The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape

11

BRAD FALON WASN’T finished with the Blake family. Having skillfully finessed Morgan into the federal pen, his full attention turned to Becky and the child. They had been staying with Caroline Tanner but it looked now as if they’d moved back home again just as he’d hoped they’d do. Last night he had cruised by meaning, if he saw no one about, to jimmy the back door and slip inside.

But the Tanner woman’s white van was parked in the drive beside Becky’s car, there was another car behind it that he didn’t recognize, and the living room and kitchen lights burned bright behind the drawn drapes. Easing his car along past the house beneath the overhanging oaks he had parked for a few minutes, looking back, watching the house, wondering what was going on, wondering what Becky might be up to.

But now, this late morning, there was no car at all in the drive. There was no room for a car in the small garage, he knew it was stacked with boxes of automotive parts and new tires for Morgan’s shop. He remained parked for a few moments, scanning the neighborhood. He saw no one in any of the yards, no one looking out a window. Parking half a block down, he walked back beneath the tree shadows to Becky’s front porch.

Having studied the lock on earlier visits, he quickly inserted a thin screwdriver, tripped the simple device, and let himself in. Locking the door behind him he made a leisurely tour of the rooms to be certain the place was empty. In the kitchen he opened the refrigerator, drank some milk from the bottle, took out a bowl of cold spaghetti, found a spoon in one of the drawers. He ate half of it, then put the bowl back. The kitchen was too neat, the counters scrubbed, everything put away behind cupboard doors. None of the easy clutter his mother kept on the counter, the cookie jars filled with flour and packages of staples where she could reach them, the pots of miniature cacti, the pictures and lists she kept stuck to the refrigerator and to the walls between hooks bearing limp dish towels and greasy potholders. His mother still lived alone, the house too big for her. The rest of his clothes were there, but he didn’t stop by often, they had their differences. She seemed sometimes almost afraid of him, he thought, smiling.

Moving down the hall to the front bedroom he opened the closet, stroked Becky’s neatly arranged dresses and fondled them. Morgan’s clothes still hung beside hers—as if they thought he was coming home again. He chose a pale blue cotton dress Becky had worn during the trial. Stretching it tight on the hanger he slashed it with his pocketknife, ripped it nearly in half and dropped the pieces on the floor. He’d reached for a second dress when a chill ran through him, a sense that he was watched.

He stared into the shadowed end of the closet where Morgan’s clothes hung but saw nothing to threaten him. He looked foolishly up at the shadowed shelf as if someone could hide among the half-dozen shoe boxes and the battered suitcase. Nothing there of course, and no one behind him in the small bedroom. He checked the hall, went through the rest of the house, then returned. On the dresser stood a cluster of framed photographs, one of Becky and Morgan standing before the house, their hands clasped, and several pictures of the child, from baby to little girl. One by one he smashed the glass, pulled the pictures out and broke the frames. But even as he tore the pictures into small pieces and dropped them on the floor he felt watched again, felt that he was not alone. Nervously he began to open dresser drawers. He removed Becky’s panties and bras one at a time, dropped his pants, and rubbed them over himself. She wore only cotton, not silk, but the garments felt smooth and cool. From the next drawer he lifted out nighties and some stockings and did the same with these, leaving the drawers in a tangle ripe with his male scent.

He left Morgan’s side of the dresser alone except for the top drawer, which was locked. That interested him, and he was examining the lock when he heard a car door slam. As he stepped to the closed window a faint breeze touched the back of his neck, making him shiver. But when he turned, nothing was there. Outside, a car had parked at the curb. A strange man was heading for the house as Becky’s car pulled into the drive, a big man, broad of shoulder, his tie loosened over a white shirt, his gray suit wrinkled. Quickly Falon headed for the kitchen, eased open the bolt on the back door and left, shutting the door softly behind him.

BECKY CAME INTO the house ahead of Quaker Lowe. She made him comfortable in the living room, then went to make some coffee. They had met outside the courthouse where Lowe had spent the morning going over the transcripts of the trial. They hadn’t talked there, Lowe had followed her directly home. She was comfortable with Lowe, he seemed to understand clearly her lone battle and her helpless frustration.

He had driven up from Atlanta two days before to talk with the bank employees who had witnessed the guard’s murder and then been beaten and locked in the vault. He was staying at the nicest of Rome’s three motels. So far he had seemed content with the five-hundred-dollar retainer she’d given him, which was all the money she had in their savings account. She had seen him for only a few minutes the day he arrived and then again last night when they’d had a simple dinner here at the house, when Caroline had joined them bringing a hot casserole. Now, as she carried the tray of cookies and coffee into the living room, Lowe was reading his copies of the police reports.

“I read the transcripts,” he said, smiling up at her, “and talked the court steno out of a set of her carbons.” He spooned sugar into his coffee. “Last night after I left you I tried again to see Natalie Hooper. There was a light in the living room, but she didn’t answer the door. I tried again this morning. She didn’t respond and she isn’t answering her phone.”

