Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Coming_Home_BookFi

27

HAVING CALLED THE night dispatcher about the canvas-covered car, Joe left Wilma’s house and hurried back to the motel through a haze of fog, a mist drifting in from the sea to dampen his fur and blur the rooftops around him. Below him, already parked in front of the motel, was a gratifying response to his phone tip: a squad car stood at the curb, along with Dallas’s tan Blazer. From below, from the front office, he heard Officer Crowley and a strange voice, maybe the desk clerk. When he didn’t hear Dallas, he trotted across the roof to the small parking lot. Where the hedge met the wall, where he’d reported the black Cadillac covered by the tarp, Dallas stood surveying the scene.

The Cadillac was gone. The corner was empty. No black Caddy, no car at all, no tarp, nothing but blacktop, the area a shade lighter than the surrounding, fog-damp macadam. Well, didn’t that tear it. He’d been gone maybe twenty minutes, but enough time, apparently, for the two perps to double back and take the car. Or had they sent one of their pals to retrieve it?

But why? What had alerted them? Had someone seen the cats watching them, and knew what they were, knew they’d alert the cops? But that couldn’t happen, that was too far out. Or had the yellow tomcat alerted the man and woman? Was he traveling with those no-goods, and not the innocent old fellow that he seemed? Joe watched Dallas kneeling at the edge of the dry parking space, his leather bag by his side, using the department’s new, handheld laser beam to illuminate a tire mark that was, apparently, so faint Joe had missed it. The thin edge of a second, clearer mark was incised into the earth strip that ran along the hedge. Joe looked up when he heard a far door close.

Padding across the roof, he watched Officer Crowley leave the motel office and head across the patio to the parking lot. Joe kept pace with him. Even in uniform, Crowley looked awkward, his thin, stringy six-foot-four body moving as if he were walking behind a plow, his big hands seeming better suited to the plow, too, than to the 9-millimeter he wore at his belt. Approaching Dallas, Crowley stood shifting from foot to foot waiting for the detective to photograph a second tire print that shone as faint as a breath on the dry macadam.

Dallas set his camera aside. “What did you get from the desk clerk?”

“The woman checked out. Name of Karen Birkler. A single, registered for the whole month, special rate. The clerk didn’t like that she had two different men in and out at different times; that made him nervous. Maybe he thought they’d run into each other, and there’d be trouble. He was curious enough about her to follow her once, watched her carry a small plastic bag a dozen blocks and drop it in a builder’s Dumpster. Said she could just as well have dumped it at the motel. She registered with a Sacramento address.” Crowley handed Dallas a piece of paper. “Probably bogus.”

Dallas nodded, tucked the paper in a small spiral-bound notebook that he returned to his pocket. Crowley said, “I told him to make sure the lock code is changed, that the room remains locked, not to let the maids or maintenance or anyone else go in. Told him we’d cordon off the two entrances.”

Dallas removed a clean paintbrush from the satchel and began dusting bits of debris into an evidence bag, maybe loose fibers from the canvas tarp. “Did you put out a BOL on the brown pickup and the Toyota?” Crowley nodded. “Do the same for the Cadillac, do it before you string your tape. When we’re finished here, I’m headed back to the Galleon. I hope to hell we don’t have another dustup tonight, with three scenes to work. Being this shorthanded makes me edgy.”

Crowley grinned. As Joe listened to him call in the Cadillac, he worried over why the couple had bailed out so fast. He followed above Dallas as the detective headed for the motel office, watched him disappear inside. This wing of the building was an old-fashioned brick box, the swinging glass door with a glass transom above it; the other wings were newer. Edging over the roof gutter as far as gravity would allow, he peered in through the open transom.

He couldn’t see the clerk, but he could hear his reedy voice, a pale contrast to Dallas Garza’s deeper tone. Dallas wanted a look at the motel room, but when he mentioned a warrant the clerk waived that aside. Clerk said if he asked the law to have a look, then no warrant was needed. When their voices receded, as if they had headed down the hall behind the office, Joe padded away across the roof. He backed down into the bushes as Dallas entered the room through the inner door from the hall. Through the glass slider, Joe watched the detective fit goggles over his eyes. He squinted as Dallas scanned the room with the laser. Didn’t take long to pick up footprints from the carpet, fingerprints from the dresser and headboard. When he’d finished, Dallas turned on the lights, throwing the room into stagelike brilliance, highlighting the shabbiness of the dated, Swedish modern bedroom suite.

Avoiding certain areas of carpet, Dallas began to dust a few selected areas of furniture in the conventional way, to pick up prints the laser had found. Using the laser was a hell of a lot faster than the old drill. If scientists kept coming up with these startling new techniques, they’d put a cat out of business.

When Dallas left the scene, Joe headed for the station, hoping more information might be forthcoming. Maybe a patrol, or the CHP, had already picked up the Cadillac or the Toyota. Or even the old truck, which Kit had reported earlier. All the way to the courthouse unanswered questions rattled around in his head. If Kent Colletto was part of this tangle, could Maudie know that? Did she not want to turn in her own nephew? She hadn’t seemed that fond of Kent, but he was family, and the woman was harboring some secret. If Kent was involved in the invasions and he thought Maudie knew, wouldn’t that put her in danger from her own nephew as well as, possibly, from her son’s killer?