Cat Shout for Joy

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Joe knew that. He was more than uneasy himself.

  At Scotty’s first mention of the attack Ben looked uncomfortable. “If ­people were half as decent as animals,” he said, “were as kind as animals, the whole world would be at peace.”

  No it wouldn’t, Joe thought. Watching Ben, the tomcat found it hard to keep his mouth shut. He wanted to point out that predatory animals weren’t so decent, that wolves, coyotes, jungle cats, were all cruel killers, that was the way God made them. Wolves, for instance, began eating their prey before the poor animals were dead; a wolf would pull half-­born calves from their mothers, or would mortally wound valuable young heifers and not even bother to eat them. They would leave their prey slowly dying and move on to kill the next little calf, as they taught their cubs how to hunt. He wanted to say that it was only the victims of the wolves and coyotes that were without cruelty.

  And, Joe thought, only half ashamed, even a mouse might not die quickly in the jaws of a hunting cat. The tomcat’s own dual nature sometimes left him conflicted; he really didn’t like to analyze such matters—­and now he could make no reply to set Ben straight. His opinion was locked in silence.

  He realized he was scowling only when Ryan gave him a faint shake of the head, a look that said, Back off, cool it, Joe. You’re too interested. Suck up whatever you want to say. Get out of Ben’s face with that angry and superior stare.

  Embarrassed, Joe turned from Ryan, leaped from the table to the kitchen counter once more, and licked clean the last of his spaghetti.

  Only when Ben talked about his rescue cats did his eyes brighten. He launched into an amused and loving description of his three charges, of how well they got along together and how all three slept with him at night. Maybe, Joe thought, if Ben finds a larger apartment he might keep the three homeless cats. Ryan said his apartment was so small there was hardly room for the bed, a tiny refrigerator, and a hot plate. The little basement room and bath huddled beneath a tall old house that overlooked a shallow canyon east of the village. Ryan had described, to Clyde and Joe, the rough concrete walls, the decrepit metal windows on the two daylight sides of the corner room. She said Ben had lined up the two spacious cat cages before the windows, further darkening the little apartment but giving the cats light and morning sun. Ben’s landlord rented out rooms in the house above, but ­people were seldom home. No one seemed to care that Ben kept cats. Joe expected he’d find a better place soon. He’d only moved down from San Francisco less than a year ago.

  Well, Joe thought, the Bleak job will finish soon and Ben will be working full-­time to finish the shelter; he’ll like that better. Though Joe did wonder why Ben was so uncomfortable around Tekla, more upset at her harassment than seemed warranted.

  Well, who could blame him? Joe avoided the woman, too. Now, watching Ben, the tomcat had no idea that by the next morning his idyllic picture of the young man would have changed radically—­and that Joe himself would be thrown into the middle of the tangle.

  9

  That blonde that spotted the attack had nearly messed them up, she ran faster than you’d expect, almost got a good look and ruined it all. A hasty retreat and no harm done, but way too close—­left a person shaking with nervous sweat.

  But that was the only time there was trouble. All in all, every new assault was a blast. Shadowing the victims, learning their habits, learning the paths they took among the village stores, knowing where they lived and where they shopped. Watching the places they worked, where they ate if they ate out. Pausing in a doorway, waiting, silent in the shadows, that was the best part. The sudden hit—­slip up with no sound, one good shove and it was done. See them fall scared and struggling and you were gone before they got a glimpse. A fast attack, then gone. How easy was that?

  Well, it should have been the same this time except the damned blonde got in the way. She had a cell phone—­did she get a picture? If so, it couldn’t be much. A running smear from the back. Hell, she didn’t see anything. What could she tell the cops? Anyway, that mark had been just a shill. Tomorrow would be a real one again. Tomorrow’s target knew something, knew too much and needed taking out. Tomorrow when they’d be alone, just the two of them.

  It was near dawn when the setting moon angled into Joe Grey’s tower so bright that, even deep in sleep, he tucked his face under the pillows. But the afterglow stayed in his head, brought him half awake. Wriggling around, he scowled out at the offending yellow orb. Damn moon brighter than a streetlight slanting in through the oak and pine branches.

