by April Hill
Bert Markowitz interrupted his assault on the coffee machine long enough to come over and slap McCann on the back. "This is your lucky night, McCann. You finally got to chat with 'Midnight Mary'.
"We call her 'The Night Owl'," Markowitz explained, "or the 'Nosy Neighbor from Hell'. Some screwball insomniac, an old maid or something, with a house full of stray cats. Works at that women's center over in Rayburn. She's been calling in every few nights for a couple of weeks, now. Always real late, and always with the same story. Her neighbor's up to something suspicious." He smirked. "I say the lady needs to get laid."
"You volunteering for the job, Markowitz?" someone called out.
Markowitz grinned. "I might. The guys tell me she's not bad-looking—for a nutcase."
"Give it up, Bert," another cop called. "She's not your type."
"Yeah, and why the hell is that?" Markowitz shot back, his face reddening.
From his desk across the room, McCann's partner, Ed Forrester, joined in. "She can read and write, for one thing."
McCann held up his hand to interrupt the raucous laughter. "Okay," he said "knock it off for a minute. Has anybody checked out this guy she's beefing about? Kruger?"
"Yeah," said Forrester. "First time she called. We ran him through records. He's clean. Old guy. Some kind of college professor. One hundred and ten percent straight-arrow. Like Bert says, the dame's probably some nutcase," he winked at Markowitz, "who needs to get laid."
McCann shook his head, doubtful. "She didn't sound crazy. Just mad as hell—at us. Maybe a little scared."
"Scared of her own freakin' shadow's more like it," Markowitz growled. "Wait'll you sit through another six or seven of her calls. You'll get the picture. A world-class nutcase."
* * * * *
Two weeks later:
Someone was in the house. Beth sat up in bed, listening again for the sound she'd heard—faint but unmistakable. Too loud to be one of the cats prowling around. It had sounded like footsteps on the stairs. Frustrating all of the home repair remedies she'd tried, the steps had creaked since the day she bought the house. What she couldn't determine was whether whoever it had been was still on the stairs, or already outside her door, listening.
She grabbed the phone and held it against her chest to muffle the dial tone, then quietly opened the drawer of her bedside table. The gun was all the way at the back, under a folded pillowcase, and in fumbling for it in the dark, she managed to knock a stack of books off the cluttered table. There was a second's pause, then a scuffling noise from the hallway. He was running! Beth dropped the phone and bolted from bed with the weapon in her hand. She put her ear to the door and listened, and when the steps creaked again, she flung open the door and dashed along the hall to the landing, screaming at the top of her lungs about having called 911. In the dimly lit foyer below, a dark shape moved stealthily along the wall.
Later, she wouldn't remember exactly what happened next, but in the narrow hallway, the explosion of the two shots was deafening. The next sound—of breaking glass—told her she'd probably missed the prowler, and scored a bulls-eye on her great-grandmother's oak china cabinet. Beth swore as she stumbled down the stairs and into the kitchen. The back door was wide open. Desperately, she tried to calculate how many bullets had been left in the second-hand revolver after her last trip to the desert to practice her marksmanship on empty beer cans. She hadn't realized that the cartridge box was nearly empty when she went to reload the ancient weapon, and had terminated the project with a partially-loaded pistol. The question was answered when she tried to fire again, through the door and into the yard. Nothing but a loud, metallic click.
With the gun empty and nothing else at hand for defense, Beth began grabbing cans from the pantry and hurling them through the open doorway into the darkened yard. When she'd exhausted her arsenal of canned goods, she slammed the door, locked it and actually dialed "911."
The confrontation had not gone as well as she'd planned.
* * * * *
McCann and Ed Forrester were on their back to the station after wrapping up their work at the scene of a drive-by shooting when they heard the call from dispatch—with a familiar address on Hazelwood Circle.
"Isn't that the address our lady Night Owl always gives?" McCann asked.
Forrester nodded. "Yeah. Must be a full moon tonight "
McCann reached for the mike. "Let's take a run by there."
"You're kidding, right?"
"You got something else to do?" McCann asked.
"Yeah. We've got a large pepperoni pizza waiting for us down at Morelli's."
