Cat Striking Back

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  “Police,” the rookie said crisply, the young man obviously prepared for any manner of disastrous emergency call.

  “Detective Garza or Davis,” Joe said, wishing his favorite dispatcher had been on duty. “There’s been a murder,” he said quickly. “Evidence of a murder.” Mabel Farthy would have put him straight through without wasting time with needless questions.

  But the sensible rookie did the same, he switched Joe straight to Davis. Joe could tell by the hollow sound that he’d left the line open so he could jot down names and locations-though he would be aware of this address if the Chapmans’ phone didn’t block caller ID.

  Detective Davis came on the line. As Joe relayed his message to her, he pictured the middle-aged, squarely built woman sitting at her desk, severe in her dark uniform, her dark Latin eyes unreadable, photographs of her two sons in police uniforms tucked away on the bookshelves behind her among stacks of notebooks and files. He told Davis about the drag marks and the footprints in the pool and up the drive, about the splatters of blood, and the dark glasses lying in the tall grass, silver-framed glasses that he thought were a woman’s.

  Davis didn’t ask his name, she didn’t ask who he was or where he was now. Juana Davis knew his voice, and she knew her questions wouldn’t be answered. Like Detective Garza and the chief and most of the other officers, she had moved on beyond questioning the identity of this particular snitch.

  She said, “Did you see anyone on the street or in the neighborhood?”

  “No one,” he said. “And no strange cars, only those that belong in the neighborhood. All of them cold, cold engines, cold tires.”

  “Anything unusual about the empty house? Anyone at the windows?”

  “Nothing that I saw,” Joe said. “The footprints end halfway up the drive. If the rain gets here before you do, it’ll all be washed away.” Wanting her to hurry, he reared up and pressed the disconnect button. As he clumsily took the cord of the phone in his teeth and lifted and pushed it back into place, he hoped Davis was already heading for her squad car. Beyond the window, dark and light sky alternated as a high, fast wind played hopscotch with the water-filled clouds, scudding them to hide the lifting sun and then allowing brightness to bathe the village in a skirmish of shadow and light.

  Dropping down to the floor, he slipped back into the laundry room, shutting the door behind him. Mango was still in the dishpan. The little yellow tom kitten had left his nest and was standing up with his paws on the edge of the pan, trying to look in, his blue eyes bright and one small paw lifted.

  Springing to the laundry-room window, Joe slid it open, hurried through, and closed it again behind him; he headed across the rooftops toward the empty house, his pace faster now that he was relieved of the heavy mice-and though he endured another stab of pity for the poor little beasts, he enjoyed far more the bold and predatory wildness so evident in that tiny kitten.

  Now as he raced over the rooftops, the air smelled heavier with rain and the sky grew darker again above him. Come on, Davis. Be there. Hurry up, before it starts to pour. He glimpsed a man two blocks over, looked like the same energetic runner he’d seen before, walking now but still moving swiftly, swinging his arms. The gossiping women were not in sight. Probably they’d finished their walk and were cozied up at home, in one kitchen or the other, enjoying coffee and fattening sweet rolls, effectively undoing whatever weight-loss program they might be pursuing.

  He expected Juana to be there already, but when he came down a pine tree and onto the roof of the house next door, there was no cop car, nor was Juana’s Honda in sight. He smelled water below him, and felt its cool breath though it wasn’t raining yet. When he looked down at the side yard, he froze.

  The lower half of the driveway was glistening wet, while the upper half was dry-as if rain had already come pelting down, but only in that one place. From the center of the drive, back to the pool, the concrete was soaking wet, the bushes still dripping. The coping around the pool glistened with water, as did the portion of the pool’s tiled walls that he could see from that angle. Backing swiftly down the pine tree, he raced to the pool to look over.

  The muddy concrete bottom was all changed. The drag marks and footprints were gone. A skin of fresh wa ter lay over the mud, still settling into new indentations where the mud had been reconfigured into long, fan-shaped trenches, the sort that would be made by the force of a hose sluicing across it. Swinging around, Joe looked for a hose.

