The desperate hours, a novel (26 page)

Then, like a swift jolt of electric current up and down his whole body, he heard a voice, from above, a tentative but uninjured voice, no pain in it: "Dad? Dad?"

"Stay there, Ralphie," Dan called. "It's all right!"

"All right," Robish echoed hollowly, but he did not move; he seemed to have no idea how to move. "You sneaked a copper in " The words seemed to give him the impetus; Dan

saw the idea seep upwards in the man, finally reach those opaque eyes. Robish charged to the front door, flung it open heedlessly, driven by fear and rage.

"Any more of you out there?" Robish bawled into the cold air. "I got one of you upstairs! Who wants it next?"

Seeing the man in the half-open door, blind to Eleanor's absence, senseless in the grip of his own terror, Dan Hilliard edged closer, slowly, without sound.

"Any more of you out there?" Robish was bellowing in the echo of his first words, when no answer came. "I still got Hilliard and the kid. They're alive!"

Those words roused in Dan Hilliard the same savage atavistic fury that had caused him to smash Robish that first night, but the instinct was refined now, controlled by caution, thought. He was very close to the man's back.

In one sudden movement then, before Robish could shout again, he grabbed the door, his fingers inches from Robish's heavy breath, whipped it open, crashed his shoulder into the man's back, then stepped back, lifted his foot and plunged it into the man's spine. All the coiled rage in him drove his leg, and it sent the hulk of body across the porch—a few spraddled-legged steps at first, then a headlong plunge off the steps onto the grass.

Robish rolled as he struck the ground, lifting the gun. The explosion thundered up and down the street, but the bullet dug into the solid wood of the closed door that Dan Hilliard had snapped shut and was already locking from inside.

Dan turned then from the door, expecting the barrage of police gunfire outside as he started up the stairs, his arms loose at his sides but his large, lined face clenched like a fist. He was surprised when no sound came from outside.

And when he was halfway up the stairs, he stopped, stunned. Glenn Griffin no longer lay on the stairway.

When Jesse Webb, clinging to the ladder that was propped against the front of the Wallings' roof, saw a woman emerge from the front door of the Hilliard house, he stiffened, lifting his hand automatically to give the signal that the men below had been expecting. But the woman was alone, hesitating on the porch a moment, and Jesse did not bring his hand down in the prearranged signal. There was that moment of suspense and then three shots rumbled; in rapid succession, muffled in the Hilliard house but clearly discernible even at that distance. Jesse recalled his own warning: // there's any shooting, Hilliard, we're coming in. But he saw the woman turn from the house then and begin to run, and this action—the lithe, swift desperation in her retreat toward the safety of the trees—stayed his hand. His long fingers flexed convulsively as he thought of the rifle.

Why not? Why not now?

Still, he waited, hoping for some answer. It came shortly, after a few seconds that seemed an eternity to Jesse Webb, in the form of a hollow shout from the direction of the Hilliard front door. Jesse couldn't make out the words, but he recog-

nized the furious, frenzied defiance as that of a trapped man. He did not know whether the words, whatever they were, were being shouted after the woman or at the poHce in the woods.

He had no time to get a report on the content of that bull-Hke cry, however, because at that moment a brawny man with a huge head came charging out the front door as though propelled from behind. He fell twisting onto the grass, and Jesse Webb then reached for the rifle. In the second he turned, though, he heard another shot, this time not muffled, and when he hfted the rifle and sighted over the trees, he saw the black glitter in the man's hand. He brought the man into the dead center of the telescopic sight, followed easily and smoothly as the man lumbered, trying to run, but hobbhng a little as though he had injured a leg, toward the blue sedan. He had him now. This was Robish, and he had him.

But Jesse Webb clamped his lean jaws together until the pain climbed his jawbone and entered his teeth. He couldn't. Not this way. Whatever the shooting inside the house had meant, there was still the chance that Griffin was still alive. What would happen to Hilliard and the boy if Griffin were startled now, if he realized the poUce were outside, if he had that other gun

But the other gun was empty. Robish had fired. The gun in the house then was Jesse Webb's own .38 and Hilhard himself had taken the bullets from it.

