Cat Telling Tales

25

The Harpers kept the barn closed up at night, the big doors at both ends drawn shut against the wind and cold, and against predators, two-legged or four. Now in the early dawn, the alleyway was dim, but the light was strange, unnaturally pale. Billy woke in his box stall to a glow more white than shadowed, white light seeping in above the stall door, and the air was freezing. His face and hands were icy while the rest of him was too hot. Six cats were piled on top of him, and one curled up between his shoulder and chin, all seven snuggled close trying to keep warm. Sliding his hands under them, he luxuriated in their body heat and warm fur. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was. He wasn’t in his own bed on the thin pad through which you could feel the rough slats, this bed was soft, and saggy in the middle, and he was tucked between real sheets, smooth and smelling of laundry soap, and the blanket was soft and thick, too. And the air—the cold air didn’t stink of whiskey and throw-up, it smelled of horses and of fresh, sweet hay. All this in an instant, and then he sat up spilling cats every which way, realizing he was in the Harpers’ barn.

He swung out of bed, and stood looking out through the hinged mesh barrier that formed the top half of the stall door. Down at the end of the alley, the light seeping in around the big doors was bright white, the faint movement of air freezing cold. The horses were stirring in their stalls, restless and wanting breakfast. When he turned to look at the cats, they were hungry, too, all seven lined up in a row, now, waiting to be fed—but they, too, were puzzled by the light, they sat glancing up at the door and up at the ceiling, watching a shaft of white light that fingered through, where the timbers joined the wall. Striped Sam, and black Lulu, they were Gran’s favorites. He thought of Gran and felt his stomach go hollow. The image would never be gone, Gran lying dead on that stretcher, her charred body, his not wanting this to be real, wanting it not to have happened, wanting to believe that such a thing couldn’t happen.

He had seen the fire as he came up the highway, pumping hard up the steep hill, saw the EMT van turn in and had raced to catch up, raced behind in its cloud of dust down the dirt lane, saw the fire truck and cop cars and felt his stomach turn hollow. Like he felt now, hollow and sick. Gran on the stretcher, her clothes and skin burned black. They had pulled him away, wouldn’t let him near, he couldn’t touch her. She was gone, she wasn’t his gran anymore, she was a foreign thing. He had stood by the wet, black timbers, the live red coals, the smoke and steam and the stink of burning rags, trying to understand that Gran was dead, stood there until the hollow sickness in his belly made him retch and turn away.

But then later a jolt of something else hit him and he was immediately ashamed. Part of him felt free. Free of Gran’s drinking, of dragging himself awake in the middle of the night to hold a bucket so she could throw up, free of cleaning up after her and cleaning her up, having to change her nightie and get her back into her bed. He hated trying to clean up the rough wood floor, you could never scrub that stuff out, never get the smell out, the place always stank of throw-up. And then every night when she went off to work, seeming to be sober, worrying she’d have a wreck, get hurt, or hurt or kill someone else.

Now he was free. So free he felt like running, like he could fly, he was free of an old woman who refused to take care of herself, refused to take any responsibility for what she did to them both.

He loved Gran, but even right after she died, right after the fire, the burst of lightness and freedom inside him had felt pretty damn good.

Did you burn in hell for such thoughts?

The bag of kibble stood on a cardboard box that Charlie had brought in for him to use as a table. He poured the dry food into the cats’ dishes, set them on the hard dirt floor, and the cats dove in growling softly at each other. No one tried stealing, they were pretty good about that. Out in the stable, Charlie’s sorrel mare nickered for her hay and banged the door, and the two big dogs, who were shut loose in the alleyway at night, stood up on their hind legs, their front paws on the stall door, looking in. Both were fawn colored, they were litter brothers, Charlie had said, most likely of a Great Dane mother and maybe fathered by a German shepherd. Both were huge and ungainly and still acted like puppies, until Charlie or Max took a hand with them. After the fire, Charlie had shown him the smoke alarm that was wired from the barn to the house, and the speaker that, if there was trouble, if there was fire or a break-in, would let her and Captain Harper hear the dogs barking.

