by Laurie Cass
The leaves under my feet were saturated with water, and I was suddenly grateful for all the rain we’d had. Wet leaves were quiet; dry leaves were noisy. Then again, if we hadn’t had so much rain, the road would never have washed out and we wouldn’t be in this mess, so I stopped the efforts of appreciation.
Every few steps I took, I stopped and listened. Denise was still talking, rain was still dripping down, and, unless spontaneous combustion was a dark and soundless reality, whoever had shot at my cat was still on this hillside.
I pressed on, moving ever closer to the shooter, treading quietly up the path, feeling my silent way in the gloom through trees and brush and rocks.
She had to be up here somewhere. Had to be—
Bang!
The rifle fired, and I saw a flash of light. From the end of the gun’s barrel, I realized. By shooting, the shooter had revealed her—or maybe his—location: off to my left and slightly down the hill.
Excellent.
I edged closer. But not too close. All I wanted was a positive identification. I wasn’t hero material. All I wanted was to see who this person was.
I was practically tiptoeing through the forest, which was silly, but I couldn’t stop myself. With my gaze fastened on the spot where I’d seen the flash, I took slow steps closer and closer. I heard the rustle of fabric—the shooter was moving!
Not breathing, I froze solid until there was another rustle and some metallic noises that I couldn’t identify. Something gun oriented, no doubt, and I suddenly wished my self-defense classes from last summer had included working with rifles in the dark.
Then my brain clicked.
Reloading the magazine. The shooter was filling up the rifle’s magazine with new bullets. Which was bad, but there was a good side. Her—or his—attention would be on the work at hand, not on what might be approaching from the rear.
I edged forward, oh, so quietly, breathing slowly and evenly, my skin tingling with tension. Every cubic inch of me was wide awake and alert.
Closer . . .
Just a little closer . . .
There was a plastic-sounding click, and a tiny circle of light appeared. The beam from a tiny flashlight danced around, illuminating the ground, a small pile of bullets, the magazine, the rifle, and a hand gloved in black.
Show me your face, I thought fiercely. Show your face!
The flashlight dropped to the ground and the shooter muttered a low curse. Another black glove reached to pick up the flashlight, and, as it picked it up, the beam skidded across the shooter’s face.
I gasped, loudly enough to be heard.
The shooter picked up the rifle and pointed it in my direction. “Who’s there? Come out right now, or I’ll shoot!”
There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to go. No possible place to hide, and there was a gun pointing straight at me. How could I have been so stupid?
Possibilities flashed through my mind. It was dark. If I ran, there was a good chance the bullets would completely miss me. And there was a good chance there weren’t any bullets in the rifle anyway, with that magazine on the ground. Maybe there was one in the chamber, or maybe there were two magazines. I didn’t know enough about guns to know what was most likely, but I did know I wasn’t going to stand here and get ordered around by the person who killed Roger Slade.
“It’s Minnie, isn’t it?” Allison Korthase said.
I heard a sound behind me, from down low. Not a swish, exactly, but not a rustle, either. Something in between, or maybe a combination. A swistle? Could there be such a thing? And if not, why? More to the point, why was I having such inane thoughts when a gun was pointed at me?
“I know it’s you,” Allison said, her voice growing louder. “Where are you?”
Right. Like I was going to tell her. Do that, and I might as well mark my location with a flare while screaming “Shoot me!”
Allison’s small flashlight beamed into life. “I know you’re there, Minnie. It can only be you. I can still hear Denise down there, yapping away to nine-one-one. I’m so cold,” Allison whined in a Denise-like voice. “I’m so scared. I’m so worried about being killed.” Allison dropped the mimickry. “Like anyone cares.”
The flashlight danced closer to my feet. I edged backward. If I could get a little farther away, I’d make a run for it, bullets or no. In my opinion, which wasn’t exactly expert but was all I had, Allison was ready to kill again, and I needed to get clear of her murderous intentions.
