Cat Coming Home

21

MAX’S PICKUP MOVED so fast that Joe Grey lost it only a block from home. He raced on across the night-dark roofs stubbornly following its sound as it sped south. He could see, away in the center of the village, a gathering of bright lights and whirling red lights reflected against the sky and could hear the distant mutter of police radios—that would be the restaurant break-ins, but Max wasn’t headed there.

The sound of the pickup grew fainter, still bearing south. Joe had traveled a dozen blocks when, far ahead, the truck’s soft rumble died, faded into silence. Racing on over slick roof tiles and mossy shingles, and across shadowed tree branches above dark and tangled gardens, he listened for the truck door to open. He heard nothing, only the hushing of the sea, five blocks away. Ahead against the night sky rose the spire of the Methodist Church, thrusting above the black silhouettes of surrounding houses. Leaping from a pine tree onto the church roof, he raced up its highest peak. Had he lost Harper?

Through the trees below him, no car lights reflected, the neighborhood was uniformly dark. At this height, the sea wind hit him full in the face; the balmy evening had grown chill, the shingles cold beneath his paws. In this residential area, even at this early hour, most of the houses were dark, as if the more elderly occupants were already tucked in for the night, while maybe the younger ones were out partying. He was cursing himself for having lost Harper when the scream of a siren blasted nearly below him, flashing red lights stained the sky and an emergency van raced past—he took off after it as if the devil himself were on his tail.

Ahead, the siren whooped and died as the white emergency van swerved into a driveway—and there was Max Harper’s pickup, parked and waiting. The van nearly grazed a police unit that was pulling in. Another patrol car drew up across the street from them, in front of the church just beneath where Joe crouched, his claws in the shingles trying not to slide down its steeply angled peak.

The house was a small, two-story Craftsman-style cottage, its wood siding painted off white with a soft blue trim, its front door set deep beneath a sheltering roof and flanked by climbing vines. The front garden was excessively neat, the small, manicured lawn edged with borders of bright impatiens. Joe came down from the peak of the church to its lower roof, pausing with his paws in the metal gutter, watching the emergency unit as its side doors opened and three medics piled out, heading for the shadowed front door. Max pulled shards of jagged glass out of the broken front door, reached through and released the lock. Pushing the door open, he eased through, gun drawn, and soon disappeared inside, where Joe could hear a faint cry. Behind Max, two officers entered, their weapons drawn; the three medics waited for them to clear the house.

A light came on from deep within; Joe heard Max’s voice and a woman’s faint, hoarse reply. As the EMTs hauled out their emergency medical equipment, Joe watched the street and the dark yards. He saw no movement, no one hidden among the neighborhood’s overgrown bushes, no one slipping away. Surely by now the perps were long gone. When the medics moved on inside, Joe dropped onto the roof of their van. There he waited until wiry Officer Reynolds, who stood by the front door, glanced the other way. Quickly Joe dropped to the driveway, slipped into the bushes and inside the house, melting into the shadows beneath a broken end table. He wanted, before the officers’ various personal scents compromised the scene, to try to pick up the invader’s trail, maybe even find the unlikely scent of old fish that had so intrigued Kit.

The first smell that hit him was a nose-tingling stink of perfume that sure didn’t belong to any of the officers present. The second scent was indeed a whiff of aging fish so strong that it prompted an uncomfortable gag reflex. Cats were not dogs, dogs reveled in such stinks. One thing was certain: the two smells together could hide any fainter, personal aroma the perps might have left.

Across the living room, the victim sat on the bloody Persian carpet, speaking in a scratchy, nearly inaudible voice to Harper and the two medics who were crouched beside her. She was as thin and frail as a hungry bird, white-haired, thin-boned, dressed in a peach-toned velvet lounge suit stained liberally with blood. Her birdlike hands were torn and bloody, one side of her thin face swollen, bruised and bleeding. The other officers had disappeared. Slipping out from under the remains of the little table, Joe slid in between an upholstered chair and a broken ottoman, where he could better watch the action.

The pretty, flowered living room was a shambles, side chairs and small tables overturned and broken, the flowered couch and matching chair slashed so deeply that the stuffing spilled out like dirty snow. Books, torn-out pages, and pieces of china littered the bloody carpet, the whole room had been destroyed as if with a pointless and cruel pleasure. Max looked disgusted and grim, as did the two medics, but it was Joe’s own reaction that was most worrisome to the tomcat.

He felt terrible for the poor woman. He wanted to pat her poor torn face with a soft paw, wanted to lick her hurt hands, tell her how sorry he was, he wanted to make everything all right again, for her. This wasn’t like him, this degree of sympathy was not his style, he thought uneasily. Was he growing soft? Maybe it was the holiday season turning him sentimental, all this Christmas cheer and goodwill muddying his usual detachment, he thought with dismay.