Opening the stall door, he pushed the dogs back, stroking and pummeling them, and stepped out into the alleyway. Moving out between the two rows of stalls past the restless horses, he approached the barn door with curiosity, where the white streaks of light shot in.

When he slid it open, the yard was white around him, the pastures white, the far hills, the roof of the house, the tops of the cars, all white, snow piled up in a white dazzle, snow on the sills of the bay window framing the lighted kitchen where he could see Charlie inside, getting breakfast.

The dogs had already bolted past him bouncing and barking and biting at the snow. Still wearing the old sweatsuit he slept in, he ran to join them and pummeled and pelted them with snow, rolled in the snow with them, laughing as they barked. Not in his whole life had he ever seen snow, only in pictures in books. He played in the snow with the dogs until he was freezing and soaking wet and then turned back inside the barn to get dry. He put on his day clothes, and fed the horses, measuring the grain carefully, following Charlie’s instructions, flaking off just the right amount of hay for each, filling their buckets with clean water. By the time he’d turned the horses out into the pasture and cleaned their stalls, the smell of bacon and pancakes was nearly more than he could stand. The two big dogs had long since gone in the house, and as he headed across the yard he could see Max Harper at the table hurriedly eating his breakfast, as if something pressing was pulling him away.

The minute Billy pushed into the warm kitchen, Charlie dished up his plate. Even as he pulled off his boots, Max gulped the last of his coffee and was up and headed for the door.

“A murder victim found last night,” Charlie said when he’d hurried away to his truck. “An old murder.” She said no more and he didn’t like to ask. The thought of murder made him queasy. She moved to the bay window, stood looking out at the white world, the snow-deep pasture. “Who would have imagined?” She watched her mare shying at the snow and acting silly, and Max’s buckskin gelding pawing at the white stuff with his usual single-minded determination, as if to clear the world of this unwanted intrusion. The kitchen table was piled with papers and flyers where she’d been working on the Cat Rescue Auction. A stack of posters lay on the sideboard showing pictures of three rescued cats, with a list of the donations to be auctioned: a weekend for two at the fancy Molena Inn, six months’ housecleaning service, a year’s car maintenance donated by Clyde Damen, three of Charlie’s original etchings of dogs and horses and two paintings. The impressive list went on and on down the page, making Billy wonder what he’d bid on if he had any money for such luxuries. Sitting down at the table, he reached for the syrup and butter, spread his pancakes liberally and began to shovel in breakfast.

Emmylou woke stiff and uncomfortable, bent nearly double in the too-short backseat. No matter how long she slept in the car, she couldn’t get used to not stretching out. She had pulled all the blankets over her, but still she was cold. What time was it? Her watch said seven, barely dawn, but a curious white light shone in, pale and icy. Rising up holding the blankets close around her, she peered out.

The world was white. The ground and roofs white, the tree branches patched with white, snow stuck to the car windows. Snow. In Molena Point, that wasn’t possible. But during the night it had snowed. The very fact of it made her joints ache.

Snow was fine if you had a warm little house and a fire on the hearth, a hot shower, something warm to eat and drink. She had none of these comforts, and she was damned cold. And soon she’d have to leave even this poor nest, before people came out and saw her, she’d have to get back in the cold driver’s seat and move the car before some do-gooder reported a homeless woman camping on the street and the damned cops hauled her in.

She longed for a hot shower. Longed to be inside a warm house with the furnace turned up all the way and maybe a blaze on the hearth, too, and a nice hot cup of tea. And the only place was Sammie’s.

Yesterday, she hadn’t thought to see if Sammie’s power was on, hadn’t had time before the law showed up. Even if the heat wasn’t on, the house would be warmer than outdoors, and there was the fireplace.