“Come on,” she said impatiently. “I know you’re just a librarian, but there’s no reason for you to be such a scaredy-cat.”
Just a librarian? I opened my mouth to argue the point, but before I could say a word, my retreating heel found a rock and I fell to the ground hard, arms windmilling, the air rushing out of me in a painful “Oof!”
“There you are.” Allison chuckled, and her voice turned snide and sarcastic. “What were you trying to do, run backward? How stupid are you? You’d have thought that someone with a job like yours would be at least a little smart, but here you are, in the woods alone, up against someone like me, who is smart and has a gun. Stupid.” She practically spat the word. “Stupid!”
I’d been pushing myself back, trying to get out of her reach, moving away from where I’d fallen, doing my best not to be stupid, when the swistle noise ran past me and toward Allison, a low, rumbling growl moving along with it.
“Eddie!” I shouted, scrambling to my feet. “No! Get back!”
Allison screamed. “Get it off! Get it off!” The rifle clattered to the ground.
In the last vestiges of the day’s dim light, I could see her waving her arms, flailing at Eddie, who was growling, hissing, and climbing up her back, all at the same time.
I ran forward and scooped up the rifle, momentarily unsure whether to hang on to it or to fling it into the woods, where neither one of us would be able to find it until daylight.
“It’s a bobcat,” she yelled. “It’s a mountain lion. It’s going to kill me! Minnie, get it off!”
She was in a full-blown panic. Allison, I suddenly realized, was afraid of cats. She wasn’t allergic, as she’d claimed to Denise. She was scared.
I turned and placed the rifle behind a tree.
“Minnie!” Her shrieks were becoming tinged with desperation. “You have to do something!”
Oh, I’d do something all right.
“You’re a good boy,” I told Eddie. He was on the back of Allison’s neck, clutching onto the collar of her coat for all he was worth and howling into her ear. “If you can hang on a little bit longer, we’ll be good.”
“MRRR!!” he said, which I took for agreement.
I lifted up my coat, unbuckled my belt, pulled it off, and pushed the belt’s length though the buckle, creating a loop. I stepped forward and bumped into Allison, making her scream just a little louder.
Grabbing one of her arms, I looped the belt around her wrist and pulled it tight. She struggled, but I held hard and reached around for her other arm. “Now would be a good time,” I panted to Eddie, “for you to help out just a little more.”
He scrambled up off Allison’s back and onto her shoulder, where he gripped hard and yowled like the hounds of hell. Even I was a little startled by the volume of noise coming out of my thirteen-pound cat.
Allison sank to her knees, whimpering.
I took hold of her free arm, pulled it behind her back, and wrapped my belt tight around both wrists, looping and tying it firm.
“Get him off,” she whispered, tears in her words. “Please, just get him off.”
And after a minute, I did.
Chapter 19
“Minnie?” Denise’s shout came from far below. “Are you all right up there?”
Me and Eddie both, thanks. “We’re fine,” I called. “You can tell the dispatcher that I have the shoo
ter disarmed and—” And what? Saying Allison was in custody wasn’t accurate. “Disarmed and incapacitated. Send the police up here, okay?”
“Incapacitated” still wasn’t quite right, but I’d come up with the right word eventually. Probably at three in the morning, as Eddie was deciding that the top of my head was the best place for him to sleep.
At this particular moment, however, the cat in questions was nestled in my arms and purring like a champ. I patted my furry little friend on the head.
“Mrr,” he said sleepily.
“Get that cat away from me,” Allison said. “This is all her fault, you know.”
I frowned. “Eddie is a boy.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she snapped.
Eddie gave a low growl and, in the dark, I felt Allison shrink away.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “What I mean is, it’s all Denise’s fault.”
“Really?” Though he’d seemed light enough a few minutes ago, Eddie was gaining weight rapidly. I felt around with my feet, found a good-sized rock, and sat down. I’d stand up with a wet rear end, but it would be nice to rest for a little. I rearranged Eddie on my lap. “What did Denise do?”
