And then he thought, No. For the time being, your job is to prepare yourself to kill at least one man. Maybe two or three. Maybe as many as half a dozen.
Suddenly he wondered how the violence past and the violence yet to come would affect his relationship with his daughter. Knowing he had killed several men, would Rya fear him as she now feared Bob Thorp? Knowing he was capable of the ultimate brutal act, would she ever be at ease with him again? Death had taken his wife and his son. Would alienation take his daughter from him?
Sam was on his knees, peering over the belfry wall.
Deeply disturbed but aware that this wasn’t the time to worry about more than a few hours of the future, easing in beside Sam, Paul looked eastward, to his left. He could see Edison’s General Store half a block away. Karkov’s service station and garage. The houses in the last section of town. The baseball diamond on the meadow near the river. At the end of the valley, near the bend in the highway, a police car was angled across both lanes.
“Roadblock.”
Sam said, “I’ve seen it.”
“Salsbury does have us penned up.”
“And right now he’s probably wondering why the hell we haven’t tried to call the cops or leave Black River.”
To Paul’s right was the main part of town. The square. Ultman’s Cafe with its pair of enormous black oak trees. The municipal building. Beyond the square, more lovely houses: brick houses and stone houses and white gingerbread Gothic houses and trim little bungalows. A couple of shops with striped awnings out in front. The telephone company office. St. Margaret Mary’s. The cemetery. The Union Theater with its old fashioned marquee. And then the road to the mill. The entire panorama, so recently scrubbed by the storm, looked crisp and bright and quaint-and too innocent to contain the evil that he knew it harbored.
“You still think Salsbury’s holed up in the municipal building?” Paul asked.
“Where else?”
“I guess so.”
“The chief’s office is the logical command center.”
Paul looked at his watch. “A quarter past five.”
“We’ll wait here until dark,” Sam said. “Nine o’clock or thereabouts. Then we’ll sneak across the street, get past his guards with the code phrase, and reach him before he’s seen us coming.”
“It sounds so easy.”
“It will be,” Sam said.
Lightning flashed like a fuse and thunder exploded and rain like shrapnel clattered on the tower roof and on the streets below.
5:20 P.M.
Smiling as he had been told to smile, his arms folded across his broad chest, Bob Thorp leaned casually against the window sill and watched Salsbury, who was working at Bob’s desk
The infinity transmitter was connected to the office telephone. The line was open to Sam Edison’s place-or at least the number had been dialed, and the line should have been open.
Salsbury hunched over the chief’s desk, the receiver gripped so tightly in his right hand that his knuckles appeared to be about to slice through the pale skin that sheathed them. He listened closely for some sound, some insignificant tiny little sound of human origin, from the general store or from the living quarters on the two floors above the store.
Nothing.
“Come on,” he said impatiently.
Silence.
Cursing the infinity transmitter, telling himself that the damned thing hadn’t worked, that it was a piece of crappy Belgian-made hardware and so what could you expect, he hung up. He checked to see if the wires were attached to the proper terminals, then dialed the Edisons’ number again.
The line opened: hissing, a soft roar not unlike the echo of your own circulation when you held a seashell to your ear.
In the background at the Edison’s place, a clock ticked rather noisily, hollowly.
He looked at his watch. 5:24
Nothing. Silence.
5:26
He hung up, dialed again.
He heard the ticking clock.
5:28
5:29
5:30
No one spoke over there. No one cried or laughed or sighed or coughed or yawned or moved.
5:32
5:33
Salsbury pressed the receiver to his ear as hard as he could, concentrated, strained with his whole body and attention to hear Edison or Annendale or one of the others.