The Beast of Barcroft (5 page)

The man was about to interrupt, but she lifted her hand to cut him off and continued, more to herself than the crowd, “It could have wandered into this area from somewhere else. A couple of years ago, a mountain lion that had been tagged in South Dakota was killed by a car in
Connecticut
.” She looked up at the man. “Sorry, sir, just trying to get some context here.”

She addressed the rest of the crowd. “Mountain lions, cougars, pumas, catamounts—they're all the same species—are really very adaptive creatures that can survive in any number of environments. And diets. Normally, that diet consists of ungulates—deer, sheep—but it will eat whatever it can catch. And they're ambush predators. They'll hide in brush, trees, places with cover, then they'll pounce, taking the animal down and breaking its neck in the process.”

“That's disturbingly accurate,” said the man.

“An animal will not see it until it's too late. Sometimes that means pets if the opportunity presents itself.”

“Kids?”

“It's extraordinarily rare, but it has happened.”

The crowd erupted once more. Sissy moved close to Lindsay and grabbed her by the elbow. Her smile was manic. Low, through gritted teeth, she asked, “What in God's name are you doing?”

“Mrs. Chapman, you might have an actual cougar in Arlington. Do you have any idea how rare that is?” To the man: “Can you show me where it happened?”

“Now?” The man looked surprised, but not unhappy. “Sure.”

“Where are you going?”

“Sorry, Mrs. Chapman, you can take the girl out of the zoo, but you can't take the zoo out of the girl.”

“This is all very interesting, but I think the bigger issue right now is the rodent situation…”

“I disagree.”

As Lindsay followed the man out the door, the Barcroft Community House became a zoo. Residents shouted over one another, yelling questions at Sissy. She heard folding chairs screech against the floorboards as members rose out of their seats.

Sissy yelled, “What about the rats?”

“Cougars eat rats too,” said Lindsay, and she was out the door.

T
HURSDAY,
N
OVEMBER 13

Ben watched her from outside the bushes, closer to them than where he had been standing the night Bucky was taken. He had wanted them cleared immediately, but he hoped maybe there was a silver lining in that his contractor wasn't available until Saturday. Maybe a helpful clue remained in the thicket. Just standing there, waiting, he wanted to pace, but every time he started the new motion sensor lights he had installed illuminated the yard—on, off, on, off.

“Please stop,” a voice called from inside the bushes.

Ben resigned himself to craning his neck, looking up to the house and scanning the yard in every direction.

Lindsay rustled inside the bushes where the cougar had dragged Bucky, her flashlight dancing inside.

“Oh!” she said.

“Find a footprint?”

“No, it's too kicked up in here.” She emerged from the bush with a tuft of tawny hair between her thumb and forefinger. “Found this though.”

“That could be my dog's. They were the same color.”

Lindsay smiled and shook her head. “Which way did he go?”

Ben pointed over the fence. Lindsay threw a leg over it.

“Wait a minute. Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“How big was your dog?”

“Ninety pounds. Greyhound.”

“That's a big meal. That'll last it a week or two. Unless the cat was a female nursing cubs, but I think that's unlikely.”

“Reassuring.” Ben followed her over the fence.

He led her through the yards where he had chased the animal. Like Ben's, each successive yard was on a grade, sloping toward Four Mile Run. A few houses' motion sensor lights blared to life as well, but none of the residents investigated; either they were still at the meeting or out elsewhere, in bed, or too accustomed to wildlife strolling through their yards. Ben and Lindsay clambered over a fence to the final yard, where Ben had given up the chase. He pointed across the neighbor's front yard to the spot in the street where the beast had dropped Bucky. In a muddy, grassless patch by the fence, Lindsay spotted a print. She knelt down next to it and retrieved a small tape measure from her coat pocket that she had brought along from her car. “Five inches. This is tremendous.”

When she looked up at him, Ben wanted to remind her that the owner of the “tremendous” print had killed his dog. Even in the dark, he could see she was beaming. She had a twig in her hair.
Kids at Christmas should look this happy,
he thought.

“So that's big then?”

“Massive.”

“That's what I thought.”

“This must have been the route it took to your yard.”

“Maybe, but that's where it landed when it came back for me.” He recounted the cougar's leap, how it abandoned Bucky and bolted for him, only to change its mind.

“It just sat there?”

“And sniffed me.” He rubbed his neck. “Maybe he didn't like my deodorant.”

“No, that's…odd. If he was going to attack
you,
you never would have seen it coming. And he already had his kill…”

“Hey.”

“Sorry, your dog…he already had that, and was outpacing you…”

“I was by no means getting in his way or impeding him. There was no reason for it other than to, I don't know, put me in my place.”