“It’s all so stupid.” Allison said.
She had a thing for that word. “What is?”
“I wasn’t trying to pass off someone else’s speech as my own,” she explained in the patient voice that grated on me like nothing else—far worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. “I just forgot to make an attribution that day I talked to the Friends of the Library. A simple mistake, that’s all. I can’t believe that Denise was trying to ruin my career over it!”
Eddie shifted, lost a little of his balance, and dug his claws into my thighs. Ow. “She told me all she wanted was a letter to the editor correcting the mistake.”
“It would have ruined me! They would have said I was a liar, a cheat! Every time anyone Googled me, it would come up, again and again. I’d never be able to escape it. All because of one stupid speech.”
“And you have plans,” I said. “For the future.”
“Exactly.” Allison sounded satisfied. Why, I couldn’t imagine, but the tone was unmistakable. “A term on the city council, a couple of terms as a county commissioner, and eight years from now I’ll run for the state legislature. One term there and I’ll be forty-nine, the perfect age for me to run for a national office.”
Assuming she won all those elections, of course, but I decided not to mention that small detail. “That’s quite a plan.”
“Yes,” she said. “Don’t you think it’s time for a female president?”
I blinked in the dark. “Of the country?”
“Why not go straight for the presidency from a state seat? Why taint yourself with the inner machinations of Washington? Why not go straight to the top? Take you. Why don’t you angle to get Stephen’s job? Or work at the State Library? Even better, the Library of Congress? Think of the things you could do. Why are you limiting yourself?”
I could think of a lot of reasons, but the primary ones were that I liked my current job, that I loved where I lived, and that Eddie wouldn’t like living in a city. He was a small-town cat, just like I was a small-town girl. Why would I want to fit myself into a square hole when I was a round peg?
“Ah,” Allison said, even though I hadn’t said a word, “you’re just like everyone else in this town. Stuck in a rut. Happy with the status quo. Living with blinders on.” She made a rude noise. “Not me. I’m going places. I’m not going to let someone like Denise ruin my life. I’ll get out of this—just wait and see.”
Though a good defense attorney could do wonders, I wasn’t sure how being on trial for murder, even if she was found innocent, could help her political career. Then again, who knew? It was a weird, weird world and stranger things had—
A swooshing noise startled me and I felt instant intense pain. I fell back, rolled to the ground, and curled into a fetal position, cradling my forehead. Allison had jumped to her feet and whacked me in the head with her own noggin.
“Mrr!”
“Get out of my way, you . . . you cat! Get away from me!”
More swooshing noises. Allison was trying to kick Eddie, and here I was, lying like a lump. I tried to scramble to my feet, but dizziness sent me back to the ground. Eddie was hissing and growling and yowling.
“Leave him alone!” I got to my hands and knees and crawled to the nearest tree. “Don’t you dare hurt my cat!” I grabbed the rifle I’d propped up and stood. Swaying, I staggered forward toward the scuffling and swung the rifle around by its barrel. “Leave him alone!”
The heavy stock of the gun thumped against something softish. Allison yelled, and I whacked again. She fell to the ground and stayed there.
In the distance I heard slamming doors, male shouts, and Denise’s voice directing them up the hill. Never had I been so happy to hear that penetrating sound.
Feet thudded in our direction. The glare of bright flashlights skittered over the trees and reached our group of two humans and one feline. “Got them!” someone called.
Allison tried to get up again, but I flipped the rifle around and pointed the business end at her. “You killed Roger,” I said. “You tried to kill Denise, and just now did your best to kill my cat.” Which was boiling my blood something fierce.
“What if I did?” she spat. “Shooting Roger was a mistake, but they’ll understand. I have answers. I have ideas, excellent ideas. I have plans!”
The feet and the lights reached us.
Willingly, I surrendered the gun, and as soon as I detached Eddie from Allison’s leg, I let them lead me away.
