Caterpillar, a Paranormal Romance With a Touch of Horror (21 page)

Chapter Eighteen

The sack hit the porch with a sickening wet thud.  The material of the sack clung wetly to the shape inside.  It was small and round and I was more than a little afraid to look inside. 

Quickly, I unlocked the door, kicked off my shoes and hopped across the doormat into my house.  I shut and locked the door behind me and stood there, wondering what to do next. 

I went into the kitchen, thinking I’d get some gloves and scissors and a bucket and some cleaning supplies.  I wanted to be prepared for anything, whatever was in that bag.

I was bent over at the kitchen sink, collecting items the cabinet beneath it, checking them off my mental list when I heard something behind me.

“Cat,” a low voice whispered.  A vice squeezed around my heart and panic rose in my throat to choke me.  There was someone in my house.  And I was terrified. 

Heart thudding in my ears, I looked around for a weapon and grabbed the first thing I could get my hands on—the coffee pot.  It had a handle and I could swing it.  That was enough.  My butcher knife was still in the sofa table drawer, too far away to be of any use to me now.

With a death grip on the pot’s handle, I whirled around and flattened myself against the refrigerator.  I tried to breathe as quietly as I could.  The intruder already knew my location (the kitchen), but he didn’t have to know
exactly where I was
in the kitchen.     

As quickly as I could, I poked my head around the edge of the fridge enough to see who (or what) was in the living room.  No one.  No
thing
either. 

I shuffled quickly and quietly to the edge of the kitchen door, hugging the inside of the frame.  I took another peek around the corner.  Still there was nothing.  I looked at the wall opposite the kitchen.  From that vantage point, I could see into the living room, be around the corner from the bedroom and be close to the door as well.  I didn’t think it was ever a bad idea to leave a few options open.

I bolted across the slick hardwoods and flung myself at the wall, flattening myself against it.

“Cat,” came the low whisper again.  The pitch was distinctly male, which made me think of the ominous shape I’d “seen” on my front porch.

The whisper came from right around the corner.  There was a man in my bedroom. 

I heard the shuffle of feet moving, bringing the man closer and closer to my position against the wall.  I tightened my grip on the coffee pot and peeked around once more.  When I saw the dark silhouette of a head, I hurled myself around the corner and swung, every ounce of weight and inertia I could manage propelling my arm. 

The coffee pot made a very satisfying crack then shattered into a bazillion pieces.  It did what I had hoped it would, though.  It knocked him down.

I dropped the coffee pot handle and raced to the door.  As I flipped open locks, I could hear moaning and shuffling as my attacker tried to get back up. 

“Cat, what the f—“ I heard.  Adrenaline was fogging my brain, prompting me to run and not look back, but the familiarity of the voice penetrated it and gave me pause.

“Carter?”  I walked back to the downed man and turned on the hall light. 

Carter squinted up at me from the floor.  Blood was trickling down the side of his face and he looked like he was having trouble focusing on me. 

“Carter!”  All the different parts of my brain were clamoring, trying to agree on coherent thought and what my next action should be.   “You broke my coffee pot, you prick!”   

“You broke my head you b—”

“What are you doing here?”

“You mean besides bleeding on your floor and probably suffering from a concussion?  I came to talk to you, idiot.”

“Oh, I’m the idiot!  Ever heard of a phone?  I’ve called you a thousand times.  You could’ve done something novel like answer it.”  He started to speak and I cut him off.  “Where have you been?’

“None of your business.  If I’d wanted you to know, I’d have told you.” 

“How did you get in here, Carter?”  The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck were standing straight up.

“Through that window,” he said, pointing to the open window to the left of my bed which was still open, letting in cold air. 

“Nice, Carter.  Your first real criminal act: a felony.  A botched B ‘n E.  Very nice.”  Actually, who was I kidding?  It probably wasn’t his first felony at all, just the first time he’d been caught. 

“In case you haven’t noticed, the cops are a little interested in me.  I didn’t call because I figured they might be listening in on your phone or whatever, tracing calls or something like that.  That’s why I snuck in here.  I parked behind Super Suds and walked over then snuck in your window.  Thank God you left one of ‘em unlocked.  It’s like frickin’ Fort Knox over here.”

“Carter, I need you to do me a favor and go see what’s in the bag on the front porch.”  For once, maybe
Carter
could help
me
.  Maybe it wasn’t such an awful surprise after all, catching Carter in my house.  Once my blood pressure dropped from stroke level, I’d probably see it as a blessing.

“Think you could get me a towel for my head first?”  He was still irritated I’d clocked him with my coffee pot.  He didn’t realize how lucky he was that I couldn’t get my hands on that butcher knife.  “Good thing you’re not a nurse.  You’d suck at it,” he muttered.   “Oh, wait.  You suck at real estate, too.  Unless you’re in the market for a dead body.”

“Do you want my help or not, Carter?” 

“Just get the towel and I’ll see what’s on the porch.”  He was making his way to his feet when I came back with an old wash cloth.

“You’re not ruining one of my good towels, Carter.  Plus, you’re not even bleeding that much.”  By then it was barely oozing and my sympathy was flowing at an even slower rate.

