Cat Seeing Double

9

Detective Garza stood with his arms around Ryan but looking past her at Rupert Dannizer's body. He studied the stacked windows, the garage itself, the drive and Ryan's truck and the front of the building, his photographic detective's mind recording every smallest detail, though he would record it all again in careful notes and perhaps in photographs of his own. Dallas Garza was, the cats had come to learn, a meticulous investigator, his nature as stubbornly prodding as that of any feline.

Yet despite the detective's thoroughness, there was sometimes information to which a human cop had no access, private doors he couldn't legally enter, crannies and niches a human couldn't squeeze into-clues, in short, that a clever cat might snatch from the shadows. Joe Grey's fascination with police investigation was not in lieu of human talent, but was adjunct to that talent.

They watched Garza move inside the garage where he conferred with Davis and the coroner, carefully observing the victim and asking Dr. Bern questions. Garza's position was indeed awkward, with his niece as prime suspect.

"Will he have to stay off the case?" Joe said softly. "Apparently not, or he wouldn't be here at all."

"The papers are going to love this," Dulcie said dourly. "Even the Molena Point Gazette. I can just see it: Police detective's niece arrested for murder. If they put a reporter on it who doesn't like Garza, he'll have a field day."

Joe flicked a whisker. "And from what Clyde says, Rupert Dannizer was well known in San Francisco. This will be big news, with Dannizer dead before the property settlement, with Ryan standing to inherit…"

"No one would believe that!" she hissed.

"We don't believe it. And the papers don't have to believe it; they'll print what sells. Their readers will eat it up."

"If Ryan wanted to murder him, would she do it in her own garage?" Dulcie laid back her ears, her green eyes narrowing. "Question is, who hated Rupert Dannizer and Ryan enough to kill him and frame her for the crime?"

They watched Officer Bonner string crime tape around the garage and yard, while the coroner sat in his car making additional notes. But when Bonner and Detectives Garza and Davis escorted Ryan upstairs for a look at her apartment and for questioning, the two cats scorched around the building, to slip inside.

The steep hill at the back rose four feet away from the wall of the garage apartment. Crouched in the tall grass looking across to Ryan's bathroom window, Joe Grey leaped. Hanging from the sill, he scrabbled with his hind claws while, with one white forepaw, he finessed open the sliding glass.

The cats had discovered this access when young Dillon Thurwell was kidnapped and they had rescued her from the garage below, from the little airless storage closet beneath the stairs. Because the window was too small to accommodate any human, no one had ever thought to lock it. Now, dropping down into the bathroom, they slipped past the tub and into Ryan's closet-dressing room, to crouch among her jogging shoes and work boots.

The room was large enough for a chest of drawers, a bench with storage underneath, and a six-foot clothes rod that held little more than jeans and work shirts. A single, zippered garment bag appeared to hold a few dress clothes. Her good shoes, like the strappy sandals that she had worn to the wedding, must be tucked away in the plastic boxes they could see atop the closet shelf. The closet smelled faintly of rose perfume. They could hear Ryan and Dallas in the kitchen, talking. But Davis and Bonner were quiet. Very likely they were there as witnesses to prevent the close relationship between uncle and niece from any taint of collusion. At some point Davis would, the cats thought, have to take over the investigation from Detective Garza.

There was a flash of light from the studio, and another, and the cats peered out of the closet to see Davis photographing the apartment, seeking to record any smallest detail that might later fit into a jigsaw puzzle of evidence. As Davis turned toward the closet they drew back behind Ryan's boots, closing their eyes so not to catch a flash of light, Joe ducking to hide his white face and paws and chest; all that remained was a gray mound. Davis took several shots in the closet causing the cats to pray that a stray paw or tail wouldn't show up on the film-not that it mattered, Dulcie kept telling herself. We're only cats. What if they were in a photograph, or if Davis did spot them? Dulcie could never overcome her fear of being discovered, never shake the feeling that the truth about them would be as clearly detectable as fresh blood on whiskers. Her need for secrecy overpowered all reason. Such fears were so foolish. After all, Ryan did have a cat door in the garage. If they were discovered, Clyde's mouse hunters were simply on the premises doing their appointed job.

