Cat Coming Home

8

AFTER KILLING MARTIN and Caroline, the driver and shooter had paused for only an instant to watch the victims’ car veer off the road, its headlights swinging crazily through the black night as it rolled onto its side and crashed into a pine tree. The shooter had tucked the .45 Colt revolver behind the seat as the driver floorboarded the pickup. They pulled to the side of the road a quarter mile on, where the driver got out, slipped into a small black sedan, and was gone, speeding away into the night. The shooter slid into the driver’s seat and moved on, knowing the narrow two-lane well enough to keep out of the ditch, knowing precisely when to make the turn into the yard of the deserted ranch house. A second turn up the old concrete driveway, and the pickup was out of sight from the country road.

How much had the old woman seen? In the flickering moonlight, before she grabbed the kids and ducked to the floor, had she gotten a look? It was only an instant that she could have seen anything, but it was a loose end, a cause for worry. Over the subsequent months since the shooting, the question had eaten and rankled. If Maudie had seen enough for a tentative ID, what had she done about it? Gone to the cops? Or, fearing for her own life, sensibly kept her mouth shut? Was there a warrant out complete with name and description, or had she seen no more than the blinding flashes of gunfire?

That night, easing around behind the farmhouse, unlocking the machinery barn and easing the pickup inside, sliding closed the heavy door and stepping into the sleek sports car that stood next to where the pickup was always parked, the shooter had waited for more than an hour, listening for any sound from the road, lounging on the soft leather seat but not daring to play the radio even softly. Then jerking suddenly alert at the sound of the sirens.

How could anyone have called the cops? Martin and Caroline had to be dead, at that close range, or too badly wounded to make any kind of call. And as for Maudie, even if she’d had the presence of mind enough to grab a cell phone, reception out there was dicey; usually there was no way to get through.

It was unlikely anyone else had heard the crash; on the little-used back road there’d been no other cars. The scattered houses and what people called ranches were all set back away from the narrow two-lane, and there hadn’t been a light anywhere; half those houses were summer places, locked up until the weather grew hot, in June.

But someone had called the cops.

Getting out of the sports car, standing at the door listening, she hadn’t heard a sound. The barn seemed safe enough. By the time sheriff’s deputies got around to searching the nearby yards and fields, and got warrants to search inside the houses and outbuildings, the pickup would be dead cold, sitting unused as the vacationing owner had left it weeks earlier. The heavy padlock on the sliding shed door would show only the owner’s fingerprints.

Listening to the sirens and then to the thumping of a helicopter, the shooter had slid the big door open just a crack, to look out into the night. Lights from the gathered cars a mile away were reflected up into the sky in a milky haze, more cars and a hell of a lot sooner than you’d have thought, way out here in the boonies.

The shooter had waited for a couple hours more after the police lights were gone, and the helicopter gone, before opening the door fully, starting the engine of the sports car and pulling out. Had checked, with a flashlight, the garage floor and wiped away the vague tire marks. Sliding the door closed again and locking it, the shooter had headed sedately away into the night, driving slowly and carefully along the country road, flicking the beams to high when there was no car coming, flicking them low again out of courtesy when another vehicle approached.

Passing two oncoming black-and-whites, the shooter lifted a hand from the wheel in the country way of greeting, though probably that gesture would not be seen in the dark car. And all the while swallowing back a rush of adrenaline, trying to control a heart-pounding panic. The two CHPs must be headed to the scene of the wreck, to join whatever sheriff’s units might have remained behind. Maybe looking for shell casings—but they wouldn’t find any. That was the good thing about a revolver: the casings remained in the gun, didn’t scatter all over. Cops would be checking for tire marks, too, but quite a few cars and trucks, locals, used this road in the daytime.

A lot depended now on the old woman. Maybe she’d seen nothing in the blackness, maybe there was nothing to worry about. She’d answer the cops’ questions but have no real information to give them, then go home and mourn for her dead son. The cops would work the case for a while and then, as overloaded as the LAPD was, it would find its way among the cold files and that would be the end of it.

Except, that wasn’t the end, there was more to consider. There would be the funeral, the gathering of friends and family around the old woman, and then the disposition of Caroline’s personal possessions. That was the complication: What had Caroline done with the papers that must be retrieved before this was finished? Or did the old woman have them? If so, what had she done with them? There was no way to know what Caroline and Martin, and Maudie, might have planned between them. Sure as hell, if Caroline had been a threat while alive, she was no better dead. And the same went for Maudie, for Caroline’s soft little mother-in-law.