Cat Coming Home
Page 25
“I did look, dammit. Car came around the corner so fast I couldn’t even shift gears, and you know damn well my horn don’t work.”
“First person sees this mess in the morning, first car comes down the road, the cops’ll be all over it, and you with no insurance. I told you this would happen.”
When he was past them, Benny ran, up through the woods, trying to remember the way he and Grandma took driving down to the village and home again. He thought Grandma’s house was away to the right; he wanted to go that way but the woods were so tangled and black. Who knew what was in there, hidden among the trees? When the road made a sharp bend to the right, the voices grew fainter behind him, but still he hurried uphill, his leg hurting worse. Once, he saw strings of little Christmas lights back in the woods. He guessed they were Christmas lights, hoped they weren’t something else, ghosts or something creepy. He was getting warm from walking, but he was out of breath. Sitting down on a long mound of earth at the side of the road, he yawned, and rubbed his hurting leg. He wasn’t lost, he told himself. The sudden sound of men’s voices made him look up. Had that drunk man followed him? He could see lights moving behind him, now, reflecting up among the trees. Frightened, he slipped behind the berm, out of sight from the road. A man was calling him, calling, “Benny? Benny?” How could he know his name?
The calling went on for a long time, but he was afraid to answer. He could see the light approaching uphill toward him. If he ran, the man would hear him. Quickly he dug down against the berm and pulled some fallen pine branches over himself. As he huddled there, again tears came, but these were tears of fear and of exhaustion and from the pain in his leg. He wouldn’t cry again for his mother, he didn’t have a mother, his connection to Pearl had been torn away, that woman who had hurt him wasn’t his mother. Yawning, he snuggled down beneath the branches, wanting help, but not from a stranger. Curling up trying to stay warm, he closed his eyes just for a minute.
He woke to a soft meow. He opened his eyes to see a cat crouched on the berm looking down at him. He came fully awake. He could see the darker blackness of familiar stripes, the wide, curved stripes across her shoulders, the stripe that blackened half her left ear. “Dulcie?”
She mewed at him and leaped down, and snuggled against his neck, purring. She was warm, cuddled against him; even her purr seemed to warm him. He petted her and talked to her and wished she could tell him how to get home, wished she could lead him home. But she was just a cat, she didn’t know he was lost. He lay there cuddling her, wondering if she was lost, too? Why would she be so far from home, from where he usually saw her? When she rose and moved away, he was afraid she’d leave him, he didn’t want her to go away to hunt and leave him all alone.
WHEN DULCIE HAD arrived at the wreck, there were two patrol cars nosed in facing it, their headlights picking out the tangle of the white Toyota crumpled half on its side against a badly dented king cab pickup. Rearing up until she could see the license plate where it was jammed against a tree, she discovered it was the Toyota from the motel. The tangle of wrecked vehicles spilled across the road and up into the driveway of a dark brown, shingled house, a grim, depressing place crowded on three sides by the dense pine woods. Looking at the wreck, she imagined the truck backing down the drive, the Toyota coming fast up around the curve from below, hitting it broadside; imagined the car spinning the truck around in a lethal dance before it lost its footing, skidded over, and tilted into the tree. She could see no one inside either vehicle. If the three officers on the scene had found anyone, they’d have an ambulance there by now. Or they’d have the coroner. She didn’t want to think about that, hadn’t wanted to think about Benny hurt or dead.
Had an ambulance already come and gone, maybe taking the little boy away? She watched one of the officers move up the stairs to the front door, his flashlight beam raking the face of the house, and Dulcie circled behind the other two uniforms, through the dark to nose around the Toyota.
She found the woman’s scent, mixed with the smell of blood. And yes, the little boy’s scent where he’d eased or been pulled out of the backseat through the broken door. Both trails led downhill along the narrow road. She’d followed to where the two trails parted, the woman’s scent going on down, toward the village.
