Snowbound

by Bill Pronzini

  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.

  He flung himself across the last few feet to the garage doors, banging hard against them with one shoulder. Gasping, he fumbled at the latch and got the doors open and shoved them wide against the powdery snow. He lurched inside. The odors of grease and winter dampness permeated the thick ebon interior, and Vince’s old Roadmaster gleamed dully in front of him. To the rear, Tribucci could make out the familiar shapes of tool-littered workbench and power saw and drill press, the chain-supported wooden storage platform which protruded from the upper back wall. He leaned against the car, used it to uphold the weight of his body as he shuffled around it toward the area beneath the suspended platform.

  The snowmobile, beneath a dun-colored canvas tarp, sat parallel to the wall. With numb fingers he pulled the tarp off, thinking: Let there be gas in the tank. He caught hold of the plexiglass windshield with both hands, turned and dragged the machine out from under the platform. It moved easily across the smooth cement floor on its waxed skis and heavy roller treads. Tribucci laid his shoulder against the windshield, his hip against the edge of the cowl, and pushed the mobile past the Buick and out into the snow in front of the garage.

  His vision now was obscured with sweat and shimmering black pain shadows. He pawed urgently at his eyes. When he could see again, he swung one leg over the Etha-foam seat, sat down, and braced his feet, knees up, on the narrow metal running boards on each side of the frame. Then he pressed his forehead against the top of the windshield and fumbled under the cowl, located the storage compartment, found the key in its magnetized metal case.

  It seemed to take him minutes to get the key threaded into the ignition slot. He turned it finally, hit the electric starter button, and the engine coughed and didn’t catch and he thought, Oh, Christ, please! and pressed the button again-and this time the motor came to life in a low, throbbing whine.

  Breath whistled through his nostrils. He took one of the Harrington amp; Richardson. 22s from his coat, the one which had not lain in the snow, and wedged it between his crotch and the padded seat, butt outward, where he could get at it instantly; but he left the safety on to guard against accidental discharge. Then he caught the handlebars, shifted into Forward, worked the hand throttle, and sent the snowmobile skimming at an angle across the yard and out onto Eldorado Street.

  The jouncing, accelerated motion made razorlike lancinations slice through his chest, and his thoughts were sluggish, his reactions were sluggish. The wind hurled snow back against his face, distorting his vision again. He fought desperately to keep the machine on a steady course, to hold away the congealing red-black mist which had begun again to form inside his head.

  Hang on, give me the strength to hang on…

  And Tribucci swings the snowmobile around the corner onto Sierra Street, weaving erratically, straightening out again. His arms have taken on the weight of stone. Down the center of the street, beneath the darkened Christmas decorations mocked and made ludicrous by the bleak savagery of a nightmare, between wedges of light that reach out dully through broken doors and shattered and ice-frosted windows. Warm reddish black within, cold whitish black without; ominous shadows, the valley of shadows, Yea, though I go through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…

  He comes past the Sport Shop then, and the church looms ahead of him through the now thinly sifting snowfall. He ducks his head against his left arm, to clear his vision again, as the snowmobile planes across Shasta Street. Cars in the parking lot all dark and icebound, nothing moving-take a chance. He bounces up over the sidewalk curbing-sharp cut of pain, pain and Cain, find Cain, get to Cain-and veers toward the southern front corner.

  He sees something, something dark against the snow between Shasta Str
eet and the north wall: man-figure, stopped, poised, not Cain, carrying something that looks like a sack.

  The psycho, Tribucci knows instantly it is the psycho.

  He makes an unconscious screaming-sobbing sound in his throat, wrenches the snowmobile back to the right. The psycho is running now, limpingly, toward the rear of the church, sack like an obscene caricature of Santa Claus’s toybag bouncing against one leg. His right arm crosses his body; the gun which is in his hand flashes: wild shot, missing both Tribucci and the snowmobile.