"Tom," Jesse Webb said through cracked lips; and then when a familiar voice responded from the attic window, he went on, although the rifle still lay along his arm: "Hold fire. Robish is leaving in the Hilhard car. He's armed. Get him three or four blocks from the house. No closer. But get him."

Tom Winston moved in the attic.

There was no way out for Robish now. They had him.

What held Jesse Webb, what caused him to lower the rifle and let the others take over while he refused to give the signal to close in, was the one other unknown element that clogged 235

his mind: What had become of that kid, that Charles Wright, and that funny-looking automatic of his? It was Jesse Webb's hunch—and he still played hunches when they were this strong —that that gun w'as also in the Hilliard house.

If HiUiard wanted him, HiUiard would call. That is, he would call if he was still alive.

Jesse looked down, only for a moment then, to see Carson leading Mrs. Hilliard from the woods into the Walhngs' house; the studious-looking young man had one arm around her. But Mrs. Hilliard was not crying.

Get in there, now, Jesse Webb ordered himself furiously. And then he answered himself, just as furiously: Let Hilhard try it his way.

Because Jesse Webb had already begun to suspect that it was Dan Hilliard who had pushed the woman from the house. What that meant exactly, he didn't know. But he decided then, arbitrarily, to give Hilliard another five minutes. He would wait at least until Carson had Mrs. Hilliard's report of what was happening in there, until he had a report on what Robish had shouted out the doorway.

Dan Hilliard mounted the stairs, his tread heavy and determined, hearing instead of the police fusillade he had expected, the motor of his car grinding over outside. As he reached the head of the stairway, where Glenn Griffin had been lying a few moments before, he saw a streak of blood on the carpet and heard, outside, the spit of gravel and the mounting roar of motor that receded toward the street. He paused.

But only briefly because, while he heard Griffin's voice on his right, behind the smashed door—"In here, Hilliard"— he saw something in the door of Cindy's room that drew him

there instead. He looked down, with the ugly bleakness returning in him, into the gray face of Chuck Wright. His whirling mind took in the dark stain on the floor, the twisted and lifeless-looking body, the blood-spattered and odd-shaped gun. In one fluid movement, Dan Hilliard stooped, picked up the automatic, the blood warm against his hand, and turned to cross the hall. It flickered through his mind that Robish had taken Chuck Wright to be a policeman; this had brought him downstairs in terror. Dan HilHard thanked Chuck Wright silently and stopped in front of the splintered door of his own bedroom.

He knew what he was going to do now. Before the police came in, before anything else, he was going to do it. It was simple, really. But the thought of Ralphie in that room made Dan Hilliard slip the gun into his coat pocket, with his hand closed over it. He would shoot through the coat. He would empty it into Glenn Griffin, and that then would be the end of it.

He stepped into the room. Ralphie was on the bed, huddled in one corner, and in the corner behind him stood Glenn Griffin. His dark, unnaturally bright eyes turned from the window and fixed glassily on Dan. But Dan was looking at the icy-white and frozen terror on the face of his son.

It would not be so easy. The boy's eyes returned at once, in sickened fascination, to the muzzle of the gun that Glenn Griffin kept fixed on him. The gun was empty, but still it was not going to be so simple.

"You got to get me out of here, Pop." But the insolence was gone; the attempt at arrogance thin and worn. "That copper over there nicked me. You got more of 'em outside?"

Dan saw, with a twist of pleasure that he did not like, the blood-edged furrow along the side of Glenn Griffin's scalp, and he realized that Chuck Wright's first shot had stunned but not seriously wounded the convict. Well, he'd finish the job, now. He, Dan Hilliard.

First, though, he had another job. One more. "Ralphie," he 237

said quietly, his voice a dry whisper, "Ralphie, look at me. Listen."

"No time now, no time!" Glenn Griffin cried, licking at his lips, and he moved his gun closer to the boy's head.

Dan Milliard became aware of something else then, recorded it, worked around it. He couldn't startle Griffin into lifting that gun, bringing it down in desperate frustration on the boy's skull.

"Son," Dan said slowly, very low and definite, the word spreading a hypnotic effect over the quiet room, "listen to me. Nothing's going to happen to you. That man is not going to shoot you. Do you hear me?" Ralphie nodded, but a flicker of uncertainty appeared in his bloodshot eyes. Dan's heart twisted. "He's not going to shoot you, Ralphie, and I'll tell you why, son. Believe me, because "

"Lay off, HilHard! You don't lay off, I'll get it over with. You got to get me out of here, see!" The frantic note was clear, and ii was this that Dan feared.

