Cat Chase The Moon

23

The courthouse roof didn’t thunder under their paws like the gravel had; they fled along the sloping far side, out of sight of Thelma and, hopefully, of the men racing the roofs behind them. But when the cats dropped down to the lower roof of MPPD, praying the window of the holding cell was open, their pursuers saw them and saw the barred window and they fled, evading the nearby cops. Bailing over the side of the building, swinging down clutching the window moldings and dropping to the sidewalk, they piled into the two cars and were gone. The cats crouched in the shadows smiling, watching them race away.

The high window was wide open to dispel the ripe scent of the holding cell, of the occasional drunken detainee—but tonight, when they looked in, the cell was empty. Though if the rain increased, some homeless people might come in trying to haggle for a bed. Quickly the cats slipped through the small window between the bars, dropped down six feet onto the thin mattress of the narrow bunk and dove under, Courtney pale with fear, her pink nose and ears nearly white.

Even before they could huddle together in the darkest corner, so the young officer at the desk might not see them, a squad car pulled up in the red zone. Peering out, they could see Max Harper at the wheel looking in through the bulletproof glass doors and through the cell bars straight at them, straight into the shadows beneath the cot. Had he seen them racing across the roof, had he seen the men chasing them?

Max sat a minute, frowning. Well, hell, there was the lost calico everyone had made such a fuss over, and Joe Grey and Pan were with her. All three cats were scared as hell! The calico was trembling, the look on her face one of icy fear. Joe Grey and the orange tomcat looked nearly as frightened.

He’d seen those guys chasing them across the roofs, seen the four figures get in their cars and take off. One could be a woman, it was hard to tell, the way the person was dressed. Thelma Luther? He recognized Ulrich Seaver, but he didn’t get a good look at the other two sleazebags; both looked like limo drivers for DeWayne Luther. Why would they be interested in a lost cat? And other men had run, into the night. Max could have followed any of them; but he knew Thelma’s car. Was that Thelma, bundled up like a man? His thoughts about following them were mixed.

For days, everything had been crazy. Everything that happened seemed to rotate around cats. Posters all over the village and in nearly every shop. His friends and all the folks from CatRescue combing the neighborhood searching for the calico, for Joe Grey’s grown kitten. While all that time, a few people knew very well where she was, and had said nothing. Not even Charlie, and he trusted her with his life. Ryan and Clyde, Wilma and the Greenlaws had been just as secretive, not a word. Those five, and Kate Osborne and Scott Flannery. He knew and loved them all, he trusted them all, but they too often made him wonder.

Whatever, it looked like the calico herself had finally made the decision. Max guessed that when she did escape, Seaver had seen her and given chase. He must have called DeWayne’s drivers to help him—his fellow thieves. But he couldn’t call DeWayne himself, he was long gone, by the reports they were getting from across the country. Those departments would keep looking until they had DeWayne locked up. He was wanted locally for assault and attempted murder, they had three more warrants for murder out of state, more than a dozen warrants for big-time robbery, to say nothing of the out-of-the-country extradition papers for his return.

Before Max left the squad car he called the desk, sent three officers to work the streets for the men who had run. There was more to this than just a cat. He didn’t know what they’d arrest them for . . . Making a disturbance . . . Trespassing on the roofs? They’d think of something. He told the young clerk to put the coffee on for roll call. “And lay out the doughnuts Kathleen brought in last night.” That got the young man out of the front office for a few minutes. When he was gone, Max stepped from the squad car, stood at its open back door rearranging something inside. He returned with a small and ancient suitcase the cats knew well. It was the shape of a two-centuries-old carpetbag, soft leather, a solid bottom, a clasp and two handles together at the top. Joe Grey imagined him emptying the bag in the car, pulling out his neatly folded uniform, his regulation cap and black shoes, and setting them on the seat. These were the spares he carried in case he had to go to court or see the judge or the mayor unexpectedly. For serious occasions, Max didn’t often wear jeans and a western shirt as he was wearing now. Before he left the car he made one more call. Then, moving in through the glass doors, he knelt before the holding-cell bars adjusting his boot, his back to the desk, hiding the cats, looking down at the fear on their faces—but not fear of Max.

Joe Grey had no reason to fear the chief, the tomcat slept all over Max’s reports, he practically lived at the station—despite Harper’s crankiness when he couldn’t find a document, Joe and Max were pals. The thought did cross Max’s mind that Joe Grey himself might somehow have found and released the young calico, but that idea was beyond bizarre, cats weren’t that clever or that handy; and the tall, tanned chief didn’t like fantasies muddling his reason. Courtney looked up at him, frightened and pleading. The chase, those men pounding across the roofs grabbing for her, had left her rigid with fear.

