around to the wall beside the door. Then, swiftly, he stepped over in front of the opening, still three paces inside, and fanned the pump across the fence. Nothing showed, nothing moved. He saw that the only tracks in the alley snow were his own, hesitated for a moment, and then ran out through the doorway to the left; pulled back to the building wall, sweeping the shotgun’s muzzle from the fence northward along the alley and back again. The narrow expanse was empty in both directions.
With the pump sighted once more on the fence, Brodie waded sideways through the snow to the south. Just prior to Modoc Street, the fence ended against a low line of shrubbery, and he could see a portion of the adjoining house’s front yard: smooth-swept whiteness. He went over there, fanned the area behind the fence, and then swung the weapon outward in an arc to Modoc. Clear. Carefully, he backed farther into the yard at an angle that allowed him to see down Modoc to Sierra in one direction, and back deeper along the fence in the other. He was completely alone.
His moves so far had been the right ones; he’d been inside the inn less than five minutes-not long enough to have trapped himself if Kubion was following his tracks, just long enough to have balanced the odds a little. There was no question what his next move had to be: the church. Loxner figured to be long gone, hiding out somewhere, but there was still an off-chance he’d remained in the car and even a mush-belly was better than no help at all. And doing the cat-and-mouse bit in the village was pure stupidity; you didn’t play games with a maniac. If he could get to the church before Kubion, and Loxner was gone, he could burrow in somewhere and try to pick Kubion off when he showed-and he would show all right, he could already be on his way there because he’d remember Loxner now. But that didn’t change matters. Any way you looked at it, the church was where Brodie had to go.
He hurried through the facing yards of two houses, watching his flank as well as what lay ahead. Then he cut across Modoc and went into another yard and along the side of a dark frame house. There was no fence separating that property from the one which fronted on Shasta; he passed beneath a row of bare-branched fruit trees, paralleled a second dark house, and came to a stop beside a wooden pony cart the owners had put in for landscaping decoration.
He squatted there to catch his breath, to momentarily relieve the sharp ache of fatigued muscles. The shotgun seemed to have grown heavier, more unwieldy. Opening the bottom two buttons of his coat, he used the lining on one of the flaps to wipe his wind-and snow-stung eyes.
As far as he could see, then, Shasta Street was clear both east and west. He levered up again and ran at an angle across the roadway, plowed through thick drifts to a fir tree at the edge of the church acreage. Kubion’s car was discernible from there; like all the others on the lot, it was draped in white, windshield and windows ice-veiled. It looked as if Loxner were gone, all right, but he was still going to have to make sure.
Brodie slogged forward through the surface pack with his body humped over and the pump gun up against his shoulder, covering both front and rear corners. When he had reached the near wall, he went to the corner and stared out into the lot. The snow everywhere was unmarred. If Kubion had managed to get there before him, he hadn’t come across the lot and he wasn’t in the lot.
Stepping out, Brodie moved to the front stairs and sat on his haunches next to them, fanning the shotgun from south to east to north. Then he looked down at Kubion’s car again, came up, and scurried crablike across the walk to the nearest vehicle; went around behind it, half turned back toward the church. Once he got to the car, he raised his left hand and rapped hard against the cold metal of the door. No response from within. He knew that the dome light in the car didn’t work, and he reached up and caught the handle and jerked outward. Ice seals crackled, breaking away from the metal; the door opened wide.
Brodie said “Jesus!” between suddenly clenched teeth, because Loxner hadn’t gone anywhere, because Loxner was still sitting there behind the wheel-with his mouth hanging open and both hands wrapped around the blood-coated haft of Kubion’s pocketknife embedded just under his breastbone.
Nineteen
Cain was not startled when he put his head out to look around the church’s southern front corner and the looter was less than twenty yards away, armed with a shotgun, moving across the front walk and into the parking lot.
He had been expecting one or more of them for several minutes, ever since he’d stood at the cottage’s far end and waited for Tribucci to appear out of the trees. There was only one possible explanation for Tribucci’s continued absence: something had gone wrong, he had been seen and then killed or wounded and pinned down somewhere. And that meant the psycho was now aware at least one man had gotten out of the church, that he would want to find out as quickly as possible if there were others, that the element of surprise had at best been neutralized and at worst been transferred in part to the opposition.
He had forced down the stirring of a strong mixture of emotions, forced himself to remain calm and to think strategically. Deliberation had been brief. The only thing he could do was to situate himself at the south church wall, alternating between front and rear corners; that way he could cover all immediate approaches without leaving any more telltale tracks than he already had. He’d spent the past ten minutes moving back and forth along the wall, watching and waiting for something to happen, and now the waiting was over-part of it, or all of it.
The man in the parking lot was not the psycho; Cain was able, through the flurries, to determine that by size, coloring, and clothing before pulling back rigidly against the boarding. His fingers tightened convulsively around the butt of the Walther, and he brought it up against his chest, thinking: Why the parking lot, why not around on this side? He can’t think I’m out there, there isn’t any spoor…. All right, it doesn’t matter; what matters is what he does not, where he goes-what I do and where I go. One mistake and it’s all over: remember that, don’t forget that for a second.
Cain inched his head out again. The looter had reached the vehicle parked by itself at the forward end of the lot. was pulling open the driver’s door. He reacted to something inside the car; but the dome light did not go on, and because of distance and angle and the storm, Cain couldn’t tell what it was. With taut movements, the man straightened and backed off two steps; swept the shotgun south to north across the front of the church, not seeing Cain-not yet.
But he’s going to come back here now, Cain thought, and when he does it’ll be in this direction; he came from the north, and he can’t know what there is on this side. Retreat to the back? No-retreating won’t accomplish anything positive, there isn’t going to be any more retreating. Too late to go after him, and that would be a fool’s move anyway with that shotgun he’s got and across open ground. Stay here, then, right here. Don’t take eyes off him, don’t make any unnecessary moves because move
ment is the thing that’ll give me away; he’s not going to be able to penetrate stationary shadows until he gets closer-believe that. Wait, wait until the last possible second, play for one shot at dead aim and don’t even think about missing…
The looter was moving now, shuffle-stepping toward the church and diagonally to the south. He held the shotgun centered on the building, ready to swing either way, but his head turned in a slow, intent ambit, coming out of profile. He seemed to be facing Cain squarely then, to hesitate-don’t move, don’t breathe
— and finally he swiveled his gaze slowly to the north again.
Sweat trickled down from Cain’s armpits, froze along his sides; the brassiness was back in his mouth, sharp and raw. When the looter’s attention was focused fully away from him, he lifted his left arm cautiously to eye level and anchored it against the corner edge of the church; brought the Walther up in the same motion and rested the barrel on his forearm. He released the held breath into his left coat sleeve, drew another. Squinting, he peered along the iron muzzle sight.
The looter took another step, and another.
Aim for the head or body? What did the Army tell you about something like this? Can’t remember, can’t think — make a decision! Body then, larger target, center on the chest, the heart.
Another step.
All right, steady now, steady. Slow, even pressure on the trigger. Squeeze it, don’t pull it, when the time comes.
The looter came to a standstill.
Not yet! He doesn’t see me, he’s not looking here. Wait. Last possible moment, one shot. Come on, you, come on, come on.
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