  The moon had been high when he galloped home from hunting late last night, his belly full of mice atop his earlier spaghetti supper—­a good hunt even if Dulcie had wanted to stay to the grassy hill that rose behind her own cottage. He was chagrined that he hadn’t been concerned, days earlier, when she preferred to stay within the village instead of out on the far hills. Why wasn’t I puzzled that my lady was slowing down?

  Tomcat inattention, he thought. All wrapped up in my own interests. Expecting her to be as irate at these new crimes as she always is at village violence. I never wondered at all why she was so preoccupied.

  But even though he hadn’t noticed Dulcie’s ­motherly condition, he had seen a different look in her eyes. That alone should have clued him in. He’d wondered only briefly what that calm look was, that deep contentment in her easy glance. He’d put it down to some passing mood, thinking, Who can understand females? He should have paid more attention, should have figured it out without having to be told. But no, not for one minute had he taken time to wonder.

  Ryan had said, late last night as she climbed into bed and Joe leaped to the rafters, ready to head out to hunt, “Be careful with her, Joe. Hunt close to home, and hunt easy.” She’d pulled the covers up over her silk nightie. “Please be careful, you don’t want to stress her. Not with those precious kittens.”

  Well, hell, he knew that.

  “Listen to Dr. Firetti,” she’d scolded. “We’re all eager for those little kittens to be healthy and strong.”

  Joe had flicked his ears in annoyance, bolted across his rafter and out his cat door.

  But he’d made sure Dulcie had an easy hunt among the tall grass where the field mice thrived. He had watched her gobble mice as if she couldn’t get enough.

  “Taurine,” she’d told him when at last she’d stretched out in the grass to rest. “Cats need taurine, and maybe I need more now for the kittens. We don’t make our own, like ­people do.” Where did she get this stuff? From Wilma? Did she and Wilma find these things online? Or had Dr. Firetti told them? Taurine, he thought. No wonder a cat craved mice.

  It had been around two a.m. when he’d escorted Dulcie through her cat door and headed home himself. He found it hard to get used to his tame, sedate lady, hard to forget her wild days when, too often, he’d had trouble keeping up with her. He guessed those times would return. He hoped so. He felt tender and frightened for her, but he missed her devil-­may-­care fearlessness. Now, rolling over among the pillows again to block out the setting moon, he burrowed under and slept once more, deeply.

  It was a reflection from the low rising sun that pulled him from the depths this time, that stirred him just enough to smell coffee brewing. Then an urgent banging, which woke him fully. He leaped from the pillows to stare around at the dawn-­bright roofs and treetops. The pounding came again, from below, from the front door, and Billy Young’s voice, “Ryan? Clyde?” A quavering, shaky voice not like Billy. Joe pushed out through the tower’s open window, leaped across the shingles, and peered over.

  The slim, brown-­haired boy stood with his back to the front door, pressed against it watching the street fearfully in both directions, his thin face white, even his high, ruddy cheekbones white, his fists clenched. The door opened so suddenly behind him that he nearly fell inside.

  Swinging around, he pushed in beside Ryan and slammed the door closed.

  Start
led, Joe Grey fled in through his tower onto the rafter, hit Clyde’s desk, and was downstairs before Ryan and Billy reached the kitchen. Clyde, startled, turned from the stove where he was frying eggs. Joe leaped to the table as Ryan urged Billy to sit down. He was trembling and out of breath, his dark eyes huge. She reached for the freshly brewed coffee, added milk for him. “You ran here from the job?”

  Mutely, Billy nodded.

  Putting the cup on the table and fetching her own coffee, she sat down next to him. At the stove Clyde dished up the eggs and set them aside. Refilling his coffee cup, he joined them. Both were quiet, waiting for Billy to collect himself. When Joe heard the familiar sound of Max Harper’s truck go by, Billy heard it, too, and glanced nervously in that direction. When Ryan took Billy’s hand, gently undoing his fist, he gripped her fingers hard, needing that strong human touch.

  Only Joe heard the softer sound of the medics’ van slip by the house, following Max. No one else looked up. The medics were not using their siren, as if they didn’t want to be heard heading for the building site. What had happened? Surely there’d been an accident—­but who was hurt, to call out the rescue team?

