Cat Spitting Mad

3

DILLON! DILLON THURWELL! Ruthie! Ruthie Marner!" The night hills rang with shouts, and swam with careening lights that faded and smeared where scarves of fog crept up the little valleys. "Dillon! Dillon Thurwell!" Max Harper's voice cut through the others, tense and imperative. "Dillon! Answer me! Dillon, sing out! Whistle! Dillon!"

And up the hills above the searchers, Joe Grey stood on a rock beside the bleeding bodies, wanting to shout, too, wanting to halt the cries and bring the searchers swarming to where the murdered women lay, wanting to shout, Here! They're here! Ruthie and Helen are here. Here, below the broken pine!

Right.

He could do that.

Shout as loud as a cat can shout, bring the riders galloping to take one look at the murder scene and fan out again searching for the killer, their horses trashing every bit of the evidence in their urgent haste-to say nothing of trampling three fleeing cats.

He had to draw the searchers without alarming them into tearing up the surround.

Slipping behind the rock where he wouldn't be seen, rearing tall behind the boulder to nearly thirty inches of sleek gray fur, Joe Grey yowled.

Opened wide and let it out, yowled-howled-caterwauled-bellowed-ululated and belly-coughed like a banshee screaming its rage and venom into the black, cold night.

Every light swung up. Torchlight illuminated the cats' boulder as if its edges were on fire. Captain Harper pushed Bucky fast up the hill, the tall, thin officer pulling his rifle from the scabbard as the big buckskin ran sliding on the rocks. A rifle!

Joe knew that the men of Molena Point PD carried rifles in their squad cars, along with a short, handy shotgun and an array of far more amazing equipment. He'd never thought about an officer carrying a rifle on horseback. He guessed that in the wild mountains to which these foothills led, in the rugged coastal range, a rifle might come in handy-there had been times, up in these hills, when he'd wished a cat could use a firearm.

"There!" Harper shouted. "By the boulders-under the broken pine!"

Every beam centered on the rocks and on the angled tree behind them, and on the two bodies sprawled across the dust-pale bridle path. Lights scoured the boulder where the cats had been.

Crouching higher up the hill, they watched Harper's buckskin gelding top the rise at a gallop and, behind Harper, riders flowing up like a stampede in a TV western, the pounding of their hooves shaking the earth. Crouched close together, the cats shivered with nervous excitement.

Harper held up a hand. The riders pulled up their horses in a ragged semicircle, some fifty feet below the bodies-a ring of mounted men and women, their flashlights and torches bathing the corpses in a brilliance as violent as if the light of final judgment shone down suddenly upon Helen and Ruthie Marner.

Around the grisly honor guard, the night was still.

A bit rattled. A horse snorted nervously, perhaps at the smell of blood.

Max Harper holstered his rifle and dismounted, swinging down from the saddle to approach the bodies alone. Leaving Bucky ground-tied, he stepped with care to avoid trampling any footprint or hoofprint. His long, thin face was white, the dry wrinkles deeply etched, his dark eyes flat and hard as he looked down on Helen and Ruthie, then looked away into the night, shining his light up into the forest.

When he did not see a third body among the rocks and trees, he clicked on his radio.

"Better have the ambulance up here. And the coroner." He called in his two detectives from the squad cars below, then knelt to check for vital signs, though there could be none. Dulcie and Joe swallowed, knowing the pain with which Harper must be viewing the scene.

Before he rose, he examined the ground directly around the bodies; the cats knew he'd be committing to memory every mark or disturbance, studying every footprint and hoofprint, every detail of the position of the bodies, memorizing the way the blood was pooled, seeing each tiniest fragment of evidence-though all such facts would be duly recorded by his detectives in extensive notes and photographs.

Joe didn't like leaving their prints at the scene-he could only hope they looked like the tracks of a squirrel or fox, though surely Harper knew the difference. Crouching, Harper studied the earth for a long time, then, rising, he looked away again into the night, shaking his head as if dismissing that wild cry that had summoned him. Maybe he thought it had come from some small, wild beast drawn there by the smell of blood, stopping to yowl a hunting cry, leaving its prints, fleeing at the approach of the searchers.

It was as good a scenario as any. They didn't need Harper to be unduly aware of cats at the scene; they knew that too painfully from past encounters.

Harper, shining his torch across the ground in ever-widening arcs, turned at last, singling out Officer Wendell.

"Call Murdoc Ranch, Wendell. See if the Marner horses have come home. See if they've seen Dillon-or if Dillon's mare is there." And again he swung his torch up into the black forest, searching for a redheaded little girl whom Max Harper cared for just as he would love his own child. His light swam over the boulder beneath which the cats crouched. But if he saw them at all, they'd be no more than mottled brown leaves and rotted gray branches, their eyes tight closed, Joe's white markings concealed behind the kit and Dulcie.