"It'll keep. This won’t take long. I'd like to meet the lady."
Forrester grimaced. "No, you wouldn't."
All of the houses on Hazelwood Circle were small, but number 285 looked more like a child's playhouse, with a scalloped roof, purely ornamental shutters and wooden flower boxes at every window. Every light in the little house seemed to be on, and since there was no driveway, the five black and whites already there were parked at angles in the street.
"Who lives in a place like this?" McCann asked. "Hansel and Gretel, maybe?"
"Yeah, and it looks like the kids are having a party," Forrester remarked irritably.
"There's a lot of firepower here," McCann observed, indicating the large number of patrol cars. "Could be real this time."
Forrester sighed. "Bet me."
They got out of the car and walked across the diminutive yard to the house. A balding, one-eyed cat watched as they came close, then slunk away under a bush. As they reached the steps, four uniformed cops burst out of the front door, laughing.
"So, now it takes five patrol units to check out a prowler?" Forrester asked the first man in the group—a gawky young rookie named Buchner.
The laughter stopped abruptly, and Buchner flushed with embarrassment. "No, sir. It’s just that…" he gulped, "it's like we all just answered the same call. You know, for backup?"
"Or maybe to check out the nutcase?" Forrester snapped.
"No, sir. Honest, it was just…"
"Get back to work. There are probably a couple of genuine bad guys out there somewhere. Go find a couple. You could use the practice."
Just inside the front door, they found another familiar face—Dave Hawkins, from Burglary.
"We got a stiff here I don't know about, or are you guys just slumming?" Hawkins asked wearily, obviously annoyed to see two detectives from the elite homicide division on his humble turf.
McCann grinned. "Nope. We're here strictly as tourists. Where's the woman?"
Hawkins pointed behind him. "Back there, talking her head off."
"What's her name again?" McCann asked.
"Beth Wallace." Hawkins checked his notes. "Nah, here it is. Mary Elizabeth Walker. Goes by Beth. Leases the place from a man named Frederick Lawrence—about six blocks over. You guys down at homicide know her?"
"Only by reputation," McCann said, trying not to smile.
They found the woman in her tiny kitchen. She had a big orange cat on her lap, and she was being questioned by two bored-looking uniforms. The infamous "Night Owl" wasn't what McCann had expected. She was in her early thirties, small—maybe five-three—and pretty, with fair skin, green eyes and mid-length dark blonde hair. Mildly plump, but most of it was in all the right places. McCann swore to himself. Reacting to witness as anything but a witness was a bad habit for a cop. It interfered with the job, and sometimes, it could be dangerous.
McCann introduced himself, and when she didn't seem to recognize the name, he repeated it. "Adam McCann, Homicide Division? I think we spoke a couple of weeks ago?"
She rolled her eyes. "Of course, Lieutenant McCann. How could I have forgotten? With all those calls I got back from you?"
McCann ignored the sarcasm. Maybe she had her reasons for being a little hostile. "Did you just move in, here, ma'am?" he asked, surveying the stacks of boxes and assorted clutter.
"Is that some sort of a crack?" she sho
t back. Okay, McCann thought, updating his analysis. Very hostile.
"No, ma'am. Just curious."
"I've lived here for almost two years."
Adam glanced around the diminutive kitchen. "I don't remember ever seeing another house this small," he remarked, to no one in particular.
"Cottage, Lieutenant. Five-hundred-and-seventy-six square feet. The development is called Cottageville, and this house was apparently considered adorable in the 1950s. And before you start asking the same stupid questions the others did, there was a prowler tonight. It's not my imagination; I'm not seeing things, and I'm not hysterical. I shot at him twice, and then I threw cans."
"Cans?"
She pointed behind him, to a shallow pantry. "I was out of bullets. I have more, of course, but I sort of hide them around in different places, in case of… And then…" She flushed, maybe beginning to realize how her story sounded. "Well, okay, sometimes I forget exactly where I've hidden them."
You know, like squirrels do, with nuts?" she added, and flushed again.
McCann smiled. Not a career criminal, anyway, and certainly not a gun nut. The rest was open to debate.
