Cat Striking Back

3

NOW AS JOE carried his gift across the rooftops, the sun had slipped away again and the smell of rain filled the morning. Leaping to the sill of the Chapmans’ laundry-room window, clinging with sharp claws to the ledge, Joe slid the glass back with one armored paw. Moving inside, he clawed the window closed again behind him, dropped to the counter and then to the floor, the mice swinging. When he looked up at the female in the box, among her kittens, expecting her to be charmed by his mousy present, she laid back her ears and glared and hissed at him.

Before approaching, to drop the mice at her feet, he turned to the closed door that led to the kitchen. Pawing at the throw rug that lay before it, he pushed it into the crack, hoping to keep the mice from escaping into the rest of the house.

There was little he could do about the washer and dryer. Nothing was as frustrating as having a mouse escape beneath a washing machine, where you could see its beady little eyes peering out but it was safe from your reaching paw.

He scanned the room, and with a stroke of genius he leaped to the counter, knocked the plastic dishpan off, pushed it across the room with his shoulder, depositing his little gifts in the deep receptacle. The whole time, the yellow cat growled and hissed. Pausing beyond the reach of her claws, he stood for a moment staring down into the dishpan where the mice crouched, confused and dazed. He hoped the little beasts would remain sufficiently stunned not to jump out before Mango could snatch them up.

He expected her to eat most of them-Dulcie said she needed more than kibble when she was nursing kits. But he hoped she’d save a couple, to start training the kittens. Dulcie had laughed at that, had said those kits were too young to train, that to give them a mouse would be like buying a tricycle for a human baby. But Joe wasn’t so sure. That one tom kitten, who had clawed so boldly at the back door, seemed plenty aggressive despite his tender age.

Joe thought about his own kittenhood. He could hardly remember his mama, she had died or run off shortly after he was weaned, long before she was able to teach him much of anything. Certainly she hadn’t taught him to hunt. He’d had to figure that out for himself, had to teach himself how to catch a mouse in San Francisco’s mean alleys, how to avoid the bigger stray cats, how to avoid the city’s wharf rats that would kill and eat a kitten-had had to figure out, alone, how to stay safe and keep from starving.

With these matters sharply in mind, he felt strongly that kittens should be introduced early to the basic skills of life. The hunting and survival skills, mastered when one was young, would never be forgotten. Without those talents, life was twice as hard and one might never grow into a strong and self-sufficient adult-might never grow up at all.

Watching the yellow female, Joe backed away from the dishpan hoping she would approach. She twitched her nose at the mousy scent but didn’t move, she was too wary of a tomcat near her kittens. Only when he turned away, to press against the door that led to the kitchen, did she step out of the box and approach the dishpan to peer in-as the mice scurried around the dishpan scrabbling at the slick plastic walls, her ears came up and her eyes widened. Staying between Joe and the kittens, she reached a paw in with keen interest. Smiling, Joe left her to them. Pushing open the door to the kitchen, he slid through fast and shut it behind him, leaving the bunched rug in place and leaving mama to her feast. Hopefully, inviting a first session of training for the little tomcat.

Now, with access to the rest of the house, what he wanted was a phone so he could reach the dispatcher before the rains began, washing clean the swimming pool. The kitchen was done all in white, white cabinets, a white tile floor, a small oak breakfast table with white pads on the chairs, and a deep bay window above the sink. When he reared up to scan the tops of the counters, he spotted the wall phone hanging just to the right of the window-hanging in plain sight of anyone walking up the drive.

Warily he leaped up and looked out, making sure he didn’t have an audience. Knocking the receiver off, he eased its fall with a quick paw and punched in 911. He was crouched low, his nose to the speaker, when the window brightened above him and he looked up to see the clouds blowing more swiftly, revealing a widening hole of blue sky-maybe the rain would hold off. Sniffing the air, he was unable to make out much in the closed room. He flinched, startled, when the dispatcher picked up.

“Police,” the rookie said crisply, the young man obviously prepared for any manner of disastrous emergency call.

