Cat Striking Back (10 page)

H
E SAT IN
his car above the deserted ranch feeling shaky. Why had those people followed him? What did they know? What had they seen? But maybe they didn't know anything. How could they? Maybe they just hadn't liked him standing down there in the bushes watching them. Though it would take someone really paranoid to get mad about such a little thing, get mad enough to follow him. He might have just been down there pruning bushes or gardening. That was
his
neighborhood, what he did there was none of
their
business.

They couldn't have seen him earlier when they stopped to talk to those two detectives, he'd been too well hidden in the dense bushes between the houses, and with the corner of the house hiding him. But the house had blocked the cops' voices, too, so he hadn't heard much of what they'd said.

The cops had been doing
something
back by the pool, but hell, they couldn't know anything.

Unless someone had seen him, early this morning? He daren't think that someone saw him last night as he loaded her into the trunk. Maybe some neighbor
thought
they saw something, a shadow moving around, maybe glimpsed his car pulling in or out of the drive, but they couldn't have
seen
anything, really. It was too dark.

Sure as hell, some crazy suspicion wouldn't be enough to bring the cops. If someone
had
seen him and recognized him—everyone knew him in this neighborhood—the cops would have come straight to his house. Maybe someone saw a shadow or heard some little sound last night, maybe thought it was some homeless guy fooling around at the empty house, trying to get in. And this morning they'd woken up thinking about it and decided to call the law. Maybe that's what this was about, maybe he was worrying for nothing.

Except for the hose, he thought nervously. Except for the water halfway up the drive. That had drawn that detectives' attention.

But what could they make of that? It was just a hosed-down driveway.

No, whatever they might imagine, he'd done too good a job of cleaning up for them to find anything to worry him; he was just having an attack of nerves. Most likely the cops were out on some crank call, just looking around. Small, quiet village like this, maybe they had nothing better to do and he didn't need to fret.

But those people in the yellow roadster. Lucky he'd overheard them talking about looking at houses, heard where they were heading. They might help him out, big time, and never be aware of it.

Could you believe that damn woman
chased
him, on foot? Running down the road like a crazy? And then their car tailing him right onto the freeway? That kind of nosiness put him in a rage. He didn't deserve that kind of treatment.

But what did it matter? He'd heard enough, and he was still laughing because he'd been able to follow them so slickly. On the freeway he'd slipped away from the yellow roadster into a tangle of trucks, had cut over two lanes between trucks, cut back into the right lane again, and gone down the next off-ramp. And had swung around onto the rise above the freeway where he'd waited until he saw them pass below, moving fast in the middle lane. That roadster was the only yellow car on the road, top down, with the dark-haired woman. What a laugh, trying to tail him in that. When he saw them, he'd swung back down to the on-ramp and pulled onto the freeway behind them as they headed back south.

He'd followed them off the freeway, staying behind a delivery van. Had stuck with them as their car wound back among the Molena Point hills, sure that if he followed them long enough they'd lead him to exactly what he was looking for. Maybe the empty ranch they'd talked about, isolated and unoccupied. A barn, a hay barn, outbuildings…What more could he want? He could dig the grave in privacy, completely unobserved.

Following them along the narrow roads, he'd stayed well back, and then had taken a higher road that ran parallel, where he could look down on them. He'd watched with growing interest as they reached the empty ranch
and pulled in. Not a soul in sight, no vehicle or farm animal, not even a stray chicken. He'd slowed, pulled the car behind some trees, thinking that once he was rid of the body, he'd take care of the original job the way they'd planned it. Maybe do it that very night. Change vehicles, follow the same routine just the way she would, and he'd be out of there and on his way.