Benny’s scent led into the bushes, and she’d found where he had lain beneath a rhododendron bush, curled up long enough to leave a little puddle of blood that was now beginning to congeal. When he’d moved on again alone, back up the road toward the wreck, he had circled wide around it, staying among the bushes as if avoiding the cops. Why would he do that when he needed help? Or had he passed before the cops arrived? But, thinking back to what Maudie had said when Benny’s daddy was shot, the sheriff’s spotlights shining suddenly into the car onto the torn bodies, the voices of men Benny didn’t know, the harsh police radio, the child staring at his murdered father’s torn body, maybe she understood his fear of cop cars and harsh spotlights.
Leaving the scene, she had followed Benny’s scent on uphill through the woods and back onto the dark road until she’d discovered him asleep behind the berm, huddled up like a little hurt animal. She’d snuggled with him, wondering how best to summon help, wondering if she could get him to follow her. Though she didn’t think he’d follow her back to the police units. She’d lain against him worrying until she lost patience and had padded away waving her tail, looking back at him—and it had been as easy as enticing a young kitten. Benny, distressed that she was leaving, reached out to her. When she didn’t stop, he scrambled up, ignoring his hurt leg, and limped after her, unwilling to be left behind.
BUT DULCIE WASN’T the only cat who’d raced out into the night on a search against all odds. Down in the village Misto and Kit chased across the rooftops, running as fast as they could, but soon losing the lights of the faster moving Jaguar, which had far outdistanced them. “Go on,” Misto said, panting. “Catch up, don’t lose them.”
“I’m winded, too.” But Kit fled on, her heart pounding so hard it shook her. She was thankful for the stoplights that slowed the Jaguar, she didn’t dare lose Maudie. She hoped this chase didn’t do Misto in, but she mustn’t wait for him. Such a dear old cat, so frail in his aging. Once when the maroon Jaguar passed some lighted houses she got a flash of Maudie in the backseat struggling to get loose from her bonds. Where was Pearl taking her? Fear sent Kit pelting headlong, running so fast her back and front legs crossed in deep Xs, a flying ball of fur sailing across tree branches, above alleys yawning black below her. When she lost sight of the Jaguar she followed its receding rumble. She was nearly done for, she had raced farther and harder than she had ever run chasing some terrified and willful rabbit.
Pearl’s lights flashed between houses and woods as the car moved higher into the hills, forcing Kit to leave the last accessible rooftop and race up a narrow road, led only by the sound of the Jaguar. Pearl was headed high above the village where the houses were closer together again, crowded along the wild ravine, where she’d be able to see the streets below but could park out of sight. It was a logical place to take cover. If she was pressed, she might escape down into the canyon, just as she must have escaped behind Alfreda’s house earlier that night. Escape, and leave Maudie bound in the Jaguar? That would mess up her plans to hit the bank first thing in the morning. But it might save Pearl’s own neck, if she could dodge the cops.
But maybe you won’t dodge them, Kit thought, smiling.
High above her, Pearl’s lights stopped, then were extinguished. Yes, she had gone to ground in a secluded neighborhood just above the canyon where it would be easy to stay hidden—except that this was the canyon behind the senior ladies’ house. Pearl wouldn’t know that, Kit thought, smiling. She would know nothing about the seniors. Her choice of hiding places made Kit laugh out loud and lick her paw with satisfaction. This was the kind of good fortune where, when you’d slipped up on a mouse hole, you found a discarded cheese sandwich and the mice already gathered, too busy to no
tice their silent visitor.
Kit turned when she heard Misto panting behind her; he came flying, as if he’d gained his second wind. They raced on, not speaking, up the road among the woods toward the houses above. If Pearl was holed up for good, they had only to slip up on her, one of them keep her in sight, and the other race away to the seniors’, where Kit knew how to get in through Lori’s window. She’d just slip in past the sleeping girl, steal downstairs and use the kitchen phone, and she’d have the law up there pronto. As they approached the crest of the hill they heard a dog bark, his voice deep and melodic, and then a second dog: Lamb, the seniors’ big chocolate poodle, and their Dalmatian. Both knew something was out there, maybe they’d heard the Jaguar pull up the hill and park.