Courtney was indeed shaking so badly her stomach felt sick. She wanted to curl up in the darkest corner and vanish. Watching Max, she didn’t know what he’d do. When she looked at Joe and Pan, both tomcats looked unwell, themselves; too much running, too much fear—and Max had never caught them being chased into the station, hiding from crooks in the station. This would not look good for the department, men chasing cats all over the rooftops and then the chief finding them hiding in the holding cell. Max knelt by the bars, looking in at them, looking as distressed as she’d ever seen him.

A hurt or frightened animal got to Max, where a defiant felon only made him mad. He glanced toward the desk but the clerk was still in the conference room. He opened the bag he had emptied. “Inside, Joe. Quick.” Reaching through the bars he pulled Joe unceremoniously into the bag, picked up Courtney more gently and settled her beside him. “Pan, get in here.”

Within seconds the cats were being carried down the hall, peering out the thin crack that Max had left in the nearly closed suitcase. Past the conference room where Jerry was laying out paper plates and they could smell the coffee start to brew. Past the closed doors of the other offices and out the back door beside the jail. Crossing the police parking lot, Max swung into a decrepit old Ford, one of the shabby cars the department kept for when officers didn’t want to be spotted. Pulling into the street, he turned left. Then a right, and two more rights into a shadowed space tucked between two condos.

Joe couldn’t see much from the bag, but they had to be behind Juana’s condo where, upstairs, Maurita was hidden. What was this, a group shelter? Max carried them up the back steps, and knocked softly. Juana let them in at once, shut the door behind them and opened the bag. Reaching in, she stroked the three huddled felines, seeking to calm them. The dark-haired Latina cop looked nearly as square in her pale blue sweats as she did in uniform. Seeing the distress in Courtney’s eyes, she took the calico in her arms. Courtney purred and rubbed against her—but when she saw Buffin snuggled on the couch in Maurita’s lap, she was so glad to see her brother she leaped straight for him, burrowing on the blanket between them, smearing blood across them from her injured paw. Maurita, in her scrubs and a robe, ignored the blood and snuggled Courtney close.

Juana brought salve and bandages; she knelt and began to help Maurita doctor Courtney’s white and calico paws, examining each tiny bone. No shrieks, nothing seemed broken. Maurita found a tissue in her pocket and wiped the heaviest blood from her calico coat, then gently she ran her hands over the rest of Courtney, flexing her legs for injuries, running her hands down her sides while watching the calico’s face for any sign of pain. Maurita’s black hair was tied back in a knot, her bruises and scars were fading. When she looked into the calico’s frightened eyes, she saw the same fear as her own—they stared at each other, the look between them filled with their mutual need for comforting, sharing the distress that would take a long time to heal. Courtney put a gentle, carefully wrapped paw on Maurita’s arm, and the young woman held the calico tighter; she could feel her shivering; they clung close to Buffin, too, his curing strength warming them both.

When Juana turned away to join Max and the two deputies, the men were smiling, watching the warm scene, and then watching Rock and Joe Grey. The minute Joe bellied out of the leather bag, the big silver dog had been all over his housemate, licking and nibbling at him while Joe slapped at Rock playfully and purred against his sleek coat. Such warm, innocent moments were all too rare in the life of a cop. Tall, big-boned Officer Crowley, looking very tender, rose to stack the breakfast dishes and carry them into the kitchen. Jimmie McFarland gathered up the cups and cream and sugar, still watching the two animals. His short brown hair was neatly trimmed and he was clean shaven, his uniform sharply pressed. “So the lost cat is found,” he said, grinning.

Max said, “Someone chased the hell out of them.”

“No wonder they’re scared. I’ve never seen Joe Grey frightened—but where are Dulcie and Kit? Did those guys catch them or did they escape? And what the hell do they want with cats?”

Max said, “I hope they escaped, and are unhurt. These three got away with a lot of fight, from the amount of blood on them. All the posters about her being lost, everyone searching for her, all that time someone had her locked up, maybe in a cage.”

Juana said, “What kind of person would do that, yet apparently not harm her? What do they want . . . ?” She paused, staring at the window. They all turned to look. Rock and Joe Grey abandoned their tussle and leaped on a chair nosing at the drawn drapery, at the open corner where, in the soft lamplight, a pair of green eyes shone and a dark tabby face looked in. When Dulcie saw Courtney inside she rose up, meowed softly, and scratched frantically at the glass. As Juana opened the window, Rock stuck his nose in the tabby’s face; gently she nipped the big gray dog and pushed past him, leaping to join her escaped kitten. She wanted to cry, she wanted to praise Courtney. All she could do was meow.