I walked behind Carter to the front door, but I stayed inside while he stepped out to examine the sack.  He took his cloth-covered finger and poked at it.  When it didn’t move, he began working at the tie that held the sack closed.  He loosened it then pulled at the gathered top, spreading it wide.  He pushed the sides down.  At the bottom lay a bloody, fur-covered head.  I could see one of the dead cat’s lifeless green eyes reflecting the light from the living room.  Saliva rushed into my mouth.

“Well, we know curiosity did
not
kill this cat,” Carter declared with a snicker. 

“That’s not funny, Carter.  That might be the cat that’s been hanging around here.”  There was so much blood matting the fur and obscuring the color, I couldn’t tell for sure if it was Aunt Jillian’s cat or not.  If it was, she would not be happy when she found out what happened to it.

Just then, with his customary growl, Aunt Jillian’s cat jumped up onto the porch railing from somewhere in the bushes.  Carter and I both jumped. 

“Guess not.”

I was relieved to see the cat, even though it gave me the heebie jeebies when it watched me so closely.  “That’s a relief.”  Then a thought occurred to me.  “Hey, you’re the criminal.  What does this mean?”

“
Stop calling me a criminal
!”  This he squeezed through clenched teeth.  I must’ve breached his threshold for teasing.  It didn’t used to be so close to the surface.  Of course, he didn’t used to be wanted for questioning in three murders either.  “And how should I know anyway?  I don’t decapitate cats and hang their heads on people’s front doors.”

“Good to know, but that’s no help to me.  Should I be scared?”

“Are you nuts? 
Of course
you should be scared.  You’ve found three dead bodies in your houses and now you’re getting dead animal parts at home.  I’d be applying for witness protection if I was you.”

“I haven’t witnessed anything, nimrod.  At least nothing like
that.
”  I had certainly witnessed lots of different things in the past week, but nothing that the government would put me in hiding for. 

“You’re such a dork.  You know what I mean.”

“What if I call the police and they laugh at me?  What if it’s just some kids playing a practical joke?’

“And exactly how many practical jokes like this have you heard of in Bethel?” 

I had no comment.  I stood, ruminating, chewing on my lip, trying to ignore the cat head lying at my feet.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, standing and pulling the bag back over the head and tying the top.  “I’ll get rid of this.  Is your trash can out back?’[

“Yeah.  At the corner.”

I walked back into the kitchen to get my bucket of cleaning supplies.  I filled the bucket with water and took it back outside.  The front door was wide open, yet the cat didn’t even attempt to get inside.  I found that odd.  I got down on my hands and knees and started cleaning the blood off the porch, the mat and the front door.

The cat watched me in that curious way of his, only he was purring, which was unusual.  “What is it about you?”  I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t respond. 

The longer I stared into those green eyes, the more absorbed I became until I an image appeared in my head.  It was there for an instant then gone.  It was as if someone had taken a snapshot of me where I knelt on the porch and uploaded it into my head.  The angle was from the cat’s perspective, though.  And the image was sharper than any I’d ever seen, the colors brighter even in the low light. 

The cat continued to watch me, his purring growing louder and louder.

“You almost done?”  I yelped when Carter appeared in the doorway.  I was so focused on the cat I had tuned everything else out.

“Yeah,” I said, standing to pour the dirty water from my bucket into the bushes behind the cat.  As I approached him, his purring continued and he arched his back, a silent command to pet him.  I stroked along his sleek back and he nuzzled his head against my side.  “Strange,” I mumbled to the cat, but he paid me no attention.

Inside, each with a cold glass of Coke, Carter and I settled in front of the gas logs to talk.  I wasn’t about to waste my one opportunity pussy-footing around the subject.

“Carter, you really need to turn yourself in.” I jumped right in.  “You haven’t done anything wrong, but running makes you look guilty.  And you
will
eventually get in trouble for avoiding the cops.  What will I tell the neighbors when you show up on America’s Most Wanted?”

“Nice to see my
life
is your top priority.”

“You know I’m kidding.”  I scooted to the edge of my cushion.  I felt a sudden urgency to get Carter in the hands of the police.  He needed to make his case before things got worse.  I had very little family left and, while a felon wasn’t anyone’s ideal, I didn’t want to lose Carter.  “Look, I have a contact at the Atlanta PD.  I guess he’s sort of a friend.  At least he has been since I started finding dead people.  His name is Tegan.”

“Tegan what?”

“No, that’s his last name.”

“What’s his first name?”

“I don’t know.  Carter, it doesn’t matter.”

“He’s the Serial Crimes guy, isn’t he?  I’ve seen him on the news.  He doesn’t look like he plays nice, Cat.  Isn’t there somebody Scott can talk to?  Someone that looks a little more…
reasonable?
”

I considered it progress that he was talking about
who
he was going to turn himself in to rather than
if
he was going to turn himself in.  “Tegan looks scary, but he’s not.  And, actually, he
is
reasonable.  He’s, uh...”  Describing Tegan was more difficult than I thought.  What I knew about him, the confidence I had in him, was not something easily explained, especially without going into details that I didn’t want Carter knowing.  And yet I felt a bone deep conviction that I was right in telling Carter he could trust him.  “He’s a really good cop.  And a nice guy, too.  You’d be in good hands.”