“Detective Garza or Davis,” Joe said, wishing his favorite dispatcher had been on duty. “There’s been a murder,” he said quickly. “Evidence of a murder.” Mabel Farthy would have put him straight through without wasting time with needless questions.

But the sensible rookie did the same, he switched Joe straight to Davis. Joe could tell by the hollow sound that he’d left the line open so he could jot down names and locations-though he would be aware of this address if the Chapmans’ phone didn’t block caller ID.

Detective Davis came on the line. As Joe relayed his message to her, he pictured the middle-aged, squarely built woman sitting at her desk, severe in her dark uniform, her dark Latin eyes unreadable, photographs of her two sons in police uniforms tucked away on the bookshelves behind her among stacks of notebooks and files. He told Davis about the drag marks and the footprints in the pool and up the drive, about the splatters of blood, and the dark glasses lying in the tall grass, silver-framed glasses that he thought were a woman’s.

Davis didn’t ask his name, she didn’t ask who he was or where he was now. Juana Davis knew his voice, and she knew her questions wouldn’t be answered. Like Detective Garza and the chief and most of the other officers, she had moved on beyond questioning the identity of this particular snitch.

She said, “Did you see anyone on the street or in the neighborhood?”

“No one,” he said. “And no strange cars, only those that belong in the neighborhood. All of them cold, cold engines, cold tires.”

“Anything unusual about the empty house? Anyone at the windows?”

“Nothing that I saw,” Joe said. “The footprints end halfway up the drive. If the rain gets here before you do, it’ll all be washed away.” Wanting her to hurry, he reared up and pressed the disconnect button. As he clumsily took the cord of the phone in his teeth and lifted and pushed it back into place, he hoped Davis was already heading for her squad car. Beyond the window, dark and light sky alternated as a high, fast wind played hopscotch with the water-filled clouds, scudding them to hide the lifting sun and then allowing brightness to bathe the village in a skirmish of shadow and light.

Dropping down to the floor, he slipped back into the laundry room, shutting the door behind him. Mango was still in the dishpan. The little yellow tom kitten had left his nest and was standing up with his paws on the edge of the pan, trying to look in, his blue eyes bright and one small paw lifted.

Springing to the laundry-room window, Joe slid it open, hurried through, and closed it again behind him; he headed across the rooftops toward the empty house, his pace faster now that he was relieved of the heavy mice-and though he endured another stab of pity for the poor little beasts, he enjoyed far more the bold and predatory wildness so evident in that tiny kitten.

Now as he raced over the rooftops, the air smelled heavier with rain and the sky grew darker again above him. Come on, Davis. Be there. Hurry up, before it starts to pour. He glimpsed a man two blocks over, looked like the same energetic runner he’d seen before, walking now but still moving swiftly, swinging his arms. The gossiping women were not in sight. Probably they’d finished their walk and were cozied up at home, in one kitchen or the other, enjoying coffee and fattening sweet rolls, effectively undoing whatever weight-loss program they might be pursuing.

He expected Juana to be there already, but when he came down a pine tree and onto the roof of the house next door, there was no cop car, nor was Juana’s Honda in sight. He smelled water below him, and felt its cool breath though it wasn’t raining yet. When he looked down at the side yard, he froze.

The lower half of the driveway was glistening wet, while the upper half was dry-as if rain had already come pelting down, but only in that one place. From the center of the drive, back to the pool, the concrete was soaking wet, the bushes still dripping. The coping around the pool glistened with water, as did the portion of the pool’s tiled walls that he could see from that angle. Backing swiftly down the pine tree, he raced to the pool to look over.

The muddy concrete bottom was all changed. The drag marks and footprints were gone. A skin of fresh wa ter lay over the mud, still settling into new indentations where the mud had been reconfigured into long, fan-shaped trenches, the sort that would be made by the force of a hose sluicing across it. Swinging around, Joe looked for a hose.

There, just beyond the edge of the pool, beside the house. A hose wound on a caddy, its nozzle still dripping, the neat rubber coil shining wet, with grass stems sticking to it where it had been dragged across the lawn. He studied the rest of the yard.

