Spy Cat (13 page)

A light came on inside the van as the door opened. Benjie hadn’t thought about that. Quickly he pushed the door closed until the light went off, holding his breath for fear one of the men would notice, but they both had their backs to the van.

“Walk faster,” Vance said.

“I’m going as fast as I can. This thing is heavy.”

“Well, don’t drop it. Set it down gently.”

Benjie bolted. His feet skimmed the surface of the gravel, barely touching down before he lifted them again. His arms pumped, and he stretched his legs out as far as he could with each step, willing himself to go faster.

As he ran he looked around, hoping to see someone who could help him. There were no people, and no other vehicles, only rows of storage units stretching ahead on both sides.

Benjie wasn’t sure if he was running toward the street or toward the back of the storage lot. He didn’t hear any traffic sounds. He came to the end of a row of storage units and turned the corner, looking for some place to hide.

The whole storage area was dimly lit with occasional streetlights, but he saw no shrubs or other hiding place, only the flat gravel road and another long row of storage units, their dark doors closed. Each one looked exactly like all the others except for the numbers over the doors.

The sharp bits of gravel cut into the bottom of his bare foot. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to leave his sock in the van. He was pretty sure his foot was bleeding.

The gravel soon wore a hole in his remaining sock, and he got a stitch in his side. His breath came in gasps, but he didn’t slow down.

From the row he had left behind came a shout: “Hey! Vance! He’s gone!”

They knew.

B
enjie knew the men
would hunt for him now. They would drive the van past every row of storage
units until they spotted him.

Panicked, he looked for someplace, anyplace, to hide. He ran to the nearest unit and pulled on the door handle, hoping the door might be unlocked, but it didn’t budge. He ran to the next unit; that one was locked, too.

He heard the van doors slam.

The van engine started, died, started again.

Go the other way, Benjie pleaded silently. Please! Don’t come this way!

He came to the end of a row and looked in both directions. To his right, he saw only the road and more storage units, but to his left he saw a large dark shape, up close to one of the units. A big box? A piece of furniture? Benjie turned that way and ran toward the object. Whatever it was, perhaps he could hide behind it or underneath it.

As he drew closer, he saw that someone had left a clothes
washer and dryer outside one of the storage units. The washer and dryer were shoved up tight against the roll-up door, side by side, as if their owner had brought too much furniture to store and couldn’t make the washer and dryer fit inside.

Benjie put his hands on the flat sides of the washer and tugged, trying to pull it away from the building far enough for him to squeeze in behind it. If he was in back of the washer, the bad guys might not see him when they drove past.

But the washer was too heavy. He couldn’t slide it on the rough gravel, and it weighed too much for him to lift. He couldn’t move the dryer, either.

I’ll have to crouch beside the washer or dryer, Benjie thought. The men won’t see me if they come from the other direction.

But what if they didn’t? What if they came from the side he was on? The headlights would pick up Benjie’s striped shirt and dark jeans against the white appliance, and he would be trapped.

Benjie hesitated. Which way would the men come? He had a fifty-fifty chance of choosing the right side. He decided those odds weren’t good enough, not when his life was at stake.

Benjie yanked open the dryer door and stuck his head inside. He would fit.

He put one leg in, then sat in the dryer while he lifted
the other leg in. He had to sit doubled over, with his knees drawn up under his chin.

Leaning out, he grabbed the bottom of the door and pulled it almost all the way closed. He didn’t shut it completely because there wasn’t any handle on the inside and he feared he wouldn’t be able to get it open again. It wouldn’t do him any good to save himself from the bad guys only to suffocate in a clothes dryer.

He felt like a pretzel, with his arms crossed under his knees and his shoulders hunched over.

Instead of being smooth, like the outside of the appliances, the dryer drum had ridges every foot. When Benjie tried to lean back to get more comfortable, one of the ridges pressed into his backbone.

