Cat Shout For Joy

“They have the gun,” Max said, amused. “The dog did find it, but he couldn’t get his nose under.” Max was silent, then, “We lifted a couple of pretty good prints, good match for Tekla’s. We’ve sent the gun to the lab.”

Once again Joe smiled to hear that Max was confiding in him. This whole situation was different from past cases. But there was something else that he hadn’t yet told Max. “There’s a second gun in Tekla’s suitcase. A big, stainless steel revolver. I couldn’t get a good look to tell what make.”

But it was the automatic that was the real evidence. If the riflings on it matched the bullet that killed Ben, they’d have the Bleaks cold. Have evidence far more telling than a notebook and phone and torn pieces from a mouse nest.

And yet now, even after Max had thanked him and they’d ended the call, Joe had an edgy, “something waiting in the background” feeling, as if something were yet to happen. He looked down at Snowball, who was deeply asleep again. He listened to the hollowness of the empty house. He stared away to the east of the village where Ocean Avenue met Highway One, where the Bleaks would have escaped—and suddenly he was out of there, leaping nervously from the desk to the rafter.

With a sudden sure sense of what was wrong, he was through his tower onto the shingles, streaking away across the roofs of the village plaza and the cottages and shops beyond. Heading not toward the tangle of highways where the Bleaks would be speeding, where no cat could ever catch them. Heading for Firetti’s Veterinary Clinic, led strongly now by the same urgency that had called Dulcie and had summoned Kit.

In the Firetti bedroom, the old cat didn’t sleep. He was not, this day, feeling exhausted; he was not drugged by medication. He had had no pain shots since the night before, nor did he want them. His body was in a transition that he knew well.

Though he was weak, he had put his failing aside, had found a new temporary strength. He sat tall on the bed, snuggled all around by his furry entourage, by Kit and Pan and Dulcie, and now Joe Grey as the tomcat slipped in across the room and up on the bed to join them. In Joe’s eyes there was sadness, there was hurt at what was to come.

The cats heard Wilma’s and Mary’s voices from the living room, but the two women didn’t enter. They heard the fire crackle to life and sensed its warmth. The old cat looked at each of them and smiled. He put a paw on the paw of his son Pan, his constant companion these last days. He looked at Kit. “You found shoes,” he said, smiling. “You hauled all that evidence across the yards and hid it for Captain Harper to find.”

Kit beamed.

He looked at Joe and the old cat shook his head. “That Rottweiler could have eaten you in one gulp, tomcat.”

Joe’s eyes widened. The venerable cat’s omniscience unnerved him.

“You did well, Joe Grey. But you’ll soon be a father.” He gave Joe a stern look but said no more. Smiling at Joe, he turned to Dulcie.

“You have another poem in your head, my dear. So much goes on, within. Even as you nurture your kittens, that clear voice nudges you. Those words want life, too. Your verses want to taketheir place in this world. Will you tell us this one?”

“A little of it,” Dulcie shyly. “Just a little . . .”

Duchess of the garbage can

Queen of the alley

Lolling under dustbins

Rolling fat and jolly

No thin beggar, never shy

This lady dines most royally

Fine salami, leftover Brie

Scraps of salmon from the sea

She is beautifully obese

Who feasts on kippers and roast geese

Queen of the garbage can

Duchess of the alley

Accepting largesse with greed

Rolling fat and jolly.

Her words made Misto laugh. “Your children will grow up on poetry,” he told her. “Poetry and,” he said, looking at Joe Grey, “maybe on cop work, too.”

The old cat settled back, and he told them a final tale. He held close his guardians of love. They waited together for his final moment, for the instant when he would step away from them into his next great journey. Misto painted for them, now, realms he would again travel; he gave them views down upon the earth, deep into ancient lands as if those times were again alive. He showed Joe and Dulcie moments from their kittens’ own pasts, each experience a tangle of puzzles.

Slyly Misto showed Joe Grey the tomcat’s past lives that Joe did not remember and didn’t want to remember. At Joe’s dismay, Misto laughed.

To Joe, those faraway moments, if they had ever really existed, were gone and done, not part of life here and now. Life was in the moment and that was as it should be.

But for Dulcie and Kit and Pan, the glimpses Misto gave them into kinder realms beyond earthly evil, that promise was a valued gift, and the cats reached their paws close around him. They held Misto, snuggled with him as he dozed in a light and easy sleep. It was later in the small hours of morning that they woke.

28

Misto died before dawn. It was just after four, the witching hour, the hour when restless human sleepers wake filled with unsettling thoughts, when restless felines rise and stretch bright eyed and hit the bedroom floor or the cold ground, ready to prowl, that secret and exciting hour that all cats welcome, knowing adventure waits.

Misto woke fully from last night’s gentle sleep. Beside him, Pan and Kit and Joe and Dulcie still slept, deep under, curled close around him. Misto smiled at the dear cats, guardians of his frail body and of his restless spirit. John and Mary lay on the bed dozing near them, but when Misto woke, they woke. All four cats woke, startled.

It was time.

Misto lifted his head and looked at John; his look said the pain had returned and it was very bad. His look said that now he wanted help. It was time.

John Firetti rose, and with care and tenderness he prepared the shot that would bring a cessation of pain, that would bring peace. Tenderly he administered the medication and, leaning down, he kissed Misto’s forehead and ears. Mary leaned close over the other cats, kissing Misto’s face.

In seconds he was gone.

Now, in this world, Misto slept deep and forever, but beyond this world a brightness glowed. They all could see it, they watched Misto’s spirit rise up, they could feel his passing, they saw his golden form as delicate as gauze above them. He was, for a moment, a clear light above them, and then he was gone. To another place.

They sat with him for some time. No one moved or spoke. From far away they felt his spirit caress them, and an echo of his thoughts drifted back to them: Do not grieve, I am with you. You have lives to live, wrongs to right before you complete your journey. You have kittens to raise,his voice said with a smile, before you move on to the next adventure.

As dawn began to color the sky, John and Mary rose. They fetched the little casket that John had prepared, with its carved designs of flowers and trees and its silk liner. They laid Misto within, and John said a prayer for him.

In the living room Wilma rose from the couch where she had dozed. They carried Misto in his small casket to his resting place, which Mary had prepared in the garden. The morning was chill, barely light, the sky streaked with trails of dark clouds and the first hints of sunrise shining through; it was the kind of morning Misto liked best.

The humans knelt. John uncovered the grave he had dug, set among its five granite boulders. The cats crept close and sat quietly. It was then that Kate appeared and, behind her, silent and close together, came Ryan and Clyde, and Charlie. Ryan took Wilma’s hand. Both wiped away tears.

John laid Misto’s casket in the flower-lined grave between the granite boulders. They patted the earth down, each hand and each paw adding a benediction.

When the grave was covered, each mourner said a few words, then Mary planted primroses over the little mound. As they turned away, weeping, in Dulcie’s head the words of a poem began. The first few words of an ode to Misto, a bright caress that would be a long time in the making, but would speak for all of them.

Golden spirit, you reach down

Your ghostly paw to touch the earth you love

To touch the sea

To stroke the lakes and rivers . . .

29

It was later that morning that Max Harper received a third call on the BOL for Tekla and Sam Bleak. All three reports were from California Highway Patrol. Max hadn’t had much description to put out, no make or model, no year, no license number. Just an older brown SUV, faded and dirty. One responder thought it might be an older Chevy. None caught the license number, the plates were smeared with dirt. In one response the car carried three occupants. In the others, only two people were visible. It annoyed him that the snitch hadn’t gotten a better handle on the car, hadn’t found a way to follow it. But then, Max hadn’t been there to witness the action; maybe the car had vanished too fast. The positive part was, in all three calls the car was moving east, heading now through Nevada.

This same morning, in Anchorage, the Greenlaws parted from Mike and Lindsey Flannery, watched them take off in a light plane for a few more days of fishing north of Anchorage. The Greenlaws spent the morning comfortably before the Inn’s fireplace. Their flexible schedule and their several side trips aboard small ferries had been exciting, but they were tired out, they missed Kit, they worried about her—it was time to go home.

And it was much earlier that morning that, up at the new shelter construction, Kate Osborne ended up crying in the arms of Ryan’s uncle Scott, her tears drenching Scotty’s red beard. Kate wasn’t sure how this had happened. Scotty wasn’t sure what Kate was crying about. He knew she was grieving for Ben. He knew that the Firettis’ old yellow cat had died, that Ryan and Billy were sad about him, too.

But no one could tell Scotty how deep the grieving went, no one could tell him Misto’s story. In Scotty’s arms, she didn’t try to stop the tears; she just let herself weep.

She was well aware that Joe Grey and Ryan were glancing in their direction, trying not to show their interest in this sudden tenderness—but did they have to stare?

When she had arrived at the shelter site, parking beside Ryan’s red king cab, Scotty had looked up from where he was installing a window. He had paused in his work, watching her approach, had looked hard at her, at her tear-blotched face. She had headed on back into the building, but he’d stopped her.

“Kate?”

She’d turned, looking at him in spite of her tears. He’d switched off the drill, laid it down and, as natural as the shining of the sun, he’d put his arms around her, had held her, let her cry against him. Across the yard Joe Grey, draped over Ryan’s shoulder, watched the couple until Ryan politely walked away to disappear behind the building.

“When did this start?” she asked the tomcat. “It’s just this week that I’ve noticed.”

Joe shrugged. “How do I know when it started? You put Scotty up here working on the shelter, and Kate is here all the time. How can he work around Kate Osborne and not be aware of her, she’s a knockout.”

Ryan looked at him. She said nothing. She moved farther back among the raw wooden beams and posts behind the main building. Sunlight warmed the plastered block walls of the shelter and warmed the three outdoor enclosures—these open-air spaces would be living quarters for dozens of feral cats who would not want to be shut inside. Wild-living cats that CatFriends would neuter, give their shots, and turn loose again in their own colonies.

Ryan said, “If Scotty and Kate get serious, that does present problems.”

Joe agreed. Scotty and Kate would be another couple where one partner knew the cats’ secret and one didn’t. Scotty had no notion the cats could speak. Not an easy way to live, where one member of a happy couple had to harbor lies, as did Charlie Harper. No happily wed couple wanted the dark specter of deception shadowing their honesty with each other. And in Kate’s case, the stress could be worse.

Kate, who had divorced a philandering husband long ago, said she’d never trust another man. Scotty, the loner, dated casually but had never found a woman he loved—he said he wouldn’t marry for less than a deep, true commitment. How would Kate hide the truth from him, when she herself had such a close connection to speaking cats?

