Cat Striking Back (23 page)

W
HEN HE WOKE
in the motel, it was broad daylight. Christ! Looking blearily at his watch, he saw it was nearly noon. What had made him sleep so long? His mouth tasted bad and his face felt worse. Gingerly, he touched his cheek, his whole face was covered with deep claw wounds, and probably some of them still had glass in them. He'd picked out a dozen bloody slivers last night that he'd gotten when he lay facedown below the window, trying to protect himself from their dirty claws. He was still bleeding, there was blood all over the pillows and sheets. His stubble itched bad already, and he wouldn't be able to shave. A razor would take half his face off, what was left of it.

He hadn't crawled into the musty-smelling bed until after three by the time he'd changed the tire and then gone back to find the inhaler. Never had found it and that was when it hit the fan, that was when everything went wrong.

After those cats attacked him, after he got away and
locked himself in the RV, he'd tried to clean up. Found a towel in the back and, half blind with blood and pain, had tried to wash and doctor the filthy wounds, squeezed on some salve he'd found in the kitchenette, that
she'd
put there in case of some emergency. She hadn't guessed what kind of emergency. Bleeding all over himself, he'd headed for the highway, wanted only to be out of there, to be as far away from that cursed house and the cursed village as he could get. But then he'd driven only as far as Santa Cruz when he knew he had to sleep. Caught himself twice jerking awake, knew he had to find a motel where he could pull the RV out of sight and get some rest.

He'd driven around the fusty little town for some time before he found a motel that would suit his purpose. He'd had to ring for ten minutes before the manager came stumbling out in an old bathrobe, none too pleased even if the place was nearly empty, only five cars parked in front. It was after three o'clock when he'd finally checked in and fallen into bed. Hadn't slept well, kept waking, his face hurting, and feeling those cats all over him. Would jerk up in a rictus of terror then, sweating, then fall into sleep again.

His muscles ached. He was stiff from digging, from hauling her up out of the pool and heaving her in the car, then later moving her into the RV and then into that garage and down the ladder. He wasn't a laborer, he worked out some to keep in shape, but not that kind of abuse. He'd already been sore when the tire blew. Changing that had nearly finished him. And then to be attacked—that monster exploding in his face and then a whole pack of them erupting in a horror, like his worst nightmares. Where
had they come from? And why?

Getting out of bed, he found a coffeepot in the small bathroom. Pot so stained and dirty that if he didn't die from an infection of cat bites he'd likely die from the accumulation of bacteria that it had collected over who knew how many years as the hotel maids wiped it out with their dirty scrub rags.

He couldn't have picked a skuzzier motel. It was in an old, run-down district, a two-story, dilapidated stucco building that must have been constructed early in the last century, surrounded by a neighborhood of small wooden houses with peeling paint, ragged lawns, and junk cars in the yards and narrow driveways. But it had what he wanted. Before he checked in he'd driven around behind the building where he found a narrow alley that would serve him well. Returning to the front and checking in, he'd asked for a room at the back, told the clerk it'd be quieter back there, away from the street. He could pretty well choose his own room, empty as they were. Taking his duffle up, he'd opened the window, draped a towel over the sill to mark which room. Then he'd moved the RV around into the alley, parked it among the garbage cans just below, pulled it up against the building so no one could open the side door. Had hoped, if anyone tried to open the locked driver's door, he'd hear them. Carrying his coffee, he opened the window and looked down.

RV looked all right, he could see in through the side windows that it was still full of the boxes, just as he'd left it. Turning, he surveyed the fusty room with its faded brown wallpaper and ragged curtains. Some send-off for a trip that they'd meant to be fancy. A trip
she'd
meant to
be an upscale vacation, spending the money they'd pocket from their neighbors' treasures. They'd set it up so well. And she had to go and ruin it.

Ever since they'd moved into that neighborhood they'd been friendly with the neighbors, had made it a point to be. Three other couples they'd gotten along with well, they'd made a good group. He sat down on the bed, drinking his coffee.

He wondered if, when his face had healed and things cooled down, he
could
return home, keep on in the same vein with the neighbors and no one the wiser. Act grateful for his friends' condolences about her leaving him, exchange sympathy with them about their mutual burglaries, keep right on enjoying their company. They'd had some fun parties, the eight of them. Potlucks, card games, cookouts. He wondered if he could get away with that as smoothly as they'd pulled off other jobs, in other cities.
She'd
say that what someone didn't know would never hurt them.

He missed her. Why the hell did she have to be so clumsy? He thought again that he could have called the paramedics. But that wouldn't have saved her, she was dead seconds after her head hit the tile coping. He could have called the cops, told them she fell, but who would have believed him? Believed he didn't push her, that he hadn't murdered her even if it
had
been her fault?

