Cat Coming Home (27 page)

E
AGERLY
B
ENNY FOLLOWED
Dulcie. He wanted to go home, he wanted his grandma, and apparently he had perfect faith that she would take him there, that she would save him, she thought, smiling. Little kids were like that, they believed in the wisdom of animals, the magic of animals. Well, she might not have all the magic skills the child found in a favorite fairy tale, but she could sure as hell lead him to where he could get help.

What she didn’t understand was why Pearl had kidnapped her own child. For money? For some kind of ransom? And if she’d wanted him bad enough to snatch him, why had she left him again so soon? Had he turned out to be too much of a burden? Benny would have slowed her down after the wreck, which Pearl must have feared would draw the cops to her. Whatever the cause, in her need to escape she had abandoned him, and Dulcie was glad for that.

But where were Kit and Joe? Kit had been there at Maudie’s when Benny vanished, but where was she now? She supposed Joe was somewhere out in the night with Rock and Ryan, following Benny’s trail. It was hard when they weren’t together, couldn’t talk, couldn’t help one another. She had no way to tell them that Benny was safe, they weren’t cops with their sophisticated electronic devices, able to talk to each other over long distances. Humans’ inventions were marvels of ingenuity; she wondered if humans realized how very special they were, that they could not only visualize such wonders but had worked out how to build them, how to make them real.

Hurrying uphill with the child close beside her, she headed not for Maudie’s house, which lay far to the right, but for the crest of the hill that towered above them. Benny might be lost, but she wasn’t, she knew where to find help. She left the road when it turned away to the left, leading Benny straight up through the woods, a hard climb for the tired, injured child through dense trees and tangled vines. Heading straight for the seniors’ house, she mewed her encouragement, wanting him to move faster as she leaped over fallen branches. Benny didn’t like pushing through the black, clutching woods, she could see that he was afraid, but still he followed her. Only once did he pause and whimper, but then he pushed on again bravely, trusting her, trusting that she would take him safely through the night to where help waited, where someone friendly waited.

T
HE TRACKING TEAM
did indeed form a strange procession through the dark and empty streets, the silver-colored dog with his nose to the paving jerking Ryan along, Clyde and Dallas jogging behind her, the hurrying gray tomcat taking up the rear. An untidy line of runners tracking Benny’s scent, which clung to the long-since-vanished white Toyota. Sometimes Rock lost the scent in the wake of a passing vehicle and had to cast around to find it again. Twice he lost it so completely he had to double back, his nose lifting and then down to the macadam until he picked up the trail, alternately following airborne scent and sucking up the faintest odor that lay along the street. Joe wondered that Benny’s scent had remained so strong—almost as if the child had rubbed against the tires or maybe clung to the fender or bumper trying to keep from being forced inside the car. Joe had, some time back, given up dodging into the shadows whenever Dallas glanced back at him. The detective knew he was there, and though his remarks amused Joe, they were unsettling, too.

“Why the hell is the cat still following us?” Dallas grumbled, scowling at Clyde. “He’s like a dog out for a run, I never saw a cat that acts so much like a dog.”

Clyde laughed. “He
thinks
he’s part dog, always been like that. He liked to run the beach with Rube and Barney. Remember how they’d race? Now, with both the old dogs gone, he’s grown pretty close to Rock.”

“He thinks he’s part cop,” Dallas said, “the way he hangs around the station.”

“It’s the food he likes,” Ryan said, sucking in breath, pulled along by Rock. “Mabel spoils him, you all do, he’s really getting too fat.”

Joe gave her a look as he moved along at a gallop beside Clyde. Ryan shook her head imperceptibly as Dallas glanced down at him, frowning. “Part dog,” Ryan said, laughing. “Thinks he can do whatever Rock can do.” She was about done in, was beginning to think she wasn’t as young as she used to be, not a pleasant revelation. They’d been tracking for nearly an hour when Rock swerved suddenly up a hillside street, leaped ahead so violently he nearly jerking Ryan off her feet.

“The wreck,” Dallas said, watching the light reflection among the treetops. With a BOL out on the white Toyota, the responding officers at the crash scene had called through to Dallas as soon as they ID’d the wrecked car.