  There, just beyond the edge of the pool, beside the house. A hose wound on a caddy, its nozzle still dripping, the neat rubber coil shining wet, with grass stems sticking to it where it had been dragged across the lawn. He studied the rest of the yard.

  Nothing else looked different except, near the street, where the driveway was dry, the tall grass at the edge was matted down in a narrow path where someone had not wanted to leave footprints on the concrete.

  Trotting up for a look, Joe found blades of grass still springing back into place; and now he could smell the vague scent of a man mixed with the smells of mud, bruised grass, and another sharp, medicinal smell that, try as he might, he couldn’t place. He was still sniffing, trying to sort out that one elusive smell, when he heard a car coming. Jerking to alert, he headed fast up the pine and onto the neighbors’ roof again, where he crouched low on the rough, curling shingles.

  Davis ’s blue Honda parked across the street but the detective didn’t get out, she sat behind the wheel studying the parked cars, scanning the neighborhood and the neatly kept houses and observing the empty house, watching its curtainless windows. How many times had Joe watched Juana Davis work a scene, always careful, always patient, never missing a detail. How many times had he and Dulcie and Kit worried that she’d find cat hairs at the scene?

  But there were never cat hairs in the detective’s carefully detailed reports. Thanks to the great cat god, Joe thought. Or maybe thanks to some benign quirk in Juana Davis’s own subconscious that, as far as Joe was concerned, didn’t bear close examination.

  When at last the detective swung out of the car, she carried a small satchel, a black leather bag that Joe knew contained basic crime scene equipment. And, the tomcat thought, smiling, wasn’t that a vote of confidence for the department’s unknown snitch.

  JUANA CROSSED THE empty street, still studying the Parker house and its blank windows. She saw no movement there. Scanning the overgrown bushes, the tall grass, and the piles of leaves that had blown onto the porch and heaped against the front door, she thought what a pity it was to let this place go to ruin. The neighboring houses were well kept, the front gardens neat, some of them really beautiful. Divorce or not, the Parkers were foolish to let their investment go to hell. This house was worth enough to greatly ease the life of both members of the dissolving marriage, particularly to ease the life of Emily Parker. Juana knew, from gossip and from information picked up by the officer who patroled this neighborhood, that the Parkers had had several violent arguments, and that Emily wasn’t in an enviable position. As much as Juana disliked the idea of prenup agreements, which surely indicated a lack of trust and true love, this was one time that the woman would have benefited. Maybe, she thought, prenups indicated not only a lack of trust, but of judgment. Or a lack of faith in one’s judgment. Ever since the word “judgmental” had become politically incorrect, clear and logical thinking seemed to have gone out the window with it.

  The Parker house had been empty for nearly a year. James had left Emily without warning after placing the house in someone else’s name and, without Emily’s knowledge, filing for bankruptcy. What he meant to do with the valuable property depended largely, Juana thought, on the outcome of the divorce proceedings, and she hoped Emily Parker had a good lawyer.

  Walking up along the side of the drive, watching for footprints, she carried just the small evidence bag that held some basic equipment and a couple of cameras. Anything else she’d need was in the trunk of her car. Halfway down the drive, she stopped, puzzled.
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  Though the cement drive beneath her feet was quite dry, that in front of her glistened with water, her first thought was that it had rained just in this one spot, as it did in the tropics-but Molena Point wasn’t the tropics. She studied the tracks near her where the dry grass had been matted down and was wet. Looked at the grassy hose farther on, wound neatly on its reel, and it, too, was wet.

  She photographed the area, then made her way carefully along the edge of the drive, watching the concrete for footprints and scanning the ground under the bushes. She circled the house looking for any sign of a break-in, but halfway back to the pool, she paused.

  She took another photograph, then pulled on a latex glove and picked up the pair of silver-rimmed dark glasses lying in the tall grass. Dropping them into a paper evidence bag, she put that in her pocket. Then, pulling cotton booties over her regulation shoes, she approached the pool along the far side, where the apron was still dry save for a first few scattered raindrops.