* * *
Denise was already gone by the time I reached the road, taken away in one of the three patrol cars that had arrived one after the other.
As I watched, Allison was brought down, her hands in front of her, wrists together. She didn’t look at me as a deputy put her into the back of the second patrol car and didn’t speak until the deputy started to close the door.
“I’ll get out of this,” she said to the air over my head. “Just you wait and see.”
The deputy shut the door, went around to the driver’s side, and started the engine. He made a three-point turn and accelerated, the car’s taillights winking out of view as it went around the curve.
“Minnie, are you okay?”
I turned. Ash Wolverson, a flashlight in hand, stood nearby.
“Fine,” I told him. “Really. The rain stopped a few minutes ago.”
“The rain did, yes. But precipitation didn’t. You’re covered in snow,” he said. “Let’s get in my car.”
“Eddie, too?” My cat, who had had enough of my cuddling, was slinking around my legs, pausing every so often to whack my shin with the top of his head.
“From what I hear, he’s the hero of the hour.” Ash scooped Eddie up into his arms and scratched him behind the ears, just the way he liked it. “He can walk all over the dash if he wants.”
So the three of us climbed inside into the warmth, but I still shivered.
“You’ve got to be wet, through,” Ash said. “I should get you home.”
I shook my head. “My phone’s in the bookmobile. Can you call the garage? I need to get a tow truck out here.”
Ash nodded and started pushing buttons on his radio.
Which was good, because there was no way I was leaving the bookmobile until it was safe and sound. Or at least on solid ground. The knowledge that it might have suffered serious damage was depressing. If the bookmobile was out of commission for an extended period of time, it would take more than Eddie’s purrs to make me feel better.
“Mrr,” he said from the dashboard.
Well, maybe they’d make me feel a little better.
“You’re all right,” I told my furry friend, “for an Eddie.”
“He’s a pretty cool cat.” Ash gave him a long pet. “His fur is silky. Not like any cat I’ve ever had.”
Wonderful. Eddie already thought he was one of a kind. Now he had the stamp of approval from the sheriff’s department. Outstanding. I half smiled. What we really needed was an Eddie stamp of approval. A sketch of his face with a paw print for a signature. We could stamp his food dish. And the back of the couch. And the rocking—
“You’ll need to make a statement,” Ash said.
Reluctantly, I steered my thoughts back to the unfortunate and unhappy present.
“She admitted to killing Roger,” I said. “Right before you got there. She said it was a mistake.” I swallowed, hating that Roger had died. And now Denise would learn with certainty that it was her threats that had unhinged Allison to the point of murder, that Allison had indeed killed Roger, thinking he was Denise.
I sighed, wondering how long it would take Denise to learn to live with that knowledge, with that guilt, and I hoped she’d be okay. Poor Roger had been in the wrong place, just like that book on the bookmobile.
“Mrr.” Eddie jumped onto my lap and flopped down. His thick purrs started to fill my empty spaces, and I leaned down to kiss the top of his head. He really was a pretty good cat. Even without the qualifier of being an Eddie.
“You’re shivering,” Ash said.
“I’ll be okay,” I said through chattering teeth.
He gave me a long look and smiled. “Yeah. I bet you will be.” And then he reached forward and turned up the heat.
* * *
On Sunday, after sleeping late and waking with Eddie curled into the crook of my elbow, I poked at the breakfast Aunt Frances cooked for me and then walked through the snow to the sheriff’s office to give my statement.
I’d been exhausted the night before when I returned home, and even more exhausted after I’d texted Tucker and called Stephen. But a good night’s sleep, and, after my visit to the sheriff’s office, a nap and a phone call with Kristen (“Your cat has excellent taste in women”) revived me to the point of smiles, if not laughter. Aunt Frances, Eddie, and I spent the evening eating pizza from Fat Boys and binge watching episodes of M*A*S*H, and my sleep that night was clear of dreams.
