PAS DE CHAT
Katherine Nabity

Chapter One

Green flowed around her as she leaped effortlessly from branch to branch. The sunlight today had the quality of thick liquid gold as it streamed through the heavy canopy of leaves and branches. She would have rather spent the day in repose in a cool crevice, observing the humidity instead of partaking in it.

But the men were everywhere.

She paused on a thick twisted branch, and scaled several feet down its wide trunk. Her muscles were warm, but not at all fatigued despite how long she had led this chase. In the dappled shadows of her forest, she was hard to see.

These men were experienced. They knew what signs to look for and had trained their eyes to see her. Even the best of them bumbled through the undergrowth. She could hear them well before she smelled their salt or saw their shadows. She felt sorry for them. They were slow and clumsy and hopelessly landbound. They had to strain their bulbous heads and thin necks upward just to see her. But what they lacked in grace, they made up for in persistence. That garnered her respect.

Several were closing in on her once again. To the east, there was one in a sodden white shirt. The stink of his sweat burned her nose. And there off to her left, she heard the clomping feet of the wide man that had been behind her all morning, since the smallest light of the sun crept over the hills. He had hunted her before with the tall, white man. In the distance, there were others that she had passed by. They left silence in their path. Birds flew before them and marmosets kept still and high just in case the men became disinterested in her and decide to hunt other prey.

She growled in frustration. She was being too predictable in her movements, using routes that would normally confound. There were so many of them today. Everywhere she turned, footsteps harried her. Men from two of the old tribes sprinted, bare-foot, alongside men covered in clothes from head to toe. Those men came with metal and noise and acrid, oily clouds. Those men often hunted without hunger or need. There was a shout from below as one of them spotted her.

She pushed off easily with her hind legs and leaped upward into the branches. They could not reach her easily, but their guns could. She struck out south, toward the river. When she was close enough to smell the running water she stopped again to listen. She considered the rapids. Past rain had made the river swift, but it would be an easy enough swim. She crouched and effortlessly bounded to a branch closer to the moving water.

Something was wrong with the river today. The flow had settled into a wider pattern than usual. And there. There was swirl in the current as water backflowed. There was a dam downstream. If she had tried to swim away, they would have captured her. Yes, it was better to stay high.

She made her way up river, up a steep incline, toward the falls. The noise drowned the sound of boots and feet, but she knew where the nearest men were on this side of the river. Without breaking her fluid stride, she jumped across a gap in the trees that spanned the river. There was another shout, and then a sharp pain in her left haunch. She growled as she landed and swiped at the thin dart that protruded from the muscles of her hip. It fell and she was gone before it hit the ground.

There was a moment of fire in her haunch, deep in the muscle where the needle had been. It had been a very long time since a man had wounded her. A very long time. She climbed higher and circled back toward the river in a wide arc. She heard them calling down below, on this side of the river too. But it was time to end this dangerous game they were playing with her. When she returned to the river, she saw one man several yards separated from his companions. He was not a man of her tribes. He had never offered thanks to her or bowed his head in deference. He had never sat alone in the forest as a young man and prayed that she would not come.

She dropped from the lowest tree branch, ten yards above him, and landed silently behind him. Her movements were covered by the sound of the water and he was looking away, trying to catch the attention of one of his compatriots without shouting. With a single bound, she landed on his back, knocking him to the ground. Her claws sprang through the heavy material of his shirt and sank deeply into his flesh. He let out a yelp as the air rushed from his lungs. The dart gun he held in his hands skittered away.

She rose from her crouch on top of him only enough to gain better position. The hat on his head gave him no more protection than the shirt on his back. A man's head was too big for her to entirely fit in her mouth, but the back of the neck, where the spine met the skull was effective. There was a hollow crunch as the bones popped beneath her incisors. Blood and brain matter filled her mouth for a moment and she was tempted to stay and feed. The man across the river had heard the death cry of his fellow hunter, and she saw him turn. With a cry he pointed his rifle at her. She reached out with one great paw, claws bared, and sent the dead man's rifle spinning into the river. And before the other man could shoot, she leapt away, back up into her home of branches and leaves. A dart followed, and lodged in the smooth green of the tree.

She could still taste the man as she chose her next target. For now, she would let the tribesmen live. She was after the unmistakable appearance of the outsiders.

Four more hunters fell. Teeth and claws worked in unison to make quick work of them between each bound upward into the trees. But burning anger made her reckless and a second dart caught her near her tail. It fell out as she sprang away. A third hit her squarely in the side.

