Cat Under Fire

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  "I can hardly believe he's done this just on the list and phone call. Maybe it's because Stamps is on parole."

  "Who knows? Maybe Varnie has a record, too."

  "Wouldn't surprise me." She licked a whisker, studying the arrangement of the three cars. "They can see every house on Stamps's list."

  The burglars would have to move up and down the hill as they followed the homeowners' individual schedules of departure. By the time they had finished, if the cops let them finish, they would be working in full daylight, in full view of the neighborhood. But what neighbor, seeing Varnie's signs and perceiving the old truck's altruistic mission to collect cans and newspapers for recycling, would question its presence?

  Now, on the street below Janet's, the car doors opened without sound. Two officers emerged and started down the hill into the backyard of the second mark. "They're going to make the arrest down there," Dulcie said. "After the second burglary."

  "Maybe."

  "Let's beat it down there. I want to see them nail those two."

  "If they make the arrest here, we'll miss it. Once they have the evidence here, why would they let Varnie and Stamps trash another house?" Joe said.

  "To make a better case? You go down. If we split up, one of us will get to see how it ends."

  He looked at her warily. "Will you stay on the roof, not go nosing around the windows?"

  She smiled.

  "Come on, Dulcie. It's stupid to go over there."

  "Promise," she said sullenly.

  He studied her.

  "I promise." She lashed her tail and hissed at him.

  He growled, cuffed her lightly, and left the roof, backing down the rose trellis. But she worried him. If she did go over there, and if the police moved in fast, she could get creamed.

  But he couldn't baby-sit her. He sped down the hill across the brightening yards, down past Janet's. As he neared the second mark he glanced back to where Dulcie crouched. Yes, she had stayed put. He breathed easier. On the peak of the roof she was a small dark lump, a little gargoyle against the paling sky. He moved on, toward the stakeout.

  The minute Joe disappeared down past Janet's, into the yard of the second house, Dulcie crept to the edge of the roof. Crouching with her paws on the gutter, intently she watched the Hamry house, following the swinging glow of the burglars' flashlight behind the dark windows. The men were taking their time. But why not? They had half an hour before the next house would be empty. Their flitting light was as erratic as a drunken moth. She could imagine them in there pulling open drawers and cupboards, collecting small, valuable items, maybe jewelry or guns or cash.

  The shadowed bushes in the Hamry yard would make excellent cover. She was about to swarm down the trellis when she saw, in the bushes at the far side of the Hamry drive, a dark figure crouching. A man knelt there. She hunched lower over the gutter, watching.

  His clothes were dark, but when he turned she saw the flash of something shiny. A gun? She watched intently until the gleam came again.

  The object was round, very bright. Maybe it was a camera lens, reflecting light from the paling sky. The man half rose, moving forward in a crouch. He must not have made a sound, the dog didn't turn-the mutt stood in the truck watching the house as if listening to the sounds of his master diligently at work.

  From the bushes, the officer would have a perfect camera shot of the truck, and of the inside of the garage as the burglars emerged.

  She wondered if this might not be considered entrapment. But Judge Wesley and Judge Sanderson were both old-fashioned jurists, strong-willed and not easily coerced into dismissing for such legal niceties. If a man was guilty, he was guilty.

  Watching the photographer, she backed down the trellis, fled across a stretch of open lawn to the Hamry lawn and into the bushes, pausing only a few feet from the crouching officer. She hadn't made a sound.

  From this vantage, she could see deeper inside the garage, could see the door into the house, could hear from within, intermittent soft thuds, as if heavy objects were being moved. She heard Varnie swear softly, then the inner door opened.

  The two men came out, Stamps carrying a television set, Varnie clutching a CD player and two speakers. Across the drive, the hidden officer raised his camera.

  The photographer followed every move with his lens as the men loaded the truck. The soft click of the shutter was hardly audible above the men's whispers and above the creaks of the truck springs. They returned to the house for a second TV, a microwave, and for several cardboard boxes and two plastic bags sagging heavy with unidentifiable objects. Watching, she crept out of the bushes.