He ran his hand over the top shelf of Miss Walker's pantry. It was empty now, and slightly sticky. The rings of dust suggested that Miss Walker apparently wasn't the domestic type, either.
"I count six cans," he observed idly. "More, if they were stacked."
She glared at him. "I'll bet you're considered the top notch investigator down at the precinct, Lieutenant McCann. The envy of all your peers."
He tried not to smile. "I have my moments."
When one of the uniformed officers asked her another question, McCann took the opportunity to wander outside. Several men were scouring a postage-stamp-sized backyard that needed to be mowed and watered—or maybe plowed under. Some of the weeds were knee-high, and the forlorn remains of what had once been a large flowerbed showed that gardening wasn't Miss Walker's favorite pastime.
"You find anything?" he asked one of the men, a burly sergeant named Fleming.
Fleming laughed and held up a large can. "Yeah, with all these weeds, and in the dark, it's like some kind of goofy Easter egg hunt. We found a couple of cans of meatless chili and one of green beans. They're all over the yard. Noonan over there's got himself a can of cheese ravioli. I caught him trying to pocket it for dinner."
McCann shook his head. "That's it?"
"Nah," Noonan replied, walking over to them with his own finds. "There's one labeled lentil soup, too." He held up the can. "Brown stuff, looks like some kind of pea. Hey Sergeant, what's a lentil, anyway?"
Fleming took the can. "It's a legume, moron. Like a bean. So, what does this tell you, McCann?"
"The lady's a vegetarian?" McCann suggested. "And not much of a shot?"
He stood for a few moments, looking toward the back of the house. The breeze had blown up, and a tall, wilted bush by the back door was waving gently back and forth. Finally, he walked back to the house, stopping at the concrete steps. A strip of bare flowerbed eighteen inches wide extended from the steps, across the rear of the house and as far as the corner, where a dented downspout hung loosely from the eave. Miss Walker needed a handyman—or a husband. Checking first for possible footprints, McCann pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and clicked it on, then edged carefully between the house and the bushes. He tried peering into the basement through both of the small ground-level windows but finally gave up. The windows were either obscured by years of dirt and grime or someone had covered them from the inside.
Letting the thin beam of light make a slow sweep back and forth on the ground in front of him, McCann moved slowly along the unkempt flowerbed, almost tripping on a short section of broken concrete. He squatted down to look at what had made him stumble and found a terra-cotta drainage tile that had probably once lain beneath the damaged downspout. Just behind the drainage tile, half-buried in the soil and dead leaves, he caught the quick gleam of something metallic. At that point, the little flashlight flickered once and went out. McCann tapped it against the house and when the light came on again, he poked around in the debris and a large can emerged. Pulling a handkerchief from the pocket of his jacket, he nudged the can until he could read the label. Beef stew. Restaurant-sized. The dented rim showed traces of what looked like blood.
"Hey, Fleming," he called. "Bring me one of those evidence bags, will you?"
"You find something?"
"Maybe. It looks like the lady's not a vegetarian, after all—and she wasn't such a bad shot, either."
Fleming leaned down and peered at the dented can. "You think there really was a prowler? And that she mighta' nailed the guy with this?"
"Yeah, probably winged him while he was on the steps, and the can bounced off into the bushes."
The sergeant took a closer look at the bent can and winced. "Ouch. That's one hell of a big can."
McCann nodded. "Which means that our prowler—if there was one—has a hell of a knot on him somewhere. And if we're lucky, it'll be somewhere that shows.
CHAPTER TWO
Back inside the house, the woman was still giving a statement, so McCann walked through the kitchen and took the narrow staircase to the second floor. Upstairs, he found a bathroom and two tiny bedrooms, the larger of which had been set up as an office. Beth Walker's bedroom was at the back, overlooking the small yard. A scruffy-looking cat was asleep at the head of the twin bed, and another was sitting on the dresser in a pile of folded towels, grooming itself. McCann stood in the doorway and studied the room for a moment, then went around the bed to part the curtains. A third cat—this one immensely fat and missing most of one ear—was perched on the windowsill. From the window, and even from her bed, Miss Walker had an unobstructed view into the yard of the neighbor living immediately behind her—Felix Kruger. While her tiny yard had an abandoned quality about it, Kruger's equally tiny back area was immaculate. A small structure McCann assumed was Kruger's gardening shed consumed most of the space. The man was apparently a serious gardener, McCann observed, who spent a lot of time at his hobby. The shed had an overhead door, a skylight and a large air conditioning unit in a side window.