  Oh, not Scotty, Joe thought. Ryan’s big redheaded uncle was often at work early—­but the tall Scots-­Irishman seemed as indestructible as stone. Is it young Ben Stonewell? He thought, shivering. But maybe only some local, poking around the building, fell over a stack of lumber? It was hard as hell to sit still, not to race out and follow the action.

  “Max dropped me off at the job,” Billy was saying, “and went on to work. I was early, Scotty wasn’t there yet. No one . . . I used my key, went on in. Opened the garage from inside, then went out again and around to get some tools . . .” He cupped his hands around the warm mug, sat silently staring into it. Seeing what ugly replay, that he could hardly talk about?

  At last, quietly, he looked up at Ryan and Clyde.

  “Ben Stonewell,” the boy whispered. “Ben is . . . Ben is dead. Lying there, the ladder fallen over him . . . blood everywhere. I . . . I called Max on my cell. Dead,” he repeated, looking at them, lost and pale. “Lying there in the side yard, so much blood . . . the ladder down on top of him.” He wiped his eyes. “I guess he’d been working on the roof gutters. I thought at first he fell, then I saw the blood . . . then the bullet wound. A terrible hole, had to be a gunshot.” He wiped at his eyes. “He couldn’t have lived . . . A hole in the back of his jacket and up through his throat. Blood underneath where he fell . . .”

  Ryan put her arms around the boy. She held him tight, her cheek against his forehead, her hands gripping his shoulders to steady him.

  “I shouldn’t have left him there alone,” Billy said. “Dead, and alone. I was afraid the killer . . . that they might still be there. That they’d think I saw them and would come after me, too.”

  “Did you see anyone?” Clyde said.

  “No one.” Billy looked up at Clyde. “Ben never hurt anyone, never wanted to hurt anyone. How could someone . . . Why would somebody . . . ?”

  Joe stretched out across the table close to the boy, put his paw on Billy’s arm. Billy had already been through the trauma of his gram’s death. The shock of seeing Gram’s frail, charred body on the medics’ stretcher, covered with a sheet outside their burned cabin, a memory that could never go away. That had been about a year ago, when Billy was twelve. Now Joe hurt for the boy in a different way than he hurt for poor Ben. Ben was dead, was at peace now from whatever horror had happened to him; he was hopefully in a kinder place. But Billy was feeling it all, the shock, the pain, the terror. why would someone hurt Ben Stonewell? What had he done that someone wanted him dead?

  It was a while before Billy quieted, before he grew steadier and some color returned to his face. When he seemed stronger, he and Ryan and Clyde piled into the king cab and headed for the remodel. Joe Grey, slipping out behind them, leaped into the truck bed among the tools and folded tarps and old jackets. A stack of oak boards was strapped to one side. Clyde’s glance back at him, as Clyde stepped up into the passenger seat, told Joe he’d better make himself scarce at the scene.

  Clyde knew that no one could keep him away. Clyde’s Get lost look was only an empty threat. Riding in the bumpy truck the four blocks to the brown cottage, Joe, despite his pain for Ben, was thankful it wasn’t Ryan or Scotty or Billy lying dead. Had some drug-­crazy vagrant, seeing the property vacant and under construction, maybe camped there overnight? And when Ben came to work early they’d panicked. Maybe the killer had a record, maybe there was a warrant out for him. He didn’t want Ben calling the cops, and in a panic he’d shot Ben? Maybe someone on drugs with his brain all scrambled?

  According to Billy, Ben must have been up on the ladder when he was shot, working on the roof minding his own business, not confronting some trespasser. But they shot him anyway, Joe thought. And what if Billy had gotten to work first? Would they have killed Billy instead? A murder as coldly senseless as the random street attacks.

  Senseless? Joe thought. Random? We don’t know that. No one thinks those attacks were without reason.