  The dog snarled. Dulcie froze. He came flying off the truck, straight at her.

  But he flew past, leaped at the photographer. Knocked him backward, sent the camera flying. Before the officer could roll away, the dog was at his face. The officer beat at him and fought; the dog was all over him, it would kill him. Dulcie launched in a flying leap onto the dog's back and dug in. Raking and clawing, she grabbed a floppy ear and clamped down.

  The dog whirled shaking his head. Loosing the officer, he plunged and bucked, snapping at her. She clung, raking. His teeth gnashed so close she smelled his meaty breath. One more twist and he'd have her. Clawing his face, she leaped away, ran.

  Speeding up the hill with the dog behind her, she heard Stamps shout, "Get back here, get the hell back in this truck."

  And Varnie screamed, "Leave the damn dog."

  The dog was gaining. Why did I do that? She fled in panic toward a stand of thick brambles, dived beneath the matted growth. What the hell did I do back there? Beg to be eaten alive. That young cop could have shot the damn dog.

  Except the dog had knocked him off-balance, was at his throat, could have severed the jugular before the man drew his gun.

  The dog plunged into the brambles behind her. She streaked away beneath the branches, and he crashed behind, breaking through-he couldn't see her, but he could smell her. She ran, dodging.

  The bushes ended.

  She crouched, panting, at the edge of the open hill. He was nearly on her, panting, seeking.

  There was nothing above her but a vast plain of short grass. No building, no real tree, only a few spindly saplings.

  She bolted out and up the hill, racing for her life.

  21

  Her paws hardly touched the ground, skimming over the matted grass. Fear sent her flying uphill. There was no shelter above her, only a few tiny trees, hardly more than tall weeds. And behind her the dog gave a burst of speed, snatching at her tail. She jerked away, the tip of her tail blazing with pain. Scorched by terror, she desperately angled toward the nearest sapling, wondering if it would hold her. Leaping for the thin trunk, she swarmed up.

  She was hardly above him when the dog hit the tree, bending it. She clung only inches above his snatching mouth, and the tree snapped back and forth under his weight, the little trunk whipping as if it would break She tried to climb higher but the thin branches bent. The bark was slick, the trunk too small to grip securely. The tree heaved. Its dry pods rattled, and the smell of bruised eucalyptus filled the wind. The dog leaped so high his face exploded at her, teeth snapping inches from her nose, and she could not back away.

  She slashed him again, bloodied him good-his muzzle streamed blood, his ear was torn.

  But she couldn't stay here. And if she leaped away, out of the tree, there was nowhere to run. All was open grass. Except, up the hill, maybe fifty feet above her, a drainpipe protruded from the hill. She could see its open end, oozing mud. She couldn't see inside very far, just the mouth of the drain, the slick-looking mud, the three smaller hills which clustered above it, probably grass-covered leavings of earth from when the drain was dug. The opening was plenty big enough for her, but maybe big enough for the dog as well. If she was caught in there with the dog crowding in behind her… Not a pleasant thought.

  But she had no choice. The tree was going to break or bend to the ground under the beast
's lunging weight. Assessing the distance, she scrabbled among the thin branches to get purchase, praying she could hit the hill far enough ahead for a successful fifty-foot sprint.

  She crouched, every muscle taut, adrenaline pumping her heart like a jackhammer.

  She shot over his head out of the tree, hit the ground running. He was on her, lunging to grab her. She spun and raked his face and rolled clear. Streaking for the pipe, she bolted in inches ahead of him and kept running, didn't look back, fled deep into the blackness, slipping in the mud, terrified he'd squeeze in behind her.

  Deep in, when she didn't hear him behind her, she turned around in the narrow tunnel to look back.

  The end of the pipe was blocked. The dog had his head in and one leg. He was trying to roll his shoulder in.

  But he wasn't going to fit. If he pushed harder, he'd be stuck for sure. Smiling, she trotted back down the pipe toward him.

  The sight of her sent him into a frenzy. He fought to push inside, his bloodied mouth slavering, his eyes blazing with rage.

