Кроха - Dedication

Beside her, Joe Grey was frowning. If he was annoyed or amused at her thieving, he said nothing. “Should we report that guy? Head for your house, and call the chief?”

“What are we going to report? He didn’t attack the woman. Maybe she’ll report it, maybe she’ll call in.”

“But we saw him. A kid . . .”

“What did we see, Joe? Dark clothes, a black hoodie, and he was gone. We don’t know if he would have attacked her. He was so bundled up, we don’t know if that was a kid. Maybe a small adult.”

Dulcie sat watching him, her tail twitching. “Let’s wait, see if she makes the call. If we call in on something so vague . . . that doesn’t help the department’s confidence in us. They have enough questions about our phone calls, we don’t need to make one that’s so . . . uncertain.” She looked at him steadily, her green eyes wide.

Joe Grey flicked an ear. He knew she was right. Every tip they offered the PD, like every bit of evidence, needed to be solid. Not just a quick glimpse of someone’s back, when they couldn’t identify him and didn’t know what he meant to do.

They lingered in the bushes until two officers left the station through the heavy glass door. Slipping in past their heels, the two cats swerved to the right through prisonlike bars into the shadows of the holding cell.

This was not their usual mode of entry. Ordinarily they would stroll into MPPD as brazen as a pair of two-bit lawyers come to bail out a scuzzy client. But today, crouching beneath the bunk that hung from chains in the wall, wrinkling their noses at the stink of stale booze and stale sweat from generations of detainees, they peered warily toward the reception counter.

They would not be greeted today with joy and petting and a little snack from their favorite clerk. No homemade cookies or fried chicken, no hugs and sweet words from blond, pillow-soft Mabel Farthy. Mabel was in the hospital’s rehab, recovering from back surgery. The cats missed her and they worried over her, as did all the department. And they knew, too, that if this sour-faced substitute clerk caught them in the station again she’d pitch a fit, would summon an officer to throw them out—though the officer would only smile, would listen to her complaint, but then would go about his own business, leaving the cats to do as they liked. And Evijean wouldn’t snatch them up herself; she was too afraid of long claws and sharp teeth.

3

The lobby of Molena Point PD featured the one holding cell just to the right of the glass doors as you entered. Here a drunk could be temporarily confined or prisoners held for a short period while waiting to be booked. Beyond the holding cell was an austere seating area: seven folding metal chairs, no coffee table strewn with magazines, no potted plants to cheer the nervous visitor. Civilians waited here for their appointment with an officer or detective, perhaps to offer information, to identify stolen items, to pore through a gallery of mug shots, or to file a bad-tempered complaint against some unruly neighbor. To the left of the waiting area ran the long reception desk on which, over the years, Joe and Dulcie had enjoyed Mabel Farthy’s gentle petting and ear rubs, her one-sided conversations and, most of all, her homemade treats. Mabel liked to cook; she often brought a freshly baked cake or cookies for the officers, and always the cats got their share. Mable could laugh and hold her own with the men she worked with; everyone loved her. Her replacement, Evijean Simpson, didn’t know how to smile.

Evijean didn’t bring treats for man or beast, she had no rapport with even the kindest officers, and certainly she had no fellow feeling for a cat. She didn’t want stray animals, as she described Joe and Dulcie, to be slipping in contaminating the station with fleas and cat fur.

Evijean was so short that, from the cats’ angle on the floor of the holding cell, she was barely visible behind the tall counter. They could see little more than the top of her head, her pale hair pulled back in a bun with ragged ends sticking out. She seemed hardly a presence at all as she moved about among the state-of-the-art radios and electronics. The cats watched until she turned away to stack papers into the copier; then they slid out through the cell bars, made a fast dash to the base of the counter below her line of sight. From there, a stealthy creep down the hall to the half-open door of the chief’s office, where they crouched listening.

At first they heard only Max’s voice, but then Charlie laughed. Comfortable husband-and-wife talk followed, implying no one else was present. Pushing inside, they saw the two were not alone.

Max Harper was in uniform this morning, not his usual lean western shirt and jeans. He sat at his desk alternately going through a stack of files and entering information on the computer. Charlie sat at one end of the leather couch texting on her phone, though such electronic preoccupation was not Charlie’s habit. Her kinky red hair was freshly brushed, smoothed back in a ponytail. Her jeans and pink sweatshirt smelled of fresh hay and clean horses. She wore dangly gold earrings this morning, and had changed her work boots for a pair of handsome leather sandals, which meant that she and Max were probably headed out to lunch.

Detective Dallas Garza occupied one of the leather chairs, reading a report, his tweed sports coat thrown over the other chair, his polo shirt open at the collar. His smooth, tan face was clean-shaven, his short black hair neatly trimmed. He glanced up at Joe and Dulcie, his dark Latino eyes amused, as usual, at how the cats made themselves at home. Only occasionally did Dallas watch them with an uncertain frown.

Though no one in the department knew the cats could speak, they all knew, well, the phone voices of their phantom snitches. Max and the detectives had learned to trust implicitly those anonymous called-in tips; they took the information and ran with it, put that intelligence to good use. No one imagined the informants were their sleek, four-pawed visitors, the department’s favorite freeloaders.

