Cat Bearing Gifts

29

EMMYLOU HAD HEADED back to the ICU when Ryan reached down to her backpack, found it empty, and panicked. She stared around the lounge, rose to look behind the two chairs in the corner, behind the other three love seats, all unoccupied, behind the green scheffleras that spread out as lush as small trees. She studied the three loud women down at the end, scanned the shadows around their feet, but there was no darker shape, and why would Kit be there? She looked out to the hall, and with an uneasy feeling she headed for the ICU. She was halfway up the hall when she heard women shouting ahead, heard some kind of alarm go off. She ran, saw someone roll a machine across the ICU to a cubicle on the far side where nurses were crowding in. “He’s flatlined . . .” Two white-coated doctors pushed inside, shouldering Emmylou away where she was stretching up trying to see over the crowding nurses.

“Birely,” she was crying, “let me in, let me by.” Ryan saw a running man disappear out through the open double doors and—her stomach sank—a dark cat chasing him, leaping through the closing doors behind him. She ran. They disappeared in the direction of the admittance desk, the closing doors clicked together in her face even as she fought to open them. Had they locked down automatically, like prison doors? She remembered a nurse touching the wall earlier, just there where that little black hand was painted. Maybe an electric eye? She hit the wall.

Slowly the doors swung out again, so slowly. She threw her weight against them, squeezed through, raced across the reception room startling a red-coated volunteer pushing an empty wheelchair. Dodging him, she was out through the wide glass doors into the dim underground parking garage, nearly falling over a woman and three children. They stood staring after him, the taller girl pointing and shouting, “A cat! Look, Mama, a cat chasing that man.” Tires squealed, she saw Debbie’s station wagon pull out fast and then slow as it moved up the ramp, as if the driver didn’t want to attract attention. Dodging past the children, racing for the Mercedes, Ryan barely glimpsed the man driving. Whatever he’d done back there had enraged Kit. She had no notion what happened or why he had Debbie’s car, only that something violent had occurred and Kit didn’t mean to let him get away. Had she leaped inside his car? Yes, a pair of pointed ears were visible for an instant, then gone again. Starting the Mercedes, she followed, glad she didn’t have her truck. A red pickup with a ladder on top wasn’t so good as a tail. The Suzuki turned onto the freeway. She entered the heavy traffic two cars behind, sliding into a narrow slot. Whatever emergency had brought the nurses running, the patient in trouble had to be Birely Miller, the way Emmylou was yelling.

Was this man Birely’s traveling partner? What had he done to Birely? Had he stolen Debbie’s car? She tried not to think about Kit in there with him, she could picture her hiding in the back among the children’s castoffs, and she was sick with fear for her. She was angry as hell, too. After they’d searched for her half the night up among the cliffs thinking she was dead, why did the crazy little cat have to launch into another crisis? Moving in and out of traffic, changing lanes while following the Suzuki, she was needled by too many questions. Had Kit gone back to the ICU looking for Pedric, seen the commotion, was startled by the cries of distress, saw the man running headlong and guilty, and had impetuously given chase?

Ryan played back Emmylou’s talk about Birely that had made her feel sorry for him and would have made Kit pity him, too. Or did Kit already know the man, and maybe know Birely? Was this the man who had broken into Lucinda’s house? Kit would know him by smell, if nothing more. She thought about Birely camping in the stone house. Was this his partner? Were they, and the men at the wreck on the cliffs, the same? Was this the man who had hurt Pedric and Lucinda, and who now had apparently hurt Birely? No wonder Kit was angry. Up ahead a car pulled out of her lane moving to the left, and she was right behind the Suzuki. She looked for a lane to dodge into, but already he was watching her, studying her in his rearview mirror, glancing ahead and then back at her. She was still trying to cut into another lane, away from him, when a siren whooped behind her.

She tried to nose over into the right lane to let it pass but horns honked and no one would let her in. Easing precariously near the car on her right, she barely let the emergency van squeeze past, giving her an angry blast of siren. Ahead, the Suzuki managed to swerve across, nearly hitting a blue convertible; tires squealed and a horn blasted as the station wagon spun off onto Carpenter Street. The traffic surged on, bearing her with it, she couldn’t get over to turn and follow. By the time she managed to change lanes she was at Ocean. She swung off there, knowing she’d lost him. Nothing ahead of her now but a green panel truck. Taking a chance, she made a right onto a small, wooded street, heading for a tangle of narrow, twisting lanes where it might be easy for the driver of the battered old station wagon to get lost among a maze of similar cars tucked into every narrow drive and wooded crevice. Moving as fast as she dared on the little residential streets, she scanned every side street, every hidden drive, praying for Kit and shaky with fear for her.

ROCKING ALONG IN the back of the station wagon, crouched in between a dozen loaded grocery bags, Kit peered out between them watching the driver. Earlier, coming down the freeway, she’d watched him look repeatedly in the rearview mirror at the cars behind him as if he were being followed. She could only hope he was, and hope it was a cop. She couldn’t creep up again to look, he’d be sure to see her—but when he’d swung fast off the freeway almost getting them creamed, she’d glimpsed a silver Mercedes and the driver was a dead ringer for Ryan. But then, screeching off the freeway onto Carpenter, he must have lost her.

Still, though, he checked behind him as he negotiated the narrow and twisting residential lanes, and at last he pulled over onto the shoulder beneath a clump of eucalyptus trees, the car hidden by the overhanging branches of the dense trees in front of the small, crowding cottages.

He must have taken a cell phone from his pocket, must have punched 911, she listened to him describe a silver Mercedes four-door, “Moving south on the freeway,” he said, “headed for Ocean or maybe on beyond. A woman driving. Dark, short hair, red sweatshirt. I saw her pick up a man running out of the hospital, looked like he was being chased. I thought . . . Looked like there’d been trouble in there, that maybe he’d robbed someone. He jumped in the backseat of the Mercedes, ducked down so you couldn’t see him. The way he acted, I thought maybe you’d be looking for him . . .” He paused, listening.

“A sport coat, I think. Maybe brown, sort of rough . . . like tweed . . .” He listened again, but then abruptly he hung up. Maybe the dispatcher had asked for his name, maybe asked him to stay on the line. He sat looking around him into the wooded neighborhood as if planning what to do next. She wondered if he’d borrowed the car from Debbie, or stolen it? Swiped it before she had a chance to unload her groceries, Kit thought, amused. But when she nosed at the paper bags, she realized they didn’t smell like groceries, no scent of cereal boxes or fresh fruit. Maybe everything was canned, that would be Debbie’s style. Feed the kids on cans of soup and beans. She tried not to think about being trapped in there with him, tried not to scare herself. Trapped until he opened the door, or until she opened it herself behind him, fought the handle down, leaped out and ran like hell.

But she wasn’t ready to do that, she wasn’t finished with him yet, she wanted to know where he was headed. If he’d killed Birely she meant to see him pay one way or another. Maybe he’d hole up somewhere for a while. Then, when he thought he was safe, she could slip out, find a phone, and call the department. She just hoped he didn’t take off for good, putting long fast miles between him and the cops—and between her and home.

She wasn’t sure why she cared so much that he’d hurt Birely. Except she’d felt bad when they’d found poor Sammie’s body, and now it didn’t seem fair Sammie’s little brother would be murdered, too. Not fair the killer would get away with it, just as Sammie’s killer had almost gone free. She didn’t like when human criminals didn’t pay, she wanted to see them face their accusers and squirm, wanted to see them suffer due consequence. That’s the way the world’s supposed to work, that’s the right balance, she thought angrily. If you have to live among the dregs and put up with their evil ways, then you should see some retribution.