Cat Shout For Joy

Well, it should have been the same this time except the damned blonde got in the way. She had a cell phone—did she get a picture? If so, it couldn’t be much. A running smear from the back. Hell, she didn’t see anything. What could she tell the cops? Anyway, that mark had been just a shill. Tomorrow would be a real one again. Tomorrow’s target knew something, knew too much and needed taking out. Tomorrow when they’d be alone, just the two of them.

It was near dawn when the setting moon angled into Joe Grey’s tower so bright that, even deep in sleep, he tucked his face under the pillows. But the afterglow stayed in his head, brought him half awake. Wriggling around, he scowled out at the offending yellow orb. Damn moon brighter than a streetlight slanting in through the oak and pine branches.

The moon had been high when he galloped home from hunting late last night, his belly full of mice atop his earlier spaghetti supper—a good hunt even if Dulcie had wanted to stay to the grassy hill that rose behind her own cottage. He was chagrined that he hadn’t been concerned, days earlier, when she preferred to stay within the village instead of out on the far hills. Why wasn’t I puzzled that my lady was slowing down?

Tomcat inattention, he thought. All wrapped up in my own interests. Expecting her to be as irate at these new crimes as she always is at village violence. I never wondered at all why she was so preoccupied.

But even though he hadn’t noticed Dulcie’s motherly condition, he had seen a different look in her eyes. That alone should have clued him in. He’d wondered only briefly what that calm look was, that deep contentment in her easy glance. He’d put it down to some passing mood, thinking,Who can understand females? He should have paid more attention, should have figured it out without having to be told. But no, not for one minute had he taken time to wonder.

Ryan had said, late last night as she climbed into bed and Joe leaped to the rafters, ready to head out to hunt, “Be careful with her, Joe. Hunt close to home, and hunt easy.” She’d pulled the covers up over her silk nightie. “Please be careful, you don’t want to stress her. Not with those precious kittens.”

Well, hell, he knew that.

“Listen to Dr. Firetti,” she’d scolded. “We’re all eager for those little kittens to be healthy and strong.”

Joe had flicked his ears in annoyance, bolted across his rafter and out his cat door.

But he’d made sure Dulcie had an easy hunt among the tall grass where the field mice thrived. He had watched her gobble mice as if she couldn’t get enough.

“Taurine,” she’d told him when at last she’d stretched out in the grass to rest. “Cats need taurine, and maybe I need more now for the kittens. We don’t make our own, like people do.” Where did she get this stuff? From Wilma? Did she and Wilma find these things online? Or had Dr. Firetti told them? Taurine, he thought. No wonder a cat craved mice.

It had been around two a.m. when he’d escorted Dulcie through her cat door and headed home himself. He found it hard to get used to his tame, sedate lady, hard to forget her wild days when, too often, he’d had trouble keeping up with her. He guessed those times would return. He hoped so. He felt tender and frightened for her, but he missed her devil-may-care fearlessness. Now, rolling over among the pillows again to block out the setting moon, he burrowed under and slept once more, deeply.

It was a reflection from the low rising sun that pulled him from the depths this time, that stirred him just enough to smell coffee brewing. Then an urgent banging, which woke him fully. He leaped from the pillows to stare around at the dawn-bright roofs and treetops. The pounding came again, from below, from the front door, and Billy Young’s voice, “Ryan? Clyde?” A quavering, shaky voice not like Billy. Joe pushed out through the tower’s open window, leaped across the shingles, and peered over.

The slim, brown-haired boy stood with his back to the front door, pressed against it watching the street fearfully in both directions, his thin face white, even his high, ruddy cheekbones white, his fists clenched. The door opened so suddenly behind him that he nearly fell inside.

Swinging around, he pushed in beside Ryan and slammed the door closed.

Startled, Joe Grey fled in through his tower onto the rafter, hit Clyde’s desk, and was downstairs before Ryan and Billy reached the kitchen. Clyde, startled, turned from the stove where he was frying eggs. Joe leaped to the table as Ryan urged Billy to sit down. He was trembling and out of breath, his dark eyes huge. She reached for the freshly brewed coffee, added milk for him. “You ran here from the job?”

Mutely, Billy nodded.

Putting the cup on the table and fetching her own coffee, she sat down next to him. At the stove Clyde dished up the eggs and set them aside. Refilling his coffee cup, he joined them. Both were quiet, waiting for Billy to collect himself. When Joe heard the familiar sound of Max Harper’s truck go by, Billy heard it, too, and glanced nervously in that direction. When Ryan took Billy’s hand, gently undoing his fist, he gripped her fingers hard, needing that strong human touch.

Only Joe heard the softer sound of the medics’ van slip by the house, following Max. No one else looked up. The medics were not using their siren, as if they didn’t want to be heard heading for the building site. What had happened? Surely there’d been an accident—but who was hurt, to call out the rescue team?

Oh, not Scotty, Joe thought. Ryan’s big redheaded uncle was often at work early—but the tall Scots-Irishman seemed as indestructible as stone. Is it young Ben Stonewell? He thought, shivering. But maybe only some local, poking around the building, fell over a stack of lumber? It was hard as hell to sit still, not to race out and follow the action.

“Max dropped me off at the job,” Billy was saying, “and went on to work. I was early, Scotty wasn’t there yet. No one . . . I used my key, went on in. Opened the garage from inside, then went out again and around to get some tools . . .” He cupped his hands around the warm mug, sat silently staring into it. Seeing what ugly replay, that he could hardly talk about?

At last, quietly, he looked up at Ryan and Clyde.

“Ben Stonewell,” the boy whispered. “Ben is . . . Ben is dead. Lying there, the ladder fallen over him . . . blood everywhere. I . . . I called Max on my cell. Dead,” he repeated, looking at them, lost and pale. “Lying there in the side yard, so much blood . . . the ladder down on top of him.” He wiped his eyes. “I guess he’d been working on the roof gutters. I thought at first he fell, then I saw the blood . . . then the bullet wound. A terrible hole, had to be a gunshot.” He wiped at his eyes. “He couldn’t have lived . . . A hole in the back of his jacket and up through his throat. Blood underneath where he fell . . .”

Ryan put her arms around the boy. She held him tight, her cheek against his forehead, her hands gripping his shoulders to steady him.

“I shouldn’t have left him there alone,” Billy said. “Dead, and alone. I was afraid the killer . . . that they might still be there. That they’d think I saw them and would come after me, too.”

“Did you see anyone?” Clyde said.

“No one.” Billy looked up at Clyde. “Ben never hurt anyone, never wanted to hurt anyone. How could someone . . . Why would somebody . . . ?”

Joe stretched out across the table close to the boy, put his paw on Billy’s arm. Billy had already been through the trauma of his gram’s death. The shock of seeing Gram’s frail, charred body on the medics’ stretcher, covered with a sheet outside their burned cabin, a memory that could never go away. That had been about a year ago, when Billy was twelve. Now Joe hurt for the boy in a different way than he hurt for poor Ben. Ben was dead, was at peace now from whatever horror had happened to him; he was hopefully in a kinder place. But Billy was feeling it all, the shock, the pain, the terror. why would someone hurt Ben Stonewell? What had he done that someone wanted him dead?

It was a while before Billy quieted, before he grew steadier and some color returned to his face. When he seemed stronger, he and Ryan and Clyde piled into the king cab and headed for the remodel. Joe Grey, slipping out behind them, leaped into the truck bed among the tools and folded tarps and old jackets. A stack of oak boards was strapped to one side. Clyde’s glance back at him, as Clyde stepped up into the passenger seat, told Joe he’d better make himself scarce at the scene.

Clyde knew that no one could keep him away. Clyde’s Get lost look was only an empty threat. Riding in the bumpy truck the four blocks to the brown cottage, Joe, despite his pain for Ben, was thankful it wasn’t Ryan or Scotty or Billy lying dead. Had some drug-crazy vagrant, seeing the property vacant and under construction, maybe camped there overnight? And when Ben came to work early they’d panicked. Maybe the killer had a record, maybe there was a warrant out for him. He didn’t want Ben calling the cops, and in a panic he’d shot Ben? Maybe someone on drugs with his brain all scrambled?

According to Billy, Ben must have been up on the ladder when he was shot, working on the roof minding his own business, not confronting some trespasser. But they shot him anyway, Joe thought. And what if Billy had gotten to work first? Would they have killed Billy instead? A murder as coldly senseless as the random street attacks.

Senseless? Joe thought. Random? We don’t know that. No one thinks those attacks were without reason.

Ryan slowed the truck a block from the remodel and drew to the curb. Officer Jimmie McFarland stood in the center of the intersection rerouting traffic, sending rubberneckers down the side streets. McFarland with his boyish smile, his brown hair fallen over his forehead, looked like he should still be in college, not in a police uniform. Seeing it was Ryan and Clyde, he waved them on through to the next intersection, which was blocked off with sawhorses. There, when Ryan parked next to the coroner’s van, Joe leaped out of the truck bed and into the bushes. The Bleaks’ cottage was three doors down. He hightailed it through overgrown back gardens and beneath the yellow crime tape that now marked off the Bleaks’ weedy property. At the far side of the cottage he slipped into the neighbors’ hedge and peered out.

Max Harper and Detectives Garza and Kathleen Ray were working the scene. Kathleen stood against the house a few feet from Ben’s twisted body, photographing the scuffed earth with its tangle of footprints from the building crew, angling for shots of the fresh prints on top. Dallas and Max were working on grids and a rough map, and making notes. Outside the crime tape the coroner waited to seal up and remove the body. Dr. John Bern was a thin, pale man, his dark-framed glasses placed firmly on his small button nose; his hair was graying, but he still looked strong and fit.

Joe watched Dallas kneel beside Ben, photographing the body from different close-up angles, then taking blood and debris samples with as little disturbance as possible. Ben lay twisted from the way he had fallen, his jacket skewed around him, the ladder still lying across him. The blood on his face and jacket bristled with dirt and debris. Dallas reached to remove the items from Ben’s pockets, but he paused, looking at the blood and dirt smeared down across Ben’s lumpy pockets and down into the folds of his clothes. He looked up at Max. “The removal of his possessions will be better done at the morgue. This mess—we could contaminate a lot, here.”

Max nodded and glanced at Kathleen. She would, Joe assumed, be accompanying the coroner and the corpse. “You’ll want a second witness,” Max said. “Get Jane Cameron over here.”

This meant Detectives Ray and Cameron would have custody of the evidence, would examine and photograph it, log it in, seal it in the appropriate individual bags, and transport it to the station to the evidence room. Joe watched Max and Dallas remove the ladder. Dallas shot another round of pictures and then, with John Bern, carefully lifted and wrapped the body in clean sheets—as clean as they could be kept. Joe watched them seal Ben into a body bag. Feeling sick and cold, he started suddenly thinking about Ben’s construction notebook.

He had seen Ben, alone at odd hours, as during a coffee break, writing in the last pages of the little spiral-bound tablet. Not making his usual brief measurement and product memos on the front pages, but writing away in longer passages at the back, frowning, deeply occupied; he had watched Ben drop the notebook in his pocket if anyone came to join him. What was on those pages?

Could Ben have known the killer? If this wasn’t a random shooting, if someone had killed Ben on purpose, would the notebook shed some light on the murder?

He’d like to have a look, but there was no way. He watched Max and John Bern carry the body to Bern’s van. When they had him strapped in place, Dallas turned back to the house, picked up the ladder that he had already fingerprinted and photographed, set it in place and climbed up to examine and photograph the roof where Ben had been working. Watching him, Joe crouched in reflex when Tekla’s angry voice echoed sharply from down the street. He reared up above the bushes to look.

Down at the corner, Ryan and Clyde stood facing Tekla Bleak, her angry harangue exploding in their faces. She was alone, Joe didn’t see Sam. Maybe she’d left him in the van, parked beyond Ryan’s truck nosed into the sawhorse barrier. Tekla’s voice was shrill enough to take a cat’s ears off. Joe had to grin at Officer McFarland’s annoyed scowl.

“Of course it’s your fault! Whose fault would it be! One of your people murdered right here in my house. How could you let such a thing happen! Why would you allow this? I can’t live where someone’s been murdered, where there’s been a dead body! How could you . . .”

Joe threaded through the hedge, raced through the backyards to the corner and slipped under a lavender bush. The murder was Ryan’s fault? Right. This woman was certifiably nuts. He wanted to leap in her face, show her what claws felt like.

“It’s a good thing Sam isn’t here, I can’t have Sam upset and distraught—”

“Where is Sam?” Ryan said, to distract her. “He’s always with you.”

“Why is that your business? Sam’s home with Arnold, the boy has a cold. Don’t change the subject, Ms. Flannery. I cannot have this mess in my yard. I cannot have police all over my property. This is intolerable. I won’t—”

She looked shocked when Clyde forcibly took her arm and turned her toward her van. “I suggest you wait in your vehicle, Tekla. Captain Harper will want to talk with you. You don’t want to tramp around mingling your footprints with those of the killer?” Clyde asked, smiling. “You don’t want to add your footprints to the possible evidence? This is a crime scene now. This is police territory.”

Tekla jerked her arm away from Clyde and turned her back. She was standing stiffly by the barrier glaring at McFarland when a second squad car drew up, nosing into the shade beneath a cypress tree. Detective Juana Davis got out, square, dark uniformed, and severe. The no-nonsense officer was still limping, her knee replacement giving her trouble. Ignoring Tekla, she put her arm around Billy and took Ryan’s hand, her dark Latina eyes warm and caring. She talked softly with them for a few minutes, then turned to Tekla, her black eyes unreadable, a cop’s closed look. Silently Tekla looked at her. Joe settled more comfortably among the bushes hoping Davis would question Tekla right there, where he wouldn’t miss anything—Davis would question Billy and Ryan, too, for whatever information they might have, whatever they had observed.