Joe looked around for Billy, wondering if he, too, had been watching Kate and Scotty, but then he remembered this was a full school day in the work/school schedule that had been set up for the boy. Joe had turned on Ryan’s shoulder so he could look behind them when Ryan spoke softly. “Look,” she whispered, facing away toward the tree-sheltered Pamillon mansion that stood beyond the rise.

Across the hilly meadow, on the remains of a fallen stone wall, a brown tabby crouched. “One of the clowder cats?” Kate said. “Oh, have they come back from the Netherworld, too? But Kit and Pan can’t know, they didn’t say anything.”

Joe stretched up from her shoulder to look. The tabby was gone, but a white face peered out from the shadows; he could barely see her pale calico against the light stone wall. “Willow,” he said. “That’s Willow! I don’t see the tabby, but Willow’s back! They’re back!” He leaped down to join the clowder cats, racing away.

Ryan stood looking after him. What would this mean? Were the ferals still fine with her building the shelter here? They’d better be, at this late stage. They’d known about it before they descended down the tunnels to that other world. She would not have begun the project without Joe and Dulcie and Kit and Pan seeking out the wild clowder and telling them. Asking them, she thought, smiling.

The ferals had seemed all right with the plan, had seemed comfortable with the close proximity to the rescues. They were pleased with this caring human help for cats in need. Though no one had been sure, in fact, that the little group of feral cats would return from the Netherworld; there were charms and wonders in both lands.

Kate had situated the shelter, and the road that approached it, nearly half a mile from the mansion, away from the ferals’ preferred hunting grounds, from the overgrown rose gardens and the woods beyond. Ryan and Kate hoped, as the shelter was populated, as volunteers came and went, they wouldn’t drive the shy little band away. They would never want to do that. They had already posted small signs around the mansion grounds marking that area dangerous and off-limits.

When Ryan heard the sound of the drill once more and saw Scotty back at work, she found Kate inside the main building in a large communal room, busy with her drawing pad. Planning the cat perches, the overhead walks, the lofts and hiding places to entice the resident cats. Laying down her drawing pad, Kate handed Ryan one end of her tape measure. Neither spoke of Scotty. Kate smiled and hugged Ryan, showed her what she wanted to measure, and said nothing more.

Joe Grey galloped across the wide, hilly berm and through scattered trees into the weedy grounds of the stone mansion, searching for Willow and the ferals. There, by the stone wall: Willow came out, stepping delicately, smiling, then rubbing whiskers with Joe. One by one the ferals appeared to greet him. Soon he was surrounded by seven cats all talking at once. He followed them deep behind the big house where no human would see or hear them. Their eyes were bright with a secret, their tails lashing. There was no small talk, not even tales of their return up the tunnels. What were they so eager to tell him? He had no notion that their message would send him racing away again for a phone.

The ferals greeted him with nose touches and rollovers and a little crazy chasing, then they led him to a narrow dirt road back in the trees beyond the mansion. “You’ll want to see this,” pale-coated Sage said. “This might be for the police. These people that were here made our fur bristle. Those humans coming here into the ruins, they were scum.”

The cats led him down the old sunken road, hidden deep in the woods, where he and Dulcie had sometimes wandered. It was hardly wide enough for a car, so cars never came there. But now a car had come, its tire marks fresh and deep in the mud where a small rivulet crossed. Joe could see where the vehicle had parked and where it had turned around, making several passes, its bumpers and fenders biting into the earthen berm. The feral cats crowded around him, dark tabby Coyote, creamy Tansy, light tabby Sage, and Willow of the pale calico coat, all seven of the small band of ferals that had ventured down to the Netherworld. Willow said, “This is your kind of hunting, Joe Grey. Hunting humans. Those people smelled of evil.”

“The car nearly got stuck,” Coyote said, the long-eared tabby smiling with pleasure. “They came here in daylight yesterday. The first thing they did was turn the car around. Took them a long time, big clumsy wheels spinning in the mud,” and that made Coyote laugh. “Way too big for this narrow road. They waited until dark to leave. Hiding,” the dark tabby said. “Hiding from what?”

“Did they see you?” Joe said.

“Not us,” said Sage, glancing at Tansy. “They had a boy, a big, rude boy, he got out and stamped around in the woods and broke branches and threw them. We made ourselves scarce.”

“What kind of car?” Joe said, not expecting them to remember. “What make?” The ferals didn’t pay much attention to man’s noisy machines, except usually to avoid them.

“Brown,” Willow said. “Like a station wagon.”

“An SUV?”

“I think so. It opened in the back so you could see through to the front. There were suitcases, blankets, as if for traveling. We could see the mark that said Ford. The license was all mud, caked and dry. But close up, you could read it. We thought you might want to know what that was?”

Joe Grey smiled. “Of course I do.” Well, the ferals did know, from past encounters, what police work was about. When Willow told him the number he said it over twice, committing it to memory. Now he burned to get to a phone. He said his hasty good-byes, nudged each cat gently and touched noses and promised to return soon.

“Most likely,” Joe said, “a detective will be out to look the scene over, to photograph the tire marks and those footprints back and forth into the woods.”

“What about our pawprints?” Willow said.

Joe thought about that. “They know there are feral cats up here, they think you are one of the wild bands that CatFriends feeds. Charlie has made it clear you are to be left alone, to be protected. They won’t be surprised to see pawprints.” He gave Willow a final friendly nudge, spun around and raced back through the woods and across the berm to Ryan, praying she hadn’t left.

He found her in the car, sitting quietly. He leaped in. “Thank God you waited.”

“What else would I do? You take off like gangbusters, all riled up. I knew I’d better wait.”

Standing in her lap he snatched up her cell phone and hit the button for the station—hoping he wouldn’t get Evijean.

Of course he got Evijean. “Captain Harper is not . . .” she began with her delaying routine.

“Evijean,” Joe said coldly, “I have the license number the chief is waiting for. If he doesn’t get itnow, pronto, you’ll never get a recommendation for another job, no matter where you look—and believe me, you’ll be looking.”

Evijean put him through.

The conversation was brief. Max said, “I’m putting the information out as we speak. We’ll see what this gets. Again, many thanks. This could reel in our fish.” And he hung up.

When Joe ended the call Ryan grinned and caught him up in a hug that, as usual, deeply embarrassed him.

When he explained what the ferals had found, she hugged him again, and he felt her tear dampen his cheek. “Those dear clowder cats. I can’t believe they’ve grown so close to humans—to care about human problems, to get that information to you.”

She looked at him, frowning. “If you hadn’t been here, do you think one of them would have come down into the village to find you? The village, the streets and buildings, seem so threatening to them.”

“You and Kate were here, you’re here every day. And Charlie. It was Charlie who sprung that trap for them when one of them was captured, sprung it and crushed it.” Joe looked at her coolly. “They would have come to you,” he said with assurance.

She nodded. “They’ve helped us, helped the law before. They do trust humans. When Sage was so badly hurt by that killer—when he was so scared—he put all his trust in John Firetti to help him—and that was hard,” she said. “Sage was scared to death. But now,” she said, “what made Tekla and Sam turn up in the hills onto that narrow little road instead of hitting the freeway?”

“When they left the rental,” Joe said, “did they see an unmarked surveillance car? Or thoughtthey saw one? Or they passed a black-and-white cruising, maybe it slowed to watch them?”

She smiled. “Whatever happened, they got nervous. Found a place to hole up until dark, thenthey doubled back to the freeway.” She started the car, glancing down at Joe. “I guess you’ll want a ride down to the station, to see how this falls out?”

“I guess I’d like that,” Joe Grey said, twitching a whisker.

“The law will find them now, Joe, with this information. They’re sure to stay on the freeways if they want to make any distance.”

“Right. But which freeway?” He thought of the tangle of highways that led out of Molena Point. “Which freeway, Ryan? And heading where?”

30

Alone in her tree house Kit huddled among her cushions sad and grieving, still licking away tears for Misto. Joe was with Ryan, up at the shelter. Dulcie would be cuddled close to Wilma. And Kit had parted from Pan at the Firettis’: Mary and John need him, they need Misto’s son close. I need him, too, but they need him more. And I need Lucinda and Pedric, I need my dear humans. I need not to be alone just now.

Why had the three of them ever parted? What if something happened to her old couple before they could return from that huge, cold land? But what if something bad had happened in the Netherworld? How would that be any different? How would Lucinda and Pedric feel if Pan and I hadn’t returned?

Besides, she thought sensibly, you could get hit by a truck right here in the village. Life is never certain, no one said it was all neatly laid out and safe. No one said life comes with a guarantee. Pedric always tells Lucinda that. You have to walk quick, watch quicker, and take your chances.

But still she grieved. She napped, and when, waking, still she felt lonely, she left her tree house and went down into the gardens and wild fields to hunt.

It was late that evening that she slipped into Kate’s basement apartment, where Kate had installed a cat door. Having feasted on mice, she licked all the blood off her paws and whiskers to make herself presentable if she were to sleep in Kate’s bed. The cat door made her feel so welcome that she slept there with Kate that night, the next night, and the next; in fact she moved right in. Missing Lucinda and Pedric, she took solace in Kate’s gentle ways and in their small suppers together that were indeed more companionable than any lone hunt. In bed at night they talked about the Netherworld and about Kate’s own adventures there in the darker realms that Kit and Pan had avoided.

“The magic is all but gone,” Kate said. “As the magic dies, fewer and fewer children are born. Without the magic that includes love, those babies who do live are pale and weak. Even the shape-shifters’ skills are fading . . . I can no longer change,” Kate said sadly. “After I decided notto do that anymore, I tried twice.” She looked shyly at Kit. “I couldn’t. I miss looking in the mirror and seeing that lovely, cream-colored queen looking back at me, my golden eyes and ivory whiskers, the marmalade streaks in my fur.”

Kate shook her head, embarrassed. “I was lovely,” she said longingly. “Though not as beautiful as you.” She stroked Kit’s mélange of black, brown, and orange fur, as soft as silk. “I couldn’t change,” she said again sadly. “My own magic was gone.”

Kit felt sad for her. But she couldn’t change, either, she never had; in the Netherworld she and Pan had tried. But they were happy; they didn’t need the complications that came with being a human person. Mortgages, income taxes, stalled cars. Let humans deal with those irritations. Maybe next time around she and Pan would be human, burdened with human responsibilities. But right now they were free spirits.

Each night Kit slept safe and content beside Kate, waiting for her own humans to come home. Each morning, Kate rose early, if only to enjoy the sunrise. She liked to sit on the deck with a cup of coffee, looking down on the village, watching the world come awake. On the fourth morning when Kit woke she heard the glass door slide closed, heard it lock, heard Kate’s step up the outside stairs, heard her car start in the drive. Heard her back out and head away. Kit rose, yawning. Sometimes the carpenters came early to the shelter. In the tiny kitchen, leaping to the table, she found the porridge and the fried egg Kate had left for her. Beside them lay a note, held down by the porridge bowl.

