The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  And Morgan woke, staring at something behind Lee.

  Lee turned to face the dark presence looming over them, its cold seeping into Lee’s bones. Morgan’s hand, then his whole body, grew so cold that Lee scrambled to reach for the call button.

  “They won’t hear it,” said the dark spirit.

  “What do you want? Get out of here. What do you want with Morgan, what does he have to do with your vendetta against me? He’s not of Dobbs’s blood.” Lee wanted to lunge at the figure but knew he would grapple empty air.

  “Morgan’s little girl is of Dobbs’s blood. She is descended from Dobbs just as you are. There is no finer prize,” Satan said, “than a child. Now, through her father, I will destroy the girl. Through her father and soon through you as well.

  “Oh, she dreams of you, Fontana. You are her kin. She saw you kill Luke Zigler, she saw his smashed face. She saw you and Morgan scale the wall; she was with you on your journey, suffering every misery you endured; she felt cold fear at the sight of the tramp’s switchblade, fear not as an adult would experience but as a child knows terror. Her pain, as she watched, is most satisfying.

  “She saw you pull the cable around Falon’s throat, she felt your urge to kill him, she watched you smile and pull the cable tighter.”

  Lee’s helplessness, his inability to drive back the dark spirit, enraged him. Nothing could be so evil as to fill a child with such visions, to torment a little girl with an adult’s lust.

  But at Lee’s thought, the invader shifted. “I do not give the child her nightmares,” Satan snapped. “I have no control over her dreams.”

  “How could she see such things if the dreams don’t come from you?”

  The shadow faded, then darkened again. “I do not shape her dreams,” he repeated testily. “I do not control her fantasies.”

  But then he laughed. “Soon I will control them, soon I will break the force that gives her such visions, and then,” he said, “then I will shape the images she sees, I will shape her fears until, at long last, I use that terror to break her. To own her,” Lucifer said with satisfaction.

  “In the end,” he said, “the child will belong to me. My retribution will be complete. You might resist my challenges, Fontana. You might have won a bargain, as you put it. But Sammie Blake won’t win anything. She will soon be my property. As I destroy her father, so I will destroy her. She is my retribution, the final answer to my betrayal by Russell Dobbs.”

  39

  IT WAS EARLY morning in Georgia, the sun just fingering up through dense growths of maples and sourwoods. A Floyd County truck stood parked in the woods at the foot of Turkey Mountain Ridge, its tires leaving a fresh trail along the narrow dirt road. Agents Hillerman and Clark of the FBI and GBI respectively, and Deputy Riker of the Floyd County Sheriff’s Department, had already climbed halfway up the steep slope. Sweating in heavy khaki clothing and high, laced boots, they shouldered through thorny tangles and dense, second-growth saplings. Hillerman was perhaps the most uncomfortable in the hot protective clothing, with his thirty pounds of extra weight. Clark, the youngest, was fit and tanned, blond crew cut covered by a sturdy cap, his ruddy face clear and sunny. Each man wore a backpack fitted out with water, snacks, and the tools they would need if they found the hidden well.

  Though the three men wielded machetes, cutting away the briars that tripped and clawed at them, still the thorny tangles ripped through their clothing, tearing into their skin leaving their pants and shirts dotted with blood, their hands and legs throbbing. They had driven up the old rutted logging road as far as the truck would go. When the incline grew too steep they had left the vehicle to climb the eastern slope on foot. Riker was in the lead, a rail-thin, leathery man as dry and wrinkled as if the cigarettes he smoked, two packs a day, were surely embalming him. Breathing hard, he led the two men back and forth, tacking across the steep hill searching carefully, stopping often to study the ground, the surrounding growth, and the mountain that rose above them. He was looking for signs of old, rotted fences, abandoned farm tools. He did not smoke while in the woods, he chewed.

  Years ago Riker had hunted deer on this mountain. He didn’t remember any old homeplace up here, but often all that was left would be a few bramble-covered artifacts or, higher up the hill, fragments of an old rock foundation and the old well, both long ago covered by heavy growth. As they neared the crest he glanced back at the bureau men, cautioned them again to take care. “You step in a hidden well, you fall a hundred feet straight down.” They’d climbed in silence for another five minutes when Riker stopped suddenly, stood looking above them where a dozen huge oak trees came into view, towering above small, scrubby saplings.