“Cougars don't do that. Not to humans, anyway.”

“Well, nobody told this cougar.” Ben looked at Lindsay's hair and pointed to his own. “You have a…”

She swiped at her hair. “A bug? Is it a bug?” She bent over and shook her hair out.

“Here, let me.”

Ben stepped forward and pinched the twig from her hair. “Just a stick.” Suddenly, the porch light of the house in the yard where they were standing came on. “Let's go,” said Ben, and they jumped over the fence and ran until they were back in his backyard. He smiled. His first in months. “You're wandering out here in the dark, looking for a giant killer cat, and you're worried about bugs?”

“Bugs are not my favorite.”

“Anything else not your favorite?”

“Bears. You?”

“Clowns. And now cats. Last I checked, it's still illegal to kill clowns, but I'm hoping that's not the case with this bastard.”

The smile fell from her face. “Kill it?”

“It's running around a residential neighborhood. My dog is bad enough, but it could very easily have been a kid.”

“This cat, being here, is a marvel. We don't know where it came from or how it got here. It's either come here from a very long way away, which is extraordinary, or it's been here all along, which is even more extraordinary. And the size of it!” She paused for a moment, then continued, quieter. “Ben, I'm truly sorry for your loss, but it wasn't malicious, I assure you. It's just its nature. And this is an incredible opportunity for study.”

“Study?” He nearly spat the word. “That,” he said, pointing in the direction of Madeleine's dark house, “brought it here. The rats, the animals. I don't know how or why it got as far as it did, but mark my words, that shithole brought it into the neighborhood.”

“I agree with you.”

“You do?”

She nodded. “I heard enough at the meeting to know that your neighbor actually altered the ecosystem here. Look, maybe we can help each other. I'm going to work tomorrow to see who I can talk to about studying this situation. Maybe they will want to trap the cat. If we determine that the house was involved—and I'm sure we would—then the National Zoo telling Arlington County it has a pest problem might lend some weight.”

Ben looked off to the side and took a deep breath. It seemed like taking the long way around when a shortcut seemed obvious, but she had already done more than any county official since Manny. He looked over her shoulder toward Madeleine's.

“Fine. No one in Arlington is doing jack shit anyway. You're the only person who seems to have a plan and you've been here for all of an hour. But I want to be involved. I'm the one who has to deal with the consequences of living next door to
that,
” he said, waving his hand. “I want to stay in the loop.”

“Deal.”

They exchanged numbers and she promised to let him know what the zoo responded with. On her way out of the yard, she looked at Madeleine's house and stopped in her tracks.

“Did you see that? Up in the window? Are you sure no one is in there?”

“Rats. They ruffle the shades. Welcome to my world.”

“No, I think it was a cat.”

“The rats can get pretty big.”

She looked at him and smirked. “I think I know a cat when I see one.”

“Fair enough.”

“So how did she die?”

“Heart attack. She was in the hospital for a few weeks. Brain dead. Terrible. While she was in, Animal Control came and took her pets. Her legitimate pets, that is. Must be a straggler.”

“We can't leave it in there.”

“Sure we can.”

She looked horrified.

“Do you know how many half-eaten rats I've found on my lawn? Probably gifts from that same pest. That house and everything associated with it has caused this neighborhood nothing but grief. I'm not inclined to do shit.”

Lindsay glanced at the sole of her shoe. “I think I stepped in some of your righteous indignation.”

“You want to talk bugs, it's probably covered in fleas…”

“If you want to be anywhere near Operation Humane Cougar Capture, you will help me liberate that cat. Consider it practice.” She started toward Madeleine's gate.

“Hold on.”

She stopped.

“There is no way you are trespassing in that house, loaded with rats and God knows what else, at night, to find a cat. I will tackle you if you even try, I swear.”

“And they say chivalry is dead.”

Ben sighed. “I'll do it.
Tomorrow
. When I get home from work.”

“Before work.”

He stared at her for a moment. She stared back, with a slight smile indicating she was clearly pleased with herself.

“Fine, but it's probably better off in there. There's a pet-eating cougar on the loose, maybe you've heard.”

T
HURSDAY,
N
OVEMBER 13

Neighborhood meeting nights always put Hazel Bennett behind, but she could not afford to miss them. Lord knows what would happen to the neighborhood if she was not around to keep everyone in check. Tonight had been livelier than she had been prepared for, though, and certainly the most bizarre meeting since the Roux woman was still alive and causing trouble. As she filled the kettle at her sink and peered through her kitchen window to the high fence that surrounded the dark house and bordered her yard, she thought the Roux woman was still causing trouble even from the grave.

