Kitten with a whip

Chapter One

You COULD always blame it on the heat. . . .

The weekend dawned hot and still, the sun suddenly near and pregnant with fire through the glassy blue air. It was September in Southern CaSfomia. The "unusual weather" that struck every year at this time had arrived. Over the plains a thousand miles to the east a mammoth high pressmre squatted like an octopus and sent its tentacles of scorching air groping for the Padfic, holding back the faithful sea breezes so the earth could sear. The mountain rocks baked and the weedy hills of the back country lay brown and tinder dry, ready for the fire sirens and headlines. In the suburbs, and the small towns that bordered on them, flowers drooped and lawns turned hard and britde. And in downtown San Diego—well, you could look forward to tonight's paper carrying the gag picture of the leggy girl in shorts trying to fry an egg on the sidewalk. Everywhere animals hunted shade ana lay panting, and the wild ones crept closer to civilization, hunting water.

Tlie heat touched the people too, turning some of them a htde wild. Some were awakening amorous, to snuggle against their perspiring mates. Omers were awakening unrested and vengeful, looking for injustice and ready to snap angrily at it. The yoimg of a certain age lay daydreaming ciuiously and children awoke peevishly, armed with whines. The old, akeady prepared to die, didn't care so much on a day hke this.

Everybody was going to turn on their hoses and sprinkling systems and curse when the water pressure went down. It was goiug to be an ideal weekend for too many long cool drinks and love and murder.

Blame it on the heat. Everybody said so.

David Patton awoke early that Saturday with no thought that he would ever have to blame anyone or anything. He awoke with no tendencies to passion or violence, but with the eerie sensation that he was not alone in his house.

He lifted his head, listened, heard nothing. He lay back again, tongueing out his dry mouth, and decided the hallucination was left over from some dream. He kicked off the sweat-damp sheet and wriggled around, hoping to find a comfortable position for those few more minutes of sleep that are the ultimate in luxury.

His eyes drifted shut—too late, his brain was aroused now. "What lousy weather," he mumbled. The bedroom was already overheated—what a jerk he had been to biuld a house with the master bedroom on the southeast comer where it got the full blast of the morning sun. "Oh, hell.'* With a sigh, he rolled over on his back and stared at the ceiling. Wliat could he find to do with himself today?

I wish Virginia were here, he thought. And Katie. Tm not cut out for this bachelor life.

At that instant the haunted sensation returned. He was not alone. He held his breath and listened.

He heard only the noises that he always heard in Knoll Valley, so familiar that he had to concentrate to listen to them. The mockingbirds on the telephone wires, the children already at play in the swimming pool up on the lull, the poimd of a hammer down the street at the house that fellow was building on weekends—nothing strange about those. The hum of the freeway a mile off sounoed a httle more anxious this morning as people rushed to the beach. It all helped make up for fiie silence of his own house. Ordinarily, David Patton was used to noises closer at hand. But this week he was—as Virginia had pointed out and they had joked about it —a bachelor' again. Virginia had flown to San Francisco a few days before to nurse her ailing mother, and she had taken along their daughter, Katie, who would be six next month. It was Virginia's third such trip this year.

Again he heard the sound that must have disturbed his sleep—the soft pad of a bare foot. This time the noise gave him a surge of pleasure and he swung out of bed quickly. For it came from Katie's bedroom and that meant that Virginia and Katie had come back home ahead of schedule. He didn't expect them until Monday but something good had happened—Mother Fisk had made a fast recovery—and they had flown down to surprise him. He could picture them out there now, expectant grins on their pretty faces, waiting to pounce on him the minute he stuck his head out of tne bedroom. David grinned himself as he stood up slowly so the in-nerspring would give no warning.

He was a man of average height but barrel-chested and big-boned. In high school he nad been something of an athlete. But now he was thirty-three, spending most of his time on his engineer's stool at the aircraft plant. He was an R and D man—Research and Development; his specialty was stress. So he weighed fifteen pounds over his college weight, and none of it was additional muscle. David made desultory passes at exercise; he played handball every Monday night, and working around the yard helped. But he was the first to admit that he was out of condition. His black hair had thinned a bit, too, forming a definite peninsula over his high forehead. He didn't mind losing the hair so much, ^ut with every good look in the mirror it reminded him that time was slipping by. And he hadn't done anything yet.

