Cat Bearing Gifts

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  If this man was visiting his wounded friend, wasn’t it a little late? Why would he care about Birely after leaving him to suffer and maybe die all alone? Her sense of Birely, after listening to Emmylou, had softened, had left her feeling only sorry for Sammie’s pitiful brother. It wasn’t Birely who had hurt Pedric and Lucinda and stolen their car, it was Birely’s visitor.

  The soft pad of a nurse’s approaching footsteps sent her behind a stainless steel machine with a cord hanging down like a noose. Next to it against the counter stood three rolling storage cabinets, polished steel carts with doors and drawers, with who knew what inside them? Towels and warm blankets? Or lethal and radiating medications that could sear a cat’s very liver at this close range? The carts stood on casters, four inches off the floor, leaving narrow, bone-bruising spaces beneath. Flattening herself, she crept under.

  Squeezed against the cool linoleum floor, concealed within the cupboard’s shadow, she peered out at the man in Pedric’s sport coat. He stood with his back to her looking in through a partially open glass door, the canvas curtain drawn halfway across. She watched him move on in, to disappear inside. Whatever he was up to, his body language and his nervous smell made the fur along her back stand stiff.

  But this wasn’t Pedric’s room, his was around the corner near the double doors, she’d seen it earlier from Ryan’s backpack. Relieved but curious, she looked both ways as if crossing a busy street, and slipped behind him across the wide walkway to the open glass door. She crouched there frantic to hide herself before a nurse spotted her, but she was afraid to push inside where he’d see her.

  The canvas curtain didn’t reach the floor; whoever had designed the flimsy barrier hadn’t envisioned anyone interested enough to peer underneath from a four-inch vantage. When she looked under, his back was to her. She crawled under and crouched against the glass beneath the curtain’s edge.

  The patient was either asleep or unconscious. He lay unmoving, his eyes closed, his nose covered with a thick white bandage. A thin plastic tube snaked out of each nostril, she could hear him breathing through them. The man she’d followed stood over him. She had to force her tail to be still, not switch with anger. He stood looking down at the tube that ran from a vein in Birely’s wrist up to the hanging jar that was the IV dispenser. He reached to examine the tube and then looked up at the screen, watching its moving graph and changing numbers. When he fished a syringe from his pocket, she shivered at the long needle.

  He took the IV hose in his other hand and bent it double, stopping the flow of liquid. She watched him lay the needle along the tube as if preparing to stick it in—for what purpose? All Emmylou’s sympathy for Birely hit her, and all her own hatred of the man who had hurt her humans. She leaped screaming at him, landed on his shoulder clawing hard.

  He hit and grabbed at her trying to pull her off, then swung around as if to run. She clawed down the side of his face, down his neck. When he raised the needle to jab her she dropped off and dove under the bed, up onto its heavy metal stand. He leaned over, looking. He kicked at her, swearing. Even as she dodged away, she saw him drop the needle, straighten up, and draw back his fist over the patient.

  His fist struck straight down with all his weight, into Birely’s stomach. Birely screamed a gurgling cry and then was still. Bells went off on the monitor, the graph of Birely’s heartbeat went flat, the gauges blinking in distress. An alarm shrieked from the nurses’ station. Birely’s attacker was gone, racing away, dodging nurses who came running. He shouldered through them shouting, “Help, someone help . . . Get a doctor, call the doctor.” Pointing and shouting, he fled through the open double doors and vanished. Kit flew through behind him, flicking her tail away as they swung closed.

  Racing past the surprised clerk at the admittance desk, she could see him out beyond the glass doors running through the dim parking garage, nearly trampling three children coming in with their heavily pregnant mother. His running feet echoed on the concrete, heading for an old brown station wagon. Debbie’s car? Puzzled, she raced for it. The instant he jerked the door open she streaked behind him into the back, into the dark tangle of Coke cans, mashed food, and little stray shoes. As he started the car, grinding the engine, she barely heard, behind them, a little child’s voice, “A cat, Mama . . . a cat chasing . . .” He took off with a squeal of rubber, the concrete roof passing over them, but at the entrance he slowed, easing sedately out of the covered parking into daylight.