He had to quit thinking about it. It was over, she was gone. Buried where no one would ever think to look. He had to get on with it now, and he could sure use the money, would need it if he decided not to go back. He didn't know how that would play out, that would depend on what the
cops found, on what he read in the papers—if it was all reported. If the damn cops didn't hold something back, trying to trap him.

Biggest problem was, he'd laid no groundwork in the neighborhood for her leaving him, he hadn't planned on this. He hadn't dropped hints that they might be having problems, and she would have no reason to say that. He'd made no big withdrawal from her account for the cops to discover, as if she planned to leave him. No secret plane reservations on her Visa. He'd have to say it was a spur-of-the-moment blowup, that they'd had their little tiffs but he'd never dreamed she'd get mad enough to leave, to just walk out on him. Have to say they'd kept their differences to themselves, that they'd had a far worse argument than usual. By the time he got up to Washington State he'd have worked out the details to make it look reasonable. He'd have to do this tedious stuff on his own, now, working out all the picky details.

Last night after changing the tire, after pulling away in the dark, leaving his lights off until he was clear of the cops below, he'd felt physically ill at their presence down there. Heading toward the highway he'd felt ice cold, and his stomach had been churning. Who the hell had called the cops? What had someone seen? Had they seen
him?
Seen the
RV?
Right now, was every CHP on the highway watching for an old brown RV that wouldn't be hard to spot?

Rising, he went into the tiny bathroom where he showered, trying to keep the hot water off his face. It stung like hell, and he didn't want it bleeding any worse. He wasn't hungry but he thought he'd better eat. Maybe some break
fast would make him feel better. He badly wanted to see a newspaper, see if the burglaries were in it. Molena Point wasn't that far away.

Before checking out, he tried the TV but by the time he turned it on there was no more news, it was all daytime programs, as murky as the oily dregs in the coffeepot. He finally found a local channel with some news. He watched that for nearly an hour but there was no mention of Molena Point. His stomach awash with coffee, he knew he had to eat.

Leaving the room, he walked past the elevator to where a window was open at the front of the building, stood looking out through the greasy curtains, up and down the street. He could see nothing like a restaurant, not even some kind of hole-in-the-wall grocery that would have packaged snacks and newspapers. Maybe better to hit the road, find somewhere to eat on his way to the city. Approaching San Francisco, there'd be plenty of restaurants.

Returning to the room, grabbing the small duffle that he'd brought in with him last night, he walked down the one flight, stopped at the desk to pay his bill. The clerk was young and pudgy; she avoided looking at his face. When he told her he might be back that night, she wanted him to make a reservation, and that made him laugh. As if they were expecting a big crowd, were booked solid with upscale tourists or some medical convention. The quality of this place, they couldn't count on a convention of second-rate hookers. Paying his bill in cash, which the clerk didn't question, he went around to get the RV.

No, nothing had been disturbed. When he slipped in, locked the driver's door, and went to look in the back, the
boxes and furniture and rolled rugs were just as he'd left them. Starting the engine and moving out to the street, he stayed in the scuzzy neighborhood, driving the narrow streets looking for someplace for breakfast. Once he'd eaten he meant to return to Highway 1, stay on the coast, away from cops and traffic. As soon as he'd taken care of business in the city, dumped the RV and bought a car, he could move north on any route he chose, he wouldn't be recognized then. Meanwhile, the day was clear and bright, the sea reflected the sun cheerfully, and he might as well enjoy the ride. After a week or two, he'd decide whether to go back and say she'd left him, or to keep moving.

T
HE THREE CATS
watched from Ryan's truck as Dallas and John Bern emerged from the pit with the wrapped body on a stretcher and lifted her into Bern's van. She was fully covered by the body bag, and the cats were relieved not to have to look on her face in death. They wanted to keep their own picture of Theresa, her eyes laughing down at them, her hands gentle and warm as she stroked them, her round cheeks pink with health and life. They didn't want to remember her sunny face as the waxen face of a corpse.

As the coroner's van pulled away, Dallas followed in his dusty Blazer, leaving the house encircled by crime tape. Max had already left to return to court and then to pick up Charlie, to head for the morgue. As soon as everyone else was gone, Ryan stepped to the bed of her truck and pulled aside the tarp where the cats were huddled.

“Come on, you three,” she said gently, reaching to stroke sad little Dulcie. She looked into their eyes, so miserable. There was nothing she could say to ease their pain
over this woman she'd never met. While Charlie knew the four couples well, she didn't know them at all. “I'll take you home,” she said softly, “if that's where you want to go. Come up front with me, where it's warmer.”

