Shirley Murphy: Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Coming_Home_BookFi

He tried to run. His feet were so cold, and his right leg hurt. Her hard shoes made running sounds on the pavement, pulling him along, running down the hill. When he stumbled and fell, she grabbed his shoulder, heaving him up and carrying him, running awkwardly. He went limp, tried to make himself heavy.

“Come on, Benny. Hold on, put your arm around my neck. I can’t leave you here.”

He didn’t see why not. He didn’t want to be with her. “I can’t hold on,” he lied. “My arm hurts. My leg hurts, it won’t work right.”

They were passing dark houses, all dark, no lights that he could run to if he could get away. But he tried pulling away and fighting her anyway. She carried him a ways as he fought her, then at last put him down. She was standing over him staring angrily down at him when voices broke the night. A man’s slurred voice and then a woman’s. Benny thought they sounded drunk, he knew about drunk. Pearl pushed him into the bushes. “Stay there and keep quiet. I’ll come back for you.” She ran, fled down the hill away from him, didn’t look back.

He knew she wouldn’t come back, she didn’t care what happened to him, all she cared about was herself. The sound of her running grew fainter until it was gone in the scuffling wind. He huddled shivering in the scratchy bushes, his leg hurting but not so bad as he’d said. The tears that squeezed out weren’t because of his hurting leg. He lay in the bushy shelter hugging himself. Which way was Grandma’s house? Could he find home? This road sloped up, and their house was in the hills, so maybe he should go that way. Rising, limping on his hurt leg, he moved up the dark road. The trees crowded black above him, branches over the road hiding the sky. Ahead, he could still hear the drunk couple arguing. He didn’t want to go near them. He was cold. He hurt, his leg hurt. His arm hurt bad where she’d jerked and pulled him. Among the trees that lined the road, there were no house lights at all now. Were there houses back in there, or was it all just woods? Should he go to those people, take a chance and trust a drunk man? Or go into the black woods and circle around the arguing couple? He moved on at last, away from them, up the narrow road, then through the woods, on up the hill through the night.

41

THIS WON’T WORK,” Dulcie said as Wilma hurriedly pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. “From the car, we won’t see anything, won’t have a clue where they’ve taken Benny. What, you want to just drive the streets clueless?”

“But you can find him, running the roofs clueless?” Wilma gave her a skeptical look and bent down to tie her jogging shoes.

“I can scan the streets faster from up there. I can see on four sides of a block in seconds. And sound rises, Wilma. I can hear more, too. If you try to follow me in the car, how will you see me? And what if I lose you among other car lights? It isn’t like we carry walkie-talkies.” That wasn’t a bad idea, Dulcie thought, except for the weight, except for having to wear a collar, which in itself terrified her. “I can look for him better alone,” she repeated stubbornly.

“Go,” Wilma said at last, exasperated. She had never, in all her working career, let her parolees rag her the way the little tabby bossed her around. She watched Dulcie streak away through the house, heard her cat door slap open and back as she bolted through. She imagined Dulcie scrambling up the oak tree, leaping to the neighbors’ shingles and vanishing across the rooftops. Where would she go, how would she know where to look? And yet, having lived with Dulcie a long time, she suspected the tabby would find a way.

She debated whether to call Ryan and Clyde, find out if they’d gone to help search for Benny. Maybe she could help them? Kit must … Oh, she thought, it’s Rock! Kit wanted Rock, she wanted him to track the child.

But then Dulcie’s on a wild-goose chase, she thought, looking away toward the windy rooftops. Will Dulcie think of Rock? Will she try to find and join them, instead of searching blindly by herself for Benny? She imagined Dulcie alone in the night searching uselessly, then imagined the ragtag midnight procession as Rock pulled Ryan through the dark streets, Clyde and Joe running to keep up, joined perhaps by a detective or two, a strange parade racing through the night. Will Dulcie find them? Or will she just go on searching all alone?

RACING OVER THE roofs toward the hills, Dulcie didn’t think about Rock, she was obsessed with the notion that the kidnappers, unless they had a safe house in which to hide, would escape among the hills above the village, among the twisting and narrow lanes. Maybe they had a cabin back in the woods somewhere. Parts of Molena Point, wild enough for deer and coyotes and the occasional cougar, were surely remote enough to hide a kidnapper. A thin fog was beginning to drift down over the village. She paused frequently to rear up and listen, though chances were slim the child would be able to cry out. The village seemed huge tonight; one little boy could easily be swallowed up in the dark. An owl swooped low over her head, but she was too big for its supper. Ahead, a car passed on a cross street; she followed for only a block before it turned into a driveway.

A lone woman got out, a teenager who really shouldn’t be out this late. This was crazy, searching with no clue, running after every car. Though this time of night the cars were few, their tires singing a lonely song on the paving. Dulcie was maybe ten blocks from home, above the village, when she saw a red light undulating up through the pine trees some blocks ahead. A cop car? Faintly she heard a car door open, and the squawk of metal grating on metal, heard a distant police radio kick in. The sounds came from higher up the hill and, hearing no other commotion in the silent village, she headed there. She had raced three blocks when a patrol car came slipping along below her heading in that direction. She was racing to keep up when it turned on its siren, and she burned up the rooftops running, her paws pounding like rain above the heads of the sleeping village.

IN MAUDIE’S GUEST room, Ryan picked one of Benny’s dirty socks from the hamper, using a pencil to lift it into a plastic sandwich bag. She didn’t open the bag until Clyde had brought Rock in, on his lead; then she presented the scent to him, letting him take a long sniff. Rock knew what this was for, he knew the drill. His short tail wagging fast, he sniffed the lure, then sniffed thoroughly along the length of Benny’s unmade bed. Clyde and Dallas stood in the bedroom doorway, watching—and Clyde looking smug. Dallas was still perplexed at the big dog’s sudden expertise, with no long regimen of training. Rock peered under the bed for only a second, then backed out again.

From beneath the bed, Joe Grey watched his protégé, but made no move to join him. When Rock peered hard at him, Joe closed his eyes in a gesture that Rock knew meant, Don’t mess with me now, ignore me. At once Rock backed away, staring up at Ryan for direction, huffing with impatience.

“Find,” she said softly.

Rock put his nose to the floor, drank in Benny’s scent, and sped out of the room, nearly knocking Clyde and Dallas down, flew down the stairs pulling Ryan along so she had to grab at the rail to keep her balance. Racing through the house with his nose to the floor, through the studio, he pressed his body against the glass slider, pawing at it until Ryan could shove it open. Bolting through into the backyard, his nose to the ground, he headed up the hill crashing through bushes, jerking Ryan along as fast as she could run. This wasn’t obedience time when the big dog had to walk at heel on a loose leash, this was work time, Rock was in charge now. As he dragged Ryan up through the neighbors’ backyards, Clyde and Dallas following, the detective didn’t see Joe Grey following behind them, nor did he see, racing across the roofs above them, Kit and the yellow tomcat leaping in fast pursuit. Didn’t see Kit nipping and shouldering at Misto until he stopped and turned on her. With all the crashing through the bushes, no one heard them arguing in soft cat voices, Kit saying they should go back, should watch Maudie, not leave her alone, the tortoiseshell so adamant that finally Misto did turn reluctantly to go back with her, to peer down through the windows at Maudie.