Hush

by Kate White

  At the kitchen table she held her hands over her eyes and tried to come up with a strategy. If the cat hadn’t returned by morning, she would drive around before she left for the camp, maybe even stick up a few signs. If she still didn’t find him, she would have to come back after the parents’ day activities and resume her search.

  Please, please be okay, Smokey, she pleaded half out loud.

  She locked up for the night and poured a glass of milk to take to bed with her. Before she went upstairs, she glanced at one of the kitchen windows, its screen the only barrier between her and the outdoors. They’d always left the ground floor windows open at night, but now the idea made her uneasy. One by one she lowered and locked them. As she shoved the final one closed, she heard the haunting call of a whip-poor-will, a sound that on any other night would have filled her with joy. Tonight it only intensified her misery.

  Upstairs she changed into a cotton nightgown and crawled into her new bed. She’d brought a novel up with her, but her eyes kept sliding over the words. Every minute or so she’d set the book down and lean forward, listening, hoping for the sound of Smokey coming through the pet flap. Just once she caught a noise from outside-riffs of laughter from what she thought must be adolescent boys. At midnight she went back downstairs again, thinking Smokey may have slunk in, guilty as sin, but there was no sign of him.

  And then, just before one, as she was turning out her bedside light, she heard Smokey meow from the floor below. In utter relief, she slipped out of bed, flicked on the hall light, and rushed downstairs.

  The meowing seemed to be coming from the kitchen and it had a plaintive feel, as if signaling distress. It became more frantic-sounding, almost growing to a screech. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she heard the cat dart into the living room. Great, she thought. He’s dragged a half-dead animal in with him and he doesn’t know what to do with it.

  “Come here, Smokey,” she called out as she stepped closer. The hall light only spilled into the entrance of the room, and she couldn’t see him. It was silent for a few seconds, but then the cat let out a wail from the far end of the room. Lake fumbled with the switch on a table lamp and when the light came on, she searched the space with her eyes. There was no sign of him.

  “Smokey, what’s the matter?” she said, taking tentative steps down the length of the room.

  Without warning, the cat sprang out from behind an armchair, and Lake’s hand flew to her mouth in shock. In the dim light she could see that the fur on his body was now a different color-a pale gray instead of black. As he wedged himself into a corner, though, she was horrified to see that it wasn’t fur she was looking at-but skin. Except for his head, tail, and legs, the hair on his body was gone.

  9

  HER FIRST THOUGHT was that Smokey had been attacked by an animal, but as she edged toward him, she saw that all his fur was missing, not just chunks of it. And he had no wounds, not even a scratch mark. It couldn’t have been done by a dog or a raccoon.

  “It’s okay, Smokey,” she said softly. He had pressed himself into the corner and she could see he was trembling. As she took another step toward him, Smokey bolted back behind the armchair and began to wail. She’d been able to get a closer look, though. There were row marks on his body. He’d been shaved, with what must have been an electric razor. A person had done this to him.

  Flushed with fear, she turned quickly to face the two large windows on either side of the fireplace. They looked out at the narrow side lawn and border garden between her house and David and Yvon’s, but right now all she could see was pitch-blackness. Was the person who’d done this still out there, perhaps even spying on her to see her reaction? She rushed toward the nearest window and yanked the long yellow drapes closed and then did the same with the other windows in the room. With Smokey still wailing under the chair, she double-checked that the front door of the house was locked as well as the two doors off the kitchen.

  Who could have done this? It was clearly a prank of some kind, a mean, nasty one. Suddenly she recalled the adolescent laughter she had heard waft through her bedroom window not long before Smokey returned. She felt more than scared now. She felt enraged.

  I’ve got to call the police, she thought, hurrying back to the living room. But as soon as those words flashed across her mind she knew that she couldn’t. There would be a record of her call, and through some inter-network of police, Hull and McCarty might learn of it, which would not be good. She couldn’t afford to be on their radar any more than she already was. She couldn’t let her life seem anything less than perfectly normal.

  Smokey had stopped wailing, though he was still behind the armchair. Lake decided to try to get a blanket around him to calm and contain him.

  After grabbing a chenille throw from the arm of the sofa, she bent down on one knee and tried to coax him out with her voice. Smokey let out a soft, mournful cry, as if eager for contact. But when she reached one hand behind the chair, he scratched at her with his paw, drawing three thin red lines along the top of her hand.

  “Damn,” she muttered. She stood up and pulled the chair forward with both hands, forcing Smokey out of hiding. As he shot across the living room again, she tossed the blanket over him. Trapped, he squirmed frantically beneath it. She scooped him up and fell on the couch, holding him as firmly to her chest as possible.

  “There, there, little boy,” she whispered, pulling the blanket back from his head. He writhed in her arms, trying to escape her grasp, but eventually he began to relax, as if from pure exhaustion.

  She held him like that for at least ten minutes, purring softly to comfort him. All the while, though, she kept one ear cocked, listening for sounds from outdoors. If she heard anyone moving out there, she would have no choice but to call the police.

  When Smokey finally seemed calm, she carried him into the kitchen and slipped him into the carrying case. She figured he’d sleep better that way and it would allow her to keep watch over him.