She cautioned a glance downward when she reached her perch. The last dart came from a rifle held by brown hands, held by a shirtless barefooted man who had once been spared by her in order to become a man. Not many of the tribesman still held to the ritual, but this one had. And now, unworthy, he had shot her.

Without thinking, she turned and sprang. He did not scream as her claws ripped into him and her jaws clamped down on his wide face. It had been a hasty decision and she immediately regretted her misstep. They surrounded her now and she felt the sting of several more darts as she charged the closest of them. She ripped out his throat and went on to the next in order to make a big enough gap in their defenses. She was covered in blood and was glad they wouldn't be tracking her by smell. More darts zinged past, only a few hitting their mark.

She ran into the forest and prepared to leap upward where she was safer. But she could suddenly feel where each of the darts had hit. Her muscles were beginning to weaken and tire. She jumped, but was unable to catch the branch she wanted. Instead, she scrabbled for hold on the tree's buttressing roots and slowly climbed. Panic kept her moving when she would have rather stopped. Fear was not an emotion that she cared for. How many moons had passed since she last had need of it?

The men were shouting, some making sounds that she was not familiar with. They would have her. Another dart pelted her, but this time it was followed by an angry word from another man. She recognized this one's voice. He was the tall one, very pale like a root that had never seen the sun. He had lived with one of her tribes for a while, and strangely had sat in the moonlight as though he were a child waiting to be a man. Maybe it had been a mistake not to kill him too, when she had the chance.

Her legs gave out, and she half slid, half fell down the trunk of the tree. She kept her feet as she landed, though her legs were threaded with fatigue.

The tall, pale man yelled again and she knew anger in his voice. One of the others said something, but he silenced him. He walked slowly toward her and she twisted in her weakened state to keep her eyes on him. She expected he would have a rifle, and he did, though he carried it pointed downward. And when he was close enough, she could see his eyes through the darkness that was closing in. The awe she saw in him, a man of no tribe she had ever known, was pure and simple. And love. He knew her for what she was.

Chapter Two

Detective Tobel rapped on the door to apartment 6c and waited for an answer.

The dingy white of the door matched the rest of the dim hallway. Paint, stained by cigarette smoke, stretched from the floor to ceiling, broken by dark scuffs and chips from uncounted residents moving furniture in and out of the units that lined the corridor. The landlord had tried to improve the elevator lobby by adding a fake potted plant and a mirror, but the effect was lost when compared to the thread-bare carpets and the cracked arrows above the sliding doors.

Jason knocked again, harder this time to make sure he had been heard. It was well past four in the afternoon and the tenement was alive with the sounds of children home from school. From his vantage point, he could hear the noise of four different sources playing music and could smell meat frying over the vague scent of urine that permeated the entire building.

She wasn't home. Just his luck. He tried again and didn't expect any result. He glanced around and tried not to appear too much like a cop. He could ask around after the whereabouts of 6c's resident, but if her neighbors suspected he was a cop, he wouldn't get any help.

In the mirror, he didn't offer much contrast to his surroundings. His tan coat was light enough to blend into the shadowed walls, and his pale skin and blond hair matched any dappling of light that managed to shine out of the florescent lights above. To his annoyance, his cheeks were still red from the cold trek from his car. He didn't look like a cop, he looked like a twenty-five year old insurance salesman, younger than his years.

He was about to move on to 6b when a shadow moved behind the peephole.

"Hello? Ms. Anderson?" he called.

"What do you want?"

"Ms. Anderson, could you open the door? I'd like to speak to you." He reached into his pocket for his badge.

Locks were undone and the door to 6c opened three inches, the length of a chain latch. Jason held his badge up close enough to be seen through the crack. "I'm Detective Tobel. May I speak with you?"

Worry crossed over the eye that peered through the three-inch crack. The door closed, the chain was slid from its track.

Joanne Anderson wore a heavy dark green robe over pajamas and nappy slippers. Her short hair had been formed into ridges from sleep, but the dark patches below her eyes told a story of unrest.

"Come in," she muttered as she held the top of her robe together. Her skin was pale and blotched with dark freckles across the back of her hands and neck. Jason wondered to where the spots extended and immediately berated himself and banished the thought.

Joanne led him into what passed for a living room and gestured to a chair barer than the carpeting in the hall. She sunk down into a sofa that took up the remaining wall. There was a mess of newspapers strewn across a glass and metal coffee table. No TV, Jason noted. It was probably in the bedroom.

"Your wallet was found at the scene of a crime last night, Ms. Anderson. I suspect that you haven't even realized that it is missing." Jason heard the heater kick in and he unbuttoned his coat before he sat.

