The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape

17

THE FULL MOON was hidden by clouds, the Morningside neighborhood cast in shadow except where an occasional porch light had been left to burn past midnight. No light illuminated Anne Chesserson’s large Tudor house as Brad Falon approached, his footsteps silent passing broad gardens and luxurious homes. He had sat in his car for some time parked on the hill several doors away, had seen the lights come on in the Chesserson woman’s second-floor bedroom, had seen her come to the window, close it, and pull the shutters across as if the night air had turned too cold. No light reflected from the basement suite where Becky and Sammie were staying. He had watched the house at different hours of the day and night until he felt sure of the layout and the sleeping arrangements. This morning he had surveyed from the backyard, dressed in gray pants and shirt like those worn by the local meter readers.

Now, with the house dark, he headed down the sloping lawn between the Chesserson house and its plantation-style neighbor, descending a cover of pine straw between manicured rhododendron and azalea bushes. In his pocket he carried a roll of masking tape, a glass cutter, a rubber mallet, and a crowbar. His left eye was swollen and black where Becky had hit him, in the parking lot. Even after three days his throat was still torn and bruised where she’d bitten him, the vicious bitch. He’d known, when he attacked her at her car, that she’d fight. He hadn’t thought she’d bite like a wild animal.

Heading for the wide French doors that opened to the spacious downstairs, he stood in the dark garden listening, looking around him. Had something moved in the shadows, had he heard some small, stealthy sound? He waited, puzzled. Something had alerted him, made him uneasy. He waited for some time; when nothing more bothered him he moved on up the three steps to look in through the wide glass panels. The rooms within were dark, the drapes partly open as if Becky might have pulled them back after she turned out the lights. Silently he tried the handle. Of course the door was locked. Fishing the tape from his pocket he tore off four short lengths, stuck them to the glass to form a small square that, when cut and removed, would leave an opening big enough to put his hand through.

When again he felt uneasy he turned to survey the garden. The clouds were shifting, the exposed moon sending more light. He wasn’t armed, wasn’t carrying the new S&W automatic, he didn’t need it to take care of Becky Blake. If something happened to screw him up, he didn’t want to be caught armed. Though of course he wasn’t in possession of the .38 that had killed the bank guard, that gun was where no one would find it.

When the wary feeling subsided he applied the glass cutter in four quick, precise strokes, then used the rubber mallet. One small, sure tap neatly loosened the glass square. He removed it. Nothing stirred now behind him. Within the rooms, all was still. He had seen, this morning, that this door led into a sitting area. Beyond was the sleeping wing, one corner of a bed visible. Beside the bed, the carpeted floor was covered with a sheet spread out to full size and scattered with the child’s drawing books. Reaching through, quietly he turned the knob of the lock. He was easing the door open when the kid screamed. The piercing ululation sent his heart racing, it went on and on, driving him off the terrace into the bushes.

As he crouched among the foliage, his dark clothes blended with the shadows. Had the girl heard that smallest tap when his hammer hit the glass? Or heard the lock turning? Inside, a faint light came on. From this angle he could see most of the bedroom. Sammie sat up rigid in bed, still screaming, her shrill voice jangling his nerves. He watched Becky slip out of her own bed into the child’s and take the girl in her arms. For one moment, as they clung together, Becky’s back was to him, her shoulder blocking Sammie’s view. Quickly he slipped from the bushes, slid the door open enough to enter, silently closed it and eased behind the couch out of sight.

SOMEONE’S THERE,” SAMMIE said softly. “In the other room.”

“It was the dream, it was in the dream,” Becky said, hugging her.

“No. Not this time.”

With the small lamp switched on, Becky looked through to the sitting room, as much as she could see from the bed. No one was there. Thin moonlight slanted in, but picked out only the couch and two chairs. She could see no darker shadow at the French doors as if someone stood looking in. “It was a dream,” she said again, holding Sammie close.

But something had awakened Becky, too. Before Sammie started to scream. She was trying to remember what had jerked her to consciousness when she saw that the drapery hung awry. The bottom corner was folded back as if it had been disturbed. Had she left it that way? She didn’t think so.

Slipping out of bed she grabbed her purse and unholstered the loaded Colt revolver, the .38 that Morgan had so carefully taught her to handle. As she moved toward the sitting room, the scents of the garden and of freshly crushed grass were sharp. As if the night breeze had blown in, though she knew she’d left the door locked. The sitting room was empty—unless someone crouched behind a chair or behind the couch. Cocking the .38, she approached the shadowed furniture, shaky with the pounding of her own heart. She stopped suddenly when, behind her, Sammie screamed. Holding the gun down and away, she whirled toward the bedroom.

Sammie’s cry stopped abruptly, turned into a muffled sound of rage. Falon clutched the child against him, Sammie twisting and kicking. Grunting, he jerked her arm behind her so hard she caught her breath—but suddenly Falon stumbled. He struck out at the air as if someone had hit him. There was no one, he swung at empty air. Becky, holding the weapon low, moved to the bedroom. “Drop the child. Do it now.”

He swung Sammie down into her line of fire, nearly dropped the fighting child. Clutching her with one hand, again he swatted at empty air then ducked away. Grabbing Sammie to him, he ran straight past Becky, ignoring the gun, racing for the door. Did he think Becky wouldn’t shoot? She lunged, grabbed him by the shirt to pull him off balance, aimed at his legs away from Sammie, and fired.

He jerked and dropped Sammie. She fled. Falon stumbled out the door ducking, swinging his arms, nearly fell down the shallow steps. He beat at his shoulder and chest as if something clung to him. Becky heard Sammie in the bedroom calling the police. Falon struggled up, pushed his unseen attacker away, and ran through the azaleas and up the hill. Becky fired once at his retreating back, but then he was too near the neighbor’s house. She ran chasing him up to the street but didn’t dare fire again among the many houses. His limping footsteps pounded into the shadows beneath the trees; she heard him stumble again then heard a car door slam, heard the engine start. Tires squealed, and the car careened away. Becky turned and ran, burst into the sitting room.