  “There. That’ll be it.” He moved on quickly, straight up the ridge until it leveled off to flat ground. There was no sign of a house or of fences or foundation, but Riker nodded with satisfaction, stood wiping his forehead with his bandana. “I’d forgotten this place. Watch your step, the well’s somewhere close.”

  Hillerman, the FBI agent, stared around him searching for signs of a homeplace.

  “These big old trees,” Riker said, “crowding all together in a half circle? That’s where the house stood, in their shade. And the brushy land that drops on down? That would have been cleared, that’s the garden spot.” The other two looked at him, questioning, but Riker knew these woods. And for the past hundred yards they’d been walking over old, worn terraces.

  “There would have been crops here, too,” Riker said, “corn, beans, more tomatoes, collards. Off to your right,” he said, pointing, “those old pear trees gone wild? Someone planted those.” He paused beside a low-branched sourwood, took a small folding saw from his pack, and cut three long straight branches so they could feel ahead through the scrub and grass.

  “The well won’t likely be near the bigger trees,” Riker said, “where the roots would grow in.” They moved on slowly, poking ahead, doubling back and forth watching the ground. Near the old homeplace, Hillerman shouted.

  Riker and Clark joined him. Kneeling, Riker pulled aside a tangle of honeysuckle, revealing the remains of a crumbled stone curb. Carefully they pulled out long, tangled vines, clearing the stone circle beneath. It was some five feet across, the hole in the center yawning black and deep.

  The sides of the well were lined with stone, too, the carefully laid rocks gray with moss where Riker shone the beam of his torch down inside. Tying a rope around his waist, handing the ends to Clark and Hillerman, he leaned down in until his light picked out the far, muddy bottom. He moved the beam slowly, looking.

  “It’s there,” Riker said. “The ammo box.”

  Hillerman fished a coiled rope from his backpack, a treble hook tied at one end, and handed it to Clark. Kneeling beside Riker, the younger man let the coil play out easy, down and down, the swinging steel claw catching torchlight as it bounced against the well’s stone and earth sides. When it reached bottom he let it settle, then eased it toward the dark metal box lying deep in the mud against the earthen wall.

  It took seven passes, Clark gently finessing the hook, before he snagged one of the two handles. Slowly he pulled the box up, afraid at every move that he’d lose it or it would pop open and spill its contents. Keeping it clear of the edges, he at last lifted the dirt-encrusted ammo box above the well and out over solid ground.

  Hillerman had to use the beer opener on his pocketknife to pry up the two heavy, rusty latches. When he had pulled the lid open the three men, kneeling around the box, looked at each other grinning.

  Within lay the bundles of greenbacks, moldy smelling, each secured with a brown paper collar. They touched nothing. Tucked in beside the money was a tightly rolled canvas bag and a dark blue stocking cap. Hillerman picked this up carefully with the point of his knife, held it high, revealing its length, which would easily cover a man’s face. Two ragged eyeholes had been cut in one side. Underneath, where he’d removed the cap and bag, lay a .38-caliber revolver.

  Pulling on clean c
otton gloves, Hillerman dropped the cap, bank bag, and revolver into clean paper bags. Carefully he checked the serial numbers on several of the bills, lifting their edges with the point of his knife. “Now,” the overweight agent said, grinning, “let’s see what the lab makes of this.”

  “The lab and the U.S. attorney,” said Riker.

  Latching the lid, they placed the box in a larger evidence bag. The agents fitted the bags into their backpacks and, all three smiling, they headed back down the mountain. Ever since Quaker Lowe had filled them in fully on Falon’s long record, on Blake’s murder trial, and on comments made by prison authorities, and knowing Lowe’s honest reputation as a straight shooter, they wanted to see Falon fry. Descending the ridge on the trail they’d partially cleared, Riker said, “That old parolee, the old train robber? Whatever his reasons, if it was Fontana who made Falon talk, I’d say he’s earned the court’s blessing.”

  “And maybe the Lord’s blessing,” said Hillerman, smiling.

