4

The room was musty and dim. She peered out from under the far end of the bed, watching him. He picked up the box and returned to the car; she heard him making noises as if loading it into the seat. In the dim room, dirty curtains were closed across three small windows, one window on each of three walls. On the fourth wall, through the open door to a bathroom, she could smell the stink of black mold. The window curtains must once have been bright plaid but were now a faded grid of colors as sickly as scrub rags. What kind of landlord would rent a place like this? There was no accounting for humans. Above her the dirty, dark ceiling absorbed what little light came in. Thin cobwebs clung to the dark old rafters, and the boards above them were crude and rough, as she'd see in some old garage.

Overlaying the other sour odors was the smell of stale food. The worn linoleum beneath her paws was so dirty that, when she crossed the room, grit and sticky stuff had pressed into her pads. She hated licking that gunk away. Where the linoleum had worn through, the fibers were filled with goo, like old ketchup.

A small, rusted cookstove stood in one corner between a dirty little refrigerator and a sink that was fixed to the wall with no cabinet or counter, its rusty plumbing hanging out underneath. A wooden table next to the sink was piled with cardboard boxes.

There was no closet. Next to the bed, five big nails had been driven into the wall. Some limp shirts and a tan windbreaker hung from these. She wondered if the bigger house, in front, was any cleaner. What a strange, forlorn place to find in this village, where most of the cottages were pampered and painted and their gardens lovingly tended. Maybe Lucinda was right, maybe some folks didn't want to do a thing to their property- just wait, and sell at inflated prices. Make a killing and move on. Strange, Kit thought, how some humans loved beauty and tried to make things nice, while others clung to ugliness.

She'd learned a lot since she left the band of ferals. When she was a little kitten, all she'd seen of humans were people's abandoned cars left to rust along the back roads, dirty streets, and garbage-strewn alleys. She hadn't understood until later that her band of strays had kept warily to the ugliest places, where humans expected them to be, where they were less likely to be chased or captured.

Hearing him outside at the car, clattering and walking around on the gravel, she slipped out from under the bed and leaped up on the table, peering into the boxes. One contained crookedly folded underclothes, and packs of letters and papers shoved in beside them. Another box held his dirty laundry. Phew. And two smaller boxes overflowed with empty beer cans. He was coming back, the grinding of gravel, the scuffing of his shoes up the steps. She flew under the bed.

Coming in, he slammed the door behind him and moved directly to the table, his rubber soles squeaking-something about the way he twisted his foot, she thought. She crept out as far as she dared, watched him set down a brown paper bag. He opened the refrigerator, pulled out a can of beer, and popped the lid. He picked up the box of laundry, tucked it under his arm, and left again, swilling beer, slamming and locking the door; she heard the bolt slide home. She listened, as nervous as a cornered mouse, as he started the Honda. Listened to it back out the gravel drive. As it turned onto the street, bits of gravel crunched under its wheels against the blacktop. What a strange man. He kills a woman, apparently follows her for weeks and then murders her, and now he's, what? Going to the laundromat? Taking out the garbage and doing his laundry? As Lucinda once said of someone, his mind was wired wrong. Drug dealers, thieves, killers. Not wired up right, Lucinda said. She listened to the car head away to the south but she remained still and shivering, more and more frightened by his strangeness.

When at last she came out from under the bed again and leaped onto the table, she looked into the bag. Yes, groceries. Peanut butter, bread, soup. As if he planned to stay awhile? Did he think no one would look for him? Or did he want them to look, did he want to be caught? Or was this food to take with him when he left, when he belatedly ran? She pawed into the cartons of clothes and papers hoping to find something that the law would want, something that could give the cops a handle, the way Joe said.

Nosing through the jumble of papers and jockey shorts and paperback books, she found, at the bottom of the second box, two big brown envelopes like magazines came in. Because he had sealed them closed, she wanted to see inside. Gripping them in her teeth, she pulled them off the table, dropping down with them, dragging them under the bed through a haze of dust to the back wall.

Crouching, she clawed the flaps open as neatly as she could, which wasn't very neat at all. When she shoved her nose in, her nostrils tickled with the smell of old newspapers. Slipping her paw inside, she was more careful now as she pulled out the contents and spread it in the dust.

There were three yellowed newspaper photographs, fuzzy and unclear, and a tangle of newspaper clippings. The photos were dull pictures of four men standing before a building. In all three pictures, the small man stood at the end, like some wizened-up child who had been made to stand next to his elders. The names in the short captions were Harold Timmons, Kendall Border, Craig Vernon, Irving Fenner. If they were in order, left to right, then the man she had followed was Irving Fenner. The columns below the pictures told about a series of murders in Los Angeles. There were no dates but the clippings were old, dry and brittle. Scanning the text as Lucinda or Wilma would have done, she went cold and still; she crouched unmoving, her paw half lifted, her eyes black and huge. Patty's name was there. In the article. And something about Patty's dead daughter, Marlie Rose Vernon.

This was about the murder of Marlie and her little boy. About Marlie's husband, Craig Vernon, who had been convicted of killing their child. Kit knew the story from Lucinda. The article said that Irving Fenner was an accessory to the murder.

Kit stared at the clippings and stared. After a long time she pawed them back into the envelope, her paw unsteady and damp with fear.

The second, fatter envelope was filled with glossy photographs, real professional portraits that made Kit catch her breath. Glossy magazine stories, too, with big colored pictures. Every photograph and every magazine picture was of Patty Rose when the famous actress was young and very beautiful indeed, her blue eyes huge, her short blond hair curling around her face. Pictures of Patty in elegant clothes, Patty in all kinds of scenes from her movies, all with other famous actors. Pictures of Patty singing with Stan Kenton, with Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, with all the famous bands that Wilma liked to listen to; Wilma and Lucinda had wonderful collections of Patty's old music.

In each picture, Patty's smile was the same that Kit knew, a smile filled with joy, as if nothing bad could happen in the world. In each picture, someone had punched a small, round hole in the paper-through Patty's forehead. A hole like a bullet hole.

Kit sat for a long time, shaking all over. Thinking about Patty, hurting bad inside, like huge hands crushing her. As she huddled there miserable and terrified and lost, she heard, outside and far away, a faint voice calling, calling her. A voice garbled in the wind but one she loved so dearly. She longed to cry out. Oh, she needed Lucinda. She longed to run out-if she could get out. Run to Lucinda where she would be loved and safe.

But she didn't cry out, and she didn't try to get out-not yet.