Deviant (18 page)

“I love the Dutch masters,” Walt said.

Danny groaned. Walt could go on about art for hours, but somehow sensing this, Tony said, “So let me tell you what we know about the cats …”

She told them about the three cats they knew about that had been killed, all of them in Cobalt, two supposedly by a coyote and the third in what the sheriff thought was “some kind of freak accident.”

“That seems reasonable, a coyote and an accident,” Bob said.

“Well, the one in the parking lot had its guts pulled out and the cat was just lying there; it hadn't been eaten or anything,” Tony said.

“Except that its heart was missing,” Tom added.

Bob shook his head. “Coyote could have been disturbed before eating the rest of the kill.”

“That's what they said in the paper,” Danny admitted.

“And then this last one could have been an accident,” Bob continued, rubbing his red goatee.

“Hanging from a tree?” Tony said.

“Hanging by what?” Bob asked.

“I don't know, does it matter?” Tony asked.

“Yes, it matters. Hanging by a wire, rope, piece of string … they're all different. And these other cats, were they displayed or just left there?” Bob asked.

“What do you mean ‘displayed'?” Walt asked.

“Ritually displayed, in a certain shape or pointing in a certain direction. You need to know these things. You need to do a lot of legwork.”

“What sort of legwork?” Tom asked.

“Well, if you're convinced it's somebody, not
something
, I can help you with a profile, but you guys are going to have to do the research. How long were the cats missing first? Did the people who lost the cats have yards, fences? Where did these cats come from? How were they taken? Were the houses broken into? Geographically, where were the houses located? Is there a pattern to the geography? What type of cats were taken? Are there similarities between the breeds? Where were the bodies found? The same place? Different places? Is there a link between the places? What was the condition of the bodies? Did the Sheriff's Department take photographs of the finds?… I mean, do you have any of those answers?”

Tony looked at Danny. Danny looked at Tom. Tom shrugged.

“No, we don't,” Danny said.

Bob sighed. “Well, I don't know why you'd want me to take this seriously when you're obviously not taking it very seriously.”

“Hey, they're just kids, you know?” Walt said defensively.

Bob's eyes flashed angrily. “Who do you think has been killing the cats?”

“What do you mean?” Danny asked.

“Kids. Kids are doing it,” Bob said.

Silence filled the room for an uncomfortable couple of seconds.

“How do you know that?” Danny wondered.

“Serial killers start young, and they start with animals. It's called zoo sadism. Almost never do they begin with human beings. They begin with insects or arachnids: wasps, spiders, flies, ants … Then when the thrill of killing those creatures fades, they move up the phylogenetic scale. Perhaps mice, rats. Then they move higher, perhaps to squirrels, possum, and maybe even house cats. What we're looking at here is a serial killer in the third stage of his progression.”

“What's the fourth stage?” Juanita asked, shocked.

“Once you've moved on to mammals, there is nowhere else to go but humans. People,” Bob said dispassionately.

“So if he's not caught, he'll get bored with cats and start killing people?” Tony asked.

Bob shook his head. “No, I don't mean that at all. He'll probably stop. Most nascent serial killers, most animal abusers, never cross that species hurdle. Ninety percent of animal abusers wouldn't dream of killing a person, but there is that chance.”

“You said ‘he.' Couldn't it be a girl, too?” Tony said.

Bob nodded. “You know what? It probably is a fox or a coyote, but if it's a person, yes, it could be a girl. Though
that also is unlikely, since the vast majority of serial killers and nascent serial killers are male. What I'll need is more information before I can say anything with any degree of certainty.”

“What about a team of killers?” Tony asked.

“Could be, especially with kids, but again most serial killers are loners—in case the other guy turns you in. The chronology might be interesting, too. Was it related to any particular time of year? Christmas Day, New Year's Day? And what were the intervals? Are they getting shorter, longer?”

Tony's hand had moved to her own lap and Danny could focus properly again, but Tom's fidgeting was increasing and Danny had the feeling that he was becoming less interested in all of this. The visit to the prison had been something of a letdown and he hadn't seemed that engaged in what Bob had to say. Danny wondered if he had only gotten involved in all of this because Tony felt that it was important. Could Tom have a crush on Tony? Was that why he had come here?

They thanked Bob for his time and on the ride back to Cobalt Danny thought about the back of Tony's hand against his thigh. He'd kissed a girl before. Two. He'd even had a sort of girlfriend for a week, Syria Hughes, but it turned out that she'd only been seeing him to make Adrian Ortega jealous. And he'd gotten to second base with an older girl on Ponson Street in East L.A., but with Tony it felt different. There was a spark there.

Tony was special. He could see that. Tom could probably see that, too.

They drove into Colorado Springs and dropped off Tom and then headed back to Cobalt. Tony waved good-bye and Danny went inside and helped his mother unpack some more of their boxes.

It was a Saturday, so they had hamburgers for dinner. And since the cable still hadn't been connected, instead of watching TV they played Scrabble, which Walt won by more than fifty points.

It started snowing at nine, and Juanita sent Danny outside to close the garage doors. He had just turned the key in the lock when he noticed Tony's front door open. And who should walk out of Tony's house but none other than Hector Watson. Mr. Frappuccino. Mr. Monday Morning, 10:15. Danny turned off the garage light and slipped into the shadows. He was surprised to see Mr. Meadows shake Hector warmly by the hand and was even more surprised when Tony appeared behind Mr. Meadows wearing a dress. Hector said something that made Tony and Mr. Meadows laugh. Finally Mr. Meadows and Hector got into the Mercedes and drove off.