So far, the relationship between officers and cats was comfortable and efficient. During the cats’ anonymous messages, no officer in the department cross-examined the caller or asked his name. They’d learned to trust the information they were given. If the cats dragged a stolen clue to the station and left it, with a phone call to alert that it was at the back door or inside a squad car, there were no questions. “Found” evidence, useful Visa bills, or a “lost” cell phone? The detectives used what they got and then generated their own follow-up investigation, digging out background facts that would stand in court.

If ever in the future the cats were careless and were caught in the act, discovered talking on the phone, Joe didn’t want to think about the consequences. Their well-oiled and effective deception would be down the tubes, the work they loved destroyed in one careless moment. A cop was all about facts; his thinking was no-nonsense and meticulous. Clues, hints, anonymous tips, a good detective might put those together in new and creative combinations and come up with the missing piece. But no cop believed the impossible.

Hopping on the couch beside Charlie, Dulcie stretched out across her lap. Joe looked up into Charlie’s lean, freckled face; Charlie always had a happy look even when life, for the moment, took an ugly turn. She petted them both, her green eyes amused at their private secret. She didn’t glance up when Max’s phone buzzed, but continued to stroke Dulcie and Joe. She did look when Max said sharply, “When? What time? Put Davis on.”

He listened, scribbling notes on a printout that he’d inserted in a yellow pad. “You have his belongings? Davis, is his wife there? Stay with her, and see her home. See that she has someone with her.” He listened again, then, “I’ll talk with the coroner.”

He hung up, looked over at Dallas. “Merle Rodin’s dead. Cerebral contusion, from the blow he took. You want to go on over, finish up the paperwork while Davis takes care of the wife, gets her statement, makes sure she has friends or family around her?” This part of police work was never pleasant. They did what they could, to ease the pain that nothing could ease.

The Latino detective rose and pulled on his jacket. He gave Charlie a brief hug, and left the office, and Max looked across at Charlie, filling her in. “Lab has the brick that may have hit Rodin. A brick from the border of the flower bed, with what looks like bloodstains. Dr. Alder says there are particles embedded in the scalp that could be the same material.” Now it was the coroner’s and the lab’s job. Charlie’s hand was tense, poised on Joe Grey’s shoulder.

She said, “He could have fallen on it? Or that street scum picked it up and hit him? That poor old man.” Charlie was stoic about most village crime, or appeared to be. The cats knew she often concealed her distress from Max—he had problems enough without worrying about her, too. He didn’t need a distraught wife. But these senseless attacks on frail citizens had left her enraged, feeling helpless—as frustrated as the department when the attacks continued and they had no viable clue yet, to give them a lead.

“The blood type on the brick,” Max said, “matches Rodin’s. But it will take a while for the DNA.” The lab in Salinas was always backed up. Max turned off his computer and rose. The cats waited until he and Charlie left for a quick lunch, then they hit the chief’s desk.

Pawing through the stack of files, Dulcie took the corner of Max’s yellow pad in her teeth, pulled it out from under the folders, and opened it with her claws.

Beneath pages of notes was a printed list of the seven attacks, with Max’s penciled notes in the margins. The victims’ individual files, with additional information, would be kept secure on the computer. This page needed no securing; most of this—until the attack on Rodin—had already been in the local paper, on local radio or TV. There had been seven previous victims including one death when banker Ogden Welder died in the hospital. Merle Rodin was the eighth mark, and the second to die. Max’s new notation gave the hour, location, and date. Cause of death would wait for the coroner’s report.

One interesting fact, new to the cats, was that three of the victims had only recently moved to the village from San Francisco; and that one had been vacationing there, taking a week off from his job at San Francisco General Hospital as a physician’s assistant.

“So, San Francisco vectors in,” Dulcie said. She cut a look at Joe, knowing what his take would be. Joe didn’t believe in coincidence. If you dug long enough you could usually claw out a connection. The tabby gazed hungrily at Max’s computer, thinking of the victims’ files. With cool speculation, she reached a paw.

Joe stopped her with a quick swipe of claws. “If Evijean barges in here, finds us alone before the lit screen, you want to guess what would happen?”

Dulcie smiled a crooked smile, but she jumped down. They’d have to wait until Max or one of the detectives was into the program, some moment when they could lie on the desk idly washing their paws as they shared departmental information.

Or wait until one or two officers stopped by Joe’s house after his shift, maybe for a few hands of poker with Max and Clyde. Max would talk freely in the Damen household, as would Ryan’s Uncle Dallas. Dulcie looked at Joe. “How long do we wait for a poker game?”

Joe shrugged, he wasn’t hopeful.

Dulcie said, “Talk to Ryan, she’ll get something going.” This wouldn’t be the first time Ryan would conduct behind-the-scene assistance—she was deceptively casual when she eased Clyde into an unplanned poker night for Joe’s benefit: Joe’s dark-haired, blue-eyed housemate did love a conspiracy.