Cat Coming Home by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

consciousness, sometimes dropping down into deep black sleep, other times alarmed by disjointed dreams where he was back in the prison yard fighting three inmates, was on the ground trying to get hold of Vic Colletto’s knife, fighting to grab it from him. Surprised and unbelieving when the knife plunged into him, easy as into butter, seeing his blood spurting out. That would wake him, put him back in the hospital, trapped by metal bars and plastic tubes, surrounded by science fiction machines pumping who-knew-what into his veins. He’d lie burning to tear out the tubes, rip them away and rip away the bed’s confining bars. Every waking moment he fought the panic of entrapment. Even the oxygen mask over his face seemed, too often, not to ease his breathing but to constrict it. The doc said that was stress, a residual panic. And then, fullyawake, he’d sink back into a debilitating depression, into the dark futility of his life.
    Sometimes he’d wake thinking about Max Harper, about Max walking into Jack’s house that day and finding Fenner’s body sprawled on the couch, blood sprayed everywhere. Even when he told Max he’d killed Fenner and Max put the cuffs on him, Harper had been more than fair with him. Max had conducted the interview himself, with his two detectives present, the three of them patient and, it seemed to Jack, more in tune with him than he had any right to expect.
    Max had booked him and taken him to jail himself, to the little village lockup, and later had talked with the judge privately, in the judge’s chambers. Max Harper had testified in Jack’s favor; he had Max to thank that he’d gotten off light, with only a conviction of voluntary manslaughter.
    He wouldn’t have minded too much going to prison, except for Lori. Though Cora Lee French and her housemates had made that easier, taking Lori in, giving her the love and stability she needed. Cora Lee had seen that Lori was able to work when she wanted, for that woman building contractor, had even gotten her into a better school when she was so bored with her public school classes.
    Sometimes he thought Lori would be better off without him, that if he were dead, that would put an end to her worry, to her fear for him in prison, and she could get on with her life. Maybe he should have died in this dustup in the prison yard.
    Vic Colletto had worked for him when Jack was partnersin Vincent and Reed Electrical Contractors. He’d fired young Colletto for drinking on the job; the kid had been wiring a house, dead drunk, rolling drunk. Kicked off the job, Colletto had been angry as hell, and now at last he was getting back at him. Vic, who was in for breaking and entering and several counts of theft, had been in Soledad only a few weeks when he challenged him, tried to make him fight. Jack survived in prison by keeping to himself; he’d managed to avoid confrontations until Colletto began a steady diet of harassment. Colletto hung out with several inmates he’d known on the outside, one of them a con artist whom, Jack was pretty sure, he’d seen in Molena Point. He couldn’t remember the circumstances, couldn’t recall his name. The guy was out now, back on the street, and good riddance. Strange, though—it was after he left that Victor’s bullying grew bolder.
    What worried Jack was that Victor’s two brothers lived in the village. If that skuzzy Kent Colletto harassed Lori, or worse, he’d have to try to escape, to get away while he was on garden detail, find Kent and kill him. The thought sickened Jack.
    He wanted to talk with Warden Deaver, get him to call Max Harper with a heads-up on the Collettos, get Harper’s people to keep an eye on Lori. Trouble was, that could backfire. It was hard to know who to trust, even within Molena Point PD. If word got back to Vic’s brothers that the law was protecting Lori, that would wave a red flag in their faces. Lori was thirteen, she was growing up fast and she was probably a lot more savvy than