Cat Striking Back

8

HE STOPPED SEVERAL times to look out at an empty field, but in every case one house or another was too close. He wanted a place where he wouldn’t have to carry her for miles across rough fields in the dark, but isolated enough so no one would hear him digging. The night was so still. Even from inside a house someone might hear the sound of the shovel, or a dog would hear and start barking. Though the night was cool, some hardy soul might be sitting on his front porch, his ears tuned to every small bucolic sound. To such a listener, the clink of a shovel would echo like thunder. And he’d have to do it all in the dark. If he used the flashlight, he’d sure as hell be seen. She’d really screwed things up, had really made it hard for him.

He’d headed home after midnight, discouraged with her still in the trunk. He was exhausted and his nerves were shot. He’d put the car in the garage, put on clean tennis shoes, and in the dark neighborhood he’d headed on foot back to the Parker house. Hoping somehow, even in the dark, to clean up the tracks he’d left. He carried the flashlight in his pocket, but when he got there he was afraid someone would see a light moving around the yard or reflecting up from the pool. Consequently, he couldn’t see what to clean up; if he tried, he’d only make a mess of it. He’d have to come back in the morning, the minute it started to get light.

Before leaving the Parkers’ yard he removed the tennis shoes so as not to leave a muddy trail, dropped them in the plastic bag he’d stuffed in his pocket. He walked home in his stocking feet, bruising his heel on a pebble, thinking about the people on his block, about their routines on Sunday mornings.

Two couples slept in, late. Two men he knew casually would probably play an early round of golf. But what did their wives do? He’d never thought to ask, never paid attention. Did those women garden on Sunday mornings? Leave the house to go to church? Or sit idly drinking coffee, looking out the windows? She’d know what they did, that was part of her job, to know about the neighbors. And now she could tell him nothing.

Walking home, he saw no one. He heard two cats yowling somewhere down the street, sending chills up his spine. Everyone on the damned block seemed to have cats. If he’d known that when they bought the place, he might have thought better of moving where it wasn’t easy to conceal his disgust-but he had no choice, he needed to be liked and to be accepted, that was part of their program.

At home, he cleaned up the tennis shoes in the kitchen sink, left them drying by the back door. He sat in the kitchen for over an hour drinking cold coffee from the morning and wishing he still smoked, to calm his nerves. He thought about going over to the all-night grocery east of the village and getting a pack, take the other car, but he didn’t feel like going anywhere. Around three in the morning he went into the bedroom, lay down on the bed, and pulled the spread up over himself-but then he could smell her sweet scent, and he ended up moving into the guest room, jerking the comforter up over his legs.

He woke, startled, 5:45 by the red numbers on the clock. It was light out. Rising quickly, he splashed water on his face, pulled on the same jeans he’d worn the night before, found some dry shoes, and an old pair of gloves. Walking back to the Parker house, he eyed each quiet, sleeping home he passed. The sun would soon be up, and his neighbors would be waking.

He didn’t think, until he was walking up the drive, that the water might have been cut off, considering that the house had been empty for nearly six months. Hurrying back to the reeled hose at the edge of the bushes near the pool, he tried the faucet and breathed easier. The water was on and had good pressure. Unreeling the hose, dragging its length to the far end of the pool, he looked down to where she’d died.

Even in the early light, the drag marks were sharp and clear, broken by the line of his footprints. Ducking down to the height of the bushes so as not to be noticed from next door or from the street, he crouched at the edge of the coping, hosing down the pool, sluicing the sides and bottom with a strong, condensed stream, sending the mud into new configurations until he was sure he’d destroyed every drag mark and footprint.

When he was satisfied with the looks of the pool and steps, he hosed the drive up to where he’d loaded her body, where the muddy trail stopped. As he worked, he kept seeing her body stuffed into the trunk of the car. The morning brightened but then dimmed again as a spread of clouds began to creep across the rising sun. He didn’t hose clear to the street. The next-door neighbors’ drapes were still closed but he worried that someone would come out later to get the paper, would glance over and see the driveway wet. He stopped well back, where the water might not be noticed.

If those clouds did mean rain, that would solve the problem just fine, it wouldn’t take much to wet the rest of the drive. This time of year the weather was erratic, so maybe, for once, luck was with him. Winding the hose back on the reel, his hands were cold in the soaked gloves. The wet tennis shoes had turned his feet cold, too. He had brought some rags, with which he wiped the shoes down, pressing the threadbare towels against the wet canvas to soak up water, to keep from leaving footprints on the way home. Departing the Parker house, on the back street, he decided maybe a real walk would help his breathing and clear his head-give him time to decide on a story if some neighbor saw that they were still here. He did maybe a mile along the side streets, a swinging walk that let him breathe easier and that set his heart beating with more strength.

Circling back at last to his own street, he knew he had to eat, though he didn’t feel like it. He went in the house through the side door, tied the wet shoes and gloves and wet jeans in a plastic bag and got dry ones. He was frying a couple of eggs when, glancing out the kitchen window, he saw a car pass, heading slowly downhill toward the Parker place, and he did a double take.

He thought he knew the driver. A square-faced woman with dark, short hair, wearing a dark jacket. She slowed as a kid on a bike passed her, then moved on, but he got a good enough look to be sure.

Molena Point PD had only a few women, and this one was a detective. What the hell would she be doing here, and at this time in the morning? He flipped his scorched eggs onto the plate, feeling cold. This had to be a coincidence, she was just passing. But, turning off the burner, he went out the back and headed for the Parker house.