Below him, the couple sat in their car looking down the steep hills as if assessing the nearby properties and small acreages. He could have waited and found this place himself from the way they'd described it, but that would have taken time. He'd have to go into the village, get a copy of the local paper, check the real estate section. That could take hours, and then he'd have to drive these hills for hours more, scanning the roads looking for the rural address of the deserted property. He didn't have the patience, he wanted to get it over with, and he was beginning to feel pushed. The sense of her back there under the blanket was like she was still alive, lying there watching him. And then the picture changed abruptly. Suddenly he saw not
her
back there, he saw the cat crouched in her place, the pale cat watching him, the cat his mother'd brought home when he was a boy, the pale cat, its eyes ablaze with rage.

She'd brought home a half-grown kitten, all snuggled down in its blanket in a cardboard box, a kitten she said would be his. He hadn't feared cats then, when he was small, and he'd liked the kitten fine. It was soon tagging around after him and begging at the table, and it liked to sleep on his schoolbooks. It would come up on his bed,
too, to sleep with him at night, snuggling up to him, purring.

But then it started sleeping with its face in his face, pressing its nose against his nose. Snuggling up to his face and to his warm breath. He hadn't liked that, he'd push it away but it would come right back—come back at him real fast, pressing against his face and nose, its body shaking with purrs. That had frightened him, that frenzied purring. He'd knock it off, knock it to the floor, but it would be right back again. If he shut it out of the room, it would claw at the door and yowl. His mother said to be nice to it, it was only a kitten and it loved him.

It might have loved him, but even after he shoved it off the bed over and over, it came back pressing against his nose, its body rocking with frantic purrs, demented, insane kind of purrs. He had no idea what was wrong with it and he didn't care, he just wanted to be rid of it. He didn't think or care that maybe it had been taken from its mother too soon or maybe was only trying to get warm. He just wanted it gone. He began to avoid it during the day. It was always there watching him but, because he'd knocked it away so many times, it wouldn't come near, would just back away, watching him. And still, no matter how angry he got and how he shoved it, every night it came onto his bed and pressed its nose to his nose, so he couldn't sleep. It was impossible to keep it out. His mother wouldn't put it outside the house at night. She said he was being silly, that the poor little cat loved him, and that it was dangerous to leave a cat out at night.

He grew more and more desperate and angry until, one cold night when the young cat was pressing hard at
him, breathing from his face, he'd grabbed it off him, held it out away from him so it wouldn't scratch, and flung it as hard as he could at the bedroom wall.

It hit the wall hard and fell and lay still. He'd gotten out of bed and knelt there, immediately sorry for what he'd done. Its eyes were open, staring at him. He'd tried to feel it breathing but he couldn't. He couldn't feel its heart beating. It was still as stone. He'd crawled back in bed and lain there, cold and shivering.

When he woke in the morning the cat was still there, lying in the same position and growing stiff. He'd shoved it under the bed behind some boxes, and crept away to school. That afternoon when he came home, he told his mother he'd found it like that, that it must have died in the night, maybe died from some kind of seizure.

Long after his mother had buried the cat, he kept seeing it; he would see its eyes watching him. It was about that time that he began to read Edgar Allan Poe, and he became obsessed with “The Black Cat.” It was that story, combined with what he'd done, that shaped for all time his sick disgust of the creatures.

After he married, he'd hidden his dark obsession from her for all their seventeen years. She liked cats, she brought cats home, and he, with hard resolve, had managed to tolerate them. Because he loved her. Because he wanted her to stay with him. Because he thought secretly that if he forced her to choose, if she knew the truth, she would turn away from him. That she would choose the cats.

In every other way, they were well suited. When they planned their jobs, they turned out to always be successful. When they celebrated afterward, she was bright and
happy and loving, and life was perfect. Because of her cleverness and attention to detail, they always got away smoothly. In this, they were the perfect couple. It was only her preoccupation with the cats that unsettled him. Even her penchant for sunbathing was nothing, at first, was only an annoyance.

Who would imagine that was how it would end? With her stupid need to take off her clothes in public, to sunbathe in the raw.

