Tiger cate, p.15
Tiger Cate, page 15
He wasn’t with Janssen’s team. Too much of a lone ranger. Too soft-hearted to be anything but a simpatico. Bronnie’s simpatico, it appeared. Gomez, Levi, Jimmy, all the good guys showing up in her life these days. Where had they been a decade ago?
Cate took a deep breath. “Who am I kidding? It’s worse than just getting trashed on social media. Russo’s camp gave me a message right before I left New York: Cate, you’re expendable. Speak out on anything and you’re dead.”
She tried to keep her voice from shaking. This conversation was bringing it to the surface again, and she did not want to cry in front of this man, no matter how nice he appeared.
“If I speak out, maybe a month or two will go by. But they’ll find me. I’ll be another tragic story on one of those true crime shows. I’ll disappear just like Margaret did. Only this time it will be without any trace.”
Chapter 30
By late morning, Gomez was preparing to leave and go get his dog, Jorge, whom he’d left in the care of Desi and her family. He pulled out a folded paper from his overnight bag. It was Margaret’s note to Cate.
“Thanks for letting me take this along. It might be supporting evidence if and when your sister’s case goes to trial. Jimmy can drop by the station and get a copy for his purposes.”
He leaned in confidentially from where he was seated on the quad. “Cate, please take care of yourself. You got a lot of people concerned about you.”
She shot him a doubtful look. Levi, Jimmy, and Bronnie for sure, but it was hard to believe anyone else gave a rip about her in this town. Noting her reaction, he took on a more business-like tone.
“We’re following up on that dinner party — the guests’ names you gave me at the hospital. And thanks for the sketch of the one guy, Gabe. You’re skilled. It’s nearly as good as a photo. I’m tempted to use facial recognition software and see if he’s known in any databases.”
“Well, look through the New York State Bar roster first. Something about him screams lawyer, the headline-chasing kind.”
Miguel nodded and started the quad.
“Hey, Miguel?” He shut off the noisy engine. “You know Estelle’s trying to pull something here with this restraining order. She … smashed her own face and did all that damage to herself. How crazy do you have to be — ?”
The man had enough class to look sheepish as he cut her off. “I’m so sorry, Cate, but I can’t comment on that one. It’s Detective Royce’s case. Just … keep in touch with Jimmy Baker about the order of protection. He’ll have updates for you.” He started the quad and put it in gear. “Sorry,” he repeated before roaring off across the meadow.
Well, full marks to Gomez for keeping ethical boundaries, she thought. He’d probably catch hell from the sheriff’s office if they knew he’d spent the night up here. Unprofessional association or whatever. She watched the quad reach the trailhead and disappear over the ridge.
Gomez had told her to take care of herself. But how could she really take care with so many loose ends to gather up? Who was Gabe? Why had Diego Junior been so pissed off at their first meeting? And had he really been the one who’d done something to her sister? Or had he assisted someone else?
She thought of Bella dying in the field as a tractor rolled toward her. Then she imagined Margaret being dragged through the same field, stashed in a cellar, and most likely loaded into a car to be driven off — to somewhere. A flash of D.J. Ruiz’s dark expression and angry words on the day she’d arrived in Cabeza Valley. That had been a week after Rae saw Margaret’s body in the pasture. It was painful for her to think the Ruiz family might be mixed up in this in any way.
With Gomez gone, Cate went back to the bench seat and opened the lid. Something else had been hiding in there. Another gift from Margaret.
She pulled out the molded black plastic box and set it on the table. Familiar gold initials reflected in the window light — MJF. Unlatching and lifting the lid, she peered down at the Walther PK380 semiautomatic with two extra magazines. Oh, it was loaded all right; she’d checked yesterday. Maybe tonight she’d build that fire in the stove.
#
By mid-afternoon, slate-gray monsoon clouds had gathered on the horizon. Cate could see a brooding clump of them migrating toward her from across the valley. Silvery sheets of rain hung from the clouds, promising a dense downpour when they arrived. Her flashlight was charged, and she’d carried several armloads of firewood from the stack behind the cabin. Although intense, the monsoon storms of her childhood had always passed through quickly. As long as you weren’t in a flood plain or standing by a solitary tree in a flat pasture, there was little threat from a downpour or lightning strike. In the meantime, she relished the opportunity to read a few more of the Finley family documents.
Out came the red file box, just as a flash of light outside preceded a deafening thunder crack. Droplets began to hit the tin roof, soon rising to a cacophony of noise. The view out the windows was obscured by cascades of falling water. “Rain on steroids” was how her father described the summer monsoons.
When the full deluge hit the cabin, she glanced up to see how the roof was faring. Still watertight. The rain let up after about ten minutes, only to return with the same intensity a few minutes later. Such was the pattern over the next two hours.
Cate surveyed her full jug of water, the remaining food from Bronnie, and the bulk of firewood next to the stove and knew all her creature needs were being met. All except companionship. She peered down at the sketch she’d drawn on her pad to calm her nerves during the loudest part of the storm. It was a study of a tousle-haired young man sitting on a park bench and leaning forward. His hands cradled his face, where a soft smile had captured his broad features. Amused eyes stared back at the viewer. She wondered what Levi had found to do in a cow town like Copperton and if he would ever forgive her for ghosting him.