Lucinda called my cell. They took a late flight last night, the four of them. I’m picking them up at San Jose. We’ll be home before noon.

Kit licked the note, shivering. Lashing her tail, she raced the length of the apartment, leaped from bookshelves, bounced on the unmade bed, flew to the dresser and almost slid off again. She was so excited she thought she couldn’t eat, but the next minute she was back in the kitchen devouring the cereal and egg, slurping it up so fast she scattered half of it on the table. Then she was out the cat door, up the hill, up her oak tree, up its rough bark into her tree house, where she could see the approaching street, where she tried to settle down to wait. Tried to settle down. Fidgeting and twitching, she knew quite well it would be hours before they got home.

She thought of going to tell Pan, but she didn’t want to disturb their grieving household with her own excitement. She could go tell Dulcie and Wilma or she could tell Joe Grey if she could find him. She could call anyone, she wanted to tell someone.

But Kate would do that, Kate would call their friends from her cell phone; and Kit didn’t want to leave home, because what if they caught an earlier flight and got home sooner than Kate said and she wasn’t there at all? Sighing, she wriggled deeper into her pillows, put her nose under her paw and tried to be patient. For the flighty tortoiseshell, patience didn’t work very well.

31

Pictures of sporting dogs filled the walls of Dallas Garza’s office, a fine succession of bird dogs with whom Dallas had hunted for much of his childhood and most of his adult life; had hunted any time he could, between college, the police academy, and then police work. Dallas’s last two, aged pointers had died not long ago. He had not bought another pup, he had little time now to train and work a sporting dog—and he was not a man to replace his respected hunting partners with a little lapdog; that was not his style.

Beneath the handsomely decorated walls, the detective’s desk was a tangle of odd papers, handwritten notes, computer printouts, faxes, and bank information from a dozen cities: account numbers, the names of his contact at each bank. Leaning back in his chair, the phone to his ear, Dallas was talking with the manager of a small Kentucky bank. So far this, too, sounded like a dead end. Each account Tekla had opened across the country, each in a different name, had been closed out, the money withdrawn, and all information on the bank records had proved to be counterfeit. False addresses that turned out to be short-sale houses or vacant lots. He had left Juana’s office some time ago, where she was tracking the couple through rental agreements.

The Bleaks had apparently lived this lifestyle for several years, under a revolving collection of pseudonyms. Apartments secured with invented information, bogus past employment that no rental office had bothered to check. Or, if the information had been looked into and found wanting, the applicants had simply been sent packing. Tekla and Sam would move on, and no complaint was made. What good was it to have efficient police, if civilians didn’t pass on suspicious information when they had the chance?

When he heard Juana’s step crossing the hall he motioned her in. She looked frustrated and tired. She poured a cup of coffee, filled Dallas’s cup, sat down at one end of the couch, laid a clipboard on her lap, the page covered with neatly inscribed notes. They looked at each other in silence. They looked up when Max appeared, coming from his office, carrying a half cup of coffee. His twisted smile held them both.

“What?” Davis said.

“The Bleaks’ brown SUV is a Ford,” he said, looking smug. “Don’t know what year, but we have the license number, I just put it on the BOL. It’s all across the country now.”

Davis laughed. Dallas said, “Was that from the snitch?”

Max grinned and nodded, making Dallas smile. The detective said, “I heard Evijean grousing at some phone call. When she shut right up, I assumed she put the call through. Is our snitch getting her trained?”

Max laughed. “Let’s hope so.” He glanced at Dallas’s scattered notes, then at Juana’s yellow pad. He sat down at the other end of the couch. “What’ve you got?”

“I think we know this much,” Juana said, “the Bleaks—Gardners—began this marathon in Northern California, when son Herbert was first arrested on suspicion of molestation. As far as I can find, Gardner is their real name; they lived in Seattle for some years. Herbert was twenty-three when the first complaint was filed against him. Without sufficient evidence, Seattle held him only a short time, released him with a warning.” She looked across at Max. “There was plenty of evidence, no reason the district attorney shouldn’t have pursued the case. Would have saved everyone a lot of trouble—would have saved a life.”

“Too busy,” Dallas said, shrugging. “Docket too full.”

“From that point on,” Davis said, “I have twelve charges, all molestation. All insufficient evidence, or so the DA thought. Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane. Tekla and Sam had already distanced themselves from him. They moved to several cities in Southern California, then back up the coast to San Francisco. Herbert tracked them somehow. When he found them, he moved right in.

“Two weeks later he was arrested on a rape charge. A neighbor saw him attack the girl and identified him. Girl was hurt real bad, she filed charges, but then she dropped them, she was too scared. This time Tekla and Sam left the city in a hurry; they must have thought this one could turn really serious and didn’t want to be involved. They changed names as usual, closed bank accounts, ended all contact with Herbert. I think I’ve traced them to Denver under one of the names, but that was some time ago. There’s no new contact in Denver. I found where her father had left her a sizable amount of cash. She manipulated that very well, both legally and illegally, using a number of names.”

Max said, “There’s no indication they ever tried to put Herbert into treatment?”

“Not that I can find. As if they just wanted to get away from him.” Davis looked up at the chief. “How often does treatment help a rapist?”

“It doesn’t,” Max said. “But getting him off the street helps. Now that we have some ID on the car, let’s see what we can do. They’ve got Herbert locked down tight, but his murdering folks aren’t much better.” Max paused as Joe Grey strolled into the office, his ears up, his head high with tomcat bravado.

Leaping to the couch, Joe stretched out between Davis and Max. The chief looked mighty pleased, Joe thought. They all three did, and that made him hide a smile. The ferals had done all right, they’d found what the department needed. Now it was a matter of waiting for the enhanced BOL to pick up more reports—and a matter of Joe catching up on the conversation he’d missed. Rolling over closer to Juana, he leaned against her arm where he could see her notes.

Davis was saying, “After she filed charges, then dropped charges, as soon as she could travel she left the state. Scared, afraid Herbert would find her. Herbert did some jail time, then walked. Surprisingly, he stayed in the city. Found a job of sorts, as an assistant janitor, rented a cheap room.

“It was not until his next arrest, maybe three months later, that the charge stuck. He was found in the storeroom kneeling over the body of Marilain Candler. The head janitor walked in on him, hit him with a shovel. While he was down, janitor made the 911 call.

“Herbert’s indicted for rape and murder,” Davis said. “He chooses a jury trial. Tekla learns about it, in the papers or on TV, her son on trial for murder. And she has one of those emotional turnarounds. This is her son, charged with murder. Suddenly she’s as angry as a mother tiger. They can’t do this to her son. She hikes on out to San Francisco to be there for the trial. What did she think? That she could stand up for Herbert, could defend his character?”

Dallas smiled. “That could be the odd-looking woman in Ben’s notes, the woman he watched from the jurors’ box.”

Davis nodded. “The woman always in the back row. When Herbert’s convicted and gets the death sentence, that’s the real turning point. She goes hot with rage against the jurors that convicted her boy. Herbert is misunderstood, he’s been grossly wronged, and she vows that each and every juror will experience exactly what they dealt out to him.”

Dallas finished his coffee. “I’ve called the lab twice to hurry them up on the ballistics. Maybe, now that we have the license number—if the Bleaks don’t switch cars or change plates—someone will pick them up and ship them back to us.”

“Let’s hope,” Juana said. Beside her, Joe Grey tried not to look smug. The license number and make of car were a big plus; he was mighty proud of his feral friends. That timely information from those shy, reclusive cats was one more nail in Tekla’s coffin.

32

In her tree house Kit turned round and round among her pillows. She curled up and dozed for a little while. She fidgeted and paced, waiting for Lucinda and Pedric to get home. The morning sun rose high and higher, but still it was far too early, it was a long drive from the San Jose airport to Molena Point. Below her, no car came along the street, not even a neighbor going to grocery shop or drop the kids at school. She slept fitfully again and dreamed of her elderly couple surrounded by polar bears. She woke terrified for them, surprised there was no snow.

Crawling out from under the pillows, she climbed up the branches onto the high roof of the tree house. She sat in a patch of sun looking down at the empty street. Where were they now? Still on a plane somewhere in the sky? Or were they already leaving the plane, going with Kate to claim their luggage?

The sun was higher, they could already be on the highway heading home. They could already be turning off Highway One down into the village. She waited. No car appeared. At last she crawled among her pillows again, trying to quiet her restless nerves. This time when she fell asleep she and Pan were safe in the Harpy’s arms flying through the green-lit Netherworld over the craggy, dark lands . . .

She woke, startled.

A car was coming up the street. She wished it were Lucinda and Pedric and knew it couldn’t be because the sun still wasn’t high enough.

But the sound was Kate’s car. She leaped up to peer over, watched the SUV pull into the drive. Yes, Kate’s Lexus, curved bars on top where the Greenlaws’ luggage was tied. Kit fled down the oak tree, dropped the last six feet as Lucinda opened the passenger door. She flew into Lucinda’s arms. Lucinda’s wrinkled cheeks were sunburned; she was dressed in safari pants and a khaki jacket. Pedric stepped out from the backseat dressed in khakis, too. They held her between them, hugging and loving her so hard they nearly squeezed her breath out. Lucinda was crying. Pedric’s wrinkled cheeks were wet—but then they were all laughing and Kit thought she’d burst with happiness and they couldn’t talk here in the front yard for fear of the neighbors, though they saw no one about. They hurried in the house, leaving the luggage on the car. Inside there was more hugging and Kit scrambled from one to the other and all of them talking at once. They were home, her dear family was home, they were safe, they were all together and safe.

In the living room Kate turned on the gas logs, made sure the tired couple was settled comfortably in their own soft chairs—as if Lucinda and Pedric were guests in their own house—then, in the kitchen, she put the kettle on for tea. As bright flames danced on the hearth, Kate went to bring in the luggage. The Greenlaws had traveled light, just their three canvas duffels. Why had they been tied on top when there was plenty of room in the big Lexus? But then Kit caught a whiff of salmon as Pedric went to help Kate carryin an oversize Styrofoam cooler; she sniffed a stronger scent as they headed for the laundry where the big freezer stood.

In the living room again, Kate told Kit, “At the last minute they changed their flights, decided to all come home together. I dropped Mike and Lindsey off first, so they could get their own salmon in the freezer.

