Cat on the Scent

            Larry rushed down immediately once he heard the news. Hayden took him to look at the X rays.

            “There’s swelling in the area of damage. The brain is fine. Luckily the bullet didn’t shatter his skull. It made a deep crease.” Hayden pointed to the X ray. “Right here is where the bullet grazed. Like a crease in a piece of paper that tears just a bit.”

            “Thank God.” Larry closed his eyes for a second.

            “It’s very hard to say what his prognosis is until the swelling goes down. He should be fine. He’s young, strong, healthy, but this is the last place you want swelling. Time and rehab will tell.”

            Later Larry walked with Hayden to see Blair in post-op.

            “Any ideas about what happened?” he asked.

            “Yes. Given the position of the wound, I think he’d turned away from his attacker.”

            “He didn’t anticipate being shot?” Larry rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand.

            “No. He turned his back.”

            “Any other signs of struggle on the body?” Larry gazed at the tall man, seemingly asleep except for all the tubes running into him.

            “No. Not a mark.”

            54

            When Blair regained consciousness Rick and Cynthia were there waiting for him.

            Hayden gave them five minutes only, because Blair’s condition was still critical.

            “Did you see who shot you?” Rick quietly leaned over Blair’s bed.

            Blair didn’t answer because he could barely focus. He had the world’s worst headache.

            “Archie?” Rick whispered to the wounded man.

            “No.” Blair whispered, then lost consciousness again.

            55

            The high sun shone over central Virginia. Each leaf, a bride in spring green, smiled at the radiant afternoon light. The trumpet vines opened their orange flowers. Bumblebees appeared in squadrons. Honeybees, decimated by a fatal mite, buzzed but in reduced numbers.

            Harry, dazed that her friend had been shot, worked hard but her mind kept returning to yesterday’s sight of the cats driving the car with Tucker down in the well. She knew that any animal recognizes injury and pain in any other animal. What was remarkable was that they brought the bleeding man to her. They drove him right in front of her.

            Each time she envisioned Murphy and Pewter, both with their paws on the steering wheel, she’d get the shakes.

            Living close to nature, Harry was better connected to reality than many people. Now she had to face the depth of her ignorance. She had credited her animal friends with human traits. She’d insulted them. By masking their true natures with human characteristics, she missed what was unique about each species. It was entirely possible that Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, along with Tucker, operated at another level of intelligence than she did. It was also possible that theirs was higher but not measurable by human standards.

            Harry was being humbled by life in its myriad forms.

            56

            In the west an inferno illuminated the sky, the spring sun setting in a scarlet blaze. The sky, as though put to the torch, exploded in scarlet and gold.

            Cynthia noticed the drama of it as she checked her service revolver. Rick, his mouth a straight line, carefully coasted down the road toward Tally Urquhart’s haybarn, where Tommy Van Allen’s plane was stowed.

            He’d stopped at Miss Tally’s to inquire if she’d seen Archie. She said he was renting a room in her house while he fixed up an old farmworker’s stone house down the farm road.

            When Cynthia inquired as to how they’d get along, Tally curtly replied, “I need somebody to fight with.”

            Rick ordered her to stay in her house. She said she had seen Archie’s white Land Rover go back there a while ago. She’d heard another car not ten minutes ago but she didn’t get to the window in time to see it. However, she was sure it was another car going in, not one coming out.

            Rick was no sooner out her front door than Tally phoned Mim.

            “Boss, should we wait for backup?”

            “No time. God, I hate these kinds of things.” Like all police officers, Rick knew domestic violence to be the most irrational of situations. Armed robbery was easy compared to this.

            After speeding down the old farm road toward the haybarn, Rick cut the motor at a curve out of sight from the barn door. Both cops got out, drew their guns, and slowly walked toward the old barn, which they could not yet see. Before they rounded the curve they heard a curse, two shots, and a scream. They ran but with practiced caution.

            As the two officers approached the barn doors they saw Sir H. Vane-Tempest bent over Archie Ingram. Sarah was clinging to her husband.

            “Freeze!” Rick commanded.

            Vane-Tempest spun around, a .357 in his right hand.

            “Drop your weapon,” Rick ordered, and Vane-Tempest threw the gun on the ground.

            Rick kept his gun on the Englishman while Cynthia ran over to Archie. She pressed her index finger into his neck.

            “Gone.”

            “He tried to kill me after abducting my wife,” Vane-Tempest said calmly.

            Sarah, sobbing, stood between her husband and her lover.

            “Have you anything to say?” Cynthia stood up, facing Sarah.