Cat Pay The Devil

22

T he village streets were filled with heavy evening traffic, the blaze of moving headlights blinding and confusing the white tomcat. He had been on these streets only once before, and then it was midnight, the town silent and empty as he and Willow and Coyote had followed Kit from that cage to freedom. Kit had told them how she crossed when there was heavy traffic, by trotting close behind humans. But now Cotton couldn’t bring himself to do that. The sidewalks were alive with people, their hurrying feet threatened to trample him even as he hid in the shadows of steps and alleyways.

Scrambling up a vine to the rooftops, he felt safer, alone at last. How did Joe Grey and Kit and Dulcie stand the human mobs? Breathing with relief the fresher air of the warm, open roofs, Cotton felt his pounding heart slow; he stopped panting and looked around him across the angled peaks, trying to get his bearings.

Far ahead rose a familiar collection of metal chimneys and the railing of a penthouse veranda that seemed familiar, as if Kit had led them that way. He recognized the tall tower, too, with the clock in it, he had seen that from the window of Kit’s tree house. Looking away to the northeast, slowly the night of their escape came back to him.

Crowded into that smelly cage, he and Willow and Coyote had nearly lost hope. Then Joe Grey and Dulcie had been captured, too, and jammed in there with them, five cats crammed in, and their rage building dangerously. But at last Kit and Joe Grey’s human had found and freed them: Clyde Damen cut off the lock, and they had exploded out of there and out the window, running with terror-and then with wild, incredible joy, running and running, following the tortoiseshell kit. She’d led them to a flower-decked alley, to a plate of delicious food that had been set out just for cats. He and Willow and Coyote had thought it was some kind of trap, but Kit swore it was not, and she had eaten and eaten, and when at last they tried, too, she drew back so they would have the rest. Cotton licked his whiskers, remembering the taste of the fine salmon and cheeses. They had filled themselves right up, and then Kit led them to her tree house, where they had curled up safe and warm. That had been their first deep, deep sleep since they were trapped, not jerking awake with fear at every sound.

Now, taking his bearings from the clock tower, Cotton reared up to search the rooftops and the islands of trees; and it was then he glimpsed a little peaked roof, too small for a regular house. It rose high among the oaks beside a big house. He raced ahead eagerly between chimneys and balconies and across girding branches: raced to find the kit, to find help for the two women who knew about cats like them, who were not afraid to talk to cats. What cat would ever have thought that he, Cotton, would launch himself on such a terrifying journey in order to save two humans?

Max Harper was thankful he’d hired Karen Packard. She’d taken over the stables and yard as efficiently as a far more seasoned investigator. Her careful, intelligent presence helped very much to ease his wrenching pain over Charlie’s abduction, as the slim, dark-haired young rookie took prints in the stable and house, and now in the alleyway of the stable poured casts of the intruders’ footprints. Karen was thirty-six, a tall, fine-boned woman with long dark hair and caring green eyes. She’d done some clothes modeling to work her way through the law-enforcement program at San Jose State. She’d told him, when he hired her, she’d rather dig ditches than do one more modeling job; she didn’t like the atmosphere, didn’t like the people, didn’t like their values and the meaningless glitz. You couldn’t put it more clearly than that, Max thought with a crooked little smile. Now, Karen pursued every aspect of her job-investigation, paperwork, surveillance-with an eager, single-minded commitment that would not be understood in that world of what she considered to be high rollers.

Running a brush over Bucky’s back, Max smoothed on the blanket and set his saddle in place, reached under for the cinch, automatically fending off Bucky’s companionable nip at his backside. It might seem a cowboy thing to do, to set out after Charlie on horseback, but there was a lot of wild, tangled country up there, and no way you could get a truck or a car up that trail; it had been iffy even for whatever smaller vehicle those men had used. He had observed, even in the near dark as he walked up along the shoulder of the trail, tire marks careening up over the shoulder, and broken branches that would have scraped hard along the vehicle. Hitting Charlie’s bound body? His mind was filled with Charlie, sitting across the table from him, laughing over some silly joke; grinning down at him from the back of her mare; standing out in the pasture calling the dogs, the wind blowing her long red hair; her hair tumbled on the pillow as she lay warm against him.

As he tightened the cinch, Ryan put Rock in the pasture so the eager dog couldn’t follow them. Max fetched the shotgun from his unit, nestled it into the saddle scabbard, and checked the clip in his automatic; then he and Ryan mounted, Ryan on Charlie’s mare, and headed up the dark trail. They would avoid using much light, which might be seen for some distance through the woods, and their cell phones were on vibrate.

