Cat Pay The Devil

28

F rom atop a crumbling wall, the five cats watched dark-clad cops scour the ruins, shining their lights into caves and crevices, talking to one another in those low, machine voices. They saw, farther up the hill, Max Harper kiss Charlie, and then Charlie mounted the big buckskin-the horses were nervous from the shooting, sidestepping, and fussing. Charlie rode away into the woods with the other woman to calm the frightened mounts, the cats thought. Willow and Cotton and Coyote understood that; they needed comforting, too. The three sat close together, gently grooming one another.

They had done things tonight that were not natural to them, had participated in frightening events foreign to their world, and now they needed one another. But they were warm with satisfaction, too. Cage Jones had gotten what he deserved, and that made them purr. But beside the three ferals, Dulcie and Kit were tense with excitement, watching the action as if eager to leap into the fray, convinced that, with cops all over, Eddie Sears would soon be caught, too.

“Like a mouse in a tin can,” Kit said. And Willow and Cotton smiled. In the ferals’ wild and threatened lives, retribution was highly valued-and suddenly Eddie Sears appeared from out of nowhere running straight at them, racing for their wall, dodging, searching for a place to hide, and the cops were nearly on him. The three ferals slunk down, ready to vanish. But Dulcie and Kit crouched, with blazing eyes, their ears back, their tails lashing as Eddie veered along the wall looking for a way through-and the two cats flew at him: twin trajectories hitting him hard, raking him harder. Emboldened, the other three followed. Eddie Sears, covered with enraged and clawing cats, ran screaming, batting futilely at the slashing beasts.

“Don’t shoot,” Wilma shouted, swinging out of the squad car and running up the road. Maybe no one heard her; there were officers all over, converging on Sears. “Don’t shoot,” she cried, “he’s not alone!”

“What is that?” McFarland hissed, throwing his light on something wild and screaming that rode Sears’s shoulder, raking his face. McFarland dove at Sears’s legs, hit him low and hard and dropped him. As Sears went down, the beast that covered him seemed to break into separate parts and vanish, exploding away in the dark.

McFarland knelt, cuffing Sears’s hands behind him. What the hell was that? He shone his light into Sears’s face. It was clawed and bloodied. McFarland shivered and felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, stiff.

He was securing Sears’s legs when he glanced up and saw Wilma standing over them. She looked at him, looked at Sears. She said nothing, just turned and headed away, back toward the squad car. McFarland knelt atop Sears, watching her, amused by the shadow of a grin that she couldn’t hide. Then Brennan joined him, and they got Sears to his feet. “What was that?” Brennan said. Around them in the night, officers were gathering, their lights coming down out of the ruins. “What the hell was that?”

No one knew, or maybe didn’t want to say what they thought they had seen. Until rookie Eleanor Sand arrived. “I think,” she said, “it was cats.”

“Cats?” the men looked at her, and laughed. “Cats, Sandy? What kind of cats? Sandy, girl, you’ve lost it.”

“I think there are feral cats up here,” she said. “I’ve been up here, seen them. Domestic cats gone wild.”

“Sandy, no cat would do what we just saw.”

“What kind of cats would…?”

“They’d have to be rabid to do that.”

Eleanor laughed. “No. Those cats act all right, usually. But they stay away from people. Maybe tonight, with all the confusion, they felt threatened.”

It was then that Charlie rode up on the buckskin. “I think Eleanor’s right,” she said softly. “Maybe tonight, with all the excitement, everyone running, the lights…” She looked around at the circle of unbelieving cops. “If those feral females were protecting kittens, as wild as they are, they’d attack anything.”

The men stared at her and shook their heads.

“Wild cats with kittens…I’ve read that cats in wild colonies birth their kittens all at one time. And that they will band together to protect them.” Charlie shrugged. “Maybe Sears, running like that, got too near their lair.” Turning Bucky, she headed back up toward the woods, her joy in retribution equally as fierce as that of the five little cats.

