Cat Fear No Evil

20

The roof of the courthouse reflected bright moonlight, offering no dark niche where a cat could hide. Along the edges of the tile roof, harsh searchlights scanned the night's shadows bleeding up into the sky. Only within the gloom of the oak tree's thick foliage, where the leaves caressed the roof of the Molena Point PD, was there safety. The three cats huddled down, blending as well as they could among the shadows, their paler parts carefully concealed from the dazzling beams. Joe Grey's white chest, nose, and paws were tucked under him as neatly as if he were a rolled-up ball of gray yarn.

It might seem overkill to send the entire department out looking for whoever had dumped that clear plastic package in through the holding cell window. But these days, any object tossed into a police building had to be regarded with suspicion. Anything, any time, could be a bomb. For too many, law enforcement had become the enemy.

Just when searchlights ceased to scour the parking lot and progressed deeper into the village, a squad car pulled in from the street to park in the red zone facing the station. The cats watched warily.

Young Officer Rordan was behind the wheel. The thin, dark, more-seasoned Officer Sacks rode in the passenger seat. Had they picked up someone they thought had dumped the package, some unintended victim of feline subterfuge? But then the cats saw the three figures in the backseat.

All were female, slim, and young; one with pale hair piled on top of her head, one a tall girl with long dark hair tied back in a ponytail. And, a too-familiar figure with a sassy bob that, even in the glow of the vapor lights, gleamed as red as new rust.

Stepping from the vehicle, Officers Rordan and Sacks ordered the girls out. The three crawled out of the back, angry and disheveled, and were marched into the station, Candy and Leah scowling with rage. Dillon looked frightened and ashamed. Officer Sacks carried two large paper grocery bags crammed full of clothes; the cats could see bits of leather and velour, an expensive-looking running shoe. The officers and their prisoners disappeared inside, and the cats heard a metal door slam. Pushing through the oak's thick leaves to the high barred window, they peered down into the holding cell.

The girls sat sprawled on the stained bunk, all three now sullen and defiant. In the style of fashion-conscious young teens, none was dressed warm enough for the chill evening. Candy wore tight faded jeans, a white tank top that hiked well above her middle, and goose bumps. She slouched at the far end of the bunk watching as Officer Sacks booked Leah and then Dillon: name and address, parents' names, school, and any statement they cared to make. Leah's answers were so rude the cats wondered if she wanted to be locked up for the night or perhaps longer. Her thin, sagging T-shirt looked no warmer than Candy's tank top. Her lipstick was the color of raspberry jam. Only Dillon answered Sacks's questions with any civility, as she glanced past him into the station. Was she looking for Captain Harper, perhaps hoping he wasn't there? She was wearing red jeans and an old, creased leather jacket with nothing but a bra underneath. Her boots were thick and heavy, of the kind that, well aimed, could break a person's leg. When Sacks finished with the girls, they lounged on the hard bunk, scowling and silent.

Max Harper arrived some twenty minutes later. He hardly glanced at the dispatcher's counter but went directly to the cell, his expression tightly controlled, a look that the cats knew very well. A line in his cheek twitched with anger, with disappointment. Dillon Thurwell was, in many respects, as close to a daughter as Max Harper might ever have.

Opening the cell door, he summoned the two arresting officers and sent Leah and Candy back to the jail to be locked up there. Then he turned his attention to Dillon. Stepping into the cell and locking the door behind him, he stood looking down at her, studying the top of her head as she sat staring at the floor. Watching them, the cats crowded against the bars, their ears back, not liking the hurt they could see in Max Harper's stern face. When Dillon wouldn't look up at him, he sat down beside her.

"I called your parents." He took her chin in his hand, turned her face so she had to look up at him. Her scowl was fierce, and frightened.

"I want to hear your version. I want to hear exactly what you three did tonight."

"If you called my dad, why isn't he here? How come he's taking so long?"

"I called him on my way down to the station. It's been only a few minutes. Tell me what happened, Dillon. Tell me now."

"I know the drill!" she snapped. "It will go easier for me if I tell the truth. Everything will be cool if I tell you all about it. The truth and only the truth and that will make life just peachy."

"Which one of you broke the lock?" Harper asked quietly.

No answer.

His expression didn't change. "Who went in through the window?"

Nothing.

"You girls planned your other burglaries more smoothly than this one. I have to say, you accomplished some fancy footwork at Alice's Mirror. Even if it was all going to go against you, in the end."

She looked at him, surprised, then scowled harder. "I broke the lock. I went through the window. I handed the stuff out. Okay? So what? That's some kind of federal offense?"

"If it were a federal offense I wouldn't have to mess with you. I'd turn you over to the feds. Where's the fourth member of your little club? Where's Consuela? She slip out before my officers arrived? Leave you to take the heat?"

"She wasn't there," Dillon said. "She's off somewhere."

"Off where?"

"How would I know."

"Did she set this burglary up before she left?"

Dillon didn't answer.

"Or did you plan it yourselves, without her? You've been busy, haven't you, teaching yourself how to steal." He looked steadily at her. "Where do you plan to go with that?"

No response. She tapped her boot on the concrete in a steady and irritating rhythm.

"I don't have to spell it out for you, Dillon. You know how to make your own choices. You're building a life here. You don't get to go back and try again, you don't get to start over."

Harper looked up when Officer Sacks came through the front door carrying two big paper drink containers with straws stuck in the lids. As Sacks handed them through the bars to Harper, the cats sniffed the sweet smell of chocolate. When Harper handed a container to Dillon, she looked like she wanted to throw it in his face. He watched her, amused, while he sipped on his own malt. From above them, the cats watched Dillon, equally amused. She refused to touch the malt, though she was probably thirsty and hungry, and much in need of a sugar fix, after her anger and fear. A chocolate malt, to a young girl, had to be like a nice juicy mouse to a cat who was hungry and in need.

