by Clea Simon
“Fascinating, doc.” It was probably fleas or some skin irritation nobody had caught yet. Odds were, the owner was using perfumed shampoo on the poor beast. But I caught myself. Sharp meant well. And he paid. “I’ll be by later to take a look.”
***
Ignoring the expression on Wallis’ face, I took the phone out to the back porch and keyed in the number from that morning.
“Harris residence.”
I didn’t think anyone in Raynbourne had staff, but it had been a while. “Mrs. Harris?”
“Oh, lord, no. This is Sal. Her neighbor.”
Of course, small town etiquette. Slipping back into the training of my youth, I took a seat on the sprung sofa my mother had dragged out here and introduced myself as a friend of Charles’. Trying to sound more relaxed than I was, I expressed my condolences and settled in for a chat. What I wanted was to find out about Charles’ will, specifically who now had possession of Lily. What I found myself promising was a casserole. I don’t do cakes. After twenty minutes at least I had directions—and a reason to come by.
The bichon held his water till I got there, although his owner was near to bursting. After the dog and I took a quick turn around the block, Tracy Horlick cornered me in her foyer, dragging me into the house with a clawlike hand. I expected a tongue lashing. Once you hire out your services, some people will only see you as a servant. I’d forgotten the small-town grapevine.
“Sally says you found him. That you had to pull that dog off him.” Her pale grey eyes glittered through the smoke of her ever-present cigarette. “That it had eaten most of his face.”
“Sally doesn’t know what she’s talking about, Mrs. Horlick.” The real memory had sprung back into my mind, and I busied myself with the bichon’s collar. “It—he—wasn’t like that.” I swallowed. Hard.
“That poor Delia Cochrane must be completely beside herself.” For some reason, this made the old biddy grin. “He was this close to proposing, I heard. Though I don’t know if there was any love lost there. I’ve heard she could smell money—”
It was too much. I turned toward the door before I tossed my toast on her grimy linoleum.
“Oh, you poor thing!” I felt her hand clamp back on mine, cool and dry like a bird’s claw, and I fought the urge to slap it away. “I didn’t know.”
In confusion, I turned back to her. Hadn’t she been trying to pump me for information?
“You must have been sweet on him yourself.” The smile on her face could have cut glass. “And you just back from the big city and looking to settle down.”
***
I rinsed the sour taste from my mouth with a cup of bad gas station coffee. I needed to keep moving, and I’d told Sharp I’d come by. Whatever hopes I’d had of wangling some meds out of him—for Lily, though I could have used them too by then—died as I checked in. The barn-like shelter was as busy as usual, the barking and howling of abandoned summer pets always a sad September constant. But the doc in charge was nowhere in sight.
“He’s out doing a rescue,” said Pammy, the shelter’s full-time vet tech. Twenty-something going on fifteen, she had her fair hair up in a pigtail that bobbed as she led me back to the cage area. As cheery as her singsong voice, the room still reminded me of a hospital with its high concrete walls painted mint green and white. A hospital with cages along each wall and a row of plastic seats down the middle. At least it didn’t smell.
Pammy brought me down the line, and I found myself stiffening. Sounds of confusion, one pained cry—“Rolly? Rolly?” Pretty much par for the course. Clean as it might seem to us humans, the shelter would be a welter of strange scents to these inmates. Not any place an animal would chose to be. “He said you’d want to see this one.” With a nod of her head, she motioned toward a large black Persian. As I looked past her into the cage, I couldn’t help noticing how her pale locks set off the cat’s glossy midnight coat. This was a gorgeous beast. But even before I noticed the bald spot behind his ear, I heard the low whining cry. When he turned, I saw it. Bald and bloody, this was pain personified. Any animal who would do this to himself was suffering. Unlatching the cage, I reached in for the unhappy cat.
“You checked for fleas? Ear infection?” Except for the bald spot, with its angry, raw center, the cat seemed in good health. Solid, clean. No mats that I could feel or see. “Mast cell tumor?”