Dan's hand was on the butt of the automatic, his finger looped over the trigger. Ralphie was between him and his target. "I wouldn't lie to you. Have I ever lied to you, Ralph?"

The boy's head shook, once.

"Christ!" Griffin screamed. "Will you stop it! Are there any more cops out there, Hilliard? Why didn't they knock off Robish? There ain't any more, are there? They'd be in here by now!"

Still, Dan ignored him, concentrating on his son. "Ralphie, that man's gun is not loaded. It doesn't have any bullets in it. Do you believe me?"

He was conscious of the start in Glenn Griffin, the quick grin of disbelief, but he was studying his son's face.

"Do you believe me?"

Then, very slowly, the boy nodded his head.

"What's going on here?" Griffin shrilled. "Hilliard, you

deaf? It's loaded, Hilliard. You wouldn't have brought it back with you if "

Griffin stopped then, the eyes brightening into a glazed stare.

Dan said, as slowly as before: "Ralph, you're a very big boy. I want you to mind me, understand? I want you to do whatever I say now."

"Stop it!" Griffin yelled. "Stop the talk! My head hurts. I

got to " He broke ofT, and somewhere in his reeling mind

a suspicion took root. He lowered his voice. "You wouldn't a-come in here with a empty "

That moment of self-doubt was what Dan had been playing for. "Ralphie!" he barked suddenly. "Run!"

The shout brought the boy up off the bed m one bound before Griffin could move.

"Get downstairs and outside!" Dan Hilliard shouted.

And then he saw Glenn Griffin hfting the gun, swinging it after the boy. Dan had to break his first impulse with a great and terrible effort of will that cracked like pain through his body. He kept the automatic in his pocket even when he heard the empty gun clicking, but he was more certain, hearing those frantic fruitless cficks, what he was going to do now. He heard Ralphie on the stairs, skittering down. The boy was gone. He would not see this. Dan had made sure of that.

He watched the dazed bleak horror in the face across the room; he saw the white teeth bared; he heard the faint boylike cry in the back of the young man's throat as he brought the deputy sheriff's gun up to point directly at Dan Hilliard. Dan heard the cUcks, over and over, and then, above this, a stranger sound than any: the short explosion of his own laughter.

It was then that he brought the automatic from his coat pocket. The rage was cold in him now, and he continued to think of that gun muzzle pointed at his son's back. He could feel his grip on the automatic climb like a pain up to his shoulder. He was going to do it now.

Whatever Glenn Griffin saw on Dan Hilhard's face then— 239

the pitiless eyes, the set of jaw, the purple swelling of the bruise that Griffin himself had put along one cheek—whatever it was, it caused him to back into the corner, his tongue darting wetly from between his lips. His eyes dropped, but they appeared not to see, not quite to comprehend the meaning of that gun in the white-knuckled hand that moved closer.

Dan Hilliard had no control over what he was going to do now. They had put the people he loved through two days of nightmarish hell; they had beaten and threatened and terrified; they had brought violence and the smell of blood and filth into his home. There was only this now, this one final act, and it would be over.

Glenn Griffin was sliding down against the wall, the saliva dribbling in little bubbles down his jumping chin. His mouth opened and closed and opened again, working loosely, but no sound came. He pleaded with those fluttering hands at his neck. The grotesque pantomime of frenzy did not touch Dan Hilliard's icy intention.

Now. Now. Why don't you pull the trigger? Why don't you get it over with? Why should anything hold you back? Why should you, Dan Hilliard, live by scruples these men never felt? Why should you hesitate when they

But Dan Hilliard was not one of them. This was his room, the bedroom in which he and his wife slept. This was his home. And down below, his wife and daughter and son were waiting, wondering, not knowing any of this, still trembling with the fear this scum had brought into the house. Across the hall lay the young man who loved Cindy, who must love her deeply; and he, perhaps, was dead now. He needed help, and quick. In the electric brilliance of this moment, Dan Hilliard lowered the gun slowly until the muzzle pointed at the floor. He didn't have the right. He was not one of them.