Slipping to one end of the backseat, she folded her covers neatly. Laying them over the bags and boxes, she thought about Hesmerra—wouldn’t she have been amazed at the snow. Waking with her usual hangover, she’d look outdoors, startled, and then turn the old stove up high and call across the yard to her, tell her it was snowing, tell her to come on over for coffee and they’d fry up some breakfast.

Hesmerra would do that, would have done that. She thought about Hesmerra dead, maybe poisoned, and a sick reality filled her, she couldn’t really believe Hesmerra had been poisoned. By whose hand?

But Hesmerra was dead, and Sammie had disappeared. And the fact that the two events were related was her secret.

Even the fact that that Realtor’s house stood empty, up there so close above Sammie’s, that could be a part of it, too. All a part of what Sammie knew.

Shivering, she crawled over into the front seat and, on the third try, started the engine. She let it idle a while, the poor thing was as cold and stiff as she was herself. She backed out clumsily from the swale, the water in it running fast enough to keep from freezing solid, and she headed up the hill toward Sammie’s. Despite whoever or whatever had made the mess in there, despite what she knew that no one else knew, it was the only place she could think of to get warm. If the cops weren’t nosing around again, if the cops would leave her alone.

She drove slowly, didn’t use her brakes, or barely touched them in little feathery motions, staying in the tracks of other cars, which had crushed the snow and ice to slush. She drove the last two blocks within the wide prints of some heavy vehicle, but when she came in sight of Sammie’s she stopped suddenly, braking in spite of herself, skidding sideways into the snowy berm.

There were cops all over. A black-and-white sitting in the side yard, two more in front parked beside a couple of civilian cars with bubble gum lights attached to the top. A white van with the logo of the state of California. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good, she guessed those patrol cars last night had been headed up here.

She could see where they’d cut a great hole into the cellar and dragged bright lights in under there, and that made her hands begin to shake. Two men stood leaning down, looking in, talking to someone. She sat looking for only a minute, then backed up beneath a low-hanging willow, halfway into a driveway where she might be able to turn around, unnoticed. They had found Sammie. She knew they had. She sat for a moment hugging herself, thinking about what she was seeing. She cracked her window open, wondering if she could hear the cops talking, and then wished she hadn’t, she went sicker, at the smell.

From this moment, she was going to need all her strength. She couldn’t let herself fall apart. First she had to get warm, and eat something, or she would be sick. She had to take care of herself, and then think about this, think about the cops in there under Sammie’s house.

Backing deeper into the drive, she looked up across the hill between the other houses, where she could see part of Alain Bent’s place. The windows were dark, the paler shades and curtains looked just as they had for weeks. Reaching under the seat, she fished out the crowbar she kept there, completed her turn, and headed over to the next block and up toward Alain’s.

Joe woke at dawn, the king-sized blankets bundled around him. By the silence, he knew the rest of the bed was empty, Ryan gone, finishing up the hole in Sammie’s basement, Clyde already up and gone. No sound of the shower pounding, no buzz of the electric shaver like a swarm of hornets loose in the bathroom. Why wasn’t he up on the roof, in his own tower? The bedside clock said 7:15. A lingering smell of coffee drifted up the stairs, but no smell of breakfast cooking or having been cooked. A pale white light filled the room. Through the open curtains a clear white glow streamed in across the walls, as weird as if he’d awakened in some alternate world—and then he remembered. Snow! It snowed last night! The bedroom even smelled different, and the air was so cold it burned his nose. Leaping off the bed he flew to Clyde’s desk, glancing down at Snowball asleep on the love seat bundled in a quilt. Snoring softly, she didn’t stir. Leaping up to the rafter, he bolted along it and out his cat door—into the blinding white light. The world was so bright he felt his pupils slitting closed, white roofs all around him, snow piled up six inches around his tower, hills of snow against the neighborhood chimneys, snow weighting down the pine and cypress branches. When he looked over the edge of the roof, the white yards and street were patterned with shoe prints where the neighbors had walked. One set of dark tire tracks snaked through between the white curbs. Children’s voices screamed as kids raced by pelting each other with snowballs. In his own yard was a trampling of big paw prints, the snow matted down where Rock had apparently performed a doggy snow dance. Clyde’s prints came out of the house to join Rock, and the two sets led away as if on an impromptu walk through the village, a walk in the incredible snow.