“Lovely salmon,” Lucinda said, leaning back in her soft chair. “A lovely trip,” she said as Kit leaped into her lap. “But a tiring flight home, we didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Tired and hungry,” Pedric said. The couple stayed awake long enough to enjoy the hot tea and the quick lunch Kate had put together. Gathered before the fire, they shared a favorite, grilled cream cheese and salami sandwiches on rye; then Lucinda and Pedric headed for the bedroom, yawning. They didn’t unpack, but pulled on nightclothes and crawled into bed, where Kit snuggled between them purring a sleepy song. She could hear Kate in the kitchen rinsing the dishes; soon she heard Kate leave, locking the front door behind her, heard her car back out. And Kit snuggled deeper, safe between Lucinda and Pedric—an unaccustomed midday nap for her two humans. Contentedly Kit dozed, drifting on a cloud of happiness that only a little loved cat could truly know.

It was nearly a week before Lucinda and Pedric felt up to a party for their homecoming, a simple gathering of friends to celebrate their safe return. It would be two weeks more before MPPD would celebrate the end of another journey: the end of the Bleaks’ cross-country escape, the moment when neither of the Bleaks could any longer dodge the law. Much would happen, between.

While Lucinda and Pedric rested at home with Kit, exchanging tales of their adventures, while Dulcie languished in her own house feeling heavy and nervous, Joe Grey prowled the offices of MPPD scanning computers, listening to phone calls, waiting, as Max and the detectives waited, for a positive response to the BOL. A few calls came in where a citizen thought he’d spotted the car speeding by, tried to follow it, lost it, and didn’t get the license number. It was raining across several states, and the Bleaks, taking advantage of stormy night travel, managed to slip through. Meanwhile MPPD was busy with the usual shoplifting, car break-ins, and domestic violence cases that, these days, plagued even the tamest of small towns. There were, as well, daily inquiries from concerned citizens asking if there was any line yet on the attacker. The next report on a brown SUV, again with only a partial license number, put the couple somewhere in Alabama, still heading east. Alabama HP put patrols out, but in the heavy storm that had hit the state, the Bleaks had the advantage.

Sam could drive only short distances because of his left leg. In Molena Point, he hadn’t driven the van at all. Best to let people think he was more crippled than he was, to garner sympathy, make folks feel sorry for him. Now, moving across the country, he did drive, though it made his leg hurt. His increasing crankiness continued to irritate Tekla.

They didn’t stop in Atlanta; she wanted to move on through, head north into Georgia’s less populated backcountry. Freeway drivers were fast and brutal, so even she got nervous. They gassed up outside Canton, moved away on a narrower road into low hills, thick pine woods, and tacky mom-and-pop farms. “Home places,” the gas attendant called them when they asked for directions, home places, with an accent that made Arnold smirk. The rain had stopped, the weather hot and humid, further souring Sam’s mood.

With a local map they checked out a couple of shabby motels back in the hills at the edge of small manmade lakes. The only motels available in that backcountry, where people went to fish. Following the crooked roads they passed truck gardens and commercial chicken farms, long rows of rusted metal buildings that stunk of burned feathers and burned, dead chickens.

They holed up in a sleazy motel north of Jasper, the hick town where juror Meredith Wilson had moved to take care of her aging father. The weather had turned even more muggy, sticky and overcast with dark clouds hanging low. Sam said it was tornado weather. He was always imagining something, some disaster that never happened. Coming across country he’d grown more and more bad tempered, critical of her and of this whole plan, whining that they were going to get caught.

Well, they hadn’t even been stopped. Couple of glances from GHP black-and-whites on the highway, but with Arnold ducked down out of sight, and with her long blond hair, they sailed right on through.

Getting caught hadn’t been Sam’s complaint earlier, right after the trial. Those first two “accidents,” he’d been pretty high, seeing Herbert vindicated. “One more payback,” he’d say. Then when she’d pulled off the first Molena Point assaults without a hitch, and then Arnold did one while she watched from the shadows, then Sam had been really excited. He’d even got a kick out of the fake attacks. “They probably deserved it, anyway,” he’d said. And all along, he hadn’t had to do one damn bit of the legwork.

But now suddenly, running from the cops, he’d decided, this late in the game, that he didn’t like the program.

It was half his idea in the first place. More than half. It had been his rage as well as her own, at the twisted law, at the self-righteous courts. It was Sam’s anger, at that lawyer and the jurors, that’s what started them planning. He said, when Herbert was committed to die, “Those twelve lackeys just signed their death sentences. No one,” Sam said, “has the right to take Herbert’s life. Every one of them will pay, and pay hard.”

It was later that he started to get shaky. Though not until they were through Texas did he really get cold feet, when that trucker slowed and ran alongside them for half a mile, looking. But by that time they’d changed license plates, and she and Arnold sat in the back, both with long blond wigs; she thought that was funny. Arnold didn’t. But it was then that Sam, glancing up at the trucker, began to really whine.

Well, to hell with him. Now they were in Georgia she wasn’t stopping, not this late in the game. Now they had a motel just where she wanted it, a place to hole up near to Meredith Wilson, and now it was her turn to pay.

A thin, nervous creature, the Wilson woman, fidgeting in the jury box looking upset every time the coroner up there on the witness stand mentioned some gory aspect of his supposedly unbiased examination—the bastard putting Herbert in the worst light. Deliberately making the weaker jurors, like Wilson, squirm with unease.

She wished she’d taken care of those other three jurors that were still in San Francisco, they’d been just as bad. Once she was done here, maybe they’d go back, see to them, too. By that time, those three would stop jumping at every shadow on the street, would have let their guard down. Meanwhile, the Wilson woman would be a pleasure to terrify before she died.

She didn’t need to stage an accident, not back in these Georgia hills. This country was full of pot farmers and no-goods, it was nothing for someone to shoot a prowler. She read the papers, she’d looked at the statistics. People got shot all the time, raped, beat up. Half those guys were never caught, were friends with enough of the deputies to accidentally escape or to wiggle around the law.

Meredith Wilson lived only half a mile up the gravel road from the shoddy motel, and that was handy. Hot, hilly country running along both sides of the valley where the narrow lake lay. Mostly summer shacks down by the water, just the one old motel. It rented fishing poles and rowboats, and when Sam kept at her, whining not to do the Wilson woman but to move on and get away, when he’d kept at her, she rented poles for him and Arnold. Bought bait from the motel keeper and sent them out to the end of the dock to fish so maybe she could have a little peace.

Sam didn’t like that the sky was so heavy and dark. She told him, there was a little wind, if he’d be patient it would blow the clouds away. Leaving them occupied, she went back to the small, muggy room, pulled the blinds, lay down on the sagging bed, thinking about the moves she still had to make. The shifting of money to a nearby state, calls from the throwaway cell phone, another motel registration, North Carolina maybe, using one of the fake driver’s licenses and fake names. She needed to pay attention to the details. Well, she was good at that.

She was dozing off when the room darkened suddenly. The wind rose howling, the blind flapped, and the window glass warped into flashes and shadows. She hurried to look out but didn’t understand what she was seeing. The air was full of flying sticks, flying boards. Two windows broke nearly in her face. The wind hit her like a freight train, the force sent her reeling away, covering her eyes. Tree limbs, furniture, pieces of wood and glass hit her as she was flung against the far wall. Behind her another window exploded and the roof was gone: she watched the whole roof lift and drop in the lake. It settled on the water, hung up on the edge of the dock. Where the roof had been, dark, roiling sky boiled down. Where she’d glimpsed Arnold racing in, pushing Sam in the wheelchair, now there was only the great slab of roof covering the dock and torn lumber and crashing wind. When she turned, the wall behind her was gone. The motel office and the line of rooms were gone, torn apart into rubble. She ran, falling and stumbling, dodging flying debris.

33

The Damens’ patio was crowded with friends gathered belatedly to welcome the wanderers home from Alaska: the Greenlaws, and Ryan’s dad and Lindsey. The walled garden echoed softly with talk and laughter. Joe, Kit, and Pan wandered among the guests begging politely. It took only a soft paw and a gentle meow to receive an offering of Brie or pâté, as their human friends, drinks in hand, waited for the main course.

But soon Joe and Pan, growing impatient, leaped to the wall beside the barbecue, closer to the broiling salmon. Below them Kit prowled restlessly, her mind on Dulcie and Wilma at home alone missing the party in their patient deference to the unborn kittens. Even Joe Grey, though he sat greedily licking his whiskers, had not liked leaving his lady.

The backyard of Clyde’s original bachelor cottage had once been a depressing expanse of dry grass and weeds that Clyde had euphemistically called the back lawn. Ryan’s description had been less endearing. Under her imaginative design, and with a good crew, she had transformed the half-dead patch into a charming and private retreat. The tall white stucco walls offered privacy from prying neighbors, and cut the sea wind. The brick paving was dappled with leafy shadows from the young maple tree she had planted, and was edged by raised planters now bright with the last of the winter cyclamens. Beneath the trellis that shaded the barbecue, hickory coals glowed where Ryan and her dad stood broiling the big salmon that Mike had split down the center and laid on foil.

Father and daughter did not resemble each other except for their green eyes. Tall, slim Mike Flannery’s sandy hair and his light and ruddy complexion spoke clearly of his Scots-Irish heritage, in contrast to Ryan’s warmer coloring and dark hair from her Latina mother, who had died of cancer when Ryan and her sisters were small. Ryan was thankful for Lindsey, for her dad’s new wife. He had remained single for so many years. Too busy to date, not wanting to date. Too occupied raising three girls, with the help of Scotty and Dallas. Lindsey’s dimpled smile and laughing hazel eyes, her fun-loving, easygoing ways, fit exactly Ryan’s view of what a stepmother should be.

Lindsey sat now with Charlie Harper and the Greenlaws at a small table, the three voyagers telling Charlie about their cruise. The same unstructured, small-boat cruise that, a few years ago, would have been Charlie and Max’s honeymoon trip. If, at the last minute, local crime hadn’t gotten in the way when someone blew up the church. Their close call minutes before the wedding still sickened Charlie. That disaster had pulled Max back into the office, unwilling to abandon his men during the continuing alerts and ensuing investigation.

With the money they hadn’t spent on their honeymoon they had remodeled the ranch house that Max had owned for years. The handsome addition was a solid and lasting gift to each other, a luxury in which to enjoy their new life. When Max isn’t chasing the bad guys, Charlie thought,working long and crazy hours.

But they had a lot to be grateful for, they were blessed, living on their comfortable acreage where they could have horses and the two big dogs, where they could ride over the open country in the evenings. She was blessed to have the time now to pursue her own career as an artist and writer. But loving Max, their close and comfortable marriage, that was way at the top of the list.