Pammy nodded and popped her gum. Those possibilities—even the tumor—should have been eliminated by a basic physical, but sometimes the basics get overlooked. “Couldn’t he just be bored?” With one finger, she began to play with a loose strand of her own hair.
“Maybe.” I used my thumb to open the cat’s mouth. His teeth looked fine, sharp and white. Even his gums were good. I wondered about Pammy’s, but not that much. “Who brought him in?”
“One of the Ridge folks.” I nodded, grateful that despite my fifteen-year absence nobody spoke of me with that tone. “Pissed off that he doesn’t look good, I figure.”
“At least they didn’t abandon him.” The Ridge meant money, the new money that was pouring in despite the economy. And rich folks, I’d learned, were no nicer to their animals than poor ones. I turned the cat over. Even for a Persian, he was unusually docile. “Dr. Sharp give him anything?”
She shook her head. “He wanted you to see him first.” She sat down with a thump, and I wondered how to get rid of her. This cat wasn’t talking, and I needed to find out why.
“Pammy, I’m wondering if this cat might relax more if we were left alone.” Subtlety wasn’t my strong point.
“Looks pretty relaxed to me.” Nor hers, either. She looked settled in, too, sitting on her hands and swinging her legs back and forth under the plastic seat. Talk about compulsive behavior. “Hey, Doc Sharp says you were asking about that killer dog?”
“Charles Harris’ pit bull.” I sighed. She wasn’t going away.
“I wanted to ask you about that.”
“Yes, it was horrible.” Why wait for the inevitable?
“Nah, it wasn’t that.” She popped her gum. “I mean, you’ve been to college. You were trained right?” I grunted something that might have sounded like assent. “So why do it?”
I looked up from examining the cat’s eyes. “Why do what?” If she thought I was going to justify studying animal behavior to her, she could think again. The field didn’t need her.
“Pit bulls.” She kicked her heels. “I mean, why even bother? They’re illegal in most places anyway.”
I shrugged. Thought about explaining, but the truth was I wasn’t sure anymore. Lily was a victim, sure. But there were too many elements piled up against her.
Pammy didn’t wait for me to answer. “Besides, I think they’re really ugly, you know? With those flat wide faces and those nasty teeth.” She popped her gum again.
“Pammy, do you mind? I’m trying to work.” I’m not an all-purpose psychic. I can’t make humans read my thoughts. I’d learned a thing a two from Wallis, though, and I fixed my stare on the young tech until she gave a little whimper—“jeez, you’re friendly!”—and left the room.
“So what is it, kitty? What’s going on with you?” Left alone at last, I put the troubled Persian down on the concrete floor and sat beside him. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”
In response, the cat started to wash. Licking the black pads of his left paw, he reached back to the bare spot and started rubbing. I got the sensation of prickling, a combination of itch and the annoyance at an itch, nothing more.
“Is that bothering you? It probably is.” Sharp had put some kind of ointment on it, an antibiotic with something to soothe the irritation of a scab, I guessed. A restraining collar would have fallen just at the wrong spot and he had to do something, but any self-respecting feline would have had the ointment off seconds after the vet left. What I was reaching for was something deeper. Why had that one spot behind the cat’s ear been worn raw to start with? “Can you tell me?”
When I first realized
I was psychic—“sensitive” as they say in the few books on the subject—the connection had come in a flood. I’d get images, wild and scattered, that packed the emotional wallop of a train wreck. Pain, fear, lust, rage. Everything we humans have appropriated for ourselves, only more so, unfiltered by society or language. It was too much. I’d been coming off a fever, anyway. A bad flu made worse by cigarettes and coffee, too much time at work and too little time asleep. This just threw me over the edge, so, yeah, I’d spent some time in a quiet room. By the time I’d gotten out, I’d quit the cigarettes. I still couldn’t quite block the signals, but I was learning to manage. Being away from the city helped. Strangely, so did talking to Wallis. I mean, maybe I was mad, but she accepted it and we’d moved on.