  40

  THE GHOST CAT, lingering unseen on Morgan’s bed, was well aware of the search in Georgia and of the morning’s find in the old well. He was as pleased as the three lawmen as they moved down the wooded hill packing out the bank money. The cat, lying close to Morgan listening to Lee’s verbal marathon, reached out a soft paw whenever Lee started to drift off. He alerted Lee more sharply to any slightest movement as their patient began slowly to return to the living, his spirit reaching up again from the darkness beyond all dark. The yellow cat, lying close to Morgan, knew that Lee’s and Morgan’s lives had begun to brighten into the shape of hope.

  The two men might not yet sense it, but from the time they scaled the wall, all across country and then into T.I., even to Morgan’s present battle, the cat knew that hope touched them. He started suddenly, hissing, when an orderly bolted into the room.

  The man reached for Lee, his meaty hand on Lee’s shoulder. “Phone call, Fontana. It’s your lawyer, he said it was urgent.”

  Rising, Lee headed for the door not knowing whether the man meant Quaker Lowe in Georgia or Reginald Storm, and not wanting to stop and ask. He followed the orderly to an empty office, the young man staying behind Lee, where he was in control. Stepping into the small space, Lee picked up the receiver that lay on the blotter next to the tall black phone.

  “Sorry to wake you,” Storm said, “I know it’s early. Quaker just called. They’ve got the bank money. A sheriff’s deputy went up Turkey Mountain Ridge this morning with two agents. They found the old homeplace, the old dry well, the ammo box there at the bottom. The money, the canvas bags. They found the gun, Lee.”

  Lee stood grinning, clutching the receiver tight, as if it and Storm’s words might vanish.

  “The bank has records of some of the packs of bills,” Storm said. “The bureau has lifted a number of Falon’s prints, that match those from the L.A. files. And ballistics is working on the gun. They even found the mask he wore, that wool cap with the eyeholes.”

  “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe our good luck.”

  Storm laughed. “We’re on our way, Lee. We have something to work on, you’re on your way to court.”

  “If anything can rouse Morgan,” Lee said, sitting down at the desk to steady himself, “this will wake him.”

  “This,” Storm said, “and the sight of Becky and Sammie, in the morning. They’re flying out today, the first flight they could get. Lowe said Becky’s been really down, worrying about Morgan. Said with this news, she’s not so furious anymore, at the two of you.”

  That made Lee smile wryly, almost tenderly.

  “They have a number of layovers, they’ll be in around midnight. I’ll pick them up, get them settled in a motel over there near the prison. Becky’s aunt paid for the flight,” Storm said. “I guess Becky argued, but she didn’t have much choice.” There was a smile in Storm’s voice. “Lowe says her aunt Anne’s a pretty stubborn woman.”

  That made Lee smile. Storm said, “I’ll be over later this morning to talk with Iverson, make sure Falon’s . . . satisfactorily detained,” he said with amusement. “How’s Morgan doing?”

  “Some better,” Lee said. “He wakes a little sometimes, and his sleep seems more normal. Maybe this news will bring him around. The wound’s beginning to heal, the swelling’s going down, they can’t detect any inner bleeding. I want to thank you,” Lee said, “for getting Iverson to let me stay with him.”

  “That was Dr. McClure’s doing. Maybe by the time we get this on the docket Morgan will be raring to get into the courtroom. I just hope we can transfer jurisdiction. Lowe’s working with the U.S. attorneys on that. If Falon’s arraigned and tried out here, and if he doesn’t ask for a jury, that’s our best bet. Our L.A. judges are a pretty good bunch.”

  Returning to Morgan’s room Lee stood looking down at him; laying his hand on Morgan’s arm, he told Morgan the news, that the law in Georgia had found the money and gun, told him everything Storm had said. He thought a little color came into Morgan’s face, a brief spark of awareness. As Lee talked, the yellow cat suddenly appeared beside Morgan, looking up at Lee, flicking his tail, twitching his whiskers, gazing deep into Lee’s eyes. They looked at each other for a long time, the cat filled with triumph and goodness; but when Lee reached to touch him he vanished again. Disappeared flashing Lee a cattish smile, was gone as suddenly as he’d appeared.

