The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  The room itself seemed out of place, had no relationship to the rest of the prison; even the bars on the wide windows were half disguised by the potted white flowers on the sills. He stood not on hard concrete but on a tan tweed carpet, the walls painted white instead of government green. Soft-looking couches and chairs were set about in little family groupings, the effect cozy and unreal. Taking in the unnatural scene, he turned to leave—but he didn’t leave. He had promised Morgan.

  And something else held him, the child held him, her likeness to Mae made him turn to watch her. From the back she looked so like Mae that he felt jerked into the past, returned to their childhood. Her thin body as light-boned as a fledgling bird, just like Mae, her long legs and the way she stood as if she might leap away any instant. He wished she’d turn around, but he was afraid of what he’d see.

  Last night he hadn’t slept well, he’d coughed all night, after the cotton mill. Awake and choking, he had tossed restlessly thinking about today, thinking about the child who was so like Mae, who dreamed as Mae dreamed. Periodically he had sat up on his bunk and done his breathing exercises, but it had been impossible to get enough air. He’d skipped breakfast this morning, had drunk some coffee and then sat in the thin winter sun hoping it would warm him. It would be Christmas soon; some wag had tied a red bow on the railing of the stairs that led down from the industries buildings. He had stood looking at it and thinking about this visit, about Sammie and about Mae, feeling curious and uneasy.

  Now he sat down in the nearest chair watching the cozy family. Watched Morgan draw his wife and child to a couch where they sat close together. Becky was tall and slim, built like her daughter but with dark hair falling to her shoulders. She wore a plain tan coat over her skirt and white blouse, sheer stockings and flat shoes. He was watching the way Morgan held her so tenderly when the little girl turned, looking across the room at him. The shock sent him weak.

  He was looking at Mae. This was Mae, this was his sister. The long-ago memories flooded back. Holding her hand as they waded in the drying stream on a scorching summer day—bundling Mae up in scarves and gloves in the freezing winter, lifting her onto his homemade sled. Mae slipping away from their mother to the saddled horses, scrambling up into the saddle by herself.

  Mae crossed the room to him . . . But not Mae. This was Sammie. She ran to him reaching for him, same dark brown eyes as Mae, same long blond hair tangled around her ears, Mae’s own elfin smile. She stopped a few feet from him, shy suddenly. But then she flew at him, she was in his lap, her arms around him as if she’d known him forever. How warm she was, like a hound pup, shockingly warm and sweet smelling. This was Mae, this was his little sister, her hug infinitely comforting.

  But of course she wasn’t Mae, this was Morgan Blake’s child, this was Sammie Blake who had dreamed of him in the same inexplicable way that Mae dreamed, seeing what she couldn’t know.

  Seeing his unease, Sammie lowered her eyes and drew back, her look as coolly shuttered as any grown-up’s, shy and removed suddenly, plucking at the doll she carried. From the couch, Morgan and Becky watched them in silence, Becky’s hands twisting in her lap, the moment as brittle as glass—until Sammie reached to touch his face.

  “Where is your horse?”

  Lee stared at her.

  “Where is your gray horse?”

  No one knew about the gray, Lee had never talked to Morgan about horses, the young mechanic had no interest in horses. Certainly he would never mention the gelding on which he had escaped after the post office robbery; he had never told Morgan about the robbery. “I don’t have a horse. You can’t have a horse in prison.”

  “But you do. You have a horse. The gray horse. Where is he?”

  If she had dreamed of the gray, had she dreamed of the robbery, too? “Sorry,” he said. “No horse. The prison guards won’t let me keep one.”

  This child knew secrets she shouldn’t know, she had seen into his life as no normal person could do. He didn’t know what else she might have dreamed, he was sorry he’d come, today. When he looked up, Becky’s face was closed and unreadable, her hands joined with Morgan’s, their fingers gripped together telegraphing their unease. When again Sammie started to speak, Lee rose, lifting her. He needed to get out of there. But when he tried to put her in her father’s lap she clutched him around the neck and wouldn’t let go.

  He pried her arms loose. “You have to stay with your daddy, I have to leave now.” He handed her forcibly to Morgan, muttered a weak good-bye, and quickly turned away. Hurrying across the big room he could feel Sammie’s hurt and disappointment. Unfinished business weighed on the child—and weighed on Becky and Morgan. Too much had been left unsaid, urging him to turn back. But he didn’t turn; he pushed on out through the heavy door, nodded to the guard and hurried through the corridors to the safety of his cell. Crawling under the blanket shivering, he didn’t want to deal with this. But at the same time, he was drawn to Sammie and to the mystery of the Blake family that seemed, that had to be a part of his own life.

