“Everything looks so crisp and fresh after a summer rain, doesn’t it?” Bob Thorp asked.
“I’m glad it’s over,” Salsbury said.
“It isn’t. Not by a long shot.”
Salsbury turned from the windows. “What?”
Smiling, as amiable as Salsbury had ordered him to be, Bob Thorp said, “These summer storms start and stop half a dozen times before they’re finished. That’s because they bounce back and forth, back and forth between the mountains until they finally find a way out.”
Thinking of Dawson’s helicopter, Salsbury said, “Since when are you a meteorologist?”
“Well, I’ve lived here all my life, except for my hitch in the service. I’ve seen hundreds of storms like this one, and they-”
“I said it’s over! The storm is over, Finished. Done with. Do you understand?”
Frowning, Thorp said, “The storm is over.”
“I want it to be over,” Salsbury said. “So it is. It’s over if I say it is. isn’t it?”
“Of course.”
“All right.”
“It’s over.”
“Dumb cop.”
Thorp said nothing.
“Aren’t you a dumb cop?”
“I’m not dumb.”
“I say you are. You’re dumb. Stupid. Stupid as an ox. Aren’t you, Bob?”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“What?”
“That you’re as stupid as an ox.”
“I’m as stupid as an ox.”
Returning to the window, Salsbury stared angrily at the lowering cobalt clouds.
Eventually he said, “Bob, I want you to go to Pauline Vicker’s house.”
Thorp stood up at once.
“I’ve got a room on the second floor, the first door on the right at the head of the stairs. You’ll find a leather briefcase beside the bed. Fetch it for me.”
4:55 P.M.
The four of them went through the crowded stockroom and onto the rear porch of the general store.
Immediately, twenty yards away on the wet emerald-green
lawn, a man moved out of the niche formed by two angled rows of lilac bushes. He was a tall, hawk-faced man in horn-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a dark raincoat and holding a double-barreled shotgun.
“Do you know him?” Paul asked.
“Harry Thurston,” Jenny said. “He’s a foreman at the mill. Lives next door.”
With one hand Rya clutched Paul’s shirt. Her self-confidence and her faith in people had been seriously eroded by what she had seen Bob Thorp do to her brother. Watching the man with the shotgun, trembling, her voice pitched slightly higher than it normally was, she said, “Is he . . . going to shoot US?”
Paul placed one hand on her shoulder, squeezed gently, reassuringly. “Nobody’s going to be shot.”
As he spoke he ardently wished that he could believe what he was telling her.
Fortunately, Sam Edison sold a line of firearms in addition to groceries, dry goods, drugs, notions and sundries; therefore, they weren’t defenseless. Jenny had a .22 rifle. Sam and Paul were both carrying Smith & Wesson Combat Magnum revolvers loaded with .38 Special cartridges which would produce only half of the fierce kick of Magnum ammunition. However, they didn’t want to use the guns, for they were trying to leave the house secretly; they kept the guns at their sides, barrels aimed at the porch floor.
“I’ll handle this,” Sam said. He went across the porch to the wooden steps and started down.
“Hold it right there,” said the man with the shotgun. He came ten yards closer. He pointed the weapon at Sam’s chest, kept his finger on the trigger, and watched all of them with unconcealed anxiety and distrust.
Paul glanced at Jenny.
She was biting her lower lip. She looked as if she wanted to swing up her rifle and level it at Harry Thurston’s head.
That might set off a meaningless but disastrous exchange of gunfire.
He had a mental image of the shotgun booming. Booming again. . . Flame blossoming from the muzzles . .
“Calm,” he said quietly.
Jenny nodded.
At the bottom of the steps, still twenty-five feet from the man with the shotgun, Sam held out a hand in greeting. When Thurston ignored it, Sam said, “Harry?”
Thurston’s shotgun didn’t waver. Neither did his expression. But he said, “Hello, Sam.”
“What are you doing here, Harry?”
“You know,” Thurston said.
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Guarding you,” Thurston said.