“About crimes down there, some unsolved crime?”
“Seems like something spectacular. How would I forget that?”
“Let me do some checking. I’ll run it by Max.”
Talking with Bennett, she’d had the speaker on. Both cats, when they talked about Greeley and Cage, had been glued to the phone. But when she’d said good night to Mandell and hung up, she had studied their two sleek little faces, Dulcie’s green eyes and Joe’s yellow eyes as innocent as the gazes of kittens, the two cats looking back at her blandly and saying nothing.
Mandell had described how Cage had shot him, how he’d gone into the office as he often did on weekend mornings to catch up on paperwork, worked from seven until midmorning, then had gone out for a good breakfast. When he stepped out of the courthouse elevator in the parking garage, checking around him as he always did, he felt the impact a second before he heard the shot. He took a second shot in the shoulder and heard a car speed away, glimpsed Cage’s face as the car swung up the ramp. He had tried to run after it, then to use his cell phone, then he must have blacked out, which embarrassed him; he could remember nothing more.
“Woke up in the ambulance,” Mandell had said, “thinking strange thoughts…about my Cherokee ancestors who I never knew. I could see them marching as prisoners across the continent into that dry hot land they hated. Woke up hot and parched, thinking I was marching…Strange,” he said, “what the human mind will do.”
Wilma thought of Mandell again after dinner, when Clyde dropped her and Dulcie off at home, thought that it would take Mandell time to recover, that he would be pretty laid up for a while, and no one to do things for him in his little bachelor apartment.
Clyde insisted on going through the house with her. The trashed rooms were heartbreaking, daunting. She tried to put that out of her thoughts; she’d clean up tomorrow. The first thing she did was go to her car, unlock the glove compartment, and retrieve her.38, which was locked there, just as she’d left it.
“It would be nice,” Clyde said, “if you’d sleep with that where you can reach it. And,” he said, “if you would consider putting a lock on the bedroom door, to narrow the odds of someone walking in on you. Dulcie can’t play watch cat all night.” He stroked Dulcie gently. “She stands guard all night, she’ll never get her beauty sleep.”
Wilma laughed and gave him a hug. “I’ll keep it close, and I’ll call a locksmith in the morning.” And within half an hour of Clyde’s leaving, she and Dulcie were tucked up in bed, a chair propped under the doorknob, which at least would make some noise if someone came in. She didn’t see how it would be needed, now that Cage was in the hospital, and Eddie in custody, but she’d promised Clyde. She did straighten up the bedroom. Then, stretched out in bed between smooth sheets, she relished the clean feeling from her shower, the feel of Dulcie snuggled warm beside her, extravagantly purring, and the thick stone walls of her own house secure around her.
31
T here was no need now for stealth on the dark bridle trail; the two riders headed home using their torches to throw wide beams of cheering light among the trees that crowded their passage, bright paths that delineated tire marks ahead, broken by the hoofprints of their horses and the paw prints of the big Weimaraner. On her sorrel mare, Charlie welcomed the quiet, empty night around them as she tried to get centered again, after seeing Cage Jones’s bloodied face when she shot him, the explosion of bone and blood, seeing Cage twist and fall. Her mind and spirit were sick with that moment, with the shock of shooting a man.
But the alternative could have been her own death, and Max, too.
“Takes a while,” Max said, watching her, riding close and putting his arm around her.
“Does anyone really get over it?”
“You live with it. Better than not stopping him.”
“I know. But it’s hard to get used to. Do you remember, when I read C. S. Lewis aloud, where a damned soul wouldn’t change itself, so it went out like a snuffed candle? Just vanished? And you said, ‘What would the alternative have been?’”
“Yes, I remember.”
“I keep seeing Jones’s face, all bloody. And a moment before, when he raised his gun at me, so vicious and filled with hate.” She looked at Max. “The devil’s face, it seemed to me,” she said, looking at him shyly.
“That’s not crazy,” he said softly. “Evil is evil, Charlie.”
She leaned into Max, their legs bumping against each other, the horses fussing because they were forced too close together. There had been moments this evening when she’d wondered if they would ever be together again, if she would ever see Max again. Tonight, when she’d thought that Cage had killed Wilma, when she’d thought that they would both be dead by morning, hope had nearly deserted her.
She sat up straight, looking away through the trees where the lights of the ranch shone, welcoming them home, and she squeezed Max’s hand. And as they headed down the last hill through the woods, loud barking greeted them and the three dogs came running-their own two unruly half Great Danes, and Rock, dancing around the horses. Beside the house, Ryan’s red truck stood parked beside a squad car. The air was filled with the aroma of something spicy cooking.
The door opened, spilling light from the kitchen, and Ryan stepped out, the smell of simmering chili filling the night. Dallas came out behind her and crossed the yard to help with the horses. That, too, was a rare treat, that Dallas would rub the horses down, give them a flake of hay and extra grain, see that they, too, were comfortable. Handing her reins to Dallas, she slid gratefully from the saddle, made her way tiredly across the yard beside Max, and went into their bright house. They were home, safe and together.
In the upstairs master suite of Clyde Damen’s house, all the windows were open, the predawn breeze blowing through smelling of the sea, cooling the bedroom and study. Beneath the high rafters, in the king-size bed, Clyde slept sprawled across the sheets, clad only in Jockey shorts, snoring. The gray tomcat slept close against Clyde’s shoulder, on his back, his four paws in the air, much as he had slept when he was a kitten. He snored, twitching in his sleep. He woke at dawn still half worn out from dreaming, irritable and hungry. He nudged Clyde, his cold, insistent nose jerking Clyde from sleep. Clyde rolled over, glaring. Then, turning, he stared incredulously at the bedside clock.
“It’s five o’clock. Five A.M.! Do you realize-”
“It’s Monday. You going to work?”
“Six,” Clyde said, rolling over. “You know what time the alarm rings. Go back to sleep. If you can’t sleep, go up on the roof. Wake up the neighbors. Leave me alone.”
“I’m hungry. Weak with hunger.”
“You are not weak with hunger. You ate half my steak last night and nearly an entire order of fries. I’m surprised you didn’t throw it all up in the middle of the bed. If you-”
“Weak,” Joe repeated. “The excitement…” He looked hard at Clyde. “Stress. That kind of thing is really stressful for a cat, all that shooting. Stress can kill a cat. I feel-”
“You are not going to die of stress. Or of starvation. You might die of strangulation if you don’t shut up. Your problem is, you’re turning into a first-class pig. If you think you’re hungry, go get some kibble. Paw open the cupboard, you’ve done it enough times. And use a little consideration, don’t spill kibble all over the floor.”
Joe didn’t want kibble. He wanted something hot and freshly cooked. He wanted comfort food, something to warm his little cat heart and soothe his frayed nerves. He wanted restorative fat and cholesterol, a real tomcat breakfast, the kind only Clyde could make. Letting himself go limp on the pillow, paws drooping, he looked up at Clyde pitifully.
For an instant Clyde’s dark eyes widened in a flash of concern, but then he caught himself. Glaring, he turned over and pulled the pillow over his head. Joe sighed. Some woman could give Clyde an equally pitiful look and he’d fall all over himself, but when a poor little cat tried it, nothing. Joe lay, sighing his last, until he almost believed that he was fainting away-and finally his perseverance did the trick; Clyde sat up scowling at the clock, glared at Joe, muttered something unnecessarily rude, and swung out of bed. “Who can sleep after that performance? What do you want for breakfast!”