A block before he reached it he crossed to the opposite side of the street, and three doors above the Parker place, at a neat white Cape Cod, he moved deep into shelter behind a toyon tree covered with red berries. Behind him, the Cape Cod ’s windows were shuttered, and there was no sound from within.

Had some busy neighbor seen him in the Parkers’ yard, and called the police? The detective parked across the street, just beyond where he was concealed. She got out, stood looking up and down the street at each house, at each yard. She was squarely built, probably in her fifties, her dark uniform severe. Black stockings, regulation black shoes. She crossed to the Parker yard, again stood looking. When she headed on back, toward the swimming pool, his stomach lurched. When she stopped, staring down at the wet drive-wet only half the way-he felt sick.

She stood looking down at his wet tracks, then moved away to examine the neatly wound, wet hose. He watched her take a camera from the bag she carried and photograph the wet drive. What the hell was this, what had brought her here? He looked around at the neighbors’ houses, but no one had appeared, no one stepped out on a porch as if to come and speak to her.

When she moved down the drive to the pool, he could hardly breathe. He had to shift position in order to see her where she’d paused on the coping, then he backed away, sweating-that was when he saw a cat on the roof of the next house. A big gray cat stood at the edge of the shingles, staring down as if it, too, was watching the woman. The appearance of another cat, after the one that ran across his path, generated a wave of fear almost like a premonition.

When the detective turned, as if to head back to her car, he didn’t wait. He slid away out of sight between the two houses, kept moving between houses down to the lower street where he hurried back toward home.

Entering his street two blocks above the Parker place, he heard a power mower start, and he saw the guy up at the corner, at the blue house, beginning to mow his lawn. Pretty damn early to be mowing the lawn on Sunday. When he looked back down the hill to the Parker place, the cop’s car was still there. From this angle he couldn’t see the detective, didn’t know what she was doing, but the cat was still there on the roof. He knew it was silly and childish but he didn’t like the sight of that cat peering down at the place where all his troubles had begun. It was not a good sign to see a cat there.

He’d finally gotten used to her succession of cats, so he didn’t act so shaky around them. She’d had several dogs but he never paid them any attention. It was when he was near the cats that he had to be careful and act natural.

When he was a boy, he hadn’t played much with other kids, he’d been a loner, a reader. He read everything, but he liked science fiction best. He thought about his mother’s old black cat that he’d hated, the way it would stare and stare at him while he wanted to be left alone to read, and the two things were related in his mind: Poe’s story “The Black Cat” and his mother’s cat. The more her cat watched him, the more he read Poe, read it over and over, sickly drawn to the story; and the more the fictional cat and the live cat ran together in his mind.

His mother never knew what happened to that cat. She said it got old, that it must have gotten sick and gone away to die. She said animals did that. Lucky for him that she’d come up with her own explanation about why it had vanished.

He’d thought she’d get no more cats, but then she came home with that pale kitten, that she’d loved and tended like a baby. Loved it more than she’d ever loved him. It was after he got rid of the kitten that his fear and disgust of cats began to get out of hand. It was then that his breathing got bad.

And then years later, when he got married, when they’d been married only a few months, she came home with a cat. She’d had a dog then, and he’d never imagined she’d get a cat, too. When she came in carrying it, he thought she was going to shove the soft, furry thing right at him. When he backed away from the cat crouched in her cuddling hands, its yellow eyes had blazed like fire, straight up into his eyes.

How could she love such a thing?

She’d looked at him, shocked. He’d said she startled him, coming in with a cat. He’d said he was allergic to them, that he’d never told her. She’d looked so dismayed that he said he’d always been allergic, but only if he got close, only if he petted them, that otherwise they didn’t bother him at all.

She’d kept the cat away from him, and he’d never let on how he hated it. He was good at that, that was what made them such a good team: He could be whatever the situation called for-on the outside.

Later he was glad he’d accepted the cat, the animal seemed to settle her down, to keep her from her nervous times. She’d had a succession of cats, and all these years he’d tolerated them, had grown skilled at acting natural around them, had never let her see how he detested them. But the cats always knew, her cats wouldn’t go near him.

Now when he looked down the street again, the cat on the roof had disappeared. He went on around his house to the back, slipped in through the side door, and locked it. He threw the cold cooked eggs in the sink, ran the garbage disposal, put the dirty skillet in the dishwasher so as not to leave anything for the housekeeping people to wonder about. Snatching up her purse and bag from the front entry, he went through the house to the garage, shoved them in the backseat of the car. At the last minute he went back to the kitchen, got the bag of wet shoes and clothes, dropped it on the floor of the backseat.

He had to reconnect the automatic door opener so the housekeeping service wouldn’t wonder about that either. That Harper woman ran a hands-on business, she was in and out of all the houses her people maintained, the nosy bitch. It would be just like her to try to open up the garage for some reason, maybe to vacuum out the cobwebs, and he sure didn’t want the police chief’s wife to start asking questions.

Hitting the remote, he winced as the door rumbled up then rumbled down again behind him. By now, some neighbor was sure to be up. What if they heard the door, and remembered it later? Well, it couldn’t be helped, he thought nervously.

He meant to head up into the hills again where, in full daylight, it would be easier to find a place to bury her. But then, changing his mind, he went on up his street to the dead end, pulled off into the woods, and walked back down the lower road to see if the detective was still there, nosing around. He’d rest easier when she left, when he was sure she’d found nothing, then he’d head for the hills, find the right place. Lay low until it got dark and he could bury her. Then he could get on with their plan.