And soon, below them, the familiar routine began. Officers emerged from their squad cars on the narrow road a quarter mile below. Detective Ray and Detective Davis hurried up the hill, the two women loaded with cameras and equipment bags, Davis to shoot roll after roll of film of the victims and the surround while Ray made notes and drew a diagram of body positions. Borrowing Bucky, Davis took many pictures from horseback, to gain the higher angle. The cats thought the team would likely work all night, sifting the earth, bagging and labeling minute bits of evidence, making casts of footprints and hoofprints.

Kathleen Ray was young, maybe thirty-five, a small, slim woman with long dark hair and huge green eyes, a woman who looked more like a model for petite swimwear than a cop. Juana Davis was pushing fifty, a stocky, solid woman with short dark hair and brown Latin eyes. Harper stood watching them, going over the scene, the muscles of his jaw tight.

For the first time in many days, the cats felt safe from predators, with the entire Molena Point PD and half the village milling around the hills and forest.

Soon another squad car arrived and four officers double-timed up the hill to organize teams of searchers. Two smaller parties, of skilled climbers, headed up toward the steep mountains.

When Davis had finished photographing, Max Harper laid out for her what he knew of Dillon and the Marners' activities that afternoon. As the detective taped Harper's flat, clipped voice, his words stirred a strange fear in Joe Grey.

"Helen and Ruthie met Dillon and me at my place about ten this morning; they rode over from the Murdoc Ranch, where they board their horses. We headed south along the lower trail toward Hellhag Hill. Rode on beyond Hellhag maybe five miles, turned back around eleven, and stopped at Cafe Mundo for lunch. Loosened the saddles, rubbed down our horses and watered them. Had a leisurely meal."

Cafe Mundo was located just above Valley Road, adjacent to one of the many bridle trails that bisected the Molena Point hills. It was famous for its fine Mexican dishes. The proprietor, having horses himself, liked to cater to the local horsemen, advertising a water trough and plenty of hitching racks. Cafe Mundo was always first to help sponsor overnight trail rides, charity calf roping, and rodeos.

"If Dillon's not still on horseback," Harper told Davis, "if she's fallen, Redwing will come home. I sent Charlie down to see, maybe half an hour ago. She knows the horses, knows how to put Redwing up. They were-Dillon was going to spend the night with Ruthie, going to stable Redwing with the Marner horses until morning. She…" Harper's voice missed a beat. "She's a strong, resourceful little girl."

He cleared his throat. "When we finished lunch, Helen and Ruthie and Dillon left. That was about one-thirty. They headed up in this direction, were planning on another two hours, up into the foothills and back. Dillon and Ruthie are-were training for an endurance competition." Harper fidgeted nervously. "Where the hell is the coroner?"

Joe watched him with interest. Harper had only called for the coroner maybe fifteen minutes earlier. It would take Dr. Bern a little while to get up the hills. They'd never seen the captain wound so tight.

But he couldn't blame Harper. If the captain had remained with the riders, this wouldn't have happened. Besides Harper's intimidating presence, even on horseback he would have been armed, very likely carrying the Smith & Wesson.38 automatic in its shoulder holster-if for no other reason than against predators. No one said what kind of predators. Every cop had enemies.

It had been the habit of the foursome, lately, to take an all-day ride on Saturday, as the girls worked on their endurance skills. Charlie Getz had ridden with them until Crystal Ryder came on the scene. Crystal had been too much for Charlie. Too bubbly, too much flirting-too much all over Max Harper. With both Helen Marner and Crystal attempting to take over Harper as private property, the skirmishes had been more than Charlie could endure.

From what Harper had told Clyde, the women's ongoing battle didn't thrill him either. He put up with them, to have ample chaperones for Dillon.

Max Harper hadn't dated since his wife, Millie, died several years earlier. His friendship with Helen had caused some talk in the village. But when Crystal moved to Molena Point and began to pay attention to Harper, there'd been a lot more gossip. Crystal was far more glamorous than Helen, and her persistence was amazing. She was, in Joe's opinion, pushy, wore too much makeup, and was always "onstage." Not Harper's type of woman.

Joe was no prude. And maybe his view of these matters was different from that of the human male. But he considered sleazy women totally boring-as tiresome as a perfumed Persian decked out in pink claw polish and a rhinestone collar.

Joe enjoyed a roll in the hay as well as the next guy, but he preferred his ladies with sharper claws and more fire.

"Interesting," Joe said, "that Crystal didn't ride with the group this afternoon-and that Harper didn't mention her."

Dulcie looked at him, wide-eyed. "What are you thinking?"