“Neither driver on the scene,” Officer McFarland had said. “Some blood on the seat of the Toyota, shoe prints over the skid marks, a woman’s shoes and the boy’s, but no one here now.”

“See if you can find Benny,” Dallas had said. “The woman’s wanted on several charges.” Dallas could have pulled Rock off the scent, taken him directly there, put him back on Benny’s scent at the scene of the wreck. He’d opted, instead, to let Rock find his way without interference. If they took the big dog off the trail, they might miss something. Maybe the kidnapper had stopped somewhere, maybe pulled the child out of the car, locked him up somewhere. This, plus the fact that he didn’t want to screw up the dog’s training by taking him off fresh scent—not when he was ramping ahead on the lead nearly choking himself.

They arrived at the wreck to find Kathleen Ray photographing the car and truck and taking blood samples.
Neither driver nor passengers had been found. Before they reached the wrecked vehicles Rock brightened on Benny’s scent so powerfully that he nearly flew off the road, jerking Ryan downhill for a long way, and then into a tangle of bushes, sniffing at an indentation of crushed leaves, a little bed matted down into a child-sized nest. Huffing, drinking in the scent, he’d circled wide around it, his nose to the ground, and then headed uphill again, veering back and forth between two trails.

At the wreck again he gave a yip and tried to climb into the turned-over Toyota, sucking at the scent from within and around the hanging door that gaped open. Proudly Joe Grey watched his protégé, smiling at the success of his training.

But there was one thing Joe and Rock knew that their human companions did not.

They had now picked up not only Benny’s scent, but Dulcie’s, and a thrill of apprehension touched Joe. Dulcie, too, was tracking Benny, alone through the black night.

Or maybe Dulcie had already found him, Joe thought hopefully. Maybe by now the child was no longer alone. And though Joe wasn’t given to prayer, tonight he made an exception as he worried for his tabby lady.

Leaving the wreck behind, Rock took them straight up the steep road until it dead-ended, and there the silver dog plunged into the woods again, dragging Ryan crashing up through vines and heavy undergrowth. Rock’s human followers were soon fighting blackberry thorns that snatched at their jeans and windbreakers, swearing with a creativity that amused the tomcat. When, above them, two dogs began
to bark, Rock paused, listening. But their voices were familiar and welcome, and he wagged his short tail.

“Benny can’t be headed for the seniors’ house?” Dallas said. “How the hell could he find their place in the dark? How would he even know the direction? What kind of blind luck is that?”

Not blind luck,
Joe Grey thought, this was Dulcie’s doing, she had led Benny there.

They came out of the woods at the top of the hill, the three humans scratched and cranky from the blackberries’ embrace. They were half a block from the seniors’ rambling frame house. No lights burned in the flat-roofed, two-story structure, except for a faint light at the back, apparently from the kitchen. The seniors’ dogs were still barking, but now with pleased little woofs. They knew who approached, and were excited to have midnight company. Rock wasn’t distracted by them, he hurried along sucking Benny’s fresh scent from the air. Only when Dallas put a hand on Ryan’s arm did she speak to Rock and pull him to a halt. The good dog looked up at her reproachfully. He’d run for nearly two hours tracking Benny, he wanted the satisfaction of the find, he wanted a joyous reunion. “Just for a minute,” she told him, stroking his muscled shoulder.

As Dallas and Clyde stood surveying the house and street, Joe moved on up beside Rock, to reassure him that this pause was all right, that this was part of the job. Ryan waited as Dallas and Clyde walked the street, checking the interiors of the seven cars parked at intervals before they turned their backs on them. Though Joe hadn’t caught any fresh scent that could indicate someone waited concealed
there. When at last Dallas nodded to Ryan and she released Rock, the big dog bolted not for the front door but around the side to the back deck.

Above the daylight basement, where a light burned in the kitchen, they could hear the murmur of voices. Benny’s voice? Rock leaped up the stairs to the deck and across it, yipping at the door with impatience. Before Ryan could knock or call out Cora Lee opened it, releasing the smell of hot cocoa—and releasing the Dalmatian and the standard poodle. They rushed at Rock, excited and ready to play. But Rock plunged past them through the open door and raced across the kitchen, heading straight for Benny.

