The office was dark. He didn’t switch on any lights because he didn’t want to reveal his position. He closed the door to the hall so that he would not be silhouetted by the pale light that spilled in.
The windows in the north wall of the office opened above the first-floor terrace. He slid one of them up, slipped through it, and stepped onto the tar-papered terrace roof.
The wind buffeted him.
He took the Combat Magnum from his belt.
If Dawson was hiding anywhere in the north yard, this was the best vantage point from which to spot him.
The darkness offered Dawson good protection, for none of the lights was on in the yard.
He could have turned them on, of course. But he didn’t know where to find the switches, and he didn’t want to waste a lot of time looking for them.
The only thing that moved out there was the clattering conveyor belt that rolled continuously up the inclined ramp to the Scrap furnace. It should have been shut down with the rest of the equipment, but it had been overlooked. The belt came out of the building directly beneath him and sloped to a high point twenty feet above the ground. It met the furnace door forty yards away. Because the cone-shaped furnace-thirty feet in diameter at the base, ten feet in diameter at the top; forty feet high-was primed by a gas flame, the fire in it was never out unless the mill foreman ordered it extinguished. Even now, when the belt had no fuel for it, the furnace roared. Judging by the intensity of the flames leaping beyond the open door, however, several hundred pounds of the day’s input-conveyed out of the mill before Dawson had halted operations- had yet to be fully consumed.
Otherwise, the yard was quiet, still. The mill pond-with the giant grappling hook suspended from thick wires over the center of it-lay to the right of the ramp and the furnace. It was dotted with logs that looked a bit like dozing alligators. A narrow channel of water called the slip led from the pond to the terrace. When the mill was in operation, slip men poled logs along the slip to the chutes that were covered by the terrace roof. Once in the chutes, the logs were snared by hooked bull chains and dragged into the processing system. East and north of the pond was the deck, those forty-foot-high walls of gargantuan logs set aside to supply the mill with work during the winter. To the left of the ramp and the furnace, two lumber trucks, a high-lift, and a few other pieces of heavy equipment were parked in a row, backed up against the chain-link fence of a storage yard. Dawson wasn’t to be seen in any of that.
Thunder and lightning brought a sudden fall of fat raindrops. Some sixth sense told Paul that he had heard more than the clap of thunder. Propelled by an icy premonition, he spun around.
Dawson had come out of the window behind him. He was no more than a yard away. He was older than Paul, a decade and a half older, but he was also taller and heavier; and he looked deadly in the rain-lashed night. He had an ax. The goddamned fire ax! In both hands. Raised over his head. He swung it.
* * *
Klinger was at the mid-point of the tower when the rain began to fall again. It drummed noisily on the belfry shingles and on the roof of the church, providing excellent cover for his ascent.
He waited until he was absolutely certain that the downpour would last-then he went upward without pausing after every third step. He couldn’t even hear the creaking himself. Exhilarated, brimming with confidence now, the Webley clutched in his right hand, he climbed through the last half of the tower in less than a minute and rushed onto the belfry platform.
Paul crouched.
The ax blade whistled over his head.
Startled to hear himself screaming, unable to stop screaming, abruptly aware that the Smith & Wesson was still in his hand, Paul pulled the trigger.
The bullet tore through Dawson’s right shoulder.