number. No answer.
“You will be O.K.? Shall I help you upstairs?”
“No. Thank you. I’ll manage.”
When she’d gone I crawled into bed and cried myself to sleep with great, heaving sobs.
I awoke with the feeling that something was wrong. Changed. Lost. Then full consciousness, and with it, memory.
It was a warm spring morning. Through the window I could see blue sky and sunlight and smell the perfume of flowers. But the beauty of the day could not lift my depression.
When I called the fire department I was told the physical evidence had been sent to the crime lab. Feeling leaden, I went through the morning motions. I dressed, applied makeup, brushed my hair, and headed downtown.
The sack contained nothing but the cat. No collar. No tags. A hand-lettered note was found inside one of the cinder blocks. I read it through the plastic evidence bag.
“Now what?” I asked Ron Gillman, director of the crime lab. He was a tall, good-looking man with silver-gray hair and an unfortunate gap between his front teeth.
“We’ve already checked for prints. Zippo on the note and blocks. Recovery will be out to your place, but you know as well as I do they won’t find much. Your kitchen window is so close to the street the perps probably pulled up, lit the bag, then threw everything in from the sidewalk. We’ll look for footprints, and we’ll ask around, of course, but at one-thirty in the morning it’s not too likely anyone was awake in that neighborhood.”
“Sorry I don’t live on Wilkinson Boulevard.”
“You get into enough trouble wherever you are.”
Ron and I had worked together for years. He knew about the serial murderer who had broken into my Montreal condo.
“I’ll have recovery go over your kitchen, but since these guys never went inside, there won’t be any trace. You didn’t touch anything, I assume.”
“No.” I hadn’t gone near the kitchen since the night before. I couldn’t bear the sight of Birdie’s dishes.
“Are you working on anything that could piss folks off?”
I told him about the murders in Quebec and about the bodies from Murtry Island.
“How do you think they got your cat?”
“He may have run out when Pete went in to feed him. He does that.” A stab of pain. “Did that.”
Don’t cry. Don’t you dare cry.
“Or . . .”
“Yes?”
“Well, I’m not sure. Last week I thought someone might have broken into my office at school. Well, not exactly broken in. I may have left the door unlocked.”
“A student?”
“I don’t know.”
I described the incident.
“My house keys were still in my purse, but I suppose she could have made an impression.”
“You look a little shaken up.”
“A little. I’m fine.”
For a moment he said nothing. Then,
“Tempe, when I heard about this I assumed it was a disgruntled student.” He scratched the side of his nose. “But this could be more than a prank. Watch yourself. Maybe tell Pete.”
“I don’t want to do that. He’d feel obligated to baby-sit me, and he doesn’t have time for that. He never did.”
When we’d finished talking, I gave Ron a key to the Annex, signed the incident report, and left.
Though traffic was light, the drive to UNCC seemed longer than usual. An icy fist had hold of my innards and refused to let go.
All day the feeling was there. Through task after task I was interrupted by images of my murdered cat. Kitten Birdie sitting upright, forepaws flapping like a baby sparrow’s. Birdie, flat on his back beneath the sofa. Rubbing figure eights around my ankles. Staring me down for cereal leavings. The sadness that had plagued me in recent weeks was deepening into unshakable melancholy.
After office hours I crossed campus to the athletic complex and changed into running gear. I pushed myself as hard as I could, hoping physical exertion would relieve the ache in my heart and the tension in my body.
As I pounded around the track my mind shifted gears. Ron Gillman’s words replaced the images of my dead pet. Butchering an animal is cruel but it’s amateur. Was it merely an unhappy student? Or could Birdie’s death be a real threat? From whom? Was there a link to the mugging in Montreal? To the Murtry investigation? Had I been drawn into something far bigger than I knew?
I kicked it hard and with each lap the tightness drained from my body. After four miles I collapsed on the
