Cat In The Dark

17

I SEE DEATH around you… death before the moon is full, Azrael had told them-almost as if the black torn could himself bring death with his dark magic, as if this beast were indeed the Death Angel. Whatever the truth, two days after Azrael beguiled Joe and Dulcie into spying at Pander's restaurant, death reached out just as he predicted.

It was barely eight A.M., Tuesday morning, as they entered the empty library, slipping in through Dulcie's cat door, their bellies full of fat mice, meaning to curl up on the children's window seat for a little nap before opening time. The cushioned retreat, where the children listened to stories, was at this hour Dulcie's private domain.

According to Freda Brackett, Dulcie had turned the long window seat and the inviting tangle of brightly flowered pillows into a nest of cat hair, fleas, and ringworm, but the children thought differently. They loved finding Dulcie among the cushions to snuggle as they listened to the librarian's stories; they all fought to hold her and sit close to her.

But now this early morning there were as yet no children and the wide bay window was theirs, the only sounds the occasional whish of passing cars away across the garden and the distant purling of the sea; crossing the reading room, the cats could feel, through the floor and carpet, the sea's constant muffled heartbeat.

Dulcie thought it so odd that Wilma couldn't feel the surf beating unless she was right there at the shore. How sad, what humans missed. Nor had Wilma, just last week, felt the preearthquake tremors that sent Dulcie under the bed at two in the morning, yowling until Wilma took shelter in the closet, the two of them waiting for the earthquake to hit, for heavy objects to start falling.

The ensuing quake had been nothing, amusingly small, no more damage done than a few drinking glasses broken and a crack in the bathroom wall-by California standards, hardly worth getting out of bed for-though Dulcie had not been able to determine its severity by its preshock tremors.

Now, leaping to the window seat, kneading the pillows, the cats yawned and stretched, ready for a nap-and stopped.

They went rigid, hissing, backing away from the glass.

A smell assailed them, unnatural and alarming.

Not the sweet aroma of little children and candy wrappers and the librarians' subtle perfume.

A stink of death seeped in around the glass-nor was it the scent of a dead animal, not the smell of freshly killed rabbit or squirrel. No. The smell they tasted, flehming and growling, was the stink of human death.

Crouched and tense, they approached the glass, stood pressed against the window looking down into the depths of the tangled garden.

Beyond the window, the building's two wings jutted out to form a partially walled disarray of blooms that reached up thick as a jungle beneath the children's window. Spider lilies, tapping at the glass, were tall and thick, their delicate blossoms curled like reaching hands. Beyond the lilies, flowering bushes glowed, and tangles of blue iris. On the east wall, a mass of climbing yellow nasturtiums shone yellow as sunshine, and above the jungle of blooms the oak trees twisted their sturdy, dark limbs and jade foliage against the morning sky.

Beyond the garden stood Ocean Avenue's double row of eucalyptus trees and then, across the divided street, the crowded, two-story shops. But it was the flower bed beneath the bay window and what lay crushing the blooms, that held the cats' attention, that made every hair rise, that drew Joe's lips back in a keening snarl and made Dulcie catch her breath with a shocked mewl.

Below the jutting window a man knelt. As the cats watched, he reached to touch the two bodies that lay sprawled together unmoving, their fleshy, blue-veined, half-naked limbs shockingly white.

Greeley Urzey knelt stroking Dora's limp hand, reaching to touch her bare, white leg, her naked limbs heavy and comatose. Both Ralph's and Dora's clothes were half-torn off-not as if they had been attacked, rather as if they had flung off their garments in a wild and frenzied dance, an insane gavotte. And across the garden, an erratic path twisted, raw with crushed foliage and flowers, a maddened trail plunging in from Ocean Avenue.

One of Ralph's penny loafers lay yards away from him among a bed of daisies, its dime gleaming in the morning light. The cats could see, across the street, what might be a sweater dropped on the curb.

They drew back as Greeley clasped together his shaking hands and rose, his whole being seeming to tremble, the expression on his face frightened and confused.

He stood staring uncertainly around the garden, then wandered away up the path, his gait slow and hesitant. As he stumbled along Ocean, the black cat dropped down out of an oak tree and fell into step beside him.

At the same instant, Joe and Dulcie leaped from the window seat and scorched across the library and out Dulcie's cat door. They reached the front garden just as Greeley and Azrael turned the corner, disappearing into a tunnel of dark, low-growing cypress trees.