“Come up,” Maurita said.

Dulcie landed softly on the blanket between her two kittens and curled down, licking Courtney’s ears. Her child was free. They couldn’t talk, she’d hear the story of Courtney’s escape later. Right now all that mattered was that her child was safe. Buffin put a paw on Dulcie’s face and licked her nose, and she could almost feel him healing her, as he seemed to be soothing Courtney and Maurita; and Dulcie sighed. They were all together, and they were safe. They were secure under the protection of the cops, of friends they could count on and trust.

Jimmie McFarland watched them with interest, this close and loving cat family. He watched Maurita, her own eyes damp. When she looked up, he handed her a tissue, watched her wipe her tears then wipe remaining blood from Courtney. He hoped most of it was human blood. The way she held and stroked the cats touched Jimmie deep down. This was not the hard-cop part of him, as he thought he should behave. Their eyes met for a moment, Maurita’s dark eyes wide with a sudden surprise as well as with tenderness. McFarland blushed and looked away.

Earlier, when Kit awakened from her nap in her tree house, she hadn’t gone along the branch that led in through the dining room window, she hadn’t wanted to wake Lucinda and Pedric and get caught up in a long explanation; that could come later. She had left the tree house backing down the broad trunk of her oak tree, racing through the rain, across the yards to where the village roofs would take her to Seaver’s Antiques, on her way to relieve Pan at his watch; it would be dawn soon, the sky in the east was barely turning light.

But when she got there, she couldn’t find Pan. Dropping down to the sidewalk by way of a potted bush, she peered in the windows of the closed store looking for Courtney. Not finding her, she climbed the tall pine at the side of the building and went across the flat roof, looking in the second-floor apartment. No sign of her kitten. Circling the apartment on the window ledge, she didn’t find Pan crouched outside in the sheltered corner where he had chosen to keep watch. But when she padded along the ledge back to the alley, she smelled blood. Human blood and cat blood. Courtney’s blood?

She could see no one. Scrambling down the ivy vine to the alley she found spots of Courtney’s blood glistening on the wet macadam. She could smell both the calico’s and Pan’s fresh scents, and the trail of Ulrich and Thelma. But the smells that alarmed her were where they were all mixed together: Courtney’s blood, Joe Grey’s and Pan’s scents and the two humans, tangled with the lingering smell of fear and of rage, a fighting stink that sent Kit racing away to the rooftops again following where the three cats had fled, and Thelma and Ulrich had climbed after them.

Earlier, looking down from the roofs, she’d thought she glimpsed DeWayne Luther for an instant. A tall man with a touch of white hair under a floppy cap—but no, this man smelled like a gas station. He had a mustache, his service jacket was stained with grease, and his shoes were filthy. Anyway, DeWayne wouldn’t be here in the village when there was a warrant out on him. And why would he care about Seaver’s crazy plan? DeWayne Luther ran to high-toned robberies, to the most exclusive stores, to jewelry worth millions, not to stealing cats; and why would he care about ancient, ragged tapestries and old fairy tales surrounding a stolen cat?

Had that been DeWayne back there despite his looks and smell? Had he been part of the chase? Pan said she had too much imagination, that her wild ideas sent her flying off into tangents.

But right now she wanted to know if the three cats had escaped, and where they had gone, she had to find them. Following their scents over the roofs to the station, she could smell several men’s, and Thelma’s, trails along the shingles, they crossed back and forth then separated. Thelma and Ulrich had gone down some steps to the street. But Kit followed the path of Courtney and Joe and Pan past where the humans had turned away, followed them toward the PD. When she found the cats’ scents strong on the bars of the holding-cell window, she sighed with relief.

But when she looked down into the cell, no one was there. Not even a drunken prisoner—then, looking across the roofs, she saw Joe Grey at Juana’s condo, leaping out a slightly open window. Juana and two officers stood behind him. For an instant, Joe turned back to rub his face against Juana’s hand then he was gone, heading over the rooftops toward home looking very happy. As if, for the moment, his job was done. Kit raced over the roofs and branches for the window, mewling and mewling at Juana before she closed the glass. She burst into the room, into the detective’s arms, and was amazed at the gathering.

She looked shyly at the chief and the two deputies, flicking her tail in a demure greeting. She thought at first the dark-haired woman on the couch was Detective Kathleen Ray snuggled with Courtney, Buffin, and Dulcie; then she saw the woman’s scars, the bruises, the stitched-up ear: the lady from the grave. And Kit found it hard not to speak right out, to shout out her surprise and her joy.