He didn’t like employing a civilian in this way, but none of the uniforms at hand was any good with a horse and he wanted someone with him in case they had to split up. Ryan, having grown up in a police family, knew more about the work than most rookies, and she was competent with a firearm; her uncle Dallas had overseen the training of Ryan and her two sisters as soon as he considered them old enough to be responsible. Dallas was their dead mother’s brother. It was their father’s brother, their uncle Scotty, who had taught Ryan carpentry. Ryan had never played with dolls, the little girl much preferring to tag along after Scotty on his construction jobs.

Moving quickly up the trail through the dark woods, they had to use their torches occasionally, shielding them heavily, flicking them on only to pick up a tire track, making sure the vehicle hadn’t turned off somewhere. Though that wasn’t likely; with no side roads, the rough terrain would slow it considerably. They were less than five minutes out when they heard a huff behind them-and Rock came racing, the big dog a pale, panting streak looming like a ghost out of the night, charging into their shielded beams.

“Oh, God,” Ryan breathed. “He climbed the fence.” The heavily woven wire of the pasture fence was constructed to confine the Harpers’ two big mutts, as well as the horses; it was six feet high, and the Harper dogs had never thought to climb it. A Weimaraner was another matter, Max thought, half angry, half amused.

The big silver dog was royally pleased with himself, and raring to go; he had his nose to the trail and paused only to look up at Ryan, as if for direction, then sniffed at the breeze, drinking in a scent that drew him. He was all tension, ready to forge ahead, not wanting to obey when Ryan told him to hold. Max watched the two of them, frowning.

Ryan didn’t know whether to scold Rock and waste time taking him back or wait and see what he’d do. She wondered if Rock’s original escape from his sadistic owner had been accomplished by climbing over the woman’s chain-link security barrier. The expression on the silver dog’s face reflected such joy at his accomplishment that she couldn’t scold him. She looked through the darkness to Max. “Do I take him back?” But she didn’t want to do that.

Max knew this was foolish, the dog wasn’t trained. But, “Let him try,” he said softly. “Keep him quiet.”

She had only to nudge the mare ahead and Rock’s nose was to the trail, then scenting up high, drinking in the still air-and like a shot he took off.

They booted the horses ahead, fast. What the hell were they doing? Max thought. This wasn’t a tracking dog, Rock had had no such demanding training. But Max shook his head. Give him a chance, let’s see what he has. He’s bred for it, and he’s sure as hell on to something. Max’s gut was churning, his mind filled with Charlie’s face; he daren’t blow it, bringing the damned dog. But they moved on quickly, following the ghostly dog; and the cop who never prayed was praying now, and was willing, tonight, to take any help they could get, no matter how off the wall.

They kept the horses to a fast trot, it was too dark to safely gallop, the trail too rough; he wasn’t going to cripple a horse, which would only slow them. He hoped to hell the trees were thick enough to hide their shielded lights. They followed Rock as fast as they dared, losing him sometimes, then catching a faint movement far ahead, the crack of a twig as he ate up the ground. Was he tracking the vehicle only because Ryan was following it, obviously distressed? Or could he be on a deer? But a deer wouldn’t stay to the trail this long. Max couldn’t believe Rock was following Charlie, but that was what it looked like: the big dog taking her scent from the air, moving fast and intently, never swerving from the narrow path.

They knew that Rock was exceptionally well-bred, from a long line of dogs developed to follow by scent as well as sight, to track and retrieve on land and on water. This was an all-around breed, intelligent and powerful, that Max had grown to admire. But, tracking without training? Watching him, Max could only speculate on what was happening in that intent canine mind. Rock was fond of Charlie, and he was keenly sensitive to Ryan’s feelings; clearly he knew that something was wrong. Before they set out, he had been attuned to their tension, watching them, nervous and alert, as they’d saddled up. Now, staying to the bridle path, repeatedly scenting the air above the tire tracks, Rock moved so fast he was leaving them behind. Ryan daren’t shout at him; she whispered to call him back but he paid no attention. Max was afraid he’d run straight into their quarry and give them away-but suddenly, at the top of a ridge, he slowed. Stood frozen.

They strained to see among the dense, dark trees, to hear the smallest sound. Approaching Rock, they could see him sniffing the ground in a circle, as if he’d lost the trail. They pulled the horses up at a distance so as not to disturb whatever he had-but the horses hardly had time to rest before Rock started again, stepping slowly now, his head raised to taste the wind. At the same instant, Max’s cell phone vibrated, sending unease through him and then a surge of hope that Charlie had been found, that he’d hear her voice. Snatching the phone from his pocket, he answered softly-and went rigid.