Digging through the file box again, a thick folder marked “Estate Planning” drew Cate’s interest. She selected a faded manila envelope addressed to Doc and Fiona Finley. Her mother had neatly lettered across its front, “File Copy — Updated Will 5/10/2000.” Bingo, the will she’d gone searching for in the office. Cate lifted out the thick sheaf of papers that had last been handled by her parents the very month they’d died. Just what had they updated?
Cate’s name turned up all over the document, which was astonishing. Only fifteen when her parents died, she couldn’t recall even attending a reading of the will or Margaret sharing any details on the estate with her. She had assumed she stood to inherit it when her sister passed, just as Doc had done when his older brother died.
Words jumped out at her from the page listing the distribution of assets to heirs.
“To our daughter, Caitlyn Willis Finley, we bequeath one-half of the entirety of our estate, to be held in trust until she reaches her twenty-first birthday.”
Cate poured over the list of assets, which included the ranch, its livestock, and vehicles, valued at nearly four million dollars; an investment portfolio totaling seven hundred fifty thousand; and a half-million-dollar life insurance policy. The phrase “to be held in trust” kept haunting her. In trust by whom? Margaret?
Her head was starting to ache with nagging questions. Why hadn’t Margaret ever told her about her inheritance? Why hadn’t Cate ever asked about it? Had Margaret’s coldness and hostility toward her really killed all her curiosity back then? True, the two of them hadn’t shared many conversations after their parents’ deaths, save the ones about Cate’s education and career direction, which Cate had heatedly rejected. If she hadn’t pushed back so much on Margaret’s plans for her, what would her life have been like today?
Cate stopped reading and closed her eyes. There was too much to process here, between her conflicted feelings toward Margaret and eyestrain from reading. She picked up the phone and dialed Jimmy’s number. He had said this was his wheelhouse.
A familiar feeling was coming over her. Once again, she’d trusted the wrong person, and it had cost her.
Chapter 31
September 6, 2000, New York City
Cate awoke on a bed of roses. Pale yellow blooms with blushing edges. A vague memory came, someone giving them to her, of holding them in a bouquet, of leaning forward to smell their elegant fragrance. Now they were scattered across the bed with abandon, their petals bruised and wilted, even as the scent lingered.
Moving her legs, she realized with a start that she was completely naked under the sheets. There was a sharp pain between her legs and warm liquid seeping down there. When she lifted the covers, the welts and smears of blood brought her to a sitting position, wildly scanning her surroundings. Oh, my God, where am I? What happened?
Her head throbbed as she strained to remember the night before. The last thing she could recall was sharing the back seat of a black town car with Joseph Russo. The clink of champagne glasses. A toast to their second date and to her “eighteenth” birthday. Then nothing until she awoke just now. What had he done to her? As she twisted around to search the room, she felt the pain inside her — raw and bruised … violated. Her head pounded. The wine. Her stomach lurched. The pasta. Now she remembered there had been a candlelit dinner.
Where was she — a locked room in someone’s house? The sudden thought sent her out of bed. The door opened onto a lit hallway and she heard the faint hydraulics of an elevator. An apartment? A hotel?
Back at the bedside, a folded card stood upright, bearing a hotel name and location on the Upper West Side. She was still in New York, at least. A wave of relief gave way to nausea and she headed for the bathroom. Drinking water straight from the faucet, she ignored its off taste as her parched mouth hungrily grabbed for more. Without thinking, she turned on the shower and let it run to hot.
Last night, Joseph had taken her out on a date, supposedly to celebrate her eighteenth birthday. It was her birthday, all right, her seventeenth. And this wasn’t how a date should end. She knew what her mother would have called it.
When Cate had arrived in the city, three months earlier, she’d been cautioned about people who would smile at you, convince you to come closer, then steal things out of your pocket or grab your purse. Joseph’s smile had been endless on their second date. More than he had ever done as a customer at the bistro.
When they’d first started spending time together, it was just fun walks around the village after her shift ended, swapping stories and laughing easily. Once she’d called him Joe, only to be corrected sternly. Joe Russo was an uncle whom he despised. He would only answer to Joseph. Cate liked the name because it made her think of the Bible story of Joseph and his many-colored coat.
He said he was planning to go into real estate, make a ton of money, and “own this town.” She’d teased that maybe then he could afford to buy one of her paintings. They’d both laughed, then hugged, which had led to their first kiss.
When he’d asked her out on a date, she’d accepted easily, thinking this was the kind of boy her parents would have wanted for her. He was well - dressed, clean - shaven, and polite. His family had lived in New York for a long time, albeit in a suburb called Long Island. He was the opposite of her boyfriend Drew back in Arizona — in appearance, in education, in goals for his life. He had goals for his life.
When he’d picked her up for her first date, he’d been stunningly dressed, like out of a menswear magazine. Not for the first time, she’d wondered at his age. While he talked about the college courses he was taking and his round - cheeked face looked youthful, he spoke with the maturity of someone a decade older.
