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 notice 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.