  She ran at him, hissing, raked him in the face, brought fresh blood flowing. Uselessly he fought to get at her, as she backed away. She turned, switched her tail at him, and moved deeper into the pipe.

  Something was bothering her, a picture in her mind kept nudging for attention, she kept seeing the three mounds above at the base of the larger hill, two of them round, the third hill clipped off sharply, as if sliced straight down by a gigantic ax.

  She shivered. Touched by images impossible to understand, she sat down in the mud, staring away into the darkness, seeing the hills from her dream.

  Everything was the same, the dark tunnel, the sense of tight walls pressing in, threatening to crush her. Even the slime beneath her was the same, turgid and sour-smelling, just like the mud in her dream.

  Drawing a shaky breath, she padded deeper in, drawn on shivering into the darkness.

  Moving warily, ears tight against her head, tail low, she crept deep into the confining pipe, pulled in, swept by a powerful chill. And something lay ahead, something waited for her within the tunnel's black reach.

  Far ahead something pale lay in the mud. She could see it now, and she wanted to turn and run.

  As she drew closer, trying to understand what she was seeing, the pale form began to take shape. It was absolutely still, a vague scattering in the mud. She smelled death. She drew nearer.

  Before her lay a little heap of bones.

  Thin little bones, frail fragments.

  The little skeleton lay on a mound of silt that had gathered against a stone. The bones were gnawed clean, the legs and ribs disarranged as if rats had been at them. A few hanks of pale fur clung to the shoulder blade. The skull was bare of flesh. The curved cranium, the huge eye sockets, the brief insert of the nose were readily identifiable. Within its mouth the tiny incisors and daggerlike canines were unmistakably feline.

  She stretched closer, studying the small, nearly hidden object which lay beneath the cat's skull attached to its gaping collar.

  The collar stood up like a hoop, circling the tiny vertebrae of the dead cat's frail neck, a collar that had once been blue but was now faded nearly to the color of mud. Attached to it was a small brass plate, the three words engraved on it were smeared over by mud. With a shaking paw, she wiped the mud away. She read the cat's name, and the name of its owner. Crouching over the skeleton, she studied the other object lying in the slime. As she leaned to look, her whiskers brushed across the cat's skull.

  A wristwatch had been buckled securely around the cat's collar.

  Even through the coating of mud she could see how heavy and ornate it was, could see a portion of the gold case flanked by two gold emblems like the wings of a soaring bird. She sniffed at it and backed away, stood looking at the pitiful remains of the white cat and at the last link in the puzzle of Janet Jeannot's death.

  She shivered, but not with chill. She was hardly aware of the tunnel and the slime and the dog that still fought to crawl in, struggling to snatch her. All her attention, all her amazement, was fixed on the white cat. He had led her here, to the last clue.

  And not only had the white cat sought to show her this final evidence; he had, in coming to her in dream, told her far more.

  He had reached out to her from beyond a vast barrier. From somewhere beyond death he had spoken to her. When she dreamed of the white cat she had touched an incredible wonder, had sensed for a little while a small part of a dimension closed to ordinary vision. She had glimpsed what lay beyond death.

  She was so engrossed she didn't realize the light in the tunnel had brightened. When she turned to look, the mouth of the culvert was empty. The dog had freed himself and had gone-or he was crouched outside licking blood from his face, waiting for her.

  Feeling strong, almost invincible, she headed for the mouth of the tunnel.

  Stepping from the pipe, she studied the bushes, the hills falling away below her. She reared up to look above.

  The dog was gone.

  She sat down just inside the mouth of the pipe, wondering. Strange that he would give up so easily. She cleaned herself up, sleeking her fur, thinking about the white cat. About Janet's death. And about the wristwatch-Kendrick Mahl's watch-that ostentatious piece of jewelry which matched exactly the watch in Mahl's newspaper picture.

  How did the watch get fixed to the white cat's collar? Did Janet put it there, maybe just before she died?