  Turning left on the tree-lined highway, she knew he was headed toward the freeway. She braced into the right turn, up onto the south on-ramp as if heading back toward the village. She heard no siren behind them, and there’d been no one in the parking lot to note his frantic flight, no one she’d seen except the woman and three children. She couldn’t believe he’d escaped past the running nurses without alarming any of them. Couldn’t they see what he’d done? Crouched behind him among the litter of toys, she scared herself thinking she could have been crushed in the slamming ICU door and then in the slamming car door. She scared herself even worse, knowing she was alone with this man whom she’d twice attacked and bloodied, who might do any terrible thing to her if he got his hands on her.

  29

  EMMYLOU HAD HEADED back to the ICU when Ryan reached down to her backpack, found it empty, and panicked. She stared around the lounge, rose to look behind the two chairs in the corner, behind the other three love seats, all unoccupied, behind the green scheffleras that spread out as lush as small trees. She studied the three loud women down at the end, scanned the shadows around their feet, but there was no darker shape, and why would Kit be there? She looked out to the hall, and with an uneasy feeling she headed for the ICU. She was halfway up the hall when she heard women shouting ahead, heard some kind of alarm go off. She ran, saw someone roll a machine across the ICU to a cubicle on the far side where nurses were crowding in. “He’s flatlined . . .” Two white-coated doctors pushed inside, shouldering Emmylou away where she was stretching up trying to see over the crowding nurses.

  “Birely,” she was crying, “let me in, let me by.” Ryan saw a running man disappear out through the open double doors and—her stomach sank—a dark cat chasing him, leaping through the closing doors behind him. She ran. They disappeared in the direction of the admittance desk, the closing doors clicked together in her face even as she fought to open them. Had they locked down automatically, like prison doors? She remembered a nurse touching the wall earlier, just there where that little black hand was painted. Maybe an electric eye? She hit the wall.

  Slowly the doors swung out again, so slowly. She threw her weight against them, squeezed through, raced across the reception room startling a red-coated volunteer pushing an empty wheelchair. Dodging him, she was out through the wide glass doors into the dim underground parking garage, nearly falling over a woman and three children. They stood staring after him, the taller girl pointing and shouting, “A cat! Look, Mama, a cat chasing that man.” Tires squealed, she saw Debbie’s station wagon pull out fast and then slow as it moved up the ramp, as if the driver didn’t want to attract attention. Dodging past the children, racing for the Mercedes, Ryan barely glimpsed the man driving. Whatever he’d done back there had enraged Kit. She had no notion what happened or why he had Debbie’s car, only that something violent had occurred and Kit didn’t mean to let him get away. Had she leaped inside his car? Yes, a pair of pointed ears were visible for an instant, then gone again. Starting the Mercedes, she followed, glad she didn’t have her truck. A red pickup with a ladder on top wasn’t so good as a tail. The Suzuki turned onto the freeway. She entered the heavy traffic two cars behind, sliding into a narrow slot. Whatever emergency had brought the nurses running, the patient in trouble had to be Birely Miller, the way Emmylou was yelling.

  Was this man Birely’s traveling partner? What had he done to Birely? Had he stolen Debbie’s car? She tried not to think about Kit in there with him, she could picture
her hiding in the back among the children’s castoffs, and she was sick with fear for her. She was angry as hell, too. After they’d searched for her half the night up among the cliffs thinking she was dead, why did the crazy little cat have to launch into another crisis? Moving in and out of traffic, changing lanes while following the Suzuki, she was needled by too many questions. Had Kit gone back to the ICU looking for Pedric, seen the commotion, was startled by the cries of distress, saw the man running headlong and guilty, and had impetuously given chase?

