Snowbound (13 page)

Kubion drove down onto Sierra Street and noticed that there was more activity in the village than usual—that two people were walking up the middle of the road toward the pass. Then he became aware of the huge mound of snow and rock and splintered trees which blocked the valley entrance in a long downward fan. What the hell? he thought.

He kept on past the Mercantile—he had come in for a few minor supplies, to get out of the cabin again for a while—and pulled the car into the Shell station and parked it on the apron. He went up the rest of the way on foot, stopping next to the man and woman he had seen trudging along the road: a couple of senior citizens in plaid mackinaws and woolen hats. “What happened here?” he asked them. “Avalanche, is that what it is?”

Lew Coopersmith looked at him, frowned slightly, and then seemed to place him. “That’s what it is,” he said at length.

“When did it happen?”

“Just at dawn. Woke up the whole village.”

“Yeah, I can imagine.”

“If you and your friend planned on leaving before Christmas, I’m afraid you won’t be able to do it. According to estimates, we’ll be snowbound at least a week and maybe more.”

“You mean nobody can get in or out of the valley?”

“Not unless they use snowmobiles around and through ten or fifteen miles of heavy timber. The pass is blocked solid.”

Some country, all right, Kubion thought: the frozen bunghole of creation. Well, what difference did it make? If anything, it was a favorable occurrence; for the next week or so they would be cut off completely from all the fuzz on the outside.

But he said, playing it cautious, “My friend’s wife is going to scream like a wounded eagle. She was expecting us for the holidays, back in San Francisco. We were leaving Saturday.”

Ellen Coopersmith said, “Oh, that’s too bad.”

“Yeah.”

“Phone lines are open,” Coopersmith told him, “so it isn’t like we were completely isolated. Your friend will be able to call his wife and tell her the circumstances.”

“He’ll want to do that, okay. Thanks.”

Coopersmith nodded. “Sorry about the inconvenience, but it’s just one of those things that happens. Nothing you can do.”

“I guess not,” Kubion said. He turned away and walked back to his car and sat unmoving behind the wheel, staring up at the slide. An idea began to nudge his mind. Snowbound, he thought. Nobody can get in or out of the valley. No contact with the outside except by telephone. Made-to-order kind of situation, by God. And he remembered the check Matt Hughes had cashed for the old man in the Mercantile the previous afternoon: unofficial bank and how much
was
there in that office safe? Ten thousand? Maybe not even that much, and then again maybe more—maybe a lot more. How many people in Hidden Valley? Seventy-five or so, wasn’t it? Hicks; but hicks sometimes had plenty of money, you were always hearing about some old fart who kept his life’s savings in a fruit jar because he didn’t trust banks. Might even be as much as thirty or forty thousand in the valley. . . .

Abruptly, Kubion shook himself. Christ! He was thinking like a punk again, there was no score for them here, how could there be?
They
were trapped along with the rest of the damned people, and there was the safe house to think of. The hicks knew him and Brodie by sight, if not Loxner, and realistically there just didn’t figure to be nearly enough in it in the first place. Even if there was a hundred grand in cash and jewelry in Hidden Valley, it wouldn’t be worth it. Still, it was a wild concept: rip off an entire valley. Wouldn’t that be the cat’s nuts! But three men couldn’t execute a caper like that—or could they? Well there was probably a way to do it and get away with it, all right; the snowbound business took care of any outside interference, it would be like working in a big sealed room. . . . Oh shit, it was crazy and stupid to even consider it. They needed a job like Greenfront should have been: safe, clean, big take, no loose ends, no people who knew what they really looked like and could identify them afterward.

But a whole valley, a whole goddamn valley.

Could
it be done, with just three men?

Kubion lit a cigarette and sat drumming his fingers on the hard plastic of the steering wheel. Come on, come on, he thought, it’s a pipe dream. And then: Okay, so it’s a pipe dream, so actually doing it is all the way out. The thing is, can it be done on paper? Is it workable at all?

He sucked at his cigarette. Well, why not find out? He was uptight, wasn’t he? The waiting—at least another ten days of it for sure now—and the worrying about those bastard headaches and that dream about the spiders: all of it pressing in on him, flooding his mind. What he needed was to focus his thoughts on something else, something that would keep him from blowing off, and there was nothing better for that than the working out of a challenging score—even an imaginary one.

Kubion started the car and drove back along Sierra Street and parked across from the Mercantile; got out and slogged through the liquidy snow to enter the store. Except for the white-haired old lady who had waited on him the day before, the place appeared empty. Recorded Christmas music still blared away from the wall loudspeakers: some clown singing about a winter wonderland. Yeah.

Maude Fredericks said when he reached the counter, “Isn’t it terrible about the slide? Such a thing to happen just before Christmas.”

“Sure,” Kubion said. “Terrible. Tell me, you have a detail map of this area?”

Her brow wrinkled quizzically. “Well, we have a specially printed tourist brochure that includes a comprehensive Hidden Valley map. We also have a county topographical map.”

“Fine, I’ll take both,” Kubion said, thinking: And wouldn’t you crap your drawers, lady, if you had any idea what I want them for. . . .

Cain spent most of that day snowshoe walking among the lodgepole pine on the upper east slope, where the stillness was almost breathless and the air was thick with the cold, fresh, sweet scent of the mountain forest in winter.

He knew these woods well, the series of hiking paths which crosshatched them, because he had spent a considerable amount of time exploring the area during the summer and fall months. When he was having a particularly bad day and the weather permitted, he had found that taking long walks served as an effective tranquilizer. Alone deep in the forest, you were mostly able to shut off your thoughts and to allow only your senses to govern; and, too, you made yourself physically tired, a weariness that acted like a supplemental narcotic to the liquor.

