Becky wiped her tears. “The questions are fine, but I don’t want to go to the hospital. And please don’t call Rob—yes, he’s at work, but he’ll be so upset. I’ll call him myself, in a little while.”
“You need someone to be with you. And,” Kathleen said gently, “we need to know how badly they hurt you. We need to know exactly what they did.”
Becky looked down at her torn clothes, at her bruised arms. The side of her face was red and swelling. When she looked up at Kathleen, her eyes were steady. “They didn’t rape me. Thank God they didn’t do that.”
Kathleen studied her. “If they did, and you press charges …”
Becky shook her head. “They didn’t. Maybe Rowdy stopped them. He’s such a little thing, but he went after them real fierce, screaming and biting them. One of them kicked him. He’s hurt so bad. Will he be all right?”
“Dr. Firetti will do the best he can,” Kathleen said, then was silent, waiting.
“I’m just bruised,” Becky said, seeing her look. “I don’t think anything’s broken. They beat me, the one did. There were two men, they ran when you drove up. They took money from my purse. Kept trying to make me tell them my PIN number. I don’t have a PIN number, Rob and I don’t have ATM cards, we’ve never wanted them. They wouldn’t believe me.”
“Can you describe them at all?”
“Both tall. One thin, maybe stooped a little. The other square and well built. Black hair, I could see that much under the stocking. A little taller than the thin one.” She was silent a moment. “Clean fingernails,” she said, frowning. “The bigger man had nice nails, as if he’d had a manicure, and that surprised me. He was the one who kicked the door in, kicked it off the chain, and burst in ahead of the other. I should never have trusted a chain.”
Officer Brennan appeared in the doorway. “Dr. Firetti called. He said Rowdy’s shoulder is broken, but so far he hasn’t found any internal injuries. He wants to put him under anesthetic so he can set the shoulder. He’ll go ahead, but he wonders if you’ll stop by later to sign the release.”
Becky nodded. Kit listened to Becky and Kathleen argue until, under Kathleen’s gentle but stubborn urging, Becky agreed to go to the hospital. The minute she had left with the EMTs, Kathleen retrieved a black bag of crime-scene equipment from the squad car, pulled on the cloth booties again, and went inside to photograph and lift prints. Behind her, Kit returned to the little cement porch, took another sniff of the odor of ancient fish, and followed it.
The fishy trail led into the house, but then out again at the other side of the threshold. She followed it to the sidewalk, trying to look casual, like a neighborhood cat out for a stroll. After only a little way, the trail vanished at the curb, most likely transferred into a waiting car.
Unable to find another trace of the scent, she left the scene and headed for Ryan’s cottage, hoping to find Joe and Dulcie. Becky’s cursory description of the invaders, plus the smell of fishy shoes, had to count for something, and Kit wanted to share what she’d learned. She was high up the hills, below Maudie Toola’s and a block over, when Maudie’s son David came jogging downhill, his short brown hair tucked under a cap, his tanned face smooth and lean. She peered down from the roof as he passed below her and disappeared down the hill, soon blocked from her view by shaggy, overhanging branches. Kit moved on up, drawn by the screech of nails and the echo of tossed boards.
Trotting along above the side street that would lead to Ryan’s cottage, she watched an ancient brown pickup truck pull to the curb beneath her, just before it reached Maudie’s street. A rusty, dented old truck with a dirt-smeared windshield. It stood with the engine idling. When the driver didn’t get out, but simply sat there, a dark shadow behind the dirty glass, a ripple of unease made her fur twitch, and she settled down to watch. The shingles beneath her paws were rough and damp.
From where she crouched she could see Maudie’s Tudor house and the roof of Ryan’s cottage. Could see Joe Grey and Dulcie lounging on the cottage roof, glancing idly up at the little birds that flitted among the branches above them—and then everything happened at once. She saw Ryan leave the cottage and head downhill to Maudie’s, saw Maudie come out her own front door heading for her car at the curb, her keys jingling in her hand. She watched Maudie step off the curb, pop the trunk open, and begin pulling out packages. At the same moment, the old truck took off fast, heading straight down the hill at Maudie. Ryan shouted. Joe and Dulcie and Kit shouted and damn the consequences as Ryan grabbed Maudie and pulled her out of its path. The truck barely missed her; it swerved around the Lincoln, metal screeching against metal, skidded downhill and around the corner and was gone.
Kit crouched among the branches, shivering. Why would anyone want to hurt Maudie? Why would anyone try to run their truck into a harmless old woman?
Down on the sidewalk, Maudie clung to Ryan. On the porch, Benny didn’t move, he stood on the step, white and frozen. As Scotty came rushing out, Ryan grabbed her phone and started to dial, but Maudie snatched it from her. Joe and Dulcie had fled to Maudie’s roof, Kit watched them scramble down to the garden and slip into the house behind Maudie. Kit remained very still, setting into memory every detail of that strange attack: the vague shadow of the driver’s face behind the dirty windshield, a thin face beneath what might have been a dark hood, the rusty scars on the truck, the mud on the back bumper and license plate. Kit’s distress at the beating of Becky Lake, and now the attack on Maudie, left her feeling very small and useless. Ears and tail down, she at last made her way from the rooftops down into Maudie’s yard, where she crawled under a camellia bush and curled into a little ball among its fallen petals. She didn’t understand humans. She thought about all the ugliness among humans that she and Dulcie and Joe had seen, and about the grim photographs and reports of murders that were available to them on the desks of their law-enforcement friends, and the more she thought, the more defeated she felt; all alone, she put her head down on her paws, filled with a terrible remorse for humankind.
8
AFTER KILLING MARTIN and Caroline, the driver and shooter had paused for only an instant to watch the victims’ car veer off the road, its headlights swinging crazily through the black night as it rolled onto its side and crashed into a pine tree. The shooter had tucked the .45 Colt revolver behind the seat as the driver floorboarded the pickup. They pulled to the side of the road a quarter mile on, where the driver got out, slipped into a small black sedan, and was gone, speeding away into the night. The shooter slid into the driver’s seat and moved on, knowing the narrow two-lane well enough to keep out of the ditch, knowing precisely when to make the turn into the yard of the deserted ranch house. A second turn up the old concrete driveway, and the pickup was out of sight from the country road.