The Cat Dancers

64

Cam drove down his street at 2:30 A.M. He slowed as he drove under the lone streetlight in the cul-de-sac. He was bone-tired, still sore from his adventures in the river, and hugely disappointed at not finding Mary Ellen Goode. He’d been on the phone with Ranger Marshall after getting back to Sheriff’s Office headquarters, and it had not been a pleasant conversation. Apparently everyone up in Carrigan County would be calling for his head.

Me, too, he thought as he pulled up into his driveway. His ears were still ringing. The house was dark, and the Leyland cypress trees were swaying gently in the wind. The word from the hospital in Triboro was “satisfactory.” The sheriff had been the only serious casualty. The shard hadn’t severed any major arteries but it had not been a clean wound, and infection was a major concern now. He scanned the front of the house but saw nothing out of the ordinary. He hit the remote for the garage door, but nothing happened. He hit it again. Nothing.

He parked in the driveway and turned off the engine. The streetlight was on, so there should be power in the house. And where were the dogs? They would ordinarily have heard the car, come through the dog door, and run around to the fence in the side yard. No dogs. He was tempted to blow the horn to see what would happen. He hit the remote again, but the door continued to ignore its signals. He checked the little red LED to see if it came on when he pressed the button. It did, so the remote was working.

He unholstered the Sig. 45 and got out. Then he got back in and called the ops center to request that a cruiser be dispatched to his house. “Ten minutes,” the operator said. Decision time: He could take a quick look in and around the house, or wait for the cruiser. No-brainer. Wait for the deputies.

Two units showed up in six minutes, and the two deputies and Cam went into the house together. The lights worked normally inside, but the dogs were nowhere to be found. The deputies accompanied Cam into every room and the garage. They looked for signs of explosive or incendiary devices, and they checked the windows and doors for evidence of tampering, but everything appeared to be normal. They made a sweep of the backyard, going all the way down to the creek, and then made a quick, if somewhat creepy, walk through the cypress groves on either side of the house.

Embarrassed, Cam sent them away forty minutes later. He knew he’d done the right thing, but still, the expressions on their faces had told a story. The only thing still very much out of order was the fact that the dogs were gone. They never roamed. The wind was steady now and the moonlight was dimming as the sky filled with low-hanging gray-white clouds. It was unseasonably warm. So where were they? He got one of his big flashlights and went back down to the creek line again, checking for signs that they’d gone under the old fence. And then he found the gate open.

He shone his light across the creek, which at this point was no more than two feet wide, and saw some flattened grass on the other side and what looked like a trail going up the hill. The gate was normally locked with a double-end snap, which was now gone. So someone had let them out. Or had sneaked into his yard, discovered two big dogs, and let himself out in a big hurry. Pursued by the dogs? There was a faint chemical smell hovering down in the grass, despite the wind. Something in the creek? He sniffed hard, but he couldn’t place it. He called for them, but only the wind answered.

He went back to the house, aware that he was clearly silhouetted by the backyard spots as he walked up the lawn. Had the dogs gone on up into the Holcomb property? And if so, why? Looking for him maybe? Frick might do that, but Frack would stay behind and watch. And they would certainly come when called.

He yawned. He was exhausted. And yet, if his dogs were nearby and in trouble, he knew he’d never sleep. He went back into the house, got his gear, turned out the spots on the back deck, and went down to the creek. One pass, he promised himself. I’ll go up the hill, look around the buildings, then come back. Tomorrow is another day-or rather, today is. I’ve got bigger problems than two missing dogs.

Get some backup, he told himself as he went through the gate, but then he remembered the looks the two deputies had exchanged. Not again, and if they weren’t dog people, they wouldn’t be too happy at traipsing through the underbrush in search of his two runaways. The Holcomb place would be spooky by moonlight, but he and the mutts had been up there a hundred times before. He yawned again, then started out up the hill. He kept going, pretty much in a straight line. The farmhouse loomed up to his right, the barns and a topless silo to his left.

He checked the barns first, sliding a large wooden door to one side and scaring off an owl and some other unidentified nocturnal creatures. The place smelled of musty old hay, ancient grease, and decaying wood. Ghostly mantles of cobwebs swayed in the draft from the open door, but there were no other signs of life in the building. A piece of tin on the roof flapped gently in the wind. But no dogs. He looked into the empty concrete garage briefly, saw signs of a teenage love nest with all the appropriate graffiti, and then turned to the house itself.

There was plywood on the doors and first-floor windows, but it had been put up a long time ago and the local demon spawn had evidently been going inside the house, too, as some of the panels, warped and grayed by weather, were stuffed rather than nailed into the window embrasures. Cam had poked his nose in once several years ago, and said nose had advised him in no uncertain terms that he didn’t want to pursue his explorations. He didn’t really intend to go inside now, other than to call for the dogs. Even as he pulled one of the plywood panels aside, he knew that if the dogs were inside, they’d have been whining at the windows.

Once inside, his search was anticlimactic. An abandoned old house on a windy night should have been at least a little creepy, but with the smell of empty beer cans, rotting Sheetrock, human excrement, fast-food cartons, and mouse droppings, the place was mostly just annoying, even in the dark. He gave up and went home.