The Man Who Understood Cats

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

  The kitchen was clean and empty. He noted the bright curtains, the carefully matched wallpaper, the cosseted houseplants, and the real, if aging, rose in the bud-vase on the table. He began to have serious doubts about his motives.

  Coming uninvited into the heart of a stranger’s family-place seems an invasion. What am I really doing here? What is it about Thinnes that is so engaging?

  Through the open door on the far side of the room he could see utility sinks and, moving closer, a washer and dryer. The light in the utility room was off. He entered and felt for the light switch. Through the half open door of an adjoining lavatory, he could see a sink and, on the floor, the lower half of a man’s body. Alarmed, he ran and pushed the door open and switched on the light. Thinnes was lying with his head near the toilet, in a pool of vomit. Caleb hurriedly felt for a carotid pulse and relaxed when he found one. He grabbed for a towel.

  Later he came into the kitchen with his jacket and tie removed and his sleeves rolled. The phone was off the hook. Wiping his hands on a towel, he hung the phone up, then lifted the receiver and dialed. He checked the contents of the refrigerator as he waited, extracting a beer, and when the phone was answered, he said, “Hello. Rob Thinnes please. Thank you.” While he waited, he sipped the beer, then opened the broom closet and extracted a mop. Rob came on the line.

  “Rob? This is Dr. Caleb. He’s okay. No, asleep.” Caleb removed a pail and cleanser from a cabinet as he spoke, and began to fill the pail with water. “He had too much to drink, but he’ll be okay.”

  Forty-One

  Thinnes felt gray. He came down the stairs dressed only in Levi’s, very hung over. As he reached the bottom, he heard something out of the ordinary and was instantly alert. He quietly opened the closet door and reached his holstered .38 down from the top shelf. He took out the gun, silently laid the empty holster on the stairs, and entered the family room.

  The room had a fireplace with a large TV set next to it. Comfortable chairs and a couch faced them. A coffee table in front of the couch displayed magazines. There was a man sitting on the couch, back to the door, paging through the Thinnes family album. Shaking from both the hangover and rage at finding a stranger in his house, Thinnes stepped into the room and assumed a firing position. He aimed the gun at the back of the man’s head, cocking it.

  “Freeze!”

  Caleb jerked around on the couch.

  Thinnes was not sure who was more surprised. His shaking became worse as he lowered the gun, easing the hammer back in place. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Caleb let his breath out. “Your son asked me to look in.”

  “Why you?”

  “He found my business card and drew the wrong conclusion.”

  Thinnes let the hand holding the gun drop to his side as he leaned against the doorjamb. “How long you been here?”

  “Since last night. I’m afraid your reputation is hopelessly compromised.”

  “What the…?” Thinnes felt his butt pucker and his skin crawl, and he knew the sudden fear and disgust nearly overwhelming him were as obvious to Caleb as Caleb’s momentary contempt was to him. Then he realized he was being razzed and began to be angry.

  “Don’t worry,” Caleb continued, “I didn’t take any liberties.” As Thinnes relaxed, he added dryly, “Far worse. I’ve been probing your psyche.” He pointed to the album.

  “You think you got me pegged?”

  “No.”

  “You think you know why I got drunk?” Thinnes opened a small drawer in the coffee table and pulled out a pack of five-by-seven glossy photos. He looked at the top print, then tapped the pack against his thigh. “You study these while you were snoopin’ around?”

  “No…”

  “My walking papers. Forged, but they’ll do the job.” He tossed the photos on the table. Caleb picked them up. They showed Thinnes and a woman, both naked, making love. Caleb glanced through them without comment. “My wife’s divorcing me,” Thinnes said. “After seventeen years.” He shook his head. “Women!”

  “Stop thinking like a fucking macho shithead prick and start thinking like a cop.”

  “Huh?” The clumsy obscenity made Thinnes laugh. He grabbed his head and, almost with a grin, said, “Fuck you.”

  Caleb grinned back suggestively. “Really?”