As he helped her into the black town car, she caught him eyeing her casual gray knit tunic over plaid leggings and scuffed Dr. Martens boots with a slight frown on his face. But the rest of the night, he never gave her clothes another glance.
From the outside, the restaurant had looked too small to do much business, but once inside it was spacious and exquisite — an ornate cavern. She imagined Alice following the White Rabbit down its hole and winding up in such a place.
Everything on that first date with Joseph had been so magical and romantic that when he’d asked her out again — this time to celebrate what she’d whispered to him would actually be her eighteenth birthday — she’d happily agreed.
“I want to do it up right for your eighteenth, Cate. Welcome you to adulthood.”
On September 6th at 9:15, Joseph was waiting in the town car outside the bistro again. This time, Cate wore a short, sleeveless dress of mauve velvet over sheer black tights and her boots. She’d felt the outfit stayed true to her artistic side but was fancy enough for another posh dining experience.
He had an open bottle of champagne and two long slender glasses. It was like something out of Cinderella. They’d sipped and talked and laughed while the car made its way uptown and then through Central Park. The driver had let them off outside a midtown restaurant connected to an elegant - looking hotel.
Inside the lobby, Joseph had led her into a private alcove, where they’d ordered linguini with red clam sauce and more champagne.
“This place … so much history. Do you like history? In the early twentieth century, around World War One, some famous writers and intellectuals met here and formed a round table of Manhattan literati.”
Cate nodded and emptied her champagne glass, imagining famous people seated at the table next to them. She wished she could look up the meaning of “literati,” as it sounded so beautiful. He was trying so hard to show her his New York — different from the one she saw every day in the East Village. He’d been so polite, so respectable, so attentive to her. Apart from her parents, no one had ever shown her that kind of attention.
Now in this strange hotel room where she’d awoken alone, she stepped into a hot shower, desperate to rinse off the entire night. Something on her upper chest stung and she glanced down to see a red circle above her left breast. She dragged herself out and to the mirror, gasping. Someone had bitten her hard enough to draw blood. A perfect set of upper and lower teeth marks. A whimper escaped her throat. She’d been drugged, hurt, raped. She should … she should call the police, right? She should report this. Her whole pelvic area throbbed.
Then she thought about what would be involved in talking to the police — the kind of questions she would be asked. Did she know her attacker? Yes. Was she sexually active? No. But she and Drew had gotten pretty close, right before she’d gone off to boarding school. And anyway, these were questions she didn’t think she could bear to be asked.
Mostly, though, she worried they would discover her fake ID. What would Brenden say when he found out? He’d have to fire her when he found out the truth. What would she do then? Call her sister? Cate winced, imagining how that conversation might go.
Now the tears were coming. She couldn’t report it. She … she didn’t know — wouldn’t be able to say what happened. Did she really want to risk losing what had taken so much to achieve?
I want out of here, she thought as she stumbled back to the bedroom. Someone had folded her clothing on the chair, her Doc Martens placed neatly beneath. Joseph? Had he stared down at her while he carefully folded her things? How long had he played with her like a rag doll while she lay there, completely knocked out and helpless?
She dressed and summoned the courage to walk out into the hotel corridor in her date clothes. Right before the lights had gone out in the town car, she’d felt his arm around her shoulders, drawing her in. Then she’d awakened this morning, feeling like a used and wadded-up tissue. Pressing the elevator button, Cate looked down the hall to see where the wailing child was and realized the sound was in her own head.
On a night when she should have been celebrating with people who cherished her, Cate learned for the first time that people could be both charming and treacherous. Later, she would hear it called psychopathy or an antisocial personality, fancy terms that warn you not to trust what you are seeing and hearing. You had to develop a feel for it, like the sense that told you if a horse was going to buck you off, or when a dog had bite in him, or if a schoolmate was going to trash you behind your back.
Every morning, she would examine the bite wound over her left breast. It was finally healing, but she feared it would leave a scar. Mostly she feared she would see it every time she looked in the mirror, even if others didn’t. So, when it was sufficiently healed, she stopped at the tattoo shop that sat opposite the Foxy Hound. She emerged two hours later with the small owl perched on a dreamcatcher, inked above her heart. She prayed that the combined symbols would give her future wisdom and protection against snakes and other predators.
For a while, Cate feared she would encounter Joseph in the bistro again, that he’d pretend like nothing had happened. But he never did come back. Good riddance, she’d thought. She’d rather devote her lonely nights to her artwork than feel that vulnerable with anyone ever again.
Then she found out she was pregnant.
Chapter 32
August 11, 2019, Finley Cabin
She is on a rollercoaster, climbing high above a fair. Crowds of people swarm below her. As the cart crests the highest hill and begins to speed up, she sees the dark - haired little boy standing apart, his arms stretched out to her. A man stands behind him, his hands over the boy’s eyes.
“Mama, I love you. Where are you?” the boy shouts.
She reaches for him but her car rushes past and then heads down and quickly around the tracks until it slows to climb again. She is looking everywhere for the boy. She can’t see him, but she hears his voice.
