Cat Pay The Devil

14

W ith her hands tied, Wilma couldn’t reach to rip away the blindfold. She couldn’t move, tied to the chair; tilting it back and forth, she was able to rock along crablike, jerking across the rough wooden floor, the chair legs banging. Feeling out with her toes, for barriers, she soon found a wall. Getting the chair turned, she rocked along beside it until she came to what felt like a heavy wooden dresser. Yes, she could feel the corner with her arm, and then the drawer handles.

Bending her head against the top drawer, she wriggled and worked until she caught the blindfold on the handle. She pulled and fought until she had jerked it and it slipped down around her throat-her release from darkness left her heart pounding. The thin light of evening filtered in through dusty windows. She looked warily around her.

The house was a crude cabin. Rough wooden walls, small, dirty windows. One wall of dark stone, behind a rusty woodstove, two faded armchairs before it. To her right opened the three small windows. Hobbling her chair toward them, she pressed her face to the grimy glass.

The cabin stood in a grove of pine and eucalyptus trees. She could see only woods, and a bare dirt yard. One small outbuilding away at the edge of the graveled clearing, a rusty old car parked beside it. To her left, where the woods thinned, she could glimpse open hills washed golden by the last rays of the sun as it settled into a low line of fog-surely that fog lay over the sea, over the Pacific. She was very likely high in the Molena hills. She caught glimpses, closer to the cabin, of a narrow dirt road leading away and down to vanish among the falling golden slopes, a road surely making its way to the sea. She searched along the far fog line for the roofs of Molena Point, but could find no hint of them.

In the far corner of the room was a kitchen alcove and a wooden table. A window above the sink faced the woods away from the sea. On the long wall between her and the kitchen was a heavy door that looked like it would lead outside; she thought she had come in that way. Awkwardly tipping and turning the chair, she headed for the kitchen. If these were her last hours on earth, she damned well wasn’t going to die of thirst.

When she had gained the sink counter, she stood up as best she could, bent nearly double in the chair, and, leaning over the stained yellow Formica into the rusting steel sink, she pressed the tap handle with her chin.

Water gushed out. She drank awkwardly for a very long time, soaking herself, drenching her shirt, cool against her hot, sweaty skin. She rested, letting the water run, then drank again, rested and drank until at last she felt satisfied; then clumsily she pressed the faucet off and balanced back, steady on the floor again. She looked around her at the dark kitchen corner, the cracked brown linoleum and ancient dark cabinets, the worn Formica; no surface looked clean. A newspaper lay on the counter. The headline and photograph caught her attention; she remembered the article from earlier in the week:

Woman Killed in Her Home, Police Seek Burglar

The picture was of a smiling Linda Tucker in a low-cut dark dress, a professional photographer’s portrait taken perhaps for a birthday or other special occasion. The paper was well worn, the stain of a cup or glass at the lower corner. This was the only paper she could see; there were no other newspapers or magazines in the room, not even on the table beside the two worn chairs. Had this one paper been saved for a reason? Or had it only been kept to wrap the garbage?

The kitchen alcove was so small, and the heavy table so close to the cabinets, that, tied in her chair, she had no room to maneuver; every time she rose to move, the chair legs sticking out behind her rammed into the cabinets or the table. The drawers were in the tightest corner. She was able, just, to reach behind her and open the top one. Feeling gingerly through its contents, she found only forks and spoons, no knives. Shutting the drawer, she had hunched down to the next, was wriggling forward, pulling the drawer out, when a sound beyond the kitchen window startled her so that she nearly toppled the chair. The sound came again, a hushed scraping. She twisted around trying to see.

Was someone out there? Someone who would help her, or someone she must hide from? Nothing moved beyond the glass; in the darkening evening she saw nothing but the dense pines. It couldn’t have been a branch blowing; the soft wind had died.

