Joe spun around, but the trellis blocked his escape. Hissing, he backed along the wall of the building until his rear pressed against the door to the delicatessen. But now he was blocked by a large, potted tree. When the killer swung the metal bar he dodged again, feinting and ducking, praying the door behind him would open, praying to escape inside the deli among friendly, white-trousered legs.
The door remained closed. And the man stood straddle-legged before him weaving and dodging, blocking his escape. Joe's fear turned him cold and weak. The man lunged to grab him, and Joe struck out fiercely, but his claws missed the thin, pale face. The killer lunged again and snatched at him, and his hands were on him. Joe clawed and fought, felt flesh tear, and he twisted away and dived between the garbage cans and the wall.
The man closed in, swinging the wrench. Joe leaped over the cans and over his flashing arm and fled from the alley to the street, streaking across the sidewalk and into the street directly in front of a cruising police car. Brakes squealed. He twisted and leaped away to safety beneath a parked car.
He crouched in blackness beside a tire that reeked of dog pee, and stared out at the street, where the police had pulled to a stop.
The officers shone a flashlight beam into the alley, its moving glow flashing eerily across potted trees and jutting doorways; but the light did not reach deep enough to pick out the murdered man. Beckwhite's dark-suited body lay indistinguishable from the shadows, his white shirt seeming no more than a twist of discarded newspaper.
Beyond Beckwhite, against a dark wall, the killer stood frozen, his face averted and hidden by his lank hair, his own dark clothing blending with the brick.
The police, expecting no trouble in the quiet village, doused their flashlights and moved on, perhaps laughing at the cat that had run through their headlights, nearly getting himself creamed.
The instant they had gone the killer was after him. The man knelt to look under the car, then circled it as if to drive him out. In a minute he'd kneel again, and reach under.
Joe thought about it for only a second. He could stay here, dodging back and forth under the car as the thin man circled him; or he could run.
He fled. If this man would kill a human, he wouldn't hesitate to knock off a cat.
The question was, why? He was only a cat. What did the man think? That he would run to the police with what he had seen? But, racing away through the dark streets, fleeing for his life, he didn't wonder long; he concentrated on the problem at hand. In this block there was nowhere to hide-the shops were joined tight together. There was no escape between. The man's footsteps thundered behind him: he was fast, dodging and swerving as Joe swerved.
Panicked, Joe slid around the corner and dived under a wooden porch, the first shelter he could think of, and through a hole in the foundation.
He knew the house well; he had a sometime lady love here. The old house had found new life as an antique shop. The dark earth underneath, in the low crawl space, was cold beneath his paws and smelled sour, heavy with mildew and cat pee.
As he raced away from the hole, cobwebs hanging from the sagging floor timbers clung to his ears and whiskers. He felt them pull away, sticky and clinging. He sped through, dodging the furnace and the gas and water pipes and hanging electrical wires, toward an opening at the back.
Before he burst out into the backyard he turned to look behind him.
The small rectangular hole he had come through was blocked. No light shone in from the street, only the dark bulk of the killer reaching in, his arm and shoulder filling the little space. Joe could hear scraping as if he was trying to climb through.
So come on, buster. Crawl on in here. Get yourself trapped under these timbers and pipes, so I can rake you good.
But on second thought, he fled. Why push it? Get the hell away from the guy.
Only faintly ashamed at his cowardice he streaked away, out through the hole at the back into the antique shop's backyard. He heard the man running, coming around through the side yard.
The small, scruffy backyard was empty. Bolting for the sidewalk, he careened along the side street, his ears twitching back, listening behind him. When he heard the man running, he swarmed up a rose trellis that climbed the wall of Julia's French Pancakes, onto the sloped shingled roof.
He could hear, below, the killer coming along the sidewalk. He crouched at the edge, looking down, trying to keep his weight off the rusty roof gutter.
The dark figure was searching for him under a line of azalea bushes growing in the parking strip between the sidewalk and the street. Joe backed away from the edge and trotted away over the rooftops.
Over Julia's, then across the top of the bookstore, then the Nugent Gallery and across the roof of an import place that always smelled of straw and spices-though its roof smelled only of tar. At the end of the row, at another side street, he dropped onto the thick limb of an oak so old and huge that the sidewalk had been built to curve around it, dangerously narrowing the street at that point. The tree covered the entire street to the other side, and was a favorite aerial crossing for the village cats. He'd had some pleasant rendezvous there.
He crossed the street within the branches and leaped up to the next line of roofs. Trotting to the end, listening, he heard only silence now. No running footsteps, only the hush of a lone car passing.
When he was certain the killer had gone he came down warily from the roof of Molena Point Cleaners, clinging among a bougainvillea vine. Dropping to the ground, he galloped two blocks east, then turned back south in the direction of home. Zigzagging through a dozen backyards and across two streets, he could hear nothing following now.
But fear still clutched at his belly, fear not of the immediate pursuit-he'd lost the guy-but fear of an even more frightening nature. Fear of something far more terrifying than being chased through the night-dark streets by a man swinging a wrench; though in fact, his last glimpse of the killer had shown him no weapon; probably the guy had dropped it in his pocket, against the moment it would be needed to smash one small tomcat.
Just before he reached Ocean Avenue, which divided the village with its wide, tree-shaded median, he swarmed up into the high, concealing branches of a eucalyptus that hung over the ice-cream shop. If the killer was following, walking softly, Joe didn't want to lead him right to his own house.
He crouched among the foliage trying to understand what was happening. Why had the killer chased him? He was only a cat. Why would the man think a cat could tell anyone who had killed Beckwhite?
Though the fact was, Joe could easily finger the killer. He could, in fact, in any number of creative ways, give the police a detailed description of the man.
But the killer could not know this. No way could he know. How could the thin, hunched man know that he, Joe Grey, could bear witness to the murder?
He sat shivering on the branches, so upset he didn't even wash.
And he was not only scared and puzzled, but his mind was filled with other strange thoughts, as well. With decidedly disturbing and uncatlike responses to the immediate events.
For one thing, besides fear for his own gray hide, of which he was very fond, he was feeling remorse for the dead man. And that was unfeline and stupid.
Why should he care that Beckwhite was dead? He hadn't even known the man. It was hypocrisy of the highest degree to pretend that he felt sorry for Samuel Beckwhite.
But yet he did feel sorry, a dark little cloud of mourning hovered over him, sentimental and totally without basis. He felt sick at the brutality of the premeditated killing.
The murder he had witnessed had been twisted and sick. It had nothing in common with the way a cat killed.
Cats killed for food or to keep their skills honed. Mother cats killed to teach their young to hunt. Cats did not kill with the cold deliberation he had just witnessed. That thin, tunnel-eyed man had killed as casually as if he were culminating a financial transaction-paying his lunch bill or buying a newspaper. And it was Joe's very analysis of the event that alarmed him.