It was black as midnight inside the dryer, and Benjie felt too confined. He had heard that some people get panicky in elevators or other small spaces, and he could see why.

Seconds after he got inside the dryer, he heard the van approaching. For a brief moment its headlights lit up the small crack where the dryer door was open.

Benjie held his breath. Keep going, he thought. Don’t stop.

He heard the van pass. The crack of light dimmed and was dark again. He heard the crunch of the tires moving away.

Benjie let his breath out.

He waited, in case the van went by again. He didn’t
know how many rows of storage units there were in this complex, but he was sure the bad guys would drive past all of them, looking for him.

They knew he was on foot. They knew he couldn’t have gone too far. They might drive past all of the storage units more than once before they gave up and left without him. It would be a mistake to get out of the dryer too soon no matter how uncomfortable he was.

Good spies are patient.

Benjie sat as still as if he were a load of laundry forgotten in the dryer. He didn’t like being in there, but it was the only hiding place he had. A good spy does whatever is necessary to save a life, especially his own.

He decided he would count to five hundred before he climbed out of the dryer. By then, surely the men would be gone.

One, two, three . . .

Benjie began the long count.

*   *   *

Gravel spun out from behind the van’s rear tires as Vance went around the corner from one row of storage units to the next.

“Where IS he?” he asked. “We were only parked there for ten minutes. How far can a little kid get on foot in ten minutes?”

Porker didn’t answer. He didn’t know where the kid was, and he didn’t know how far a boy could run in ten minutes.
He knew only that his shoulder hurt where the cat had scratched him, his hand hurt where the cat had bit him, he had hunger pains, and now Vance was worked into a snit. Nothing about this day had turned out the way they had planned.

“Let’s go,” Porker said. “Leave him here.”

“We can’t. He said he got the license number.”

“No little kid is going to remember a license number, especially when he’s scared out of his wits.”

“He wasn’t too scared to get away from us. Even if he forgets the number, he can describe the van. He can identify us.”

“Come on, Vance. Let’s leave. If you’re so worried about the van, we’ll ditch it. We’ll wipe it down so there aren’t any of our fingerprints inside, and we’ll report it as stolen. We’ll say it’s been missing a couple of hours. That’ll give us an alibi in case the kid does remember the license number.”

“Sometimes you surprise me,” Vance said. “That isn’t a bad idea. We’ll get rid of the van and hot-wire a car to drive home in, and nobody will be able to connect us with the burglaries.”

“Good. So let’s get out of here. I’m starving.”

Vance made a U-turn and went back the way they had come.

“What are you doing? The exit is the other direction.”

“Did you see that washer and dryer that somebody left outside their unit?”

“What about them?”

“They looked almost new. No point in leaving a brandnew washer and dryer outside, asking to be stolen.”

Porker groaned. “I’m tired, Vance. And I thought you were in a hurry to get rid of the van.”

“It’ll only take us a couple of minutes to put those appliances in our own unit.” Vance saw the washer and dryer in the headlights again. He approached them slowly this time so he could get a better look. He pulled up beside the two appliances and stopped with the rear door of the van next to the washer.

“We’ll get three hundred dollars for this set,” he said. “Not a bad profit for five minutes of work.”

“I’ve worked enough today. My back hurts, and I’m hungry.”

“Can’t you think of anything but food?”

“Can’t you think of anything but money?”

“Three hundred bucks will buy a lot of french fries. Besides, you owe me one for trying to keep that wild cat and getting us stuck with the kid in the first place.”

“Oh, all right.” Porker opened his door and stepped out. “It’ll be faster to take them than to talk some sense into you.”

Vance got out, too. Their shoes made a crunching sound on the gravel as they walked toward the washer and dryer.

P
ete crouched on
the porch steps while his tail swept wildly from side to side. He tried to hold it still
, but when he was nervous his tail had a mind of its own, completely out of Pete’s control.