Joe hesitated, crouching lower.

“Those boxes could shift, Joe. I don't want you hurt. I can drop you in the village if you'd rather.” She tried to stroke the tomcat, but his miserable glare made her pull her hand back. She picked up Dulcie, who pressed against her. When she took Kit in her arms, Kit pressed her face into Charlie's shoulder. Carrying the two lady cats, she turned away toward the cab. “I'm not starting the truck, Joe, until you come up front.”

In the cab, she started the engine, turned on the heater, and left the door open for Joe. As Dulcie and Kit crowded against her, she thought of many things she might say to try to ease their pain, except anything she said would sound patronizing and insincere.

At last Joe appeared, slipping up into the cab beside Dulcie.

The cats snuggled together trying not to think of Theresa wrapped in the body bag and headed for the morgue, but able to think of nothing else. No one spoke as they moved down the hills on the narrow, winding road, they were silent all the way to the village. On Ocean, Ryan pulled to the curb, reached over, and opened the passenger door. “This okay?” she asked, trying to hide her worry over them.

“Fine,” Joe said. Dulcie and Kit nosed at her by way of thanks, and the cats leaped out to the sidewalk. She'd started to pull away when a portly man in a brown tank
top banged on the truck door, shouting that her cats had escaped. Already the cats were gone, flowing up a bougainvillea vine to the rooftops, heading for MPPD. Behind the fat man, his frumpy wife stood staring up, shouting and pointing.

Ryan rolled down her window. “It's all right,” she told the meaty tourists. “They do that all the time. They like to ride into town, then go off on their own. They'll be home for supper.” They stared at her, shaking their heads in disbelief. She smiled and waved, and pulled away.

 

A
T
M
OLENA
P
OINT
PD Detective Juana Davis sat before her computer typing up her field notes from the burglaries and from her interviews with eight of the neighbors. She had slipped off her uniform jacket, revealing a white shirt open at the collar. Beneath her desk she had loosened the laces of her regulation shoes and slipped them off, too. The divergent observations she'd collected were the usual tangle, from which she must try to separate facts from imagination. Civilian witnesses weren't trained in accuracy. Too often their minds, at the moment in question, were half on other matters. Listening for the kids sleeping in their beds, hearing the TV or a ringing phone, wondering if they'd turned off the stove. Few folks remembered clearly what they'd seen and heard, particularly when they didn't realize at the time that those moments would later be important.

Leaning back in her chair, she sipped her cold coffee, thinking about the burglar. He knew the neighborhood,
knew it well enough to know exactly what he'd wanted to steal and, apparently, where it was in each house. He—or she—hadn't rooted in the drawers or torn apart the closets, he'd gone right to his objectives. He had copies of all four garage door openers and access to the house keys. Whether keys had been kept hanging in some of the garages, or he'd had duplicates of them all, was yet to be determined.

Every one of her eight interviewees had said that, as far as they knew, none of the four couples kept extra garage door openers in the house, that there was just the usual button inside each garage, and an opener in each car, some of those programmed directly into the cars' electronic systems. She thought it likely that the guy had one of those programming gadgets available online to your everyday thief. As she set her coffee cup down, a movement in the bookshelf along the far wall startled her.

She looked up, frowning at Joe Grey. “When did you slip in here? I'm no more observant than our witnesses.” That disturbed her, that she hadn't seen an intruder cross her office, even if it was only a cat, that she'd been so focused she'd noticed nothing. “At least you're not armed, you little bum,” she said, grinning companionably.

What she hadn't seen was Dulcie and Kit melt behind the small easy chair that sat at an angle at the end of her desk. By stretching, standing on their hind legs, their claws in the back of the chair for support, the two lady cats could just see Juana's computer screen, though at an angle that made it hard to read.

The interview she was typing was with a Raymond Atwater, who lived at the south end of the block. Atwater was
a widower and lived alone. Sometime between his supper and his bedtime, he saw the lights of a car pulling into the Becker garage. He thought they might have delayed their vacation, and he didn't question that. He didn't recall the time. He said he tried not to mind the neighbors' business. He'd gone on to bed, to read, and hadn't seen the car leave. He'd been deep in his book when he heard the scream of a cat, said he'd assumed a couple of neighborhood cats were mating.

Well,
he
heard us yowling in the closet,
Joe thought.
Would he eventually have come to rescue us? Maybe, maybe not. We could have died within earshot, and some people wouldn't care.
In order to read the report, to avoid a glare on the screen that wiped out the message, the tomcat had to move along the bookcase and crane his neck. He was waiting for Juana to finish up with Atwater and get on to the next witness when the phone rang.