These first interviews were best done at the scene, when the crime was fresh. Where had the ladder been stored? Did Ben have a key to the house or garage? Did Billy? Had any of them given someone else a key? Did Ben always come to work so early? Was Billy sure no one else had been there when he arrived? But it was Tekla’s answers that Joe burned to hear. Davis would ask where Tekla had been this morning, would ask for all kinds of details while, later at the station, Dallas would repeat those questions and more, the detectives alert for incongruities, for conflicting answers.

Now, at the far side of the house, Dallas was searching for trace evidence where the body had been removed. Soon he would photograph the ground there, would process for fingerprints on the window frames, would examine and take samples from all the surround. Before they finished up this morning, the officers would search Ben’s car and his apartment; both were now a part of the crime scene. Meanwhile Joe waited impatiently for Tekla’s interview, for Davis to sit her down right there, on the porch steps, to conduct the inquiry

But instead, Davis walked Tekla to her squad car, got her settled, and began the preliminary questions. Joe was poised to slip over under the car or ease up on top beneath the cypress branches when Max came out of the house and down the steps. He put his arm around Ryan and drew Billy to him. Curious, Joe waited.

“Juana can do your interviews later,” he told them. “As soon as Davis is through with Tekla, she’s headed for Ben’s apartment. I’d like you two to follow her, get the rescue cats and their cages out of there so she can work that part of the scene. I have an officer up there, he got a key from the landlord. I don’t want the place unguarded until we’re done with it.” The rescue cages were unlikely receptacles for any item of interest, but in a search, they needed to be cleared.

Ryan and Billy waited through Juana’s interview, sitting on the steps close together out of Dallas’s way. Joe did slip under the squad car but he couldn’t hear much; Tekla’s voice was sullen and low. When at last Tekla stepped out scowling and got into her van, and Ryan and Billy headed for Ryan’s king cab, Joe Grey slipped into the truck bed. He was startled nearly out of his paws when Dulcie landed beside him in a flying leap from beneath the hedge.

“What the hell!” he hissed. “How long have you been here? Can’t you be more careful! Those are our kittens you’re carrying! My God,” he snapped. “Are you all right? Are they all right?”

Dulcie smiled sweetly. “I’m fine, the kittens are fine. It was just a little leap.” She rubbed her whiskers against him. “Wilma heard the call on the police scanner.” She yawned in his face. “Scanner woke me up. Guess I slept in this morning, I was so full of mice. She . . . Wilma called the station to find out what had happened. I left her crying,” Dulcie said sadly. She settled quietly on the folded tarp beside him, and there were tears in her own eyes. “I still can’t believe it. Ben. Such a dear, gentle fellow.”

Joe clawed at the jackets that lay tossed in the bottom of the truck, pulled them up onto the folded tarp to make a softer bed for her. She gave him a whisker kiss and curled up there. She looked so sad. The engine started and they were on their way, following Juana’s patrol car up to Ben’s place. Joe supposed that until Ryan found new foster homes for Ben’s rescue cats they would reside in the Damens’ downstairs guest room.

Riding in the truck bed close to Dulcie, he wondered if Ben’s notebook had been in his jacket pocket when he died, along with the cell phone he always carried. Why did the notebook keep nudging at him, why did he think it important? And now the phone, too—the phone he’d seen more than once aimed casually at Tekla’s feet as Ben stood near her ordering supplies or checking on a delivery.

Was his curiosity one of those moments Dulcie called cop sense? “Cop thought,” Dulcie would say. “Detective intuition? Feline intuition? Who knows?” Now, curling closer to her, Joe was glad she was beside him.

But then, heading for Ben’s place, the truck slowed too soon, in only a few blocks. Joe tried not to be seen in the side mirror as he reared up to peer out—at his own house. Why were they stopping? Did Ryan not want him and Dulcie in on the search, did she mean to haul them out and leave them? That would be tacky, she wouldn’t hear the last of that.

Or maybe she didn’t want Billy to know they were riding along. Billy was too perceptive, he was sure to wonder why the cats had hung around the crime scene and why now they wanted to ride up to Ben’s place. The cats trusted Billy, but enough people knew their secret: Ryan and Clyde, Wilma, Lucinda and Pedric, Kate Osborne, the Firettis. Every new confidant became, unwittingly, a new danger to them. One careless word, one innocent remark that might imply too much, and their cover could be destroyed.

Pulling into their drive, Ryan got out but didn’t turn back to the truck bed; she didn’t snatch the cats out and dump them on the lawn. She and Billy headed for the garage. Joe and Dulcie, slipping behind the tied-down lumber, watched the two return with three cat carriers and extra blankets, safe transport for Ben’s rescues. Ryan loaded these in the truck bed, hastily tying them in place as Billy stepped back in the cab. Ryan’s scowl into the shadows of the lumber said clearly, Stay out of sight! Stay out of the way and out of trouble or I’ll make trouble. Swinging into the truck, she headed up into the hills where crowding cottages overlooked a wild canyon, where Ben Stonewell had rented his small basement apartment.

10

In Anchorage, as Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw prepared for their trip into Denali Park, worry still rode with them. They couldn’t get their minds off Kit. Shopping, adding a few things to their light backpacks for the trip, adding heavier boots and canvas jackets, they toured Anchorage for another half day—but all the while their minds were on Kit. As they walked the town’s rough streets, with the great, snowcapped peaks towering over them above the steep rooftops, unease nagged the gray-haired couple. Worry followed them as it had for the whole excursion, even as they thrilled at the sight of calving glaciers, at polar bears swimming in the icy waters and roaming the shores, at hundreds of bald eagles descending together toward an icy fjord. All the while, their thoughts didn’t leave Kit and Pan for long.

When Lucinda had asked Clyde on the phone if Kit and Pan were still gone, when he really couldn’t talk much, all he said was, “Yes, they are, Lucinda . . .” Someone came into the room, and then shortly they had hung up. Not a satisfactory discussion. She knew he’d call when they did return. Meanwhile, she and Pedric fretted. Lucinda pictured the two cats back in the village curled before a warming hearth fire, maybe with Kate in the downstairs apartment or with Wilma and Dulcie. If she thought hard enough, maybe she could make it happen.

But Kit and Pan were not curled before any fire. They were shivering cold, their paws nearly frozen as they clawed up through the dark earthen tunnels, up and up the wet, slick boulders, climbed in blackness, leaving the Netherworld behind them.

They had taken their leave with tears and with longing from that land of green light, of rolling fields and jagged cliffs, that realm of gentle unicorns and dwarves and elven folk; from the short-tempered Harpy who had carried them aloft winging through the green glow of the Netherworld’s granite sky.

They had left their own kind, too. Had left behind the small clowder of speaking feral cats with whom they had traveled down from their own land, who had chosen to stay longer in the one Netherworld realm that welcomed and understood their singular feline race.

The green light followed them into the tunnel for only a little way, staining the ragged walls but quickly growing dim, eaten up by shadows. Kit grieved at leaving but she yearned for home, for her own loved ones. They trotted close together, Kit’s mottled black and gray coat dark against the heavy stone walls, Pan’s red-gold coat glowing for a little while and then darkness swallowed them.

In the Netherworld they had stayed clear of the blighted kingdoms to the west that had long ago grown corrupt and lost their own magic. They had cleaved to the one small country where life still throbbed with the bright hopes and endeavors of its peoples, the one unspoiled corner of that lost and phantasmic world.

Now, ahead they could see only the faintest shadow-shapes in the blackness, their own eyes wide and black with their night vision. Echoes led them, echoes of a mewl to see what might bounce back to them, echoes of their own claws scraping stone. Vibrations against their whiskers led them, too, as they padded up and up in the velvet dark; up and up through the dense and incomprehensible earth, Kit’s yearning fierce for home, for space and light, for Lucinda and Pedric, for Joe and Dulcie and Misto, for all their human and cat family.

Is this always the way? Kit thought. You long so hard for something, as we longed to see the Netherworld. You reach that place, you dive headfirst into the wonders there, you embrace those who greet you, who take you to their hearts—but then you start to grieve for home and all you left behind, to grieve for those you loved first?

Oh, she thought, will Lucinda and Pedric be home, will they be there to hug and welcome us? Or are they still in Alaska? Will the house be empty and dark, no cheerful blaze on the hearth, no one to hug and snuggle us, no good smells of supper cooking? Are they still there at the top of the world even as we leave the world’s very depths? She imagined Alaska’s mountains of glacial ice breaking and falling, its huge and hungry beasts; she saw the two tiny figures in that vast land which, to Kit, seemed far more threatening than the enchanted realms that they had left behind. Now the last breath of the Netherworld had long ago vanished. The higher they scrambled up through darkness, the deeper up into the vast and heavy earth, the more they longed for the open sky. For their own stars, billions of light-years above them, for the night winds blowing down from heaven, for their own bright moon. Crowded against stone shoulders too close to the edge of dropping chasms, they knew fear: fear of falling, panic sometimes at the tunnel’s confinement, terror that they were lost, but they mustn’t let fear take them. On they climbed, drawn by their terrible longing, up and up, it seemed forever in the overwhelming dark.

Joe and Dulcie bounced along in the back of Ryan’s pickup, slyly peering out. She pulled up before a tall old dark-shingled house that hugged the side of the canyon. Two stories plus a peaked attic and, down at the daylight basement level facing the canyon, a small apartment tucked into the concrete foundation. Even the sight of Ben’s small home brought tears to Dulcie’s eyes and left Joe grim and silent.

Beside the house, the driveway from the street had been widened so one could pull on back next to the little rental. Ryan turned the truck around, backed down against a heavy wooden barrier, and set the brake. Beside Ben’s plain front door, a wide window faced the drive. Through it the cats could see two big cages facing larger windows that looked down the falling canyon. There could be no other windows, the way the apartment was tucked beneath the big house, up against the hill. The inner space looked cramped and dim. Both cats shivered, both cats felt for an instant that in that shadowed room the spirit of Ben might linger, that Ben wasn’t ready yet to leave this earth, to leave his new home, his friends, his little cats. Joe and Dulcie ducked out of sight when Juana’s patrol car pulled down the drive and parked beside them.

Ryan stepped out of the truck, untied and retrieved the three small carriers—and gave Joe and Dulcie another warning look. Stay put. Do not make trouble in front of Davis. Do not slip in and try to toss the apartment—until Davis leaves. Joe scowled at her but obediently the cats crept deeper behind the lumber. Ryan was getting as bossy as Clyde. When everyone’s backs were turned, Juana unlocking the apartment door, Ryan and Billy hauling the carriers inside, Joe and Dulcie scrambled out of the truck bed, up over its roof, in through the driver’s open window, and to the backseat. With its dark-tinted glass, they could see out but remain nearly invisible. Only the white strip down Joe’s nose was a problem, but maybe it would look like a simple reflection of light.

It was one thing to lounge on Max Harper’s desk snooping and listening; the department was used to freeloading cats making themselves at home. But their presence at a crime scene was never smart, particularly one as out-of-the-way as this. Why would cats hitch a ride way up here? Why would they hitch a ride anywhere? Most cats, unlike dogs, didn’t enjoy going along to savor new smells or new views; most cats didn’t like the noise and jolt of a car or truck.

Though sometimes a cat would crawl into a warm vehicle unseen, maybe a mover’s van, go to sleep, and end up half a continent away. That cat might make the national news if he was discovered, identified, and found his way home again via human intervention. Or not. He might spend the rest of his life as a homeless stray, or might luck out and adopt a new family but never see his own people and his own neighborhood again. All because he had foolishly chosen to nap in the wrong hideaway.

Inside the dim apartment Juana flicked on the dull overhead bulb; she left the door open for additional light as she examined the small, shadowed room.

Knowing that Ben would never again sleep in that narrow bed, eat a meal at the little table, or pet his three rescue cats made Joe swallow hard and look away.

As Juana examined the big wire cages, the three rescue cats eyed her warily: a half-grown black female, a big white tom, and a black-and-white tuxedo male. Juana photographed the cages, the walls, the concrete floor, then began to lift fingerprints from the cage handles and from their flat metal latches. Why would the killer, if he had been in there, have any interest in cat cages? Whywould the killer have come there?

Had he planned to kill Ben here in the apartment this morning, but Ben had already left? Or did Ben have something he wanted, something so valuable that before following Ben to work he had slipped in here to search?

This whole case seemed so senseless. Innocent victims, four of them dead. Banker Ogden Welder; Merle Rodin; James Allen, who had been attacked while wiping the windshield of his car, and died shortly afterward, in ER. And now Ben Stonewell. While the other assault victims had been left alive as if their attacker had no desire to finish them. None of this, Joe thought,none of it adds up.

He watched Juana bag a cluster of short black hairs from the bed, and that gave him a start. Anything involving cat hairs unsettled him. But those weren’t his hairs, they’d belong to one of the rescues. When Juana finished with the main room, Ryan and Billy lifted out the three rescue cats and put them in the carriers. Setting these outside the front door, they got to work breaking down the big cages into flats. Davis watched them carefully; civilians were never left alone at a crime scene, even the most trusted friends. That was, in part, for their own protection, if questions should arise later about the possibility of contaminated evidence.

Fighting the bolts on the old cages, Ryan and Billy slowly removed the sides and tops. Before loading the big wire flats in the truck, Ryan stepped outside with her cell phone. The cats, slipping into the front seat beneath the open window, crouched listening. She made two calls, the first to Wilma, to tell her that Dulcie and Joe were safe, and to talk a moment about Ben. But then when Wilma asked if Dulcie was all right, the tabby hissed and lashed her tail. Do they have to fuss over me? Just because I’m with kitten, do they have to treat me like I’m helpless?