And left me asleep, he thought irritably. But in his own fascination at the snowy world, he raced away over the white roofs, swerving around chimney drifts and leaping weighted branches, running until his paws were so numb with cold that he had to stop and lick them.

In the center of the village he watched half a dozen early-rising locals cavorting in the snow, as excited as kids themselves. He watched several pairs of tourists, emerging from the motels, head for one or another of the village bakeries, stomping off snow in the doorways, pushing inside to warm up on coffee and strudel or cheese Danish. Dulcie would say, the village looked like a scene from Dickens. Where was she? Why wasn’t she out in this, racing through the frozen morning? Leaping away, he headed for her place, but on the pristine rooftops he saw not one paw print, not Dulcie’s, not Kit’s or Misto’s, not even a squirrel. Maybe Dulcie was already at the crime scene, maybe watching the early-arriving forensics team.

He thought of the techs driving two hours down from San Jose on the icy freeway, eating doughnuts and coffee in the cab of their warm van. Once they got to work, they’d bundle up, heavy sweaters under their lab coats, faces masked against the smell. Maybe they’d be warmed a little by heat from the high-powered spotlights shining beneath the beams and cobwebs as they brushed away earth from the first body. A pair of techs crouching low in the tight space, dropping bits of trace into evidence bags: fibers, hairs that might be other than the victim’s, maybe a button or a fragment of shoelace. He hoped not cat hairs. Maybe a broken fingernail, but not a broken claw. Maybe the forensics entomologist was there, as well, waiting for the second body to be exhumed, to diligently consult the colonies of insects that had created their own tiny worlds within and, in fact, might turn out to be the only living witnesses to the time of death.

Inside Sammie Miller’s house, Dallas finally had the lights on, after an earlier call to the power company. It was cold as hell in there. He’d left the furnace off, keeping the atmosphere in the house as he found it, and so as not to disturb the scene below where the old furnace, which had to be far from airtight, would suck and expel air and disturb all manner of evidence. The house and yard were cordoned off, and most of the overgrown lot, and they’d established a control center where Officer Brennan was handling the documenting. He’d told Davis to stay home, her knee was pretty bad. She’d said it was damn near as big as a basketball, and she was trying to wrap her mind around the upcoming surgery.

He had photographed the interior of the house, which, in this mess, had taken the better part of two hours, had done three rolls just of close-ups of the tangle of clothes and scattered household debris. What was a part of Sammie’s lifestyle, and what disarray the vandals had caused—raccoons or humans or both—was pretty much up for grabs. He had gathered trace evidence, including the intrusive raccoon fur, and begun lifting prints and scanning electronically for footprints, working one section at a time as he tried to figure out what might be out of place and how much of the mess Sammie had left herself. So far he had prints for what looked like four separate individuals, besides those of the damned raccoons. Talk about contaminating the scene. One set would be Sammie’s, one possibly Emmylou Warren’s. The stink of the raccoons, mixed with the smell of death and the smell of spoiled food from a refrigerator without power, made him sorry he’d eaten breakfast. No wonder Emmylou Warren, when she came in here, hadn’t smelled the body. Below him in the cellar, the forensics team should be pretty close to lifting the victim, sliding a stretcher under it and easing it out onto a gurney. The question was, what would they find underneath?

And the real question was, how the hell had the snitch found the damned grave? What was he doing snooping around underneath Sammie Miller’s house, in the middle of the night?

Or had this call not been from their regular snitch at all? Kathleen wasn’t as familiar with the snitch’s voice as he and Davis were. What if it was someone else?

Had that meth bunch broken in, thinking to hide more chemicals under there? Or to stash the meth itself, get it out of their possession where they thought no cop would look?