  As for herself, she knew there was little chance of her falling asleep, especially upstairs. Better to stay on the couch, she thought, so she’d be able to detect if anyone was prowling around outside. She scurried upstairs to grab a pillow, blanket, and an alarm clock. There was an animal clinic that opened early about twenty minutes away and she would take Smokey there first thing in the morning to make certain he wasn’t injured.

  For the next few hours, she lay on the couch with one lamp burning and Smokey in his case on the floor by her head. In her mind she replayed her search through the backyards. Had the teenagers who’d done this-if she was right in her assumption-been watching her, then? she wondered. Had she been in any kind of danger?

  Some time before dawn, just as the light began to seep through the cracks between the drapes, she finally managed to fall asleep, though it was a restless, sweaty sleep that did her little good. An hour and a half later, Smokey woke her. He was meowing at least, no longer wailing. After struggling up, Lake let him out of the case to eat and use the litter box. She blocked the pet flap with a wastebasket-though it was hard to imagine him ever wanting to go outside again. By seven she had him back in the carrying case and next to her in the front of the car.

  There was only one car in the parking lot, so she wasn’t surprised to find the animal clinic empty except for a man sitting on the edge of the reception desk, drinking coffee from a cardboard cup. When she entered he looked up from the magazine he was reading and nodded. He was no older than thirty with a pleasant, slightly doughy face.

  “Morning,” he said warmly. “I’m Dr. Jennings. How can I help?”

  “Someone’s done something awful to my cat,” Lake said. “They-they shaved most of his fur off. He-his name’s Smokey. He’s calmed down now, but I wanted to make sure he wasn’t injured.”

  The vet wrinkled his face in surprise and concern.

  “Okay, why don’t you bring him back this way,” he said, cocking his head toward the back. He picked up a clipboard from the desk. “You�
��ll need to fill this form out-the receptionist doesn’t come in for an hour.”

  She followed the vet down the hallway to a small exam room with a stainless-steel table that dropped from the wall. Jennings set the carrying case down on the table.

  “Okay, Smokey,” he said softly, unzipping the front of the case. The cat snarled and tried to claw him, but the vet expertly scooped him up and held him in a way that was instantly calming.

  “My God,” he said, glancing at Lake. “Who did this to him?”

  His voice seemed cooler now, and she wondered if he was suspicious of her.

  “I think it might have been teenage boys,” she said quickly. “I thought I heard a few of them laughing near the house just before Smokey came in. They may have been out cruising, looking for trouble.”

  “You’ve called the police?”

  “Um, no, not yet-no. But I will, of course.”

  Jennings looked back down at Smokey and began to run his hands over him carefully, feeling for any kind of fracture perhaps. His eyes followed his hands. Finally he looked back up at Lake.

  “I think you’re wrong,” he said soberly.

  She froze, confused. Was he challenging her, suggesting that she was lying?

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s too complicated a job for teen boys. You could never shave a cat this smoothly unless it was sedated first. The cat would freak out and you’d never get it to stay still.”

  “Are you-? You’re saying this was calculated?”

  “That’s my guess. I hate to say this, but do you have any enemies? I mean, has one of your neighbors been complaining about the cat lately? People do awful stuff to other people’s pets if they’re annoyed by them. They poison them, set them on fire.”

  Lake’s body sagged in dismay. “All my neighbors are friendly,” she said. “And they’re not even here this weekend.”

  But her mind had begun to catch up with the truth: this was no random prank. Someone had planned this out. And the goal had been to scare the bejesus out of her.

  “How could the person have tranquilized him?” she asked.

  Jennings shrugged. “He could have left some food outside with a sedative in it.” He glanced at Smokey again and ran his fingers over the cat’s body. “Oh, wow.”

  “What?” Lake said.

  “Here,” he said, pressing his finger just in front of a red dot on Smokey’s upper back. “It looks like he’s been given an injection.”

  Lake caught her breath.

  “Look, I’ve clearly scared you,” the vet said. “Would you like me to call the police?”

  “No, no,” Lake said. “I appreciate it but I know the cops in my town. I’ll do it when I get home.”

  “Okay, if that’s what you want.” He glanced back at the cat. “Let me just finish my exam and make sure that Smokey’s okay.”

  After grabbing an instrument from its holder on the wall, he looked into Smokey’s eyes. Lake sat down on the small stool behind him, her mind racing.

  If this was planned, she thought-and surely it must have been because you don’t just happen to show up in someone’s backyard with a hypodermic needle and an electric razor-then it meant that someone was doing their damnedest to rattle her. Did it have to do with Keaton’s death? Her heart sank. Maybe the killer knew she’d been with Keaton-and had followed her to Roxbury. She thought back on the drive yesterday. She didn’t recall any one car following her for any length of time, but she’d been lost in her thoughts much of the time-she probably wouldn’t have noticed.

  But that wasn’t the only possibility, of course. She remembered her call to Maggie yesterday. She’d told her that she was coming up here, even given the name of the town, and had asked Maggie to let people at the clinic know. Maggie had also pointed out that the clinic was closing early that day. Anyone with a car could have checked her address with directory assistance and found the house. She’d mentioned to at least a few people at the clinic that she had a cat.

