Cat's Claw

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Rambo was also big and tough-looking and there had been a time when Sheila had been afraid of him, just as she had been half afraid of the big, hard man who once owned him. That was Dan Reid, who worked undercover narcotics for the Dallas PD’s Organized Crime Division while Sheila was an investigator with the department. She hadn’t seen him for over a year, until, under the name Colin Fowler, he had shown up in Pecan Springs and opened a shop on the town square. The next thing she knew, he was romancing Ruby, one of her two best friends.

  The situation got complicated in a hurry. Sheila felt she ought to warn Ruby about Dan’s freelance love-’em-and-leave-’em habits, which she understood all too well from their own intimate, intense, and brief love affair. But she suspected that Dan was in Pecan Springs on some sort of official undercover assignment, and she didn’t feel she could explain to Ruby how she had known him or reveal his real identity.

  Then, just as she was deciding that she had to come clean, she didn’t have to, because Dan had been murdered. It had taken some doing, but Sheila (with some help from China) had caught his killer and snagged the shipment of drugs that he’d been tracking. Ruby inherited the proceeds from Dan’s sizeable insurance policy and a hefty hazardous-duty payment. And Sheila inherited Dan’s Rottweiler, who turned out to be a well-mannered, well-trained drug-sniffing dog. In the long run, she thought, it was all for the best. Rambo liked to boss her around but he was far more devoted and loyal and uncritical than Dan Reid had ever been. And she always knew where he was when she needed him.

  As Sheila pulled out of the parking lot behind the police station, the radio on her dash crackled into life. It was Bartlett, saying that he’d reached the Pecan Street address and was setting up the scene. She turned right on Crockett and a couple of blocks later, stopped in front of Cavette’s Market, a small family-owned shop with wooden bins and wicker baskets of locally grown fruits and veggies lined up under the sidewalk awning. She rolled down the windows a couple of inches and left Rambo to guard the Impala (not that anybody would be stupid enough to mess with a police car with a Rottweiler in the front seat) and went into the store. She usually made it a point to stop in one or two shops every day. It was good community relations—another part of her job. The more face time she could put in with the community, the more trust was created. And trust was a valuable commodity.

  “Hello, Chief.” Young Mr. Cavette—nearly seventy and bald as an onion—put a hand on his back as he straightened up from a basket of acorn squash he was putting out on the produce counter. His father, old Mr. Cavette, who was perched behind the old-fashioned cash register, had recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday. Junior, in his forties and the youngest Mr. Cavette, made deliveries on his red motorbike. Sheila always had the feeling that the shop and all three of its owners ought to be registered as historical landmarks.

  “Hello, Mr. Cavette,” Sheila said, picking up a wire basket. “How’s it going today?”

  “’Bout as good as expected when you get to my age,” old Mr. Cavette wheezed from his stool. “But it’s allus good when you can get up and get your pants on in the mornin’.”

  Young Mr. Cavette raised both scrawny eyebrows. “Met that new gal o’ yours this morning, Chief. Real nice, she is.”

  “New gal?” Sheila picked up a bottle of wine and scanned the label. Texas wine, local winery. “Oh, you must mean Officer Kidder. Stopped in to say hello, did she?”

  Taking the rookies around to meet the local merchants had been Sergeant Clarke’s idea. Sheila liked and supported it. The drop-in visits looked spontaneous and casual, but they served two purposes: introducing the merchants to the new officer and giving the rookie a look into the stores and shops. From her own street experience, Sheila knew that prior knowledge came in handy when an officer had to respond to a burglar alarm on a dark, rainy night. Most of the alarms were false. It was the one that wasn’t that could get you killed. PSPD had not lost an officer in her time as chief. She wanted to keep it that way.

  “Kidder.” Young Mr. Cavette pursed his lips deliberately. “That’s the one. Nice smile. A real looker, too. But if you don’t mind me sayin’ so, Chief, she’s just a little thing. I gotta wonder how she’s gonna handle a drunk cowboy in a dark alley.”