But what now? If she slipped into the house to use the phone, the dogs would be all over her. Even now, their barking might scare Pearl away, prompt her to run again. Rearing up looking through the trees trying to make out the dark shape of Pearl’s car, Kit was uncertain what to do. Uncertain how to play this game, maybe a far more dangerous game, with Maudie’s life at stake, than any she’d ever tackled.
At last, shivering, she headed for Lori’s second-floor window. Leaping to the hood of Cora Lee’s car, scrambling up, she found the window shut against the cold night, shut and locked. When she tried Cora Lee’s windows, they were locked, too. Both rooms were dark. As she crouched, peering in, she saw the reflection of a soft light come on at the back of the house, the kitchen. She could hear soft voices there, too, and could smell chocolate; maybe the ladies were having a little before-bed cocoa. She had to find a phone without alerting these ladies who had no idea she could speak, had to call the department, tell them that Pearl had Maudie. Looking up at the high little bathroom window, seeing it open a crack, she made a flying leap, clinging and clawing at the sliding glass.
44
EAGERLY BENNY FOLLOWED Dulcie. He wanted to go home, he wanted his grandma, and apparently he had perfect faith that she would take him there, that she would save him, she thought, smiling. Little kids were like that, they believed in the wisdom of animals, the magic of animals. Well, she might not have all the magic skills the child found in a favorite fairy tale, but she could sure as hell lead him to where he could get help.
What she didn’t understand was why Pearl had kidnapped her own child. For money? For some kind of ransom? And if she’d wanted him bad enough to snatch him, why had she left him again so soon? Had he turned out to be too much of a burden? Benny would have slowed her down after the wreck, which Pearl must have feared would draw the cops to her. Whatever the cause, in her need to escape she had abandoned him, and Dulcie was glad for that.
But where were Kit and Joe? Kit had been there at Maudie’s when Benny vanished, but where was she now? She supposed Joe was somewhere out in the night with Rock and Ryan, following Benny’s trail. It was hard when they weren’t together, couldn’t talk, couldn’t help one another. She had no way to tell them that Benny was safe, they weren’t cops with their sophisticated electronic devices, able to talk to each other over long distances. Humans’ inventions were marvels of ingenuity; she wondered if humans realized how very special they were, that they could not only visualize such wonders but had worked out how to build them, how to make them real.
Hurrying uphill with the child close beside her, she headed not for Maudie’s house, which lay far to the right, but for the crest of the hill that towered above them. Benny might be lost, but she wasn’t, she knew where to find help. She left the road when it turned away to the left, leading Benny straight up through the woods, a hard climb for the tired, injured child through dense trees and tangled vines. Heading straight for the seniors’ house, she mewed her encouragement, wanting him to move faster as she leaped over fallen branches. Benny didn’t like pushing through the black, clutching woods, she could see that he was afraid, but still he followed her. Only once did he pause and whimper, but then he pushed on again bravely, trusting her, trusting that she would take him safely through the night to where help waited, where someone friendly waited.
THE TRACKING TEAM did indeed form a strange procession through the dark and empty streets, the silver-colored dog with his nose to the paving jerking Ryan along, Clyde and Dallas jogging behind her, the hurrying gray tomcat taking up the rear. An untidy line of runners tracking Benny’s scent, which clung to the long-since-vanished white Toyota. Sometimes Rock lost the scent in the wake of a passing vehicle and had to cast around to find it again. Twice he lost it so completely he had to double back, his nose lifting and then down to the macadam until he picked up the trail, alternately following airborne scent and sucking up the faintest odor that lay along the street. Joe wondered that Benny’s scent had remained so strong—almost as if the child had rubbed against the tires or maybe clung to the fender or bumper trying to keep from being forced inside the car. Joe had, some time back, given up dodging into the shadows whenever Dallas glanced back at him. The detective knew he was there, and though his remarks amused Joe, they were unsettling, too.
“Why the hell is the cat still following us?” Dallas grumbled, scowling at Clyde. “He’s like a dog out for a run, I never saw a cat that acts so much like a dog.”
Clyde laughed. “He thinks he’s part dog, always been like that. He liked to run the beach with Rube and Barney. Remember how they’d race? Now, with both the old dogs gone, he’s grown pretty close to Rock.”