  LEE WOKE WHEN the Klaxon rang for first shift supper. He had slept for over an hour. He thought of skipping the meal, he didn’t want to sit with Morgan, didn’t want to try to explain how uncomfortable the child made him, he didn’t want to talk. But in the end he decided he’d better eat something. Maybe Morgan would eat later, slip in at second shift. He washed his face, combed his hair, pulled on the wool jacket the prison had issued when the weather turned cool, and headed out along the catwalk. They’d have to talk sometime, he just hoped it wasn’t tonight.

  In the mess hall, getting his tray, he chose a table in the farthest corner, hoping Morgan wouldn’t show. But of course when he looked back at the line, there he was. In a few minutes he set his tray down across from Lee.

  Lee had invented a number of fake explanations for departing the visiting room so abruptly; but this morning, leaving his cell, something had made him slip Mae’s picture in his pocket. Now, when Morgan began quizzing him, he handed it across the table.

  Morgan looked at the picture, frowning. Sammie was dressed as he had never seen her in a white pinafore, shiny black shoes, and white socks. She was standing before a three-rail pasture fence, a couple of steers off in the distance, a place Morgan had never been.

  “My sister,” Lee said. “Taken when we were kids. Mae was about eight.”

  Morgan frowned at Sammie’s dark eyes and perky smile, Sammie’s pale hair hanging down her thin shoulders. Except for her old-fashioned clothes, this child was Sammie. Morgan looked for a very long time, then looked up at Lee.

  “Mae had dreams,” Lee said, “the same as Sammie. Not often, but she would dream of the future. She didn’t talk much about them except to me, they upset our mother. And Pa would pitch a fit. Mae wasn’t very old when she quit telling Pa what she saw, telling him what would happen.”

  Morgan handed the picture back, treating it with care. “Where is Mae now?”

  Lee shook his head. “I didn’t keep in touch, I lost track. I tried to find them in North Carolina, in a town where I thought they might be, but my letters were sent back. Someone wrote on one, ‘Try Canada,’ but they didn’t say where, in Canada. I had an older brother, and two sisters older than Mae, I knew they’d take care of her.

  “I heard from our neighbor when Pa died, there was a saloon where he knew to get in touch. It took a couple months before I rode that way. He said Ma and the kids had moved to North Carolina, that’s when I tried to write to them. He wasn’t certain about the address. I never heard from them, but I wouldn’t have, I was always on the move.” He knew he could have tried harder. He was ashamed about that. Well, hell, he was so caught up in his own life. All that young wildness, always another train to test him, another woman’s smile to entice him.

  “I was fourteen when we moved to Arizona. Two years later I went off on my own. I took the best two cow horses we had and I know Pa wasn’t happy about that.” He didn’t know what made him talk so much. Maybe the fac
t of Mae’s and Sammie’s strange likeness made him ramble on, drew him to confide in Morgan.

  IT WAS LONG after supper and lights out, as Lee lay coughing and sleepless, when the tomcat joined him as he liked to do—as if he was tucking his wards in for the night. Landing hard on Lee’s bed, this time the cat was fully visible in the overhead lights. Quickly Lee rose up from the covers, effectively hiding Misto, and turned to scan the cells across the way.

  No one seemed to be looking back. He guessed the cat would know. Misto pricked his ears as a train thundered, its small earthquake deafening the cellblock. The ghost cat seemed quite to like the noise and hustle, the excitement. When the train had faded, he sat watching Lee again, alert and waiting.

  Lee said, “That child is the spittin’ image of Mae. You’re the spirit, you know these things. You tell me what that’s about.”

  Misto lashed his tail but said nothing.

  “Talk to me.” Lee scratched the cat’s ragged ears.

  “I can’t know everything. But I can tell you this. You are meant to be together, you and Morgan and Sammie. A path is taking shape, just as certain as the route of that train. A path that you and I have followed, just as the devil follows.”

  Lee looked up again along the tiers of cells. Still no one was looking or seemed to be listening.

  “He not only wants your soul,” Misto said, “he would take Sammie if he could. There is something in the child that he can’t touch, but still she is part of his plan.”

  Misto licked his paw. “The child is strong. Her deepest nature is to resist him, so deep an instinct that often she is hardly aware of him. She will help you, just as I will—as best a child and a small ghost can help, can try to save your scrawny neck.”

  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 hi
s 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.