From the kitchen they heard a cup rattle as if Ryan had poured the coffee that had, from the smell of it, steamed in the pot for some time. Dallas asked, "When did you see Rupert last?"

"I haven't-hadn't seen him since early July. I caught sight of him here in the village. That startled me, he never came down here. I don't think he saw me. I'd had dinner with Clyde-Clyde Damen. We were coming out of the grill when I saw Rupert at the bar with a tall, sleek blonde. Long, gleaming hair. I didn't see her face but Rupert turned and I saw his profile. I have no idea what he was doing down here, he has no friends in the village that I know of."

"And he didn't see you?"

"I don't think so. I practically dragged Clyde out of there. We… a divorce and lawsuit are not pleasant. Rupert hadn't been very pleasant."

The cats listened to Ryan describe when and how she had found the body, and what she had done afterward, how long it took her to go upstairs and call 911.

"Did you touch the body?"

"I touched his leg. I just… reached out before I thought. I was sure he was dead, the dried blood, and he was so white, but I… something in me had to be sure-that there wasn't life there, that there was nothing I could do. He… he was so cold…"

"And what would you have done if you'd thought he was alive?"

"The same as I did, call the department-unless I'd thought CPR would… I suppose I would have tried that."

"What did you tell the dispatcher?"

"That a man was dead in my garage. And I answered her questions."

"You came upstairs to call?"

"Yes."

"Do you own a gun?"

"Yes."

Behind Ryan's boots, the cats glanced at each other. Of course Dallas knew she owned a gun, but he was committed to asking all the necessary questions. He made her describe the black.38 Smith and Wesson, made her tell him where she kept it, where it had been that morning and where it was at that moment. The cats didn't need to watch him to know he was carefully recording her answers both on tape and in his log- recording not to incriminate but to protect, to have the record straight.

"I forgot to bring my gun upstairs when I got back from San Andreas. Normally I would have put it in my nightstand. It… it's been locked in my truck since I got back, night before last. I… just forgot about it."

"Forgot about it?"

"I don't feel the need, in Molena Point, to keep a gun with me at night the way I… the way one might in an isolated trailer."

"You left it locked in your truck, where?"

"In the glove compartment."

"I'll need your keys."

The cats heard keys jingle. Dallas said, "Are they all here? None have been removed?"

A pause, then, "Yes. All there. Apartment door, garage, truck keys, side lock boxes, glove compartment. Key to the house in San Francisco, which is still officially half mine."

The cats glanced at each other. She was just a bit defensive. But surely she didn't like being questioned this way, even by her uncle, even though she knew it was necessary.

"Last night, what time did you go to bed?"

"The minute you left here. Just before two."

"Did you hear anything during the night, any noises?"

"No."

"Nothing downstairs?"

"No."

"Did you hear gunshots."

"No I didn't. I don't understand why not."

"What is your opinion about that?"

"That whoever killed him used a silencer. Or that he was shot somewhere else and brought here."

"Does that strike you as rather improbable?"

"It's improbable to find Rupert down there, dead in my garage. I only know that I didn't hear shots. And it seemed to me there was very little blood, for a head wound."

Joe Grey frowned, the white strip down his face squeezing into wrinkles. In the dim closet his yellow eyes shone black as obsidian. His whisper was soft. "If those two bullets, that went into the back wall, had been a couple of feet higher they could have come up through the floor directly where Ryan was sleeping."

Dallas said, "Did you see any indication that the body had been moved to that location? Any blood trail? Any drag marks down the drive or in the yard?"

"No. You would have seen them too."

"But there was a tire mark," Dulcie said softly. "A little thin tire mark, like a bike, just at the edge of the drive."