  Sheila chuckled wryly. Every woman cop got the dark-alley question, over and over again, in a dozen different forms. How would she deal with a rabid gorilla, a seven-foot seaman, a three-hundred-pound sumo wrestler, all of them drunk or high on crack? There was no point in getting your hackles up. It was just something that every civilian (and some male cops, as well) had to ask. She had developed a stock answer.

  “I pity the drunk cowboy,” she said with a laugh. “Officer Kidder has some pretty convincing take-down moves.” For good measure, she added, “She was first in her class in Defensive Tactics at the academy. We’re glad to have her on the force.” To the wine in her basket, she added a package of fresh ravioli and a jar of tomato sauce and the makings for a spinach salad—tonight’s supper for herself. For Rambo, she picked up a pound of beef liver and a package of dog treats. Old Mr. Cavette checked her out and she paid the bill.

  “Y’all give us a call if you need anything,” she called as she headed for the door.

  “Hope we won’t have to,” young Mr. Cavette said. “But if we do, be sure and send that young’un. I’d like to see some of them moves.”

  Back in the Impala, still chuckling, Sheila looked at the clock on the dash. It was five thirty and by now, Bartlett had secured the scene and begun his investigation. She opened the package and gave Rambo a treat, then started the car. Driving slowly, she headed north up Guadalupe, through the hills just to the east of the CTSU campus, above the river.

  Pecan Springs was located on the long-inactive Balcones Fault, where eons ago, a series of earthquakes had produced a palisade of limestone cliffs with springs of clear, cold water at their feet. To the west of the palisade rose the rugged Texas Hill Country, famous for its upland string of spring- and rain-fed lakes cupped like blue gems in the rolling limestone-and-cedar hills. To the east, on the other side of I-35 and stretching all the way to the Gulf coast, lay the flat, well-watered lands of the Blackland Prairie: fertile farmland once upon a time, littered now with dozens of sprawling real-estate tracts and shopping malls.

  The town had been settled in the late 1840s by German colonists, about the same time as New Braunfels and Fredericksburg. It lay halfway between Austin and San Antonio. As far as Sheila was concerned, this meant that they got the spillover of the crime—mostly drug related—that lapped like a dirty wave along the I-35 corridor, as well as up from the border and north as far as Dallas. But a town didn’t have to be centrally located these days to feel the current of drug crime. It was everywhere, all the time. And that wasn’t just a cop’s paranoia talking. It was a fact.

  But this neighborhood had the look and feel of a safe and pleasant enclave, with genteel Victorian houses aging gracefully under arching live oak trees in large, well-kept yards bright with blooming crepe myrtle and roses. On the interstate to the east, the rush-hour traffic was as slow as molasses in January, road rage tempers hot as July firecrackers. But here, there were more people than cars on the street and everybody moved slowly: young moms pushing baby strollers on the sidewalk; a pair of girls walking arm-in-arm down the street; older people rocking on their porches, digging in their flower beds, deadheading their roses. One old gray-haired guy even paused, leaned on his rake, and waved cheerfully at the chief’s car as it cruised up the street.

  Sheila waved back, thinking what a pretty neighborhood this was. A genuinely residential neighborhood, too, where many folks actually lived full-time in their houses and where “neighborhood watch” meant what it said: neighbors looking out for neighbors, not just for themselves. It wasn’t the kind of place where the residents left for work at dawn and smash-and-grab burglars pulled up in their vans, kicked in the back doors, and hauled out the loot, secure in the knowledge that there was nobody
at home to see them.

  Not the kind of neighborhood where people killed themselves.

  Except.