Ryan’s next call, to Celeste Reece, was a long and tearful conversation. The cats could tell from Ryan’s gentle words that Celeste was shocked and upset. After a long while, Ryan said she’d bring the rescues on over if Celeste had room. Ryan listened, nodded, and hung up. As she and Billy loaded the flats into the truck bed, Joe peered out, torn between staying with them or remaining behind. He glanced at Dulcie. “We could just slip inside, search in the shadows behind Juana.”

“Oh, right. Just how do you propose, in that tiny space, to keep out of Juana’s sight? You know her better than that.”

Waiting wasn’t Joe’s style, but they stayed sensibly in the truck. Peering from the cab window into the apartment, they watched Juana meticulously photographing the little table beside Ben’s cot, paying close attention to some kind of marks on its surface. Juana stepped outside once, as Ryan headed for the backseat with the first carrier. “Did Ben have a laptop? And a printer?”

“He may have,” Ryan said. “He submitted a printed résumé. But he could have done that anywhere. Library, UPS, Kinko’s.” Ryan looked at Juana questioningly.

“Table’s a bit dusty,” Juana said. “Two items have been recently removed. Clean underneath and with slide marks. Did Ben have a smartphone? Did he take and print any pictures?”

“He had a smartphone. I never saw any prints he’d made. I think he took some shots of work in progress. Probably just for the record and didn’t bother to print them. I keep the same kind of record. Unless . . .”

Ryan paused, frowning. “Unless Tekla criticized something more than I knew. Unless she was onhis back, too, when I wasn’t around, and he wanted proof of the work he’d done? If he did take pictures for that reason, I’d like to know what it was about. I guess his phone would be at the coroner’s, he usually kept it in his jacket pocket.”

But Juana had already keyed in a call to Kathleen Ray.

“You’re still at the coroner’s. Did you find a phone, was there one on the body?” She waited, then, “And Dallas didn’t find it at the scene?”

Joe wanted to shout, Ask about a notebook, too! Did she find a spiral-bound notebook? Beside him Dulcie was strung tight, they both wanted to slip into the apartment to scent the marks on the table, see if they could detect what a human sleuth might miss. But one look at Ryan, as she opened the back door of the king cab, and he knew they’d better stay put. They were already in trouble for not staying in the truck bed.

They watched, peering back between the bucket seats as she strapped the cat carriers onto the backseat. When she’d finished, they leaped to the floor back there, in the shadows where Billy might not notice them. Glancing up at Ryan, they tried to look small and defenseless, but Ryan only scowled.

Billy got in the front next to Ryan, she started the engine, and they headed down the hills to deliver the rescues to Celeste Reece. Maybe by the time Juana got back to the station, she’d have found something of interest, have pulled more pieces together. Maybe by the time they slipped into the station again, Davis’s written report would be on the chief’s desk? And, with luck, Kathleen’s list of Ben’s possessions? Maybe she would find the notebook. Maybe then the odd bits of intelligence might start to make sense. Then, it would be time to slip away and call Harper.

Kit and Pan pressed on up the tunnels in blackness, their whiskers brushing outcroppings, their keen ears catching the echo of empty spaces that halted them in their tracks. They found their way sometimes by the luminescence of scuttling crabs, the iridescence of blind fishes flashing through dark rivulets. Scrambling up through the blackness toward their own world across underground springs that soaked their paws, they didn’t know day from night. They crossed stone bridges trusting their whiskers, trusting the tiniest movement of air. They wondered if they werefollowing the same path that they had descended. Or would they keep climbing and circling forever?

“I don’t think. . . .” Kit began. But Pan eased closer to her and purred and licked her ear to steady her and on they went, Pan’s bold attack on the darkness soothing and calming to the tortoiseshell. And then at last as they rounded a bend the tunnel grew wider—and they saw ahead the faintest glow, the thinnest shaft of light. “Sunlight!” Kit whispered. “Oh, sunshine!” Soon golden light blazed in at them, the portal shone wide open, and they bolted out into the brilliance. “Our sky,our world,” Kit cried, reaching tall, whirling around on her hind paws, staring up into Earth’s infinite spaces that swept away forever; beside her Pan, too, leaped for the sky. They were home, reveling in the vastness of their own bright and endless domain, their own universe.

11

Celeste Reece worked hard for CatFriends’ rescued strays, finding homes for lost and abandoned cats. She lived south of Ben’s place, down along the canyon nearer the village, a square, sturdy woman, her iron-gray hair layered short and neat, her voice low. Her way with a cat was understanding and always gentle. She attended CatFriends meetings at the Damens’ house where Joe liked to lounge among the group and slyly enjoy the variety of snacks laid out on Ryan’s tea cart.

Now, from the floor of the backseat, Joe and Dulcie could see nothing as Ryan pulled up into Celeste’s drive and parked. Only when she and Billy had lifted the three small carriers out, and their footsteps moved away, did the two cats leap up onto the seat and press their noses once more to the dark window.

Celeste’s one-story stucco cottage stood on a narrow lot flanked by older houses crowded close together above the canyon among olive and pepper trees. Behind Celeste’s yard a lone pine loomed tall, a dark exclamation mark against the pale spring sky. The stucco walls of the cottage smelled of fresh paint, the color pale ivory beneath a black shingle roof. The front windows were narrow and tall, reaching nearly to the ground, three at either side of the carved front door.

An old, discarded basketball hoop lay at the side of the yard atop a stack of folded painters’ tarps. Part of the driveway was wet. A bed of flowers and bushes along the drive gleamed where they had just been watered. The rest of the yard, an expanse of pine bark and bushes, was dry. The marks of wet bike tires crossed the drive, swerving in and then back to the street. Beside the house a wheelchair stood tucked against the porch rail and the two shallow steps. In the back pocket of the wheelchair a blue shopping bag peeked out: it was the wheelchair from in front of the station—but that hadn’t been Celeste Reece in the wheelchair, spinning around to face a possible assault.

Ryan and Billy set the carriers on the porch. The door opened at once, Celeste stepped out, gave Ryan a big hug and put her arm around Billy. Her jeans and T-shirt were old and faded, her short hair shone fresh and clean. Leaving the door ajar, she knelt to look in the carriers.

Two of the rescues pushed forward, greeting her with interest. The black-and-white tuxedo kept his distance. She spoke gently to the small black cat and to the white tom but ignored the wild tuxedo as she could see he preferred. She looked up at Ryan. “My sister’s down from the city, she’ll help me with the cats. These three make twelve, about all the room I have. I hope we can find homes for them.”

“We usually do,” Ryan said, “you usually do. And soon we’ll have the shelter. Didn’t your sister . . . ?”

Celeste nodded. “Bonnie. You remember, she married Gresham Rivers. Yes, she recently lost Gresham in a shocking accident. She was hurt, too. Now that she’s out of the hospital and through the memorial, now that she’s beginning to heal, she needed to get away, get out of the city. Away from every painful reminder, at least for a little while.”

“I’m so sorry,” Ryan said. “How can Clyde and I help?”

“Thanks, but there’s nothing at the moment. She’s doing fairly well. It was a terrible accident. It’s been hard for her, alone suddenly, the shock of Gresham’s death, so cruel and senseless. Come, let’s set up the cages.”

Leaving the rescues in their carriers on the porch, Billy and Ryan followed Celeste as she opened the garage from outside. Inside, five tall cages stood against the far wall, each with several tiers.

Joe and Dulcie could see pale shapes within, interested eyes looking out. They dropped down quickly as Ryan passed the truck, Celeste and Billy behind her, ready to unload the wire kennels.

Watching the three friends haul out the big flats, thinking about Ben taking care of his rescues in that small apartment, Joe’s voice was hardly a whisper. “We need to tell Misto about Ben. Misto was fond of him.” He thought about how, before Misto got sick, Ben would come to the shore to help John feed the ferals and would always carry Misto around with him in his arms. About how, that first day when they knew Misto had a malignancy, Ben had gone to the clinic and spent a long, quiet time with the frail old cat. Golden Misto, even for those humans who didn’t know he could speak, had woven himself, with his indomitable spirit, into the lives of them all.

“Misto needs to know about Ben,” Joe repeated, “but I don’t like to hurt him. He . . .”

“Maybe he does know,” Dulcie said softly. “Maybe, in that mysterious way he has, maybe he already knows, maybe he knows where Ben is. Where . . .”

“Where Misto soon will be?” Joe finished sadly.

A soft step by the truck window, and Ryan looked in. “I came back for my gloves. I heard you whispering,” she said quietly. “I’ll see that Misto knows. I’ll call Mary. The Firettis will gather him to them and hold him; they’ll tell him gently that Ben is gone. Two strong humans, to tell him and hold him.”

Joe looked up at Ryan and swallowed and didn’t answer. He looked toward the garage where Celeste and Billy were at work setting up the cages. Ryan reached into the truck seat for her gloves, gave the cats a pet, then returned to the garage. Joe and Dulcie were watching the cage sides being bolted in place when, at the house, the front door swung open again and the woman in the leg brace hobbled out, the woman from in front of the courthouse, Bonnie Rivers, lean and tanned, wearing her metal brace.

Leaving the door ajar behind her, she didn’t approach the wheelchair. She came down the two steps using only her cane and headed for the garage. And the cats heard again in memory the woman in the red sweatshirt, That was her, all right, Howard . . . same long face, same tennis tan. She wasn’t in a cast and wheelchair then . . . Bonnie something . . .

How was Bonnie Rivers connected to the couple in the red sweatshirts? Somehow, through San Francisco. And was she connected, as well, to the Molena Point street attacks?

As Bonnie limped toward the garage, Joe Grey and Dulcie waited until the little group had their backs turned working on the cages, then slid out the open window, Dulcie breaking her fall among the bushes. Quickly they crossed the dry part of the garden to the open front door—but the smell of the wheelchair stopped them.

They stood sniffing, wrinkling their noses at the unexpected scent. A faint hint of Vicks VapoRub. But a strong, fresh scent of Hoppe’s, said Joe. There was no mistaking the smell of gun-cleaning solvent. Its aroma drifted all through the offices of MPPD, as well as at home on occasion when their housemates cleaned their own firearms. But Hoppe’s on the wheelchair? The smell brought them up sharply.

The Hoppe’s was on the handlebars. The hint of Vicks clung to the edge of the seat where Bonnie’s legs would have touched. Sore muscles in the injured leg they could understand. But Hoppe’s? That was more interesting. Glancing toward the garage where the four were at work, they fled through the partially open front door into the house, shaking pine bark from their paws.

The large living room had also been freshly painted, white and airy. Big bay windows at the back, white canvas slipcovers on the upholstered furniture. A pale wood floor, no throw rugs for a cane or wheelchair to get caught on, the room uncluttered and welcoming. They had no trouble following Bonnie’s scent to the guest room, which appeared to share a wall with the garage. Slipping in, they could hear the mumble of voices where the four were working, heard small metallic clicks as the cages were bolted together. Following the smell of Hoppe’s to the dresser, they leaped up.

They landed nose to barrel with a businesslike revolver.

Dulcie backed away before she saw that its action was open and empty, the weapon bright from a recent cleaning. It lay on folded newspapers beside gun-cleaning equipment, a bottle of Hoppe’s, gauze patches, a long rod, and a little brush. Beside these lay a box of .38 cartridges.

They wanted to paw the box open to see if any rounds were missing, but they didn’t want to smear fingerprints. They still didn’t know if pawprints would be picked up. But why not? They had never yet gotten in trouble over pawprints, but the thought haunted them.

The sounds from the garage changed suddenly. They heard water running as if bowls were being filled, hands being washed, the chores were done. Dropping to the floor they fled the room, fled the house. They were through the truck window, in the backseat of the king cab, when Ryan and Billy headed their way. Dropping to the floor, Dulcie was panting with tension and exertion. Joe nosed worriedly at her.

He’d been so interested in Bonnie Rivers and the gun that he’d nearly forgotten his lady’s condition. I nearly forgot the kittens, nearly forgot how stressed Dulcie must feel, ramping around the village trying to sort out this tangle while she worries about the kittens. Gently he licked her ear. Maybe all Dulcie really wanted was to loll around the house enjoying little treats and listening to music. Maybe she didn’t want to be out chasing a killer, just wanted to be calm and cosseted, for herself and for the kittens.

How much strife can the kittens sense, he wondered, when they’re still inside the womb? We don’t want frightened babies. Will the tension that Dulcie feels, will that weaken them or strengthen them? Make them more fearful or make them bold and strong? Maybe, he thought, no one knows the answer to that. But for his lady and the babies, he’d prefer restful and tender care.

Kit and Pan had emerged from the tunnels among the Pamillon ruins just where they had entered to go down seeking the Netherworld. Emerged from beneath a stone porch between tumbled pillars and vine-covered buildings. “Home.” Kit mewled again softly. “Oh, we’re home.”

They stared up at the endless sky above them; they drank in the scents of pine and cypress, the smell of the grassy fields and of the distant sea. This world’s breeze caressed them, rippling through their fur, made them race in circles. They were fiercely hungry. In the tall grass among the broken carvings Pan lifted his nose scenting for mice, for rats or squirrels, for anything edible, and Kit did the same. The tunnel had provided water and an occasional blind lizard or sightless fish snatched from the black waters, but never enough, nothing substantial enough to truly sustain them. Now they dodged through the ruin on the trail of a wood rat, doubled through overgrown bushes working together hazing the little beast until they took him down. Quickly they shared their kill, but left the tail. They spied and cornered a big wharf rat, attacked it with businesslike urgency. Soon, killing and gorging and feeling stronger, they finished off their meal with a pair of small and succulent field mice.

They drank from a little spring within the overgrown garden, and at last, sated, they lay washing blood from their paws. They wanted a nap after their long and stressful climb, but Kit hungered too passionately to be home. Had Lucinda and Pedric returned? Would they snatch her up and hug her and cry over her and comfort her? Would they hold her warm and safe and hug Pan, make a loving fuss over both of them? Were her humans home to welcome and comfort them?