He added cream to the brew and slid three cookies onto his saucer. “It wasn’t much good sitting in the car watching the front entrance to the lobby when she could slip out the back. I parked around the corner, borrowed a chair from the building manager, and sat in the hall. When she did come down, she wasn’t happy to see me,” Lowe said, smiling.

“I told her we could either go upstairs to her place or talk there in the hall. Reluctantly she took me upstairs. I spent over an hour with her but I didn’t get much, just the same lies she told in court. Except for one small discrepancy.

“On the stand, she said Falon left her apartment at two-thirty, the day of the robbery, to go across the street to the corner store. This morning she told me two-fifteen, I got her to say it twice.” He looked evenly at Becky. “I don’t see how she could forget what she said on the witness stand, though the woman doesn’t seem too swift.

“It may be nothing,” he said, “but it flustered her. I’ll talk with the store manager when I leave here. But the biggest hole in Falon’s story,” Lowe said, “is that double entry to the apartment building, the fact that when he left the grocery he could have gone in the front door and out the back. But with no witness, there’s nothing to support that. Can you think of anything that might have been overlooked?”

She couldn’t. Yet despite that discouragement she had faith in Lowe, he was far more positive than their trial attorney, he left her feeling so much more hopeful. She was thankful he’d taken the case, though she didn’t know where she was going to find the money to pay him, and she hated taking it from her mother. Lowe had told her to take her time to make payments, that what he was interested in right now was getting the appeal and winning it.

This morning when she’d met Lowe at the courthouse she had just come from taking the ledgers over to Farley’s Dime Store and collecting her last paycheck. Farley would no longer need her services, and he had been pretty cool. He hadn’t apologized for letting her go, he had just abruptly fired her. Last Thursday she had lost three accounts including Brennan’s Dress Shop, and she’d known Beverly Brennan all her life. She couldn’t believe Morgan’s trial and conviction had caused such a change among people she’d thought would stand by them. And business at the automotive shop was so bad she wasn’t sure she could pay Morgan’s mechanic.

Selling the automotive shop would help pay the bills. But would destroy what Morgan had worked so hard to build, destroy another big piece of his life.

Lowe finished his coffee. “You can think of nothing else?” When she shook her head, he stood up to leave. “I want to check the records on Falon, see if the police missed any old outstanding warrants here or out on the coast, maybe in Washington State or while he was in California.” He put out his hand. “Please take care. Doors locked, that kind of thing.” He took both her hands in his, looking at her kindly. “Will you and Sammie be all right? You’ll be moving to Atlanta in a few days, to your aunt’s? You’ll be near the office then, when we need to talk.”

She handed him the paper where she’d written Anne’s address and phone number. “Maybe we’ll be lucky, maybe he won’t know about Anne. His mother might remember, but they don’t get along, I’d guess he seldom sees her. We’re taking Mama’s car to Anne’s. Mine will be here, in Mama’s garage.”

On impulse Lowe gave her a big bear hug that made tears start. “I’ll call you before I leave Rome, let you know what else I find, and of course I’ll call you at Anne’s.” He turned and left her, swinging out the front door heading for his car. Getting in and pulling away, he waved. She stood at the front door, tears gushing in spite of herself, watching him drive away.

It was twenty minutes after Quaker Lowe left that she discovered someone had been in the house. She hadn’t gone into the bedroom when she got home. Now when she went in to change to a pair of slacks she stopped, looking down at scattered shards of smashed glass, at broken frames and the torn pieces of their family pictures. She spun around, her back to the dresser facing the closet door.

Reaching up, she snatched the dresser key from where it clung to a magnet behind the mirror. She unlocked the dresser drawer and took out Morgan’s loaded and holstered .38. Only when she was armed did she open the closet door.

No one there. Her blue dress, Morgan’s favorite, lay on the floor torn into rags.

No other clothes had been disturbed but when she turned to the dresser and pulled out the drawers she found her bras and panties tangled in a mess and they smelled; every piece of her more intimate clothing reeked with an ammonialike male smell. Her sweaters, blouses, everything had been pulled out, wadded up, and stuffed back again. Morgan’s clothes had not been touched.

Carrying the gun pointed down, her thumb on the hammer, she walked slowly through the rest of the small house, stepping back as she flung open each door: Sammie’s room, Sammie’s closet, the coat closet, the bathroom, the kitchen. When she checked the service porch, the back door was unlocked. She locked it and called the police.

From now on she’d keep the loaded gun with her. She would train Sammie, she’d gun-proof Sammie just as she knew the children of police officers were trained. She should have done that before. Now she would drill Sammie over and over in the rules for caution and safety, she had no other choice.