The two tomcats, waiting for supper, watched their gathered human friends, and listened, attuned to every conversation, Joe Grey keen with interest, though Pan was solemn and withdrawn, the red tabby badly missing his father. Joe watched Kit, who had only now settled on Lucinda’s lap between Charlie and Lindsey, trying hard to be still.

Kit wanted to ask Lucinda if someone should be with Dulcie and Wilma in case the kittens came, but among this crowd of human friends she could say nothing. She was always having to tell herself to be careful. It was so hard not to blurt out a question, to swallow back her words when so many urgencies railed inside her head, too compelling to not talk about.

But Dulcie’s all right. What could happen? Wilma has a phone, and John Firetti is right here at the party, he and Mary are only minutes away if the kittens come. And then she worried, How will the kittens handle their gift of speech? How will they learn that they must not speak in front of most humans? How will Dulcie impress on their young kitten minds that talking is a secret? If they do speak? If they are born with that talent, they will think it as ordinary as sharpening their claws. There’s so much Dulcie and Joe will have to teach those tiny mites. How will the new babies ever learn to keep their kitty mouths shut?

But Lindsey was saying to Charlie, “The new exhibit opens when?”

“Next week,” Charlie said. “Two landscape painters, and a woman who does wonderful birds. And my animals.” They watched Ryan leave the barbecue, pick up several empty plates from the table, and head into the kitchen.

“I’m coming to see your animal drawings,” Lindsey said. She glanced down at Kit, then looked at Lucinda and Pedric. “There’s one of your lovely tortoiseshell peering down from an oak branch that I’d like to buy.” She smiled. “If you two don’t snatch it up first. She’s so lovely,” she said, reaching to stroke Kit.

Kit gave her a sweet kitty smile and tried not to preen. But then, even with such praise, her attention turned suddenly to Max and Clyde and Scotty, sitting on the low wall of a flower bed; their serious talk, Clyde’s sudden frown, drew her curiosity; she dropped to the brick paving and padded across to listen. Hopping up into the flower bed, she stretched out among the blooms.

“I don’t like what will happen to the Bleak house,” Clyde was saying, “now that they’ve skipped. Ryan could be stuck with a big loss, though she did, after a couple of weeks of Tekla’s crazy changes, demand more money up front.”

Scotty laughed. “Tekla wasn’t keen on that.”

Max said, “Their bank account—the only account we’ve found so far—shows only forty thousand. I expect the mortgage company will attach that, and look for the rest. I’d guess there’ll be a foreclosure, maybe a short sale. If—when—we pick the Bleaks up, bring them in and prosecute, maybe the court will assign what assets they can find to help the victims or their families.”

“What I don’t get,” Scotty said, “is why they ever bought that house, why they ever started on a renovation. If they came here to . . . If their intention was these attacks, they can’t have thought they’d be staying permanently.

“Or,” he said, “did they really believe they’d get away with this, that everyone would think the assaults were some kind of prank—and that the murders themselves were unfortunate accidents? That’s insane thinking. Or,” he added, “was that remodel all for show? For distraction, to put you off the track?”

“Pretty expensive cover,” Max said, “though they’re adept at manipulating money, sliding out from under.”

Scotty shrugged. “The woman’s crazy as a drunk squirrel.” Picking up a canapé, he slipped it down to Rock, who sat watching the three men, the Weimaraner’s eager yellow eyes following each morsel from hand to mouth. Clyde gave Scotty a look; Scotty knew Rock wasn’t allowed a human diet, but sometimes the Scotsman couldn’t resist.

“Well, we’ve got a line on them,” Max said. “That sighting in Arkansas. Too bad the café owner didn’t report it sooner. He didn’t know about the BOL until a couple days later. A deputy stopped in for coffee, mentioned it and described the Bleaks.” Max scratched Rock’s ear as the dog nudged him, but he didn’t feed Rock. “They were headed toward Georgia, if they kept on in that direction.” He sipped his beer. “Maybe we’ll pick them up on the East Coast, maybe the odds will turn.” He looked up when Ryan caught his eye from the kitchen door, holding up the phone extension.

Max rose and headed for the kitchen, but moved on through toward the guest room, wanting that extension where he could hear above the party noise. The minute Joe Grey heard the guest room door close he dropped down from the wall and slipped away through the crowd. Kit, watching them both, hopped off Lucinda’s lap and followed. Pan remained on the wall, stoic and quiet.

Kit, passing the guest room’s closed door, paused to hear Max say, “She gave you this number, and not my cell phone?” His irritation told her he was talking about Evijean. She flew up the stairs as, above her on the desk, Joe Grey eased the phone from its cradle. As she landed beside him, he hugged the headset in his paws and eased it down on the blotter. They hoped Max would hear no small electronic click and no thump on the thinly padded surface. Pressing their ears close, Joe and Kit listened.

There was no break in Max’s voice as if he’d been alerted that an extension had been picked up. Glancing at each other, they tried not to breathe into the speaker; and they watched the stairs warily in case someone started up to the office and studio—why would the two cats have the phone off the hook, crouched over it?

Mice in the speaker? Kit thought, and had to swallow her laugh.

Max’s call was from Georgia, from Sheriff Jimmie Roy Dover. Dover’s drawl was deep and heavy. Kit imagined a portly man who enjoyed his native southern cooking.

“So far, this is the way we’ve put it together,” Dover was saying. “The worst of it is, we’ve got every unit out there looking for wounded, for bodies. And of course evidence is disturbed, stuff flying everywhere.

“Well, when the tornado passed, she must have known Sam’s and Arnold’s bodies were there on the dock, under the fallen roof. Maybe she thinks they’re dead, maybe not. Maybe she runs to help them, maybe not. All we’ve found is a line of muddy footprints where she gets out of her room, where she runs outside—and she doesn’t head their way.

“When she’s clear of the worst of the debris,” Dover said, “she pauses beside the body of a dead woman among the fallen walls. Later, one of our men photographed the body and what may be Tekla’s footprints. The dead woman must still have been clutching her purse. Looks like Tekla—if those are her footprints—grabs the purse, you can see where it was dragged out from under the muddy debris. It took us a while to find this much, with the mess, and with victims needing help.

“We figure Tekla now has the woman’s car keys, fished them out of the purse. She steps on out to the parking strip. The first row of cars was smashed. Tornado sheared through the building neat as a Skilsaw, dumped the fallen walls on that row of vehicles. It missed the more distant cars, she must have bleeped the electronic key until she got a response from one of them, an answering bleep or blinking light. Now she has the right car, she gets in and takes off.”

Max was silent, listening.

“But Tekla’s wounded,” Dover said. “She drives about three miles, then starts swerving, tire marks all over the road. Pretty quick she loses it, runs the car into a tree.”

“You got her.”

“No, we didn’t. She must have sat there for a while, but then you could see where she backed the car up. Apparently didn’t do too much damage, gas line must have been okay, apparently no tires punctured, and she takes off again.”

“Well, hell.”

“Rescue units were on their way to the motel, but in the dark and the hard wind they must have sped right by her, didn’t ever see her.

“We didn’t find the tire marks and the gouge in the tree until the next morning, first light. By that time,” Dover said apologetically, “she was long gone.”

“And Sam and Arnold?”

“Dead,” Dover told him. “Crushed by the fallen roof. GBI has the report. They’ll be calling you.”

Max was quiet for a long while. Joe and Kit felt a surprising twist of pain for Sam and Arnold Bleak. No matter what they had done, no matter whether they’d been a willing part of Tekla’s plan, the two cats didn’t like to think of someone being crushed that way, in that terrible storm—and of Tekla not even trying to save them, just leaving them.

Max gave Dover his cell phone number. As the officers ended the call, Joe used both paws to ease the headset back onto the phone. They waited in the shadows at the top of the stairs until Max left the guest room and moved out to the patio again. Only when he’d gone did they wander casually down the empty stairway—but at the bottom Kit paused, startled, the fur along her back lifting. Joe Grey froze.

A faint ripple of tension ran through those gathered, through not everyone seemed aware of it. A subtle glance across the patio between Ryan and Clyde, between Charlie and Kate and the Greenlaws, a look as meaningful as a whisper—and the Firettis were headed for the front door, John fishing his car keys from his pocket.

“The kittens,” Kit whispered. “Joe, the kittens are coming.” But Joe was gone, racing away, flicking his heels in her face. Clyde bolted across the living room and out of the house, across the yard trying to snatch Joe from the air as the tomcat leaped past John Firetti—and Joe was through the driver’s door into the back of the medical van.

Joe Grey glared out at Clyde. “Leave me alone,” he hissed softly. “They’re my kittens!” Clyde stepped back, returning Joe’s angry stare.

“Let him come,” John said. “Let him be with her.”

“But . . .”

“There’s not much chance of germs, they’re always together. Whatever Joe’s been exposed to, so has she.”

Silently Clyde stepped back. John closed the door and they were gone, roaring away up the street headed for Wilma’s cottage. In the van, Mary reached out to Joe. He crept up between the bucket seats to the front and into her arms. She stroked him but said nothing; the kittens were coming and they were both nervous.

Behind the retreating van Clyde turned back to the house, ignoring questioning stares. Approaching the front door, where Max, Scotty, Mike, and Lindsey stood, he didn’t want to talk and didn’t want to know what they were thinking. Joe’s behavior and his own were too strange. “Cats,” Clyde said with disgust, shouldering past them, coming in the house, putting his arm around Ryan.

Ryan smiled, and before anyone could ask questions, she led Clyde away to set out the desserts and make a fresh pot of coffee.

Lucinda and Pedric had risen and headed for the living room behind the Firettis. Kate followed as, behind them, Clyde said casually to those around him, “John’s off to deliver Dulcie’s kittens. Wilma—Wilma’s been a bit nervous.”

From the mantel, Pan sat watching the action, cutting his eyes at Kit as she leaped up beside him. Kit wanted to be with Dulcie. Her look at Pan said, Shall we? She knew John didn’t want a crowd. Birth was a private business. And he didn’t want other cats’ germs near the kittens. Butwe haven’t been around other cats— Oh! Except the ferals, up in the hills. And John’s ferals at the beach.

But they’ve had their shots. And John always changes his shoes when he gets back in the van, changes his lab coat and cleans his hands.

She thought about Dulcie in labor and hurting. She told herself they’d keep out of the way, that they’d stay outdoors, she just wanted to be there. She looked at Pan, edgy and nervous. The fascination of Dulcie’s miracle made her shiver. Pan frowned back at her but then reluctantly he rose. Together they dropped from the mantel and fled out the open door.