Nothing else looked different except, near the street, where the driveway was dry, the tall grass at the edge was matted down in a narrow path where someone had not wanted to leave footprints on the concrete.

Trotting up for a look, Joe found blades of grass still springing back into place; and now he could smell the vague scent of a man mixed with the smells of mud, bruised grass, and another sharp, medicinal smell that, try as he might, he couldn’t place. He was still sniffing, trying to sort out that one elusive smell, when he heard a car coming. Jerking to alert, he headed fast up the pine and onto the neighbors’ roof again, where he crouched low on the rough, curling shingles.

Davis ’s blue Honda parked across the street but the detective didn’t get out, she sat behind the wheel studying the parked cars, scanning the neighborhood and the neatly kept houses and observing the empty house, watching its curtainless windows. How many times had Joe watched Juana Davis work a scene, always careful, always patient, never missing a detail. How many times had he and Dulcie and Kit worried that she’d find cat hairs at the scene?

But there were never cat hairs in the detective’s carefully detailed reports. Thanks to the great cat god, Joe thought. Or maybe thanks to some benign quirk in Juana Davis’s own subconscious that, as far as Joe was concerned, didn’t bear close examination.

When at last the detective swung out of the car, she carried a small satchel, a black leather bag that Joe knew contained basic crime scene equipment. And, the tomcat thought, smiling, wasn’t that a vote of confidence for the department’s unknown snitch.

JUANA CROSSED THE empty street, still studying the Parker house and its blank windows. She saw no movement there. Scanning the overgrown bushes, the tall grass, and the piles of leaves that had blown onto the porch and heaped against the front door, she thought what a pity it was to let this place go to ruin. The neighboring houses were well kept, the front gardens neat, some of them really beautiful. Divorce or not, the Parkers were foolish to let their investment go to hell. This house was worth enough to greatly ease the life of both members of the dissolving marriage, particularly to ease the life of Emily Parker. Juana knew, from gossip and from information picked up by the officer who patroled this neighborhood, that the Parkers had had several violent arguments, and that Emily wasn’t in an enviable position. As much as Juana disliked the idea of prenup agreements, which surely indicated a lack of trust and true love, this was one time that the woman would have benefited. Maybe, she thought, prenups indicated not only a lack of trust, but of judgment. Or a lack of faith in one’s judgment. Ever since the word “judgmental” had become politically incorrect, clear and logical thinking seemed to have gone out the window with it.

The Parker house had been empty for nearly a year. James had left Emily without warning after placing the house in someone else’s name and, without Emily’s knowledge, filing for bankruptcy. What he meant to do with the valuable property depended largely, Juana thought, on the outcome of the divorce proceedings, and she hoped Emily Parker had a good lawyer.

Walking up along the side of the drive, watching for footprints, she carried just the small evidence bag that held some basic equipment and a couple of cameras. Anything else she’d need was in the trunk of her car. Halfway down the drive, she stopped, puzzled.

Though the cement drive beneath her feet was quite dry, that in front of her glistened with water, her first thought was that it had rained just in this one spot, as it did in the tropics-but Molena Point wasn’t the tropics. She studied the tracks near her where the dry grass had been matted down and was wet. Looked at the grassy hose farther on, wound neatly on its reel, and it, too, was wet.

She photographed the area, then made her way carefully along the edge of the drive, watching the concrete for footprints and scanning the ground under the bushes. She circled the house looking for any sign of a break-in, but halfway back to the pool, she paused.

She took another photograph, then pulled on a latex glove and picked up the pair of silver-rimmed dark glasses lying in the tall grass. Dropping them into a paper evidence bag, she put that in her pocket. Then, pulling cotton booties over her regulation shoes, she approached the pool along the far side, where the apron was still dry save for a first few scattered raindrops.