Eagerly she headed down the hills, Pan following close beside her, down and down where the hills dropped away, dotted by cottage rooftops. Down they fled, racing belly-deep in grass, paws flying, crushing dandelions and wild nasturtiums, leaping through tangles of honeysuckle. Down and down the familiar hills where, far below, the sea reflected late afternoon sun; down through cottage gardens that smelled of onions and rotted leaves, down until at last they could see Kit’s own roof among the distant oaks. She could see her tree house. Racing steeply down they bolted at last into Kit’s own garden.

The house towered two stories above them. Kit’s tree house thrust higher still. Up the oaken trunk they scrambled, up into her aerie into scattered leaves and cushions. Kit rolled among her pillows, lay on her back looking up into the tree’s sheltering crown, up into the sky beyond. Hersky, her tree, her house, her gardens all around. Their world, their village, their rooftops stretching away where they could travel the shingled byways as familiar as other cats’ firesides. Among the leaves and pillows Pan sprawled beside her, his amber eyes laughing. “Our world,” and it was theirs, their own sky rising high and away without any stone barrier, high and away forever.

But even now, even so content, Kit couldn’t be still. Restlessly she rose again from among the cushions, peering toward the big house. Were they home? Could she hear them? Could she catch their scent?

She heard no sound. She saw no movement at the kitchen windows, the shades were still half drawn. There was no smell of cooking, no lingering scent of recent and comforting meals. The big house smelled distant and empty.

But maybe . . . Maybe they’d just gotten home, maybe they had just now come in. Maybe . . . Leaping from her aerie, Kit raced along the thick and twisted branch that led to the dining room window. In through her cat door that was set into the lower pane. One leap from the windowsill and buffet to the dining table, Pan close beside her, the cat door swinging behind them.

No one cried out at hearing the flapping door, no one came running. All was still. The house was empty. But even so they went racing through the hollow rooms, one room to the next, and in each room scenting out and listening and rearing up, looking for an open suitcase, sniffing for some hint of new smell.

All was still. All was as Lucinda and Pedric had left it. Nothing in the house was changed, no book or magazine moved from where Kit had last seen it. Wastebaskets empty, clothes hamper empty, clean towels hanging on the racks neatly folded, double bed carefully made, bedroom shades at half-mast. Nothing out of place in the kitchen, trash basket empty when Kit stood on the foot lever and Pan reared up to peer in.

The only change was the stack of mail piled on Pedric’s desk in the living room, where Kate must have brought it in. Yes, Kate Osborne’s faint scent where she had been through the house making sure no tap was leaking, no intruder had entered.

“Maybe Kate’s home,” Kit said, “the downstairs apartment,” and she was out the cat door again, along the wandering branch and down the oak tree, Pan close behind her.

“Her car isn’t in the drive,” Pan said behind her, but Kit paid no attention; down the hill she fled and around the lower wall of the house to Kate’s sliding glass door.

They could smell her scent stronger there, beneath the edge of the door. They pawed at it, Kit yowled, they tried the knob, swinging and kicking, but that did no good, the dead bolt was in place. They pawed and scratched and meowed together in a fine chorus, but there was no answer. They scrambled up bushes to peer in through the windows. At last, discouraged, they gave it up and headed for Wilma and Dulcie’s. They needed welcoming. Kit needed hugging. And, in spite of being full of rodents, they longed for a bite of home-cooked supper. No wood rat or even field mouse was ever as succulent as a meal prepared lovingly by human hands.

They had left Kate’s door, were crossing the neighbors’ roofs when a brown car came along below them and stopped at the curb. A Dumpster stood across the street before a vacant lot where a dozen dead trees had been felled. Two men sat resting from cutting the logs with chain saws. The big metal bin was nearly full of smaller branches.

As the brown sedan slowed, a passenger stepped out, emptied a bag of old shoes in under the twigs and leaves, swung quickly into the car again, and it moved away. The workmen glanced up but paid little attention—they were only dumping old shoes. The cats didn’t recognize the make of the car; they didn’t see either the driver’s or the passenger’s faces. They moved on toward Wilma’s hoping for a hot supper.

Alone in the stone cottage, Wilma had put on a CD of Pete Fountain, a favorite among her collection of early jazz. These days when Dulcie was gone and Wilma worried, the lilting clarinet eased her. But now even as she paced the cottage worrying over the pregnant tabby, she knew she was being foolish. She knew very well where Dulcie was, from the police scanner that sat on the cherry desk and, later, from Ryan’s phone call. She felt ashamed keeping such a close watch on Dulcie, but just now, considering the tabby’s condition, she and Ryan might both be forgiven.

She’d known, early this morning when Dulcie bolted out her cat door, where she’d gone, had known when she turned on the scanner, and then from calling Ryan. Young Ben Stonewell had been shot. The murder sickened her, she was . . . had been fond of Ben; he was kind and caring and nothing cruel about him. Why this death? Was there something about Ben that they hadn’t known? Could his murder be connected to these other crimes?

She had been tempted to drive over to the Bleak renovation this morning, but with the department working the scene she didn’t like to get in the way. Pacing the cottage, across the Persian rug, brushing by the flowered couch, thinking about Ben’s murder, and worrying about Dulcie, she hardly saw the room at all. She jumped when the phone rang, and snatched it from the cradle.

“The cats are fine,” Ryan said, knowing how she worried. “They’re with me, we’re moving the rescues from Ben’s place. Celeste is taking all three. We’ll swing by the department so Billy and I can give our statements—Dulcie and Joe will be right there in our faces, you know that. Dulcie will be just fine. Joe Grey,” Ryan added, “Joe has grown very attentive.”

Wilma laughed. “He’d better be, he’s responsible for this miracle—half responsible.”

There was a smile in Ryan’s voice. “I’ll bring Dulcie home when we’re finished. Please don’t worry about her.”

Hanging up, Wilma put on another CD and stretched out in the easy chair. Listening to the haunting clarinet helped to push away her worry, helped to ease life’s dark side. She dozed off listening to Pete Fountain. The CD was nearly to the end when a different sound stirred her from sleep. The soft flap of the cat door, then a demanding mewl that startled her wide awake.

Having raced over the roofs heading down toward the village, Kit and Pan paused several blocks above where the shops began. Scrambling down a pine they fled through Wilma’s bright garden and in through Dulcie’s cat door—but at the sound of music, they paused. Music filled the house, the clear notes of a clarinet, the dulcet riffs of the one musician in all the world who could speak to a cat’s very soul.

Listening and smiling, but then curious, they padded into the kitchen. Wilma seldom put on a CD unless she or Dulcie were celebrating some special joy, or unless they were very blue and needed that soul-healing music.

Kit and Pan, lonely and hungry and needing loving, did not want to face some sadness. Which was this they were hearing? The lilting clarinet to ease an unwanted sadness, to assuage unexpected bad news? Or was the bright music a celebration of some wonderful event, of which they knew nothing? What were they to find?

Hesitantly they crossed the dining room beneath the big table. Softly they padded toward the living room prepared for either extreme, ready to offer comforting if that was needed, or to add their own joy to some bright and mysterious celebration. The cozy room was so welcoming, the soft oriental rug under their paws, the smell of recent baking, the flowered couch and overflowing bookshelves, sunlight streaming in on the cherry desk. In her easy chair, Wilma had stirred from sleep, an open book in her lap. Kit, watching her, gave a loud and startling mewl. Wilma jerked up, fully alert. She leaped up and knelt before them, grabbing them both in a hug, laughing, nearly smothering them in her joy, in her delight at their return.

12

In the lobby of MPPD two men and a young woman waited in the folding chairs, a chair between each as if they had come in separately. The thin woman, in pale blue workout clothes, had focused on the younger man, grousing to him about the unfairness of the police, how that cop had pulled her over just because she was talking on her cell phone. Both men glanced away, their minds on their own problems. Ryan and Billy stood near the desk, waiting for a detective to come out for them, to escort them back to one of the offices to take their statements.

Joe Grey and Dulcie, having slipped into the holding cell, crouched under the bunk, trying not to breathe the mixed fumes of sweat and Lysol that so sharply stung their noses. They watched Detective Davis come out to get Ryan, watched the two disappear down the hall, leaving Billy at the mercy of Evijean Simpson; but Evijean had all she could do to deal with an enraged wife who had come to bail out her husband. “Of course he drinks,” she snapped at Evijean. “What do you think I can do about it? Why should I be hassled and embarrassed because of the trouble he gets into!”

“You don’t have to bail him out,” Evijean told her as Dallas came up the hall, motioning Billy back to his office. At the same moment the front door flew open and Tekla Bleak stormed in demanding to see Captain Harper. Evijean, already overwhelmed, took one look at Tekla’s scowl, backed away, and buzzed through to Harper.

The minute Max appeared, Tekla lit into him. “I want that woman off my property at once. I’m surprised you haven’t already done that. I told you, with this murder . . .”

Max listened in silence, with only the hint of a smile.

“That Flannery woman has no business there after what happened. Why didn’t your people make her leave? She’s responsible for this and she’s made no effort to evacuate the premises, to move her equipment, get her workers out of there. I want her out now. She refuses to honor the contract and of course it’s in the contract, about damages caused. What worse damage could there be than this disgraceful murder, and I told her as much.”

Max waited, letting her vent. In the holding cell, beneath the bunk, Joe Grey and Dulcie looked at each other with the same amused disbelief as the chief.

“This is police business, Captain Harper. It’s your business to get her out of there now.”

Max looked at Tekla for a long moment. “The property is a crime scene. Nothing can be moved or removed. And how is your contract with Flannery Construction any of our affair?”

“She’s turned our house into a crime scene! That is your affair. She’s the one responsible for hiring that Ben person—he was obviously involved in something shady or he wouldn’t have been murdered, but she refused to admit that. It’s up to you to make her leave, or I will see my lawyer.”

“Right now,” Max said, “we’ll want your statement, what you actually witnessed at the scene. Come back to my office, we can take care of that at once. Then you can call your lawyer.”

Across the room, the two men and the young woman seemed to have forgotten their own troubles as they enjoyed the entertainment. Under the bunk, Joe and Dulcie were more frustrated than entertained. They wanted to follow Max and Tekla and listen, and they didn’t dare cross the room. They watched them vanish down the hall. They heard Harper’s door close, hard and decisively. Then silence. Their line of communication had gone as dead as an unplugged phone.

Cut off from eavesdropping, they curled up beneath the bunk into that drowsy seminap that serves a cat in times of annoyance, when things don’t go as planned.

Maybe Max would record Tekla’s statement at the same time that he made written notes; maybe they could listen later. But to what end? What would they learn? The woman was all vitriol and hot air. They were dozing and waking, listening for Max’s door to open, when Ryan came up the hall with Davis, and Dallas and Billy behind them. Ryan stopped at the desk.

“Evijean, we’re going to do some errands. Will you tell Captain Harper we’ll be back, so Billy can ride home with him?”

Evijean scowled and nodded. Ryan, turning away, was just beside the holding cell when she dropped her car keys.

Leaning down to retrieve them, she glanced in at Joe and Dulcie—she knew just where they’d be, with the lobby full of strangers. Her look said, Are you coming?

Both cats looked back at her blankly, their ears down in a no, we’re not, get out of our faces stare that made Ryan hide a laugh. Rising again, she went on out, following Billy. Joe knew she’d meant to drive Dulcie home to Wilma, not leave her running the roofs; but Dulcie backed away stubbornly.

There were only two civilians waiting now, the young woman having been seen and sent on her way. Joe was wishing they could make a dash for Max’s office when they heard his door open, heard Tekla whine, “ . . . but you’re the police. It’s your—”

“As I explained, Mrs. Bleak, this is not police business. This is between you and Ms. Flannery. If you want to file charges of misconduct, which I think would be hard to substantiate . . .” He was walking behind Tekla; she halted when she saw Ryan and Billy disappear out the glass door to the parking lot.

“What are they doing here?”

Max just looked at her.

“You will file charges against her!” she said shrilly.

As Evijean called the remaining two civilians to the counter, and Max walked Tekla to the door, behind their backs Joe and Dulcie made a dash past the counter and down the hall to the chief’s office.

When Max returned, Dulcie was curled up on the leather couch. She looked up purring at Max’s indulgent glance. From the bookcase, Joe got a gentle scratch on the head as Max sat down, picked up the form where he’d recorded Tekla’s statement. He scanned it into the computer, then slipped the sheets into a file in his desk drawer. Turning back to the computer, he pulled up the first section of Kathleen’s report, which she had sent from the coroner’s office. It included details of the condition of the clothing and of the body as clothing was removed. Joe skipped down to her list of Ben’s personal belongings: pocketknife, small grouting spatula, car and house keys, oversize bandanna, wallet, and a neatly folded packet of receipts from various building supply houses. No cell phone, no notebook.

Had these two items disappeared after the shooting, lifted from Ben’s pocket by the killer? Or had Ben somehow been able to hide them before he died? Standing on the ladder working on the roof, had he heard an uneasy noise behind him? Had he glimpsed someone standing below in the shadows of the surrounding trees? Had he seen the gun? In that split second, had he, in desperation, quickly stashed the items he didn’t want someone to find? But hidden them where?

Dallas had searched that whole area, had taken Ben’s toolbox as evidence, had climbed the ladder and searched the roof for debris and trace elements.

Did Ben have those items when he fell, and the killer snatched them? Or, Joe thought, am I chasing shadows? Is the notebook of no interest? Was there nothing in the back but a few personal thoughts, like a diary? Nothing among the phone’s pictures but building details? Am I fretting over nothing more than a collection of building specifications and material lists?

