Кроха - Dedication

He parked in a handicapped spot in front of the Village Inn. He eased out, pulled his crutches out, locked the car, and swung along the narrow walk that led behind the hotel to the little courtyard, to the row of small shops tucked in around a patch of garden, heading for the jeweler’s door. There were miniature courts all over the village with their little, half-hidden vendors. Each retreat was, to a tourist, a new and exciting discovery; that’s one of the reasons visitors came to Molena Point, for this kind of special charm.

He didn’t like his reflection flicking along the fog-dim windows. His white beard and crutches, his hobbling walk made him look older than he was; some days he felt old, but he didn’t like to see it.

The village was nearly deserted this early, the stores not open yet, and the streets so foggy. The few early tourists would still be holed up, and most of the locals, too. But the jeweler was always there early working on the books, cleaning up, puttering around; even if he kept the door locked, he’d let you in if he knew you.

The newspaper warned folks not to go into empty courtyards and alleys alone, since the attacks began. But this court was safe enough, being right by the hotel. The paper claimed the cops didn’t have a lead yet to the source of the crimes—and the Molena Point cops were good at what they did. Too bad, nice little village like this, so much crime suddenly. Maybe he was getting old. He didn’t like the changes he was seeing in the world, didn’t like what the world had become.

Moving on into the courtyard, walking slowly, he placed his crutches carefully on the uneven bricks so not to stumble on the edge of a flower bed and tip over into the cyclamens. Their array of red and pink flowers had bloomed all winter among their intricately patterned leaves. They would die back soon now, once summer was on them. Sure enough, there were lights on in the jewelry store. He was heading across the court, for the glass door, when he was hit from behind. His crutches flew out from under him. He spun around, striking out at the attacker. He hit a glancing blow with his left fist and fell sprawling, his arm twisted under him. His legs twisted, too, tangled in the crutches. A violent pain dizzied him where his head was struck.

He didn’t know how long he’d lain there, the wind knocked out of him, when he heard the siren, a blurred, faraway sound as if he were half asleep. One whoop, then silence. Then a tangle of voices, and people kneeling around him, putting machines on him to take his blood pressure, his pulse. A man wiping at his forehead with something cold and stinging. Uniformed medics lifting him onto a stretcher, covering him with a blanket, really careful of his arm, lifting it gently. He didn’t try to move it, he knew it was broken. He didn’t know, until later in the hospital, that he’d lost his watch.

He didn’t know, and never would know, how the Swiss Army watch was found, that two cats found it lying in the flower bed deep beneath the cyclamens.

Joe Grey and Dulcie discovered the watch long after Merle Rodin had been lifted into the medics’ van and driven away, after the cops had finished their search of the scene and the crowd had dispersed. Merle wasn’t there to see the gray tomcat and his tabby lady slip down a vine from the hotel roof and trot across the courtyard to where he had lain; to see a discerning tabby nose and a gray and white nose sniffing among the cyclamens, twitching at the smell of turpentine that the cops, with their inferior sense of smell, had missed. Merle didn’t see a soft tabby paw reach down among the leaves to investigate the wristwatch or see Dulcie sniff at it again. He didn’t see the two cats slip out of the courtyard leaving the watch where it lay, the cats galloping fast up the street, noses to the faint breeze following the turp-scented air where the attacker had fled.

Fog held the stink of turpentine low against the sidewalk. But as Joe and Dulcie raced after the scent that had transferred to the mugger when Merle struck out at him, the smell vanished. It ended at the curb, replaced by the smell of exhaust as if the attacker had stepped into a car and sped away.

The street was empty. No car moved now in either direction. But then as the fog shifted, the heady smell of sandalwood drowned all other scents. The cats slid into the shadows as the proprietor of the oriental rug shop passed them, sandalwood aftershave drifting back to them as he paused to unlock his store. As he disappeared inside, Dulcie sniffed again at the curb.

“There’s not only exhaust,” she said, looking up at Joe. She watched as he, too, sniffed again at the concrete.

“Oil,” he said, his yellow eyes brightening, “bicycle oil. Maybe he didn’t get away in a car.” He sniffed again, breathing deeply, his whiskers twitching. “But still a hint of the turpentine, too. Maybe we can catch him.” Noses to the pavement like a pair of tracking hounds, they raced away, ran out along the street swerving past parked cars, glad there was hardly any traffic, that they needn’t dodge moving wheels.

The smells they followed continued for three blocks but then suddenly the turp and oil were gone, vanished in the wake of a noisy street sweeper, its huge roller-brushes sucking away every leaf, every scrap of paper, and every errant smell. Its roar drove instinctive fear through the cats: every fiber of their beings trembled, fearful the hungry juggernaut would crush them if they drew close. They might be wiser than most cats, they might be brave when facing a human killer, but this monster reached down into their darkest, ancient instincts, terrifying them both.

Only when the sweeper had passed did they relax. They followed it, sniffing along its wake, but no scent remained. The giant spinning brushes had destroyed the trail. And the perp himself was long gone. A faint sea wind began to tease them, and to stir and thin the fog. Soon all they could smell was salty iodine, a hint of dead fish, and the pine and cypress trees that sheltered the narrow streets. Glancing at each other, the cats were of one thought.

