Cat Deck The Halls

8

H AVING BACKED THE car into the small garage, Kuda hid the two duffel bags in a storage cupboard, but left the pillows and blanket in the car. He tore up the car rental agreement and registration, stripped off the rental stickers, tore all of it into confetti and stuffed it, a few pieces at a time, into the drain of the laundry sink, running all the pieces on down with a lengthy cascade of water.

With tools he’d found days earlier in the garage, he removed the license plates, then, taking off his shoes, he stood atop the car in his stocking feet, shoved the plates up into the attic through the crawl hole, and pushed them under the soft blanket of fiberglass insulation, smoothing it back over them. He was still wearing white cotton gloves. Last thing, he put the bike in the trunk of the car and tied the lid closed over the protruding rear wheel.

He waited a long time, his ear to the crack in the garage door, listening for the soft sounds of cop cars moving outside on the narrow streets, and trying to be patient. Had to make sure the cops had given up looking-given up, depending on what that witness had told them. Where the hell had that unseen witness been? What had they seen? Someone had called the law. He knew he’d been careful. He was certain the cruising patrol hadn’t seen him. And he sure as hell hadn’t seen anyone on the streets or standing in the shadows. Hadn’t heard anyone-until that sound of running, almost like it was overhead, a sound so soft. Most likely some animal. Or could have been some kid on the street, the echo playing tricks? Some kid slipping out at night to see the Christmas tree?

Time to get moving, everything quiet out there. The cops would still have a guard at the plaza, but he’d use the back or side entrance. He looked around the garage to make sure he’d tidied up. No, nothing there but the two small duffel bags in the cupboard, under a bunch of old rags, and they wouldn’t be there long. Silently he stepped out the side door to see if the street was clear, before opening the garage door.

W HILE CLYDE DAMEN stood in the kitchen holding Joe, staring out at the predawn dark, and while James Kuda prepared to dispose of the body, across the village in her condo apartment Juana Davis was tucking the little girl into a hastily made bed on the wide velvet love seat. She had placed the child so she would not face the Christmas tree. She thought of covering it or moving it to another room, after the trauma the child had suffered.

But there were Christmas trees and decorations everywhere, all over the village, no matter where they went. She would be taking the child to the station in the morning, and dispatcher Mabel Farthy had a small, beautifully decorated tree on the counter beside the in-box.

Juana thought sometimes it was a lot of fuss and extra work for a person living alone to buy and decorate a Christmas tree-but she always did, always had a fresh, live tree, and she guessed she always would.

Though it would soon be dawn, Juana had slipped into a pair of warm, comfortable pajamas, over which she had rebuckled her shoulder holster with her automatic. She had lit a fire on the hearth, only gas logs but real enough to be cozy, and had brought out an extra blanket and pillow from the bedroom so she could sleep lightly in the upholstered chair near the sliding-glass door to the balcony with a view of the street below.

Davis’s one-bedroom condo rose just across the street from the courthouse complex-with her husband long dead and her two sons gone from the nest, she had sold her house up in the Molena Point hills and rented an apartment while she waited, it seemed forever, for the right condo to come on the market. When this one became available diagonally across the street from the station, it was hard to make a low offer and chance losing it. Hard not to snap it up. But as both the real estate agent and the seller well knew, the market for a condo where two women had been murdered was somewhat limited-this was a small town, and no one had missed the details of that brutal killing.

The fact that this had been the scene of a double murder last summer didn’t bother Juana. The one-bedroom unit had been listed for less than a week when her low offer was accepted. She had worked the case, so she knew the apartment well, and she had no complaints about it except for a leaky bathroom faucet and the noisy refrigerator; she was not a person to worry about lingering ghosts. All traces of blood had been cleaned away and the walls freshly painted in a pleasing off-white; she had installed new, off-white carpeting-and she took a quiet pleasure in being so near to work.