Max Harper sat with Dillon for some time not talking, finishing his malt. Dillon tasted hers at last, glanced ashamedly at him, and ended up slurping the contents as if she was indeed starving. Sitting on the bunk beside her, Harper put his arm around her. Dillon, letting her guard down, looked now on the verge of tears. But she glanced up scowling again when the front door of the station opened.

Helen Thurwell entered. The cats were pleased to see that she had come, until they saw Marlin Dorriss behind her. Talk about bad taste, talk about thoughtless and rude.

The couple was dressed to the nines, Dorriss in a dinner jacket, Helen in a long slim black dress with a V-neck, a gem glittering against her throat, suspended on a platinum chain.

Moving to the barred cell door, Helen stood looking in at her daughter. Her frown of distaste included not only the jail cell, but Captain Harper himself. Behind her, Marlin Dorriss stood not five feet from the dispatcher's desk, his back to the sealed freezer bag that lay in plain sight, displaying his paid Visa bills and the torn pages of the little notebook. The cats, watching the potentially explosive scene, were rigid, all three hearts pounding in double time. As Dorriss turned toward the counter, Joe Grey sucked in a breath ready to yowl, desperate to create a diversion-but at the same moment the dispatcher slid the packet underneath the counter out of sight. Both Joe and Dulcie went limp, and their pounding hearts slowed.

Officer Jennifer Keen was a rookie who filled the dispatcher position when the regular dispatchers took time off. She was a pretty brunette with a voice as hoarse as sandpaper. Having glanced at the contents of the plastic package, she had been adequately quick on the draw.

At the cell door, Helen looked from Harper to her daughter. "Which one of you wants to talk?" Her look at Harper seemed almost to imply that the break and enter had been his fault. The cats wondered where Dillon's father was. John Thurwell was the nurturing one, the wronged parent who stayed home with Dillon while her mother played fast and loose. It was her father who should be with Dillon now.

Within the cell, Max Harper sat quietly beside Dillon waiting for her to explain to her mother what she had been unwilling to tell him. Dillon was silent, staring at the floor.

Harper opened the cell door and Helen, with an expression of extreme distaste, stepped inside. Closing the cell door behind her, he stood to the side, just below the cell window. Across the foyer, Marlin Dorriss's expression where he stood beside the dispatcher's desk was cool with disdain, as if his relationship with Helen Thurwell really ought not to include involvements with the police, or with her errant daughter.

Watching him, Joe Grey wondered. What was it about Dorriss's expression? Filled with distaste, but something deep down, as well, seemed tense with apprehension. And as Helen tried to get Dillon to tell her what had happened, and Dillon remained silent and uncooperative, Dorriss began to fidget. At last Helen turned to him.

"I know you have to get to the airport, Marlin. I'll walk the few blocks home; it's a nice evening." Summarily dismissing him, she reached through the bars of the closed door. He took her hand, pressed her hand in both of his, but did not offer to kiss her.

Not in front of her daughter? Or not in front of the captain? Or did he not want to get that close to the bars of a jail cell?

When Dorriss left the station the cats slipped to the edge of the roof and watched him swing into his black Mercedes. Heading for an evening flight, where? A trip that would remove him from the village for how long?

When Dorriss had gone and the cats looked again down into the cell, Harper was holding a police report, reading it to Helen in a gesture the cats thought was as much to shame her as to shame Dillon.

The burglary had occurred at the Sports Shop on Lincoln Street. The officers had found the lock on the back door broken, and the girls in possession of some five thousand dollars' worth of imported sweaters, leather coats, and top-of-the-line running shoes.

"How do you know how much it was worth?" Helen challenged.

"My officers can add," Harper told her. "They can read price tags. Mrs. Barker is on her way in." He looked at Dillon, repeating his earlier questions. "Who took the stuff, Dillon? Who handled the break-in, and who stood watch?"

"I took it! I broke in, I told you! They stood watch. I took the stuff. Okay? How come we didn't hear the alarm?"

"Silent alarm," Harper said. "It alerts the security firm. I guess, this time, you didn't do your homework." According to the report, the two officers arrived on the scene as Dillon handed out the first bag. Apparently neither Candy nor Leah had seen the two officers approach them among the shadows of the alley.

Max Harper's lecture to Dillon was short, to the point, and not appreciated by Helen Thurwell. "You are fourteen years old, Dillon. In four years you'll be responsible for your own physical, financial, and emotional well-being. It takes some effort and thought to equip yourself for that, for the time when you'll have no one but yourself to lean on."

He put his hands on Dillon's shoulders. He looked a long time at her, the kind of look as when she'd done something stupid that had endangered a good horse. He tilted her chin, again forcing her to look at him. "You've learned to handle a horse competently, under difficult conditions. Now it's time to remember your lessons, to treat yourself with equal respect.

"You cannot," he told her, "let someone else's emotional baggage cripple you. Even if that someone is your mother." He looked hard at her. "You cannot cripple yourself to teach your mother a lesson."

Helen Thurwell looked mad enough to hit Harper, looked like she would grab him, jerk him around, and punch him. Dillon glared at him, but angry tears were running down. He put his arms around her and pulled her close. Above them, the cats hardly breathed. They were so caught by the drama, they hung halfway in between the window bars. The vicissitudes of humanity were sometimes so overwhelming, the scene they witnessed was so emotionally draining, that when Dillon's father arrived to take his daughter home, the cats felt like three limp dishrags hung to dry in the branches.