Holly glanced up, even though she couldn't see any of the upstairs windows from where she sat. "Which window?"
"One of the ones in Tommy's bedroom."
"Did you see who it was?"
"No. Not really. I just saw a shadow move. I came in and looked around, but I didn't find anything that had been disturbed... other than the broken kachina. I'm going to call the contractors tomorrow about the cracks, and the stains on the kitchen floor. I'll have them change all of the locks while they're out here, just in case someone is playing a joke on us."
"A joke?" Holly asked. "Do you think someone's playing a joke on us?"
He shrugged. "Maybe. I'm not sure. A teenager might have gotten into the house, not knowing it was occupied. But if this is their idea of a joke then I'm not laughing."
* * * * *
That night at the supper table Holly and Mike avoided talking about the day's events in order not to upset the children. When Tommy brought up the subject of his visit to the church, the conversation was quickly changed to something else. The boy didn't mind. He knew there was a cherry pie for dessert and he was happy to talk about anything his parents wanted to talk about, or nothing at all.
Finished with dessert, the children went into the living room to watch television. The subject of not having HBO or MTV had come up during dinner, and Mike promised to check into purchasing a satellite dish antenna. Holly was just starting to stack the dirty dishes in the sink when Tommy reentered the kitchen, a frown on his face.
"Mom, have you seen Pinky?"
"No, dear," she said, wiping her hands off on a dish towel. "Did you look upstairs? He's probably taking a nap on one of the beds."
"I looked upstairs, but he's not there. I haven't seen him since this morning. Do you think he's hiding?"
Mike had been wiping off the table. He stopped and looked toward Pinky's bowl in the corner of the room. The can of cat food he had opened earlier was still untouched. "That's odd. Pinky hasn't touched his food. Come to think of it, he didn't come around to beg for a handout at dinner."
As a matter of fact, none of them had seen the big tomcat all afternoon. It wasn't normal for him to miss an opportunity to hang around the dinner table begging for a handout.
Holly set the dish towel on the counter and turned off the water in the sink. "Pinky never misses a meal, not if he can avoid it."
"Maybe he got himself locked in somewhere." Mike pushed the chairs in at the table. "You said you already looked upstairs?"
Tommy nodded. "I called his name, but he didn't answer."
"Well, let's say we go have ourselves another look. If I know that silly cat he's probably napping in a closet somewhere. Or under a bed. Go get your sister and tell her we have a missing cat to find."
Mike, Holly, and the kids searched through every room in the house for the missing tomcat, cut he was nowhere to be found. They looked under beds, and in closets, even opened up dresser drawers to see if he was mixed in with the clothes.
Thinking Pinky might have slipped out when they weren't looking, Mike grabbed a flashlight and looked around the outside of the house. He checked behind all of the bushes and shrubbery, and beneath the front porch, but the only thing he found was an old rubber ball and a couple of spiders the size of silver dollars.
"All right, cat. This isn't funny. You're cutting into my coffee drinking time." Mike stood up and brushed himself off. He swept the beam of the flashlight across the front yard toward the road, hoping to see the reflection of green eyes in the darkness. Nothing.
Deciding the barn would be the next best place to look, he circled the house to the old wooden structure. The barn was probably a haven for field mice. Maybe Pinky had decided to test out his hunting skills. After all, a cat couldn't be a country cat unless he could prove himself as a hunter. What would the neighbor cats think if Pinky couldn’t catch at least one lousy mouse?
Mike approached the barn slowly, suddenly aware the old wooden structure looked a heck of a lot spookier at night than it did in the daytime. In the daytime it was just an old wooden building, its red paint blistered and peeled away by the sun and numerous Midwestern thunderstorms. A place of quiet memories which spoke of long, lazy summers, fields of ripening hay, and maybe event he hint of forbidden teenage love.