  The bottom of the pool had been hosed, and not long ago. Water was still settling in the long ripples of mud, like those a concentrated stream of water would leave in its wake. There were no drag marks such as the snitch had described, no footprints leading across to the steps. Standing at the edge of the coping, she suddenly felt watched, felt as if the perp was still nearby or that someone was, concealed in the yard or perhaps in the empty house. The feeling unnerved her. She didn’t often experience this sharp and sudden unease-when she did, she had reason. What had she seen and not consciously registered to prompt that instinct?

  Looking around her, she assessed the area even more carefully. If she could believe what the snitch had told her, then someone had been here just moments earlier, between the time he observed the scene and when she arrived, someone who had watched the snitch leave and then had immediately washed away the evidence.

  She wouldn’t want to think the snitch was lying. She knew his voice, and over the years she’d learned to trust him, as had the rest of the department. How many times had he helped them, and never once given them cause to doubt his word. Whoever the guy was, he and the woman who sometimes called, their tips, and sometimes the delivery of evidence, had always resulted in information that led to arrest, to indictment, and, most often, to a con viction. The department’s snitches were would-be cops, she thought, smiling. And more power to them, they were good at what they did.

  She considered the house, wishing she had a search warrant in hand, then moved on and, in a workmanlike manner, searched around the pool for blood, kneeling to take samples then photographing the area despite the lack of any remaining shoe prints or drag marks. On the pool’s bottom a bird’s feather floated, along with bits of dry grass, as the fresh water eased into the sour mud. She shot a long video of the settling water, then went through a roll of still shots of the pool bottom, the walls, and the surround. Then she moved around the pool to where the paving was dry except for the gathering raindrops. Looking along the pool’s stained sides she considered individual chips and flecks of dirt in the old, cracked tile. Kneeling, she lifted some samples of a stain that had been missed by the hose, placing them on glass slides. Four looked and smelled like blood. She paused in her work long enough to call in, to ask the dispatcher if she’d come up with any missing-person’s reports from the surrounding area. But as she worked, she couldn’t shake the sense of being watched.

  She had no idea that the snitch sat on the roof above her, ready to melt away out of sight if she turned to look up.

  THE GRAY TOMCAT smiled with satisfaction each time Juana scraped up a bit of what he knew was human blood. She worked fast but carefully until the rain started. When it began coming down in earnest, she pulled off her boo ties and packed up her slides and equipment. Joe watched her circle the house again before she headed for her car, and only then did the tomcat decide to abandon the scene himself and head home. He wasn’t partial to a drenching rain, and he felt hollow with hunger. This was Sunday morning, and Ryan, in her new mode as a blushing bride-which probably wouldn’t last too long-would very likely be cooking up a fine breakfast.

  But then, hurrying over the roofs, shaking raindrops off his ears, he felt the rain stop again as suddenly as it had started. He watched the last clouds part above him and begin to move away, allowing shafts of sun to stream through onto the wet shingles. Just a harmless summer rain, a passing shower-but that harmless little rain, together with a judicious hosing down, had sure screwed up the crime scene. Joe wondered where that would leave the department, wondered what Juana would make of what little evidence she’d been able to retrieve. Would she decide that, without a body, she didn’t have enough to run with? That her morning’s work had been for nothing? She had, after all, only his anonymous description of the original scene.

  And where was the perp hiding, that he could return and hose down the place and vanish again so quickly? Was he in the empty house? Was the body in there? Earlier, circling the house, he had found no hint of fresh scent. He wondered if Juana would take the little remaining evidence seriously enough to come back with a search warrant. Wondered if she had enough evidence so the judge would be willing to issue a warrant. His head filled with questions, but with his stomach alarmingly empty, the tomcat headed for home-no cat can think productively on an empty belly.