  Ryan played back Emmylou’s talk about Birely that had made her feel sorry for him and would have made Kit pity him, too. Or did Kit already know the man, and maybe know Birely? Was this the man who had broken into Lucinda’s house? Kit would know him by smell, if nothing more. She thought about Birely camping in the stone house. Was this his partner? Were they, and the men at the wreck on the cliffs, the same? Was this the man who had hurt Pedric and Lucinda, and who now had apparently hurt Birely? No wonder Kit was angry. Up ahead a car pulled out of her lane moving to the left, and she was right behind the Suzuki. She looked for a lane to dodge into, but already he was watching her, studying her in his rearview mirror, glancing ahead and then back at her. She was still trying to cut into another lane, away from him, when a siren whooped behind her.

  She tried to nose over into the right lane to let it pass but horns honked and no one would let her in. Easing precariously near the car on her right, she barely let the emergency van squeeze past, giving her an angry blast of siren. Ahead, the Suzuki managed to swerve across, nearly hitting a blue convertible; tires squealed and a horn blasted as the station wagon spun off onto Carpenter Street. The traffic surged on, bearing her with it, she couldn’t get over to turn and follow. By the time she managed to change lanes she was at Ocean. She swung off there, knowing she’d lost him. Nothing ahead of her now but a green panel truck. Taking a chance, she made a right onto a small, wooded street, heading for a tangle of narrow, twisting lanes where it might be easy for the driver of the battered old station wagon to get lost among a maze of similar cars tucked into every narrow drive and wooded crevice. Moving as fast as she dared on the little residential streets, she scanned every side street, every hidden drive, praying for Kit and shaky with fear for her.

  ROCKING ALONG IN the back of the station wagon, crouched in between a dozen loaded grocery bags, Kit peered out between them watching the driver. Earlier, coming down the freeway, she’d watched him look repeatedly in the rearview mirror at the cars behind him as if he were being followed. She could only hope he was, and hope it was a cop. She couldn’t creep up again to look, he’d be sure to see her—but when he’d swung fast off the freeway almost getting them creamed, she’d glimpsed a silver Mercedes and the driver was a dead ringer for Ryan. But then, screeching off the freeway onto Carpenter, he must have lost her.

  Still, though, he checked behind him as he negotiated the narrow and twisting residential lanes, and at last he pulled over onto the shoulder beneath a clump of eucalyptus trees, the car hidden by the overhanging branches of the dense trees in front of the small, crowding cottages.

  He must have taken a cell phone from his pocket, must have punched 911, she listened to him describe a silver Mercedes four-door, “Moving south on the freeway,” he said, “headed for Ocean or maybe on beyond. A woman driving. Dark, short hair, red sweatshirt. I saw her pick up a man running out of the hospital, looked like he was being chased. I thought . . . Looked like there’d been trouble in there, that maybe he’d robbed someone. He jumped in the backseat of the Mercedes, ducked down so you couldn’t see him. The way he acted, I thought maybe you’d be looking for him . . .” He paused, listening.

  “A sport coat, I think. Maybe brown, sort of rough . . . like tweed . . .” He listened again, but then abruptly he hung up. Maybe the dispatcher had asked for his name, maybe asked him to stay on the line. He sat looking around him into the wooded neighborhood as if planning what to do next. She wondered if he’d borrowed the car from Debbie, or stolen it? Swiped it before she had a chance to unload her groceries, Kit thought, amused. But when she nosed at the paper bags, she realized they didn’t smell like groceries, no scent of cereal boxes or fresh fruit. Maybe everything was canned, that would be Debbie’s style. Feed the kids on cans of soup and beans. She tried not to think about being trapped in there with him, tried not to scare herself. Trapped until he opened the door, or until she opened it herself behind him, fought the handle down, leaped out and ran like hell.

  But she wasn’t ready to do that, she wasn’t finished with him yet, she wanted to know where he was headed. If he’d killed Birely she meant to see him pay one way or another. Maybe he’d hole up somewhere for a while. Then, when he thought he was safe, she could slip out, find a phone, and call the department. She just hoped he didn’t take off for good, putting long fast miles between him and the cops—and between her and home.