Juana glanced at it, and picked up. “Yes, Chief.” Juana Davis was old fashioned enough that she didn't much care for a speakerphone, she was never sure who might be out in the hall listening, an arrestee on his way to an interview, a felon being escorted back to lockup.

Behind the chair, Dulcie was content to listen to the one-sided conversation, but Kit wanted to climb up on the desk where she could press her ear against the receiver. Dulcie's look drew her back.

After a moment, Juana nodded. “I hope you can get an ID.” She paused, then, “I'm just getting to the last interview. A Mrs. Edmond Turner, four houses down from the Chapmans'…Nancy Turner, yes. She said she stopped by the Chapmans' Saturday around noon to loan Theresa
a book she'd wanted to read on vacation. She said Frances Becker was there, that Frances said she was on her way out for a quick walk, that she and her husband were leaving that afternoon. That before they left, she'd wanted to see the kittens. The two women were in the laundry with the kittens, she said Frances was making a real fuss over them. It surprised her, that Frances was down on the floor playing with them like a kid.”

Another pause, then, “Yes, she did. Said both women were wearing shorts and flip-flops, that only young women could dress like that in this weather. She said Frances walks a lot, usually on weekends.

“She said there was a rolled-up blue towel lying on the floor next to Frances, looked like a beach towel. Said the kittens were all over it, playing and clawing it.” Davis had a satisfied smile on her face. “Yesterday at the swimming pool, the threads I bagged? Some of them were blue. Blue threads stuck to the coping, some of them with blood.”

She listened for a few minutes, answered, “Yes,” then, “No. When Mrs. Turner left Theresa's, Frances was still there.”

The cats could hardly be still. Dulcie and Kit were fidgeting with interest, and Joe Grey watched Juana intently. Had Frances stopped by Theresa's on her way
not
to walk but headed for the abandoned pool? Carrying her beach towel, intending to strip and catch a little sun before leaving? Joe thought about the towels that Clyde had used as cat beds, how they quickly got matted with fur. He imagined Frances beside the empty pool, stripping off her shorts and shirt, lathering on suntan oil and stretching
out on the blue towel—where every yellow cat hair would have clung to her oily skin.

Was it Frances Becker who died? And not Theresa?

Across the room, Dulcie's heart was pounding. Kit could hardly keep from lashing her tail.
That was
Frances
with cat hairs stuck to her suntan lotion! Theresa isn't dead? That was Frances Becker who'd died in the pool, not Theresa?

Juana said, “No, she didn't. Yes, let me read it.” She looked at the screen to quote Nancy Turner. “‘She likes to take long midday walks alone. Sometimes she wears a Walkman, listens to classical music. Frances does a lot of her work at night. I can hear the CDs she plays. She's very dedicated in her accounting jobs, I see her office light on very late.'

“That's most of it,” Davis said. “She couldn't tell me which way Frances went when she left the Chapmans', she said she'd gone right home, that she didn't know where Frances usually walked once she left the block.”

Resting his chin on his paws, Joe thought about Frances Becker, so sensible and low-key. Was she the kind of person to sunbathe naked? How much did they not know about her? He thought about her charming husband—her philandering husband—and how much they didn't know about him, either.

Was Ed Becker capable of murder? If he was a womanizer, Joe thought, then why wouldn't he be just as capable of stealing? Had Ed Becker planned those thefts, Frances found out and tried to stop him, and he'd killed her?

Joe thought about Ed following her to the abandoned pool, killing her, getting rid of the body, and then moving
on as he'd planned, to steal from his neighbors. Proceeding just as glibly as when, behind Frances's back, he stole the attentions of his neighbors' wives.

This scenario made sense. And yet as relieved as he was to hope that Theresa was alive, still a dozen questions rattled in his head and wouldn't let him rest.

“Yes,” Davis said. “You're headed there now? If she's from the neighborhood, Charlie will know her. Yes, I'll be at the autopsy first thing in the morning.”

As much as the tomcat liked to be in on every aspect of a murder, when he imagined Davis photographing the autopsy, he was willing to bypass this part of the investigation. Dissecting a human body was not the same as eviscerating a mouse.

Well, it shouldn't take but a few minutes for Charlie to identify the victim, and for Max to call Davis. He watched Dulcie and Kit curl up behind the chair to wait, and he stretched out along the bookshelf, closing his eyes. Praying, as coldhearted as it might seem, that that was Frances Becker up there at the morgue, and not Theresa.