Bern climbed down the ladder into the pit, and Dallas followed. Max stood looking on, a little amused, a little put off. The cats couldn’t see to the bottom, could see into the garage only as far as the lip of the pit, where Ryan stood watching. They could hear the soft scrape of slow, careful digging, could see Fernando and Manuel just inside the door, idly shuffling their feet, waiting to witness Ryan’s embarrassment when all this digging turned up nothing-or perhaps to experience a macabre thrill if a corpse was uncovered. Soon the sounds of digging grew more tentative, there was a long, muffled discussion, then the cats could hear only soft scratching, such as their own careful paws might make. Dallas ’s exclamation was sharp.
Ryan stepped closer. Fernando and Manuel moved forward to look but then Manuel backed away, his face pale. Fernando stood looking, and then nodded at Ryan and gave her a shy smile
She grinned back but looked at the two men with concern. “You guys okay?”
“Okay,” Fernando said. Both men were looking at her now as if she possessed some magical power, as if she were some kind of witch to have known that there was a body buried there.
She said, “You’ll have to wait for the detective to take your statements, then you can go on home, take the rest of the day off with pay.”
That seemed to revive Fernando. Manuel gave her a lopsided, gentle smile. Down in the pit, Garza said something the cats couldn’t make out. Joe Grey wondered how many bodies Dallas Garza had helped to disinter over his twenty-five years in law enforcement. He wondered if it ever got any easier to deal with a victim of violence, to look on a battered or mutilated body and think about the cruelty that existed in one’s own species. The tomcat burned to slip out of the truck and move closer where he could see if he knew the woman, but Dulcie’s armored paw on his shoulder drew him back. She was always so afraid people would wonder why they were watching. He didn’t want to admit she was right.
It was some time before John Bern and Dallas finished bagging evidence. Joe, having at last lost patience, had left the pickup despite Dulcie’s protests and slipped into the garage behind the pile of cement. He had to smile when Dulcie and Kit followed him, crouching beside him where they, too, could see down into the pit but not be seen.
They could see Dallas ’s back where he knelt beside Bern, but couldn’t see much of the woman, only a glimpse of her arm and one bare, tanned leg. They jerked to attention when Bern said, “These look like cat hairs.”
The cats lived in fear of cat hairs being found at a scene, hairs that could give them away, and would certainly generate questions. But why were they flinching now? They hadn’t been near this victim, they hadn’t been in the pit. There was no way…
“Hairs stuck to her skin,” Bern said. “She’s oily, smells like suntan oil. She’s tan all over, not a pale mark on her. Was she in the habit of sunbathing naked?”
“I don’t know,” Dallas said dryly. “I never had the pleasure.”
Bern lifted a cat hair with forceps, to view it though his magnifying glass. “Yellow. Sure looks like cat hair. Maybe it came off her clothes, or…I wonder if those same hairs are stuck to the killer’s clothes?”
The cats crouched, frozen. A yellow cat? There were no yellow cats in that neighborhood except Theresa’s cat. Oh, this wasn’t Theresa. They felt as if they’d been kicked in the belly.
Max said, “Charlie has clients a couple of blocks from the empty swimming pool where we’re working that missing body. I think one of them has a yellow cat. I’ll get Charlie over to the morgue, see if we might get lucky and she can ID her.”
Frightened for Theresa, already grieving for her, the cats slipped out of the garage and across the drive to the shelter of Ryan’s truck. Crawling up beneath the tarp, they pushed close together, Joe and Kit pressing their heads against Dulcie.
“Oh, it isn’t Theresa,” Kit mewled. “No one…It mustn’t…It can’t be Theresa.”
“Not Theresa,” Dulcie said. “They’re wrong, it can’t be.” She pressed hard against Joe, her ears down, her eyes closed, and the three cats clung together, mourning Theresa as they had seldom, in all their lives, grieved for a human person.
35
WHEN HE WOKE in the motel, it was broad daylight. Christ! Looking blearily at his watch, he saw it was nearly noon. What had made him sleep so long? His mouth tasted bad and his face felt worse. Gingerly, he touched his cheek, his whole face was covered with deep claw wounds, and probably some of them still had glass in them. He’d picked out a dozen bloody slivers last night that he’d gotten when he lay facedown below the window, trying to protect himself from their dirty claws. He was still bleeding, there was blood all over the pillows and sheets. His stubble itched bad already, and he wouldn’t be able to shave. A razor would take half his face off, what was left of it.
He hadn’t crawled into the musty-smelling bed until after three by the time he’d changed the tire and then gone back to find the inhaler. Never had found it and that was when it hit the fan, that was when everything went wrong.
After those cats attacked him, after he got away and locked himself in the RV, he’d tried to clean up. Found a towel in the back and, half blind with blood and pain, had tried to wash and doctor the filthy wounds, squeezed on some salve he’d found in the kitchenette, that she’d put there in case of some emergency. She hadn’t guessed what kind of emergency. Bleeding all over himself, he’d headed for the highway, wanted only to be out of there, to be as far away from that cursed house and the cursed village as he could get. But then he’d driven only as far as Santa Cruz when he knew he had to sleep. Caught himself twice jerking awake, knew he had to find a motel where he could pull the RV out of sight and get some rest.
He’d driven around the fusty little town for some time before he found a motel that would suit his purpose. He’d had to ring for ten minutes before the manager came stumbling out in an old bathrobe, none too pleased even if the place was nearly empty, only five cars parked in front. It was after three o’clock when he’d finally checked in and fallen into bed. Hadn’t slept well, kept waking, his face hurting, and feeling those cats all over him. Would jerk up in a rictus of terror then, sweating, then fall into sleep again.
His muscles ached. He was stiff from digging, from hauling her up out of the pool and heaving her in the car, then later moving her into the RV and then into that garage and down the ladder. He wasn’t a laborer, he worked out some to keep in shape, but not that kind of abuse. He’d already been sore when the tire blew. Changing that had nearly finished him. And then to be attacked-that monster exploding in his face and then a whole pack of them erupting in a horror, like his worst nightmares. Where had they come from? And why?
Getting out of bed, he found a coffeepot in the small bathroom. Pot so stained and dirty that if he didn’t die from an infection of cat bites he’d likely die from the accumulation of bacteria that it had collected over who knew how many years as the hotel maids wiped it out with their dirty scrub rags.
He couldn’t have picked a skuzzier motel. It was in an old, run-down district, a two-story, dilapidated stucco building that must have been constructed early in the last century, surrounded by a neighborhood of small wooden houses with peeling paint, ragged lawns, and junk cars in the yards and narrow driveways. But it had what he wanted. Before he checked in he’d driven around behind the building where he found a narrow alley that would serve him well. Returning to the front and checking in, he’d asked for a room at the back, told the clerk it’d be quieter back there, away from the street. He could pretty well choose his own room, empty as they were. Taking his duffle up, he’d opened the window, draped a towel over the sill to mark which room. Then he’d moved the RV around into the alley, parked it among the garbage cans just below, pulled it up against the building so no one could open the side door. Had hoped, if anyone tried to open the locked driver’s door, he’d hear them. Carrying his coffee, he opened the window and looked down.