34

Dulcie paced the living room back and forth, past the flickering hearth, past the couch where Wilma was pretending to read. She could feel Wilma watching her and trying not to worry. She moved from room to room, padded into the kitchen, sniffed at the nice custard Wilma had set out, and turned her face away. She drank from her bowl, but only a few laps. There were no pains yet, but her restlessness was intolerable. She wanted to crawl into her new kittening box, and she didn’t want to be confined in there. She wanted to creep into the farthest corner of the house under the darkest bed, but when she did that, she backed out again. She wanted to be near Wilma, but then Wilma’s lap was too warm. She wanted Wilma to come to the kittening box with her, but she didn’t want anyone there at all. This should be a lonely vigil, only her kittens should share the coming moments, she wanted to be alone to bring them into the world, yet she didn’t want to be alone.

The kittening box Wilma had set up in the bedroom, beside her own bed, was sturdy and splendid. It was constructed from a heavy packing carton uncontaminated by grocery store insecticides. Wilma had cut a smooth little door at one corner arranged so a draft wouldn’t blow in. She had made a lid for the top, which could be lifted off to clean the box. A nice thick bed of newspapers lined the bottom. Papers that Dulcie wanted to rip up, that she intended soon to tear apart, she could feel the urge itching in her pads; papers that would be thrown away after the birthing and would be replaced by a warm blanket.

There were clean soft towels stacked outside the box, that John Firetti had asked Wilma to provide. Everything was ready. But as perfect as was her nest, Dulcie couldn’t stop creeping into dark corners, turning around and around and then hurrying out again into space and light—and then returning to her box. She didn’t know what she wanted; she was eager and scared. She felt ravenous, but the sight of food made her ill. She wanted Joe Grey, but she didn’t want him until the ordeal was over. Where was he, why wasn’t he there with her? She returned to the kitchen, longing to race outside, but Wilma, after futile attempts to reason with her, had fetched the electric drill and screwed her cat door closed.

And now suddenly as she paced and fussed, the front doorbell rang. Wilma picked her up to keep her from running out. She opened the door to the Firettis, they stepped in quickly, and Mary deftly shut the door behind them. Even a sentient, speaking cat could behave foolishly when she was about to give birth. The minute Dulcie saw John, she relaxed. The minute Joe Grey wound in behind John’s ankles, Dulcie hissed and spat at him. Why was she behaving like this?

She let John take her from Wilma’s arms; as she laid her head against him, trust in the good doctor filled her. She quit spitting at Joe and she felt easier. It was then that Charlie arrived. Dulcie heard the Blazer pulling up, heard the kitchen door open and close. Charlie came through the house, reached gently to stroke Dulcie, then put her arm around Wilma. “I thought you might like a little more moral support?”

Wilma smiled and hugged her niece. At their feet Joe Grey was quiet, watching their friends gathered around Dulcie. Dulcie didn’t want to spit at him now. And now, for a moment, a brightness filled the room, glowing around them, and she could hear Misto’s whisper, the faintest breath, You will be all right, the babies are strong, they will be just fine. The glow hung a moment, then was gone, Misto’s warm, familiar voice gone. But his love remained.

In Wilma’s bedroom, John lifted Dulcie down into the kittening box. She settled at once, she didn’t fight him, she didn’t try to run away now. She put a paw up, she wanted him near, she didn’t want him to leave her. John waited, sitting on a low bedroom chair beside the box. She felt restless but then lay quiet. Her purr rumbled stronger, a purr of anticipation and of fear waiting for the pains that would come. She heard from the living room a bold scratching at the door, heard the door open, heard Kit’s mewl, Wilma’s voice and then Pan’s, and she was glad they were there: a loving entourage waiting—filled with kindness but leaving her to her privacy.

It was a long time before the first pain hit her, then soon another, and another. Soon they were coming faster than John had told her they would. She murmured once. Another pain and she strained and mewled softly. She cried loudly only once, pushing hard when the pains were sharpest. The rhythm of the contractions carried her as if on a huge wave, soon so close together she thought she couldn’t breathe; this first kitten was eager, was clamoring to get out.

In the living room where Charlie held Joe Grey, he tried to leap away when he heard Dulcie cry, tried to go to her. Charlie grabbed the nape of his neck. “Don’t, Joe. Don’t go in and upset her, let her be, John is with her.” She scowled down at him. “You have to be patient.”

He didn’t feel patient, he wanted to be with Dulcie. He hissed at Charlie and raised a bristling paw. She held him hard, held him until he eased off and settled once more on her lap, only faintly snarling. Dulcie was hurting. His lady was in there crying out and maybe in danger. Birthing kittens was frightening and perilous, why hadn’t he realized that? He butted his head against Charlie, shaken with fear.

Across the room Kit and Pan snuggled close to Wilma in her soft chair, Kit shivering but Pan stoic and calm, hoping to calm his own lady. They heard Dulcie’s whimpers and her single yowl, they watched Joe Grey flinch and strike at Charlie, saw Charlie’s green eyes widen as she settled him once more. They heard the back door open, watched Kate and the Greenlaws slip through. Dulcie’s patient but nervous attendants filled the living room, looking quietly at each other, waiting. These were not ordinary kittens, these were miracle kittens, and their friends waited nervously.

Only Ryan and Clyde were absent. How could they leave their guests to attend such an ordinary occurrence as the birth of kittens? So many folks had already rushed out. The Damens didn’t need more puzzled questions—but Joe Grey wished they were there. Clyde to bolster his courage, Ryan, like Charlie, to soothe and mother him.

“Sometimes,” Charlie said, stroking him, “it’s harder on the father.”

Joe Grey glared up at her. How could that be true?

“Do you remember,” Charlie asked him, “how proud you were when Dulcie told you? Proud and shy and excited?”

Joe remembered. “Kittens?” he’d cried. “Our kittens?” He remembered backing away from Dulcie, perplexed and amazed, racing away across the rooftops, then flying around her, skidding nose to nose with her. “Kittens?”

It was late evening. The three kittens had been born safe and strong. Dulcie had cleaned them up and was resting, the tiny little ones nursing against her when Joe Grey slipped into the room. John Firetti, kneeling over the box, looked up and nodded.

“Come, Joe Grey. Come see your babies.” John and Mary and Wilma had just cleaned the kittening box, Mary sliding the soiled newspapers out from under as John and Wilma gently lifted Dulcie and the kittens. Deftly Mary had slipped a thick warm blanket in, and John had settled mother and babies back onto their nest. Joe Grey entered warily, nearly electrified with shyness.

He crept up onto Wilma’s bed where he could look down into the box. He crouched there very still, looking at their new family. He was, for an instant, fearful of how he might respond. He was too aware of the ancient instinct of some tomcats to ravage their own young. Would this age-old urge surface in him now, would emotions he detested hit him suddenly? Looking down into the box, he was ready to turn and run before he hurt his tiny, helpless babies.

But no. Watching Dulcie and their three beautiful kittens, Joe Grey knew only wonder.

Only when Dulcie lifted her eyes to him did he see for an instant the female’s equally primitive response, the inborn ferocity of a mother cat to protect her young. But then her look softened, her gaze matched his own contentment. They looked at each other and at their babies, and they knew they had made a fine family. Three kittens so beautiful that Joe couldn’t resist slipping carefully down next to the box, next to the door where he could reach his nose in, could breathe in their sweet kitten scent.

“Courtney,” Dulcie said, licking the swirl-marked calico female. Joe thought about names for the two boys but nothing seemed to fit; the two pale buff kittens were still so small, how could one know what kind of cats they would be?

Lucinda and Pedric and Kate slipped into the bedroom, having removed their shoes. They looked down into the box at the three tiny kittens and pronounced them the most beautiful babies ever born. Charlie was enchanted by them. She came again the next morning wearing freshly laundered jeans and shirt, removing her shoes outside the back door, washing her hands at the kitchen sink. Not until the kittens had their several shots would the “germ vigil,” as Wilma called it, ease off and the little family be free from isolation. John Firetti, indeed, worried over the rare little newborns.

Now everyone, humans and cats, would wait impatiently the two weeks or more for the kittens’ eyes and ears to open, for their curiosity to brighten. Wait for them to crowd to the door of their kitten box, peering out, for the boy kittens to reach for the wider world. Courtney needed no encouragement; she was already pawing at every new stir of air, mewling at every small change that occurred around her.

The next days, while the friends waited to hear more than kittenish meows, to know if the kittenswould speak, Joe Grey prowled restlessly between his new family and MPPD: a doting father, but still a nervous hunter, as alert as were the police for some clue to Tekla’s next move, for law enforcement somewhere on the East Coast to pick up her trail, to arrest and confine her.

35

Tekla’s left arm and side hurt bad from where the car had hit the tree. Maybe she was only bruised, or maybe she’d cracked a rib. Fighting the “borrowed” Honda back to the narrow dirt road, getting it on solid ground again and easing out of there in the wind and blowing rain, she slipped the loaded revolver from her purse into her jacket pocket. She was still nervous over the automatic’s disappearing, back in Molena Point. She and Sam had fought all the way across the country about that, too. Either Sam or Arnold was lying, or both were. Why would Sam move the gun? To use it as evidence, to prove that she’d killed Ben Stonewell? If the cops picked them up, did he mean to turn it over, with her prints on it, get himself off the hook?

There’d been no one else in the house to take it after she’d put it in her suitcase. Had he stashed it in the garage somewhere? If he had, sure as hell, the cops would find it. She didn’t understand what he was up to, and that scared her. She’d wondered if, that night in that first out-of-the-way motel, somehow a maid had slipped in, gone through their bags, and taken the gun. That didn’t seem likely; they’d left only long enough for a quick burger, and she’d locked her bag. The other gun, the Magnum that was now in her pocket, hadn’t been taken.

But all across the country, Sam had been losing his nerve. Whining, getting cold feet, not wanting to go on with this, wanting to leave the last jurors they could reach. Just let them go free, after all his earlier talk about getting even. His malingering had delayed them, too, pulling off the highway early, sleeping in late, not wanting to get started.

After she shot Ben, she’d wiped off her prints, but then she’d handled the gun briefly again when she packed it. That missing gun scared her bad. What the hell had Sam done?

When the tornado hit, she’d been lucky to get out of there, the whole room caved in around her. Lucky to find her purse with the Magnum safe inside. The .357 was heavy, but with the automatic gone, it would have to do. With that mess back there, the twisting wind picking up the roof, she knew Sam and Arnold were dead. How could she go to look when the fallen roof covered the entire dock, when everything it had hit was underwater. All she could do was run.