BUT JOE GREY wasn’t the only cat to feel sympathy for the suffering woman, he was not the only cat on the scene. From the roof of the invaded house, tortoiseshell Kit peered over, her black and brown coat blending into the night. She had arrived long before Max Harper’s truck pulled to the curb and the emergency van and police cars came racing. It was Kit who first heard the woman’s pitiful cries. Though she hadn’t been able to get inside, after considerable effort she’d found a phone, had made the call to 911, had seen the law arrive: Harper, the medics, the squad cars. Only when she saw Joe Grey come streaking across the roofs did she slip behind the chimney, not wanting Joe to see her, feeling suddenly too embarrassed by her own preoccupation, inexplicably shy and uncertain.

What a strange night it had been, she was all sparks and fidgets. First that peculiar Colletto family with their prissy habits and their sleazy son, the rude way Kent treated his parents that had left her so angry. Then when the cats left the Colletto house, Joe and Dulcie heading home, Kit caught the lingering scent of the yellow tomcat and she’d hung back. Studying the surrounding roofs, she didn’t see him but she knew he was nearby. Then suddenly there he was, a pale shape padding along a branch above the Collettos’ garage, looking straight down at her.

He had looked for a long moment, and then had moved away across the oak limb, but glancing back, wanting her to follow. Putting aside her unease, Kit had followed. She’d reminded herself that he was a very big tomcat, that she was alone, that she’d never really seen him clearly, that she didn’t have Joe and Dulcie to fight beside her if he turned aggressive. But so far he hadn’t bothered them, he’d only watched as if he were curious. And she was a strong fighter, she’d thought boldly. She’d followed him because her dreams of a handsome soul mate wouldn’t let her do otherwise, because he might be the one mate in all the world she’d waited for and dreamed about. She’d followed through the treetops and across the roofs into the center of the village. There he slowed.

Where the shop roofs crowded close, he’d stayed to the deepest shadows, stopping every little while to look down at the streets and then to look back at her, and there was an urgency in his journey. His route took him across Ocean where the wide street narrowed, to the south part of the village near the steeple of the Methodist Church. Just before he reached it he paused. She heard from below a man’s chuckle and a low laugh that seemed to have no gender, that could have come from a man or a woman, she couldn’t be sure.

The tomcat backed away into the dark beneath a second-floor balcony, where he could see below and could listen. Kit felt that he wanted her to do the same, though who would care if there was a cat watching? The laughter came not from the small pickup parked on the street before the church, but from a dark sedan that had drawn to the curb behind it, a big four-door vehicle as sleek and daunting as a limousine. A figure stood beside it talking with the driver, their laughter quiet but with overtones that made her fur crawl. As she watched, a third figure got out of the pickup and joined them, slipping into the passenger seat of the sedan, and an elusive whiff of their scents drifted up. Their laughter and voices were as hushed and slithery as a wind stirring beach sand.

The pickup parked in front was old, its dark color undetectable in the night. It appeared badly dented, as beat up as the one that had nearly run down Maudie, and Kit wanted a closer look. She was sniffing for the humans’ scents when one of the men said softly, “She can’t untie herself, hell, she might never be found.” Kit pricked her ears, startled.

“That won’t do us any good,” the driver of the car said with disgust. Listening, Kit leaned farther. “She can last until tomorrow, can’t she? How bad did you hurt her? You remember what I told you!” The man’s voice, as low-pitched as it was, seemed somehow familiar. Kit stood with her paws in the damp gutter peering over, trying to get a look at him.

“Of course I remember,” the other whispered crossly. “We just roughed her up, is all.”

Straining to listen, Kit nearly lost her balance. She backed away, alarmed, still trying to identify the man’s cold, superior tones that struck such fear into her heart.

“She’ll last,” the other said, “so what difference does it make?”

“You want murder on the ticket?” the familiar voice said. “Why do you think we don’t rape and kill them! You want to go before a hanging judge? One of you keep watch. If no one finds her by late tomorrow, call the cops yourself—you’re an unidentified neighbor—and make sure you use the throwaway phone.”

“What do you think? We’re stupid?” The tall, thin man sounded young, though he spoke only in a grainy whisper. Why did he keep looking around into the night, fidgeting and shifting as if he thought they were being watched? That made the tortoiseshell smile. He didn’t know half how closely they were observed, who the observer was, or what she’d do with the information.

“The paper has a front-page piece ready to go,” the other said, “written, ready to insert, a nice two columns for the villagers to read over breakfast.” Still, Kit could see nothing of the figure inside the dark car. She looked away to the blackness where the pale tomcat crouched. Did he know these lowlifes? What exactly was his interest, and why had he led her there? She could just make out the curve of his pale back beneath the balcony’s rail.

The moment the pickup left, the tomcat came out from the shadows into a path of moonlight, stood looking after the vehicle. Now, for the first time with the moonlight full on him, Kit got a good look at him.

Oh, my. The surprise that she felt—and the disappointment—rippled through her clear down to her dark little paws.