Part 3
Nook stood beyond the glass. He rubbed his face along the edge of the storm door, paused, and lifted his left front foot.
Above it, a strip of skin showed through the fur.
Ada opened the inside door, leaving the glass between them. He shifted his foot again. The mark looked narrow and freshly rubbed.
She went to the telephone.
Ben arrived to an empty porch. He photographed the tracks and examined the damp streak Nook had left on the frame. In the morning he returned to follow the prints through Ada’s back acreage.
She watched him come out of the trees carrying an evidence bag. Inside lay a bent length of wire with black hair twisted into it.
He showed her where an illegal loop had been fastened beside a hare trail. Nook had pulled it loose.
Farther along the boundary, a snowmobile track cut across her posted property line.
“Gordon traps,” Ada said.
Ben sealed the bag. “I’ll speak with him. You leave that to me.”
“He was asking about the tracks that first week.”
“So might somebody who noticed them. We need more than that.”
A road sighting reached the diner, and by afternoon people were pricing Nook’s hide over their meals. The first price was a year’s wages. By the time Ada heard the tale, it had almost doubled.
Ben told her there was no lawful buyer waiting to make anyone rich. The gossip, he said, could still get Nook killed.
Gordon appeared after supper in his own pickup. He stood on the porch with his gloves on and asked whether she was running low on salt.
“You just brought some.”
“Thought I’d check.” His gaze went toward the shed. “People figure that cat belongs to you.”
“People ought to find work.”
He rubbed at a glove seam. “Government takes him, you won’t have much say. There are other arrangements.”
Ada kept her hand against the door.
“What arrangements?”
“Private collections. People who know how to keep something rare. An introduction could be worth a fair amount.”
She shut the door before he finished looking at her.
This time she made the call immediately. Ben questioned Gordon that evening. There was no animal in sight, no transport crate, no trap tying him to Ada’s land. Ben could watch him and follow leads. He could not open every locked outbuilding merely because Ada was certain.
The cage trap came out of her yard soon afterward. Too many people knew where it was, and Ben did not want curiosity drawing more visitors to the house. Lena secured her equipment in a shed at the fire station and rented a motel room for the week. She and Ben checked the forest cameras each evening. A warden from the neighboring district helped cover the plowed road whenever a nighttime sighting came in.
Ada listened to these arrangements with the saucer drying beside her sink.
Ben noticed the black hair caught in its chipped edge.
“I haven’t brought him indoors,” she said.
“Have you fed him?”
She reached for a towel.
“Ada, somebody put wire on your land. Every meal you leave tells Nook to come back to the same place.”
She dried the saucer and turned it facedown.
It remained on the counter that night. The following evening, she set a little venison near the far end of the porch, beyond the window. She did not call him.
When she retrieved the empty dish, she washed it before breakfast.
Snow accumulated along the windowsills. A brief thaw settled it, and freezing rain sealed the drifts with a hard crust. A week after Nook’s first injured return, Denise came up again.
This time she carried two library books. She asked for a screwdriver and repaired the loose mudroom hinge while Ada cut vegetables for stew. They discussed the hospital, the price of heating wood, and a book neither of them liked. Denise stayed away from the cupboard where the saucer was kept.
Ada went to bed before eleven. Denise was still reading downstairs.
The knock against the storm door came shortly before midnight.
Ada found Nook with ice beading the hair along his back. His head kept turning toward the woods. Before Denise reached her, Ada had opened the door.
He slipped into the mudroom and crouched on Walter’s old canvas coat. Ada had left it there after bringing in wood. Nook licked at the bare strip above his foot and would not settle when Denise approached.
Ada went in alone.
At the sound of her slippers, he lowered his head. The faint, rough vibration came again, just as it had through the green wool that first night.
For half an hour, she stood near him while melting ice spread across the floor.
Denise waited at the inner doorway with the telephone.
“Let me call Ben,” she said.
“He’ll leave when he hears the truck.”
“We need him somewhere safe before that happens.”
Ada closed the inner door.
She heard Denise move through the kitchen toward the other entrance. Nook rose at once. He paced along the outer wall, turned sharply, and reached for the storm-door latch.
Ada looked at the raw place on his leg, then at his ears, which kept pivoting toward the darkness.
By the time Denise came around, Ada’s fingers were on the handle.
“Please wait,” her daughter said.
Nook struck the door with one broad foot.
Ada opened it.
He ran past the woodshed. The door had scarcely closed before a sharp metallic report came from the trees, followed by a cry that sent the telephone out of Denise’s hand and onto the floor…
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