Cornered! (8 page)

“Then we’re all happy,” Billy said, looking toward the rear. “Where’s the breakfast, jelly roll?”

“Right away, right away!” Bob Saywell chattered. A moment later he scurried up with a large plate of eggs and bacon. He placed it obsequiously in front of Billy, then backed up and looked hopefully at the gunman, giving the impression of wringing his hands without actually doing it.

Billy placed his gun in his lap again and started eating ravenously. He paused suddenly, looking sideways at Bob Saywell, fork poised in air.

“Well, feed the rest of the animals, chunky. We’re all at the trough this morning!”

“Yes, sir!”

Bob Saywell had never given such service. He served the entire room in unbelievable time, then stood panting, waiting for Billy’s next desire.

Billy motioned with his gun. “What’s the matter with that doc?”

“Ought to be here any minute! Yes, sir! You can count on Doc. A good man! The best, Doc Stewart!”

“I don’t care what his goddam name is,” Billy said, carefully looking over the counter at Reverend Andrews. “I just want to know where he is.” Reverend Andrews flushed, but he did not get up.

Bob Saywell, in desperate but futile eagerness to produce Dr. Hugh Stewart, looked as though he might have to run to the back of the store to the small lavatory.

Hugh Stewart solved Bob Saywell’s dilemma at that moment by rapping on the front door.

Billy’s fork clattered onto his plate. His gun was again in his hand. He looked at a quivering Bob Saywell.

“Now, listen, jelly roll. This is closed shop today, you hear? I mean to everybody, but that doc. Now you go over and look past that shade. If it’s the doc, let him in. And he’d better come in alone, or I’ll put a hole right through your pink little head, see? I mean that like I never meant anything in my life, chubby. Now, go!”

Bob Saywell went, around the counter, scooting to the door. He peered out, then unlocked the door. Dr. Hugh Stewart stepped inside.

“Now shut the door and lock it!” Billy snapped from behind the counter.

Bob Saywell did just that. Hugh Stewart stared in surprise, first at Billy Quirter and the gun in his hand, then at the faces of the others, sitting silently, staring back at him.

Billy Quirter grinned. “Welcome to the party, Doc. It’s the left arm—busted. I’m real glad you could make it. Come on over here and start working, huh? Jelly roll there’ll get you some breakfast. Hop to it, fatty. How do you like your eggs, Doc? Sunny side up or over one time?”

The storm was wearing thin with the
brightening of morning. Snow had drifted like nicely placed dollops of whipped cream. Traffic had been eased to a thin trickle all around, and would not return to any degree of normalcy until the snow plows had cut through; there was one beginning its slow push from Graintown to Arrow Junction right now.

Still, with a half-ton truck and chains, it was possible to get around fairly easily; and Ted Burley, when he lurched from Greta Blummer’s farmhouse did not think about whether or not he could make the drive back to his own farm without trouble. He simply ground the starter until the engine caught and turned over, the muscles of his jaw standing rigid along his cheeks.

Deep in his stomach Ted Burley felt a nauseous distress. For one thing he was suffering a crushing hangover. The night previous he’d drunk three-quarters of a bottle of whisky all by himself, and Ted Burley did not normally drink. For another thing, he had, in his own opinion, just degraded himself to the bottom of the pit by spending the night with Greta Blummer. Anybody in or around Arrow Junction knew well enough what Greta was.

Yet he’d kept up that drinking—taking one final swig from the bottle as he’d driven the pickup into the drive of her farm. Then he’d lurched on to the house and grabbed Greta, while she giggled and kept asking him what in the world he was doing. She’d known exactly what he was doing and was happy as hell over it.

In the cab now, shuddering as he drove away from that house, Ted Burley remembered where he’d put that bottle of whisky; it was just behind him on the ledge behind the seat.

He got it and took another drink, blinking as the whisky seared down to his empty stomach. He’d tripped the emotional lever again, done it by imagining how it was with Ann and Dr. Hugh Stewart, an image that had built up the previous late afternoon and finally suffused him completely, until he’d vented his rage and building desire on the soft flesh of Greta Blummer.

“Damned dirty whore!” Ted Burley repeated of his wife. He hunched behind the wheel, drunkenness resuming instantly with the first drink. He propped the bottle beside him, driving with instinctive accuracy along the snowy road. “I’ll show her when I get home,” he muttered. “I’ll show her!”