Standing at the front window she waited nervously for the police, but then when Sergeant Leonard did arrive, the stern older man made her feel that she had called him out for nothing. Leonard was a beefy man, forty pounds overweight with soft, thick jowls and an attitude of boredom. He made little effort to conceal his amusement even when, entering the bedroom among the broken and torn pictures, she showed him her ruined dress and the wadded clothes in her dresser. When he looked at them, stone-faced, embarrassedly she asked him to smell them. He sniffed her clothes with distaste and gave her another amused look. “Is anything missing?” he said as if she had made up the intrusion, had made this mess herself.

“Nothing’s missing that I’ve found.” She told him she had locked both doors when she left the house that morning, and that just now, when she went through the house, the back door was unlocked, the bolt slid back.

When she moved to the front door and asked him to look at the lock, the pry marks were easy to see, bright scratches in the weathered brass. When, in the kitchen, she showed him that the milk bottle had been left out and the leftover spaghetti had been dug into, she felt awkward and stupid. She said Sammie was at Caroline’s, that she hadn’t been home at all to enjoy a little snack. Everything she showed him or told him seemed to amuse him. He moved back to the living room, stood by the front door asking questions about what time she had left the house this morning, how long she had been gone, and where she had been. He didn’t make any notes, though he carried his field book in his hand.

She said, “Can you take fingerprints, can you find out who was in here?”

“If there’s nothing missing, no break-in, no door or window broken, we don’t take fingerprints.”

“But the pry marks on the front door. That is the sign of a break-in.”

Carelessly he scribbled a few lines in his field book as if to humor her. His disdain, his refusal to take prints made her feel totally helpless. This was not how the police handled a problem, this was not what she’d been raised to expect of them, in Rome or anywhere else. Enraged by his lack of concern, by his sarcasm, all she could think was that the entire Rome PD was against Morgan, was sure Morgan was guilty, and had lost respect for their family. Leonard said nothing more. He turned, let himself out the front door. She watched from the window as his patrol car pulled away.

When he had gone she locked the door and checked the bolt again on the back door. Tonight she would either booby-trap both doors or go back to Caroline’s. She had moved home yesterday, leaving Sammie cosseted at Caroline’s, so she could get her bills and papers in order and pack what they’d need in Atlanta.

In the bedroom she removed her clothes from the drawers, her panties and nighties, bras and slips, and put them in the washer. She washed everything twice, with a little bleach. But for months afterward the touch of her undergarments against her skin made her feel violated and unclean.

While she was running the wash she called Quaker at the motel. He was out but she left a message. When he called back and learned what had happened he made her promise to go back to Caroline’s, where at least the neighbors were younger and more able to come if they were needed. “How soon can you leave for Atlanta? How soon can you be out of Rome?”

“A day, maybe two. As soon as I can wrap up the figures for my last job.”

He said to call him when she left, and again when she got to Atlanta, he wanted to know she was safe. “As soon as I get back to Atlanta myself, I’ll set up a meeting with Morgan, go over the transcript with him, see if he can come up with anything else, even the smallest lead I might follow.”

“Don’t tell him Falon broke in. I’ve told him nothing about Falon’s attacks, it would only worry him when there’s nothing he can do.” She was still shaky when they hung up. She put her clothes in the dryer, dragged out their old battered suitcase and some grocery bags, and got to work packing.

SAMMIE SNUGGLED DEEPER under the quilt, pulling Misto warm against her. “You’ll come with me tomorrow, you’ll come to Aunt Anne’s house. No one will know.” It was late after supper, Mama hadn’t come to bed yet, she could hear Mama and Grandma in the kitchen, the bright rattle of silverware as they washed dishes, the soft murmur of their “good-bye” voices, their sad voices. “You can ride on top of my new suitcase or anywhere in the car you want and Mama can’t see you.”

Sammie’s small brown suitcase, the one Grandma had given her, stood packed and ready, across the room on the cedar chest beside Mama’s battered one. She didn’t want to leave Grandma, she didn’t want to move to Atlanta, she wanted Daddy home again, not gone away like when he was in the war. Why did things have to change? Mama said life was change, she said the important things stayed the same because the important things were inside you. Like loving each other and being strong.

Ducking her head under the covers she pressed her face against Misto. When she stroked his ragged ears and tickled him under the chin the way he liked, he purred and patted a soft paw against her cheek and she knew he loved her just the way she loved him. That would never change.

MISTO THOUGHT ABOUT Falon in Becky’s house rummaging through Becky’s clothes, peering up at the closet shelf knowing something was there, never guessing that a ghost crouched inches from his face, an angry invisible tomcat who could have clawed and bloodied him if he’d wanted. Misto had simply crouched there entertained by Falon’s fear, he could still see Falon shiver and back away. Falon had been even more afraid when Misto streaked through the air letting his tail trail across Falon’s neck. Falon’s reaction would make any cat laugh.

Now as Sammie drifted into sleep Misto slept, too, as deep and restorative a sleep as if he was a mortal cat; a sleep that helped embolden him against the dark that not only tormented Lee but so often traveled with Falon. As the little cat slept he knew in his enduring feline soul that he was not alone, that neither he nor Sammie was alone, that they could never be abandoned; eternity didn’t work in that way.