The child sat at the kitchen table with a blanket wrapped around him. Lori had pulled her chair close beside him, and there was a big mug of cocoa on the table in front of him. There was a fresh bandage on his face, and one on his right arm. Rock reared up, softly keening and licking Benny’s face; and when the big dog cut a look at Ryan, his yellow eyes were filled with such pride that Ryan pressed her fist to her mouth and couldn’t speak; Rock’s doggy excitement at his accomplishment was so great that Clyde and Dallas, too, seemed choked with emotion.

From atop the little planning desk tucked beside the refrigerator, Dulcie looked on, purring extravagantly, her own triumph nearly as great as Rock’s. Joe didn’t know the details, but from the look on his lady’s face, Benny Toola had enjoyed two miracles tonight. One when an “untrained” dog successfully tracked and found him. The other when he must have been led through the cold night to safety by an “ordinary house cat,” a miracle that most humans would find impossible to believe. A rescue that,
even to the hard-nosed tomcat, proved there might, indeed, be a touch of magic in the world. A special Christmas blessing, perhaps, that Dulcie had found Benny in the dark night, searching all alone, and that the child, lost and afraid, had been willing to follow her.

But Joe wasn’t the only one focused on Dulcie. When he looked at Dallas, the detective was frowning at the purring tabby, as if puzzled that Wilma’s cat was up there so far from home. Benny saw him looking. “Dulcie brought me,” he blurted out. “She was in the woods, a man was calling me and I saw lights and I didn’t know who that was. I ran, and then Dulcie was there, and she brought me here.”

“She must have been hunting,” Ryan said. “I’ve seen her over there on that road. Maybe she heard the police, saw the lights, and that frightened her just as it scared Benny.”

Dallas watched Ryan, puzzled and silent—maybe not really wanting to know what this was about.

“A miracle that they met up,” Ryan said. “Maybe, since she knows the seniors’ house, maybe she thought of this as a place of safety …” Ryan knew she was talking too much, but she couldn’t seem to stop. She didn’t like the skeptical look on Dallas’s face. He’d started to reply, his scowl stern, when his cell phone rang.

Picking up, the detective listened, then turned and stepped into the entry hall where he could talk in private. Silently Joe followed him, slipping into the shadows to listen.

“She’s where?” Dallas said. “How could you know that? Who is this? Where are you? Are you certain she has Maudie?”

I
‘
M SURE
,” K
IT
said. “She pushed Maudie in the backseat of a maroon Jaguar, her hands tied behind her. I followed them up where you are. I saw you with that dog. She didn’t stop anywhere, she couldn’t have let Maudie out. She’s parked up in those trees, in the darkest shadows.”

Kit’s heart was pounding when she clicked off the speaker on the phone by Lori’s empty bed, after calling Dallas’s cell phone. She listened to Lori’s voice and Dallas’s voice from the kitchen below, heard him ask a question, heard Ryan answer. There was silence for a few minutes, then she heard the front door open. When she peered out through Lori’s window, Dallas and Rock were on the porch, Rock straining at the leash, staring up the dark hill, his ears up, his whole body quivering. Soon they would head up there. Kit didn’t know whether to follow them as they closed in on Pearl, or go down to poor Misto, who was crouched beneath the back deck, waiting for her.

Having clawed through the bathroom window, then slipped into Lori’s room, having found Lori’s bed empty and heard her voice downstairs, she’d made the call to Dallas, all the while worried about Misto. The old cat was worn out from running, tired and sore, and he’d been breathing hard when she left him. Now, still hearing Lori’s and Cora Lee’s voices from the kitchen, she fought the lock on Lori’s window, pawed it open, and slipped out onto the roof. Peering down, she listened as Dallas spoke on his cell phone, talking with Max. She watched Rock pull on the lead, staring up into the night, fixed intently
on Pearl’s hidden car. She knew Dallas was waiting for backup. She wanted badly to follow when they closed in on Pearl’s car. Instead she dropped off the roof onto Cora Lee’s hood, then to the drive, and streaked around to the back and beneath the deck, where Misto lay curled up, breathing raggedly.