  The picture was taken only days before the opening; Mahl had the watch then. Did he lose it the morning of the fire? Was he waiting in the studio when Janet came upstairs? Did he let himself in as she prepared her work, laying out her welding equipment, filling the coffeemaker?

  Or had he been there already, perhaps the day before, losing his watch then?

  She licked the wounded tip of her tail, removing the congealing blood, smoothing the raw skin where hair had been pulled out-and puzzling over Mahl's watch. He would not deliberately have left it in Janet's studio; he had no business there.

  Licking her tail, she found that none of her little vertebrae was broken. She was lucky, the way that dog grabbed her, that half her tail wasn't missing, like poor Joe's- though he seemed to get along fine with a docked tail, seemed as proud of that short appendage as if he were some kind of fancy retriever, an elegant feline bird dog.

  For herself, she would be lost without her tail. She took great pride in that dark, mink-colored, silky, tabby-striped extremity. Before ever she could speak human language, she had talked with her tail as much as with her eyes and her twitching ears. Her repertoire of tail dances could convey a whole world of needs and emotions to a perceptive viewer. She'd detest some debilitating injury to that elegant appurtenance.

  Well her dear tail was intact, her wound was only a scratch. It would heal, the hair would grow back.

  Mahl killed her, she thought nervously. Janet's last act on this earth was to buckle Mahl's watch around Binky's collar and somehow chase him away, make him run away from the burning building.

  She thought about the white cat's appearing to her in dreams long after he was dead, showing her things she could not know in any other way-extending to her a heady promise. The promise there would be something else, another life after her own small bones had shed their earthly flesh. Promise of Joy, as Wilma had read to her once, Joy, different from ordinary pleasure. The brightness of another kind of light… from within another dimension.

  She rose, stepped out of the pipe to the fresh green grass, sat down in the thin wash of sun fingering down across the hills behind her. Wrapping her tail around herself, she sat looking down the falling hills and up to the mysterious sky, and a deep, pure happiness sang through her, pulsing and shaking her.

  It was there that Joe found her, sitting happily in the sun rumbling with purrs.

  22

  Under the hill, deep within the dark and slimy drainpipe, Joe crowded beside Dulcie, looking down at the little pile of bones, the frail skull, the faded coll
ar and its metal plate, the mud-caked watch- Mahl's watch.

  He looked for a long time, said nothing. Then, "Too bad. Really too bad it can't be used as evidence."

  "Of course it can." Her green eyes blazed. "Why couldn't it? Why else would it be on Binky's collar unless Janet put it there before she died, unless she buckled it on during the fire, chased Binky away when she couldn't get out herself. It has to prove Mahl set the fire, why else…"

  "But Dulcie-

  "If Mahl stole the paintings, he could have lost the watch then. He was in a hurry, he didn't know it was gone."

  "But this is all conjecture."

  "That Monday morning when Janet found the watch, she knew Mahl had been there. She had to wonder what he was doing in her studio, but maybe she saw nothing disturbed. The racks were filled with paintings. Easy not to notice the edges had thumbtacks instead of staples. It was early, she wanted to finish the fish sculpture, was anxious to start work. Maybe she dropped the watch in her pocket, meaning to find out later what Mahl had been doing there."

  "But even if…"

  "Let me finish. She made coffee and drank some. As she stood looking at the sculpture, she began reacting to the aspirin that Mahl had put in the pot. She didn't know what was wrong, maybe she thought she was just sleepy. Maybe she drank some more coffee, trying to wake up. She turned on her tanks to get to work.

  "The minute she turned on her oxygen, it exploded. By now she was dizzy and confused. As the fire blazed up, Binky ran to her, frightened."

  "But even if that's the way it happened, we can't…"

  "She was weak, faint. Maybe she tried to crawl away. Maybe Binky came to her, he must have been terrified, confused by the fire. They clung together."

  "Dulcie…"

  "Then she remembered the watch-Mahl had been there, he was responsible for the explosion. She was so dizzy, sick, maybe hurt by the explosion, too. She dug in her pocket, buckled the watch on Binky's collar. With a last effort she chased Binky away; he fled out the window."