The lady's hobby, on the other hand, was apparently reading. Shelves crammed with books lined the walls, consuming much of the floor space, and the small table next to her bed was stacked with a jumble of papers and books. Coffee mugs bearing the logos of several different educational TV channels were stuffed with pens, pencils and scraps of folded notepaper. He shooed away a fourth cat and picked up the fat paperback lying facedown on the top of the heap. Leafing through it, he found dozens of places that had been marked with torn slips of paper—pages dealing with labor, childbirth and infancy. Turning the book over, he read the title on the front cover. Pregnancy: From Here to a Healthy Baby. The volume beneath that one was entitled The Natural Childbirth Primer.
McCann glanced through some of the other titles on the table: Successful Breast Feeding. What to Expect in Baby's First Year. Circumcision: Barbaric or Beneficial. A Working Mother's Guide to Daycare. The last couple of items were interesting—a book called Going It Alone, with a leaflet tucked inside as a bookmark. It was a state-issued pamphlet explaining how to sue for child support, and how to collect. As he put the last book down again and carefully arranged everything exactly as he'd found it, he was trying to remember if he'd gotten a look at Beth Walker's stomach. His sister always joked about getting a telltale bulge in the first weeks of pregnancy.
By the time he came back downstairs again, someone had already told her about the bloodied can. "So, do you believe me, now?" she demanded, as he walked into the kitchen. A skinny black cat he hadn't noticed earlier was sitting on top of the refrigerator, hissing at him.
Before he could reply to her question, Ed Forrester appeared at the back door. "They're almost finished here, Mac, and Morelli's probably given away our pizza by now, so I'm going back to the station to finish up some reports. You ready to head out?"<
br />
McCann shook his head. "I've got a couple more questions I'd like to ask Miss Walker, Ed. Can you leave me the car and grab a ride back with someone?"
Forrester nodded, waved a quick goodnight and disappeared down the steps. When McCann turned back, Beth Walker was standing at the sink, rinsing out coffee cups. She was wearing a heavy blue fleece robe that hid pretty much everything, and for some reason, McCann found himself trying to picture what she was wearing—or wasn't wearing—under the bulky robe. Something about his expression must have struck home, because she flushed self-consciously and pulled the robe closer around her body.
"Yes, I know, Detective," she said irritably. "I look like Cookie Monster. It was a birthday gift from my mother, who believes that all women who live alone are in perpetual danger of being seduced. This is her contribution to my safety—meant to make me as unattractive as possible, presumably."
McCann nodded, but didn’t say what he was thinking—that if that's what Miss Walker's mother was hoping for, she'd failed in her mission. In his mind's eye, Detective McCann was undoing the robe's fluffy belt, then slipping his hands under the soft blue fleece to caress the even softer, warmer skin of Beth Walker's silken hips and thighs.
"It's kind of cute," McCann remarked. "The robe, I mean." He smiled, but he was kicking himself mentally. Cute? Where the hell had that come from? And as he'd expected, the lady wasn't flattered by his clumsy compliment.
"Thank you," she said, her tone dripping acid. "I imagine that's precisely the look she was going for. Cute. Childish and cute."
While McCann's purely male side was still imagining his hands inside Beth Walker's ugly robe, his cooler detective side was already trying to put together what he'd seen and heard about her and forming a rough picture of the situation. Miss Walker was a damned good-looking woman, but she didn't know it. She had smart mouth, a quick temper and too much attitude for her own good. And as much as he hated to agree with a sexist jerk like Bert Markowitz, she probably did need a man in her life. Not the kind she'd already had, apparently, but a decent one, the kind who wouldn't get her pregnant then make her fight him tooth and nail for a few lousy bucks of child support. No wonder the lady had a big chip on her shoulder when it came to men. She had a damned good reason.
