Кроха - Dedication

Having missed supper, he spared a few moments to stalk the trail, hoping to assuage the hollowness in his belly. Slipping across the room following the mousy enticement, he had doubled back where it was stronger—when a swift small shadow fled past his nose. Damned mouse exploded right past him! Enraged to have missed it, he leaped where the shadow paused for an instant. He missed again, the tip of its tail vanishing beneath the bed. Well, hell!

Bellying under the bed among inert dust mice, he found where the little beast had disappeared. Where the molding was warped, concealing a sizable hole behind the wooden trim.

Crouching to peer in he saw a tangle of chewed-up paper, and the smell of mouse was strong. He was staring at the edge of a mouse nest: torn papers deep and cozy. He tensed when something small stirred within. Hungrily he flashed his paw in, fast as lightning he grabbed—and drew back faster, hissing, pain shooting through his paw.

A half-grown mouse clung to his paw, its sharp teeth sunk deep in his tender pad. The tiny animal glared at him with rage. Joe shook his paw and backed away, the angry mouse clinging.

In all his days, in all his battles with enemies twice his size, from fighting raccoons to enraged dogs, he had never been attacked by a mouse. He stared at it, shocked; he was about to pull the cheeky youngster off his paw and crunch and swallow it. But it was so small and so damnednervy. The stupid mouse had way more courage than sense. Joe bared his teeth over it. One chomp and it would be gone, warming his hungry belly.

In the second that he hesitated, the mouse bit him harder. Angrily Joe swatted the little bastard off with his other paw. It was so bold he couldn’t eat it. It stared up at him, squeaking angrily, then fled back into the hole.

Peering in, Joe prayed the little varmint wouldn’t charge out and grab his whiskered nose. He couldn’t believe the nerve of the creature.

But now the nest was empty, the mouse had vanished. There were no others. Had they run away at his disturbance? Nothing there now but the soft paper bed itself. Joe studied the tangle of chewed-up paper, each piece colored as bright as Christmas wrappings. Tiny scraps gleaming red, green, blue: a nest of scraps as brilliant and shiny as . . .

As brightly colored photographs.

Photographs, diligently chewed into hundreds of pieces, torn to line a rodent’s nest.

Gingerly he reached a paw in, hoping the coast was still clear. Carefully he examined the edges where the mother mouse’s mastication had not been so thorough. She had created a soft bed in the center, but had left the outer portion in larger scraps only lightly torn apart. Joe clawed out a few pieces, some nearly an inch across.

Yes, torn photographs. A shot of green grass with a streak of muddy path. The toe of a jogging shoe, mud-stained. The cuff of black jogging pants. All common items, but views that had, for some reason, stirred Ben to record them.

Once he’d printed them, had Ben hidden them in the hole not thinking about mice? And the mouse, typical opportunist, had begun at once to line her nest. Or had Ben hidden them somewhere else in the room, and the mouse dragged them here to make her nest?

He imagined Juana, in her straight black uniform skirt, having to crouch low, her face to the floor to peer into the opening beneath the warped baseboard. Crouching so low might have put more stress on her mechanical knee than she wanted, and she’d made short work of the search.

How, Joe wondered, do I report the torn photographs without making Juana look bad for missing them? And how, in fact, do I report this at all without hinting at my identity? How many snitches crawl around under beds looking in mouse holes? Why had this supposedly human snitch thought to peer inside a mouse nest; why would he ever imagine a mouse might be hoarding useful evidence?

Maybe he should just forget this one, abandon this particular tip. Were the torn photos worthreporting and thus stirring anew whatever suspicions Harper already had about the snitch? Maybe the department would gather enough information without this very dicey report.

But as he leaped to the windowsill and slipped out of the apartment, latching the screen behind him, he knew he would make the call. This one was too good not to pass on to the chief. Time to head home and call Max again, he thought, smiling. And, listening to his rumbling stomach,Time to hit the refrigerator—leave the mouse, go for the cold spaghetti. Then call Max. Licking his whiskers, he took off across the rooftops.

16

Joe’s second call to Max was disappointing.

After the intelligence that Max had shared with him earlier in the day, he’d thought their relationship had geared up to a new and more intimate confidence.

Not so.

As Joe sat on Clyde’s desk using the cell phone, trying to maintain the heightened relationship, telling Max about the mouse nest, the chief dropped back to his closemouthed demeanor of earlier calls, the one-way snitch-to-cop dialogue that Joe was used to. Well, what could you expect? Listening to Joe’s wild tale of a mouse and torn photos, of course he’d clam up. “What were you doing poking around in mouse holes, what were you doing in Ben’s apartment? That’s a crime scene.”

“The crime tape was gone,” Joe said. “The windows were open. I was standing at the window looking in, wondering if your detectives missed anything, when this mouse ran across the floor. I guess mice take over right away when a place is empty. It had a piece of shiny red paper stuck to its fur.

“I remembered what you said about photographs. That paper was bright and shiny enough to have been chewed off a photo, and it made me wonder. I climbed in the window, had a look under the bed where the mouse had gone, and found the nest.”

Max’s heavy silence made him want to hang up and pretend he’d never made the call. Sitting among the clutter of Clyde’s bills and catalogs, he knew he’d talked himself into a corner.