Juana had searched Ben’s apartment and searched Ben’s car for evidence, and Dallas had worked the rooms of the remodel. The detectives knew Ben had a phone and a notebook, so they should be as interested as Joe to know what they might contain—but they had found neither. Now he watched Max remove another file from the drawer and pull out a yellow pad, the kind on which he made random notes. Hanging half off the bookshelf, Joe scanned the chief’s brief notations about those who had been attacked. The full reports would be on the computer. Max made no move to bring that up on the screen—even for Joe’s convenience. The yellow pad was a place to contemplate, to perhaps jot down random thoughts about the victims.

Betty Porter, leaving work, M.P. Drugstore, streets stormy, nearly dark, hit from behind as she approached her car. Nothing stolen. Still had her purse, her billfold with credit cards and cash. Sent to ER, her spleen removed, recuperating at home, twenty-four-hour nurse.

Hazel Curt, walking home carrying groceries, again nearly dark. Hit from behind, knocked down, not badly hurt. Again, no robbery. She walked on home, called the department. No sign of attempted break-in. No further occurrence reported.

Luella Simms. Late afternoon. Attacked in parking lot of Village Grocery, loading shopping bags into backseat, knocked down but saw no one, nothing stolen. She was helped by a passerby, refused transportation to ER. Reported bruises, no injuries.

Elsie Rice, walking from her cottage at Pineview seniors’ residence to the dining room for breakfast, 9 a.m. Hit from behind, fell into bushes. Saw no one, heard no running. Davis took the call, photographed footprints in the damp lawn. Victim was cared for at the facility. No enemies in the facility that she knew of.

A notation in the margin: “Have received so far two dozen frightened phone calls, citizens sure they were being followed. Conducted interviews. No useful information.”

The last four names were the murder victims, Max had marked three with a penciled note: “San Francisco connection?”

Ogden Welder. 84-year-old retired banker. Walking home from the beach, 6:40 p.m., attacked from behind, critically injured, died, MP Hospital. Lived alone, Jasper Senior Apartments. Listed by the facility as having no family.

James Allen. Attacked 6:30 a.m. in driveway of his house, in his walker as he wiped windshield of his car. Had an order in his pocket for routine blood work, was headed for the lab. Heard nothing. Knocked to the ground, heard someone running, light footsteps like rubber soles. Saw no one. Statement was short, in severe pain. Died in ER 1:03 a.m. of a ruptured aorta. Attending doctor: Robert Ingleton. Officers Brennan and McFarland canvassed neighborhood. No witnesses, no newspaper delivery yet. Allen moved to MP from San Francisco with wife two years ago, bought small cottage on First Street.

Merle Rodin. Hit from behind, patio garden outside McKee Jewelry approx. 9 a.m. Found by passerby, transported to ER. Cause of death: blow to head with brick, severe contusion, blood but no prints on brick. See coroner’s report: Kathleen Ray.

Ben Stonewell. Shot in back of head while standing on ladder at construction job. Approx. 7:15 a.m. Dead when he hit the ground. See coroner’s report: Kathleen Ray. Moved from San Francisco eleven months ago. Unmarried. Went to work the same week for Flannery Construction. Basement apartment on Hayes.

Joe burned to see the full reports, but even Max’s notes jolted him. It was time to add his own information about San Francisco, it was time to call the chief. Tell him about the couple in the coffee shop patio, and about Celeste Reece.

He wished that right now he could lean out from the bookshelf and whisper his message in the chief’s ear. He hid a smile at the thought—but when he glanced across at Dulcie she was staring hard at him, her green eyes wide with alarm. Hastily he backed deeper into the shelf, put his chin down on his paws and closed his eyes. How did she know what he was thinking? How did she do that?

When he looked again, her green gaze was languid, only gently scolding.

But then when he looked deeper he saw something else, something strange and unfamiliar in his lady’s eyes. He saw a need, deep and urgent, a fear he didn’t know what to make of—he saw a look of entrapment. And Joe felt, in his own being, Dulcie’s shaky uncertainty.

This was her first litter. She was thrilled but she was scared. Scared of the birthing? Joe guessed he would be, too. Scared of taking care of those tiny mites? And was she fearful because life was so upside down—the two of them entangling themselves in these ugly attacks when she should be at home thinking only about the kittens? Joe saw, suddenly and clearly, Dulcie’s need for quiet and repose, for a new kind of tenderness. His lady, he realized, was far more vulnerable than he had ever guessed. Vulnerable and frustrated, right down to her soft tabby paws.

He didn’t know how to handle this. He was observing a kind of confusion that perhaps only another female would know how to deal with. He wanted to leap off the bookshelf and cuddle her. He wanted to lick her face and comfort her. But in truth, he felt clumsy and inept. He had helped make these kittens. Now he didn’t know what to do about it.

Dulcie needed another female, another lady cat who understood the frightened, excited, lonely confusion that must be a part of motherhood. She needed Kit. Kit had never been a mother, but she was female. She would know how to ease Dulcie, Kit could lay on that special tenderness that even the most loving tomcat didn’t quite know how to handle. But Kit wasn’t there. And across the room Dulcie, seeing Joe’s own confusion, turned her face away, curled up in the corner of the couch and pretended to sleep, pretended that she was just fine.

Yet even now, as he tenderly watched her, the tomcat’s mind was of two opposing passions. He was struck with worry over his lady, but yet he burned to claw deeper into the case at hand. To see the full reports, to anonymously call Max and add his own information to the mix.

Max knew the key to the attacks lay somewhere in San Francisco, but neither of them knew what that key was, what element drew the varied victims together. Joe was kneading his claws on the shelf, wired to race home and call the chief, when Ryan knocked at the open door, Billy behind her.

“Interviews done?” Max said, motioning them on in.

They stepped inside. “Done,” Ryan said, “and we’ve run our errands. Evijean did tell you we’d be back?”

Max scowled and shook his head. “Not a word.” He reached for the phone as if to speak to Evijean, then seemed to change his mind. He looked up at Billy. “I won’t be long,” he said, “a little paperwork to finish. Charlie’s up at the rescue building. We’ll be home in time to feed the horses and we can start dinner.”

A smile lit Billy’s brown eyes. He liked cooking bachelor style with Max. He sat down on the couch beside Dulcie, gently stroking her.

Max glanced down at Kathleen’s notes, then looked at Ryan. “Ben always carried his cell phone?”

“Yes,” she said, sitting down beside Billy. “Juana went over that, in my statement. He always had it, either in his shirt pocket or his jacket. He never set it down on the job or left it in his car, he never mislaid it. Juana searched his apartment, his car, searched the jobsite and my truck that he uses to pick up supplies. No phone. She’s concerned about what pictures he might have taken before . . . right before he was shot,” she said softly.

Max nodded; they talked for a few minutes about Ben, his habits, his interests, his deep caring for the rescue cats. Joe guessed that Juana would have covered most of that, too. But another take was always good. Max said, “Did Ben ever tell you why he moved down from the city? Did he have family there?”

“He had no family at all. None. I was wondering . . . about a service when the body is released?”

“We’ll put something together,” Max said. “Talk with Charlie about it. Maybe that little cemetery out by the water. You’re sure he was all alone in the city? No girlfriend?”

“He said, in the city he was hardly ever home. The construction firm he worked for put him out on jobs in Sacramento, Redding, up the coast—all too far to commute. He said he was tired of that, he wanted to live near his work. He said once, ‘How did I have time to date, to even meet anyone?’ He liked the smaller town atmosphere of the village, he wanted to settle in one place, he loved the small community. He was lonely, Max. He was just so young, he was just getting started making a life for himself.”

“And you’re sure he had no other problems? Bad trip with a girlfriend that he didn’t want to mention? Any other reason to leave the city, besides his dissatisfaction with work?”

“Not that he ever said. Surely you’re not thinking drugs, not that clean-cut boy.”

Max was quiet, looking absently at his notes, his thoughts to himself. Ryan, seeing that he had no more questions, rose and scooped Dulcie up from the couch. “Come on, my dear, I’m taking you home, you need some supper.”

Watching them, Joe dropped down to the desk and came to the edge—thinking of a phone, a fast ride to the nearest phone. Ryan gave him a startled, then amused look. She came around the desk carrying Dulcie and gave Max a hug. She scooped Joe up over her shoulder and they left the office.

And Ryan, like Dulcie, seemed to know exactly what was on Joe’s mind. She hurried out, thinking, Phone, he wants a phone. That wild, intense look in his eyes—like he wants to shout right out at Max. He’s been scanning Max’s desk, reading everything in sight. Something he found really grabbed him; he’s burning for a phone, burning to share it with the chief.

13

With the tomcat twitching to get to a phone, Ryan took him home first. She meant to pick up Rock, drop Dulcie off to be coddled by Wilma, then head for the beach. No matter how heavy her workload or Clyde’s might be, the big dog needed his twice-a-day gallop. The minute she stopped in their own drive Joe scrambled over her shoulder, out the driver’s window, and up to the top of the king cab. She watched him leap to the roof and vanish across the shingles. He’d be through his tower and onto Clyde’s desk before she’d backed out again. She could hear Rock pounding down the stairs barking, ready for his run. As she let him out the front door and loaded him up, she envisioned Joe on the phone talking with Max—the gray tomcat sitting straight and tense at one end of the line, Max Harper swinging his feet off the desk, sitting up, alert, when he heard the snitch’s voice—and that too-familiar craziness hit her: that Alice in Wonderlandgiddiness. None of this was happening, none of this was possible. But all of it was happening, right now, right in her face.

Joe dropped to Clyde’s desk, listening to Rock thunder down the stairs, to the front door slam and the king cab pull away. Then listening to the silent house, the upstairs rooms empty and still, a few golden dust motes floating. He looked across at little Snowball curled up on the love seat all alone now, one white paw over her pink nose. When he leaped to the couch to nuzzle her, the cushions were still warm where Rock had lain napping beside her. Joe snuggled close for a few moments, gave her a warm lick on her ears, but then he returned to the desk.

He didn’t use the house phone, he pawed the hidden cell phone from among a stack of papers, the phone that Clyde had bought him and registered in a false name: Joe’s insurance against some moment of failed caller ID blocking on the Damens’ landline. He sat for only a moment washing his paws, going over the items he needed to tell the chief, hoping Max and Billy hadn’t left yet. Turning on the phone, he punched in the single digit for the desk at MPPD. Half the time, Max didn’t turn on his own cell, knowing he could be reached by radio. Joe was sorry to hear Evijean answer.

Any of the younger officers who might be standing in for a moment would have put him directly through to Max. Speaking patiently, he asked for Captain Harper. He knew what was coming. Evijean’s voice was cold and authoritative. “What is your name? You will need to give me your name.”

“This is a personal call, Evijean. Everyone in the department knows my voice. I need to speak with Max now.”

“I can’t connect an unidentified caller, that’s against departmental rules. You will have to identify yourself.”

“Rules? What rules?” The woman was nuts. “What? Security rules? What damage do you think I can do over the phone? If you don’t connect me, Max will know it pretty quick and you, my dear, will be pounding the street for a new job.”

He could feel Evijean’s rage through the phone line, could almost smell the smoke.

“I cannot connect you without identification.”

He thought of calling Max’s cell, but it would probably go to voice mail. He didn’t want to leave a message, he wanted to talk with Max. He could try for Juana or Dallas, but he’d get the same routine. The silence stretched out unbroken and then there was a click. Evijean had hung up.

Immediately he called her back. “I have information for him regarding the current murder investigation. Put me through to him now.”

“If you want to see Captain Harper you’ll have to make an appointment.”

“What do you think the chief will say when he finds out you are blocking confidential information in the murder of Ben Stonewell? And that you are getting in the way of the investigation of the other three murders? No one, no one else in the department treats a valued informant so rudely.” Ears back, claws bared wanting to slash her face, he listened to another long silence, expecting her to hang up again.

A very long silence. But then he heard a click and Max came on the line.

The chief sounded short and impatient, as if he might be headed out the door for home. When he heard Joe’s voice, he calmed. Joe imagined him settling back in his desk chair, picking up a pen and notepad.

The tomcat laid it all out for him: the San Francisco connections he had found, people other than the dead victims but involved with them. Bonnie Rivers in her wheelchair, not a victim but shecould have been when she was followed there in front of the station. Bonnie’s husband recently killed in a San Francisco street accident, and Bonnie herself injured. And then, in the home of her sister, the .38 revolver on Bonnie’s dresser, a weapon that had been newly cleaned.

Joe didn’t like blowing the whistle about the gun—maybe the .38 had nothing to do with Ben’s murder. Maybe Bonnie was one of those rare Californians who had a carry permit? He wondered how she’d managed that. If she had a permit, maybe she’d been target practicing at some gun club on her way down from the city? Or she carried the gun without a permit, sufficiently frightened after her husband was killed that she balanced her own life against California’s restrictive gun laws. Whatever the case, he felt shabby, implicating the woman when he didn’t even know what caliber weapon had killed Ben.

Still, Bonnie was connected to this tangle somehow. What was that incident in front of the department, when the boy followed her and then ran? What was her relationship to the portly couple in the red sweatshirts, the woman so uncomfortable at seeing her? He gave Max the couple’s names and their San Francisco address. But besides passing along his uncertain tips, there were questions Joe himself would like to ask.

Oh, right. Harper had never yet answered the snitches’ questions. Nor did his detectives. It was all take and no give. Maybe if he were a human snitch, a drinking buddy, someone they talked with in the shops or on the street, it would be a different matter.

Yet the questions ate at him, and what harm to try? “Is there,” Joe said boldly, “a connection here, to San Francisco?”

“What’s your take?” Max said, shocking Joe clear to his paws. Max never asked his opinion.