Sure, he was happy with his life, as he'd tried to explain it once to Virginia, but sometimes there sneaked up on him an awful ache of despair that he couldn't quite analyze.

"Like I was waiting for something to happen. Or more like I missed the boat somewhere along the Hne," he had told her.

"Oh, Dave. Things happen all the time."

And she was right; they led a full life. And a stress engineer was exactly what he wanted to be, not a soldier of fortune or an explorer. So he couldn't explain the longing to Virginia, and he never tried again, because he couldn't bring it injocus to his own eyes. But that didn't chase the phantom away. In fact, when it had been decided that Virginia and Katie would fly north again, leaving him behind, he had been conscious of a mild excitement. Not that he ever expected any actual adventures to come his way, but it was a break in the routine and you never can tell.... He could tell now. Life without his womenfolks was pretty much the same as life with them, except for the inconvenience of getting his own meals and doing his own dishes and having no one to talk to in the silence that pressed down heavier every evening. As always, he couldn't think of any place he wanted to go by himself, so he had gotten red-eyed from too much television and midnight reading. His boldest stroke, the very first day, had been to stock up thoroughly on bourbon and gin and triple-diy vermouth. He'd thought it would give him a party feeling to have that much stuff in the house until he made a new discovery about himself—that he was essentially a social drinker and it bored him stiff to drink alone.

Well, he wasn't alone any more and David was delighted. He hadn't realized how highly he prized his home life. And Virginia and Katie. He hadn't thought consciously for some time of how much he loved them and how close they all were.

He crept stealthily out of the bedroom and along the hall carpeting to Katie's room. He hitched up his pajama trousers and tried to straighten his face but he was grinning Hke a kid as he stepped around the doorjamb, a yell of "Surprise!" all ready in his mouth.

His mouth hung open but no noise came out. The only sound ui the dim shade-drawn room was a squeaking gasp from the girl who stood beside the bureau. She backed away until she bumped the wall, her eyes bulging in fright. She wore a coarse brown nightgown to her ankles and David had never seen her before.

They stared at each other and he finally found his voice. "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm sorry," the girl muttered. She raked one hand through her mussed brown hair while she tried to think of something to say. "I swear to God I wasn't doing anything wrong. I mean, I just—" She shook her head hopelessly, as if explanations were a waste of time.

"But you can't just break in here and—what are you doing here?"

She didn't answer, merely kept on staring at him with her large amber eyes. She was young and small, about seventeen or eighteen, and oddly pretty in her own way. Her skin had tanned Hghtly to a golden color that set off the yellow in her eyes. Her face was long and narrow, her nose short but pointed, and her wide full-Hpped mouth was pale pink without Hpstick. It was a quizzical face, like a cat or a vixen. Her bare feet were tiny and dirty, as if she had walked some distance without shoes. He couldn't tell much about the rest of her because of the cheap heavy nightgown—except where perspiration had stuck the garment against her breasts. She looked weU-developed for her age.

"WeU . . ." Several explanations for her presence flitted through David's mind. He voiced the least bizarre one. "Look, are you staying around here some place? Did you get lost? You walk in your sleep or something like that?" She merely shook her head again. "I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to know what's going on."

''You're damn right you're not going to hurt me," she biu-st out suddenly. Then she sighed and spread her hands and even began to smile faintly. "Okay. I guess I've had it, anyway. You might as weU hear the whole bit." She had a pleasant voice, low-pitched but with a trick of turning up at the end of sentences, giving even a statement or plain fact a questioning quahty. Perhaps she doubted everything. "I'm Jody Drew. You know?"

He couldn't recall any Drews in KnoU Valley. "AU right. What are you doing in my house, Jody?"

"I didn't know it was your house, or anybody's in particular. I mean, I'm not picking on you, understand? I got tired and who wants to sleep outside? I saw your front door was standing open a little."

