Cat Striking Back

19

HE STOOD ON the hill beside the car hidden by the heavy cypress branches, looking down along the lower roads. There were no car lights, and only a few scattered houselights shone, muted behind closed curtains. People were settling in for the evening, and that old couple with their canes and their weird dog were gone. It had taken them long enough, nothing better to do than sit on a stone wall watching the fog roll in. He’d lost sight of them for a while, and when he looked again they’d vanished. He meant to wait another hour, until there was less likelihood of cars, before he started digging. He didn’t want someone taking a late-evening walk and hearing the sound of the shovel or seeing the reflection of his flashlight through the garage window.

Getting in the car, silently closing the door, he sat looking down at the quiet, bucolic neighborhood. Those houses down there, none of them were very impressive, just little wood-framed places, ordinary and small. A strange neighborhood to be putting a lot of work and money into a remodel, particularly with the economy in trouble. Why spend time on the nondescript place, why take the risk?

He didn’t let himself think that he was taking an even greater risk-and that he had a lot more to lose than did that contractor.

He had laid the flashlight and tools on the backseat, everything was ready. He wished he could play the radio but he didn’t want to chance it. She’d have turned on the oldies station, she didn’t like to sit quietly when they were together.

Yet she’d lie for hours soaking up the sun, silent and alone and completely happy. He hated that, hated that she’d liked being alone.

When he started getting restless, he did turn the radio on, real low, but then nervously turned it off again. Below him, the lights in one house went out, as if the occupants had gone to bed. Or were they leaving, going out? But no car lights came on and moved away. He was about to gather up his tools and get on with the unpleasant work ahead when, far down the hill, lights appeared from around a bend, heading up toward him.

He watched the car getting closer, watched it turn onto the street below and head up the hill, straight for the remodel, making him wish he’d pulled his car even deeper under the trees. As it passed the last lighted house he saw its black-and-white pattern. Black car, white door with MOLENA POINT POLICE stenciled on it. It paused before the remodel, generating in him a jolt of panic.

He could see only the driver, couldn’t tell if he was alone. He sat with the motor running, shining the beam of his flashlight over the house and yard. It paused at the dirt pile. He prayed the guy wouldn’t walk the property, that he wouldn’t try the pedestrian door into the garage, which he’d left unlocked. The thought of a cop going in there made cold sweat prick his neck and shoulders. Was this a routine patrol, or had someone seen him walking around the place and called 911?

The cop’s light played over and around the dirt pile for a few minutes but then swung back across the front door and front windows and the garage window. There, again it paused. He expected the guy to get out, maybe walk around the place. If he checked the doors, found the garage door unlocked, would he go inside? There was nothing to see in there. Yet. Would he maybe call the contractor, that the door was unlocked, meet her up here so she could check it out herself?

But the cop didn’t get out, he just sat there behind the wheel, looking. As if this was only a routine check after all, and he’d be gone in a minute. He could hear the guy talking on the radio but couldn’t make out what he said, his voice was low and the distance too great. Was it something about this house or something else entirely? Maybe only a routine call. It seemed forever before the cop moved on, heading up the hill toward him. As the squad car approached the cypress trees, he slid down in the seat, thinking about the shovel on the floor and the tools lying in plain sight on the backseat.

He watched the reflection of moving headlights, lis tened to the crunch of tires on the rough street as the unit passed within a few feet of his hidden car. He didn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe. His blood felt like ice.

But the guy didn’t stop, didn’t see his car. He remained crouched out of sight, listening to it move on up the hill. Did he hear it stop, up there? Yes, when he rose warily to look, it had paused at a lighted house high on the hill above.

Again he waited, again the cop remained in his car, just sitting there, shining his light around. Didn’t he have anything better to do? What, was he checking out a report of someone prowling around up here? Why didn’t he get out and walk the properties, then? Was it because he was alone, without backup? Was he afraid to walk these hills alone?

After what seemed like forever, the unit moved on, to disappear over the crest of the hill. He waited, listening. After some time, when he didn’t hear it coming back, he eased up, trying to get his breath, sucking on the damned inhaler and then rubbing his legs and arms to warm himself. Shortness of breath always made him cold. Doctor gave him some pills for a really bad attack, but he didn’t take them; they made him feel worse than the constricted breathing. He’d dumped them out long ago, and now he wished he had them.

When the law didn’t return, he pulled his cap lower, pulled the collar of his dark windbreaker over his face so he’d blend in with the night, and eased out of the car. He headed down the hill staying among the trees, staying in the shadows and trying not to trip on the rough ground.

Moving along the dark side of the garage where the pedestrian door etched a darker rectangle, he told himself it would soon be over and no one would ever find her. In the morning they’d fill in the trench with gravel and pour new cement to replace that part of the garage floor and be none the wiser about what lay under their careful work. By the time the cement was dry, he’d be long gone.

Once he’d laid her to rest, as the obituaries so delicately put it, and before he left the area, he’d have plenty of time to take care of the rest of his business, and by morning, he’d be two hundred miles north.