“Maybe some soured workplace relationship?” Joe said. “A fired, disgruntled ex-employee out for revenge? Or . . . Illicit investments? Some kind of Ponzi game? The victims were on to the scam, someone trying to scare them off, stop them from reporting it?” But Joe shook his head. To torment the victims, yes. But to kill them? Still, the way crooks killed today, for no reason, anything could happen.

But what he really wanted to know was about the gun. “What weapon,” he asked Max, “did kill Ben? Could it have been Bonnie’s .38?”

He expected no response. Max was still for a long moment, then, “Not that gun,” the chief said. “It was a .32-caliber automatic.” He paused, then added quietly, “I’ve never given you information before. I expect the same courtesy of confidence that the department proffers to you.”

“You have that,” Joe said, his voice shaky. “Now, can you tell me whether in fact you found Ben’s phone? And the small spiral notebook he carried?”

“We’ve found neither,” Max said, rather tightly. “There’s the possibility they contain useful information, maybe photographs in the phone. We’d be indebted for a lead.”

Joe could hardly breathe. A whole new world had opened up, an enhanced one-on-one cooperation that made his head spin. Suddenly the chief was working with him, not just using the information that Joe or Dulcie provided.

Why the change? Why Max’s abrupt, increased confidence in the snitches he’d known and worked with—at paw’s length, Joe thought—through so many long and satisfying cases? What was happening here?

“I’ll do what I can to find them,” Joe said softly.

“Thank you,” Max said. And before Joe could say more he heard the soft click as Max broke the connection.

Switching off his cell phone Joe Grey sat on the desk absently batting at Clyde’s scattered invoices, mulling over the change in the chief’s response. Almost, he thought with interest, almost as if the chief were proud to be working the case right alongside his two snitches.

And didn’t that set a cat up!

Or, he thought with alarm, almost as if Max knows something?

As if Max had guessed the identity of his informers? His furry, four-pawed informants? And a deep, icy chill held Joe.

But no, not Max Harper. Not that hardheaded cop. If Max ever for a moment imagined that his snitches might be cats he’d . . . Joe couldn’t guess what the chief would do, he didn’t want to think how Max would respond. Sign up for psychiatric counseling? Check himself into rehab?The very thought gave Joe shivers.

No, Max doesn’t know. Maybe he’s just mellowing, growing more comfortable with his longtime snitches, easing into a more direct relationship. That’s it, Joe thought, and the idea pleased him. If Max really believed his snitches were cats he would have challenged them straight-out, would have made them speak to him in person.

Whatever the case, I’m not solving anything prowling the desk messing up Clyde’s tax receipts. Leaping up to the rafter, he pushed out into his tower. He’d just gallop across the rooftops to Ben’s apartment, for a little break and enter. The notebook and phone had to be in there, and somehow Juana had missed them.

But Juana seldom missed anything. Like all Harper’s detectives, Juana Davis was nosy and thorough, prodding and snooping until she had found every last thread and torn fingernail. No, Joe thought at last, to search Ben’s apartment after Davis was finished was an exercise in futility. He sat down in his tower among the pillows, stared out through windows at the streaks of sunset trailing above the Pacific. He thought about Ben, who never forgot or misplaced those two items. Why, this morning, would he have left them at home? He thought about Ben at work, the phone and notebook safe in his pocket. The sun just pushing above the eastern hills. Ben, alone, up on the ladder nailing down the new roof gutter . . .

He glimpses a shadow move in the yard below? Maybe hears the click of the automatic as a shell slides into the chamber? He turns, sees the gun, sees the killer? He knows in that split second that he will die there, so his gut reaction is to hide whatever evidence he carries, leave it for the cops to find. He turns, shoves the notebook and phone—not in the gutter but hides them under the roof tiles, slips them under those pliable composite shingles.

Now certain where the phone and notebook had to be, Joe fled out his window, racing across the rooftops heading for the remodel. He could almost see the two items tucked down under the black shingles. As thoroughly as Dallas Garza would have searched the scene, Joe thought this time the detective had missed that small hiding place. Had missed Ben’s message that lay waiting. With stubborn certainty he knew Ben had seen his killer and had left a trail for the law to find.

14

Ryan and Rock arrived home fresh and sassy from their walk, both smelling of the sea and the tide pools, and covered with wet sand. She took the big Weimaraner around into the backyard and gently hosed him off. She dried him with a towel, dried his feet. She removed her own shoes and socks, and in the privacy of the walled patio she pulled off her jeans, shook everything out in the flower bed. Leaving Rock sunning on a lawn chair, she rolled up the wet items, carried them in through the kitchen to the laundry and dumped them in the washer. Her face burned from wind and sun; her short, dark hair was sandy and windblown. Rock had chased half a dozen seagulls, threatened a big Rhodesian Ridgeback until she called him off, and had run her some three miles up the hard, wet shore. She wished she had more time with her dog. She envied Clyde the mornings that he took Rock running, pulling on his sweats, returning an hour later feeling just as high as she felt now, and of course just as hungry.

But in the kitchen, meaning to fix herself a snack, she stopped, shocked at the sight of Joe Grey: the tomcat lay on the table on his belly, his head down between his paws, his ears down, his eyes closed in misery. She hurried to him, but she touched him only gently. “Are you hurt? Oh, Joe! What is it, what’s wrong?”

He stared up at her, forlorn.

“Where do you hurt? What happened? Was there an accident?” She slid soft fingers down his side and his legs, feeling for an injury. “Talk to me! I’ll call Dr. Firetti.” Leaving him she stepped to the phone.

“No.” Joe shook his head and closed his eyes again.

“What’s the matter?” she repeated. Then, alarmed, “Is it Dulcie?” She turned back to the phone, but Joe grumbled and sat up.

“Dulcie’s fine.” He stared grimly at Ryan. “Prescience, hell,” he said. “Cop insight is all rubbish, I don’t buy that stuff!”

Ryan sighed and sat down. “What? You act like you’re dying, and all that’s wrong is . . . some investigative glitch? You made a wrong guess?”

He scowled at her, ears and whiskers flat. She was getting as cranky as Clyde.

“Joe, every cop has bad days! Just because you’re a cat, why should you be any different?”

Silence.

“Tell me!” she snapped, losing patience.

“I thought . . . Dulcie says sometimes I have the same precognition as a cop. A subconscious thing . . . putting together vague hints . . . coming up with a solid fact.” Joe looked up at her balefully. “Sometimes she has me believing it.”

“So what happened? You had an idea, you put things together and . . . it didn’t fly?” Ryan willed herself to speak softly.

“I was so sure. Ben’s phone and his notebook are missing. When neither Juana nor Dallas found them, I thought—I had a clear picture of the phone and notebook tucked down under the roof tiles, I could almost see Ben shoving them there.” Joe sighed. “I bought into Dulcie’s theory and thought it was second sight, a cop’s intuition.”

“And you found nothing.”

“Only the smell of Dallas’s aftershave, where he’d already looked.”

“Then maybe he found them,” she said logically.

“He didn’t,” Joe said with certainty.

“Maybe the department is holding back.”

“They’re not,” he said with equal conviction. From the look on Joe’s face she didn’t ask how he knew that.

“Max would have told me,” he said. “Max . . . Max talked to me this evening. When I called. He answered my questions. A real two-way conversation,” Joe said, looking at her with amazement.

She was as surprised as Joe, then as uneasy. “He gave you information when he never has before?” She looked at him, frowning. “Why would he do that?”

“Trust?” Joe said hopefully. “He’s decided after all these years that I’m an informant he can trust?”

They looked at each other, questioning.

“It’s no more than that,” Joe said, feigning a conviction he didn’t feel.

“Yes,” she said uneasily. “But I’d call what you were thinking no more than common sense. Ben was on the ladder. He saw or heard something, maybe heard the gun click. If the phone and notebook do contain something of value, he hid them in the only place handy. But what could be so important about the notebook? Ben used it for measurements and lists.”

“And maybe other things,” Joe said. “I saw him more than once watching and listening to Tekla, frowning, moving away when she noticed him.”

“Maybe Tekla has some suspicion about who this assailant is, about why he’s doing this? Maybe she said something to Sam, and Ben overheard? Ben made notes, trying to figure it out, to make sense of it?

“But,” she said, “if Tekla had a suspicion, why wouldn’t she talk to the department? Why didn’t she speak up this morning, the minute she knew Ben was dead? Why didn’t she tell Dallas or Juana?”

“Tekla wouldn’t talk to a cop. All she could think of was how inconvenient and embarrassing the murder was for her. She doesn’t care who killed Ben. She doesn’t trust cops any more than she’d trust the killer.”

Ryan rose, took a glass from the cupboard, opened the refrigerator, and poured herself a beer. From a big covered bowl she dished up Rock’s supper, a concoction she cooked up every week for Rock and Snowball, and kept frozen in manageable portions. Setting the bowl in the microwave for a moment, she put it on the floor. She stood back as Rock rushed to his meal, scarfing up a mix of meat and a variety of steamed vegetables. She smiled when Snowball came trotting down the stairs, yawning, and tucked into her own bowl, close beside Rock’s gulping muzzle. Gently the big dog made way for her, not touching her food.

“Snowball might be getting on,” Ryan said, “but with this new diet you’d never know it.” She looked down at Joe, sprawled across the table patiently waiting for his own supper, for Clyde to get home and start cooking. Joe wasn’t having even the most artfully prepared dog food. Ryan was saying, “If you’d just try a few bites . . .” when the intercom buzzed. She turned on the speaker.

“It’s Charlie, we’re just headed home.”

Ryan buzzed Charlie and Billy in. Charlie’s red hair was tucked back into an intricate twist. She was wearing black tights and a long, many-colored, hand-knit shawl. “Kate and I were at the gallery,” she said. “A little private preview. The group show looks great, Kate loved it. And five of my large horse etchings have already sold. I’d hardly gotten there when Max called, wanted me to pick Billy up at the station. Something about a phone call just as they were starting home. He was headed up to talk with Celeste Reece and her sister,” Charlie said, puzzled.

At the mention of Celeste Reece, Joe Grey came to attention. So his phone call had been important, had sent Max up there double time to talk with Bonnie, and surely to have a look at the gun.

“Kate left the gallery and headed back to the shelter,” Charlie said, smiling. “She can’t leave it alone, has to make sure every detail is the way she wants it, has to pet and play with the few shelter cats that are already settled in, the few we’ve made room for. She’s up there more than the carpenters are. And . . .”

But Joe Grey hardly heard her as he dropped off the table and melted away through the living room. With his thoughts on Max Harper, on Celeste Reece and her sister, he bolted out his cat door, scrambled up a pine tree, over his own roof and the neighbors’ roofs, heading for Ocean Avenue and the roofs rising up the hills beyond. The scents from the surrounding restaurants followed him, the smell of steak and lobster reminding him that he’d left home without his own supper. On the other side of the divided main street he hit the peaks and shingles, streaking up over the little shops and crowded cottages; hoping he’d beat Max to Celeste’s house, and knowing he wouldn’t.

He just hoped he could get inside where he could hear what they talked about; he had a lot of questions about Bonnie Rivers. Above him the orange-streaked sky was darkening, the sun gone, the streets below him growing shadowed. Approaching Celeste’s freshly painted, bright ivory cottage, he saw above its dark roof the first stars begin to gleam. Max’s truck was parked in the drive.

15

Wilma, having hugged and cried over Kit and Pan home from their long journey, had made supper for them, then saw that they were tucked up on the couch in the folds of her quilt. She had served them leftover shrimp Alfredo heated in the microwave, warm milk, and a nice bowl of custard, all of which vanished swiftly. The poor cats were starving, and exhausted, too, from their long climb.

Now, full of their warm meal and happily back in their own world, they tried to tell her of their travels but all they could do was yawn—neither one could stay awake. Even as she stroked them, sitting on the couch beside them, the cats yawned and yawned and dropped into sleep. She sat looking down at them, so beautiful, Pan’s red-striped fur tangled against Kit’s mottled black-and-brown coat; the two cats so lovely but so small and vulnerable—and yet so bold and courageous in the adventure they had undertaken, in the dangers they must have faced. She wanted to grab them up again and keep holding them or to snuggle down warm between them. She left them at last, let them sleep and restore their strength, restore all that they had spent. She wanted to call Ryan and Clyde, call Charlie, call Kate, call the Firettis to tell them all that the cats were home, but she put that urge aside. Let them sleep, don’t encourage anyone to come racing over to love and hug them, to see for themselves that they were well and safe, to welcome and celebrate them. Let them sleep around the clock if they chose.

But she did call Lucinda and Pedric, they would be so relieved. She called from the bedroom, shutting the door, speaking softly. When she couldn’t get them on their cell phone she called the lodge in Anchorage.

The Greenlaws were in Denali, their cell phone out of range. The lodge called them on the radio, then put her through to them. Lucinda’s yelp of joy and her flood of questions wavered with static. When Pedric came on the line, his voice was shaking. Wilma couldn’t stop smiling. Now, their worries put at rest, Kit’s beloved housemates could get on with their own adventure.

“Don’t wake them,” Lucinda said. “We’ll talk later. We’ll call as soon as we’re back from Denali.”

Wilma, wishing them a happy journey, had hung up and headed for the kitchen when she heard the cat door flap open and Dulcie came bolting in. Glancing out the kitchen window, she saw Charlie’s red Blazer pulling away. Charlie waved, tooted the horn, and was gone. Wilma spun around at Dulcie’s excited mewl. In the center of the kitchen, Dulcie stood up on her hind legs, her ears up, her tail twitching, one paw lifted. She had caught Kit’s and Pan’s scent; she was poised to bolt for the living room when Wilma grabbed her up.

“Don’t wake them,” Wilma whispered, cuddling Dulcie. “They’re worn out. They had such a long, hard journey up those endless tunnels, let them sleep.”