Her eyebrows twitched upward over large deep green eyes. "You're right," she said, "I didn't know. Where was it found? Do you have it?"

He produced it from his pocket, and she took it tentatively. Her nails were moderately long and painted an iridescent shade of purple. She didn't wear any rings.

"Thank you," she said. She turned the billfold over and over, but didn't open it.

"Is there anything you might want to tell me, Miss Anderson?"

"I was attacked last night," she said. The words were nearly carried away with the bluster of the heater. Jason might have thought he dreamed them if she hadn't turned her fathomless eyes toward him.

"And you didn't file a report?" She wasn't frail. In fact, within the bundle of the green robe, there was an athletic woman. But the thought of any harm coming to this woman sent anger coursing through Jason's heart. The flush that came to his face caught him off-guard.

Joanne shrugged. "I wasn't injured. The guy came up behind me. I elbowed him and ran."

"You didn't give him your billfold first?"

"No. I had it in the pocket of my coat. He must have reached in and grabbed it."

"How did he know it was in your pocket?" Questions started up in Jason's mind, ratcheting through with the tenacity of a teletype machine. She was very calm. It could be that she was simply tired. Had she slept all day, in shock after the events of the night? Why had she been out that late, obviously alone? There were possibilities that Jason didn't care for. A wad of twenties and tens fattened her wallet.

Her eyes drifted around the room as she shook her head. "He must have seen me at the ATM. I dropped my wallet in my pocket after that. I don't carry a purse."

"Were you depositing money or withdrawing?"

"Depositing my paycheck."

"What were you doing out that late, Miss Anderson?"

"I just got off of work. I'm a bartender at Galvanized," she clarified before Jason could ask the question. "In fact, if we don't finish this up soon, I'm going to be late for my shift."

"Of course," said Jason. That explained her hours, his interruption of her sleep. Galvanized was one of the older clubs in Chicago, which didn't mean that it was one of the best; merely that it had a loyal clientele. "Just a few more questions?"

"Whatever, but I think I'm going to start my breakfast if you don't mind."

She rose from her chair, keeping the freckles on her neck covered with the collar of her robe. Jason followed her to the sixteen square foot nook that served as a kitchen. There was a neat stack of none-the-less dirty dishes next to the sink and a collection of forks and spoons in the basin. Joanne swirled water through the glass pitcher of the coffeemaker in an effort to dispel the brown ring left from the last pot she had brewed.

"Can you describe the man that attacked you? Did you see him at all?" Jason asked.

"Nope. I didn't see him. He came up behind me and I ran when he let go. I was too scared to look back." She filled the coffee filter with gourmet grounds, of higher quality than Jason expected. Everything in the kitchen was mismatched and two-owners-old. But the coffee was sealed in a foil pouch that Joanne stored in her undersized, avocado-colored refrigerator. "Would you like a cup?" she asked.

"No, I'm fine. Thank you." He had been staring. "Where did the attack take place?"

"Alley, off of 6^th and Lex."

"Not exactly a safe place to walk," said Jason.

"Well, it seems like I can take care of myself." She leaned back against the counter and let her beverage percolate.

"Your wallet was found under a dead body in the alley off of 6^th and Lexington, Miss Anderson. His name was Javier Rodriguez. There is a very good possibility that someone else killed Rodriguez not long after you fled."

Her face drained of warm color.

"Did you know Javier Rodriguez?" Javier Rodriguez had a rap sheet literally as long as Jason's arm, and that was the post-juvenile offenses. It really didn't surprise Jason that the man had turned up dead in an alley. The nature of the wounds was the spectacular aspect. The coroner had quickly determined the fatal wound had been to the throat. The spatters of blood in the dirty alley were consistent with that. But Rodriguez's face had been shredded as well, by claws from what Jason couldn't tell.

Joanne shook herself and retrieved a cup from the wire dish rack. "No, I didn't know him."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure!" She placed the mug of coffee down too hard. "I didn't know him, I didn't see him. He attacked me."

"It's alright," Jason said. In the close confines of her kitchen, he reached out and touched her elbow. She breathed hard through her nose, a habit Jason knew from his sisters. She was trying to contain tears. He pulled his hand back, but remembered the warmth that he felt through the green robe. "Did you see anyone else in the alley?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Will you call me if you remember anything? Anything at all?" He pulled out one of his cards from behind his badge and laid it on the counter.

"Yes, of course," she said. "I'm sorry I haven't been more help." Her green eyes held anxiety and fear and sadness.

© 2004 Katherine Nabity