Sammie was five when her daddy brought the tiny yellow kitten home to her, just before he was sent overseas in the Second World War. Sammie’s mama worked as a bookkeeper in their little town of Rome, Georgia, and their small rented house seemed very empty, once Morgan had gone. Empty, and then soon vulnerable. The minute Morgan Blake left for the navy, Becky’s and Morgan’s old schoolmate began to come around, uninvited. Brad Falon was a well-muscled, pushy young man. In high school he had run with Morgan, but Becky had never liked him. Now he began to annoy Becky, coming to the door, frightening Sammie with his cold eyes and slippery talk. Becky never let him in, but he kept coming. The late night he came there drunk, pounding on the locked door, not beseeching anymore but demanding to be let in, and then breaking in, it was Misto who drove him off.
As Brad broke a window, reached in and unlocked it, Becky ran to the phone. Falon knocked out most of the glass, and swung through. He grabbed the phone from Becky, threw it against the wall. When little Sammie flew at him, he hit her hard against the table. He shoved Becky to the floor and knelt over her, hitting her and pulling up her skirt. As Becky yelled at Sammie to run, the big yellow cat exploded from the bedroom, landing in Falon’s face raking and biting him. Brad tried to pull him off then flicked open his pocketknife.
The cat fought him, dodging the knife. Becky grabbed a shard of broken glass and flew at Falon. He hit her, had her down again, cutting her. The cat was on him again when a neighbor heard their screams and came running; the wiry old fellow saw the broken window and climbed through, but already Falon had fled, banging out through the front door.
Behind him, Misto lay dying from a long, gaping wound that bled too fast, that bled away his life before anyone could help him. But even as Falon fled, Misto’s ghost rose and followed. He followed as Falon dodged the police, gained his car and took off fast heading out of Rome, heading for Atlanta. The Rome cops didn’t like Falon, they wouldn’t be gentle if they caught him, nor would the county D.A. Some of the younger officers, having gone through school with Falon, observing the trouble he had caused all those years, might indeed have turned to law enforcement careers in an effort to right the wrongs of the world.
At the airport south of Atlanta Falon bought a plane ticket and an hour later, nervously drinking coffee from a paper cup, he boarded a flight for the West Coast, where he had connections who could be useful in whatever venture he chose to pursue. As Falon settled into the dusty seat in the DC-4, Misto drifted into the plane and settled unseen beside him, not too close, but unwilling to lose sight of him.
Falon had friends in a number of West Coast cities. Why, the cat wondered, had he headed for Seattle? Had that urge been formed simply at Falon’s random choice? Or, by Satan’s wishes? Why Seattle, not twenty miles from where Lee was doing federal time at McNeil? The ghost cat couldn’t pretend to understand the forces at work here, but Falon’s destination distressed him. Lee had no connection to Falon, and no connection to Georgia where Falon had grown up. Lee might have no family left anywhere, as far as he knew. He had lived his life on the run, had left the home ranch as a hot-tempered sixteen-year-old, and had not kept in touch with his relatives.
Misto, even in his ghostly state, couldn’t know everything. There was, however, the one puzzling link: the mirrorlike resemblance between Lee’s little sister, Mae, and little Sammie Blake. Mae Fontana, born a lifetime ago, before Sammie, whose old tintype picture, taken at their South Dakota ranch, Lee had carried with him all these years, in and out of prison, the picture he still carried among his meager belongings. Two little girls more alike than twins, the exact same wide brown eyes, same little heart-shaped faces, same dimples cleaving deep, the same crooked smiles, the same long pale hair so painful to comb free of tangles. Two little girls from two different centuries, more alike than twins could be. Misto had known of no connection between Lee and Mae, and Sammie. Until now, when in some inexplicable manner Brad Falon formed the connection.
When Falon killed Misto, when Misto rose as ghost to follow Falon out to the West Coast, Falon soon committed a bank robbery in which he shot a guard in the leg. He was tried, summarily convicted in federal court, and was sent from Seattle to the nearest federal prison, at McNeil Island. Though his sentence was shorter than the U.S. attorney would have liked, there was no question in the ghost cat’s mind that forces beyond his ken had brought Falon and Lee together.
Did the dark spirit, with his persistent hatred of Lee’s ancestor, mean to use Falon against Russell Dobbs’s grandson, against the failing old man? But how was little Sammie a part of his plan, this child so like Lee’s sister? If she were in some unknown way also a descendant of Russell Dobbs, then she, too, would be in danger.
When, at McNeil, Lee’s emphysema grew worse on cold, damp days, but then he felt good again when sunshine warmed the island, he grew increasingly desperate about his old age, grew more determined to pull off one more job when he got out; he did not mean to face his failing years with nothing to support himself.
With sympathy the cat remained near him. Misto was witness when, not a week after Falon arrived at McNeil, the prison rape occurred that so enraged Lee, the conflict between Lee and Falon playing, clearly, into the dark web Lee’s adversary was weaving. As Lee confronted younger, stronger Falon, did the dark spirit expect Falon to kill Lee? More in keeping with the devil’s plans, the cat thought, would be that Lee kill Falon in a passion of unbridled rage that would destroy Lee’s own salvation.
Or was the confrontation between Falon and Lee intended to lay some pattern for the future, for a plan that would prove even more satisfying to the dark one? Though Misto could move back and forth within short periods of time, when it came to the complicated shape of the distant and tangled future, he was as lost as if trying to swim the heaving depths of Puget Sound.
But whatever the devil’s purpose in bringing Lee and Falon together, it was surely no accident, and the yellow tom grew increasingly wary for Lee—just as he worried for Sammie herself, who was somehow entangled with Lee’s own destiny.
6
After Lee’s encounter with Brad Falon he’d found himself watching the shadows more carefully, and he didn’t like this kind of fear. He had been headed for the laundry that afternoon, had started to cut through the exercise room when he saw half a dozen jocks in there pumping iron. One of them, a new arrival, had eyes as cold as a hunting vulture. Brad Falon had already gathered a cluster of followers around him, and Lee didn’t want to mess with him. His good sense told him to turn back and go a different way, to avoid trouble, but he stubbornly pushed on in. Afterward, hours later, he wonderedwhy he’d done that. The men watched him expressionlessly from where they worked the weights, the press, their rhythm never ceasing but their eyes never leaving him, their stripped bodies sleek with sweat. Lee moved on past, knowing this wasn’t smart, feeling Falon’s stare and not liking it. When, behind him, the rhythm of the weight machine stopped, he tightened his grip on the knife in his pocket, didn’t falter or let his glance flicker.
He entered the auto shop skirting a battered touring car set up on blocks waiting for a rebirth. No one entered behind him, and he could still hear the steady rhythm of the exercise equipment. Passing the touring car—a badly dented relic, one fender twisted, paint peeling over heavy rust, cloth top in tatters—he heard a faint moan.