Her only disappointment was that, entering the woods where Ryan sat astride Redwing, she could tell her nothing of what had really happened, she could share none of the wonder with Ryan. Nor could she, she thought sadly, share this with Max.

Dulcie and Kit listened to the ambulance come screaming, they watched as the rescue vehicle slowed and made its way through the estate, watched the medics get to work on Cage Jones.

Ought to let him die, Dulcie thought as she fled for the squad car and Wilma. She glanced behind her once, to the broken wall where Kit sat with the three ferals, all of them smiling. Then heading down the road, Dulcie leaped in through the passenger-side window, into Wilma’s arms, snuggling with her and purring so loudly that Wilma smiled.

But after a while, Dulcie said, “You’re hurting, aren’t you? I can tell, the way you sit. I bet you’re all bruises.” Dulcie quit purring and laid her ears back. “Hurting, and all alone, while Cage Jones is being patched up and pampered and covered with a warm blanket and given a sedative for pain.”

Wilma laughed. “I’m not alone, I have you. I could use something for my headache. A whiskey and a rare steak would fix that.”

“Makes my fur bristle to think of all the tax money the state of California is going to spend, making that man comfortable.”

“That, Dulcie, is the way it works.”

“Money that could be used to clean up our house, which he trashed. Why spend money on that scum?”

“Only in a dictatorship,” Wilma said, “would Jones be left to die unattended.”

“Maybe so, but that’s all he deserves. Well, I’m only a cat. I don’t have to think like a human. Maybe cats cut a sharper line between good and evil.”

“Maybe,” Wilma said, stroking Dulcie’s ear. “Maybe cats should rule the world.”

The traffic was light considering what this freeway usually handled. By nine forty-five the late work traffic had dispersed. Beyond Clyde’s open window the worst heat had abated, and the night was warm and soft; the heavy Lexus SUV provided a ride so smooth and silent that a guy could go to sleep, Clyde thought. Not like the vintage cars he restored, that let you know their engines were running. The way he babied them, his engines always purred-but louder and with more character. Tonight, he could have used a bit of engine growl to keep him alert. He didn’t even have Joe’s acerbic conversation. In the open-top carrier on the seat beside him, the tomcat slept deeply, his soft snoring rivaling the smooth rhythm of the Lexus. It had been a long day for the tomcat.

From Dulcie’s frantic phone call to the station saying that Wilma was gone, from the moment Joe raced to her house, and then their hasty trip to Gilroy; from Joe’s sleuthing in the discount shops, to playing dumb for Detective Davis, all that on top of the village murders that the gray cat had fussed over for days, Joe was done in. In the car after supper, looking out from the carrier, his last words had been that he’d catch a few winks, a small restorative nap to recharge the batteries, then be rarin’ to go again.

The calm evening drive would be peacefully restorative for Clyde, too, if he hadn’t been strung tight with concern for Wilma and for Charlie. Not in the mood for local radio or a CD, his mind was filled with a succession of scenes that ran by him like clips from old movies. Wilma the first time he ever saw her, when he was eight and Wilma in her twenties, the day her family moved in next door to him, Wilma in jeans and an old T-shirt, her long blond hair tied back, working alongside the two men her folks had hired to unload the rented truck. The tall blonde carrying in big cardboard boxes marked “kitchen,” “bathroom,” “Wilma’s room,” all the rooms of the house. Clyde’s mother had said they were probably paying the moving men by the hour, so everyone helped. Times were hard then for many families, certainly for his own folks.

A memory of Wilma playing baseball with the little kids, in the street, Wilma hitting a home run over the neighbor’s garage; they never did find the ball. Wilma making Christmas cookies in the shape of cowboy hats and horses for him; she was always so beautiful, her blond hair so clean and bright. Long years later, when it turned gray, she didn’t dye it like other women, she enjoyed that silver mane. Wilma taking him to San Francisco for the weekend when he was twelve, to the zoo, to Fisherman’s Wharf for cracked crab and sourdough. And the trip through the San Francisco PD because she knew the chief.