"Not sure. Just strange."

"Well, whatever's on your mind, we need to tell Harper which way that man chased Dillon. The kit said there, to the north."

"This is one time, Dulcie, the secret snitch is not going to tip the chief. Not with every cop and half the village swarming, and no phones except in the squad cars."

"But we have to! Dillon could be… You did it before. You called Harper from a squad car while the officers had their backs turned."

"Not this time," Joe said, his eyes blazing so fiercely that Dulcie drew back. "Anyway, there's no need." They watched Harper swing into the saddle and head Bucky away to the north, shining his torch along the trail, following those racing hoofprints. And soon the silhouette of horse and rider, backlit by the torch, melted into the night.

Dulcie stared after him, praying that Dillon had escaped, that she was out there on the dark hills hiding, and Harper would find her.

Glancing at Joe, she started to follow. But Joe, leaping away beside her, hit her with his shoulders and nipped at her until she slowed. "Don't, Dulcie. Leave him alone. What could you do? You couldn't keep up forever-alone in the night, you're cougar bait. If Dillon's out there, he'll find her."

She sat down in the pine needles, looking at him forlornly.

"Is nothing safe?" she said. "Is no simplest thing people do beyond danger? It was such a harmless pleasure for Dillon, having a horse to ride."

The two cats looked solemnly at each other, and padded back through the woods to join the sleeping kit; and to watch, below them, as Detective Davis began to lift plaster casts in their little frame boxes, where the creamy liquid had hardened into boot-prints and hoofprints. As Davis worked, the mist blew thicker over the hills, veiling the moon, casting moon-shadows across the coroner's thin face, where he stood watching the forensics team, making Dr. Bern look paler than ever. Beside Dulcie, the dozing kit woke, yawning a wide pink gape. Joe, angry at the world, it seemed, didn't wait for her to wake fully; he fixed her with a steady yellow gleam that shocked her right up out of her dreams.

"What were you doing, Kit, all that time after he killed them and you saw him chasing Dillon? Didn't you know something should be done? That Dillon needed help? Why didn't you race down to find us?"

"You weren't there to find. You were up here on the hills."

"But you didn't know that," Joe said impatiently. "What were you doing?"

"I ran after the man and the girl, I followed them, I didn't know what to do. Their scent led down the hills, and when I couldn't see the horses, I could hear them. I ran and ran. So many smells. I wanted to see if she got away, and then I couldn't smell her anymore and that was near the ruins so I thought she might hide there and I went in to look."

"Well?"

Dulcie said more gently, "Did you smell Dillon there? In the ruins?"

"So many smells. Foxes and raccoons. A coyote. I could smell him, and I hurried away under the rubble where he couldn't come. I smelled all the night hunters. There is water in the cellars. The big hunters come there to drink."

"We know that," Joe said impatiently.

"Don't you remember," Dulcie said, "we told you not to go there? Did you smell Dillon?"

"I smelled the cougar."

For a moment, the kit would not look at Dulcie. Then, "I couldn't smell the little girl in all the other smells. And then I lost the man-smell. But I smelled the lion and I was afraid. I hid," she said softly. "I hid and I didn't know what to do.

"Then when I thought he was gone I slipped away and came back here again and looked at the dead bodies, and I was going to go home and tell you but then I saw you. I saw you, you were here," she said, crowding against Dulcie.

Dulcie licked the kit's mottled face. The little black-and-brown patchwork creature with the round yellow eyes was the strangest young cat she'd ever known.

The kit lifted a dark paw to Dulcie, the fur between her claws so long and thick that it made Dulcie smile. The kit, with her furry paws and the long fur sticking out of her ears, resembled too closely some wild feline cousin-wild looks that exactly matched her unruly temperament.

Tenderly, Dulcie washed the kit's mottled face. "We will search," she said. "Just as Harper is searching. But where were you, Kit, for three days? Didn't you think we worried? We looked and looked for you. You could have said, 'I want a ramble, I need to go off alone.' You could have told us you were going."

"Would you have let me go?"

Dulcie only looked at her.

Joe studied the kit, his yellow eyes nearly black, his white paws, white apron, and the white patch down his nose bright in the night. "What is that smell on you, Kit?"

"What smell?"

"Musty. Deep musty earth. I don't remember a smell like that in the ruins, even in the cellars-not that kind of smell."

The kit looked innocently at Joe.

Joe fixed her with a hard gaze.

And Dulcie moved close to the kit, standing tall over her, her own neck bowed like a torn, her tail lashing. " Where, Kit? Where were you?"

"I went down," the kit said softly. "The deep, deep place below the cellars." And she moved away from them, suddenly preoccupied with patting at the dry leaves.

"Pay attention!" Joe snapped. "What deep place!"

