Cat Striking Back

31

HE WAS SWEATING as he headed for the highway. He couldn’t stop seeing that cat watching him through the window. What had made it stare in at him so intently and then stare straight down at her grave, almost as if it knew what he was doing? He thought about that big gray cat watching him, too, while he was packing up the last of the books. He couldn’t figure how it had gotten in there. Why had it and those other two followed him to the next house? Evil devils, all of them. Evil.

Well, he’d taken care of them. With any luck, they wouldn’t be found in that closet for weeks-found dead from thirst and starvation. He smiled, thinking of them locked in and slowly dying, and a chill of pleasure filled him, a sharp and satisfied lust.

But then he couldn’t get his breath. He had to find the inhaler. He felt all his pockets again, felt around on the car seat. Had he left it on the table by her grave, where he was headed? If he’d left it in one of those houses…Oh, God. When those cleaning people found the paintings gone, found the furniture and rugs cleaned out, the books and paperweights, there’d be cops all over those rooms. He couldn’t let them find the inhaler with his prints on it. Couldn’t…

He had to get hold of himself. He searched his pockets yet again, squirming up in the seat as he drove. Found his handkerchief that she’d always ironed and folded just so. His pocketknife, the gloves he’d used. The four sets of keys, which he would dispose of somewhere along the highway, toss them off the cliff into the Pacific. But no inhaler.

But even if they found it, found anything of his, what would it matter? He was a neighbor, a friend, he was in and out of those houses all the time. The cops could find his fingerprints-which they wouldn’t because of the gloves-and it wouldn’t make any difference. And yet, heading for the remodel, he knew he’d feel easier not to have left it in one of the houses. Before he searched the remodel, he knew he had to go back to the houses he’d robbed, even if he had to leave the RV sitting right there all loaded up…Oh Christ…

But he’d feel better when it was done, when he’d found it. Winding along the hillside roads, back onto the residential streets, half of him knew he was being paranoid-the neighborhood was quiet and dark, everyone was asleep, there was nothing to worry about. This wouldn’t take long, and he’d feel easier, maybe it was there somewhere. Swinging into a U-turn he headed along the hillside street above his street, where he could look down there before he approached. Or maybe he could park up there, walk down the hill, find the inhaler, and then hit the highway, and not have to go back near her grave.

Head for the city, make contact with the fence, collect his money, and then across the Golden Gate and on up the coast, just another tourist in his beat-up old RV. Drive slow and easy up through the little lumber towns, on into Oregon and then inland to eastern Washington for a while before he headed home-returning alone and devastated from their vacation, where she’d left him. Had taken her bags and walked out on him, cleaned out their bank account, and caught a plane to the East Coast.

He’d take care of the electronic deposits on her laptop, transfer the funds to her household account. He didn’t know yet how he’d manage withdrawals from that account, he’d figure that out later. He’d tell people she had a lover, that he’d been so shocked and hurt, heartbroken. And then to find they’d been robbed, that would nearly destroy him.

Calling the cops about the robbery, he’d wonder aloud if she had come back and cleaned out her treasures, stashed them somewhere before she caught her plane. He wouldn’t be certain this was a burglary until he learned that the other houses had been robbed. Then he and his neighbors would share their misery.

Winding along the hill’s steep crest on the dark and narrow street a block above his, he was rehearsing the poignant scene with his neighbors when a tire blew. The RV lurched, the steering wheel jerked in his hands, and the suddenly unwieldy vehicle headed for the drop. There was no guardrail. It was all he could do to pull the RV over onto the opposite side, against the rising hill.

He got out, shaken, looked along the dark, empty street where it was too steep for houses. The three houses high up on the cliff were dark. He walked over to the edge, looked down the steep drop to his own street, below…Quickly, he stepped back.

The street was filled with lights. Car lights, lights on in all the houses. More cars approaching, cop cars. He could hear men’s voices and the distant mutter of police radios. What the hell was this?

Had someone seen the RV enter or leave one of the garages and, unable to mind their own business, called the cops? The garage door openers had been her idea. Over the past year, using one excuse or another to be in each garage alone for a few minutes, borrowing tools or a dab of paint, he’d used the electronic duplicator she’d purchased through a special catalog to program duplicate garage door openers. It had worked like a charm.

Two more police cars arrived, pulling up in front of the brightly lit houses. He could see half a dozen uniforms searching the yards, their flashlight beams cutting into the shadows of trees and bushes. Their predatory search panicked him. Helplessly watching, wanting only to get away, he turned nervously to attend to the flat tire.