And then when Charlie had first come to stay with Wilma after she’d quit her job in the city, packed up her belongings in cardboard boxes, driven down to start a new life in the village. First time he ever saw Charlie she was lying on her back underneath the van, changing the oil in her old blue van, swearing when oil dripped in her eye.

For a long time he’d thought he was in love with Charlie. Maybe he had been. It had hurt bad when suddenly Charlie and Max were a pair, no hints, no working up to it that he’d noticed. They’d been training Clyde’s unmanageable Great Dane puppies for him, up at Max’s ranch, working the two on obedience where there was room for them to run.

It was a situation that neither Charlie nor Max had planned, Clyde was sure of that. It just happened. After Charlie told him, he’d never let either of them know how much it hurt.

But he’d gotten over the hurt, had seen how good they were together, had realized that in some strange way they belonged together, and he’d been glad for that, glad they’d found each other-and now Charlie was missing. Clyde felt his stomach twitch and churn, hurting for Max, felt tears of rage burn.

This wasn’t coincidence. Did Cage Jones have both women? He understood how Jones’s twisted mind might decide there were issues that warranted kidnapping Wilma, that was sick enough. But why Charlie? A hostage, additional pressure on Wilma? But for what? Both Max and Davis thought the hostage theory was valid, and that Wilma’s kidnapping wasn’t for retribution alone. Clyde slowed at the Prunedale cutoff, but then gave it the gas, deciding to keep straight on through Salinas, which was a safer route. In this light traffic, the trip should be less than an hour. Not until he’d slowed going through Salinas did he hit the phone’s button for Molena Point PD.

When the tomcat heard the ringing on the speaker, he jerked awake and pushed up out of the carrier, stretching tall and yawning. Stretching again as he listened to Mabel Farthy’s brief answer.

“It’s Clyde; I’m just coming through Salinas, headed home.”

Mabel’s voice was bright with excitement. When she said, “Wilma’s safe! Charlie’s safe!” Clyde almost wrecked the car.

“They…Hold a minute,” Mabel said, as she switched to another line. She was gone maybe twenty seconds, then cut back in. “The captain’s there with them, Dallas on his way. Jones is in custody, headed for emergency, gunshot in the face. Hold…”

Another short delay, then she came back on. “Sears is in custody, too.”

“Where?” Clyde snapped. “Where are they?”

“Don’t go up there, Clyde. Half the force is up there on a narrow road, can hardly turn a car around, you’d only be in the way.”

“Up where?”

“Hold again…” Over a minute this time. As Clyde sped up, west of Salinas, a truck passed him, cutting close. He let off the gas until there was again ample space between them. Mabel came back on. “Gotta go, three lines flashing…”

“If you don’t tell me where, I’ll keep calling, jam your lines.”

Mabel sighed. “Pamillon ruins. Come on into the station, Clyde. They should be down here by the time you get back. They…Gotta go,” she said, and cut off.

He turned the speaker off, grumbling. Beside him Joe sat erect in the carrier, staring at Clyde, then staring out the window, then back at Clyde, his look saying clearly, Step on it. Get this heap moving.

“I’m not wrecking us to get there faster. The excitement’s over. They’re safe. Thank your cat god or whatever, and keep your fur on.”

“But they…Dulcie and Kit…She couldn’t tell us what’s happened to them. Where they are, Clyde? What if…?”

“I’m not driving any faster. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

The tomcat began to wash his paws. “There was a time, you’d have floor-boarded this buggy.”

“There was a time I’d kill a quart of whiskey, get up the next morning and hunker down on the back of the meanest bull in the string. I’m older now and smarter.”

Silence.

“Does it occur to you that my more sensible driving keeps your worthless neck safe? Or does that not mean anything?”

Joe Grey sighed, curled up in his carrier, lifted a disdainful paw, and pulled the top over. He remained thus secluded until Clyde bypassed Molena Point and, at around ten forty, turned up the hills, toward the Pamillon estate. Then Joe came alive, staring high above them at the scattered car lights, pricking up his ears at the wail of an ambulance that came zigzagging down, forcing them onto the shoulder. The minute they stopped, he crouched, to leap out.