She was terrified when she found their car outside the room smashed beyond use, the wall of the building crushing it. She was lucky to nearly fall over that dead woman, that’s what saved her. Rooting around under the woman’s body where she could see a leather strap, digging out the woman’s purse, that was luck, finding those car keys. Beeping the car, hoping it wasn’t crushed, she’d found it and gotten out of there fast. You had to live right to have luck like that—but then on the dark dirt road when she hit that tree, skidded off the road, she thought she was done for. Jammed in tight against the steering wheel, she’d hurt bad. Cops with their lights and sirens careening by in the dark never even saw her, not that she wanted to be found.

Strange that once she’d left the destroyed motel, had passed maybe half a mile of wrecked cottages and fallen trees stacked like broken toothpicks, that was the end of the damage. Nothing more had been hit. That’s where the road turned away from the lake and climbed. Was that how these tornadoes worked? Ran along between the hills, hit in just the low places?

Now, using the penlight in her purse and the local map, she followed the back roads to the next small town. It hadn’t been hit, either, just a little wind damage, an awning torn. Dinky little burg, one dumpy motel right out of some old movie. She checked into a room, she had no choice. She hurt real bad and it was too dark to move on with what she meant to do. She couldn’t afford to get stuck on those back roads at night, lost trying to get away afterward.

At the front desk she paid with cash. The bearded fat man didn’t blink an eye, just gave her change. The room was ancient. Scarred wood furniture, worn-out bedspread, limp drapes. She finished the bag of chips she’d bought at the last gas station. Her side felt like fire. Was it going to keep getting worse?

She took four Tylenols, didn’t undress, just fell into bed. She slept most of the night. She woke before dawn, sick with hurting. When she stripped and looked in the mirror her whole side was purple, a vast, tender bruise. Sure as hell her ribs were cracked, maybe broken. She didn’t need this, she didn’t want to move on Meredith Wilson in this condition.

Picking up the phone, she cajoled the bearded, overweight rube at the front desk into sending her up some breakfast. What she got was stale cold cereal with milk that was about to go sour, and a cup of lukewarm coffee. She ate, took four more pain pills, crawled back in bed and slept.

She stayed in the fusty room a week, hurting bad, sure her ribs were broken. She didn’t want to see some doctor. Toward the end of the week the pain began to ease, and the bruises were fading. She lived on stale cereal and stale cheese sandwiches. On the eighth day she hauled herself out of bed, sick of the place, sick of the food. It was late morning, later than she’d meant to start, but she couldn’t stand waiting any longer. Making sure she had the map, she headed out, paid the rest of her bill with cash. She stopped at a burger place for takeout, first hot food she’d had in a week.

None of the narrow back roads were marked, most of them dirt with patches of gravel, walled in by thick timber tangled with bushes and vines. She had to guess which road, none were marked. Only once in a while did a small, faded sign appear, but with names she couldn’t find on the local map. Twice she came to dead ends and had to turn around. It was early yet, but the woods were growing dim; this was taking longer than she’d planned. She didn’t want to get on toward evening out here, get lost in the pitch-dark. She wanted to find the woman, do what she came for, and get back to civilization.

Meredith Wilson was the first of the jurors who had left the city after the two accidents. She didn’t know whether it was because of the accidents. Her friend from the court, who’d gotten the sealed jury list for her, said for sure the Wilson woman was going back to Georgia to be with her sick father; Meredith Wilson had told her all about it. A jury clerk could get real friendly with the jury, bringing them sandwiches and coffee and all. Her friend Denise Ripley, they went way back, they’d been in high school together, in the city. Denise had worked for the Clerk of the Court for years—she had not only given Tekla the jury list and their addresses, she’d passed along other useful information, including several people headed for Molena Point, maybe for a few days’ getaway after the stress of the trial.

She’d found out more about those people, first in the city itself, talking to their neighbors, checking mailboxes. That’s why it took so long from the time Herbert was sentenced and sent to San Quentin until she went into action. Took time, finding out how best to get at each of those righteous jurors who had sentenced her son to die—die for a pitiful weakness that Herbert himself couldn’t help and that no one knew how to cure.

On these narrow dirt roads trying to follow the map, it seemed like she’d been driving forever; and now the road itself was beginning to darken as the sun dropped behind the trees. The sky was clouding over again, too. She didn’t like this. But she was too far now to turn back.

When she came to the next fork, she could see a small sign. When she brightened the headlights, a thrill touched her: the hand-carved letters read wilson. This was it. She wasn’t lost. Far ahead through the pine woods, scruffy open fields still held evening light. She turned off the headlights, moved on up the dirt road. She could smell the stink of chicken houses, smell them before she saw them. Bumping along, she came to the turnoff that led, maybe a quarter mile, to the long rows of corrugated metal buildings rusted and sour with chicken dirt. A cottage stood between the road and the metal structures, its two front windows faintly lit, enough to light her way—a raw wooden shack with a weedy vegetable garden along one side. A wide front porch ran across the front, complete with rocking chairs. She could smell woodsmoke and could smell meat frying. Before turning into the long dirt drive she paused at the mailbox.

The name and numbers were nearly invisible. robert clive wilson. She pulled along the rutted drive to a small stand of red-leaved trees. She decided the ground was hard enough that she wouldn’t get stuck. Carefully she backed into the shadows between the spindly trunks. She didn’t get out of the car but sat waiting for full dark. Finding the house cheered her, had put her back in charge again. She sat watching the windows as darkness closed in, feeling the car rock when the wind picked up. She’d say she was looking for a Timmie Lee Baker. Any name would do, she’d say she was lost. She could repeat road names from the map and from the few nearly illegible signs; that was all she needed to get her foot in the door. When it was dark enough and with the wind pushing at her back, she stepped out of the car, the loaded .357 heavy in her jacket pocket as she approached the house.

36

Late-evening sun shone through Wilma’s dining room windows into the large new cat cage she had set up there. The bedroom quarters had grown too small for full-time use. Now Dulcie and the kittens, and Joe Grey, too, had room to sprawl for a nap in the sunshine. The ringing phone woke Joe.

The babies didn’t stir, they slept deeply, their tummies extended and full. Nor did Dulcie wake, worn out from the kittens crawling over her in their attempts at rough-and-tumble. The babies’ eyes were open and their tiny ears unfurled. It was less than two weeks and Joe was proud of them; John Firetti called them precocious and waited eagerly for their first words. They all waited, trying to think how to keep them from talking at the wrong time, in front of the wrong people.

Wilma answered the phone on the second ring. Joe heard her desk chair squeak.

“Oh, yes, I’d love that. What can I do?” By the smile in her voice he could tell it was Charlie, she had a special tone for her niece. “Are you sure? Is Max . . . ?” She was quiet, then, “Yes, that sounds fine.” Hanging up, she looked across into the dining room. “Charlie’s on her way over with a shrimp casserole, a last-minute potluck. Ryan and Clyde are bringing a salad. Max will be along, he’s at the station waiting . . .” She paused, watching Joe. “Waiting for a callback from Georgia.”

Joe came to full attention.

She said, “Looks like they’ve got Tekla!”

He leaped out of the pen and headed for the cat door. Wilma watched him disappear. She couldn’tnot have told him, nor would she have stopped him.

Joe, racing from peak to peak, was hardly aware of clouds darkening toward evening. Almost thundering over the roofs, he hit the courthouse tiles, raced their length and dropped down the oak tree to the station. He slid in through the glass door behind a pair of teenage girls. Across the lobby, Detective Davis was headed down the hall toward Max’s office. Joe fled past the counter, hoping to avoid Evijean, but a familiar voice stopped him.

“Yes, sir, Captain. I’m still waiting, I’ll put it straight through.” Mabel Farthy’s voice—Mabel was back. There she was, his blond, pillow-soft friend standing at the counter beside sour-faced Evijean Simpson, a stack of papers and files between them. Was Mabel catching up on the cases at hand? Was this Evijean’s last day? He was torn between racing to Max’s office or leaping to the counter.

He leaped—Mabel grabbed him up in a warm and smothering hug. “Oh, my. Look at you. Where’s Dulcie? But Davis said she had kittens? Oh, my! Imagine. Kittens! You’re a father, Joe Grey, and don’t you look proud.”

He tried not to look too proud. He rubbed his face against her shoulder; he nuzzled her face and smiled. She petted him until Evijean cleared her throat loudly. When Mabel turned to frown at Evijean, Joe slipped from her arms, dropped from the counter and fled. He didn’t want to get Mabel in an argument with Evijean on her first day back.

Life was good, leave it that way. Evijean would soon be history.

Slipping into Max’s office, he hoped that somewhere on the East Coast, Tekla was resting her heels in the cooler, and that would top off the day.

Juana and Dallas sat on the leather couch, sipping fresh coffee and looking pleased. Max lounged behind his desk, his feet up on the blotter, waiting for Mabel to put his call through. Whatever was coming down, all three were smiling. Joe flopped down on the deep Persian rug and tried not to look curious. He rolled luxuriously, then had a little wash. Nothing so distracted a human from a cat’s true intention as to watch the cat bathe. A little cat spit, a busy tongue licking across sleek fur, and most people would relax as if hypnotized. Maybe they could feel the comforting massage in their own being, a kind of reflex contentment. He looked at Max, at ease behind the desk, and a sense filled Joe that indeed all was right with the world. Slipping up on the couch beside Juana, he waited, as the officers waited, until the phone’s open speaker came to life—until Mabel said, “Sheriff Dover is on, Captain Harper.” The call from Georgia law enforcement was not from the GBI as Joe had expected, but the deep, slow voice of Pickens County Sheriff Jimmie Roy Dover.

When Max answered, Dover said simply, “We lost her.”

“Lost her?” Max barked, envisioning as Joe did that again Tekla had given them the slip.

But Dover didn’t sound dismayed. In fact there was a smile in his voice.

“When she disappeared, and every deputy out helping the rescue crews, the best we could do at the moment was put out another BOL and alert Meredith Wilson. This wasn’t one big tornado, Max. Narrow, slicing ones hit all over the state, scoured the low places between the hills. At the lake here, wiped out nine cabins and the motel. That low wind roaring along the cleft between the hills, screaming like a banshee, struck through half a dozen of these valleys, uprooted trees like mown hay, flattened buildings. Couldn’t tell where it would hit next, never seen anything like it. Local police and highway patrol and us, we had every man out looking for the dead and injured.

“Twenty-four hours, the storm began to ease up. No word on Tekla. Phone lines were down, but we got Meredith Wilson on her cell. All was quiet at their place. We sent two deputies out there as soon as we could spare them, but no sign of Tekla.

“About then, GHP got a call from a citizen with a police band, said he’d spotted the car Tekla was driving, just north of Waycross. Blue Honda Civic, he didn’t get the plate. Headed for Florida. Lone woman driving, blond hair that looked like a wig, he said, kind of crooked on her head. County sheriff deputy made her and pulled her over.