Down the hill below him, the couple got out of the roadster and went off among the buildings. He was well hidden up here, he'd parked high above the place under a bushy eucalyptus tree where he'd never be seen. Taking a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment, he sat studying the empty barn and outbuildings, the empty corrals. The day was warming up. He thought sickly that the body would be ripening, and he felt a cold sweat start, across his chest and forehead.

He tried to take himself in hand, tried to breathe deeply, but he had to use the inhaler. When his breathing eased, he concentrated on the empty barn, thought about burying her in there, deep under the dirt floor. This old place could stand empty for years, the way the real estate market had fallen off. Might be decades before she was found, and maybe never. He wanted to get on with this, get it over with. The recurrent fear in his chest and belly made him hunch over the steering wheel. He told himself that her death wasn't his fault, that maybe it wasn't all her fault, that maybe it
was
an accident. Only an accident. And yet something within him knew that it was more than an accident that had made her fall.

What would have happened if he'd called the cops right away?
Told
them it was an accident? But when he imagined telling that to a cop, fear shook him. What cop would believe that, would believe she'd accidentally fallen, that he hadn't shoved her?

Anyway, it was too late now, he'd run away, and he'd moved the body.

Down the hill, the couple appeared from the outbuildings and walked around the outside of the empty house looking up at the windows, then standing still as if studying the structure. They knelt down to inspect the foundation, and the dark-haired woman dug into it with a screwdriver, then lay a level up against the sides of the house almost like she knew what she was doing. She was a good-looking broad, maybe thirty-something, dark brown bouncy hair, nice shape in those tight jeans.

He thought about the women he'd had while
she
was alive and she'd never guessed, never had a clue. She'd been good friends with some of them, and no hint of her knowing. And what harm? The others were simply challenges, the value in the taking and then moving on.

He saw that the couple had a key to the house. The front door creaked as the man pulled it open, and they disappeared inside. He sat studying the barn, wanting to look inside and see if there was a good place to dig. Thinking about moving the body, putting it down in the earth, her corpse seemed to loom larger as if she was pressing up at the lid wanting out, reaching out to him.
Had
he meant to push her?
Had
something inside him meant all along to kill her? Again her eyes seemed to be the cat's eyes, the eyes of that long-ago kitten watching him.

Below him the couple stood at the living room window, looking out and talking. They couldn't see him, way up at the top of the hill the eucalyptus branches hung nearly to the ground and his car was pulled in behind some discarded machine parts, too, and a tumble of slatted wooden crates that looked like they'd been rotting there for years. Soon they left the window, disappeared from his view.

They were gone maybe twenty minutes. Not knowing where they were, he began to grow edgy. He felt not only watched uncannily from the trunk but watched from the house. He wanted to get away from there, he didn't like the sense of being observed.

But if he pulled out now and drove off, they'd be sure to see him. And even driving away, he couldn't escape
her
presence.

They came out at last, locked the front door, walked around the outbuildings again, and then went back in the barn. A laugh behind him made him jump, scared him nearly to death. He swung around in the seat, looking.

At the crest of the hill he saw two boys on bikes, heard the crunch of gravel and more laughter. Shrinking lower in the seat, he turned the key, wanting to start up and peel out. But he stopped himself from doing that. It was just two kids pedaling along a narrow dirt path that ran beyond the eucalyptus tree and on up the hill. There was more crunching of gravel, a guffaw of laughter as one lightly shoved the other. He waited, hunched low, until they'd gone.

When he looked down again at the ranch yard, the couple was headed for their car. He watched them swing in and drive on up the hill, past him. Neither looked in his
direction. He sat for only a minute deciding whether to follow them or wait to look the place over. They took off across the hills, the woman's dark, gleaming hair blowing enticingly in the wind. He started the engine and slowly followed them. Staying maybe a quarter mile behind the yellow car, he wished his own car wasn't white and so easy to see. They made a sharp turn, and another, and he lost them among a stand of pines.