Cat Striking Back

14

POLICE DISPATCHER MABEL Farthy had brought fried chicken for her lunch, with extra servings in case any of the cats wandered in. The plump, blond, middle-aged officer loved to spoil the three freeloaders; she’d be happy to bring fried chicken for the whole department except that, the way these guys ate, she’d have to file for bankruptcy before the end of the week. She was sorting the mail when Joe and Dulcie appeared beyond the glass door. She looked up, smiling. Before she could step out from behind her counter to let them in, Officer Brennan came up the sidewalk and the cats slipped in behind him, crowding so close on his heels that they surely left cat hairs clinging to the dark trousers of his uniform.

Leaping to the counter, they peered over, sniffing at the shelf beneath where they knew she kept her lunch. The chicken smelled heavenly. When she reached for the bag, Brennan paused, giving her a woeful look. She grinned and shook her head and the portly officer moved on. The cats watched him turn into the conference room where there was always a box of doughnuts beside the coffeemaker, maybe fresh, maybe dried out, but sweet and filling. As Mabel unwrapped their own bite-size treats of fried chicken, down the hall Detective Juana Davis stepped out of her office carrying a CD and headed for Dallas Garza’s office.

“Take a look at these,” they heard her say as she entered. “We sure did have company this morning.”

The cats looked at each other, wolfed down their chicken, made a show of stretching and yawning, then dropped off the counter and trotted lazily down the hall as if wanting a noonday nap. It wasn’t easy to want to hurry like hell, yet move as slowly as a basset hound on downers. Envisioning Dallas inserting the disc into his computer, they slipped into his office and out of sight beneath his credenza. They couldn’t see the computer screen from where they crouched-it stood on the detective’s desk with its back to them-but at least they could listen.

“I’ll be damned,” Dallas said sharply, staring at the screen.

Juana had pulled up a straight chair next to Dallas ’s desk. “Turn that one back,” she said, frowning at the screen. “There, zoom it up. There, the jawline and ear, just beside that bush. Print it out. Can you make it lighter?” As the cats listened to the soft whir of the printer, Juana said, “There, by the window, behind the camellia bush. Print that one, too.”

Again the whisper of the printer, and the cats watched it spit out another sheet. When they had seven sheets and Juana was shuffling through them, Joe Grey strolled out from beneath the credenza. Staring sweetly up at her, he leaped to the desk beside her. She was so used to the cats in and out of the offices that she hardly looked at him; she stroked him absently as she fanned out the photos.

“Try enlarging this one,” she said.

Another click of computer keys and the printer whirred again.

“Is that a shadow?” Dallas said, picking up the picture. “Or is he wearing some kind of cap?” In all the shots, even the enlargement, the figure was only barely visible, a shadow among shadows within the tangled bushes.

“Looks like a cap,” Juana said. “He must have seen me pointing the camera his way when I shot the suntan oil bottle. Did he think he was completely hidden? Or that he’d be out of focus?” She smiled. “But what could he do? He couldn’t move, he was trapped there.”

And Joe Grey thought, Like a rabbit frozen in place trying to blend in with its surroundings, trying not to be noticed.

Dallas ran off one more enlargement and took the sheet from the printer. It was as murky as the rest. “Are we looking at the killer?” he said. “Provided there is a body. Why the hell can’t we have a nice simple murder, with a body on the scene?”

“Plus the murder weapon, prints, excellent witnesses, the works?” Juana said, laughing. “And what fun would that be?” Laying the pictures down, she rose. “I’ll get the film over to George, see what he can get with some high-tech enhancement.”

“I’ll get the blood off to the lab,” Dallas said. “And the prints we lifted. I don’t-”

They both looked up when Charlie appeared in the doorway. Joe had been so interested he hadn’t heard her voice up at the front, though she and Mabel usually talked for a while. She stood in the doorway, wisps of her red hair bright as flames in the overhead lights.

“I just stopped in to see Max for a minute. And to-” She glanced at the pictures. “Are those from the Parker house? May I see?”