  Except that Sheila saw the daily crime reports, and knew that the usual human passions—anger, hate, fear, greed, lust, jealousy, despair—lurked behind many of the well-kept gardens and cheerful wreaths and attractive facades. She knew that a fraud victim lived in the two-story house on the right, the one with the serious roof damage. A scam artist had agreed to repair the roof and made off with the owner’s thirty-five-hundred-dollar “deposit.” A couple of blocks away, an eighty-year-old woman had become the victim of repeated elder abuse: her abuser was her daughter, who lived with her. The old woman was now in a nursing home and the daughter was in prison. That pretty gray house on the corner, the one with the late-blooming roses in front and the autumn wreath on the door? The wife had reported two domestic violence incidents in one week there, and the husband was under a restraining order. And just a block down and a block over, in an upscale house with a pool in the backyard: an attempted teen suicide—a girl who had been bullied at school. Luckily, the mother had come home from work early. She’d found her daughter before it was too late. A pretty neighborhood, yes, if you only looked at the facades.

  Sheila made a left onto Pecan, suddenly conscious that she envied Detective Jack Bartlett. Of course, there probably wasn’t much involved in this investigation, since it was a suicide. But if there were, she would love to join him, maybe even team up with him. It would be a pleasure to get out from behind the damned desk and do some serious fieldwork, instead of simply tending to the endless crop of memos and reports. And with the sudden envy came the recollection of the heady, almost joyful rush she always felt when she knew she had righted a wrong, when she apprehended someone who had broken the law. When she brought to justice a man or woman who had inflicted pain on a weaker, less powerful, more vulnerable person.

  Brought to justice. For her, the phrase had never been empty, not just one of those things you tossed off without thinking what it meant. Those three words had always held a profound significance, always made her feel that what she was doing wasn’t an ordinary job. It was important. She was helping to preserve order in an otherwise disorderly and chaotic world. She was enforcing the laws that bound people together, that preserved their rights and upheld their obligations—although the law was never as simple and clear-cut out there in the world as it seemed in the criminal code.

  And on top of all that, there was the pleasure of collecting odd bits of seemingly unrelated information, assembling and reassembling the pieces like a complicated jigsaw puzzle, until finally you could see the whole picture come together, you could say, Yes! Yes, that’s it! That’s the answer! to the only and obvious conclusion.

  Sheila’s hands tightened on the steering wheel and she took a deep breath. What was stopping her from teaming up with Bartlett on this one? Nothing really, was there? And with Hardin off fishing in the Gulf for the duration, this might be the only chance she’d have. Why not go for it?

  Then she made herself loosen her grip. Not a good idea. Since this was likely a suicide, the investigation would be limited. Anyway, it was Bartlett’s investigation. It was her job to make him look good, not steal the limelight or intrude on his turf, the way Hardin often did.

  No. She would put in a brief appearance, take a quick look at the scene (mostly to remind herself of what real, on-the-ground fieldwork was all about), and then let Bartlett get on with his work while she went home and had her supper. But first, she needed to get Rambo settled. So instead of stopping at the scene, she made a right at the next cross street, a left onto Hickory, and another left into her driveway.

  The house where she and Blackie were currently living was an older two-bedroom, two-bath rental that Ruby Wilcox had found for them on Hickory Street, on the other side of the alley and a couple of doors down from Ruby’s house on Pecan. It had a large yard with a dog run and shelter for Rambo, which was what had decided the matter as far as Sheila was concerned. She had loved her little, low-upkeep frame house on the west side of town, but it was too small for two people and a big dog, so she’d put it on the market and (luckily) had sold it within a couple of weeks. Blackie had a big house with a barn and thirty-five acres, and Sheila would have loved to live there. But it was a half-hour drive from town, and her job meant being on call twenty-four-seven. So he had rented the house to a CTSU faculty member and kept the barn and pastures for his horses. The two of them spent time out there when they had it to spend. Sheila was learning to ride, and Rambo loved having plenty of open space to run.

  Sheila let Rambo into the fenced backyard to take care of his business while she went into the kitchen to get his dog food, then put him in his run with his dinner, which he happily attacked. She briefly debated whether to walk across the alley to the crime scene but decided it would be better to use the chief’s car. It would let the neighbors know that PSPD was on the job—another helpful bit of community relations.