By night, however, the barn took on an altogether different image. Gray as a crypt in the silvery moonlight, it was now a place where ghosts might pause to rest as they strode across the haunted countryside, doing whatever it was that ghosts did on their nightly outings. Mike remembered some of the supposedly true ghost stories he had read over the years, realizing that many of them took place in just such a building as that which he now faced.
"I do not believe in ghosts," he said aloud, reminding himself that, while he often wrote ghostly tales, he never really believed the existence of spirits, haints, and other such supernatural visitors. He did, however, believe in rabid rodents, poisonous spiders, snakes, and dastardly evil insects, all of which he was certain inhabited the old barn at night. Still, he had a cat to find and nothing was going to stop him from taking at least one quick look inside the barn.
Pushing his way through the high weeds, he circled around to the big double doors in the side of the barn. Only one of the doors was still standing; the other had fallen off years ago and was now nothing more than a slab of wooden boards rotting on the ground. Stepping up to the opening where the door had once stood, he aimed the beam of his flashlight inside the barn.
The interior of the barn was divided into sections. The area closest to the double doors had once been used for storing farm equipment. An old hay rake sat upon iron wheels just inside the doorway, looking like something once used as a weapon of war. Beyond the rake low walls partitioned off a place to keep cattle or horses during times of bad weather. Overhead a small hayloft extended half the length of the barn, its hay long since removed.
"Pinky?" Mike called, shining the flashlight back and forth. Most of the dividing walls had gaps in them, places where the boards had fallen out or been removed to be used for other things, allowing him to see much of the interior without venturing too far beyond the opening. He caught movement to his left, but when he pointed the flashlight in that direction he only saw a small scurrying beneath a pile of dead leaves. It was probably only a cockroach escaping the beam of the bright light. One thing for sure, Pinky was not inside the barn.
Stepping back outside, he thought about searching the orchard, and maybe part of the forest, but decided against it. If Pinky had decided to stake out his territorial claim, he could be halfway to town by now. Not that he really believed the big cat was out laying claim to anything. Pinky, bless his heart, had been fixed years ago at Holly's insistence. He was no longer a lover and a fighter, and had no reason to set out in search of adventures and cat kingdoms to conquer. He was a cat of leisure. A fat, happy, lazy cat.
Mike thought about the untouched food dish back inside the kitchen. He didn't want to admit it to Holly and the kids, but the last time he had seen Pinky was when he kicked open Tommy's bedroom door. He had frightened the big cat, and he wondered if that was the reason he was now missing. One thing for sure, it wasn't normal for Pinky to miss an evening meal. Not normal at all.
Part Two
"There are things we don't know about. Strange things that lurk in the darkness. Just because we don't' know about them doesn’t mean they're not there."
—Jay Little Hawk
14
Some Mondays are bad. Some are worse than others. This particular Monday soon proved to be the mother of all bad days.
The contractors arrived shortly after the kids left for school. Examining the kitchen floor, they claimed there was nothing wrong with the tiles they had installed. Nor could they find any indication of a water leak. Rather than argue with them, Mike decided to go ahead and pay to have new tiles put down in the kitchen.
He also had the contractors patch the crack in the floor, and the one in the library wall.
As with the stains, they could not determine what had caused the cracks. The house's foundation appeared to be in good condition, and there was no evidence of settling.
While the contractors were busy ripping up the kitchen floor, Mike decided to clean out some of the mess in the basement. He had been at it for less than an hour when he discovered Pinky's lifeless body beneath a pile of old boxes.
"Oh, dear, Jesus," he said, jumping back. He turned to make sure Holly hadn't entered the basement when he wasn't looking — she was still upstairs supervising the work in the kitchen — and then stepped back toward the dead housecat.
Pinky lay on his left side, legs outstretched, tongue protruding between his front fangs. The big cat had been killed and mutilated, his eyes gouged out and his throat ripped open. There were several other minor cuts on his body, and his fur was torn and matted, indicating he had been in one hell of a fight. Oddly enough there was no blood beneath the body. He hadn't been injured and crawled beneath the boxes to die. On the contrary, something had dragged him beneath the boxes after the cat was already dead.