  Leaden fingers fumble at the dashboard, locate the headlight knob, pull it out and twist it to high beam. Bright yellow cones jab glitteringly through the snowy darkness. Tribucci swerves left too abruptly and then overcorrects; the snowmobile begins to yaw. Get him, get him, run him down! and he tries to center the psycho in the headlights but seems to have no more control over the machine, no more control over his own bodily movements. Breath heaves out in out in through his open mouth, pain boils in his chest, weakness spreads tangibly and the red-black mist grows and twists through his mind like a helix, no hold on, and his left hand slips off the handlebar throttle, his right undergoes a paroxysm and jerks forward and sends the snowmobile sliding sideways toward the church, the helix widens blackly and he can’t hold on any longer, he can’t hold on any

  Twenty-Three

  When Cain first saw the blob of motive darkness coming unevenly along the center of Sierra Street, he did not know what to think. He stared at it through the thinning flurries: not quite distinguishable, the fuzzy patches of light from the buildings on either side failed to reach it. Stiffened joints protested painfully as he pulled his feet under him and flattened his upper torso across the layer of freezing snow which covered the Mercury’s deck.

  Drawing nearer, the blob began to take on shape and substance-and when it passed the Sport Shop, Cain recognized it as a snowmobile. But the driver, crouched low behind the snow-speckled windshield, was just another heavy shadow. The psycho? It didn’t make sense that he would be coming so openly, coming on a snowmobile… Weaving, the machine angled toward the parking lot on a direct line to where Cain was hidden; the whining sound of its engine reached his ears. He still could not make out the driver, but he was thinking then: Tribucci? Whoever was piloting the snowmobile either knew nothing at all about handling one or else was hurt, badly hurt-Tribucci?

  Cain saw the mobile lurch again, due west; instead of coming into the lot, it was going to parallel the north wall. When it was fifty feet away, abreast of the Mercury, he was finally able to make out the driver in dark profile: wearing a cap, wearing what appeared to be a women’s cap, wearing a light-colored overcoat. Tribucci! Relief, and a sense of sharp exigency welled inside him-and moving spontaneously, he pushed out from behind the car, ran along its side with his left hand upraised in frenetic signal.

  The snowmobile’s dual headlights snapped on.

  What’s he doing, what’s he doing? Cain thought, and ran another five steps; but Tribucci did not see him. The machine wobbled left, wobbled right, made a sudden right-angle turn toward the church, swirling a quadrant of light, and tilted up on its near side. Tribucci spilled off the seat, the howl of the motor cut off as it stalled. The snowmobile shuddered to a halt, full on its side, in a thin cumulus of dislodged snow.

  Cain saw all this running, cutting toward the corner, coming out into the open-saw then the dark figure forty yards away, twenty yards from the rear corner, and knew why Tribucci had put on the headlights and realized with the abrupt taste of ashes in his mouth just how foolish his own actions had been. But it was too late now to reverse direction, the psycho could see him just as plainly, and without hesitation he threw himself forward and down in a flat running dive. He landed on his belly and left forearm, keeping the Walther up-heard a buzzing slap in the snow to one side of him, the muted sound of a shot. Frantically he propelled himself toward the snowmobile on elbows and knees, putting the machine between himself and the other man. A hole appeared in the plexiglass windshield, spurting ice crystals, making a loud cracking noise; a third bullet spanged somewhere into the undercarriage. He came up against the cowl, arched his body around the curved line of the windshield, and braced his right forearm in his left palm.

  Kubion was running again-hobbled steps-toward the rear corner.

  Cain fired after him, missed badly both times and saw him disappear into the shadows at the end wall. He pulled back, trembling slightly, dragging his left arm across his eyes, and crawled toward the motionless figure of Tribucci lying face down five feet away. Kneeling low beside him, Cain rolled him gently onto his back. Frozen blood and two charred holes in the upper front of his coat; shot twice, unconscious but still clinging to life: mouth open, breathing liquidly. Blood in his throat. Turn his head to one side so he doesn’t strangle on it. Nothing else he could do for Tribucci, not now if at all. He had to concentrate on the psycho-but he couldn’t stay where he was, he couldn’t wait, he had to make some kind of offensive move….

  And he knew then just exactly what it would have to be.