  She drove back around the block onto Pecan, checked the street number for 1117, then pulled in to the curb behind two black-and-whites; a paramedic vehicle, lights flashing; and a white van with Adams County Crime Scene Team on the side. She regarded the vehicles with raised-eyebrow interest. Bartlett must have found a reason to call out the county crime-scene unit, which was under the authority of the sheriff and shared by PSPD and the smaller municipalities in the county.

  On the other side of the street, she saw Maude Porterfield’s Ford F-150 pickup truck. Adams County operated under the Inquest Law, an old segment of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure that conferred on justices of the peace the responsibility of determining the cause of death in cases of accident, homicide, or suicide, or where a death occurred under suspicious circumstances. Larger counties were required to operate under the newer medical-examiners law, which—as Judge Porterfield jocularly put it—took the JPs out of the cause-of-death business. Sheila had the feeling that Maude secretly liked being in the cause-of-death business. It kept her abreast of what was going on in Pecan Springs.

  Neighbors were gathered in two or three self-conscious knots on either side of the street, trying not to look too curious as they watched the official comings and goings at the two-story frame house. Whatever had happened here, it was obviously a neighborhood event—one that people would be talking about for quite a while. Sheila took another look. She didn’t see Hark Hibler’s car or anybody from the Enterprise. And Pecan Springs was forty-five minutes from both Austin and San Antonio. The TV stations didn’t send a camera unless there was a major disaster. A suicide didn’t qualify.

  Sheila was opening the car door when she thought of something else. Unsnapping her briefcase, she took out a small red notebook and a pen. She glanced at her watch, opened the notebook to a fresh page and noted the address, the date, and the time. She didn’t stop to ask herself why she was doing this.

  As she got out of the car, a commotion rippled through the onlookers. “Hey, it’s the chief!” a man in the nearest group said. In his sixties, with thinning hair, he wore a pink-and-green Hawaiian print shirt and red flip-flops. His beer belly bulged out like a beach ball over green polyester pants. He raised his voice. “Hey, Chief, what’s going on back there? What’s the scoop?”

  “I just got here,” Sheila replied in a friendly tone. Community relations, she reminded herself. It was good for citizens to see their police officers at work. “I haven’t checked with Detective Bartlett yet. He’s in charge.” She went over to the group and put out her hand. “What have you heard, sir?”

  Green Trousers grasped her hand briefly. His was sweating. “Just that somebody’s dead in the kitchen.” He swiped his hand across his shirt front and pointed across the street. “Mr. Kirk, is what I heard.”

  “Lawrence Kirk,” an older woman said excitedly. “He’s really nice—came over and fixed my grandson’s computer when it got this really terrible infection. I live right next door.” She pointed, her tight blu
e curls bobbing importantly over her ears. “I was pickin’ the last of my spaghetti squash in the backyard when Ruby Wilcox’s sister went in the kitchen and found him. Really, you’d have thought somebody shot her. Run out of the door and fell right down the steps.”

  Ruby Wilcox’s sister? Ramona Donahue? That was a surprise. Sheila was about to speak, but Green Trousers beat her to it.

  “Hate to think stuff like this can happen in our neighborhood,” he said.

  “What’re you talkin’ about, Joe?” another woman demanded. “This kinda stuff happens everywhere. Why, somebody lifted my mother’s wristwatch right out of the drawer beside her bed. In the nursing home!” She slanted a look at Sheila and added accusingly, “Cops never did find out who did it.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Sheila said. She wanted to add, Tell your mother not to put her valuables where somebody on the staff can be tempted. But she only said, in a regretful tone, “We do the best we can, but we can’t clear every theft.”

  “Betcha CSI would’ve solved it,” the woman muttered.

  “We don’t have a CSI budget,” Sheila replied smoothly. It was another one of her practiced phrases. “You might speak to the city council about that.” She turned to the next-door neighbor. “Mr. Kirk fixed your grandson’s computer?” she asked. “Is he by any chance the owner of Kirk’s Computer Sales and Service?”

  “That’s him,” the woman said. “But he wouldn’t take any money when I offered to pay. Said he was just being a good neighbor, which I appreciated. A very nice young man.” She pulled down her mouth. “So sad.”