Following them along the narrow roads, he’d stayed well back, and then had taken a higher road that ran parallel, where he could look down on them. He’d watched with growing interest as they reached the empty ranch and pulled in. Not a soul in sight, no vehicle or farm animal, not even a stray chicken. He’d slowed, pulled the car behind some trees, thinking that once he was rid of the body, he’d take care of the original job the way they’d planned it. Maybe do it that very night. Change vehicles, follow the same routine just the way she would, and he’d be out of there and on his way.
Below him, the couple sat in their car looking down the steep hills as if assessing the nearby properties and small acreages. He could have waited and found this place himself from the way they’d described it, but that would have taken time. He’d have to go into the village, get a copy of the local paper, check the real estate section. That could take hours, and then he’d have to drive these hills for hours more, scanning the roads looking for the rural address of the deserted property. He didn’t have the patience, he wanted to get it over with, and he was beginning to feel pushed. The sense of her back there under the blanket was like she was still alive, lying there watching him. And then the picture changed abruptly. Suddenly he saw not her back there, he saw the cat crouched in her place, the pale cat watching him, the cat his mother’d brought home when he was a boy, the pale cat, its eyes ablaze with rage.
She’d brought home a half-grown kitten, all snuggled down in its blanket in a cardboard box, a kitten she said would be his. He hadn’t feared cats then, when he was small, and he’d liked the kitten fine. It was soon tagging around after him and begging at the table, and it liked to sleep on his schoolbooks. It would come up on his bed, too, to sleep with him at night, snuggling up to him, purring.
But then it started sleeping with its face in his face, pressing its nose against his nose. Snuggling up to his face and to his warm breath. He hadn’t liked that, he’d push it away but it would come right back-come back at him real fast, pressing against his face and nose, its body shaking with purrs. That had frightened him, that frenzied purring. He’d knock it off, knock it to the floor, but it would be right back again. If he shut it out of the room, it would claw at the door and yowl. His mother said to be nice to it, it was only a kitten and it loved him.
It might have loved him, but even after he shoved it off the bed over and over, it came back pressing against his nose, its body rocking with frantic purrs, demented, insane kind of purrs. He had no idea what was wrong with it and he didn’t care, he just wanted to be rid of it. He didn’t think or care that maybe it had been taken from its mother too soon or maybe was only trying to get warm. He just wanted it gone. He began to avoid it during the day. It was always there watching him but, because he’d knocked it away so many times, it wouldn’t come near, would just back away, watching him. And still, no matter how angry he got and how he shoved it, every night it came onto his bed and pressed its nose to his nose, so he couldn’t sleep. It was impossible to keep it out. His mother wouldn’t put it outside the house at night. She said he was being silly, that the poor little cat loved him, and that it was dangerous to leave a cat out at night.
He grew more and more desperate and angry until, one cold night when the young cat was pressing hard at him, breathing from his face, he’d grabbed it off him, held it out away from him so it wouldn’t scratch, and flung it as hard as he could at the bedroom wall.
It hit the wall hard and fell and lay still. He’d gotten out of bed and knelt there, immediately sorry for what he’d done. Its eyes were open, staring at him. He’d tried to feel it breathing but he couldn’t. He couldn’t feel its heart beating. It was still as stone. He’d crawled back in bed and lain there, cold and shivering.
When he woke in the morning the cat was still there, lying in the same position and growing stiff. He’d shoved it under the bed behind some boxes, and crept away to school. That afternoon when he came home, he told his mother he’d found it like that, that it must have died in the night, maybe died from some kind of seizure.
Long after his mother had buried the cat, he kept seeing it; he would see its eyes watching him. It was about that time that he began to read Edgar Allan Poe, and he became obsessed with “The Black Cat.” It was that story, combined with what he’d done, that shaped for all time his sick disgust of the creatures.
After he married, he’d hidden his dark obsession from her for all their seventeen years. She liked cats, she brought cats home, and he, with hard resolve, had managed to tolerate them. Because he loved her. Because he wanted her to stay with him. Because he thought secretly that if he forced her to choose, if she knew the truth, she would turn away from him. That she would choose the cats.
In every other way, they were well suited. When they planned their jobs, they turned out to always be successful. When they celebrated afterward, she was bright and happy and loving, and life was perfect. Because of her cleverness and attention to detail, they always got away smoothly. In this, they were the perfect couple. It was only her preoccupation with the cats that unsettled him. Even her penchant for sunbathing was nothing, at first, was only an annoyance.
Who would imagine that was how it would end? With her stupid need to take off her clothes in public, to sunbathe in the raw.
Down the hill below him, the couple got out of the roadster and went off among the buildings. He was well hidden up here, he’d parked high above the place under a bushy eucalyptus tree where he’d never be seen. Taking a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment, he sat studying the empty barn and outbuildings, the empty corrals. The day was warming up. He thought sickly that the body would be ripening, and he felt a cold sweat start, across his chest and forehead.
He tried to take himself in hand, tried to breathe deeply, but he had to use the inhaler. When his breathing eased, he concentrated on the empty barn, thought about burying her in there, deep under the dirt floor. This old place could stand empty for years, the way the real estate market had fallen off. Might be decades before she was found, and maybe never. He wanted to get on with this, get it over with. The recurrent fear in his chest and belly made him hunch over the steering wheel. He told himself that her death wasn’t his fault, that maybe it wasn’t all her fault, that maybe it was an accident. Only an accident. And yet something within him knew that it was more than an accident that had made her fall.
What would have happened if he’d called the cops right away? Told them it was an accident? But when he imagined telling that to a cop, fear shook him. What cop would believe that, would believe she’d accidentally fallen, that he hadn’t shoved her?
Anyway, it was too late now, he’d run away, and he’d moved the body.
Down the hill, the couple appeared from the outbuildings and walked around the outside of the empty house looking up at the windows, then standing still as if studying the structure. They knelt down to inspect the foundation, and the dark-haired woman dug into it with a screwdriver, then lay a level up against the sides of the house almost like she knew what she was doing. She was a good-looking broad, maybe thirty-something, dark brown bouncy hair, nice shape in those tight jeans.
He thought about the women he’d had while she was alive and she’d never guessed, never had a clue. She’d been good friends with some of them, and no hint of her knowing. And what harm? The others were simply challenges, the value in the taking and then moving on.