The bottom of the pool had been hosed, and not long ago. Water was still settling in the long ripples of mud, like those a concentrated stream of water would leave in its wake. There were no drag marks such as the snitch had described, no footprints leading across to the steps. Standing at the edge of the coping, she suddenly felt watched, felt as if the perp was still nearby or that someone was, concealed in the yard or perhaps in the empty house. The feeling unnerved her. She didn’t often experience this sharp and sudden unease-when she did, she had reason. What had she seen and not consciously registered to prompt that instinct?

Looking around her, she assessed the area even more carefully. If she could believe what the snitch had told her, then someone had been here just moments earlier, between the time he observed the scene and when she arrived, someone who had watched the snitch leave and then had immediately washed away the evidence.

She wouldn’t want to think the snitch was lying. She knew his voice, and over the years she’d learned to trust him, as had the rest of the department. How many times had he helped them, and never once given them cause to doubt his word. Whoever the guy was, he and the woman who sometimes called, their tips, and sometimes the delivery of evidence, had always resulted in information that led to arrest, to indictment, and, most often, to a con viction. The department’s snitches were would-be cops, she thought, smiling. And more power to them, they were good at what they did.

She considered the house, wishing she had a search warrant in hand, then moved on and, in a workmanlike manner, searched around the pool for blood, kneeling to take samples then photographing the area despite the lack of any remaining shoe prints or drag marks. On the pool’s bottom a bird’s feather floated, along with bits of dry grass, as the fresh water eased into the sour mud. She shot a long video of the settling water, then went through a roll of still shots of the pool bottom, the walls, and the surround. Then she moved around the pool to where the paving was dry except for the gathering raindrops. Looking along the pool’s stained sides she considered individual chips and flecks of dirt in the old, cracked tile. Kneeling, she lifted some samples of a stain that had been missed by the hose, placing them on glass slides. Four looked and smelled like blood. She paused in her work long enough to call in, to ask the dispatcher if she’d come up with any missing-person’s reports from the surrounding area. But as she worked, she couldn’t shake the sense of being watched.

She had no idea that the snitch sat on the roof above her, ready to melt away out of sight if she turned to look up.

THE GRAY TOMCAT smiled with satisfaction each time Juana scraped up a bit of what he knew was human blood. She worked fast but carefully until the rain started. When it began coming down in earnest, she pulled off her boo ties and packed up her slides and equipment. Joe watched her circle the house again before she headed for her car, and only then did the tomcat decide to abandon the scene himself and head home. He wasn’t partial to a drenching rain, and he felt hollow with hunger. This was Sunday morning, and Ryan, in her new mode as a blushing bride-which probably wouldn’t last too long-would very likely be cooking up a fine breakfast.

But then, hurrying over the roofs, shaking raindrops off his ears, he felt the rain stop again as suddenly as it had started. He watched the last clouds part above him and begin to move away, allowing shafts of sun to stream through onto the wet shingles. Just a harmless summer rain, a passing shower-but that harmless little rain, together with a judicious hosing down, had sure screwed up the crime scene. Joe wondered where that would leave the department, wondered what Juana would make of what little evidence she’d been able to retrieve. Would she decide that, without a body, she didn’t have enough to run with? That her morning’s work had been for nothing? She had, after all, only his anonymous description of the original scene.

And where was the perp hiding, that he could return and hose down the place and vanish again so quickly? Was he in the empty house? Was the body in there? Earlier, circling the house, he had found no hint of fresh scent. He wondered if Juana would take the little remaining evidence seriously enough to come back with a search warrant. Wondered if she had enough evidence so the judge would be willing to issue a warrant. His head filled with questions, but with his stomach alarmingly empty, the tomcat headed for home-no cat can think productively on an empty belly.

One thing for sure, he thought as he raced over the rooftops, he was keeping this morning’s events to himself. Though Ryan would listen with interest, he didn’t need Clyde ’s acerbic remarks. He didn’t need to be told that he was only imagining a murder and that if he had any sense, he’d learn to stay out of police business. Though Clyde’s harassment was half joking, though Joe knew Clyde respected the results of his past investigations, he didn’t feel, this morning, like being hassled by his teasing housemate.