“I saw you writing,” said Jasper Grue. “In your computer.”
Rebecca shrank into a crouch. She tried not to make any noise. She could hear him breathing in her ear. She looked at the kitchen windows. He was on a phone somewhere, he was—
Crouching, Rebecca made her way down the front hallway to the dining room. Opaque yellow curtains draped the windows like desert veils. She turned and saw the parlor tray table from there.
Rebecca crept to the windows. The curtains were parted in the middle, and outside she saw boot prints in the snow. They came out of the woods and right up to the snow-mounded shrubs. There, a small patch of snow was yellowed.
The address on the mailbox. He looked her up in the phonebook. But where was he calling from?
Was he in the house?
She pulled back from the window, striking the table and rattling the crystal punch bowl centerpiece.
“Where’d your men go?” he said.
He had been near when they left. Had he killed them?
She went ducking back into the kitchen to the weapons bag. She was pawing through it.
Mia and Dr. Rosen stood in the doorway, frightened, and Rebecca motioned for them to duck down.
“Did they go to town?” he said.
Rebecca pulled a gun from the duffel bag and forced the words. “I’ve got a gun. We all do.”
“All of you? The girl and the boy too? And the sick old man in the toboggan? You think guns’ll keep me away?”
Rebecca sat against the wall near the door, out of sight from all the windows. She gripped the phone hard and did not know what to do.
His slow drawl was just as she had imagined it. “Here’s Bert’s final testament. ‘Don’t do this, dear God, I have money, please.’ He was crying. I wrote that just after I cut him. The wife was trying to scream through her gag, but when I pulled it off her she went quiet, like she weren’t there anymore. ‘Gloria,’ she said. Just once, just like that. ‘Gloria.’ Must be a daughter. ’Course, you’re a great artist. Your last words count. I expect much more from you.”
Rebecca pushed the on/off button and the receiver clattered across the kitchen floor.
Spotty stood for awhile near the bulldozer working outside the funeral home. He was watching the snow fall in front of his face.
Something had been bothering him, and now he knew what it was. The church looked a lot like the town hall except that there was no cross on top of the white spire. The TV van was parked outside of it now. Next to the church was the graveyard where Spotty kept his dogs.
They were quiet. No stray barks or howls.
Spotty walked across the common. He went in a straight line, stepping over the low white post fence with almost no change in his stride, snow swirling in his wake. Passing the bandstand, he saw the dogs congregating at the rear of the graveyard. He heard a little whimpering.
One of the dogs heard him as he passed the TV van. She barked once, jumping to her feet leading the charge at him across the cemetery. They planted their front paws in the beaten snow there and raged at him, full-throatedly, though Spotty noticed a couple of them backing off. Two or three of them whined and trotted back to the church wall with a grace Spotty himself lacked.
He bore their hatred without understanding it. Something in the church had their attention. Something there pleased them. Spotty felt more jealousy than either confusion or anger. With one stride he mounted the steps to the double doors.
The man standing inside wore a long, black coat and a hunting cap with ear flaps. Spotty got the drop on him and the man turned but did not otherwise move. Spotty saw the fear right away. He knew there was no one else inside the church.
“Hands,” Spotty-said.
The man’s hands went up very slowly. They were gloved. This was one of the rebels who blew up the gas station.
“Coat off,” Spotty said.
Carefully, like a man removing wet clothes, the rebel pulled off his coat and laid it over one of the pews. He wore a gun belt.
“Gun out,” Spotty said.
The gaunt man took his gun out and set it on the bench next to him.
“Turn around,” Spotty said.
The rebel was obedient. He stood with his arms above his head as though the church were flooded and water was rising.
The front doors opened and Spotty wheeled. He saw the earmuffs and black skin and long coat of the TV van ex-con. Spotty nodded to him, easing up on his gun, a quick glance back at the rebel.
“Got one,” Spotty said. Disappointment became pride. “My dogs led me to him.”
Spotty was pleased with himself. He knew that saving the guard dogs was a good idea. He wished he had a radio to call Luther.
The ex-con closed the doors on the snow. “Get his gun,” Spotty said, turning back to cover the rebel.
He never felt the crack on the side of his head. He never heard it, he never saw it coming. He knew only he was on the floor now and the church was roaring. It tilted like a dream room and he clutched at the floor, rolling, sliding off.
When he opened his eyes again, the church righted itself. He was sitting up, clawing at the armrests of a high-backed wooden chair. He was tied to it by ropes around his neck, waist, arms, and legs. The ropes were tasseled at the ends, though it took several moments of confused staring to discern this.
He was coughing and spitting and his vision was blurred. Spotty had tasted mace before.
They had him at the foot of the church altar. The black ex-con from the TV van was there, standing before the big table like a priest.
But he was not the black ex-con from the TV van. This revelation sank in slowly. There was a hunting knife in the man’s hand.
“What his...?”
Spotty hissed a spray of blood, finding several of his teeth broken. He tested the ropes, but his neck was lashed to his wrists in such a way that the throat cord tightened with each squirm. Mace tears rolled down his face. The big chair was made of heavy wood. It would not crack under his great weight.
Kells said, “You know what this is.”
Spotty understood only that there was more hurting to come.
Kells showed him a missile launcher. “We found this in the cloakroom.”
Spotty said nothing. Spotty was confident he could stall them a long time.
Kells said, “Do you have one of these stored in every building?”
Spotty said nothing. The man finally just nodded and set the launcher back down on the table. Spotty wondered for a moment if he had somehow let on something. He was disoriented.
Kells said, “I want to know about the security arrangements here.”
Spotty shook his head as best he could.
Another voice then, the rebel in the hunting cap, lurking on the periphery of Spotty’s vision. “And the names of the two ricin towns.”
Spotty blinked. He played like he was unaware what they were talking about.
Kells stepped off the altar to stand in front of him. He was playing with the knife in a casual, threatening way.
“You don’t have to die. You should know that. This isn’t the end unless you want it to be.”
Pride surged in his veins and Spotty showed him his best face. The sweat squeezing out of his forehead was pure anticipation. He was eager to prove himself. He welcomed this test of will.
“We have little time,” Kells said, checking the door, “so here is how we will proceed. I am going to ask you a question. If you fail to answer it quickly and truthfully, then you will choose where I cut you. You have five senses and therefore five choices: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or hands. You select the sense you can best do without and then we start it all over. I ask the same question again, and you get another chance to avoid becoming a vegetable.”