  Ryan slowed the truck a block from the remodel and drew to the curb. Officer Jimmie McFarland stood in the center of the intersection rerouting traffic, sending rubberneckers down the side streets. McFarland with his boyish smile, his brown hair fallen over his forehead, looked like he should still be in college, not in a police uniform. Seeing it was Ryan and Clyde, he waved them on through to the next intersection, which was blocked off with sawhorses. There, when Ryan parked next to the coroner’s van, Joe leaped out of the truck bed and into the bushes. The Bleaks’ cottage was three doors down. He hightailed it through overgrown back gardens and beneath the yellow crime tape that now marked off the Bleaks’ weedy property. At the far side of the cottage he slipped into the neighbors’ hedge and peered out.

  Max Harper and Detectives Garza and Kathleen Ray were working the scene. Kathleen stood against the house a few feet from Ben’s twisted body, photographing the scuffed earth with its tangle of footprints from the building crew, angling for shots of the fresh prints on top. Dallas and Max were working on grids and a rough map, and making notes. Outside the crime tape the coroner waited to seal up and remove the body. Dr. John Bern was a thin, pale man, his dark-­framed glasses placed firmly on his small button nose; his hair was graying, but he still looked strong and fit.

  Joe watched Dallas kneel beside Ben, photographing the body from different close-­up angles, then taking blood and debris samples with as little disturbance as possible. Ben lay twisted from the way he had fallen, his jacket skewed around him, the ladder still lying across him. The blood on his face and jacket bristled with dirt and debris. Dallas reached to remove the items from Ben’s pockets, but he paused, looking at the blood and dirt smeared down across Ben’s lumpy pockets and down into the folds of his clothes. He looked up at Max. “The removal of his possessions will be better done at the morgue. This mess—­we could contaminate a lot, here.”

  Max nodded and glanced at Kathleen. She would, Joe assumed, be accompanying the coroner and the corpse. “You’ll want a second witness,” Max said. “Get Jane Cameron over here.”

  This meant Detectives Ray and Cameron would have custody of the evidence, would examine and photograph it, log it in, seal it in the appropriate individual bags, and transport it to the station to the evidence room. Joe watched Max and Dallas remove the ladder. Dallas shot another round of pictures and then, with John Bern, carefully lifted and wrapped the body in clean sheets—­as clean as they could be kept. Joe watched them seal Ben into a body bag. Feeling sick and cold, he started suddenly thinking about Ben’s construction notebook.

  He had seen Ben, alone at odd hours, as during a coffee break, writing in the last pages of the little spiral-­bound tablet. Not making his usual brief measurement and product memos on the front pages, but writing away in longer passages at the back, frowning, deeply occupied;
he had watched Ben drop the notebook in his pocket if anyone came to join him. What was on those pages?

  Could Ben have known the killer? If this wasn’t a random shooting, if someone had killed Ben on purpose, would the notebook shed some light on the murder?

  He’d like to have a look, but there was no way. He watched Max and John Bern carry the body to Bern’s van. When they had him strapped in place, Dallas turned back to the house, picked up the ladder that he had already fingerprinted and photographed, set it in place and climbed up to examine and photograph the roof where Ben had been working. Watching him, Joe crouched in reflex when Tekla’s angry voice echoed sharply from down the street. He reared up above the bushes to look.

  Down at the corner, Ryan and Clyde stood facing Tekla Bleak, her angry harangue exploding in their faces. She was alone, Joe didn’t see Sam. Maybe she’d left him in the van, parked beyond Ryan’s truck nosed into the sawhorse barrier. Tekla’s voice was shrill enough to take a cat’s ears off. Joe had to grin at Officer McFarland’s annoyed scowl.

  “Of course it’s your fault! Whose fault would it be! One of your ­people murdered right here in my house. How could you let such a thing happen! Why would you allow this? I can’t live where someone’s been murdered, where there’s been a dead body! How could you . . .”

  Joe threaded through the hedge, raced through the backyards to the corner and slipped under a lavender bush. The murder was Ryan’s fault? Right. This woman was certifiably nuts. He wanted to leap in her face, show her what claws felt like.

  “It’s a good thing Sam isn’t here, I can’t have Sam upset and distraught—­”

  “Where is Sam?” Ryan said, to distract her. “He’s always with you.”

  “Why is that your business? Sam’s home with Arnold, the boy has a cold. Don’t change the subject, Ms. Flannery. I cannot have this mess in my yard. I cannot have police all over my property. This is intolerable. I won’t—­”