The sound did not return; she sat staring into the woods, both disappointed and relieved. But then, knowing there might not be much time, she turned her attention again frantically to the kitchen drawers-paper napkins and long narrow boxes of foil or waxed paper with little metal saws along the edge that might cut rope. She considered those briefly-little saws that could leave her arms painfully scraped and bloody, inviting infection if she remained there long.

Putting that option aside as a last resort, she was fumbling lower into the next drawer when she heard the hushing sounds again. As she twisted toward the window, something dark flicked away, so fast in the gloom that she couldn’t tell what it was. The shadow of a person? A small animal? A squirrel? No fox or weasel would be that high off the ground, and it had moved so fast.

A cat, peering in at her? And now, even as she watched for that presence to return, another noise alarmed her, a sound from the ceiling, a loud thudding. Was there a second floor, then? She’d seen no stairs. But someone was there, someone was in the house, above her.

The rows of identical shops bordering Gilroy’s parking lot seemed to Joe Grey, in the mall’s vapor lights, yawningly dull and commercial; yet at this moment the discount mall drew the tomcat more powerfully than rats scrabbling in a barrel. As Clyde parked in front of Wilma’s favorite restaurant, to see if in there he could get a line on her and also could find Davis, Joe crouched, ready to leap out and head across the parking lot to the shops that, too soon, would be closing.

Clyde slapped his hand on the lock. “You stay in this car, Joe. You will not get out of this vehicle. Not for any reason. Not unless and until I say you can get out.” He stared hard at Joe. “You got that?”

Joe looked at him defiantly. “You can’t be serious. This is what we came for! So I can-”

“Not without me. Not until I tell you. Comprende?”

If Dulcie had been there, she might have felt just as rebellious as Joe, but she would have looked meekly reprimanded, knowing that you can catch more birds with subterfuge. Joe stared pointedly at the clock, which even now rolled its lighted digits to the next minute. “Twenty minutes! That’s all we have!”

“You get out of this car, in this traffic and confusion, and get hurt or in trouble, and you’re going to blow the search. Did you think of that? I told you I plan to stay over, get a motel room. The stores we don’t cover tonight, we’ll hit in the morning.”

This might sound reasonable to a human. It made no sense to the one doing the tracking. “The scent is fresh now. By tomorrow morning the cleaning people with their vacuums and chemicals will have trashed every trace. Vacuuming compound, cleaning substances, to say nothing of the personal scents of dozens of assorted humans.”

“Five minutes, I’ll be back. Then we’ll hit the stores.” Clyde leaned over, his face close to Joe’s. “I have to open some windows or you’ll die in this heat. I expect you, on your tomcat honor, to stay inside this car.” He looked up again, scanning the parking area. “That could be Davis’s unit, over behind that truck. I’ll just see what she’s found, then we’ll get to work.” Another hard glare and he was gone, leaving the windows halfway down, locking the doors simply as a small deterrent to passersby.

Not that anyone with common sense, seeing the glaring eyes of the enraged tomcat, would stick his hand through. Joe watched Clyde enter the restaurant and wave, and glimpsed Davis, sitting in the back. The squarely built Latina was in uniform as usual, though the day was hot as hell and such formality was seldom expected of Harper’s detectives. She didn’t look happy to see Clyde.

Juana Davis was a good detective, she’d do a thorough search for Wilma-as good as a human could accomplish with no talent for scent detection. Sitting with Davis in the booth were two sheriff’s deputies. As Clyde sat down beside Juana, Joe considered the car’s open windows. He looked across the parking lot to Liz Claiborne’s, which was Wilma’s favorite store and had, most likely, been her first stop this morning-if she ever got this far, he thought, rearing up with his paws on the glass, wondering if the security alarm would go off.

It didn’t. He propelled himself over and out, and there was not a sound. In a nanosecond he was across the lot, between parked cars, slipping into Liz Claiborne’s, padding in on the heels of a hurrying shopper. Ducking behind a rack of dresses, immediately his nose filled with the smells of new cashmere sweaters and women’s perfume, unwelcome indeed as he sought the one scent of importance.