“So, kitty, talk to me.” I didn’t like anything about this gift. You think your mind is your own, until somebody else’s trauma starts pouring in. But it did have its uses—especially since I’d never gone back for that last round of exams. Not finishing bothered me because I’d spent too much time and money to be a glorified trainer. Still if I paid attention, this could be useful.
Warmth, the smell of a person. That itch, that terrible itch was it. What wasn’t I getting? “Kitty?” Sometimes physical contact makes the connection stronger, and I reached forward to place my hand on the sleek black back.
“No!” Wrong move. I got a wave of aversion. Not fear, but something strong. He pulled away. “Not you!”
I sat back, startled. Did this cat see me as an individual, recognize me as Wallis did? “Kitty?” It felt disrespectful, but I didn’t have a name.
Nothing. That feeling of an itch, the warmth of a hand. The Persian had turned in on himself again, and I was at a loss.
***
“Pammy? Pammy?” I was being punished by the vet tech now. She pretended not to hear me after I’d come out of the cage room. I wanted to check in, but this was ridiculous. “Okay, I’m going.” I don’t play those games.
“Wait, don’t you want to talk to Doc Sharp?” She turned away from the shelf she’d been restocking. I tried to imagine her face covered by tawny fur. I didn’t want my dislike to show.
“No point.” I wanted to talk to Wallis, but I remembered my classes, too. If the cat wouldn’t tell me what I needed, I could do my research old school. “I need to get some background. Find out what’s going on in that cat’s home life.” That sounded normal enough, didn’t it? “You have the owner’s address?”
Maybe it sounded normal, but according to the young vet tech I was still in the dog house. “I’ll have to look it up.” She snapped her gum and turned away. “I should be able to get it to you by the end of the day.”
“Thanks so much.” I headed toward the door. Some things it doesn’t pay to be too sensitive about.
It wasn’t until I was halfway home that something Wallis said resurfaced. Words about not understanding. It’s funny, that way. Since this all started—this hearing animals and everything—I hadn’t really questioned what was coming through to me. What I understood and what not. I mean, someone slams into you, you don’t think about the subtlety of his touch. In some ways, I was still recoiling from that blow.
But that’s not what I’d set out to understand when I first decided to work with animals. I’d spent hours in classrooms, then, learning about the biological basis for behaviors. Memorizing how certain chemicals came out of the brain a certain way, and what they meant. Why all of us—humans, too—do what we do. I’d done my practicum in one of the city’s biggest shelters, witnessing the kinds of trauma no human would survive. The one lesson in all that? Animals feel. They’re just as sensitive as we are, maybe more.
The next part was something I’d forgotten. How they react to those feelings. Not just the behavior, but the way they interpret their experience—the way they see their world: That was their own, and very different from the way we humans live. Sure, I’d been feeling what they felt, seeing—or smelling or hearing—what they sensed. But I’d been thinking about it like a human.
Sometimes I’m as dumb as Pammy. I hesitated for a moment and pulled over onto the shoulder of the road to make a U-turn. Only then did I notice the blinking light on my cell telling me I had a message.
“Ms. Marlowe?” I couldn’t place the voice. “This is Officer Creighton.” The young buck from the crime scene. “I’d like you to come in to answer a few questions. Please call me at your convenience.”
My convenience would be sometime in the next century, but since I had the phone open, I scrolled back. He’d already called three times. He was a cop, and I didn’t need him pissed at me, and so I hit “call.”
Creighton answered right away, the number obviously his private extension. Whatever hopes I had of distracting him, he was all business.
“Ms. Marlowe, I need you to come in.” His voice sounded older than he’d looked. Tired. And that set off alarms. Tired cops want to close cases quickly.
“How about Monday? This week has just been an awful shock.” I wanted space and I wasn’t above feminine wiles.
“How about today? I’ll be here at least until six.” Pity when wiles don’t work. I was saved by his mention of the time.
“And is it three already? Oh, gosh, I can’t.” That was probably overdoing it, but in for a penny. “I’m going over to Mrs. Harris’ and I said I’d bring something.”