From the wide balcony she could see down onto the block-long courthouse building and its surround of old twisted oak trees and bright gardens, and the wide parking lot on its far side. She had a clear view of the end of the two-story complex and the single-story wing that housed Molena Point PD. She could see the department’s back door and smaller police parking area and the small jail, all enclosed within a woven wire fence. She could see, beneath the gnarled branches of an ancient oak that hung over the red tile roof of the building, the small bared window that was cut into a raised clerestory, allowing light and ventilation for the department’s one small holding cell that opened off the front entry. Now, at just before six on this cold winter morning, beyond her drawn draperies, Juana’s balcony was black and chill, a light dew clinging to the teak chair and love seat and the three potted camellias that were in full bloom. But here within the bright, firelit living room, she and the child were cozy. This was nice, the cheerful blaze on the grate, the little girl curled down, her tummy full of cocoa and a cookie, hopefully falling into welcome sleep.

Since her own two boys had grown and left the nest, Juana had seldom held a small child in her arms. Maybe someday there’d be grandchildren, but not for a while. Both her boys were cops, neither one married yet. When that time came, she wondered what kind of grandmother she’d make. Well, she wasn’t holding her breath. At this point both her sons were married to their work, Randy as a detective with the Tacoma Sheriff’s Department, and Jed with California Highway Patrol.

Guess I’m married to my own work, she thought, amused. Still, as a widow and an empty nester, she found it surprisingly satisfying to shelter this little girl, to hold her and to put her to bed, tucking her safe under the quilt. The child was such a fragile little thing, thin as a baby bird. Shoulder-length hair as black as a raven’s wing, and skin as pale and clear as milk. Long black lashes, and when she was awake, those huge black eyes staring up at you, so sad, filled with such hopelessness.

In the hospital, and then in the car coming home, the child hadn’t spoken. She had made not a sound even when the woman doctor examined her, an examination that had to be frightening. Juana had called ahead and asked for a woman, and found that Terry Wayne was on duty. Juana’s white-haired, cheerful friend had been waiting for them at the emergency-room desk, and Juana, not knowing what the child had been through, was relieved not to have to deal with a male doctor.

Terry hadn’t kept the child long. The little girl was so frightened, and so tired and cold. Just long enough to wrap her in warm blankets, and then gently examine her to determine that she had not been molested and had no physical wound that Terry could find. Nor could Terry find any malformation of the throat or mouth that would account for the child’s silence.

Last night was not the time to run complicated hearing or speech tests, even if they had been available, at that hour. Terry thought the speech problem was simply trauma. Whether the child had been so traumatized by the murder that she’d stopped speaking, or whether this was an older condition, they couldn’t guess. They only knew that the child was still very afraid, and cold and clinging, and jumpy at any loud sound. The two other doctors on emergency duty had wanted to keep her in the hospital, but Terry wouldn’t hear of that. Even with a private room and a guard at the door, a hospital setting made Juana uneasy. She could make the child more comfortable in her apartment, make her feel that maybe someone cared what happened to her; and both she and Max felt that the child was safer with an armed officer, and with extra patrol around the building.

Max would be setting up a round-the-clock schedule for the few woman officers in the department to take shifts staying here with the child. That would be hard on the officers, taking double shifts, even if they could get some sleep while they babysat, and it would be hard on the department’s budget, which was always tight-but at the moment there was no viable alternative. No one in the department wanted to dump this child into the gaping jaws of the state bureaucracy. Watching the sleeping child, one hand curled now in a more relaxed gesture, not clenched rigidly, and her black lashes thick and soft on her pale cheeks, Juana told herself again that the child’s silence was indeed caused by trauma and that with rest and love and quiet, she would speak again-and, thinking like a cop, and then maybe we’ll have a witness.

A frail, frightened little witness. How much would a six-year-old remember as it had really happened? How much would she be able to make clear to an adult? To a judge or jury?

How much of the testimony of a six-year-old child would grown-ups believe?

All night the child had clung to her, at first hadn’t wanted anyone else to touch her, her dark eyes huge with dread, her ivory skin clammy and damp. Was it her father who had been shot? Shot as they stood looking up at the wonderful Christmas tree?

For the rest of this child’s life, what would her Christmases be like? Chestnuts and blood. Bright lights and rocking horses heralding death.

But Juana had known one thing from the first moment she saw the little girl. She wasn’t taking her to Children’s Services. Not now, not in the morning that was fast approaching. Neither she nor the chief nor Dallas liked the lax security at Children’s Services, even in the Protective Division. Although some of the caseworkers were conscientious and understanding, too many were hard-nosed paper pushers, political climbers, or just plain incompetent. As if the children in their care were so many packages to be sorted, held in will-call, and delivered when required.