The two cats grimaced at the death smell, softened by the scent of crushed lilies. Joe placed an exploring paw on Ralph's arm.

Dulcie nosed at Dora's hand-and drew back from the icy flesh. She looked at Joe, stricken.

"Greeley didn't do this. Greeley didn't do this terrible thing, not to his own daughter."

"Maybe he just found them. They've been dead for hours, Dulcie. If he killed them, why would he come back?"

"But if he just found them, why wouldn't he head for the police station? He went in the opposite direction."

"Maybe he was too upset. Maybe he'll call the cops from somewhere. Maybe go home to Mavity, call from there."

"Oh, Joe, these poor, silly people. What did they do, that they would die in such-distress?" She pressed close to him, thinking of the stolen computer printouts, then of Ralph and Dora's feet beneath the table at Pander's, Ralph's penny loafers beside Bernine's silk-clad ankles, thinking of Dora kicking Ralph when his remarks didn't suit her.

"Whatever they did, they were just simple folk. Who would kill them?" She stared at the tangle of pale, twisted limbs, shocked by their raw whiteness. The Sleuders were such very bulgy people, their limbs lumpy and misshapen. It must be terrible not to have a nice coat of sleek, concealing fur to cover your fat places and your rawness. She watched Joe sniff at Ralph's nose and mouth-he made a flehming face, raising his lip and flattening his ears.

He smelled Dora's face, too, scowling. "Drugs? Were they into drugs?"

"Don't be silly. Dora and Ralph Sleuder?"

"What else would smell so foreign?"

She sniffed at the dead couple's faces and backed away sneezing at the strange, pungent odor. "We'd better call the dispatcher."

As they started toward her cat door, he stopped suddenly, pressing her back. "Dulcie, wait."

She paused, one paw lifted. "What? It's nearly opening time; the staff will be coming to work. What's the matter?"

"Isn't children's story hour this morning?"

"Oh! Oh, my! Come on!" She dodged past him. "They'll be crowding in any minute, running to the window." And she took off round the side of the building.

Twice a week story hour began at eight-fifteen. The kids came flocking in, breaking away from their parents, laughing and pummelling each other and heading straight for the window seat, leaping into the cushions in a frenzy of enthusiasm, pressing their noses to the glass to look out. Children were always drawn to windows-as surely as kittens were drawn to dangling string. Entering any room, children flocked to the glass as if, like Alice, they expected to find beyond the pane any number of exotic new worlds.

This morning, beyond this glass, they'd find an exotic world, all right-a scene never meant for a child's viewing. But now, as she leaped for her cat door to call the precinct, Joe barged into her again, blocking her way.

"What?" she hissed, shouldering him aside.

"Listen, Dulcie. What would happen if we don't call the cops?"

She stared at him, shocked. "The children would be… We can't let them see those bodies. They'd…"

"They'd start screaming," Joe suggested. "Screaming, giggling, making jokes to hide their fear and confusion. Their parents…" He licked a whisker and smiled wickedly. "Their parents would see the dead bodies and pitch a fit-that the library would let the children see this."

He began to purr. "Those parents would put Freda right on the hot seat."

She looked at him, her eyes widening. She didn't breathe. What he was suggesting was terrible.

"How embarrassing for Freda," Joe said softly.

"No!" she said, shouldering past him. "I won't do that. It would be dreadful for the children."

"Those kids are tougher than you think. All they'll need is plenty of hugging and a chance to talk it out with their mom or dad-any good parent could put a positive spin on the experience. Turn a shocking situation into something positive-as long as the kids are hugged and loved."

"No!" she said, pressing past him.

But again he blocked her, licking his whiskers. "It would be the parents who are stressed. And they'd dump it all on Freda-complaints to the mayor, to the city council, letters to the editor, follow-up editorials. Enough fuss," Joe said, his yellow eyes burning, "to get Freda fired."

There was a long silence. Joe's eyes gleamed with the devil's own light.

"No, Joe. We can't! Not frighten the children like that-not to spite Freda, not to spite anyone." Hotly she slashed at him and bolted through her cat door into Wilma's office where she could call the station.

But she was too late.

As she leaped for Wilma's office she heard two librarians talking, heard Freda call out as she came in through the back door, and the next moment she heard children running up the walk past the hidden, flower-shrouded bodies, heard them racing across the reading room straight for their window seat.