Tony waved and closed the front door.

“So, you had Hector over for dinner,” Danny said petulantly to himself. “And it looks like you all had a great time. I guess you don't care that there's a lunatic out there, breaking into people's yards, killing their cats!”

He stood there watching the snow fall and turn weirdly
orange under the halogen streetlamps. He shivered. There was something about this stupid town. Something he didn't like but that he couldn't quite put his finger on. What was it? The smallness? The fact that everyone knew everyone else? Or was it just the people themselves? At least in Vegas people told you they were out to get you. Here they stabbed you in the back.

Danny went back inside. He turned on the TV, but without cable all he was looking at was static: gray and black dots vaporizing on the screen.

He went upstairs and got his skateboard out from under his bed. He skated on the hardwood landing back and forth, back and forth while Jeffrey watched him glassily every time he passed the bedroom door.

He finally came down for supper. Juanita had placed Oreos and a glass of milk on the living room table.

He could only manage one cookie. He was very tired and already the wind in the trees had begun to work its soporific magic.

He went up to bed. Jeffrey curled up next to him on the duvet.

“Cat killers,” he said. “Don't you worry, Jeff. Whether it's a coyote or a kid, we'll keep you safe, old buddy.”

Jeffrey blinked his green cat eyes in slow, measured indifference.

A noise before the dawn. Danny bolted out of bed and shouted “Aha!” pointing his finger at Tony, Tom, or whoever else she'd brought with her in this latest bedroom invasion.

There was no one there.

Jeffrey wasn't there either.

He looked at the clock. The luminous hands of SpongeBob SquarePants were pointing at the five and the two. He squinted a little and saw that it was ten past five.

It was Monday morning.

Sunday had been a total bust.

Tony hadn't come round to see him.

Tom hadn't texted him.

He'd skated to the Cobalt Sheriff's Department, but
their office had been closed. Everything in Cobalt turned out to be closed on Sundays. The 7-Eleven, the Safeway, the Laundromat, the hardware store, the sorry excuse for a strip mall on Manitou Springs Road. Everything except the two Pentecostal churches, which were packed—at least, they appeared to be from the number of cars in the parking lots.

The sun had come out and Danny had skated around aimlessly.

He'd seen Cooper drive past with his mom and he'd waved to him, but Cooper had frowned like he knew Danny from somewhere but couldn't quite figure out where.

Danny skated home and sat there all day with no books or TV or computer.

And now it was Monday.

Monday morning, eleven minutes past five.

And something had woken him.

“Jeff?” he said. But Jeff wasn't there.

He went to the window and stared out at the blackness. Some of that void was mountain and some forest, but it was impossible to tell which was which.

Danny slapped his forehead. “And I forgot that stupid flashlight again!” he muttered, and then forgave himself, because unless they'd gone into Colorado Springs there was nowhere to buy the flashlight anyway.

“Jeff?” he tried one more time.

He hadn't gone out there, had he?

Danny stared into the nothingness.

He couldn't see his hand in front of his face. If it hadn't been for SpongeBob's hands there would be no—

Wait a minute. Wait a minute, what the hell was that?

Out there in the woods, that little bobbing rectangle. There, just for a moment at the edge of his vision and then gone. And there again. And gone again.

Danny knew exactly what it was. It was the fluorescent patch on a pear of sneakers. There was nothing animal, vegetable, or mineral about it; it was a person. Someone was definitely out there.

His first instinct was to call out “I can see you!” but he thought better of it immediately.

He fumbled for his jeans and pulled them over his pajama bottoms, shoved on sneakers and a sweater, and grabbed his new ski coat before realizing that it was covered in fluorescent patches, too.

He got his leather jacket instead and opened the bedroom door.

Down the hallway he could hear Walt snoring loudly.

Maybe he should wake him and his mom? No, they'd do more harm than good.

He jogged down the stairs, went to the back door, picked the key from the hook, turned it in the lock. The large yard at the rear of the house had a wooden fence around it with a gate in the fence that led directly to the forest.

He had never gone through the gate; no one had.

He looked into the garden. About an inch of snow had fallen—not too bad. He walked across the garden and came
to the gate. It was chilly, and although his breath wasn't freezing on his face like earlier, twenty minutes outside without a hat wouldn't be pleasant.

He fumbled at the gate for a second, found an iron latch, lifted it, and pushed hard. The gate opened easily and swung out on well-oiled hinges into the forest.

Danny's eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark. There were streetlights in the cul-de-sac, and between the clouds, stars from trillions of miles away were scattering a few random photons here and there.

The fluorescent patches were about thirty yards to the north in the woods. It looked like they were roughly behind Tony's house.

Danny walked toward the light, stepping over fallen trees and split branches.

He was afraid but not
that
afraid, and he wasn't entirely sure that he wasn't still in bed dreaming all this.

He stepped over a fallen log and waded through a two-inch layer of pine needles.

When he got to within fifteen or twenty yards of Tony's house he discovered that the person (if it had been a person) was no longer visible.

An owl hooted and Danny bumped into a tree, causing snow to drift down from the upper branches like powdered sugar onto a churro.

His teeth began to chatter and he shoved his hands deep into his pockets.

The fluorescent patches had vanished, but he hadn't heard
anyone running away. Maybe he'd been seeing things? Or perhaps it was a—

A noise came from behind him and he turned and got his arm up just in time as something came crashing down on top of him.

He crumpled like a rag doll and his face hit the snow.

He flinched and curled himself into a ball, expecting more blows, but nothing came. He opened one eye and then another.