David frowned, trying to remember. He was generally

pretty meticulous about locking up at night; strictly as a matter of habit, however, for this was a suburban neighborhood where everyone's garage was always left wide open in full confidence that nothing would ever be taken.

Jody snapped her fingers. "You know, that's not actually true. What I did was pry open the screen, the window next to the front door? I don't think I broke it or anything." She grinned at him hesitandy. "The front door bit—I guess I was trying to reduce the charge, huh? Trespassing instead of breaking and entering?" He didn't smile back at her and she added apologetically, "I didn't get the couch dirty. That's where I slept."

"Oh. You mean the sectional sofa? All night you've been right out there in the front room?"

"Mosdy. I don't know the time. I was just bushed. Still am." She sat down suddenly on the end of Katie's bed and shook her head moodily, gazing at her dirty feet. "Well, so I didn't quite make it. That's the story of my life. At least, I didn't get raped."

David winced at the word. He was a man of strong language himself but what kind of young girl would . . . Yet, looking down at her sitting there, so small and defensive, he felt a melancholy pang of sympathy for her. She seemed so expectant of being pushed around, as if that was what she'd been raiseci and schooled for. More gendy, he asked, "What is it—trouble at home? You run away?"

"Yeah. I ran away. Not the kind of home you're thinking about, though." She glanced up anxiously. "I crushed out of Juvenile HaU last night."

"Oh.' Jody's presence suddenly began to make more sense to him. The new county reformatory—though they weren't called that any more, but glossed over as juvenile halls or honor ranches or something—had been built at the other end of the valley two years ago, amid much protest from local residents and wailing about lowered property values. "Then diat's why the nightgown. . . ."

Jody looked down at herself, her mouth curving distastefully. "Isn't this a drag, though? But they lock your clothes up at night." She nodded at Katie's pink dresser, decorated with clown and teddy bear decals. "That's

why I came in here. Sort of hoping I might find something that'd fit me." Hastily, she added, ''Just to borrow, I mean, till I could get my own stuff."

"Katie's only five, six next month."

"Yeah, I figured that out. My usual luck." She gazed slowly around the room, looking at the fluffy curtains, the little blackboard desk, the sliding doors of the closet, the wall-to-wall carpeting . . . everything so abnormally neat in Katie's absence. "So nice," she murmured wistfully. "A room of your own, just once."

David cleared his throat. "Don't you have any folks, Jody? People who might get worried when they hear—" lou kidding?"

"No, of course not."

She blinked at him appraisingly. "Okay, I guess not. Well, I do have a father but all he worries about is where his next drink is coming from. I'm not going back to that lush even if he'd let me in. He's the reason I got picked up, anyhow." She leaned back on the bed, alongside the large panda doU, and gently stroked its fur. "I won one of these once, out at Mission Beach."

David said uncomfortably, "How'd you happen to get involved with the pohce?" He thought, God, I sound like an old man, a judge or somebody.

The girl sat up quickly, defensive again. "You're scared I'll get the doll dirU^. Well, I wont."

"Not at all. Jody, I don't like having to ask you questions but I do have a certain right to be curious."

She thought it over. "I don't know why I'm being nasty when you're being pretty nice. Ever get the feeling that you want to take everything out on the first person you meet? Anyway, back to the Juvenile Hall bit. The old man was crying for a bottle and didn't have the money, so he got me to pinch one. My first time. I wasn't too good at it so they caught me." She shrugged. "That enough out of True Confessions, or do you want me to go on and on?"

"I was just ciuious. You seem so young."

'I'm seventeen." She looked him up and down. 'Teah, I guess that does seem like a Idd to you."

*Well, I'm not that much older than you are." He was abruptly conscious of how he appeared to her, un-

shaven, barefoot in his pajama trousers, perspiration coursing down his naked chest. In the service he had gotten into the habit of sleeping in his shorts, and he would have continued the custom into civihan life but Virginia insisted he at least wear the pajama bottoms. Still, it wasn't exactly the most dignified costume in which to interrogate a young girl, who was in her nightgown, at that. He said stiJBJy, "You know I m going to have to notify the authorities you re here, don't you?"