“Oh, my,” Dulcie said softly. She slipped down from Wilma’s arms, padded silently into the living room and reared up, looking at the two cats so deeply asleep on the couch. She longed to reach out a paw and gently touch Kit, but she only looked, every line of her tabby body curved into pleasure, to see the two home again. Kit was safe, they both were home and safe. And won’t they be surprised when we tell them about the kittens? Oh, my, Dulcie thought, won’t Kit make over them and spoil them.

But maybe she would spoil them more than they needed, this tattercoat Kit who was still, in spirit, a wild and unruly kitten herself. What kind of influence, Dulcie wondered warily, will Kit be on our innocent babies?

From the shadows beside Celeste Reece’s front door Joe Grey could hear Max’s voice clearly. He wouldn’t need to find a way inside as long as Celeste didn’t close the windows. The front door was shut tight, but the tall glass panes flanking it stood wide to the evening breeze. Joe could smell coffee from within, and some kind of peanut butter confection that reminded him again he’d had no supper. The bright white room, clean and uncluttered, smelled not only of coffee and dessert, but a lingering scent of roast beef that didn’t help his emptiness, either. Max must have arrived just as they finished their meal.

The windowsills were so low he had to crouch down in the petunias so as not to be seen. Celeste and her sister, Bonnie, sat on the white couch, Max in a matching chair, his dessert and coffee beside him on a small table. He had just finished asking a question that Joe missed; he looked at Bonnie expectantly for an answer.

Bonnie, tanned and slim, was dressed in pale jeans and a light blue T-shirt, her metal brace snug to her left leg. “It was me they were after,” she said shakily. “Not my husband. They didn’t . . . they didn’t care who else they killed.”

Celeste said, “The trial itself was stressful enough for Bonnie. And then, all those weeks later, the accident—what we thought was an accident. I headed for the city, stayed in the hospital with her. It was terrible. Gresham gone so suddenly, that long surgery on Bonnie’s shattered leg . . .” Celeste looked across at her sister and went quiet.

Bonnie’s direct, steady voice was more in control now than her sister’s. “After all those days sequestered, sitting in the cold, stuffy courtroom, finally it was all over, the ugliness, the stress. I was just beginning to feel normal again. Gresham and I needing to be with each other, staying close, going out to dinner at our favorite little restaurants, going to movies, long walks through the park. And then . . . the accident.”

Max was quiet, giving her time. Then, “The jurors,” he said at last, “could you identify them all, do you remember their names?”

“I’d know them to see them. I’d know their pictures, of course. But I’m not sure I can remember all their names—in most cases, just a first name.

“But I’ll try,” she told Max. “I’ll start a list, write down descriptions and the names that I can remember. Maybe the full names will come to me. After the accident, it took me a while to realize what . . . what had really happened—that it wasn’t an accident. When I read about that waiter, Jimmie Delgado, going home from work after midnight, his bicycle hit, Delgado killed . . . he was on the jury. It was then I began to put it together and got scared.”

“I’d like you to come down to the station,” Max said gently. “Tomorrow morning if you can. See if you can identify the murder victims? I can have someone pick you up, if you like. If I’m not there, one of the detectives will work with you, show you the pictures.”

Bonnie nodded. “I read something in the paper about James Allen, saw the paper some time after he was killed. I remembered him, maybe because it’s such a simple name, and because he was in a walker. An older man, nearly bald, gray fringe of hair around his ears. He complained, said he was too old to be on jury duty. But I guess the attorneys didn’t think so.”

Max said, “We may need to get a release of the names of the jurors, that may still be sequestered. A list would help you put names and faces together.” He was quiet, then, “You’re sure you didn’t know the boy who followed you?”

Bonnie shook her head. “All bundled up. A boy? A small man? I’d say a boy, though. A good runner. But the couple you mentioned, in red sweatshirts? A rather portly pair. I recognized them, but they weren’t on the jury, I never knew their names. I saw them in the visitors’ gallery several times. And during the verdict and sentencing? She was crying, both days. He had his arm around her, hugging her. I couldn’t tell whether she was crying from grief or was happy. It was that kind of crying,” she said, looking across at Max.

Max nodded. He picked up some newspaper clippings from the arm of his chair. “May I make copies of these, return them when you come in?”

“Yes, of course.”

Joe glimpsed the headlines for only an instant as Max folded the articles into his notebook and slipped it in his briefcase.

. . . dies when car goes over cliff north of . . .

. . . on a rainy street south of . . .

Bonnie said, “Would first thing in the morning suit you? Say, eight o’clock?”

“That’s change of watch,” Max said. “I’m tied up until, say, nine?”

She smiled. “Nine’s fine. That will give Celeste and me a chance to have breakfast out, splurge a little.”

When Max rose, the tomcat backed deeper into the petunias. Though the evening was growing dark, his white paws and white nose were always a problem, too bright in the gathering dusk, even among the tangled leaves. Watching Max head for his pickup, Joe wanted to leap in the truck, ride home with him unseen, slip into the Harper house, paw through Max’s briefcase and read the clippings. What trial was this? What was the offense? Who was the plaintiff? If someone was out to kill the jurors . . . a friend or relative of the plaintiff . . . then he must have received the ultimate sentence . . . life in prison or the death penalty. Joe wished he had run faster over the rooftops, that he hadn’t missed half the conversation, missed the telling facts.

But now, as much as he wanted to know the rest of Bonnie’s story, he decided not to hitch a ride, not chance getting caught snooping up at the Harper ranch. He’d see the clippings in the morning, once he hit the station. Though even that wait annoyed him, he was wired with curiosity. He watched the chief cross the yard, step into his pickup and back out—and Joe Grey hit the rooftops, his paw-beats thudding across the shingles of the neighborhood cottages as he headed not for the Harper ranch, that long haul up the hills, but for Ben’s place.

Maybe Juana had missed nothing at all—and maybe not. Either way, she was sure to have cleared the scene by now.

Maybe, in the process of removing crime tape, she had aired the apartment of cat-box smell, had opened the windows and, if luck were with him, she had not relocked them all. Not likely, knowing Detective Davis, but he meant to find some way inside.

Up across the roofs and oak branches, racing above the dropping canyon until he saw the tall old house ahead, Ben’s small basement apartment at the back. The outdoor security lights were on, but no interior lights at all, even in the big house. He came down two gardens away.

There was no sound from within as he crossed the darkening yards onto the brightly lit lawn. Juana had removed the crime tape, and luck was with him. She, or maybe the landlord, had left the apartment wide open, to air. Strange, he thought, to leave it unlocked at night. Maybe that’s why the security lights were on, shining brightly into the tiny room, brighter than Joe wanted. His nose twitched at the lingering stink as he leaped to the sill of an open window.

The screen was old-fashioned with just the kind of latch he liked. With careful claws he ripped a small hole in the bottom. Reaching through, he flipped the hook, pulled the screen open, ducked under, and dropped down inside.

The room was just as it had been except for the empty space before the windows where the two big cages had stood. Dent marks from their stands marked the carpet. He scanned the room looking for a hiding place that Juana could somehow have missed. Though still he found it strange that Ben would have left notebook and phone at home that morning. There was a better chance the killer already had them. Joe couldn’t get it out of his head that Ben had secretly taken pictures that he felt might lead to perpetrator of the street crimes—pictures that Ben didn’t know might lead to his own killer?

In this little square room, could there be some hiding place so small and out of the way that even Juana had overlooked it? She had surely gone over the carpet feeling for lumps underneath. Beside the narrow bed was a little writing desk that served as a night table, cluttered with cough drops, a battery-operated travel clock, a couple of paperback mysteries. Marks in the thin coating of dust described the shape of a laptop and what could be the feet of a small printer. Maybe one of those giveaway color jobs where the company made most of its profit selling cartridge replacements. In the far corner of the room a tiny refrigerator stood beneath a small counter with a bar-sized sink. On the counter were a dozen cans of cat food, a few clean mugs and plates, and a microwave. And now, even with the windows open to air out the lingering stink of cat kennels, another scent touched Joe. He could smell, when he took a good whiff, the whisker-licking aroma of young mice.

Having missed supper, he spared a few moments to stalk the trail, hoping to assuage the hollowness in his belly. Slipping across the room following the mousy enticement, he had doubled back where it was stronger—when a swift small shadow fled past his nose. Damned mouse exploded right past him! Enraged to have missed it, he leaped where the shadow paused for an instant. He missed again, the tip of its tail vanishing beneath the bed. Well, hell!

Bellying under the bed among inert dust mice, he found where the little beast had disappeared. Where the molding was warped, concealing a sizable hole behind the wooden trim.

Crouching to peer in he saw a tangle of chewed-up paper, and the smell of mouse was strong. He was staring at the edge of a mouse nest: torn papers deep and cozy. He tensed when something small stirred within. Hungrily he flashed his paw in, fast as lightning he grabbed—and drew back faster, hissing, pain shooting through his paw.

A half-grown mouse clung to his paw, its sharp teeth sunk deep in his tender pad. The tiny animal glared at him with rage. Joe shook his paw and backed away, the angry mouse clinging.

In all his days, in all his battles with enemies twice his size, from fighting raccoons to enraged dogs, he had never been attacked by a mouse. He stared at it, shocked; he was about to pull the cheeky youngster off his paw and crunch and swallow it. But it was so small and so damnednervy. The stupid mouse had way more courage than sense. Joe bared his teeth over it. One chomp and it would be gone, warming his hungry belly.

In the second that he hesitated, the mouse bit him harder. Angrily Joe swatted the little bastard off with his other paw. It was so bold he couldn’t eat it. It stared up at him, squeaking angrily, then fled back into the hole.

Peering in, Joe prayed the little varmint wouldn’t charge out and grab his whiskered nose. He couldn’t believe the nerve of the creature.

But now the nest was empty, the mouse had vanished. There were no others. Had they run away at his disturbance? Nothing there now but the soft paper bed itself. Joe studied the tangle of chewed-up paper, each piece colored as bright as Christmas wrappings. Tiny scraps gleaming red, green, blue: a nest of scraps as brilliant and shiny as . . .

As brightly colored photographs.

Photographs, diligently chewed into hundreds of pieces, torn to line a rodent’s nest.

Gingerly he reached a paw in, hoping the coast was still clear. Carefully he examined the edges where the mother mouse’s mastication had not been so thorough. She had created a soft bed in the center, but had left the outer portion in larger scraps only lightly torn apart. Joe clawed out a few pieces, some nearly an inch across.

Yes, torn photographs. A shot of green grass with a streak of muddy path. The toe of a jogging shoe, mud-stained. The cuff of black jogging pants. All common items, but views that had, for some reason, stirred Ben to record them.

Once he’d printed them, had Ben hidden them in the hole not thinking about mice? And the mouse, typical opportunist, had begun at once to line her nest. Or had Ben hidden them somewhere else in the room, and the mouse dragged them here to make her nest?

He imagined Juana, in her straight black uniform skirt, having to crouch low, her face to the floor to peer into the opening beneath the warped baseboard. Crouching so low might have put more stress on her mechanical knee than she wanted, and she’d made short work of the search.

How, Joe wondered, do I report the torn photographs without making Juana look bad for missing them? And how, in fact, do I report this at all without hinting at my identity? How many snitches crawl around under beds looking in mouse holes? Why had this supposedly human snitch thought to peer inside a mouse nest; why would he ever imagine a mouse might be hoarding useful evidence?

Maybe he should just forget this one, abandon this particular tip. Were the torn photos worthreporting and thus stirring anew whatever suspicions Harper already had about the snitch? Maybe the department would gather enough information without this very dicey report.

But as he leaped to the windowsill and slipped out of the apartment, latching the screen behind him, he knew he would make the call. This one was too good not to pass on to the chief. Time to head home and call Max again, he thought, smiling. And, listening to his rumbling stomach,Time to hit the refrigerator—leave the mouse, go for the cold spaghetti. Then call Max. Licking his whiskers, he took off across the rooftops.

16

Joe’s second call to Max was disappointing.

After the intelligence that Max had shared with him earlier in the day, he’d thought their relationship had geared up to a new and more intimate confidence.

Not so.

As Joe sat on Clyde’s desk using the cell phone, trying to maintain the heightened relationship, telling Max about the mouse nest, the chief dropped back to his closemouthed demeanor of earlier calls, the one-way snitch-to-cop dialogue that Joe was used to. Well, what could you expect? Listening to Joe’s wild tale of a mouse and torn photos, of course he’d clam up. “What were you doing poking around in mouse holes, what were you doing in Ben’s apartment? That’s a crime scene.”

“The crime tape was gone,” Joe said. “The windows were open. I was standing at the window looking in, wondering if your detectives missed anything, when this mouse ran across the floor. I guess mice take over right away when a place is empty. It had a piece of shiny red paper stuck to its fur.

“I remembered what you said about photographs. That paper was bright and shiny enough to have been chewed off a photo, and it made me wonder. I climbed in the window, had a look under the bed where the mouse had gone, and found the nest.”

Max’s heavy silence made him want to hang up and pretend he’d never made the call. Sitting among the clutter of Clyde’s bills and catalogs, he knew he’d talked himself into a corner.

But then Max said, sounding only slightly reluctant, that someone would investigate the mouse hole, and he thanked Joe and hung up.

Now Joe lay in his tower speculating on what would come from that phone call. Hoping the photos would be worth the effort—his bitten paw still hurt. And then thinking about the one missing fact that Max and Bonnie Rivers knew and that he didn’t. About the real heart of the puzzle: the rest of the information on the San Francisco trial, the facts that he’d missed when he arrived late at Bonnie’s to eavesdrop through the front window.

A murder trial, but whose trial? What kind of murder? And when? He had left Celeste Reece’s house knowing more than when he arrived, but not knowing enough, not knowing what the department knew.