"I didn't see that," Joe hissed. "How could I miss that?"

"You were watching the coroner. I saw Detective Davis photograph the ground there, but the mark was really faint. I thought it went along the drive, maybe to the side door."

"You heard nothing after you went to bed?" Dallas repeated. "You didn't hear a shot fired." The cats pictured Officer Bonner silently observing the detective, witness to the fact that Dallas was detached and objective and didn't lead Ryan's answers.

"I'm sure I'd have waked to gunshots," Ryan said. "Unless there was a silencer."

"And you heard nothing during the night?"

"Not that I remember. I was dead asleep, I was very tired." But the cats glanced at each other. Ryan sounded as if she wanted to tell Dallas something more. As if perhaps later when they were alone, when she was not on record, she would share with him something that was bothering her?

"Those stained-glass windows," Dulcie said softly. "How could the killer have wedged the body in like that? To lift a deadweight, pardon the pun, at that angle and ease the body down between the windows… That would be like standing on your hind legs lifting a dead rabbit as heavy as you, hoisting it way out at an angle and slowly down without dropping it. The killer had to be strong. But why bother? What was the point of leaving the body there?"

"You don't think he was shot there?" Joe said.

"Nor do you," she said, cutting her eyes at him. "Those windows are old and frail. You heard Ryan last night telling Clyde. That glass has to be brittle, and those strips of lead fragile. Those old stained-glass windows in the English Pub, the way if you rub against them, the glass will push loose from the leading? If Rupert had fallen there he'd have smashed those windows to confetti."

Dallas said, "We'll have to take your gun." The cats heard chair legs scrape, then the front door open, heard the officers and Ryan going down the stairs.

Leaping from the bathroom window and down the hill, they were just at the edge of the drive when the officers and Ryan came down; and the medics set down their stretcher, prepared to take Rupert away. Slipping into the bushes, they watched Dallas unlock Ryan's truck door then unlock her glove compartment. Flipping the glove compartment open, he turned to look at her.

"You said your gun was here?"

Ryan stared in past Dallas. She reached, but drew back.

Dallas pulled out a thin folder, and laid it back again. "Empty. I've never known a woman to keep an empty glove compartment."

"I keep stuff in the console, you know that. Except my gun. Where's my gun!"

"You didn't take it upstairs?" he said sternly.

She shook her head, scowling. "No. I didn't."

"Let's go over it again. You got home Friday night around midnight."

"Yes. Unloaded the windows, unloaded a few tools, closed and locked the garage door. Went upstairs and fell into bed, dead for sleep."

"And the next morning-Saturday morning?"

"Got up, made coffee. Came down and finished unloading, hauled my trash bags around the side of the garage. I'd bought a mantel up there, as well as the windows, and some carved molding. I stacked those better, along the back wall, and shook out the tarp and folded it, put it back in the truck bed where I keep it. It had crumbs and Hershey wrappers in it, and was folded differently than I'd left it. I learned Saturday night after the wedding, the Farger boy hitched a ride down from San Andreas without my knowing." All this was for the record, for the tape that was surely running.

"And before we came upstairs last night, I locked the side door. I know I did. But this morning when I first went in, it was unlocked. And there were muddy paw prints in the truck bed as if one of the neighbors' dogs got in during the night. My truck wasn't muddy Saturday night when you examined it. It was when I went in the garage to get some cleaning rags that I… that I found Rupert."

"Did you drive the truck anywhere Saturday?"

"No. I rode to the wedding with Clyde Damen. And you brought me home that night to look at the truck in regards to the Farger boy. It was clean then. It hasn't been out of the drive since I got home Friday midnight."

"Was there any mud in the garage yesterday when you cleaned up?"

"No, I'm sure. And it hasn't rained. But behind the garage, to the side… I hosed down a shovel and rake back by the faucet, tools I'd used at the last minute, at the jobsite to set some stakes. It was muddy back there."