Or had someone broken in under there to get out of the cold, maybe meant to sleep safely hidden beneath the house? Maybe Emmylou Warren had returned but afraid to go back inside after they ran her off? She slips in underneath, maybe thinks the furnace is running and it will keep her warm. But then she smells the stink and makes a hasty retreat?

But she didn’t call the department, it was a man who called—unless she was pretty good at disguising her voice.

He thought about the snitch, this guy, and the gal, who were so unlike the usual informant with whom you maintained a quiet relationship; someone you knew and could talk to, a barkeep, a mechanic, city clerk, someone who had contact with a lot of people, and who liked the high of helping the law, liked to feel they were on the inside. And, he thought, smiling, liked seeing their marks go to jail.

They knew most of their snitches and nurtured the relationships, yet for some six years now they’d been getting anonymous calls from this man or the woman and they didn’t have a clue to either one. Yet not once had they been led astray, every tip was a good one, though too often perplexing in the things they turned up. Evidence no cop might have come up with, items lifted that no one could have gotten their hands on without a pretty elaborate break-in. Information that didn’t involve locked houses or cars but seemed to have been overheard under the most unlikely of circumstances. It was almost as if they had a ghost on the payroll, someone skilled beyond any normal ability to get their hands on all manner of evidence, someone almost uncanny at eavesdropping, and at slipping in and out of locked houses and offices unseen. An invisible snitch who left no smallest mark of jimmied lock or fingerprints, no trace of any kind.

Sometimes a few cat hairs at a scene, as if maybe the snitch kept cats. But what were you going to do with that? Half the people in the world owned cats. What, run DNA on the cat hairs and then run DNA on every cat in the village until you found the right owner?

As Dallas mulled over the puzzle of the snitches, he had no idea his two informants crouched just above his head on the neighbors’ rooftop. When Joe first arrived he’d found Dulcie already hunkered down there against the brick chimney where the snow hadn’t gathered. Freezing their restless paws, they’d listened to the faint voices of the two crime-scene investigators working in the cellar, and they could see down across the narrow scrap of yard through the hole Ryan had cut in the wall, could see the men’s shadowed movements. They had watched Kathleen find and bag the open padlock, and had prayed that if the lab found fingerprints, they wouldn’t find cat prints badly smearing them. Dulcie said, “If the lab picks up a few good fingerprints, why would they bother with the smears? With even one good print, plus whatever information they get from the body itself, maybe they won’t be so nosy.”

“And maybe they will,” he said. “Nosy is what makes good police work.” He wished the sun would come out, he’d had enough of the cold. Snow was fine as a novelty, but this freezing morning, snow was best seen from a snug house as you lay curled before a crackling fire.

They had watched Dallas enter the house, glimpsed him through the windows as he worked the scene lifting prints, taking blood samples, taking roll after roll of photographs of the detritus from every angle, a hard job, sorting out anything that might be linked to the murder, among that chaos. Seemed like Dallas had been in there forever before the front door opened, he stepped out, and secured it with the department’s own lock. He stood on the little porch looking around at the snowy neighborhood as if he’d expected, when he came out, the snow would have started to melt.

It hadn’t.

Where the snow was exposed to the full morning sun, it had begun to soften, but then the heavy drifts slicked over again as the temperature dropped, the morning sun gone again behind a pale mist. Black ice glittered in the gutters, icicles hung from the trees. Dallas paused on the porch as Ryan came around the corner of the house, her frown stern and uncomfortable.

“What?” he said, looking down at her.

“There are two bodies, just as Kathleen thought. Two bodies, Dallas, crammed into that terrible, dark place.”

He came down the steps, put his arm around her. “You okay?”

“Yes. Just—maybe the smell gets to me. Two graves, the earth packed down with the back of the shovel, shovel marks where the footprints were smoothed away.”

Joe hoped Dulcie’s prints were all smoothed away.

“They are,” Dulcie whispered, cutting him a look. “I brushed them away, I hope I got them all.”