Checkmate. But he didn’t like it. “Tomorrow morning, then, Ms. Marlowe. I’ll be waiting.”
***
Lies have a way of tripping you up. Back in the city, I’d have been able to buy something to bring. Beef stroganoff, “homemade” meat loaf. A complete Thai feast, and at any hour of the night, as well. Out here, well, we’re not exactly the sticks. Only the closest gourmet food store was over in Beckett, and midweek there was no guarantee when it would close. Nothing for it, then, but to shop and cook. Murder was making me domestic.
Chopping onions leaves you free to think. Both the black Persian and Lily were trying to tell me something, only I wasn’t getting it. Standing in the big, open kitchen that was my house’s best feature, I opened the ground beef and stood there waiting, hoping the scent would lure Wallis from whatever hiding place she’d found. I could use the consult, though in our current relationship I no longer felt I had the right to ask after her whereabouts—or even to keep her inside, despite my concerns for her safety, and the birds’. Now, in true cat fashion, she’d absented herself when I most could have used her company. As I scraped the onions into a casserole, listening to them sizzle in the hot oil, I tried to remember how I’d used to think, back before Wallis started talking to me. Or rather, before I started hearing her. Before —
“What horrid concoction is that?” As if on cue, Wallis appeared in the doorway, stifling a yawn.
“Napping, were we?” I heard the waspish note in my voice. I’d been about to put something together, and her tone didn’t improve my mood.
“Working.” She sat and began to wash her face. “Some of us have lives, you know.”
I didn’t bother responding. Instead, as I stirred the beef into the casserole, I tried to recall what had been on the tip of my consciousness. Something about thoughts, about connections.
“Speaking of which, shouldn’t you be getting out more?” Wallis’ voice entered my head like a cold draft. I spun around to face her.
“Are you reading my mind now?” She kept washing. “Wallis, would you answer me?”
“Not on a general basis.” She seemed focused on one ear. “Too dull, really.”
“Wallis, don’t be such a cat.” She looked up at that, meeting my eyes with her cool green ones. “I mean, don’t get all legalistic on me.” Nothing. “Please.”
“I know what you mean.” She finished her bath. “Don’t get your panties all in a bunch. Yes, I can listen in, when I want to. How do you think we’re conversing anyway? How do you hear all those other voices?”
I hadn’t thought about it, but she had a point. “I just do, that�
�s all.” That flood, that curse of consciousness. “But since we live together, you could try to respect my privacy.”
“I thought you wanted my help.” She jumped up on the counter and watched as I cooked. In previous times, I might have shooed her off. Now it would seem rude. Instead, I scooped out a hunk of meat and held it out to her on my wooden spoon.
She sniffed and turned away. “Too many onions.” Still, she seemed pleased to have been offered, and settled into her sphinx pose while I worked. “You’re starting at the wrong end.”
“The onions?” I was humoring her. It worked. She smiled, as only cats can.
“Humans! So linear.” She tucked her paws beneath her. I knew a lecture was coming and opened a can of tomatoes while she gathered her thoughts.
“My thoughts are perfectly gathered, thank you very much.”
I broke the tomatoes into the meat. “Sorry, I was waiting.” I tried to keep my mind blank.
“To start with, I still don’t understand why you care so much about a dog. Especially a dog like that.”
“A pit bull?”
“An animal too dumb to survive on its own.” Before I could protest, she continued. “Animals get killed, and that Charles may have been your best client, but that simply illustrates his inability to get along on his own.” I’d thought she was talking about Lily, but I guess to her, the dog and its owner were one and the same. “But I understand. For whatever reason, you do care. That’s obvious. For some reason, your so-called advanced intelligence needs to understand what happened. And you’re still clearly confused about your gift. So why not approach the killing from the other end?”
I looked at her, confused. Surely she wouldn’t need me to voice the question in my mind?
“Cui bono.” I must have been staring. “ ‘Who benefits,’ isn’t that the number one question of any crime investigation? Watch it with the cumin. It smells like fireweed from here.”