“It wasn’t Tekla,” Dover said. “This woman checked out, she had family in Florida. Officer fingerprinted her but no match, and sent her on her way.”

On the couch beside Davis, Joe had to hide a smile. These law enforcement guys from the South, they were talkers, they liked to string it out. Well, that was okay, southerners were storytellers, it was in their blood. Wilma said some of the best writers came from the South. She had described for him and Dulcie southern families sitting on their deep, covered porch in the warm evenings, rocking away, watching the fireflies, weaving family stories and ghost stories and their traditional tales.

“We had two other reports,” Dover said. “Blue Hondas, lone women, but both turned out duds. Until tonight, nearly a week later,” the sheriff said.

“Weather blowing in again, but it wasn’t here yet, just heavy clouds, when Meredith Wilson called us. Said a blue four-door, she couldn’t tell the make, had stopped on the road in front of their mailbox, then turned in, pulled in among a stand of young sourwood trees.

“I sent two deputies. Takes about twenty minutes from the station, and called in four more as backup. Our first car gets there and turns in, the storm is gearing up. Enough wind to cover sound and movement. Meredith and her father could still see Tekla’s car. We told them to stay inside, don’t answer the door, stay away from the windows.

“First patrol car checks in, approaching the house. Next thing, we hear gunfire. Second car pulls up and we get an Officer Down call. We radioed for the medics. Two more cars arrive, deputies surround the place. The officer is lying in the doorway shot in the leg and a wound in his side, his partner kneeling over him applying tourniquets to stop the blood. And Tekla’s sprawled on the steps,” Dover said. “She’s dead, shot through the chest—but not by our men.”

There was a little pause. Dover said, “Meredith Wilson killed her, with her daddy’s favorite handgun.”

They were all silent. Then, “It was later we found the scar on Tekla’s revolver where one of my deputies shot it from her hand. She could well have kept firing, have hit more of us if she’d had the chance.

“So I guess,” Dover said dryly, “besides saving lives, Meredith Wilson saved the California courts some money. Maybe,” he said, “the good Lord handled this one.”

And Joe Grey, face hidden from the chief and the detectives, couldn’t stop smiling.

In Wilma’s living room before the fire, Max and Charlie sat close together on the couch, Ryan and Clyde on cushions before the hearth. Joe and Dulcie lay on Wilma’s lap, in her easy chair. The kittens, for the moment, were blessedly asleep in their pen. The house smelled deliciously of shrimp casserole set in the oven to keep warm. Ryan’s big salad bowl and a basket of French bread waited on the table. Impromptu meals, Wilma thought, were the best. The Greenlaws had brought a berry shortcake; Lucinda sat near Charlie and Max, at the other end of the couch; Pedric chose the padded desk chair, Kit stretched out on the blotter beside him. Pan was home with the Firettis. Kate and Scotty had opted out for their own impromptu supper, they didn’t say where.

Just this morning John Firetti had examined the kittens again, had pronounced them fine and healthy and had doted over the babies. Talking to the kittens and stroking them, he had called the lighter buff boy Buffin, then had looked up guiltily at Dulcie. “It’s just a nickname, it’s not for me to name them.”

Dulcie smiled. “Why shouldn’t you name them? You helped them into the world. Buffin? I like that. Buffin,” she said, “as golden pale as the sea sand. The name has a gentle sound.” She looked up at John. “Misto named Courtney, and he would like this name, too.” She laid a paw on John’s hand and looked down at the tiny baby. “Hello, Buffin.”

“And this other little fellow,” John said, “with the dark shadow on his pale coat? Does he yet have a name?”

“Not yet,” Dulcie said. “I guess Joe and I are waiting . . . for our friends to help. Or maybe,” she said, “maybe we’re waiting for this little boy to name himself.”

And now this evening, this was how it happened when, the friends all moving to the dining table, paused around the cage looking down at the kittens.

“You don’t want common names,” Max said, startling Dulcie—as if they had been talking about just that. She watched the chief nervously.

“They’re Joe’s kittens,” he said, “Joe Grey’s and Dulcie’s.”

Everyone was quiet. What was Max saying, what was he thinking? That the kittens were far more than just special? In the silent room Charlie glanced at Ryan and Clyde, and at Wilma.

But maybe, Dulcie thought, Max meant nothing—his expression was bland, maybe he was just taken with her babies. He had grown to enjoy Joe’s bold and purring interruptions in the office. Now he admired Joe’s kittens; surely that was all he had meant.

Charlie said, “Wilma has already named the girl kitten, she is Courtney.”

“And this morning,” Wilma said, “John Firretti gave me another name . . . maybe not so original, but it fits.” She bent down to stroke the paler boy kitten. “Buffin,” she said. “This is Buffin.”

Charlie said, “I like it, it’s a sturdy name. He is sturdy, look at him.” She leaned down to pet the sand-colored baby. But when she picked up the other kitten, with the gray cloud marking his pale coat, he immediately nipped her and dug his claws in, making her laugh. “This one’s a little wildcat, he’s going to be a handful.” She glanced down at Dulcie and Joe, then at Wilma.

“Striker,” she said. “What about Striker? But Striker as in to protect, not to threaten.”

Behind Max’s back, Dulcie and Joe looked at each other, amused. Yes, a strong name. And a strong, determined kitten. And Joe thought, A good name for a young cop kitten—if that’s what Striker turns out to be.

Wilma looked into Dulcie’s green eyes, then into Joe’s level gaze. “Striker. I like that,” she told Charlie. When she took the kitten from Charlie she received a sharp scratch of her own. She set him down in the pen, tapped him gently on the nose when he tried for another swat. When he drew back, she gently stroked him. He looked up at her uncertainly.

“Hello, Striker,” she said, laughing, and she removed her hand before he thought to lunge again.

When Ryan brought the casserole to the table and everyone gathered, Courtney and her brothers, smelling the warm shrimp, let out lusty mewls. Even kittens with full tummies could bellow demanding cries; but a look and a soft mumble from Dulcie, and soon they quieted.

As they all took their seats, Ryan was saying, “What I don’t get is how Tekla got the jurors’ names. Doesn’t the court seal those, so no one can influence the jurors during the trial or do them harm afterward?”

“It was the jury clerk,” Max said, “a Denise Ripley, she passed the names and addresses to Tekla. They went through high school together. Maybe buddies, maybe not, but Tekla paid her well. Ripley spilled when the chief judge called her in. He got her story—I’m not sure how. Maybe she thought he would only fire her and not prosecute, though I’m sure he didn’t promise that.” Max smiled. “Ripley’s in jail now, under indictment.”

“She got what she deserved,” Charlie said, “and so did Tekla. Meredith Wilson is alive, unharmed. Because of Meredith, maybe so are a couple of deputies. And maybe those jurors, too, who were lucky enough to escape the Bleaks.”

“What would the world be like,” Ryan wondered, “if all the vindictive, blood-hungry people suddenly went up in smoke, vanished into nothing?”

“I’d be out of a job,” Max said, laughing. “I’d be spending my time with Charlie, in a long and satisfying retirement.”

“And pretty soon,” Wilma said, “with no more evil in the world for us to stand against, people would become as weak and ineffective as garden slugs.”

Dulcie thought about that. But in her mind, at that moment, the prospect of an innocent world, of a safe life for her kittens, such a dream would offer more than a few virtues.

It was later in the evening when, yawning, Dulcie watched their friends depart, that she thought a little prayer for them all, for cats, kittens, and humans. Her purr was deep, she was content with life as she and Wilma moved the kittens into their nighttime pen beside Wilma’s bed. Dulcie settled down among them, inundated by pummeling babies who did not want to go to sleep. Soothing her lively youngsters with a gentle paw, she willed herself to forget the last lingering images of Tekla’s brutal assaults, of the suffering that woman had caused.

She thanked the greater powers for all their good fortune, despite the ugliness. She thought of Pan tucked up with the Firettis, the three friends comforting one another. She thought lovingly of Joe Grey stretched out in his tower staring out at the sky and she thought, Good night, Joe, dream well—and in his tower at the same moment Joe Grey bade happy dreams to Dulcie and their three babies. The late spring night tucked warmly around humans and cats, and the kittens beneath Dulcie’s restraining paw drifted into sleep, safe and loved. Dulcie, looking out the bedroom windows to the night, hoped that Misto could hear the kittens’ purrs and could hear her own contented rumble. And they all slept, cats and humans.

It was only much later that Dulcie woke again and rose, that she trotted out into the dark living room, leaped onto Wilma’s desk, and with a quick paw she turned on the computer. She sat in its soft light thinking about Misto, thinking about the poem in her head that had been forming ever since the old cat died, the verses that wouldn’t leave her, and slowly, with her forepaws squeezed small, she shared her words on the screen, her ode to Misto.

Golden spirit, you reach down

Your ghostly paw to touch the earth you love

To touch the sea

To stroke the lakes and rivers

To caress green hills and forests

To bless this mortal land you left behind.

Though you are gone,

Your spirit dances now

In bright eternity.

You are young again and strong

You whisper, “I am with you,

I am with you, still.”

You whisper,

“When your spirits join me,

You will know all secrets.

You will then fly free,

Fly paw to paw with me.

Our spirits sailing free.”

About the Author

In addition to her popular Joe Grey mystery series for adults, for which she has received ten national Cat Writers’ Association Awards for best novel of the year, Shirley Rousseau Murphy is a noted children’s book author who has received five Council of Authors and Journalists Awards. Though her early young adult fantasies feature speaking animals, there is no speaking cat like Joe Grey and his wily crew.

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Also by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

Cat Bearing Gifts

Cat Telling Tales

Cat Coming Home

Cat Striking Back

Cat Playing Cupid

Cat Deck the Halls

Cat Pay the Devil

Cat Breaking Free

Cat Cross Their Graves

Cat Fear No Evil

Cat Seeing Double

Cat Laughing Last

Cat Spitting Mad

Cat to the Dogs

Cat in the Dark

Cat Raise the Dead

Cat Under Fire

Cat on the Edge

The Catsworld Portal

By Shirley Rousseau Murphy and Pat J. J. Murphy

The Cat, the Devil, the Last Escape

The Cat, the Devil, and Lee Fontana

Credits

Cover illustration copyright © 2016 Beppe Giacobbe

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

CAT SHOUT FOR JOY. Copyright © 2016 by Shirley Rousseau Murphy. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Art by Dobrynina/Shutterstock, Inc.

ISBN 978-0-06-240349-0

EPub Edition FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN: 9780062403513

16 17 18 19 20 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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