  Thinnes laughed again, heartily this time, then groaned and held his head. “What’s your point?”

  “Why did your wife just happen to get those pictures now?”

  “My guess is some bastard where she works has had his eye on her, and figured those…” he pointed to the pictures, “…would be all it would take for her to cut me loose.” As Caleb thought about it, Thinnes added, “As to why now, Murphy’s law. Whatever can fuck up will, at the worst possible time.”

  “Pfui! That kind of coincidence happens only in inept fiction.” To Thinnes’s discomfort, Caleb started to look over the photos carefully. “How reasonable is your wife?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know much about photography, but I’ve got a friend in the business. If he could demonstrate how these were faked, would she buy it?”

  “Probably.”

  “Good. I’ll get in touch with him, and call you.”

  “What do you get out of all this?”

  “I might need a traffic ticket fixed sometime.”

  “Don’t count on it.”

  Forty-Two

  Thinnes didn’t feel much better that afternoon as he waited by the hydrant in front of Caleb’s building. His dis-ease wasn’t a result of the hangover that’d left him feeling leaden and strung out and battered; the two-pound weight in his gut was due mainly to the gradual awareness of the position he was in after yesterday’s bender. The prime suspect in a murder investigation had spent the night in his house and was preparing to help him resolve a personal, domestic problem. Thinnes shuddered and considered calling the expedition off. But what the hell. Might as well buy the whole nine yards. If he took the photos to the cops and forensics couldn’t prove they were fakes, his position in the department would be compromised anyway. And Ronnie would still walk. Ronnie was about the only thing in the universe he’d put his job on the line for. Even if the lab boys did prove the shots were faked, he’d never hear the end of it. This way, if Caleb’s buddy struck out, he could still quietly plead no contest to the divorce and at least save face and his job.

  Unless Caleb killed Finley. The doctor’s eagerness to help might just be motivated by the desire to put Thinnes in his debt, so that he’d keep quiet about Caleb being a fag.

  If he really was a fag. Thinnes thought back over the encounters he’d had with Caleb and tried unsuccessfully to think of a gesture or phrase, even a glance at a passing man that’d confirm the doctor’s claim. He couldn’t see a reason why Caleb would say he was gay if he wasn’t, but there could be one. That was the trouble with a case like this; by the time you figured it all out, all the hidden motives, you could be in deep shit. Up to your asshole.

  He cursed the impulse that had made him even consider trusting Caleb. Better forget the whole idea and let Oster look into this. He started the engine and was about to pull away when the passenger door opened and Caleb slid into the seat.

  Caleb said, “North Halsted Street.”

  After driving for a mile, Thinnes gave up trying to figure a way to phrase the question delicately. “Why?” he asked. “Even if you’re on the level, why go out of your way to help someone who may be trying to pin a murder rap on you?”

  “I didn’t murder anyone.”

  “Protestations of innocence are so convincing.”

  “Maybe because there are no innocents. But Allan was honest and conscientious. I can’t believe I’d be so inept as to miss it if he was blackmailing someone, or stealing, or suicidal.”

  “You got any new thoughts on the killer?”

  “In the movies, it always turns out to be some homicidal sociopath—who just happens to be smarter than the cops. But
real mentally ill people usually aren’t capable of planning a grocery list. I’m not an expert on murderers, but I imagine real-life killers are motivated by mundane vices—greed or anger or fear of ruin.”

  Thinnes nodded.

  “Someone who deliberately plans a murder and commits it in cold blood cuts himself off from the rest of us as radically as does the suicide. Dostoyevsky wrote a whole classic novel about how the average man can’t do it.”

  “So we’re looking for a professional killer?”

  “They don’t usually try to make murder look like suicide, do they?”

  “No. Word around is Finley killed himself.”

  “You and I know better.” When Thinnes didn’t answer, he added, “In answer to your original question, I want to help because I want you to succeed.”

  As he turned onto Halsted, Thinnes said, “Even if this works, she’ll probably dump me.”

  “She’s found someone else?”