A female voice-but not Charlie.

“Charlie’s kidnappers are headed for the ruins,” she said, and the voice was so familiar that he shivered. “For the Pamillon estate. They plan to hide her there, leave her tied up in an old overgrown trailer, all covered with vines.”

“If you know where she is, then help her!” he whispered. “Where are you? Can’t you untie her, help her get away! Where-”

“I’m not there. I…heard them say that’s where they’d take her. I’m not anywhere near there.”

“Then how did you hear them? Who are they?”

“Cage Jones. And a younger man, slimmer than Cage. Long hair and faded brown eyes.”

“Will you tell me who you are? Tell me how you…?”

The caller hung up.

He knew who the woman was, as much as he could ever know. This snitch, who had given him so many tips, had never identified herself and very likely never would. Feeling numb, he punched in the code for Garza, got him on the first ring.

“Ryan and I are on the trail above my place,” he said softly, “headed up into the hills, following the tire tracks. The snitch just called-the woman. She said it’s Cage Jones and, from her description, I’d guess Eddie Sears. Said they mean to hide Charlie at the old ruins, that she overheard them. Some overgrown trailer up there. That ring a bell?”

A negative from Dallas.

“She said it’s covered with vines. Send four units up the old road, no lights, radios off. Have them wait at the edge of the ruins, stay in their cars. No radios, no noise.”

“They’re on their way.”

When Max hung up, he called Karen. She had nothing new, she was still taking prints while waiting for her casts to dry-tire casts and three good sets of footprints, one set that she thought would be Charlie’s. “Did Rock follow you? He got out of the pasture. I’m sorry, Max. He wouldn’t come to me. I didn’t know dogs could climb-I swear I saw him do it.”

“This one can,” Max said wryly. “He’s here. Damn dog’s tracking her.” He told her about the snitch’s call and that four units were headed for the ruins. “When you finish, Karen, get on back to the station, get those prints into the works.”

Hanging up, he pushed Bucky to a slow, sure-footed lope, catching up with Ryan. She’d dismounted and was holding Rock back, to wait for Max. When she turned the dog loose he took off again, tasting the air now with even sharper excitement, his four-inch tail wagging madly, wagging the way it did when he dug out a ground squirrel. Then suddenly he stopped again, dead still, nose to the ground and snuffling hard.

Ryan slid off the mare, threw her reins to Max, and pulled Rock away so he wouldn’t destroy the new configuration of tracks. “Shoe prints,” she said softly. She praised Rock and hugged him, and she and Max studied the torn-up ground, their coats wrapped over their lights.

The Jeep had stopped there, and the prints of two men were all around its tracks, in a confused tangle. Had Charlie made a successful try, and gotten away? Max searched for her footprints, his hands sweating, his belly in a knot.

The young officer who came to evict Greeley Urzey from the seniors’ basement apartment took considerable verbal abuse in both English and Spanish. Jimmie McFarland was one of the youngest men on the force, baby faced, with soft brown hair and innocent brown eyes. Jimmie knew enough Spanish to greatly admire the grizzled old man’s vocabulary.

Greeley Urzey was not well educated, but McFarland knew he’d lived and worked most of his adult life in Panama. He’d apparently learned quickly what he needed to get along, including a nice repertoire of retorts. As Officer McFarland invited Greeley to quietly leave the premises of the seniors’ house or spend the night in jail, Greeley told him half in English and half in Spanish that he wasn’t sleeping in their jail and just what they could do with that facility.

McFarland had looked at Greeley steadily, trying not to smile. “You want a lift down the hill? It’s a motel or the jail, take your pick.” McFarland wasn’t about to leave Greeley hanging around the seniors’ place and have to come back for him. No cop likes a domestic dispute, even an apparently nonviolent one-though he didn’t much want the old man in his squad car, either; he smelled like a drunk billy goat.

“I have a car!” Greeley had snapped, snatching up his wrinkled leather duffle and heading around the house to the street, to a new, green PT Cruiser that surprised McFarland. McFarland waited for him to start the car and head down the hill, then followed him, wondering if he should run the plates, see if the car was stolen. He pulled over, making a note of the plates, and watching as Greeley swung into the parking area of the first vacant motel he came to, parked the PT Cruiser, and carried his battered old satchel through the motel’s patio and into the lobby.

After ten minutes, when Greeley did not come out, McFarland called the motel desk to make sure he’d checked in.