But on this day, as on the previous two, the forest did nothing to erase the continuing feeling of loneliness which had come over him on Monday night—which lingered like a sudden bright and maddening stain on the fabric of his mind; if anything, the absolute solitude of the surroundings increased it. He felt confused, restless, irritable. And to make it worse, now the damned people in this valley were starting to bother him.

Two unwanted and unexpected visitors yesterday. First that old man, the retired county sheriff named Coopersmith: pleasant, apologetic, asking politely if he knew anything about a door having been jimmied open at the Valley Café. It hadn’t been the indirect implication that he was a malicious vandal which had caused him to snap angrily at Coopersmith; it had been the visit itself, the intrusion on his aloneness. The same was true of Rebecca Hughes’ appearance last night. Perhaps she
had
come simply because she was lonely and wanted some innocent companionship, but that had not mattered at the time. He had only wanted to be rid of her; he didn’t want conversation, and he particularly didn’t want conversation centered on the subject of loneliness; so he had made the obvious insinuations, he had treated her, cruelly, like a tramp.

But this morning when he’d reexamined the incident not long after being awakened by the still-unidentified earth-quakelike concussion, he had felt a sense of shame. He’d hurt her, her tears had been genuine when she’d run out, and the last thing he truly cared to do, after what he had done to his own family, was to inflict pain on anyone. Alone and fully sober, he’d thought that he could have got her to leave some other way and was sorry he hadn’t. Briefly he’d considered going down to the Hughes’ house and apologizing to her, but the embarrassed intimacy of a personal apology was something he simply couldn’t face. And if yesterday were any indication, it would become necessary to leave Hidden Valley. There were plenty of similar places in the Sierra; it made no difference at all in which of them he lived just as long as he was left alone.

Cain returned to the cabin in late afternoon—and discovered ten minutes after his arrival, when he went into the kitchen for a fresh package of cigarettes, that the carton there was empty. His mouth twisted ironically; all the walking today, empty walking, and now, because tobacco had become a necessity rather than a habitual indulgence, he would have to walk yet another half mile or so round trip to the Sport Shop.

There was no need for snowshoes on Lassen Drive; he donned only his coat and a muffler before leaving the cabin again. The sun was well hidden now behind the mountain slopes to the west, but the sky in that direction held a faint lavender alpenglow. The temperature had dropped considerably, as it did every day around this time. There was still no wind.

When Cain reached the Hughes’ house and drew parallel with the entrance drive—eyes cast down on the icing snow beneath his feet—an awareness touched him and he paused, raising his head, looking into the front yard. Rebecca Hughes had just come out of the house and was moving toward the road.

She saw him at almost the same instant, stopped, and visibly stiffened. One hand came partway up in front of her breasts in a gesture that might have meant anything or nothing. They stood fifty feet apart, motionless, for a long awkward moment. The sense of shame nudged Cain’s mind again, and he thought once more of apologizing to her; happenstance had created the situation for it. But he could think of nothing to say; he still did not want a connection of any kind.

She was the first to move. Her hand dropped, and then she turned sharply and went back to the house with quick, jerky steps. At the Dutch-doored front entrance, she fumbled a key out of her purse, got it into the lock, and disappeared inside. The door made a dull slamming sound.

Cain was immediately thankful that there had been no dialogue between them; and yet at the same time he was contrite for not having spoken. More ambivalence—damned ambivalence! With an effort he forced Rebecca Hughes from his mind and continued down Lassen Drive.

He had gone five hundred yards farther, nearing the job in the road which would bring him into the village proper, when he heard the sound of a car approaching. He did not glance up. The sound grew louder, and the car came around the job and pulled abreast of him. It braked to a halt, and the driver’s door opened, and Frank McNeil stood up, peering over the roof. His mouth was drawn so thin that it appeared lipless.

“You—Cain!” he shouted.

Cain kept on walking.

“Listen, goddamn it, I’m talking to you!”

He felt the muscles bunch on his neck and across his shoulders, and irritation came thickly into his throat. Finally he stopped and turned and looked at the car, recognizing McNeil vaguely, recalling the man’s name. He said, “What do you want?”

“Where you been all day? I been up here three times now.”

“What business is it of yours?”

“You think I don’t know who’s been doing it?” McNeil said in a voice that quivered with outrage. “Two nights in a row now, and you think I don’t know it has to be you? Well I know, Cain, and I want you to know I know. I want you to sweat, because as soon as the pass is open, the county deputies will be here to arrest you. I’ve already called them, and the hell with Lew Coopersmith. You hear me, Cain? You hear me?”

Cain stared at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You know, damn you, and you’re going to pay.”

The irritation boiled over into anger. Cain took several steps toward the car. McNeil slid back inside, and the door banged shut, and the rear wheels sprayed freezing slush in a long grayish fan as it skidded forward. Well up the road, it swung into the Hughes’ driveway, backed and filled, and came down toward Cain at an increased speed. He moved deep onto the shoulder as it passed, but the wheels churned up more slush and flung it at him in an icy spume, spattering his jacket and trousers.

Cain stood trembling, watching the retreating car. Nothing McNeil had said made immediate sense to him; it seemed like gibberish. Then he remembered Coopersmith’s visit the day before: somebody breaking into the Valley Café. Two times, McNeil had said. It must have happened again last night, and for some reason McNeil thought he was the one who’d done it. For Christ’s sake, why would
he
do anything like that? Why single
him
out for the blame? He’d done nothing to give these people the idea he was that kind of man; he’d never bothered them at all.

And now there would be police, and there would be questions—further intrusion on his privacy—and while they would realize his innocence sooner or later, it might take days before they were convinced. The bastards, the bastards, why couldn’t they let him be?

Why couldn’t he be left
alone?