She looked to the left of the high fence, at the McKelvie boy's house. She would not miss his oafish greyhound and its barking, but wild animals on the loose in the neighborhood would not stand. And she and McKelvie had always been in lockstep when it came to Roux and her rats. The rats were clearly still a problem, and drawing even bigger problems.

She hated the rats. Everyone hated the rats, but she
hated
the rats. They were nature's perfect filth machines. It's not just that they were pestilence embodied, it was their efficiency, something she could admire in any other species but loathed in these creatures. They could flatten their bodies to fit into impossible spaces. With their strong teeth, they could chew through any barrier. They even survived on the waste of other animals. And the Roux woman had practically shielded them. Hazel had put down rat poison stations, but the woman kept feeding the pigeons (rats with wings, really) despite Hazel's insistence that she not. The rats loved the food, and it was loaded with vitamin K, which actually counteracted the poison. They were damn near indestructible.

And breeding? Forget rabbits (which were also a problem, but only with her garden in the spring and they were not a priority now); rats should replace them for that particular euphemism. Even with Roux dead and not feeding the birds anymore, and the neighbors using traps and poison stations to keep them at bay, as long as they had the safe haven of that dump, they would never be fully eradicated.

It was near eleven, but she was too wound up from the meeting. The dishes were clean, countertops wiped down, and coffeemaker filled and set to auto, so she opened her mystery novel and waited for the kettle. It was the fifth in a series about an antiques dealer in a town with a shockingly high mortality rate, and she had gotten a few pages deeper when the kettle whined. She went into the kitchen and removed it from the burner. The high whistle abated, and in its place another whine came from outside.

Cozy
.

Her cat was calling from outside. Was it possible he had darted out without her noticing when she returned home after the meeting? Cozy was purely a house cat, not equipped for life outdoors on a good day, let alone in a neighborhood plagued by rats and God knows what else now. She bolted through the door leading to the backyard. She called his name. The meowing continued closer to the fence. McKelvie's new high-wattage motion sensor lights flashed on. It bathed the yard in a glow like that of a sports stadium. It was practically day over the fence, lighting up the adjacent section of her own backyard. In another situation she would have cursed him for it, but tonight it was useful. She saw no trace of Cozy in her immaculate backyard. She kept no trees or shrubs, but there was the thicket in the corner, on McKelvie's side. She walked deep into her yard and called, “Kitty kitty kitty.” The meowing stopped.

It was quiet again.

She scanned the yard. McKelvie's lights shut off, leaving her yard illuminated only by her own porch light, feeble by comparison. She shuddered at the thought of her cat somehow getting over the high fence, trapping himself in Roux's jungle, when she heard the meowing start again.Behind her, back inside. She marched toward the house.

She closed and locked the door and called for him again. He was not in any of his dozing or hiding spots on the main floor, so she climbed the stairs to her bedroom and nearly slipped in a puddle.

“What in God's name?”

She went to the hall closet for paper towels, daubed one into the puddle, and held it to her nose. Cat urine. She cleaned up the mess. When the floor was spotless again, she set out to reprimand the cat.

“Cozy! What's gotten into you?”

She got down on her hands and knees by the bed and lifted the duvet. A shaft of light caught two wide, glowing eyes. Cozy gave a loud and plaintive cry.

“Are you not feeling well, Cozy?”

Another cry, more urgent.

“Why did you go outside?”

A hiss.

“Fine, Mr. Cranky Pants. You can stay under there all night with no treat if you want to be naughty.”

Hazel washed her hands and went back to her tea. She thought about returning to her book, but she was too frazzled now; she simply would not concentrate on it. Finally, she turned on the television and watched a celebrity dancing program she had recorded. “Stars,” she said to no one, and snorted. At best, she was thinking, she could name two of the contestants, when a foul smell overcame her. And she heard the scratching.

She turned and saw the mound of rats. Hundreds of them, just standing there, watching her in a tight mass. Her first thought was not fear, but revulsion. Indignation even. Her home had always been a bastion of order and cleanliness, and it had been invaded by the enemy.

She recoiled and tried to flee, but she spilled herself from her chair. She turned back to see the tangle of rats move as one across the floor. As they reached her, they reared up. Impossibly, from the floor, she realized she was looking up at them. They nearly reached the ceiling. Worse, she noticed there was no daylight, no space, between them. They were pressed together.

No, not pressed,
she thought,
fused
.

One twisted, gnarled body, thousands of tiny heads protruding. The mass crested over her, swaying like a cobra for a moment, hundreds of black eyes looking down on her, before it crashed over her in a wave and thousands of razor-sharp teeth found purchase at once.