He had. Breathing easier, McFarland left, thinking about the beginning Spanish lessons he was taking, wondering if the advanced course would provide a more colorful approach, if it might include some of the old man’s impressive vocabulary.

McFarland had had a good day. He had, with the two detectives and Karen working the urgent missing cases, been given free reign with the village murders. He had acquired, by means he might not want to relate to the chief, enough evidence to bring in both Tucker and Keating for questioning-for visits that, he hoped, would result in arrests. As for the third murder, he was convinced that it, too, would turn out to be a domestic, though as yet they had nothing solid.

As Greeley signed the register and palmed the key to his room, up in the hills his sister, Mavity, was airing out the apartment that he had occupied. Setting down her arsenal of vacuum cleaner and dust mop, scrub mops and chemicals and buckets, she flung open windows as violently as if the wind coming up the canyon could blow away Greeley himself. Her attack of cleaning included new contact paper in all the drawers, which gave her an excuse to go through them to see if he’d forgotten anything of interest. She had already searched Greeley’s duffle, two days earlier.

That was part of what had upset her so, and made her pursue the restraining order. She had been searching his bag for his stash of whiskey, meaning to throw it out. She felt no guilt in poking around. It wasn’t her fault her brother was a drunk, but she did feel responsible for the fact that he was disturbing her friends. She hadn’t found his bottle, but she’d found something far more interesting.

In the bottom of the bag was a small white paper box, maybe two by three inches, embossed with the logo of a Panamanian jewelry store; the box was old and stained, as if perhaps it had been used for many purposes. Inside, packed carefully between layers of yellowed tissue paper, was a little gold devil. An ugly little figure with an evil leer-devil, or some other idol, one of them pagan idols from Central America. It looked like real solid gold, and it felt warm and rich like gold; it was so heavy it startled her.

But it couldn’t be real gold, the real thing would be worth thousands, maybe more. It had to be a museum copy. She remembered Greeley telling about little gold figures, ancient artifacts, he’d said. She couldn’t remember the name he called them. Did he say they were pre-Columbian? From the time before Columbus discovered South America? Didn’t seem possible anything could last that long, anything so small. Sacred trinkets, Greeley’d said, fashioned by vanished tribes. He’d been only a little drunk at the time, just enough to be in one of them showy moods when he liked to tell what he knew, and embroider on it. He said them little gold figures were in great demand, now, that even one would be worth a fortune.

With Greeley, she never knew what to believe.

She didn’t know much about history or archeology, and she didn’t remember those long-ago dates. Huacas, she thought suddenly. That was what he’d called them. The real gold huacas, Greeley said, were illegal to own, in Panama, except by the national museum. He said the museum made copies, though, and sold them to the tourists. Surely this was one of the copies. But why was it so heavy?

Greeley wasn’t above stealing, if he could get away with it, or thought he could-but Greeley couldn’t steal this kind of state-guarded treasure. If what he said was true, such a theft was far more sophisticated than anything that old man was capable of. Greeley’s thefts ran to cracking the safe of a small mom-and-pop store and making off with a few hundred dollars. Not some high-powered international operation; that wasn’t Greeley’s style, he wouldn’t know how to go about such a thing. All his talk that night, that had been whiskey talk, colorful storytelling, more than half from Greeley’s sodden imagination.

All their lives, her brother had stolen, ever since they were kids. She was forever surprised he didn’t spend more time in jail; it was just short sentences and then out again. Well, she had to admit, in spite of his thieving ways, he’d held down a good job for forty years-but only because he loved the diving. She never ceased to wonder that he could be so responsible at his work and so worthless in the rest of his life.

That day she’d found the huaca she’d stood there in the basement apartment looking down at that evil gold devil, wondering. It was an evil little thing; its stare had given her the creeps, made her think of voodoo curses, the pagan magic that Greeley liked to tell about.

Wilma said those countries weren’t all pagan, that they were Christian, too. Catholic. But Mavity had seen pictures of those South American churches, their voodoo idols all mixed in with the saints and the virgin. That, in her book, wasn’t any kind of Christian.

Quickly she had wrapped the gold devil up again, closed it away in its box, and put the box back in the duffle. Hurrying, she’d latched the worn leather bag and left the room, her hands icy, the image of that devil face too clear in her mind.

Now, she cleaned the room vehemently until she’d eradicated the sour smells. She carried the sheets and towels into the little laundry at the end of the hall, put them in the washer with plenty of Clorox. When she gathered up her cleaning equipment and locked the door to the apartment, she left the windows open, to air the place. She felt no guilt at possibly sending Greeley to jail. If he didn’t obey the restraining order, a cell was what he deserved.