  SAMMIE’S EXCITED CRY jerked Becky upright from napping among the plane’s pillows. On the hard seat, Sammie no longer huddled dozing against her. “Wake up!” Sammie demanded again, shaking Becky so hard she knocked their pillows to the floor. “Daddy’s awake, he’s waking up.”

  “Shhh,” Becky said, hugging the child against her, glancing around at awakened and annoyed passengers. Curious faces rose up from the seats ahead, looking back staring at them. Becky turned away, cuddling Sammie to quiet her. They had left Atlanta in mid-morning, had already changed planes in Dallas, with two more stops ahead before they reached L.A., and every moment of the journey excruciating as they worried over Morgan

  “He’s awake,” Sammie repeated, then, “He knows. Daddy knows they found the money. He’s waking up and he knows. Oh, Mama . . .” The child’s face was alight, she hugged Becky hard.

  “Shhh,” Becky said again, “tell me quietly.”

  “This is what it’s about,” Sammie whispered, sounding very grown-up, “this is why they climbed the wall.”

  Every night since Morgan and Lee escaped, Sammie had cried out in her dreams, afraid and often defiant; she had traveled with them all that long journey, not sleeping much, not eating well. But now, tonight, she seemed stronger. Now it was Becky herself who was shaken and clinging, who needed Sammie to hold her.

  Around them passengers continued to stare and some to grumble. Mother and daughter were silent, their tears mingling against each other’s faces. When Misto pressed suddenly between them warm and comforting, Sammie put her arms around the ghost cat, too, and smiled contentedly at Becky. Everything was all right now, everything would be all right. She hugged Misto. What should be would be. Their life, despite the bumps and hurts yet to come, was moving on in the right direction, just as her good cat knew it should.

  LEE WOKE AT dawn from a short nap on the empty bed, his wrinkled clothes binding him. He swung to the floor—and there was Becky sitting beside Morgan’s bed on the straight wooden chair.

  The room was barely light. Morgan had turned on his side, Lee could see the rise and fall of his chest, see the IV tube swing when Morgan shifted his arm. He watched Morgan reach up and tenderly touch Becky’s face. Lee wanted to shout and do a little dance. Morgan was awake. He sat silently on the bed, looking.

  Becky’s navy suit was rumpled from traveling, her eyes red from either crying or fatigue, her dark hair limp around her face. He saw no suitcase, then remembered that Storm had put them in a motel last night. Sammie lay curled up at the foot of Morgan’s bed, her head on a pillow so she could see Morgan, her blond hair tumbled
across the prison blanket. He remembered how warm she had been the times he had held her, infinitely warm and alive. Sammie’s gaze didn’t leave Morgan. But slowly Becky looked up at Lee.

  It was all there in her face, her pain from the long weeks when she didn’t know where they were or what was happening to Morgan, didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. Her relief when at last Storm called to say they had turned themselves in, relief that Morgan was alive—and then the phone call that he was injured, that the doctors couldn’t wake him. She looked at Lee for a long time in silence, then, “Lee? How did you make him talk?”

  Lee smiled. “I had a piece of steel cable. After he hurt Morgan, I showed him how to tie a necktie.”

  Becky thought about that. She didn’t ask any more questions. Lee knew the guards would have found cable marks on Falon’s throat. So far no one had hauled him into Iverson about it; he wasn’t looking forward to that confrontation.

  Maybe Storm’s friendship with Warden Iverson had stifled such inquiries. He could only hope so. When he looked again at Becky, there was amusement in her eyes. He grinned back at her, rose, grabbed the clean clothes the orderly had laid out for him, and went down the hall to the shower.

  When he returned, Sammie lay snuggled in her daddy’s arms, Morgan’s face buried against her shoulder. Becky still sat in the chair, her hand lying against Morgan’s face, below the bandage. Lee looked at Morgan. “What did Falon hit you with, a brick?”

  “A sock full of something hard as hell,” Morgan said. “Before I woke, you were talking to me. I kept reaching for your voice, trying to come awake, trying to make sense of what you were saying. Something about horses, about cattle. I kept trying to reach up to you, like swimming up through heavy molasses.”