Little Ralph Wicken immediately did as he was told; he stood up to face the far wall, and he stood still. Leroy stood still, watching Ryan, undecided about her resolve or whether she was armed. The cats knew she didn’t have a gun, that she wouldn’t come onto the grounds of the children’s home armed. As Leroy made a move toward her, Betty dove at her, swinging a hammer and hitting her a glancing bow; Ryan sidestepped and tripped her. At the same instant the cats leaped and landed on Betty’s back, biting and clawing. Ryan grabbed the end of Betty’s hammer, bending Betty’s wrist back and jamming the hammer into her ribs. Catching her breath, Betty fell. As Leroy lunged at Ryan, Joe Grey leaped in his face, raking with strong hind claws. Beside him, Kit, too, clung to the man, biting and clawing. But Leroy, despite their attack, swung his hammer a glancing blow at Ryan hitting her hard on the side of the head. She staggered, dropped, and lay still.
Betty spun away, ripped a panel from the wall, and passed it to Leroy. “In the van. Hurry up. Put the blankets between.” She snatched another panel, spattering it with her blood. The cats wanted to go to Ryan.
“They’ll be gone in a minute,” Joe whispered, “be still.”
“I can’t be still,” Dulcie hissed. “She needs help.”
30
“H OLD THE DAMN door, Ralph! Get out of the way!” Betty stepped over Ryan where she lay unconscious, bleeding onto the stone floor. Quickly she and the two men loaded the panels, piled into the van, and took off with a squeal of tires, leaving the garage door banging.
Leaping to Ryan, the cats crouched over her, nosing and pawing at her, trying to rouse her. “Her cell phone!” Dulcie said, pawing at her jacket pockets and then at her belt, trying to find the little holster. “Where…?”
“The truck!” Kit mewed, and fled for Ryan’s truck. Leaping and scrambling in through the open window, she vanished, her tail waving and then gone.
She appeared again almost at once, her mouth gaping around Ryan’s cell phone. Dropping out the window and bolting into the studio, she laid it at Joe’s feet.
Joe knew how to operate Clyde’s phone, and he’d used Wilma’s. But every phone was different, and it took them precious minutes to understand this one. Finally, with a prayer and a fast paw, he reached the dispatcher-one ring, two, and a familiar voice.
“Thank God it’s Mabel,” he blurted to Dulcie. “Stanhope mansion,” he shouted. “Thieves, struck Ryan with a hammer, she’s out cold, maybe concussion…The old studio…” He heard Mabel speaking to the medics on another line and in a second they heard the siren whoop, half a mile away. Whoop, whoop, coming fast, straight for the school. Joe described the blue van look-alike, gave Mabel the plate number and the number of the tan Suburban with which, he thought, the van might rendezvous. They wouldn’t get far in that conspicuous blue van, they’d have to shift the paintings somewhere. As Joe talked with Mabel, Kit and Dulcie pawed at Ryan and licked her face, trying to wake her.
T WO MILES SOUTH of the village, below the black cliffs, a lone hiker descended to the shore. The tide was unusually low, the sea sucking back into the far distance, leaving a long slope of wet and gleaming sand bejeweled with tiny, sea-washed treasures. Wandering slowly, the woman left a single line of footprints pressed into the silver skein, each indentation quickly filling again with seawater; the cold smells of salt and iodine were strong enough to taste.
Although it was against coastal rules, she bent down now and then to collect a rounded stone or a shell of particular beauty, or a small bit of sea-smoothed driftwood, placing each carefully in the lightweight backpack that she carried over her shoulder. She was twenty-two, with lank brown hair, a lean and tanned young woman who seldom wore makeup. The wind was at her back, pressing her along as she moved north from where she’d left her small, two-door Civic on the cliff above, parked in a pullout, its bumper against the log barrier at the edge of the cliff stairs. Her stride was long and swinging, her delight complete at finding the beach empty on this bright, cold afternoon. Buoyed and excited by her isolation, relishing the perfection of the day that nothing could spoil, she stopped suddenly.
Startled.
Stood very still, sniffing the air, frightened by the unnatural smell.
She stood at a bend in the cliff. She could taste the cloying, sweet smell, it nearly made her retch. She stood staring, then she started forward again, hesitantly, her hand over her mouth and nose to block the smell. Above her the cliff rose some thirty feet, sheer and wet, and black as obsidian.
Just ahead, beyond the stone outcropping, something gleamed. She approached until she glimpsed it, dark and curved, sleek as a beached whale, half hidden beyond the turn in the cliff; whatever it was did not belong there.
Oh, not a baby whale, she thought, recoiling with pity and dread. Donna Reese loved the eerie songs of the whales; she played her wildlife tapes over and over through earphones at night in her college dorm, to help her sleep.
But no, this was not a smooth, water-sleek animal. This was metal. Dark, wet metal. At a change of the wind that drove the stink at her, she gagged, the wind’s shifting gust slapping the sick-sweet stink right in her face, making her stomach twist.
But in a moment she approached, her hand tighter over her nose and mouth.
She saw the fender first, and then the whole car. Water dripped from the metal, water left when the tide had receded. The vehicle was turned up on its nose, badly dented, wedged beneath a hollow of cliff that was being slowly cut by the sea into a shallow cave.
How long had the wreck been here? Through how many changes of tide? Ignoring the need to heave, she cupped her hands to the cracked passenger window, peering in.
She stood a moment looking at the dead man, then looked up at the sheer black cliff and the narrow highway some hundred feet above. Down the side of the cliff she could see fresh scrape marks where the car had gone over.
At the base of the cliff lay jagged humps of broken black rock protruding from the wet sand. Once, millions of years before, this whole coast had lain on the sea bottom. She didn’t know what that had to do with the dead man, she just thought it. The thought sent a thrill of fear through her that made her glance warily behind her at the endless sea, made her think about the frailty of human life.
Moving away from the body and the wreck, she threw up.
When she had emptied her stomach, probably of all her meals for the last week, she thought, her mouth tasting vile both from throwing up and from the permeating stink, she dug into her pack for her cell phone.
Donna Reese, at twenty-two, might be adventuresome and independent and prefer to hike alone without talkative companions, but she carried water, candy bars, and a cell phone. She was generally levelheaded, but now she stood trying to gather her wits, trying to put out of her mind the swollen, ugly body, the transformation that death had bestowed upon what had once been a living man.
And then she dialed 911.
One ring, and a woman dispatcher picked up. Carefully Donna gave her location, told the woman that she’d seen only one person in the car. Yes, he was definitely dead. Swollen. Far beyond need for the paramedics. As she spoke, she longed suddenly to be home, if only back in the dorm, back in her own familiar place in the world, where she’d be safe; and for a moment, she wondered if she had the nerve, now, to drive back toward the village along that narrow and precarious two-lane highway.