"Down under the ruin," said the kit, flattening her furry ears and turning her face away.

"Deep down?" Dulcie said softly. "Why, Kit?" But she knew why. The tattercoat kit was keenly drawn to strange, frightening fissures. She was as obsessed with the cellars of the old Pamillon estate, and with the yawning cave-ins that dropped away even beneath the cellars, as she had been with the deep and mysterious caverns that she claimed lay below Hellhag Hill.

"I went down and down." The kit's round yellow eyes filled with a wild delight. "Down and down under the cellars. Down and down where my clowder wanted to go. Down and down under water dripping, down long cracks into the earth, down and down until I heard voices, until…"

"You did not," Joe snapped. "You didn't hear voices. You didn't go below any cellar. You're making it up-inventing silly tales."

"Deep down," said the kit. "Down and down and I heard voices."

"It was echoes," Joe hissed. "Echoes from water dripping or from sliding stone. You're lucky to be up in the world again, you silly kitten, and not buried under some earthslide in one of those old cellars."

The kit looked at Joe Grey. She looked at Dulcie. "Down and down," she said stubbornly, "to that other place beneath the granite sky."

And Dulcie, despite herself, despite her better judgment, believed the kit. "What was it like?" she whispered.

"You didn't go there," Joe repeated, baring his teeth at the two of them.

"Terrible," said the kit. "It is terrible. I ran up again, but then I lost my way. I had to go back and start over, I had to follow my own scent."

Dulcie said softly, "Were the others from your clowder there?"

"I was all alone. I don't know where they went when they left Hellhag Hill. I don't like that place, I was afraid. But…"

"Then why did you go?" Joe growled, pacing and glaring at the kit. Half his attention was on her-his anger centered on her-and half his attention on the torchlit scene below them where the coroner and detectives were doing their grisly work.

But Dulcie, pressing against the kit, could feel the kitten's heart pounding at thoughts of another world-even if it was her imagination-just as Dulcie's own heart was pounding.

"She's making up stories," Joe said, his eyes slitted, his ears flat to his head, his scowl deep and irritable. He didn't want to think about that other place, if there was such a place. Didn't want to imagine other worlds, didn't want to dwell on his and Dulcie's ancestry. If their dual cat-and-human natures had risen from some strain of beings among the ancient Celts, who had come, then, to this continent, he didn't care to know more about it.

Joe wanted only to be. To live only in the moment, fully alive and effective, in this life that he had been dealt.

And Dulcie loved him for that. Joe was his own cat, he felt no need to peer into the lives of his ancestors like some voyeuring genealogist longing for a time before his own.

Joe spoke the human language, he read the morning paper- with a sharply caustic slant on the news. Dulcie considered him smarter than half the humans in the world. But Joe Grey valued what he had here and now, he wanted nothing more. Any additional mysteries about himself would be an unnecessary weight upon his tomcat shoulders.

With tender understanding, Dulcie licked his ear, ignoring her own wild dreams of other worlds and even more amazing talents. And she snuggled the kit close, too, wondering about the skills that this small cat might show them.

She was washing the kit's splotchy black-and-brown face when they saw Clyde striding up the hill between the swinging spotlights. Immediately Joe and Dulcie ducked, dragging the kit lower behind the boulders.

"Why?" whispered the kit. "Is he not your human, Joe Grey? Why are you hiding from him?"

Joe gave her a slant-eyed look. "He hates finding us at a murder scene. All he does is shout. It's bad for his blood pressure." He watched from between the boulders until Clyde turned away again, to where Officer Ray was cataloging the scene. Standing outside the cordoned-off area, Clyde said, "Is Harper out looking for her?"

Kathleen Ray nodded. "The captain, and five search parties."

"I'll swing by Harper's place, see if the mare came home. No word from Charlie? Is she down there?"

"No word. She said she'd be there. The captain asked her to see to the mare."

Clyde turned, heading down the hill.

"Move it, Kit," Joe whispered. "Stay close."

Racing down ahead of Clyde, staying in the heavy grass and dodging torchlight, the three cats covered the quarter mile, scorched between cars parked along the narrow dirt road, and leaped into the seat of Clyde's antique roadster.

Before Clyde was halfway down the hill, they had slipped up behind the seat and beneath the car's folded top. Stretching out nose to tail, warm beneath the layers of leather, they were ready to roll.

Clyde wouldn't have a clue-unless he saw their muddy paw-prints. But in the dark, with only the dash lights, he likely wouldn't see the mud on the seat-not until morning.

The kit, warm and comfortable between them, rumbled with purrs-until Dulcie poked her with a soft paw. "Hush, Kit. Here he comes, he'll hear you."

But the kit had fallen sound asleep.