Sammie stood between the two beds pale and silent, the phone still in her hand. Becky, with four rounds still in the chamber, checked the suite for a second assailant, though she doubted Falon had a partner. She pulled on a robe over her gown and dropped the gun in her pocket, then sat on the bed holding Sammie, waiting for the police. If they didn’t find Falon and lock him up, if they didn’t keep him in jail, he’d be back.

Not tonight, but soon.

Maybe her one sure shot had damaged his leg enough so he’d look for a doctor, someone who would treat him without reporting the shooting. She knew he’d keep coming back, harassing them until he had hurt them both or killed them.

Or until she killed Falon.

Could she have wounded him bad enough to make him stay away? When she looked at the threshold, there was blood on the carpet and on the steps. She was sorry she hadn’t killed him and put an end to it. If she had trained more, she might have been more effective in stopping him without harming Sammie. What training she’d had, Morgan had given her long ago. When the war was over and Morgan was home again, neither of them dreamed that her life and Sammie’s might depend on added training. The world seemed at peace then. They were caught up with being a family again, with being together and being happy. She started when a shadow moved through the bushes toward the French door. She rose, her hand in her pocket on the gun, and stood waiting.

“Police,” a man shouted. His back was to the light, he was only a silhouette, she couldn’t see a uniform. At the same moment she heard Anne call from the top of the stairs, then the figure on the terrace moved into clearer view where the sitting room light struck across his badge and sergeant’s stripes. A tall, thin man with sandy hair.

She told him she was armed, slowly drew the gun, opened the action, and laid it on the dresser. “Come in,” she said dryly.

“Sergeant Krangdon,” he said, entering, glancing at the gun. Anne was coming down the carpeted stairs beside a second officer. The two men searched the suite while two more officers searched for Falon outside, their lights moving among the bushes, circling the garden and the neighbors’ gardens and then up the hill. The sergeant took samples of blood and photographed bloodstains, out to where Falon’s trail disappeared among the mulch and bushes. Anne didn’t stay downstairs long. Seeing that Becky and Sammie were safe, she went up again, as Sergeant Krangdon asked her to do, to avoid disturbing any evidence. Sammie stood huddled against Becky, cold with the aftermath of fear. But something else shone in Sammie’s eyes. She looked up at Becky with a deep and secret amazement. Becky looked back at her, shaken with what she’d seen.

Earlier, after Falon attacked Becky in the parking lot, Sammie had said, Misto couldn’t help you, Mama, the dark was too strong.

If the cat couldn’t help her then—if there was a real ghost cat, Becky thought—why had he been powerful enough tonight to attack Falon? To make Falon pause so she could get in that one telling shot?

Had the difference to do with Sammie? With the fact that Sammie was in danger?

When Sergeant Krangdon returned she watched him unload her gun and bag it for evidence. He didn’t seem concerned that he was leaving her with no protection from Falon. Quietly she answered his questions. Told him how Sammie had awakened screaming, and that she had grabbed the gun from her purse. She showed him where she had stood when she fired. She didn’t tell him who the man was, she didn’t say she knew him, and Sammie remained silent.

“If you could ID him,” Krangdon said, “if you would file a complaint, you can take him to court, put a restraining order on him.”

“How can I? I don’t know him. I can’t identify a man I’ve never seen before.”

If Falon were caught, if he learned that she had identified him, and if he were then released, as he likely would be, he would come after them with even more vengeance. And what did the police have, to hold him? They had only her word against Falon’s. They couldn’t hold him long on that. She had heard of women attacked, brutally beaten, where the story proliferated, in gossip, even in the papers, that they had led the man on, had enticed him. Maybe the day would come when women were treated more fairly, but it hadn’t arrived yet and she wasn’t taking chances.

Most damning of all, Falon’s testimony had helped convict Morgan. If she identified Falon for the break-in, what would the police or the court say? That she’d filed the complaint to get back at Falon? That she had enticed Falon, had set him up?

She thought of calling Quaker Lowe, but maybe she didn’t want to know what he would advise. If she called Lowe now, in front of the police, they’d know there was more to the story, that this hadn’t been a random break-in. She was courteous to Krangdon, cooperative in every other way. When he’d finished the interview he assigned young Officer Bishop to stay on the premises so that Becky and Sammie might get some sleep. He suggested they get a carpenter to install a metal barrier over the French doors. “An open grid,” he said, “that can be locked but will let in air in hot weather. Make sure he installs it so the drapes can be pulled. And,” he said, “you could put better locks on some of the solid doors, replace the thumb locks with dead bolts.”

When the thin-faced officer had left them, moving out into the yard, Anne came down again and sat on the bed, holding Sammie. “It’s all right. The police are here, it’s all right now.” But Sammie, like Becky, didn’t have much faith in the police, after Rome PD had abandoned Morgan, had done nothing to uncover the real facts of the Rome murder. When Anne had said good night, Becky turned out the lamp and crawled into bed with Sammie. Not until the next morning did she call Quaker Lowe.

When she told him about the break-in and that she had shot Falon, Lowe was quiet, noncommittal. Did he really understand why she had withheld Falon’s name? He said, “A complaint against Falon might have been useful in getting the appeal. Did you think of that?”

“I did. And it might also have gotten me or Sammie killed.” Had she been wrong in not identifying Falon? She didn’t want to cross Lowe, she couldn’t afford to turn him away. She didn’t want to lose the appeal. She ended the phone call feeling alone and uncertain, more frightened and upset than she would have thought, at losing Lowe’s sympathy.