Verne Mullins: “Who are they, they’re not businessmen, where did the third one come from…”
Maude Fredericks: “Matt can’t be dead, he can’t be…”
June Novak: “Oh my Lord please don’t let Greg be harmed, please…”
Sharon Nedlick: “Dave, Mother’s heart won’t stand any kind of shock, if they break into the house and try to bring her here even after what we told them…”
Agnes Tyler: “Peggy has to be all right, they haven’t hurt her, they haven’t hurt her… ”
Edwards’ nurse, Sally Chilton, had joined him at the minister’s side. She took one of the coats from Coopersmith, folded it, and carefully pillowed Keyes’ head; Edwards covered him with the second and then began unwrapping the blood-soaked handkerchief from his torn right hand, telling Sally to find a clean scarf or something to use as another makeshift bandage.
Coopersmith pivoted away-and Ellen was there, coming into his arms, pressing her wet face against his shoulder. He held her clumsily, felt the tremors fluttering through her body, and had no words to comfort her. Acrimony, helplessness formed an acidulated knot in his chest.
After a moment he lifted her chin with gentle fingers, brushed his lips across her forehead, took her slowly back to where they had been located in the right front pew. Opposite, on the left forward bench, Ann Tribucci was still sitting in the graceless, spread-legged, flat-footed posture of the pregnant woman in her final month; her abdomen, moving with the quickened tempo of her breathing, seemed enormous. Tie pulled loose, shirt unbuttoned at the throat, John Tribucci squatted in front of her.
He was saying, “You’re sure you’re okay, honey?”
“A little queasy, that’s all.”
“It’s not the baby…”
“No. No.”
“Do you want to lie down?”
“Not just yet. Johnny-”
“What, honey?”
“If… Matt has been killed, do you think Becky-”
Inadequately he said, “Shh, now, try not to worry about Becky or anything else.”
“How can I help it? I’m so frightened-for all of us, for the baby.
… ”
Tribucci took her hands in his and held them tightly. “I know,” he said, “I know, I know. But nothing will happen to any more of us; we’re all going to come out of this just fine.”
There’s no conviction in his voice, Coopersmith thought — and I don’t think I believe it either, not after the things that homicidal lunatic said and has done already. He looked at Ellen and then swiftly averted his gaze again; he did not want her to see on his face what was in his mind. Spontaneously, he went up onto the pulpit and stared at the wooden crucifix on the wall above the prayer cloth-draped altar. The constriction in his chest had tightened, and he realized that he was short of breath. A new apprehension tugged at him. He had had a physical checkup three months before, and Webb Edwards had pronounced his heart as strong as ever; but he was sixty-six years old- old, not young — and an old man’s heart could give out at any time under stress, wasn’t that a medical fact?
Knock it off, he told himself sharply. You’re not going to have a stroke. Whatever else will happen today, you’re not going to have a stroke.
He kept on standing there, staring at the crucifix. A minute or two passed, and John Tribucci came up beside him. Some of the younger man’s control had clearly begun to slip; his normally amiable face was dark-flecked with an admixture of anxiety and savage fury. “Lew,” he said in a voice liquid with feeling. “ God, Lew.”
“Easy, son.”
Tribucci closed his eyes, released a heavy shuddering breath and opened them again. “I’ve never hated anybody or anything in my life, but those three men, that maniac…”
Coopersmith knew what he was thinking: exactly the same thing he himself had thought when the dark gunman ordered him to reveal which valley residents were not present inside the church. He did not speak.
“It’s so senseless, ” Tribucci said. “Reverend Keyes wounded and Matt Hughes murdered and maybe others dying, maybe all our lives in jeopardy-for what? For what, Lew? There isn’t any money or valuables in Hidden Valley worth stealing.”
“Johnny, don’t try to find reason in the actions of a madman.”
“All three of them can’t be crazy.”
“No, but it was obvious who’s running the whole show. I can’t figure why the other two are in it. Maybe for some other cause than what little the valley can be looted for.”
“Well alone or not, that psycho has been planning it for days. He came into the Sport Shop on Thursday and asked me a lot of questions about snowmobiles and ways to get out of the valley. I believed the excuse he gave, told him everything he wanted to know. He looked all right then, I didn’t suspect anything to be wrong…”
“How could you? How could any of us? We-”
“ Stand back in there, you’ve got company! ”
The shouted command from outside sliced off conversation, jerked heads around, turned Tribucci and Coopersmith and brought them down off the pulpit. There was the sound of the key in the lock, and then one of the door halves swung open and the Donnelly and Markham families, and Peggy Tyler, filed inside. The door banged shut, and the key scraped again.
Agnes Tyler cried, “Peggy!” and rushed down the center aisle. The blond-haired girl had stopped just inside the entrance and was standing as immobile and expressionless as a mannequin. When her mother reached her and flung arms around her, moaning her name, she blinked several times but did not otherwise move; she seemed only vaguely aware of where she was. Coopersmith saw, as he and Tribucci approached, that the others seemed in better condition and apparently unharmed, although the adults were all haggard and eviscerated and shaking with cold or fear or both. The two Donnelly children clung to each other like waifs lost in the night.
Webb Edwards pushed his way forward and swept each of them with a clinical glance that concluded only Peggy Tyler was in immediate need of medical attention. He stepped to her, disengaged Mrs. Tyler’s enfolding arms, and probed the damp ivory face, the vacuous eyes. His mouth thinned; he took one of her lax hands.
“What is it, what’s the matter with her?” Agnes Tyler said frantically. “God in heaven, what did they do to you, baby, what did they do to you!”
Taking Peggy’s other arm, Sally Chilton helped Edwards steer her to one of the rear pews; her mother hovered nearby, hands clenched together at her breast, teeth biting deeply into a tremulous lower lip. The Markhams and Donnellys found benches near the south-side wall heater, and Coopersmith and Tribucci and Harry Chilton brought extra coats for the women and children.
Minutes later, in subdued and exhausted tones, Sid Markham and Martin Donnelly related some of the grim details of their ordeal. When they were finished, Coopersmith said, “So it was just the lunatic at first.”
Markham nodded. “I don’t think the other two knew anything about it. He didn’t bring them around until he had us all tied up in Martin’s living room, and they were shook when they saw us-plenty angry.”
“Why did they join in with him, then?”
“They didn’t have much choice. For one thing, the crazy had his gun out and they didn’t seem to be armed, and he looked like he’d use it on them if they gave him any trouble. For another, he’d told us everything about the three of them except their names-and I guess told them that he had. He sat there grinning after he had us tied and said how he planned to take over the valley and that they’re professional thieves and that they tried to rob some place called Greenfront in Sacramento last Monday and killed a security guard and didn’t get any money. He said that lake cabin where they’ve been staying is what he called a safe house.” Markham’s foxlike face remained desolate, but his words took on a sardonic edge. “We’ve had criminals hiding out in Hidden Valley off and on for years, seems like. Right under our noses the whole time.”
Coopersmith was not surprised that the three men were professionals; despite the madman’s actions, they had taken over the church in a phlegmatic, businesslike manner with which he was all too familiar after forty years of law enforcement. But the fact that the Mule Deer Lake cabin had been an established hideout for the criminal element was an unexpected and galling revelation. Right under our noses, he thought. Right under the nose of a retired old fool of a county sheriff named Lew Coopersmith, who kept bemoaning a severed involvement in his profession while God knew how many wanted felons camped with impunity in his backyard and maybe drank
