Snowbound by Bill Pronzini Page B

set in until he was in bed in his barracks.
    When it did, he could not seem to stop trembling. He lay there the entire night trembling and thinking about what had happened on the beach and asking himself over and over why he had done what he had. He was not heroic or even particularly brave. He had no strong feelings for Charlene. The two riders very likely had had rape and nothing else on their minds. Why, then? Why?
    He had had no answer that night, and he had none thirteen years later; he had done it, and that was all.
    The next morning he had called Charlene, and she’d asked him briefly if he was all right and how he’d got away and for God’s sake he hadn’t called the police, had he? Because she didn’t want to get involved; if the police came around to her house, her father would-throw her out on the street. She did not thank him, and she did not tell him she was sorry for having left him maybe hurt or dying, for not having summoned help. He hadn’t seen her or spoken to her again.
    For a week he combed every local newspaper he could find, and there was no mention of anyone answering the description of the cyclists having been found dead on the beach or anywhere else near Santa Cruz. So he hadn’t killed one or both of them, and that knowledge had taken away some of the haunting immediacy of the incident and he had been able to begin to forget; he’d told no one—not Ann, not Vince, not his parents—about that night, and he never would....
    “. . . Johnny, what is it? What’s come over you?”
    Ann had gotten up and crossed to stand beside him, and she was tugging at the sleeve of his shirt. Tribucci blinked and pivoted to her, saw the concern in her eyes—and the dark recollection faded immediately. He smiled and kissed her. “Nothing,” he said, “just one of those brooding spells a man gets from time to time. It’s finished with, now.”
    “Well, I hope so.”
    He put his arm around her and walked her back to the sofa. “I didn’t mean to upset you, honey; I’m sorry, I won’t let it happen again.”
    “You had the oddest look on your face,” she said. “What could you possibly have begun brooding about when we—”
    And the door to the adjoining family room opened, and Vince appeared, sparing him. Heavier and three years older, Vince wore thick glasses owing to a mild case of myopic astigmatism and was just beginning to lose his hair; for the past hour he and his wife, Judy, had been watching television, or what passed for television on a winter night in the Sierra.
    “Just saw an early weathercast from Sacramento,” he said. “There’s a heavy stormfront moving in from the west, coming right at us. We’ll likely be hit with one and maybe two blizzards this week.”
    “Oh fine,” Tribucci said. “Great. A few more heavy storms without a long letup, and we’ll sure as hell have slides before the end of winter.”
    “Yeah, and I’m afraid at least one of them is liable to be major.”
    “You two sound like prophets of doom,” Ann said. “Where’s your Christmas spirit? This is supposed to be the jolly season, you know.”
    “Ho-ho-ho,” Vince said, and grinned. “You people decide on names for your offspring yet?”
    “We sort of like Stephen if it’s a boy.”
    “And if it’s a girl?”
    Tribucci looked at Ann. “Henrietta Lou,” he said.
    She threw a sofa pillow at him.

Seven
     
    Earl Kubion had a savage, pulsing headache when Brodie finally brought them into Hidden Valley at twenty minutes past eight.
    They had been on the road for more than five hours, fighting snow and ice from the time they reached Grass Valley, forced to stop in Nevada City to put on chains, forced to drive at a reduced speed over the treacherous state and county roads. And even though they hadn’t encountered any roadblocks or spot checks, and the three highway patrol units and two local county cruisers they had seen had paid no attention to them, Kubion sat tense and watchful the entire