First thing in the morning he’d find out, when he hit Harper’s office. Now, curling among his pillows, looking out his tower windows at the night, he tried to be satisfied with that. At least now his belly was full of supper: cold spaghetti and smoked salmon that he’d scarfed down before he called Max. Yawning, he was dropping into sleep when below in the house, the phone rang. Two rings, then Ryan or Clyde picked up on one of the downstairs phones; he could hear no voice from Clyde’s study. All was silent again and he drifted off, he was down into heavy sleep, into a deep dream, when the doorbell rang and Ryan’s excited squeal jerked him wide awake.

Ryan never squealed. It was not a scream but a high, delighted exclamation. He heard several voices all at once, excited male and female voices jangling together and then Ryan pounding up the stairs, Rock thumping and barking beside her. Her voice rose among the rafters and through his cat door as if the house were afire.

“Joe! Joe, are you there? Wake up! They’re home! They’re here!”

Joe yawned. Lucinda and Pedric? Well, good, it was about time. To go running off to Alaska just when—

“Kit and Pan are home. Kit and Pan are here! Wake up!”

He shot out from among the pillows, belted in through his cat door, and crouched on the rafter staring down. Ryan stood looking up at him, her velvet jogging suit wrinkled, her dark hair tousled. “Kit’s home! Pan’s home! Oh, come down! They’re here! Wilma brought them.”

Clyde appeared behind her, Rock crowding between them. Wilma hurried up the stairs, too, Dulcie tucked up in a fold of her red cloak. Kit and Pan raced up past them, flew up the stairs, and reared up, staring at Joe. He wanted to leap down yowling, wanted to pummel Pan and caress Kit as he’d done when she was a youngster—but even as delight rushed through him, Joe felt sick.

He looked down at the two cats crowding between Ryan and Rock, the red tomcat serious and silent, Kit’s black-and-brown fur all atangle, her yellow eyes huge. For a moment their looks were steady with satisfaction at being home. But then they let their pain show, their deep and terrible pain.

They knew. They knew that Misto was dying.

“Dulcie told us,” Kit said in a small voice. Pan’s amber eyes were filled now only with rising dread, his distress terrible to see. Joe dropped to the desk and to the floor and pressed against Pan. He put his chin over Pan’s shoulder, in a tomcat kind of hug. Pan pressed his face hard against Joe; they stood so for a long time before Pan turned away, hanging his head, and Joe moved to comfort Kit. But Ryan picked Pan up, holding him close, pressing her face against him, her dark hair tangled over his red coat. He snuggled his face into her throat, shivering.

And as Joe licked and nuzzled Kit, her yellow eyes were filled with such conflicting emotions. Her tears, her pain for Misto were terrible, her devastation at the old cat’s illness. When Misto had first arrived in Molena Point, Kit had followed and followed him over the rooftops, begging for his stories, listening to his ancient tales. He was the closest to a father she’d ever had.

But now Joe could see, even through Kit’s pain for Misto, a spark of wonder, too. Despite her hurt and grieving, he could see in her eyes a rising joy at the thought of Dulcie’s kittens. Sadness and wonder burned together, now, within Kit’s small tortoiseshell being.

Joe was hardly aware when Clyde picked him and Kit up and they moved down the stairs. Wilma carrying Dulcie, Ryan hugging Pan over her shoulder, they made a strange procession through the house and out to the drive. They all tucked up in Wilma’s car, Clyde beside Wilma, Ryan in the backseat, the cats cuddled among them. They headed for the Firettis’ cottage, dreading the moments ahead. Kit, in the front seat beside Wilma, pressed against Pan. Pan licked her face but then turned away, grim and withdrawn.

Dulcie had told them about Misto’s illness only a long time after she burst in the house catching their scent and letting out a mewl of joy. Going quiet, letting them sleep, she had waited in silence for a long while, tucked up in Wilma’s lap. But then when Kit and Pan did wake, and Kit jumped down to nuzzle Dulcie, she backed away with a yowl of surprise. Dulcie smelled different. “Oh, my!” Kit stared at Dulcie, her yellow eyes wide. “Kittens! You’re carrying kittens!”

Dulcie laughed and lashed her tail and looked very proud of herself. Pan came close and sniffed, and backed away again with a typical tomcat shyness.

It was only after Kit had sniffed Dulcie all over and asked too many questions, and Pan asked questions, only later that Dulcie put out a paw at last to silence them, and sat quietly looking at them both.

Kit and Pan grew immediately very still, shivering at Dulcie’s solemn look. When, gently and softly, Dulcie told them about Misto, Pan had slunk away into the hall by himself, where he curled up against the wall, nose to tail, rigid and grieving.

It was a long time more, after Pan finally joined them again, stoic and resigned, that Wilma had called the Damens. That she and the three cats got in the car and headed for Ryan and Clyde’s house.

Now, driving the few blocks from the Damens’ to the Firettis’, Wilma stroked Pan softly. “Don’t grieve, please don’t, Pan. Don’t let Misto see you grieve, he doesn’t want that.” And, to Kit, “Please don’t cry, my dear, he doesn’t want sadness. Misto himself is not sad—except to be parting from you. He is certain he is parting for only a little while; he is so very sure this is not a forever good-bye. He does not believe there is an end to the spirit.”

But even so, Pan tucked his nose deeper under his paw, and Kit laid her face against him. Wilma said, “Misto has known other lives. I believe him,” she said softly. “He will be bright-eyed when he speaks of waking in vast eternity again, of finding himself once more approaching a new life.” She paused at a stop sign, then turned onto the Firettis’ street, passing the softly lit dome of the clinic, approaching the lighted cottage that sat deep in Mary’s garden.

“Grieving would only make him sad,” Wilma said. “Let him tell you of the wonders, of how his released spirit will see the vastness of the earth, see the sweep of centuries again as no living creature can see them. Let him tell you more of his earlier lives, of the wonders that await us all, of how we will all be together again. Don’t spoil that for him.”

Parking in the Firettis’ drive, she picked up Dulcie and stroked Pan. “Misto’s vision is so clear, so real, it must be true. His view of what lies in the past is too detailed to be only an old cat’s dreams. Let him tell you with happiness. Love him, Pan. Tell him you know you will be together again. Don’t spoil his parting, don’t hurt him with your own sadness.”

17

The four cats padded quietly into the Firettis’ cottage, where Mary stood in the open doorway. Ryan, Clyde, and Wilma lingered behind, then silently joined Mary and John where they’d been lounging by the fire, John in tan pajamas and a brown terry-cloth robe, Mary in a velvet housecoat printed with small nasturtiums. As she drew humans and cats to the couch, Pan alone approached the bedroom. The others waited in silence, filled with his grieving.

In the bedroom Pan reared up to look. Misto did not recline now on the Firettis’ big double bed; he lay curled up in a roomy retreat of his own. A child’s crib lined with soft blankets had been drawn up against the big bed, the bars removed on that side so he could pad back and forth as he pleased. So he could settle alone with no movement to disturb him, or could curl up against Mary and John, warm and close. Now, as Misto lay sleeping, Pan’s heart twisted for the big yellow tom. Misto seemed so small suddenly, so frail. Padding across the covers of the big bed, Pan lay down with his front paws just touching Misto’s blanket.

They lay thus for a long time, father and son, Pan wrapped in silence and thin, elderly Misto so deeply asleep, his once-golden fur turned straw-colored from his illness. Pan, seeing his father so old and frail, felt his heart nearly break.

He could hear from the living room Dr. Firetti telling Dulcie that she mustn’t go traipsing across the rooftops anymore until after the kittens came. As he wondered idly how many times John had repeated his cautions, scolding the pregnant tabby, suddenly Misto’s eyes opened. The old cat had awakened to John’s voice, perhaps, or maybe to some inner perception—maybe to the sudden scent of his son reaching him through his dreams. Seeing Pan, he rose up out of the blankets, his amber eyes growing as bright as the eyes of a young cat, gleaming with life now, and with joy. Pan moved close to him in a tender feline embrace, father and son reunited, paws and fur all atangle, old cat and young together once more. For a long time neither spoke, the only sound their rumbling purrs. They didn’t see Kit, Dulcie, and Joe look in from the door and then turn away again. Kit, leaving the bedroom, stifled her longing to leap up and hold the old cat close, too, and snuggle him. Her own love for him could wait.

But then from the bedroom Misto, scenting her, called out weakly. “Kit? Kit, let me see you. Let me see how the Netherworld has treated you.”

Kit came slipping in and up on the bed and into the blankets of the crib, easing down close to Misto. The old cat looked her over and licked her face. “You look strong and fine, the Netherworld treated you well.” Kit smiled and nuzzled him; and there Kit and Pan remained, beside Misto, for the rest of the night.

Joe Grey and Dulcie, Wilma, Ryan, and Clyde soon slipped away home, leaving John and Mary to read by the fire, leaving Kit and Pan and Misto reunited, snuggled in Misto’s bed.

The three were quiet for only a little while before Misto stirred again and sat up as if he felt stronger, as if the closeness of Pan and Kit had brought him new life. No one imagined such a strengthening would last, but, “Tell me,” the old cat said, “I want to hear your journeys, I want to see that amazing land as you saw it.”

Listening to the crackle of the fire from the living room and watching its flickering reflections on the bedroom ceiling, Kit and Pan told Misto the wonders of those green-lit lands and the amazing beasts, the winged dragons, the white-feathered harpy, the dwarves and selkies and all the magical folk.

“We took a wrong turn at first,” Pan said, “where the tunnel split into five branches. Three crossed a sunken river on narrow stone bridges. The clowder cats argued; they weren’t sure which bridge, which path. We went a long way in the wrong direction and came out into the dark and fallen lands . . .”

“We didn’t mean to go there,” said Kit, “into that ruined part of the Netherworld. It is moldering and empty except for the grim old castles with their haughty rulers. The cruel royalty keep armies close around them, they are whip-masters over the peasants. The poor have nothing, nor do they care anymore. Why should they work when all they grow and any sheep or goats they raise are taken by the kings and they are left to starve?”

“They have turned to crime,” Pan said. “They think they have no choice, but they are courting even more evil. We moved through peasant villages where we saw no one, the cottages all collapsed, pasture walls fallen, fields fallow and untended. Not even a starving chicken remained, only mice and rats, scavenging. We hunted those, as did the peasants themselves; how thin were those poor folk, all weak and listless.”

“The magic is dead,” Kit told him. “We didn’t want to be there.” She tucked her bushy tail tight around her, her ears down as sadness filled her. “Dark spells rule them now. Greed rules that land.”

“We headed away,” Pan said, “seeking the one lone land that, the clowder cats said, had survived in brightness. Kate told us that, too. But she had approached on her own journey from another direction. We asked, from those who dared speak to us, which path, which tunnel. We asked from those brave enough to approach us.”

“We found the way at last,” Kit said, “beyond the Hell Pit and up the mountains. It was a hard journey—until the Harpy found us,” she said with a little smile. “The brash and loving Harpy. Oh, my,” Kit said. “A great, tall woman with a bird’s head, with bird’s legs and white-feathered wings, and she is all covered with white feathers. She is strong, she dines on the kings’ flying lizards. She took us on her back, all of us at once, our claws deep in her feathers to hang on, and she rose up to the stone sky on those great wings. She sailed up and up the mountains and over and down again in the green light, winging down into that clear, free land, into Zzadarray.

“She carried us down among the happy, smiling peasants,” Kit said, “to the only land still free, down among the strong selkies and the sturdy dwarves, and all of them welcomed us and their fields were green and rich and their animals are sleek . . .”

Misto sighed, seeing that land, seeing wonders he’d never known.

“No king,” Pan said, “rules that land. No bejeweled queen dictates tithes and taxes nor enslaves the villagers, demanding all their harvest. All farmers are master of their own fields and of what they wrest from them. All farmers own their land; they guard their small, free world fiercely against royalty’s cold sword.

“Those peasant armies,” Pan said, “with the help of the magical beasts, have gained the love and protection of the fiery dragons, too, the dragons who can be conquered by no man.

“One day,” Pan said, “that small country will take back the dark lands, you’ll see. Those who live in freedom will make the dark lands free again. Nothing of the Netherworld, then, will be ruled by avarice and greed. All rule will be born of love and caring—and of strength.”

“It is their strength in battle,” Kit said, “their fierce will to protect, that has kept alive Zzadarray’s magic.”

Misto rumbled a contented purr; Kit’s and Pan’s words brought strength to his thin face. The promise of freedom spreading from that one small land of Zzadarray lit his eyes, made the old cat smile. “I have lived many lives, but never in such a world as that magical place. Maybe one day fate will send me there, to that land.”

The three cats thought of that, and together they dozed and dreamed; it was not until they heard John bank the fire, to come to bed, that Misto said, “There is one more pleasure I crave, before my time is gone. Just one more visit to the sea, to say good-bye to the great and gleaming sea.”

John had come into the bedroom, Mary behind him. “In the morning, early,” he told Misto. He looked at Kit and Pan. “Will you come?”

“Oh, yes,” Kit said.

“Of course,” said Pan. “Where else would we be?”

“Early,” John said, “at low tide, when Mary and I feed the ferals. Misto, you can sit on the dock in your blanket as the wild ones share their breakfast. You can enjoy the beginning of their day with them, just as you like to do.”

“We will watch the sun rise,” Mary said, “red above the far hills, watch its reflection cross the sky and reach down to touch the sea.”

“We will watch the waves brighten,” Kit said, and as John and Mary climbed into bed, the three cats snuggled close together, yawning and safe. Kit and Pan were still tired from their journey, Misto bone tired from his lifelong journey, though it had been a rich passage. The old cat would soon be ready to leap up into the vast weightlessness beyond all barriers, to drift once again beyond mortal time, assured that one day he would return, to the finite world.

But never would Misto’s spirit, in life or in eternity, never would he abandon those he loved. All he had ever touched would remain close, forever would they be close, those spirits whom he treasured.