Letting himself into the garage, he locked the door behind him. There was enough moonlight coming through the window so that he didn’t have to flip on the flashlight. He pulled on the gloves he’d brought and took up one of the shovels that leaned against the wall. He was about to head down the ladder when he thought of the coveralls that he’d sat on earlier.

The foreman was bigger than he was, so it was easy to pull the muddy garment up over his pants. He tried on the boots that stood in the corner. The fit was a bit loose, but they’d save having to clean up his own shoes, which he left on the worktable. More important, they’d leave the correct, waffle-patterned footprints in the bottom of the ditch, because who knew what someone might notice before they dumped in the gravel?

Tossing the shovel down into the pit, he descended the ladder. The damp ground had already been loosened with the shovel or a pick and was soft under his feet, the waffled prints showing clearly. He chose the corner that felt soft est, and began to dig, congratulating himself on changing into the boots but annoyed that it had been a last-minute thought, that he hadn’t planned better. He began to wonder what else he might have missed.

He could think of nothing left undone, he thought he had everything in hand, but still, as he worked, the worry nagged at him. This procedure, tonight, hadn’t been planned the way their regular jobs were. She hadn’t planned it, he thought with sick amusement. Working on his own, he was shaky about his attention to detail-she’d seen to the details. Now, without her direction, he had to be doubly careful.

The digging wasn’t hard until he hit a layer of soft rock. That slowed him as he stomped the shovel into it-and the scraping sound was louder than he liked. A glint under the shovel caught his eye for a minute, but it was only a silver gum wrapper. It vanished when he tossed the next shovelful on the pile. He had to drive the blade through maybe five inches of rock, which made his breath ragged. Had to stop twice, to breathe and use the inhaler. Digging, he went over his next steps.

Once he brought her down and buried her, he’d swing by the rented garage on the other side of the village, change cars as she had planned, then get on with the night’s work. He felt strange, doing the job without her. Strange, and sick, but excited. Almost like a kid doing something new on his own.

He’d been digging for half an hour, was making good headway despite the fragmented rock and the weight of the damp earth. He wasn’t used to this kind of heavy work. He’d had to move the drainpipes out of the way, memorizing their position so when he’d finished, he could put them back in the same formation. He was taking a rest when he heard a faint brushing sound, a soft, stealthy noise that turned him cold.

Glancing at the closed door, he ducked down into the darkest corner of the pit, pulling the shovel beneath him so it wouldn’t gleam, hiding the pale oval of his face and hoping his dark clothes would blend into the pit’s shadows. Had that cop come back?

What else could it be? Not the contractor, not at this hour. He prayed seriously that it was just some animal, a raccoon or stray dog. She’d say it was insane to pray. She’d call such determined prayer arrogant and would laugh at him, say he’d already damned his own soul, so what difference would it make? Crouched in the dark corner in the earthen pit he listened again for the soft brushing, trying to envision what might have made the sound.

When it came again he realized it was not from the door at all but from the direction of the window, a brushing and then a scratching noise. Had that cop come back and was looking in the window? But no flashlight beam shone in, reflecting through the garage.

The sound continued for so long that he lost patience and warily slipped up the ladder to look, keeping his collar pulled up and his hat low, climbing only until he could just see over the lip of the ditch, could just see the moonlit window.

He froze, his hands turning cold on the ladder rungs.

No human stood beyond the glass. A cat was there, staring in at him, a pale cat crouched and ghostly on the windowsill, pressed against the glass and looking in-straight at him. A white cat smeared with dirt or some kind of smudged markings. Its eyes caught a red gleam from the reflection of moonlight off the glass. Its intent gaze was relentlessly fixed on him, it didn’t blink or look away. Swallowing, he backed down the ladder, tripped and nearly lost his footing, his clumsiness causing a metallic clatter that made his heart pound.

When he climbed and looked again at the window, expecting the cat to have been startled and run off, it was still there watching him.

Well, hell, it was only a cat, only a stupid beast. It didn’t know what he was doing. And it was, after all, beyond the glass where it couldn’t come near him, couldn’t rub up against him as cats so often did, as if they knew he hated them and took pleasure in his fear.

Disgusted, he turned back to his digging, kicking the shovel deeper into the earth and loose rock, his breath coming in gasps, and all the time he dug, he could feel the cat watching, feel the icy chill of its stare.

He kept working, booting his shovel again and again into the earth, heaping up the removed dirt at one end of the long excavation. When he stopped to breathe and to measure the depth of the grave with the shovel handle, and then stepped up the ladder to look, the cat was still there. What did it want, why would it watch him? Turning his back on it and measuring again, he determined that maybe six more inches would allow him to cover her solidly. He’d have to make sure the last layer of dirt over her didn’t have any rock in it, because the rock all came from deeper in the earth; someone might notice that and investigate. He was tiring, but he kept on stubbornly until at last the hole was deep enough. Setting the shovel aside, leaning it against the pit wall, he started up the ladder. When he looked again at the window, the cat was gone.