“He thinks he’s part cop,” Dallas said, “the way he hangs around the station.”
“It’s the food he likes,” Ryan said, sucking in breath, pulled along by Rock. “Mabel spoils him, you all do, he’s really getting too fat.”
Joe gave her a look as he moved along at a gallop beside Clyde. Ryan shook her head imperceptibly as Dallas glanced down at him, frowning. “Part dog,” Ryan said, laughing. “Thinks he can do whatever Rock can do.” She was about done in, was beginning to think she wasn’t as young as she used to be, not a pleasant revelation. They’d been tracking for nearly an hour when Rock swerved suddenly up a hillside street, leaped ahead so violently he nearly jerking Ryan off her feet.
“The wreck,” Dallas said, watching the light reflection among the treetops. With a BOL out on the white Toyota, the responding officers at the crash scene had called through to Dallas as soon as they ID’d the wrecked car.
“Neither driver on the scene,” Officer McFarland had said. “Some blood on the seat of the Toyota, shoe prints over the skid marks, a woman’s shoes and the boy’s, but no one here now.”
“See if you can find Benny,” Dallas had said. “The woman’s wanted on several charges.” Dallas could have pulled Rock off the scent, taken him directly there, put him back on Benny’s scent at the scene of the wreck. He’d opted, instead, to let Rock find his way without interference. If they took the big dog off the trail, they might miss something. Maybe the kidnapper had stopped somewhere, maybe pulled the child out of the car, locked him up somewhere. This, plus the fact that he didn’t want to screw up the dog’s training by taking him off fresh scent—not when he was ramping ahead on the lead nearly choking himself.
They arrived at the wreck to find Kathleen Ray photographing the car and truck and taking blood samples. Neither driver nor passengers had been found. Before they reached the wrecked vehicles Rock brightened on Benny’s scent so powerfully that he nearly flew off the road, jerking Ryan downhill for a long way, and then into a tangle of bushes, sniffing at an indentation of crushed leaves, a little bed matted down into a child-sized nest. Huffing, drinking in the scent, he’d circled wide around it, his nose to the ground, and then headed uphill again, veering back and forth between two trails.
At the wreck again he gave a yip and tried to climb into the turned-over Toyota, sucking at the scent from within and around the hanging door that gaped open. Proudly Joe Grey watched his protégé, smiling at the success of his training.
But there was one thing Joe and Rock knew that their human companions did not.
Or maybe Dulcie had already found him, Joe thought hopefully. Maybe by now the child was no longer alone. And though Joe wasn’t given to prayer, tonight he made an exception as he worried for his tabby lady.
Leaving the wreck behind, Rock took them straight up the steep road until it dead-ended, and there the silver dog plunged into the woods again, dragging Ryan crashing up through vines and heavy undergrowth. Rock’s human followers were soon fighting blackberry thorns that snatched at their jeans and windbreakers, swearing with a creativity that amused the tomcat. When, above them, two dogs began to bark, Rock paused, listening. But their voices were familiar and welcome, and he wagged his short tail.
“Benny can’t be headed for the seniors’ house?” Dallas said. “How the hell could he find their place in the dark? How would he even know the direction? What kind of blind luck is that?”
Not blind luck, Joe Grey thought, this was Dulcie’s doing, she had led Benny there.
They came out of the woods at the top of the hill, the three humans scratched and cranky from the blackberries’ embrace. They were half a block from the seniors’ rambling frame house. No lights burned in the flat-roofed, two-story structure, except for a faint light at the back, apparently from the kitchen. The seniors’ dogs were still barking, but now with pleased little woofs. They knew who approached, and were excited to have midnight company. Rock wasn’t distracted by them, he hurried along sucking Benny’s fresh scent from the air. Only when Dallas put a hand on Ryan’s arm did she speak to Rock and pull him to a halt. The good dog looked up at her reproachfully. He’d run for nearly two hours tracking Benny, he wanted the satisfaction of the find, he wanted a joyous reunion. “Just for a minute,” she told him, stroking his muscled shoulder.