  She wasn’t sure why she cared so much that he’d hurt Birely. Except she’d felt bad when they’d found poor Sammie’s body, and now it didn’t seem fair Sammie’s little brother would be murdered, too. Not fair the killer would get away with it, just as Sammie’s killer had almost gone free. She didn’t like when human criminals didn’t pay, she wanted to see them face their accusers and squirm, wanted to see them suffer due consequence. That’s the way the world’s supposed to work, that’s the right balance, she thought angrily. If you have to live among the dregs and put up with their evil ways, then you should see some retribution.

  30

  HAVING LOST BIRELY’S attacker, Ryan still didn’t call the department. She wanted Kit out of there first, and safe, before the cops descended on him; they wouldn’t be polite in taking down a killer, if in fact Birely was dead. They’d run his attacker off the road if they needed to, fire at him, do whatever necessary to take him into custody, and Kit would be right in the middle.

  She could keep on cruising the village backstreets looking for the Suzuki among the winding, wooded residential lanes, which would, she thought, be an exercise in futility. Or she could go back to Debbie’s, park the Mercedes out of sight, and watch. See if he showed up there—perhaps to return the car, if he hadn’t stolen it. If Debbie had let him use it, then did Debbie have a role in this, whatever it was? Was she into more than shoplifting? Ryan thought angrily. Moving on through the village and up the hill, she parked two blocks above Emmylou’s on a narrow backstreet roofed over with its giant cypress trees, their lower branches reaching out across the street half covering the Mercedes. Getting out and locking the car, she walked on down to Emmylou’s.

  The Chevy was still gone, Emmylou would still be at the hospital. Maybe she was being questioned by the police, or maybe she was asking questions of her own. Was she mourning poor Birely now? Ryan wondered. Moving up the back steps, she tried the door but found it locked. She sat down on the top step, in the shadows where she could see down across the street into Debbie’s scraggly yard. Into her scraggly yard, that Debbie had never bothered to clean up. She could see the full expanse of Debbie’s empty drive but no sign of Debbie, no light on in the kitchen. Was Tessa still in there alone, tucked up in bed?

  Watching the shadowed bedroom, she began to make out a silhouette, a small figure looking out. As if Tessa were kneeling up on the bed, looking out watchfully at the neighborhood, much as she herself was doing.

  She was scanning the empty streets, the empty yards, when Debbie’s station wagon came into view slipping slowly along a side street. The driver didn’t turn onto Debbie’s street, he paused at the corner and then turned, circling back, moving down along a stand of pines. She watched him turn into a narrow, overgrown property two blocks to the south. He pulled down the long, weedy drive to the back, where a one-car garage stood beside the forlorn gray house. Parking at one side of the drive, two wheels on the yellowed grass, he nosed the Suzuki into a pile of scrap lumber, gray with age. The minute he opened the driver’s door a dark streak
exploded out behind him, fled across the lumber pile and up into a pine tree. Ryan eased back with a sigh of relief. Among the dark foliage, she could barely see Kit slip out onto a branch, to peer down.

  Stepping out of the station wagon, the man moved to the old-fashioned garage door and stood fiddling with the lock. She could imagine the hinges rusted, the cracked driveway beneath stained with scrape marks where the old door swung out. With his attention diverted, Ryan moved on down the stairs, had started down the hill, heading in his direction, when she heard the ratcheting squeal of wood on concrete as he eased the door open. Within, beyond the open door, something dark loomed. The hood of a dark car, its lines sleek but its narrow chrome and its headlights dulled as if with dirt; they were the smooth lines of the Lincoln. Snatching her phone from her pocket, she punched in 911.

  She ended the call just as fast, clicking off.

  She didn’t want the law there, taking over the stolen car, declaring it out of bounds to everyone but the department, impounding it for evidence. Not with what was there—what she hoped was still hidden there behind the door panels. Instead, she hit Clyde’s number.