Leaping up the nearest oak, they headed for Molena Point PD. By this time, Chief Harper would have information on the victim: driver’s license, other identification from the man’s billfold, maybe a hospital report on his condition. Maybe the responding officer’s field notes were already on Max’s desk. Off they raced over tiles and shingles, Joe’s mind fully on the assaults. But as the gray tomcat tried to understand the perp’s motive, Dulcie lagged behind, feeling tired again suddenly, feeling awkward and heavy.

She didn’t like to think that as her pregnancy advanced, she would become truly clumsy, that she wouldn’t be able to keep up with Joe. Who needed a fat, slow partner trying to do detective work? This frustration, plus having lost the trail of the attacker, plus her underlying distress over Misto, left the little tabby padding slowly and disconsolately across the tiled roof of the courthouse.

Ahead on the roof of the PD, Joe had stopped. He stood looking back at her, puzzled by her slow approach, his lady who usually ran circles around him. It was just as she joined him that a woman came out the door of the police station below, her high heels tapping. She didn’t notice her scarf slip off her shoulder to fall among the bushes, a pink scarf hidden now beneath the bottlebrush blooms. Dulcie froze, watching.

The pale pink gauze excited her, brought her sharply alert, stirred in her a possessive greed she hadn’t felt since she was a very young cat. Her longing for that soft, beautiful garment filled her suddenly with a keen, claw-snatching desire. She wanted that scarf. Her passion surged anew from her long-ago thieving days. The pink scarf was hers; the woman had carelessly lost it and now it was meant for her. Her passion returned for the silk stockings she had stolen, the satin teddies she had lifted from neighbors’ bedrooms, slipping out through an open window, the lovely cashmere sweaters she had dragged home and hidden when she was very young—had hidden until Wilma found them, until her embarrassed and amused human housemate had called the neighbors and given them back their treasures. The disappearance of each item, which Dulcie had so cleverly stolen, had broken the little cat’s heart.

Now, awash in her early passion for possession, she flashed past Joe and down the oak and into the bushes. Creeping under the dense and leafy shelter, she snatched the scarf, pawed it into a little bundle in her mouth, and ran, through the bushes and away. She paused only when the tap of high heels returned down the walk. Dropping the scarf, she reared up to look.

Peering over the bottlebrush blooms she watched the woman searching, watched her look all around and then turn back into the station as if to ask if she’d lost the scarf there. Gripping the soft scarf again, Dulcie hurried away beneath the leafy shelter. She stopped only when, glancing out toward the street, she saw a wheelchair coming down the sidewalk beyond the parking lot, a middle-aged woman gliding along turning the wheels with her hands; clearly she was being followed.

She was lean and tanned, her brown hair in a ponytail threaded through the back of a golf cap. She wore cargo pants, the fabric folded neatly beneath a long steel brace on her left leg. Dulcie could see the corner of a blue shopping bag pushed, bulging, into the back pocket of the wheelchair. Four strides behind the woman, a boy in ragged jeans walked silently, the hood of his heavy black sweatshirt pulled up around his face. He moved slowly, keeping his distance and looking in the other direction, but certainly he was following her.

Could this be the mugger, this kid? Dulcie couldn’t see enough of him to tell his age, but his walk was easy, like a boy. She sniffed, but at this distance she caught no turpentine scent, no smell of bicycle oil.

Was he waiting until the wheelchair had passed the PD and was in a more deserted part of the village before he attacked?

But again, why? What was his purpose? The attacker never stole anything; he shoved, pushed someone over, and ran. None of this made sense. A shout stopped the boy in his tracks, and stopped the woman. A shout from atop the roof, shocking Dulcie.

“Look out, you’re being followed. You, boy . . . Get away from her!” Joe’s voice. Oh, he wouldn’t cry out in public, he wouldn’t chance being seen!

She couldn’t see above her, she was too near the building; but Joe would already be gone, safely hidden.

As the boy stood looking, the wheelchair-bound woman spun to face him. When she started after him, the boy ran. He was fast, disappearing in the traffic, dodging cars. She was fast, too, but she stopped at the curb. Two pedestrians had turned to stare, but their attention was on the woman. A bus went by; when it passed, the boy was gone. The two portly tourists, dressed in red sweatshirts, watched the woman for a long moment as she headed away down the street; they talked softly between themselves, then they, too, turned away—and Dulcie’s thieving passion had cooled. Joe Grey’s shout had sharply upset her. It took a lot for a speaking cat to expose himself like that, a lot of nerve even to whisper, in public. Leaving the scarf beneath the bushes, she slipped out into the parking lot where she could see the roof above.

From that distance, rearing up, she could see that the roof was empty. She thought Joe would be behind that tangle of heat vents, of weathered gray pipes and metal boxes that rose up against the clearing sky. She waited, crouching at the edge of the bottlebrush until Joe appeared, slipping out from the galvanized jungle, and came leaping down the oak tree. Dulcie joined him. She would return the scarf later, to the PD, would leave it for the clerk to find. Maybe the woman had left a phone number in case someone discovered it. Guilt touched her only a little; her surge of greed had been deeply therapeutic. She felt like herself again, her passion to steal, her wild dash dragging that soft and silken prize, had left her refreshed and wide awake and like her old, wild self once more—no longer just a pregnant cat growing heavy and lethargic. She was her bright, kitten-self again. Her joy burned young and rash, she was a whole cat once more: thief cat when the mood took her, mother cat, cop cat. She was all together now; she felt strong again, and complete.