Mike turned and looked around the basement, searching for blood droplets, bits of fur, something to indicate where the battle had taken place and what Pinky had tangled with. When he could find none of these things, he became suspicious that maybe it wasn't an animal that had caused the beloved cat's death. Maybe a person had murdered Pinky and then hidden his body beneath the boxes.
The last time he had seen the big tomcat was yesterday when he was searching through the house looking for a possible intruder. Pinky had scared the hell out of him when he bolted out of Tommy's bedroom after Mike slammed open the door. The feline had also been startled, fleeing down the stairs to the first floor. The cat had been downstairs when the bear kachina was broken. Maybe the person who broke the statue had decided to carry out a wanton act of cruelty on the Anthony family cat. It would be an easy task to accomplish. Pinky was quite friendly toward people, often approaching complete strangers for a rub. Had the cat approached the wrong person?
"But how did he get down here in the basement?"
Mike thought maybe he knew the answer. Yesterday, after seeing someone upstairs in Tommy's room, he had quickly searched the rooms on the first floor and then hurried upstairs, never thinking to look in the basement for the intruder. Whoever it was must have hidden there after seeing him approach the house, waiting for an opportunity to escape. Before leaving the house, the intruder, for whatever reason, had decided to break the bear kachina. While he was destroying the wooden statue, Pinky had entered the kitchen, and the intruder had taken the opportunity to enact further crimes against the family.
Tears welled up in his eyes as he looked upon Pinky's body. Slicing the cat's throat had been a violent act of murder, but cutting out his eyes went far beyond that. It was an unspeakable act that could only be performed by a sick and dangerous individual.
But why? Why had someone done such a terrible thing? He and his family had no enemies, no reason for someone to seek revenge on them by torturing the family housecat. He thought about his wife's confrontation with Reverend Mitchell, wondering if one of the minister's congregation had killed the cat in an effort to get them to leave the community. If so, what kind of poison was the good reverend spouting at the pulpit?
Mike shook his head. He didn't think the minister or any of his congregation was behind the killing. They might boycott his books, ban his family from church, even call upon the saints to boil his soul in oil, but he doubted if any of them had the stomach it took to murder and mutilate an innocent cat, especially one as lovable as Pinky.
"Oh, no."
The voice startled him. He turned and found Holy standing a few feet behind him. Mike hadn't heard her come down the steps because he was so upset over finding Pinky's body. He didn't want her to see the cat like this, wanted to break the news of his death gently to her after he had buried him, but now it was too late. She stood just behind him, staring in wide-eyed horror at a pet that was more hers and the kids' than it was his.
"Oh, no," she repeated, her lips forming the words so carefully it appeared she was incapable of any other speech.
Mike stepped in front of her, blocking Holly's view of the lifeless cat. "I'm sorry, honey. I just found him a few minutes ago."
Holly looked up at him, perhaps seeing her husband for the first time. She stepped slightly to the side, her gaze returning to the floor behind him. "His eyes," she said, her voice almost a whisper. She looked at Pinky a moment longer, then looked at him. Her face grew dark with anger. "Who did this?"
"I don't know," he said, stepping forward to comfort her. He could tell Holly was fighting back tears, using anger to keep control of her emotions. She didn't like to cry, not if she could help it.
"Call the sheriff," she said, clenching her fists at her sides. She looked at Pinky, and then back at him. A tear slowly formed in her left eye, then trickled down her cheek. "What will I tell the children? What will I tell Tommy? He'll be heartbroken."
"We'll think of something to say." He placed his arm around his wife's shoulders and steered her toward the stairs. "Come on, let's go upstairs and call the sheriff's office."
Mike looked up the phone number of the Hudson County Sheriff's Office in the directory. He told the dispatcher what had happened, and then waited a few moments while he was put on hold. When the dispatcher came back on line, she told him they would have someone out to his place as soon as possible. Mike thanked her and hung up.