But his own farmhouse on the west edge of Arrow Junction was still empty. Ann Burley had remained in the office of Dr. Hugh Stewart. She had finally slept that night. Now, early this morning, she was awake and thinking. “You can’t keep on running,” Hugh Stewart had told her. “You’ve got to stop sometime…”

She stood in the silent office and looked out over the snow-covered smallness of Arrow Junction. Two cars had appeared and parked beside her sedan. One of them belonged to Reverend Andrews, she knew; the other was unfamiliar. And now, as she looked, Dr. Hugh Stewart’s car also appeared and stopped near Bob Saywell’s store.

Her throat tightened a little. She wondered if Hugh Stewart were going to talk to Bob Saywell. How he would, she did not know. A hope fluttered up in her, then died suddenly. She was once again turning to Hugh Stewart when in reality, she knew, the problem was totally hers. “You’ve got to tell the sheriff,” Hugh Stewart had said to her.

Ann Burley pulled the shade down and turned away from the window, the fright returning in full force.

In the sheriff’s office of the courthouse in Graintown, Sheriff-elect Jenkins had calmed a little. Fatigue was catching up with him as a result. He sat and looked at his deputy, Wade Miles.

Deputy Miles said, “I can’t figure how he busted out!”

Deputy Miles was twenty-one years younger than Sheriff-elect Jenkins. He was the same height, the same weight, in fact—six feet tall and two hundred pounds. But Deputy Miles was lean, muscle making the bulk of poundage which was in Sheriff-elect Jenkins’s body pure flab. The contrast in sinewy toughness, however, went deeper than framework; it went deep inside to spirit and courage. Sheriff-elect Jenkins was a bluff. Deputy Miles was not. Deputy Miles had been a paratrooper in World War II. He’d jumped into Holland on D minus one. Deputy Miles was afraid of nothing. He was deadly with either knife or gun, and he was physically quick as a cat.

The prime trouble with Wade Miles was that he did not have the mental ability to match his spirit and able body. His mind simply would not organize properly. He often acted without thinking, because thinking was a terrible chore. Thus he’d been a fine trooper, but never a leader.

He had a leader now, in official terms: Sheriff-elect Harvey Jenkins. But the trouble was that despite the officialdom of the command, Sheriff-elect Jenkins was, at this moment, capable of leading nothing. Due to an inherent lack of sensitivity, Wade Miles did not know this. He did not know, for example, that Sheriff-elect Jenkins was no more capable of figuring out the next move than he was himself—not from lack of intelligence, but rather from a lack of guts.

Sheriff-elect Jenkins shook his head in mock, but convincing, sadness. “He must have, Wade.” He hoped, in truth, that Billy Quirter
had
busted out. He had visions of a stolen car, not yet reported, somehow gotten past the roadblocks, souping down a highway at high speed, please God, far away from Graintown.

“Figured the State Police ought to do better on their own than they have,” Deputy Miles said sullenly. “They don’t do nothing, nothing at all!”

The fact was the State Police were doing as well as they could. The fact was that Sheriff-elect Jenkins, by virtue of county jurisdiction, was in charge of this manhunt. Even with Deputy Miles working hard behind him, Sheriff-elect Jenkins was the weak link in an otherwise strong chain. You couldn’t work at peak performance with a drag at the very top of the chain of command.

“Tough cookie,” Sheriff-elect Jenkins said. “Slippery as an eel.” He was full of triteness this morning, because his mind was dulled by fatigue.

“All roads plugged up,” Deputy Miles said, smacking one large fist into one large palm. “How far can he get on foot?”

“Maybe,” Jenkins said, suddenly hopeful, “he tried it that way. Got himself caught in the snow somewhere out in the fields. Stuck there right now, frozen—”

“Billy Quirter?” Deputy Miles said, incredulous. Before the previous morning, Deputy Miles had never heard of Billy Quirter. But he’d now heard all he needed to hear to respect him. “No, sir. Not Billy Quirter!” Deputy Miles said, as though he’d known Billy all his life.

“You can’t be sure.”

“I’m sure enough about that. You don’t get Billy Quirter that way. You shoot him down is how you get him. You put so much lead in him he can’t stand up for the weight is how you get Billy Quirter!”

“He’s not that good.”

“You say,” Miles said, his enthusiasm created out of his respect for Billy outweighing his politeness to a superior.

“I say we’ll get him if he’s around,” Sheriff-elect Jenkins said brusquely. He’d said that so many times by now that the word-forming was purely mechanical.

