“Incredible,” Jenny said.
“Looks like a storm trooper,” Sam said wearily. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Jenny followed him.
Paul took hold of Rya’s icy hand.
Her face drawn, a haunted look in her eyes, she squeezed his hand and said, “Will it be all right again?”
“Sure. Everything will be fine before much longer,” he told her, not certain if that was the truth or another lie.
They went west, across the rear lawns of the neighboring houses, walking fast and hoping they wouldn’t be seen.
With every step Paul expected someone to shout at them. And in spite of the manner in which Harry Thurson had behaved, he also expected to hear a shotgun blast close behind him, much too close behind him, inches from his shoulder blades: one sudden apocalyptic roar and then an endless silence.
Halfway down the block they came to the back of St. Luke’s, the town’s all-denominational church. It was a freshly painted, neatly kept rectangular white frame structure on a brick-faced foundation. There was a five-story-high bell tower at the front of the building, out on the Main Street side.
Sam tried the rear door and found it unlocked. They slipped inside, one at a time.
For two or three minutes they stood in the narrow, musty, windowless foyer, and waited to see if Harry Thurston or anyone else would follow them.
No one did.
“Small blessings,” Jenny said.
Sam led them into the chamber behind the altar. That room was even darker than the foyer. They accidentally knocked over a rack full of choir gowns-and stood very still until the echo
of the crash had faded away, until they were certain that they hadn’t revealed themselves.
Holding hands, forming a human chain, they stumbled out of that room and onto the altar platform. Because the storm clouds filtered the day into twilight before it was filtered again by the leaded stained-glass windows, the church proper was only marginally brighter than the room behind it, Nevertheless, there was sufficient light to allow them to break the chain; and they followed Sam along the center aisle, between the two ranks of pews, without having to feel their way as if they were blind people in a strange house.
At the rear of the nave, on the left-hand side, Sam pulled open a door. Beyond lay an enclosed spiral staircase. Sam went first; Jenny went next, then Rya.
Paul stood on the bottom step, staring out at the shadowy church for a minute or two. His revolver was ready in his right hand. When the big room remained silent and deserted, he closed the stairwell door and went up to join the others.
The top of the bell tower was a nine-foot-square platform. The bell-one yard wide at the mouth-was at the center of the platform, of course, suspended from the highest point of the arched ceiling. A chain was welded to the rim of the bell and trailed through a small hole in the floor, down to the base of the tower where the toiler could tug on it. The walls were only four feet high, open from there to the ceiling. A white pillar rose at each corner, supporting the peaked, slate-shingled roof. Because the roof overhung the wails by four feet on all sides, the rain hadn’t come in through the open spaces; and the belfry platform was dry.
‘When he reached the head of the stairs, Paul got on his hands and knees. People seldom looked up as they hurried about their business, especially when they were in a familiar place; however, there was no reason to risk being seen. He crawled around the bell to the opposite side of the platform.
Jenny and Rya were sitting on the floor, their back to the half-wall. The .22 rifle lay at Jenny’s side. She was talking to the girl in a low voice, telling her a joke or a story, trying to help
her ease her tensions and overcome some of her grief. Jenny glanced at Paul, smiled, but kept her attention focused on Rya.
That should be my job, Paul thought. Helping Rya. Reassuring her and comforting her, being with her.