“Come sit,” Dallas said. “Have a look.”

She sat down on the couch. Dallas handed her the pictures and said, “Someone was watching us while we ran the scene this morning-what appears to be a crime scene.”

Charlie was quiet for a minute, tilting the pictures this way and that for a clearer view, then she looked up at the detectives. “This could be the same man.”

They waited. Joe dropped off the desk and slipped up on the couch beside her. She glanced down at him and their eyes met for a moment, then she looked up again at the two detectives.

“When Ryan and Clyde left you this morning, they stopped up the hill where I was checking my clients’ houses. We were on the street, talking, when Clyde saw a man down the hill standing hidden among the trees as if he was watching us.”

She looked again at the pictures. “He was wearing a dark hat, a slouchy kind of hat. Jeans. A dark green windbreaker.” Her hand, petting Joe, felt reassuring. They were in this together and that thought pleased the tomcat.

“None of us got a look at his face,” she said, “with the hat pulled down. He ran down the hill and disappeared, and in a minute a white car took off. Maybe he was interested in my vacationing houses, too. A glass slider looks like someone tried to jimmy it. I didn’t report it, nothing seems to be missing.”

She looked embarrassed. “I guess it wasn’t a very smart way to tail someone, Clyde in a yellow car, me in a red SUV. When we lost him at Ocean, we split up. They went north, I went south as far as the shops, looked all over the parking lot, then gave up.”

“And you didn’t call about the attempted break-in,” Dallas said, frowning.

“It was so…I had nothing to report. Even the guy down the hill, watching. Might have been only a neighbor. If he was watching you, wouldn’t he know he’d show up in the pictures you were shooting?”

“He might have thought I didn’t have a very wide field,” Juana said. “I was shooting small details, a pair of dark glasses, close-ups.”

“And what was he going to do?” Dallas said. “If he’d moved and we’d seen him, we’d have brought him in for questioning. Maybe we’ll have better luck when the video is developed.”

“Could this be our snitch?” Juana said. “I took the call, and it was the snitch’s voice, I’m sure. Was he hanging around to see if we’d run the scene even, when there was no body?”

“That doesn’t tell us how he happened on the scene in the first place,” Dallas said. “The odds of him stumbling on that particular pool…How many people spend their time prowling around vacant houses and looking in empty swimming pools?”

Juana said, “Unless they saw the murder in progress, or saw the body before it was moved. But why the snitch’s continued secrecy? What’s that about? And how has he known any of the information he’s given us over the years? I’m beginning to think he’s some kind of psychic. If I believed in such things.”

“Sometimes,” Charlie said, “it seems there’s no other way to explain what he comes up with.” Her hand had tightened only slightly on the gray tomcat. He pressed nervously against her, eased by her steady touch. Sometimes that kind of conversation, hearing the detectives talk about their unknown informant and make guesses about the snitch’s identity while looking straight at Joe himself, tended to make a cat nervous.

“I’d say he was a member of the department,” Juana said, rising and heading for the door. “Except, not even someone in the department would know this kind of stuff. For any one person to have gathered all the information we’ve received over the years from this guy-and from the woman-that just isn’t possible.” Brushing a gray cat hair from the skirt of her dark uniform, the detective left them to return to her own office. Dallas sat looking after her, then looked across at Charlie.

Charlie said, “I sure don’t know the answer. I guess you and Max are right. If you like the help of the snitches, then run with it and don’t ask questions.”

Across the room beneath the credenza where Dulcie crouched hidden, the tabby’s green eyes looked out at Joe and Charlie, wildly amused. Beside her, Kit was silently laughing.

Charlie said, “Were you able to lift any prints?”

Dallas nodded. “Fingerprints. Blood. Shoe prints. And with spray, we got some tire marks.”

Charlie rose to leave. Joe, feeling uncomfortable suddenly, dropped off the couch and followed her. Dulcie followed Joe, the two cats trailing Charlie as far as the dispatcher’s cubicle, where they made a detour up onto the counter to see if Mabel had any more fried chicken.