  “Naw. Oh, hell. I don’t know. I don’t think so. But she’s suddenly got this career…”

  Caleb nodded. “You know, you can’t hold on to a cat—they hate it—but if you let go and just sit tight, most of them will eventually climb into your lap.”

  “What’s your point? What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Some women are a lot like cats.”

  “You’d know a lot about women.”

  “It’s my job. And I may have a more objective viewpoint.”

  Thinnes conceded the point grudgingly. “It sounds like the old sixties bullshit—‘if you love something, let it go.’”

  “How do you think these things get to be clichés?”

  “You telling me I ought to just give up and kiss her off?”

  “No. But you could try thinking of her not just as your wife, but as an adult human with needs and aspirations that may differ from yours. How do you get along with Crowne?”

  “Just fine. Don’t change the subject.”

  “I’m not. Do you assume you know what he wants or what’s bugging him?”

  “I ask.”

  “And you ask your wife?”

  “Yeah, sure. She just jumps down my throat.”

  “How do you ask?”

  “Oh, for chrissake!”

  Caleb smiled as if he’d made his point. “It seems to me that your problem with your wife is a bit like Allan’s death—not quite what it seems. You might try applying your professional skills to your personal problems.”

  “You trying to make me feel uncomfortable?”

  “I’m trying to make you think, which for most people is synonymous with being uncomfortable.”

  Thinnes didn’t have to think about that.

  Forty-Three

  Jeremy’s was one of those little specialty studio-shops set up in rehabbed houses on Halsted south of Diversey. The sign was microscopic; and you wouldn’t notice it if you weren’t looking for it. The shop was the sort of place where you could have pictures framed; browse through framed prints by the next Ansel Adams; find how-to books or photographic trivia; or stock up on camera supplies with instructions or tips or history thrown in at no extra charge. According to Caleb, Jeremy didn’t have to advertise; word of mouth brought in all the business he could handle.

  When Thinnes and Caleb arrived, a young man stood behind the counter next to the cash register studying a college text. He greeted Caleb and waved them to a doorway at the rear of the shop. They found their path blocked by a white pit bull—stained gray with what was probably printers’ ink—that was stretched out in the doorway on sheets of The Reader. Caleb said, “Jeb, move,” but he didn’t. He didn’t even open an eye as they stepped over him. Thinnes imagined they didn’t have trouble with shoplifters.

  The studio itself was a loftlike space created by gutting the old house’s interior. Residential rooms off a balcony above were reached by a wrought iron spiral stairs. The work area below was divided, by movable walls, into spaces for photographing, matting, and framing. The door labeled DARK ROOM had a naked light bulb above it and a sign next to the doorknob that said DO NOT OPEN DOOR WHILE LIGHT IS ON.

  A rail thin man in his early twenties was cutting a mat at a table with his back to the entrance. He was wearing only a pair of carpenter’s overalls. His hair was the color of Rhonda’s, dingy blond; it came past his shoulders and was tied back in a ponytail. He didn’t look up to see who’d come in. “Be with you in a minute.”

  Caleb walked up and put an arm around him, startling him, but when he saw who it was, he relaxed and gave Caleb a hug and a kiss. Thinnes was startled to be reminded so graphically that Caleb was gay. He felt himself blush. Caleb pretended not to notice. He pointed at Thinnes, then at the skinny man.

  “John. My friend, Jeremy.”

  Jeremy eyed Thinnes speculatively as they shook hands. When Caleb elbowed him in the chest and shoved the compromising photos at him, he barely glanced at them. The subject matter obviously held no interest, and beyond the obligatory smirk, he had no particular interest in having fun at the expense of a stranger. “I see,” he said.

  Caleb tapped the hand holding the photos. “No, you don’t. John didn’t pose for those. They could be faked?”

  “Anything could be faked. Except a hard-on.”

  Caleb laughed; Thinnes squirmed. Jeremy looked at the photos again, this time carefully. He nodded. “A piece of cake.”

  “Educate us.”