But then Max said, sounding only slightly reluctant, that someone would investigate the mouse hole, and he thanked Joe and hung up.

Now Joe lay in his tower speculating on what would come from that phone call. Hoping the photos would be worth the effort—his bitten paw still hurt. And then thinking about the one missing fact that Max and Bonnie Rivers knew and that he didn’t. About the real heart of the puzzle: the rest of the information on the San Francisco trial, the facts that he’d missed when he arrived late at Bonnie’s to eavesdrop through the front window.

A murder trial, but whose trial? What kind of murder? And when? He had left Celeste Reece’s house knowing more than when he arrived, but not knowing enough, not knowing what the department knew.

First thing in the morning he’d find out, when he hit Harper’s office. Now, curling among his pillows, looking out his tower windows at the night, he tried to be satisfied with that. At least now his belly was full of supper: cold spaghetti and smoked salmon that he’d scarfed down before he called Max. Yawning, he was dropping into sleep when below in the house, the phone rang. Two rings, then Ryan or Clyde picked up on one of the downstairs phones; he could hear no voice from Clyde’s study. All was silent again and he drifted off, he was down into heavy sleep, into a deep dream, when the doorbell rang and Ryan’s excited squeal jerked him wide awake.

Ryan never squealed. It was not a scream but a high, delighted exclamation. He heard several voices all at once, excited male and female voices jangling together and then Ryan pounding up the stairs, Rock thumping and barking beside her. Her voice rose among the rafters and through his cat door as if the house were afire.

“Joe! Joe, are you there? Wake up! They’re home! They’re here!”

Joe yawned. Lucinda and Pedric? Well, good, it was about time. To go running off to Alaska just when—

“Kit and Pan are home. Kit and Pan are here! Wake up!”

He shot out from among the pillows, belted in through his cat door, and crouched on the rafter staring down. Ryan stood looking up at him, her velvet jogging suit wrinkled, her dark hair tousled. “Kit’s home! Pan’s home! Oh, come down! They’re here! Wilma brought them.”

Clyde appeared behind her, Rock crowding between them. Wilma hurried up the stairs, too, Dulcie tucked up in a fold of her red cloak. Kit and Pan raced up past them, flew up the stairs, and reared up, staring at Joe. He wanted to leap down yowling, wanted to pummel Pan and caress Kit as he’d done when she was a youngster—but even as delight rushed through him, Joe felt sick.

He looked down at the two cats crowding between Ryan and Rock, the red tomcat serious and silent, Kit’s black-and-brown fur all atangle, her yellow eyes huge. For a moment their looks were steady with satisfaction at being home. But then they let their pain show, their deep and terrible pain.

They knew. They knew that Misto was dying.

“Dulcie told us,” Kit said in a small voice. Pan’s amber eyes were filled now only with rising dread, his distress terrible to see. Joe dropped to the desk and to the floor and pressed against Pan. He put his chin over Pan’s shoulder, in a tomcat kind of hug. Pan pressed his face hard against Joe; they stood so for a long time before Pan turned away, hanging his head, and Joe moved to comfort Kit. But Ryan picked Pan up, holding him close, pressing her face against him, her dark hair tangled over his red coat. He snuggled his face into her throat, shivering.

And as Joe licked and nuzzled Kit, her yellow eyes were filled with such conflicting emotions. Her tears, her pain for Misto were terrible, her devastation at the old cat’s illness. When Misto had first arrived in Molena Point, Kit had followed and followed him over the rooftops, begging for his stories, listening to his ancient tales. He was the closest to a father she’d ever had.

But now Joe could see, even through Kit’s pain for Misto, a spark of wonder, too. Despite her hurt and grieving, he could see in her eyes a rising joy at the thought of Dulcie’s kittens. Sadness and wonder burned together, now, within Kit’s small tortoiseshell being.

Joe was hardly aware when Clyde picked him and Kit up and they moved down the stairs. Wilma carrying Dulcie, Ryan hugging Pan over her shoulder, they made a strange procession through the house and out to the drive. They all tucked up in Wilma’s car, Clyde beside Wilma, Ryan in the backseat, the cats cuddled among them. They headed for the Firettis’ cottage, dreading the moments ahead. Kit, in the front seat beside Wilma, pressed against Pan. Pan licked her face but then turned away, grim and withdrawn.

Dulcie had told them about Misto’s illness only a long time after she burst in the house catching their scent and letting out a mewl of joy. Going quiet, letting them sleep, she had waited in silence for a long while, tucked up in Wilma’s lap. But then when Kit and Pan did wake, and Kit jumped down to nuzzle Dulcie, she backed away with a yowl of surprise. Dulcie smelled different. “Oh, my!” Kit stared at Dulcie, her yellow eyes wide. “Kittens! You’re carrying kittens!”

Dulcie laughed and lashed her tail and looked very proud of herself. Pan came close and sniffed, and backed away again with a typical tomcat shyness.

It was only after Kit had sniffed Dulcie all over and asked too many questions, and Pan asked questions, only later that Dulcie put out a paw at last to silence them, and sat quietly looking at them both.

Kit and Pan grew immediately very still, shivering at Dulcie’s solemn look. When, gently and softly, Dulcie told them about Misto, Pan had slunk away into the hall by himself, where he curled up against the wall, nose to tail, rigid and grieving.