Sirens and flashing lights and strangers talking were enough to make most cats run for their lives, but Pete stayed where he was. He was the only one who knew what had happened to Benjie. If he was going to help Benjie now, he needed every scrap of information he could get.

He had given up trying to tell the people about Benjie and the van and the two men. Every time he spoke, they thought he wanted food. As if he could eat at a time like this!

Pete listened as Alex told the sheriff and his deputy what had happened. Mrs. Sunburg told her part of the story, too, and before she had finished, Mrs. Kendrill drove up.

“What happened?” she asked.

Everyone spoke at once, telling her about Benjie and about the burglary.

“He’s still missing?” The color drained out of Mrs. Kendrill’s face, and she leaned against her car as if she might topple over without support.

Sheriff Alvored made a call on his cell phone, reporting that Benjie was missing. Soon a second sheriff’s car pulled up behind the first one; Deputy Harper and Deputy Ebbin got out. Then Mr. Kendrill arrived, and the stories got told all over again.

Mrs. Sunburg explained how nobody had answered the door when she came over to look for Benjie. “The cat was hurt, too,” she said. “When I called the police, I should have told them that Benjie lived in an area that’s been burglarized recently. Perhaps they would have come more quickly.” She twisted the bottom of her sweater as she talked.

“It isn’t your fault, Gramma,” Mary said. “You did what you could.”

“Do you have a recent picture of Benjie?” one of the deputies asked. “One that we can take to give to the media?”

“We have his new school picture,” Mrs. Kendrill said. “He brought the packet home on Friday, and I stuck the large one on the fridge. Come on in.”

“Mary and I will go home,” Mrs. Sunburg said as the others headed for the house. “Call if we can help.”

Rocky hesitated but stayed were he was.

Alex could tell that Mary wanted to stay, too, but her grandma took her by the arm. “We don’t want to be in the way,” she said. “We’ve told them everything we know.”

When the people started toward the front door, Pete jumped off the porch into the shrubbery, intending to wait until the last person went inside before he followed. There was less chance of getting accidentally stepped on if he went in last.

He landed in the dirt beside one of the laurel bushes—and saw what looked like a word scratched in the dirt. Pete went closer, his nose to the ground. His whiskers twitched as he inhaled deeply.

Benjie had been here. His scent was everywhere in these bushes, and a twig that lay in the dirt next to the word smelled strongly of Benjie, too.

Pete crept to where he could see the word right side up, being careful not to step on any of the writing. He stood beside it, but it wasn’t a word he. recognized. He tried to sound it out in his mind and realized it wasn’t a regular word at all. Words are made of letters; this was both letters and numbers.

0 9 4 X C L. Pete concentrated, trying to think where he had seen numbers and letters strung together like that.

It’s a license-plate number, Pete realized. The cars and trucks all have a combination of letters and numbers on their license plates.

Benjie must have seen the burglars and decided to spy on
them. He hid from them here in the bushes, and he scratched this license number in the dirt using the twig for a pencil.

Pete knew this was important evidence. He needed to show it to the humans.
“
Look what I found!
”
he yelled. He leaped back up on the porch steps and saw that he had waited too long. The front door was closed. All the people had gone inside.

Pete pawed at the door.
“
Come out!
”
he called.
“
I found something that will help.
”

Alex opened the door.
“
Good boy
,”
he said.
“
You came home.
”

Pete did not go inside. He jumped off the porch and landed beside the laurel bush.
“
Come here
,”
he told Alex.
“
Look what I found.
”

“
Get in here, Pete
,”
Alex said.
“
This is no time to play games. Benjie’s missing.
”

“
I know all about it
,”
Pete said.
“
I saw it happen, and now I found what Benjie scratched in the dirt. Come down here and look.
”

“
Do you want me to try to catch him?
”
Rocky asked.

“
No. He’d run from you.
”
Alex closed the door.

Pete walked along the edge of the house to the corner, following Benjie’s scent, but found nothing else of importance.