He didn’t want to use the flashlight, not with all those cops down there, one of them was sure to look up the hill, and they’d be on him like a bunch of damned commandos. He hadn’t changed a tire in years. He found the spare under the floor in the back, just inside the door, but it took him a while to figure out how to release it. She’d tripped up there, not to have gone over the manual with him. In all the five years they’d had the RV, parked in that rented garage or off on short trips, the tires had never even gone soft on them, and they’d sure never had a flat.

When he released the spare and bounced it, it was soft, too. It took him awhile to find the hand pump. He was almost convinced there wasn’t one, until at last he found it down in the well where the tire had been housed, jammed way to hell down under the bracket for the jack and other tire tools.

He got the tire pumped up, his heart pounding, his breath short. After two tries, he got the jack set, lying under the RV so he’d be sure to get it right under the axle. He’d started to jack up the vehicle when he remembered he hadn’t set the brake, or loosened the lugs before taking the weight off. He had to ease the wheel down again, set the brake, then start over, and that angered him.

When he removed the nuts, he nearly lost them before he thought to put them in his pocket. He hadn’t changed a tire since he was in his teens. The one time more recently that her car had had a flat, he’d called AAA, had let the emergency road crew do it. Tires didn’t go flat now like they had years ago.

He was sweating and nervous when he finished, anxious to get away. When he looked over the edge, the cops were still all over the place. He thought he saw the chief of police, Harper. And the woman who ran the cleaning service, that was his wife. Regular family affair. He could see that woman detective, too. For an instant he felt a belly-wrenching fear that somehow they knew he was up there watching them. But that was stupid. He was tired, that was all. Worn out from changing the tire, breathing hard. He needed that inhaler. Turning away, he checked the lug nuts again, but they were tight. He’d screwed them on hastily in the dark, wanting to rest. It had taken the last of his breath to get them all good and tight.

Shoving the wheel he’d removed into the back of the RV and laying the tools beside it, he carefully eased the door closed so it made hardly a click. His hands shaking, he got in, started the engine, and headed slowly up the dark street using only his parking lights. Squinting through the windshield at the sheer drop, he saw again in uncomfortable memory that pale cat staring in the window at him, watching him bury her, watching him lay her down in the grave and clumsily scoop earth over her, shovel by slow shovelful. He couldn’t stop thinking that the cat knew he had killed her.

When he was around the first bend, he switched on the headlights. Driving slowly across the hills, his thoughts were filled with the inhaler that he seemed to see clearly now, sitting on that contractor’s worktable among the hammers and screwdrivers. Driving the dark and winding residential road toward the freeway, he turned right at the top of the hill, crossed over the freeway, and headed for the empty remodel.

This time, he parked right in front of the place, right beside the dirt pile. He’d be there only a minute. The houses below were all dark, not one light; he’d just pick the lock, get the inhaler, and he’d be out again and gone.

Letting himself in, he searched the table, then the dirty floor under the table. The inhaler wasn’t there. He stood at the edge of the pit shining the flashlight’s beam back and forth across the raw earth, but he picked out only the black drainpipe and the boot prints. He turned to search the rest of the garage, along the wall where he’d sat on the floor, everywhere he’d been; once in a while he glanced up at the broken window, thinking about that cat, hoping he’d killed it.

The window remained empty, the cold air scudding in. He didn’t find the inhaler. The cat didn’t appear again. At last, trying to figure out where he could have left it, he locked up again and headed for the RV, taking a moment to circle the yard to see if he might somehow have dropped it there. Cupping his hand around the flashlight, directing only a thin beam onto the ground, he approached the broken window. Across the lumber and on the earth around it, shards of broken glass blazed up at him, scattered among deep paw prints. For an instant, he lifted his beam to the window.

As his light hit the sharp teeth of glass, the pale cat exploded out of the blackness straight into his face, its eyes ablaze, its pale fur standing out like licks of white flame. It landed in his face, raking and biting him. He stumbled backward and fell, and a second cat was on him, cats all over him in a tangle clawing him, so many cats their weight held him down. They screamed and raked him and the pale cat was right in his face. The dark cat with a white stripe down its nose was at him, too, so fierce he was terrified they’d blind him. Blood ran into his eyes. Wild with terror, he drove them off enough to stagger up and run, cats clinging to his back and shoulders and throat. As he knocked them away, he could swear he heard a voice say, “Leave him, let him go.” He spun around to see who was there, saw no one in the blackness. He’d dropped the flashlight, its beam shining uselessly along the ground picking out shards of glass. The cats had drawn back but they crouched on the lumber pile as if to leap again. He ran and stumbled and nearly fell again as he made for the RV. Flinging open the door, he bolted in, slammed and locked it, leaned against it, shaking.

Someone was out there, someone had spoken, but he’d seen no one. Fearing a witness, he started the engine and took off with a squeal of tires, heading for the highway.