  “You start with your base photo…” He looked at the photos again, then crossed the room to take a loose-leaf notebook from a shelf. He paged through it until he found what he wanted and showed it to Caleb. “Picture number one.”

  Caleb showed it to Thinnes—two curvaceous females in bikinis, standing arm in arm on a beach. The photo had an index number on the side. Jeremy put the book away and got the negative with its corresponding index number from a file cabinet. He put the negative in his pocket, picked up a businesslike Nikon, and pointed it at Caleb. “I’ll also need a couple of mug shots.” He shot Caleb, then shot Thinnes before he could protest. Then he advanced the film and took it from the camera. As he went toward the darkroom he said, “Make yourselves at home.” The light above the darkroom door went on as he closed it.

  Thinnes prowled around impatiently while they waited; Caleb studied the picture Jeremy’d been matting.

  After about twenty minutes, Jeremy called through the darkroom door, “Jack, be a love and get me a wine cooler, will you? And something for John and yourself.”

  “Surely,” Caleb called back and he went off up the spiral stairs.

  A framed photo on the wall caught Thinnes’s eye, and he took it down for a closer look. It showed Caleb with a young man resembling Jeremy—an older brother maybe—and a third man. All three were in combat fatigues, arms around one another’s necks, laughing. He was still studying the picture when Jeremy came out of the darkroom.

  Jeremy eyed the object of Thinnes’s interest. “You can’t let Jack’s wimpy exterior fool you. He left Nam with a couple medals and a fist full of citations.”

  “Somehow I can’t picture him carrying a gun.”

  At that moment Caleb returned with wine coolers and a beer. “I didn’t. I carried a stretcher.”

  Jeremy gave him a wry smile. “Touchy!”

  Caleb handed the beer to Thinnes and one of the coolers to Jeremy, asking, “How’s it going?”

  Jeremy said, “That reminds me…” and dodged back into the darkroom. He came out minutes later with a dripping wet eight-by-ten print. “Here you are, gents.”

  The print showed the two curvaceous females depicted earlier, now sporting Caleb’s and Thinnes’s heads. Neither Caleb nor Thinnes could resist laughing.

  “I ought to charge you double time for Sunday work.”

  “I thought you artistes charge by the print,” Caleb said.

  “That’s right. If this is to be a limited edition, it could cost…” He noticed Thinnes’s face and stopped.

  The banter was g
etting on his nerves.

  Jeremy shrugged. “Forget it.”

  “You done anything like this for anyone else lately?” Thinnes asked.

  “Not since high school,” Jeremy said defensively.

  Caleb put an arm around his neck, and said, “Loosen up.” He relaxed and Thinnes eased up. “Someone’s trying to come between John and his missus. Naturally, he’s a little sore.”

  “Naturally.” Jeremy didn’t try to hide the sarcasm.

  “And he’s anxious to know whom he should thank for those charming candid shots.”

  Jeremy nodded in a way that echoed naturally. “Well, the only one I can think of takes a dim view of that kind of recommendation.”

  Caleb raised an eyebrow; Jeremy shrugged. “They say he carries a very popular line of kiddie porn. He runs a sleazy joint on Broadway. Name’s Berringer…”

  Forty-Four

  "Thinnes,” the desk sergeant said, “see Keys.” Keys was District Nineteen’s acting community relations officer while the regular guy was on vacation. Thinnes made a left down the corridor leading to the district offices. The CR office was on the right. The room was too small for the three desks crammed into it. Keys was sitting at one of them. The relieved look on his face when Thinnes came through the door must’ve given the woman sitting across the desk from him a cue. She stood and faced him.

  “Detective Thinnes?”

  Caucasian, five two, 110 pounds, blue eyes, strawberry blond. Shell-shocked. Her face was puffy and lined. Thinnes had seen the face before.

  “Ms. Finley.”

  He decided he’d be the bad guy. Since he wasn’t dealing with a career criminal or a likely suspect, he’d only have to be moderately officious. Crowne, who was closer in age, could offer her coffee and sympathy.