  And what about her kids? she wondered frantically. Could they be in any danger? She had to get to the camp and make certain they were okay.

  “But don’t exceed two a day.”

  She looked up, startled. Dr. Jennings was holding out a small white packet to her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Can you repeat that?”

  “If he acts stressed again, you can give him one of these, but don’t exceed two a day.”

  A few minutes later she was headed back to Roxbury, her mind spinning. She wished she could just pack up everything at the house and not have to come back, but she couldn’t take Smokey to the camp with her. Not only would it be cruel to leave him in his carrier all day, but she also couldn’t risk the kids getting a look at him.

  She pulled the car into the driveway and scanned all around the outside of the house. Not seeing anything out of the ordinary, she left Smokey in the kitchen with food and a fresh bowl of water, and then raced back out to the car.

  She was now running ten minutes late. She tried to make up the time by driving as fast as possible, but her foot kept easing off the accelerator as her mind attempted to fathom this new twist to her nightmare. If someone from the clinic had done this, why? Because the person had murdered Keaton and knew she was with him that night?

  But if the killer knew she’d been in the apartment, why did it matter so much? Obviously because he-or she-assumed Lake suspected who it was. But if Lake was a supposed threat, why harm her cat and not her? It must be a warning, she decided. “I know you were there and you better shut up-or you’ll be next.” There was no way she could ever let Hull and McCarty find out about Smokey. They would suspect instantly that something was up with her.

  Just before she made the second-to-last turn for the camp, she checked her rearview mirror for what seemed to be the hundredth time. No one was behind her.

  As she pulled into the overflowing parking lot of the camp, she realized that she’d been so preoccupied with what had happened to Smokey that she hadn’t mentally prepared for seeing Jack today. Jack, who, she suddenly realized, had also known she would be at the house this weekend. Maybe the scare with Smokey wasn’t related at all to Keaton’s death, but to the custody situation. Jack trying to scare her so she’d come unhinged. Could he have done this? Opening the car door, she realized how this thought would have been impossible with the old Jack. But she knew nothing about what the new Jack was capable of.

  She heard her daughter before she saw her-as the word Mom rang out from the grassy slope just above the parking lot. It was just like Amy to be waiting excitedly for her arrival-and Lake felt a surge of relief.

  “Hey, sweetie,” Lake called, waving broadly and forcing a big smile. Amy was with another girl about the same size, both in their khaki shorts and hunter-green shirts stamped with the camp logo, and they bounded toward Lake as if she were an ice cream truck pulling up on a sweltering hot afternoon. Lake hurried to meet them. Though Amy possessed Jack’s tall, athletic build, she had Lake’s coloring-the brown hair and gray-green eyes-and people always knew instantly they were mother and daughter. Amy, however, was self-possessed in a way that Lake hadn’t been at her age-because of the birthmark she was deeply ashamed of.

  As the two girls reached her, Amy threw her arms around her mother’s waist.

  “Wow, it’s so good to see you,” Lake said, hugging her back and kissing the top of her head.

  “Mom, Mom, this is Lauren,” Amy said, smiling at the red-haired girl with braces standing next to her. “She’s from Buffalo. We’ve been there, right?”

  “Yes, on our way to Niagara Falls. Hi, Lauren. It’s very nice to meet you.”

  “Well, it’s really a suburb,” Lauren said. “Amherst. Have you ever heard of it?”

  “Yes, of course,” Lake said. “So tell me about the plan today, girls. The swimming races are first?”

  “Yes, and then lunch and then we’re doing a talent show,” said Amy. “Lauren and I are singing. Will is doing
an animal dance-he’s a skunk.”

  “A skunk-perfect! So where is he?” Lake needed to set eyes on him as soon as she could.

  “He’s playing soccer, I think,” Amy said. “He’s probably already filthy. I swear, it’s embarrassing-he’s always covered in dirt. Do you want a tour, Mom? I don’t think you saw everything the day you dropped us off.”

  “I’d love one. Are your parents coming, Lauren?”

  “Yeah, in a while. They’re always late for everything.” She added an eye roll for emphasis.

  They began to ascend the hill, with a few other parents straggling behind them. Jack must not be here yet, she thought looking around, or Amy would have mentioned it.

  “Are you looking for Dad?” Amy said, reading her thoughts in that uncanny way of hers.

  “Is he here?” Lake asked, trying to sound casual.

  “No, he’s not coming now,” her daughter said.

  “What?” Lake said, stopping in her tracks.

  Amy shrugged and let her shoulders droop.

  “The counselor told us,” she said glumly. “She said Dad called the director and told him he’s not going to be here. He said something came up.”

  10

  THAT MADE NO sense, Lake thought. Why wouldn’t Jack come? Maybe it had something to do with the Boston trip he had alluded to. Or was he trying to avoid her? Her mind flashed back to Smokey. Had Jack shaved him-or sent someone to do it-and now he didn’t have the guts to look her in the eye? Was he trying to screw with her mind in general? There’d been that call in the middle of the night, too. If Jack was responsible for what happened to Smokey, he might have been behind the call as well.