Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Chapter 33

Synth You’ve Been Gone

Once Rens—that walking contradiction in genetics, the mini husky Chihuahua—was restored to his person, I begin to think I could safely lock myself back in the Miata with my Miss Temple being none the wiser.

I am about to make myself scarce on the alien flash mob scene, when something familiar flashes across my field of vision and kisser like a chorus girl’s black ostrich fan.

I sneeze, not the suave reaction I hope for during an encounter with a chorus girl. Once my eyes blink open again, I am disappointed to discover the firm’s junior partner has joined the melee.

“Off cadging free lunches again, huh, Pops? This time with the local vermin of a canine nature,” Miss Midnight Louise admonishes me.

If she really were my daughter, as she claims, she would defer to my parental role and let me do the admonishing. Or … maybe not. Miss Midnight Louise does not take correction well at all. She is what they call liberated and I call impertinent to her elders.

“A guy has got to keep his energy up.”

“For what? Naps?”

“Research has shown that the dude who naps lives longer to nap again.” That comment does not quite come out right.

“You were not napping when you did that swan dive off the top of the so-called parking garage. You are drawing the public’s attention to a lot of bodies of late. You could damage Midnight Investigations, Inc.’s reputation.”

“You know I did my earlier body-discovery work for Ma Barker’s clowder.”

“Yes. I am also invited for lunch with them at the police substation from time to time, and get caught up on all the gossip then.”

“You lunch on Big Macs and Red Lobster?”

“And Tastee Crème doughnuts,” she adds in a nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah tone.

“I have never been invited. I am just asked to do the dirty work.”

“Oh, come on. I have dipped into the trash containers at the Circle Ritz. Your Miss Temple is lavishing oysters and shrimp and sirloin beef tips on your Free-to-Be-Feline bowl.”

“Yes, but it all has a certain odor of—” I cannot contain a shudder. “—FTBF.”

“Yeah, there is a definite army green vibe to your roommate’s health food of choice. Have you ever tried putting some of it in her half-used cereal boxes and forcing her to face the stuff first thing in the morning?”

“I would never subject my Miss Temple to such a dirty trick.

“Although, Louise … maybe it would banish Free-to-Be-Feline forever. I would have to make it look like Miss Temple had mixed up the bag and the box contents. That could be done if I woke her up earlier than usual in the morning with one of my purr-massage-love-rub sessions.…

“She would stumble into the kitchen half-asleep and—presto!—Free-to-Be-Feline in her bowl, with low-fat milk.

“No, I cannot do that to low-fat milk.”

“Anyway, Pops, I am not here to discuss cuisine.”

“No kidding. What hair-brained scheme are you laying on me now?”

“We need to break into the coroner’s office on Pinto Lane.”

“What!? Are you crazy? Do not answer. That was a rhetorical question. Louise, the facility will be screwed down tighter than a rusty bolt with all these Alien nut jobs in town. Everybody from paparazzi to amateur bloggers wants to break in to eyeball and photograph The Hunk Who Fell to Earth. At the moment, he is more popular than Elvis. And that is going some in Las Vegas.

“Do they fret about me? Are they worried about my delicate limbs being broken, along with my shivs? Am I on their cell phone and camcorder films? No. I am just a dust mite in a media-mad world, a tiny Cinderfella at the ball. An unsung hero.”

“Yeah, yeah. Fame is fleeting, also YouTube hits. I am telling you. This is serious. I was there when you fell—”

“You were? I did not see you rushing up to succor me.”

“Hah. I was busy rushing up to the falling body once it hit the dirt, before any curious onlookers got a glimpse of it.”

“So some dead human is more important than your supposed old man. I am really glad we are not related now.”

“That is your unlikely story.”

Louise can be merciless, but she is the female of the species. Bloodthirsty. Her mind is back on the corpse. She mews on. “I cannot say for sure—unless I inspect the body in the morgue. But…”

Females are ferocious hunters and killers, did I mention that? Forget the cliché of them quailing at violence and mayhem.

“And…,” she says after a final pinprick of her claw into my shoulder just in case I am not paying enough attention. “I think the scars on this guy’s back and sides were put there by the Cat Pack I led to defend the Synth from the two armed individuals in Darth Vader outfits at the Neon Nightmare, now defunct.”

I catch my breath. What Miss Louise is calling defunct is not the Synth magicians’ club, or the invading Darth Vaders from that recent meeting I was not privileged (or invited, I guess) to participate in. No, it is only the Neon Nightmare nightclub that is closed and defunct.

Louise does not know I was there much more recently with Miss Temple and Mr. Max, when my roommate’s speculations made it clear that some of the Synth members and wannabes are, um, dead, possibly by the hand of Synth recruiter Cosimo Sparks, himself now slain by person or persons unknown.

So here I am being asked to consider that one of the two masked leaders and predators who fed on the Synth’s thirst for revenge might now be dead at the morgue, his body bearing identifying marks of the Cat Pack attack on that night when Miss Louise and her minions swarmed to protect Miss Temple and divert attention from her undetected presence.

Whew. That is a lot of dead people, but then, Miss Temple’s Table of Crime Elements is longer than a grocery list for a reality TV cooking show.

I sit back on the pillow of my most operative parts, stunned.

For months and years, I have been protecting my main gal and her associated humans against renegade magicians, IRA terrorists, possible mob remnants, and a psycho serial killer.

Now, it could be likely the secret malefactors at the top of the pyramid of crime are possibly from out of this world.

Can it be that I am dealing here with murder most extraterrestrial?