A patrol car pulled into the driveway about an hour later. Mike was surprised to see it was Sheriff Jody Douglas driving the car rather than one of the county deputies. He wondered for a moment if the county even had deputies, because he had never seen any, and then decided the sheriff probably answered the call himself because he knew the person who had called. Maybe he wanted to check up on the local celebrity writer. Then again, maybe it was just a slow day in law enforcement and any excuse to get out of the office was a good one.
Greeting the sheriff, Mike led him down into the basement and showed him Pinky's body. Holly did not accompany them. She had already seen the mutilated cat once and that was enough. Instead she stayed in the kitchen, scrubbing pots in an effort to occupy her mind and not think about the death of the family pet.
Pulling a flashlight from his gun belt, Sheriff Douglas squatted down and carefully examined Pinky's body for a minute or two. Standing back up, he switched off the light and turned to Mike. "Your cat's throat was not cut by a knife, if that's what you're thinking. The cut is much too jagged and rough. Same way with the minor cuts on his body, and around his eyes. Offhand, I would say that he probably died of old age and something got to him after he was dead."
"There must be some mistake," Mike argued. "Pinky was not that old. And he was in perfect health; we had him checked out by a vet before we left New York. It couldn't have been sickness, or old age."
"Then what do you think killed him, Mr. Anthony?" the sheriff asked. "There's nothing bigger than raccoons and possums in this county, and I doubt if you would find too many of those down here in this basement."
"I don't know what killed my cat. Or who. All I know is that Pinky was not that old, and there isn't a possum big enough to take him on."
"Mr. Anthony, I don't know who it is in the big city, but here in the country cats die from all kinds of reasons: some get run over by cars, some get killed by dogs, others just up and die for no apparent reason at all." The sheriff slipped his flashlight back into his belt.
"You're not going to do anything?" Mike asked, frustrated.
"Look, I can't ever write a report about your cat, because there's no evidence of any foul play. Now, if someone would have shot him, that would be different. But they didn't. And I seriously doubt if anyone tiptoed down here to—"
"I think I saw someone here in the house yesterday," Mike interrupted.
The sheriff cocked an eyebrow. "Oh? When was this?"
"Around noon. I was just
coming back from a walk, and I thought I saw someone in the upstairs window."
"What did they look like?"
Mike shook his head. "I didn't get a good look at them, just caught a glimpse of movement. I came in and looked around, searched all of the rooms, but I didn't see anyone. But when I was upstairs I heard a loud banging in the kitchen, like someone was hitting the floor with a hammer. By the time I got back downstairs the noise had stopped, and the kitchen was empty, but the bear kachina was broken."
"The what?" Sheriff Douglas asked.
"The bear kachina," Mike explained. "It's one of the Indian statues. I had it sitting in the center of the kitchen table. It was there when I came into the house, because I saw it. I went into the kitchen and grabbed a butcher knife out of the cabinet drawer before I searched the house. The kachina was sitting on the table, not a scratch on it. But when I came back downstairs to investigate the banging noise, I found the statue on the floor in pieces."
Sheriff Douglas glanced past Mike, obviously looking at the statues that lined the shelf on the wall. "Was anything else broken besides the statue, or anything taken that you know of?"
"No. Nothing's missing. And the only thing I found broken was the kachina."
"Did you see anyone when you came in the house?"
"No. They must have gotten away."
"How about the doors and windows, were they all locked?"
Mike nodded. "Everything was locked."
"From the inside?"
"Yeah, from the inside. Why?"
The sheriff shook his head. "Nothing. Just seems kind of odd that someone could get past you without being seen, especially if they were upstairs and all of the windows and doors were locked from the inside."
Mike suddenly realized that Sheriff Douglas was patronizing him, treating him like a child who was telling a whopper of a story. His face warmed with anger, but he held his tongue. The sheriff must have seen the anger in Mike's eyes, or in his facial expression, because he smiled.
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