Hush

“Smokey, what’s the matter?” she said, taking tentative steps down the length of the room.

Without warning, the cat sprang out from behind an armchair, and Lake’s hand flew to her mouth in shock. In the dim light she could see that the fur on his body was now a different color-a pale gray instead of black. As he wedged himself into a corner, though, she was horrified to see that it wasn’t fur she was looking at-but skin. Except for his head, tail, and legs, the hair on his body was gone.

9

HER FIRST THOUGHT was that Smokey had been attacked by an animal, but as she edged toward him, she saw that all his fur was missing, not just chunks of it. And he had no wounds, not even a scratch mark. It couldn’t have been done by a dog or a raccoon.

“It’s okay, Smokey,” she said softly. He had pressed himself into the corner and she could see he was trembling. As she took another step toward him, Smokey bolted back behind the armchair and began to wail. She’d been able to get a closer look, though. There were row marks on his body. He’d been shaved, with what must have been an electric razor. A person had done this to him.

Flushed with fear, she turned quickly to face the two large windows on either side of the fireplace. They looked out at the narrow side lawn and border garden between her house and David and Yvon’s, but right now all she could see was pitch-blackness. Was the person who’d done this still out there, perhaps even spying on her to see her reaction? She rushed toward the nearest window and yanked the long yellow drapes closed and then did the same with the other windows in the room. With Smokey still wailing under the chair, she double-checked that the front door of the house was locked as well as the two doors off the kitchen.

Who could have done this? It was clearly a prank of some kind, a mean, nasty one. Suddenly she recalled the adolescent laughter she had heard waft through her bedroom window not long before Smokey returned. She felt more than scared now. She felt enraged.

I’ve got to call the police, she thought, hurrying back to the living room. But as soon as those words flashed across her mind she knew that she couldn’t. There would be a record of her call, and through some inter-network of police, Hull and McCarty might learn of it, which would not be good. She couldn’t afford to be on their radar any more than she already was. She couldn’t let her life seem anything less than perfectly normal.

Smokey had stopped wailing, though he was still behind the armchair. Lake decided to try to get a blanket around him to calm and contain him.

After grabbing a chenille throw from the arm of the sofa, she bent down on one knee and tried to coax him out with her voice. Smokey let out a soft, mournful cry, as if eager for contact. But when she reached one hand behind the chair, he scratched at her with his paw, drawing three thin red lines along the top of her hand.

“Damn,” she muttered. She stood up and pulled the chair forward with both hands, forcing Smokey out of hiding. As he shot across the living room again, she tossed the blanket over him. Trapped, he squirmed frantically beneath it. She scooped him up and fell on the couch, holding him as firmly to her chest as possible.

“There, there, little boy,” she whispered, pulling the blanket back from his head. He writhed in her arms, trying to escape her grasp, but eventually he began to relax, as if from pure exhaustion.

She held him like that for at least ten minutes, purring softly to comfort him. All the while, though, she kept one ear cocked, listening for sounds from outdoors. If she heard anyone moving out there, she would have no choice but to call the police.

When Smokey finally seemed calm, she carried him into the kitchen and slipped him into the carrying case. She figured he’d sleep better that way and it would allow her to keep watch over him.

As for herself, she knew there was little chance of her falling asleep, especially upstairs. Better to stay on the couch, she thought, so she’d be able to detect if anyone was prowling around outside. She scurried upstairs to grab a pillow, blanket, and an alarm clock. There was an animal clinic that opened early about twenty minutes away and she would take Smokey there first thing in the morning to make certain he wasn’t injured.

For the next few hours, she lay on the couch with one lamp burning and Smokey in his case on the floor by her head. In her mind she replayed her search through the backyards. Had the teenagers who’d done this-if she was right in her assumption-been watching her, then? she wondered. Had she been in any kind of danger?

Some time before dawn, just as the light began to seep through the cracks between the drapes, she finally managed to fall asleep, though it was a restless, sweaty sleep that did her little good. An hour and a half later, Smokey woke her. He was meowing at least, no longer wailing. After struggling up, Lake let him out of the case to eat and use the litter box. She blocked the pet flap with a wastebasket-though it was hard to imagine him ever wanting to go outside again. By seven she had him back in the carrying case and next to her in the front of the car.

There was only one car in the parking lot, so she wasn’t surprised to find the animal clinic empty except for a man sitting on the edge of the reception desk, drinking coffee from a cardboard cup. When she entered he looked up from the magazine he was reading and nodded. He was no older than thirty with a pleasant, slightly doughy face.

“Morning,” he said warmly. “I’m Dr. Jennings. How can I help?”

“Someone’s done something awful to my cat,” Lake said. “They-they shaved most of his fur off. He-his name’s Smokey. He’s calmed down now, but I wanted to make sure he wasn’t injured.”

The vet wrinkled his face in surprise and concern.

“Okay, why don’t you bring him back this way,” he said, cocking his head toward the back. He picked up a clipboard from the desk. “You’ll need to fill this form out-the receptionist doesn’t come in for an hour.”

She followed the vet down the hallway to a small exam room with a stainless-steel table that dropped from the wall. Jennings set the carrying case down on the table.

“Okay, Smokey,” he said softly, unzipping the front of the case. The cat snarled and tried to claw him, but the vet expertly scooped him up and held him in a way that was instantly calming.

“My God,” he said, glancing at Lake. “Who did this to him?”

His voice seemed cooler now, and she wondered if he was suspicious of her.

“I think it might have been teenage boys,” she said quickly. “I thought I heard a few of them laughing near the house just before Smokey came in. They may have been out cruising, looking for trouble.”

“You’ve called the police?”

“Um, no, not yet-no. But I will, of course.”

Jennings looked back down at Smokey and began to run his hands over him carefully, feeling for any kind of fracture perhaps. His eyes followed his hands. Finally he looked back up at Lake.

“I think you’re wrong,” he said soberly.

She froze, confused. Was he challenging her, suggesting that she was lying?

“What do you mean?”

“It’s too complicated a job for teen boys. You could never shave a cat this smoothly unless it was sedated first. The cat would freak out and you’d never get it to stay still.”

“Are you-? You’re saying this was calculated?”

“That’s my guess. I hate to say this, but do you have any enemies? I mean, has one of your neighbors been complaining about the cat lately? People do awful stuff to other people’s pets if they’re annoyed by them. They poison them, set them on fire.”

Lake’s body sagged in dismay. “All my neighbors are friendly,” she said. “And they’re not even here this weekend.”

But her mind had begun to catch up with the truth: this was no random prank. Someone had planned this out. And the goal had been to scare the bejesus out of her.

“How could the person have tranquilized him?” she asked.

Jennings shrugged. “He could have left some food outside with a sedative in it.” He glanced at Smokey again and ran his fingers over the cat’s body. “Oh, wow.”

“What?” Lake said.

“Here,” he said, pressing his finger just in front of a red dot on Smokey’s upper back. “It looks like he’s been given an injection.”