They looked up as Officer Bonner came around the side of the garage carrying a black handgun by a stick through the trigger guard. The clean-shaven, neat young man did not look at Ryan, only at the detective.

"Found it in a trash bag, along with some wet, stained rags and stained bedsheets. Dark stains that could be blood."

Ryan studied the gun. "It appears to be mine. If it's mine, you'll find the trigger guard is worn, the bluing worn off." She began to shiver. Dallas didn't touch the stick or the weapon. He looked at Bonner. "Has it been fired?"

Bonner's shiny black shoes and the pant cuffs of his uniform were muddy. He sniffed the barrel briefly, as if he had already made a determination. "It smells of burnt gunpowder. I'd say it's been recently fired. The trigger-guard bluing is worn off."

"Bag it," Garza said, and turned to Ryan, his face unreadable, that reined-in cop's expression bearing no discernible message of love or familial closeness, offering her no support or encouragement.

Ryan looked back at him, very white. "How did this happen? That gun was locked up! You yourself unlocked the cab door after you collected evidence about the boy. Just now, you unlocked the glove compartment. How could-?"

Neither mentioned that such storage of a gun was not legal, that in California one had to have a special lockbox that could be removed from the car, a law that had never, to Joe Grey and Dulcie, made any sense. What good was a lockbox if it could be removed by a thief?

"Who else has keys to your truck?" Dallas asked.

"Scotty has a set because we used it on the job, but he's family. I've only had this truck three weeks-I bought it in San Andreas." She looked hard at Dallas. "Could someone in the truck sales, someone…?"

"Not likely, but we'll check. Has anyone else driven it, besides your uncle Scott?"

"Dan Hall, once or twice. He used Scotty's keys or mine. There was no one else up there but Dan and Scotty."

"No one?"

"No one to drive the truck. Some kids were hanging around, the Farger boy and his friends, but they weren't… they couldn't…" She looked at him, shaken. "They had no chance, they couldn't have taken my keys."

"The kids were in the house trailer where you were staying?"

"A couple of times, but I was with them. They were never alone. I let them make sandwiches one day, while we were eating. They… well… there was one time," she said faintly. "They… when I was surveying one day, they wanted to use the bathroom. I was right there, down the hill," she said lamely.

"And your keys?"

"Either in my purse or on the table. I kept my purse in the bedroom closet." She stared at Dallas. "That boy… why would he take my keys? Anyone," she said more forcefully, "anyone could have gotten into the truck with a door tool, then used a lock pick on the glove compartment."

"Could have," Dallas agreed. He hesitated, glancing at the tape recorder. Then: "That boy very likely set a bomb, Ryan. Set it or helped someone set it. You think that was innocent, that bomb?"

She said nothing.

"Did you use the truck every day?"

"No, sometimes not for several days if we could get a lumber delivery in good time. But if he did take my keys," she said softly, "what was the connection? Between the boy and Rupert?"

The two cats looked at each other. You are, Joe Grey thought. At the moment, Ryan, it looks like you're the connection. The tomcat shivered. If someone wanted to harm the Molena Point police, first with the bombing that, lucky for everyone, hadn't come off as planned, maybe they'd meant to ruin reputations, too, as a backup move.

So they chose Ryan, Detective Garza's niece, as the patsy. Pin a murder on Ryan, they'd put Garza in an embarrassing position.

And, the tomcat thought with a soft growl, this scenario was far too much like the vicious attack earlier in the year when Police Captain Harper was set up as a killer.

Were Rupert Dannizer's death and yesterday's bombing connected to that other murder? Were all three crimes part of some planned vendetta against Molena Point PD? The possibilities rattled around in Joe Grey's head as wildly as those little plastic balls in some diabolical pinball machine. He felt he was racing back and forth across the glass top swatting uselessly at unrelated facts, the little bright spheres forming, as yet, no logical configuration.