“Can’t figure out where he got to,” Deputy Miles said, pacing. “Covered this town like we was combing out hair. Looked in every niche and cranny. He just ain’t turning up!”

“I say he could be gone,” Jenkins insisted stubbornly.

“How then? Not in any car! He didn’t get out in nobody’s car!”

“Well, maybe he got away on that train.”

Wade Miles snorted. “How, I wonder? Those boys didn’t see a soul at the station. Train didn’t stop between here and Arrow Junction. We had the station master in Arrow Junction alerted by the time it did stop. Nobody got off. No trace of anybody on that train. No, sir. He’s around here. He’ll show his hand one way or another. And we’d better be ready, that’s all I got to say. We’d better be good and ready and not miss when we go for him. He’ll get some of us if we do, I’ll tell you that. You think about that hole in Corly’s old head, and then you think what he’ll do when we spook him out—”

“Wade,” the sheriff-elect cut in, feeling that trembling start inside him once again, “we’ve got to get some rest. Why don’t you just take off home and get some rest?”

Miles looked at him, blinked. “I don’t need no rest, Harvey. I’m feeling fine!”

Jenkins rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Well, I’ll tell you, Wade, I’ve got to think a little by myself. All right? I mean, I want to relax just a little in here on that leather couch and get my thoughts straightened out—kind of try to think like this Quirter, so maybe we can outfox him and get him. You get yourself something to eat or something and come back in about an hour, all right?”

Reluctantly Miles nodded. “Okay, Harvey. About an hour. I’ll see you then.”

When Deputy Wade Miles had gone, Jenkins walked wearily to the leather couch. Folded neatly on the bottom were a pillow and an Army blanket he had used on National Guard camping trips. His wife had brought them the night before.

Harvey Jenkins picked up the pillow and placed it at one end of the couch, then lay down, his stomach knotted so hard it was making him physically ill. He licked his lips. His tongue, his whole mouth, was dry. He reached down and pulled the blanket over him, thinking about what Wade Miles had said: “We’d better be good and ready and not miss when we go for him. He’ll get some of us if we do, I’ll tell you that…”

A small shudder ran through Sheriff-elect Jenkins, and he pulled the blanket around him a little more. In fact, he pulled it all the way over his head.

Dr. Hugh Stewart stared at Billy
Quirter. He stared at the quick eyes glinting at him from across the room. He knew instantly who Billy was and why he was here. “Billy Quirter,” he said aloud.

He walked across the room and around the counter, approaching Billy. Billy grinned at him, but the eyes were careful, sizing the doctor up. “I’m getting famous, huh?”

Dr. Hugh Stewart said carefully, “Do you want to explain why you’re holding a gun on me?”

Billy Quirter kept grinning. “No, Doc.”

Hugh Stewart looked around the room. “Anyone else?”

Reverend Andrews stood up. “He is obviously a gangster. Whatever reason he has, it is for some evil reason.”

“Sit down, Reverend,” Billy said disgustedly.

“I think,” Reverend Andrews said stoutly, “it’s time for you to explain this thing.”

“I think you’re going to get in some real trouble, Reverend,” Billy said tightly, “if you don’t do what I tell you!” He stared at Reverend Andrews until the reverend finally sat down. Then Billy looked straight at Hugh Stewart. “The only thing it’s time for is you to start fixing this broken arm. I’d advise that, Doc.”

“It’s my job to treat you. But not at gunpoint.”

“At gunpoint. Or without. Either way. It’s still your job. I’ve just told you it is. Do you want to start?” Billy’s voice had softened, but the flash of his eyes indicated a growing anger. Hugh Stewart saw that. He put his bag down, opened it.

“You’ll have to get that coat and jacket off.”

Billy examined him carefully. He finally nodded. “All right.” Billy got off the stool and stepped backward.

Hugh Stewart opened his bag, drew out a syringe. Billy, his suit jacket half shrugged off now, shook his head. “Oh, no, Doc. No, thanks.”

“It’s going to hurt.”

“Let it. See, I just think you might try something if you had half a chance, Doc. Like load up that needle with something that might not really be good for Billy Quirter. It’s just a feeling I have.”

Hugh Stewart shrugged. “It’s up to you, Quirter.”

Billy smiled. “That’s the whole truth.” He had the jacket off now. He stepped forward, looking much skinnier than he had in the coat and jacket. He wore a holster over his white shirt, strapped under his left armpit.