Some ugly stories about Children’s Services had reached the department, and then when young Lori Reed was found last year hiding in the library basement, and had refused to have anything more to do with the caseworkers, and after Juana and the chief had talked with Lori and looked into the handling of the child, they felt even more strongly that the County Department of Children’s Services would benefit from a good housecleaning. Nine vanished children who had never been found and whose cases were still open. A boy in foster care for five years when all Children’s Services had to do was pick up the phone and check information, in order to to locate the child’s relatives in Seattle. And too many “accident” cases among the foster homes, logged in to hospital emergency. Children with old scars, and with new bruises that could not be accounted for.

Lori Reed, after spending nearly a year on the East Coast, in the custody of Children’s Services and a number of foster homes, before being returned to her father, had told Juana other ugly stories that enraged her.

Lori had run away from a seriously depressed father who, in his secret and unrevealed fear for Lori, had inadvertently terrified her. He had boarded up their windows, padlocked the doors, and had forbidden her to leave the house even to go to school. With Lori’s mother dead of cancer, with no one to explain to her the real cause of her father’s distress, and with her fear of being sent to another foster home, the twelve-year-old had taken matters into her own hands-had packed a blanket and some food, and found a very clever and safe place to hide.

But Lori Reed was twelve, not six years old, and had been far more skilled and resourceful in solving the problems that were dumped on her. This child was hardly more than a baby.

And the fact that she might be the only witness to a murder was more than sufficient reason not to turn her over to a lax bureaucracy where anyone could get at her.

Without opening the draperies, Juana stepped behind them and looked out through the slider to the balcony; standing in the shadows, in the predawn silence, looking down at the village, she considered other options than keeping the child too long in her apartment, where the coming and going of officers might be noted.

She thought of the Patty Rose Orphans’ Home, a very caring private facility. But, though the child could lose herself among the other children, the home didn’t have sufficient security. The Patty Rose Home was not a jail, the kids were not locked in, and, conversely, visitors were not locked out or rigidly screened. Even with an officer assigned to guard her, the Patty Rose Home was not a good choice.

She thought about Cora Lee French and her housemates, with whom Lori Reed lived until her father would be released from prison. Lori was an understanding little girl, and might be good for the younger child. It was a big house, up in the hills away from the village, with plenty of room for the child and an overnight officer, and Juana wondered if the senior ladies would be interested.

Maybe a rotation, from one private residence to another, always with a guard. This little girl was too precious to be hurt again. Juana had to remind herself that this was police business, that besides her personal fear for the child, the little girl was their only witness to a crime.

Hoping they got something positive on the blood samples or the prints, hoping they could find the body, nail the killer, and wrap this up quickly, she listened to the crash of the Pacific ten blocks away. The waves sounded violent, and would be black and churning-with the extremely high tide just after midnight, the Pacific all along the coast would be dangerous. That meant emergency calls, and another strain on the department. Every year some fool, most often an uninformed and overly trusting tourist, went too near the sea during a storm and had to be rescued-rescued if they were lucky. And either way, needlessly putting lifeguards and law enforcement in danger. The rule was, never turn your back on the sea. Even in calm weather. That bright, seductive monster was always hungry, waiting for the foolish and unwary.

Turning back inside, she locked the slider, feeling secure within her own space. Cheerful fire on the hearth, her old familiar Christmas ornaments on the tall, fragrant tree, her grandmother’s Creech on the mantel, the hand-carved Creech she’d had since she was a child in Ventura in their close Mexican family-a childhood of safety and warmth, in sharp contrast to what this sleeping child might have known.

Moving to the kitchenette, she started a pot of coffee, then went to take a shower. Stripping off her holster and pajamas and stepping into the pelting hot water, Juana had no notion that the storm that now battered the shore was about to claim another victim. No notion that the black water crashing up the cliffs was already licking at its prey, hungry to receive the sacrifice offered. No idea, as she soaped and rinsed off and wrapped her towel around her body and moved into the bedroom to put on clean clothes, that the eager sea was already doing its best to swallow what murder evidence might remain.