  One thing for sure, he thought as he raced over the rooftops, he was keeping this morning’s events to himself. Though Ryan would listen with interest, he didn’t need Clyde ’s acerbic remarks. He didn’t need to be told that he was only imagining a murder and that if he had any sense, he’d learn to stay out of police business. Though Clyde’s harassment was half joking, though Joe knew Clyde respected the results of his past investigations, he didn’t feel, this morning, like being hassled by his teasing housemate.

  4

  HAVING PARTED FROM Joe Grey before dawn, the two lady cats had followed the elusive scent of the band of feral cats that they’d detected during their hunt, had followed their trail and then followed the faint sound of the cats’ voices softly laughing and talking, these cats who were like themselves.

  This was the clowder in which Kit had grown up, the band whose leaders had so tormented her. The band she had left the moment she was big enough and brave enough to go out on her own-and the moment she discovered a pair of true friends among some very special humans. Oh, that had been a change in her life, to come to live with humans she soon learned to love, to live in a warm house with wonderful food, and music, and with all the joys of the human world.

  Kit did love her life, and surely she loved her housemates. But still, sometimes, she missed the clowder. Sometimes, despite all her domestic pleasures, she felt strongly drawn back to that wild life. When, this morning, high up in the hills near the ruins of the old Pamillon mansion, she and Dulcie saw five wild, speaking cats slip up over a nearby crest and pause to look down at them, Kit had felt a thrill clear down to her paws. Watching those members of her old clowder, she’d reared up, staring at them-and staring straight at the tomcat who had once been her love, and from whom she had parted.

  It had been only a few months ago that Sage, badly wounded, had been brought into the village where Kit’s human friends cared for him-and where he asked Kit to be his mate. She had refused him, had realized that she loved him more like a brother. But now, watching Sage, whom she had so painfully rejected, she considered intently the small, buff-colored female who crouched beside him.

  Was this Sage’s new love? This scrawny, bleached-out, nondescript young cat as thin as a sick rabbit? Kit stood tall on her hind paws, looking. Did she even remember this waif of a young cat from among the clowder? For a moment, despite the fact that she had jilted Sage, Kit was riven with jealousy.

  But then she thought, startled, had she seen that scrawny cat in the village? Had she seen that little cat among humans? Oh, but that wasn’t likely. The clowder cats never went there unless in a terrible emergency. And then it was only brave Willow who would come seeking human he
lp. Certainly that scrawny, nervous young cat would never come down into the human world.

  As she watched, the pale cat reared up, too, and opened her pink mouth, staring down at them, intently interested in Kit and Dulcie, her thin little face filled with excitement-until Sage nuzzled her and pushed her away.

  But even as Sage bossed the little buff-colored cat and demanded her attention, she ignored him and continued to stare-and Kit could see clearly the younger cat’s wild yearning. She seemed to know at once that cat’s dreams.

  She’s like me! Kit thought with surprise. Not just that she can speak, we’re all alike in that. She feels the same hungers that I do, she wants to understand the whole world the way I always did, she wants to know everything. She isn’t content in the clowder, she wants to see and smell and taste everything in the world, she wants to know more than she’ll ever learn running with the clowder, she wants to know human ways…

  The words of an old English tale filled Kit’s mind. “…A pretty little dear her was, but her wanted to know too much…” And Kit’s heart had gone out to the young cat. She’s like me when I was her age, she wants to know what it’s like to live among humans and hear music and ride in cars and have more wonderful adventures than a clowder cat can ever know. And Kit yearned for the young cat as she would yearn for the ghost of her own younger self.

  Beside her, tabby Dulcie watched the silent exchange, saw Kit’s jealousy but then, far stronger, Kit’s fascination with the buff-colored cat. Dulcie had been a grown cat when she and Joe found Kit up on Hellhag Hill. Kit had been just as thin and scrawny and half starved as this little waif-and as full of dreams. Kit was grown now, but that spirit still burned in her, that often irrepressible kindling of curiosity and joy, so much joy that sometimes Dulcie thought the little cat would explode.