  Half dragging his left leg, Kubion ran the length of the church’s rear wall and came up hard against it at the south corner. Immediately, black eyes staring back to the north, he set down the gunny sack-four quart mason jars of gasoline siphoned from a car in one of the house garages on Shasta Street; a half dozen oily rags he’d found, along with the jars, in that same garage-and ripped the empty clip out of the automatic. He heaved it away furiously, located the extra clip buried beneath a wad of currency in his trouser pocket, bills spilling out unnoticed, and jammed that one into the butt.

  The impulse, now, had reached a vertex of shrieking inside his head, making it pound thunderously, jumbling and interfusing his thoughts: No pursuit but let him come let him try cat-and-mousing blow his head off Christ! screwing up screwing up things keep screwing up snowmobile coming catching me in the open like that just two more minutes fucking snowmobile so sure only one other hick out and killed Tribucci so who was driving had to be Tribucci killed him but he wasn’t dead and got to snowmobile oh these Eskimo bastards one in the lot alerted running out fat target but lousy snow cold darkness throwing off aim and clip empty had to run because him with the gun he’d shot Brodie with well all right nothing really changed and nothing more going to screw up ten feet tall can’t stop me can’t stop me come on hick give it to you burn all of you up watch you burn…

  Kubion bent and caught up the sack again; turned his body with his weight on his good right leg and backed away from the building at an angle. When he could see all of the south church wall and that it too was clear, he ran along it and stopped beneath the nearest of the stained-glass windows. He lowered the sack a second time, looked up at the pale light in the window-looked back at the sack and reached into it and brought out one of the mason jars, one of the oily rags.

  Wedging the jar between his right arm and body, so he would not have to release the gun, he unscrewed the cap and fed one end of the rag inside; worked the cap back on to hold the cloth in place. His body shielded both from the falling snow, kept the rag dry. He glanced both ways along the wall-nothing stupid hick wasn’t going to come but he would come later bet your ass he’d come later when he heard them yelling in there when the fire bomb exploded in there when they started dying in there-and then glanced up again at the stained-glass window. The need shouted, shouted, and his breathing grew heavier; the skull grin reformed on his mouth.

  All right all right.

  Kubion brought his left hand up and fumbled for the box of wooden matches in his shirt pocket.

  Cain, leaving Tribucci, crawled back against the padded seat of the snowmobile. He peered closely at the dashboard, ran gloved fingers over both handlebars and located clutch, throttle, gearshift, brake. He had driven a snowmobile only once in his life, two winters before when he and Angie and the Collinses had spent a weekend at Mammoth Mountain; but they were simpler to operate than a car, and it had taken him, that time, no more
than a minute to get the knack of it.

  He leaned his shoulder hard against the seat, gripped the windshield in his left hand, and shoved upward. The machine rose, tilted, dropped with a flat heavy thud on its skis and roller treads. Cain waited for half a dozen heartbeats, but the shadows at the rear corner remained substantially solid. He opened the top three buttons of his coat, tucked the Walther into his belt, and then wrapped his left hand around the near handlebar and engaged the clutch lever; his right moved along the dash to the starter button, pressed it. The headlights dimmed slightly as the engine coughed stuttering to life, brightened again as the stuttering smoothed into a stabilized rumble.

  Still nothing at the corner.

  Cain lifted a leg over the seat, maintaining his grip on the clutch lever, and pulled himself into a hunched sitting position. He caught hold of the right handlebar, shifted into forward, opened quarter throttle, and let the clutch out slowly. The machine began to move forward. He spun a sharp turn to the northwest, spraying snow, and made sure he had full control before opening the throttle wider. Nearly abreast of the rear corner, he made another looping turn to the south; straightened out. The headlights were like probing yellow blades slicing into the night’s dark fabric, and he could see all the area between church and cottage. No sign of the psycho. He’d gone around on the south side then, maybe all the way around to the front; whatever he’d been carrying in that sack was bound to be lethal, and God, if he had time to open the locked front doors…

  Grimly, Cain gave the snowmobile full-bore throttle and sent it skimming to the south equidistant between the two buildings, leaning his head out to the left because frozen snow and the webbed bullet hole made the windshield impenetrable. When he came on the south corner, he circled out and made another hard skidding left.