Кроха - Dedication

Ben Stonewell. Shot in back of head while standing on ladder at construction job. Approx. 7:15 a.m. Dead when he hit the ground. See coroner’s report: Kathleen Ray. Moved from San Francisco eleven months ago. Unmarried. Went to work the same week for Flannery Construction. Basement apartment on Hayes.

Joe burned to see the full reports, but even Max’s notes jolted him. It was time to add his own information about San Francisco, it was time to call the chief. Tell him about the couple in the coffee shop patio, and about Celeste Reece.

He wished that right now he could lean out from the bookshelf and whisper his message in the chief’s ear. He hid a smile at the thought—but when he glanced across at Dulcie she was staring hard at him, her green eyes wide with alarm. Hastily he backed deeper into the shelf, put his chin down on his paws and closed his eyes. How did she know what he was thinking? How did she do that?

When he looked again, her green gaze was languid, only gently scolding.

But then when he looked deeper he saw something else, something strange and unfamiliar in his lady’s eyes. He saw a need, deep and urgent, a fear he didn’t know what to make of—he saw a look of entrapment. And Joe felt, in his own being, Dulcie’s shaky uncertainty.

This was her first litter. She was thrilled but she was scared. Scared of the birthing? Joe guessed he would be, too. Scared of taking care of those tiny mites? And was she fearful because life was so upside down—the two of them entangling themselves in these ugly attacks when she should be at home thinking only about the kittens? Joe saw, suddenly and clearly, Dulcie’s need for quiet and repose, for a new kind of tenderness. His lady, he realized, was far more vulnerable than he had ever guessed. Vulnerable and frustrated, right down to her soft tabby paws.

He didn’t know how to handle this. He was observing a kind of confusion that perhaps only another female would know how to deal with. He wanted to leap off the bookshelf and cuddle her. He wanted to lick her face and comfort her. But in truth, he felt clumsy and inept. He had helped make these kittens. Now he didn’t know what to do about it.

Dulcie needed another female, another lady cat who understood the frightened, excited, lonely confusion that must be a part of motherhood. She needed Kit. Kit had never been a mother, but she was female. She would know how to ease Dulcie, Kit could lay on that special tenderness that even the most loving tomcat didn’t quite know how to handle. But Kit wasn’t there. And across the room Dulcie, seeing Joe’s own confusion, turned her face away, curled up in the corner of the couch and pretended to sleep, pretended that she was just fine.

Yet even now, as he tenderly watched her, the tomcat’s mind was of two opposing passions. He was struck with worry over his lady, but yet he burned to claw deeper into the case at hand. To see the full reports, to anonymously call Max and add his own information to the mix.

Max knew the key to the attacks lay somewhere in San Francisco, but neither of them knew what that key was, what element drew the varied victims together. Joe was kneading his claws on the shelf, wired to race home and call the chief, when Ryan knocked at the open door, Billy behind her.

“Interviews done?” Max said, motioning them on in.

They stepped inside. “Done,” Ryan said, “and we’ve run our errands. Evijean did tell you we’d be back?”

Max scowled and shook his head. “Not a word.” He reached for the phone as if to speak to Evijean, then seemed to change his mind. He looked up at Billy. “I won’t be long,” he said, “a little paperwork to finish. Charlie’s up at the rescue building. We’ll be home in time to feed the horses and we can start dinner.”

A smile lit Billy’s brown eyes. He liked cooking bachelor style with Max. He sat down on the couch beside Dulcie, gently stroking her.

Max glanced down at Kathleen’s notes, then looked at Ryan. “Ben always carried his cell phone?”

“Yes,” she said, sitting down beside Billy. “Juana went over that, in my statement. He always had it, either in his shirt pocket or his jacket. He never set it down on the job or left it in his car, he never mislaid it. Juana searched his apartment, his car, searched the jobsite and my truck that he uses to pick up supplies. No phone. She’s concerned about what pictures he might have taken before . . . right before he was shot,” she said softly.

Max nodded; they talked for a few minutes about Ben, his habits, his interests, his deep caring for the rescue cats. Joe guessed that Juana would have covered most of that, too. But another take was always good. Max said, “Did Ben ever tell you why he moved down from the city? Did he have family there?”

“He had no family at all. None. I was wondering . . . about a service when the body is released?”

“We’ll put something together,” Max said. “Talk with Charlie about it. Maybe that little cemetery out by the water. You’re sure he was all alone in the city? No girlfriend?”

“He said, in the city he was hardly ever home. The construction firm he worked for put him out on jobs in Sacramento, Redding, up the coast—all too far to commute. He said he was tired of that, he wanted to live near his work. He said once, ‘How did I have time to date, to even meet anyone?’ He liked the smaller town atmosphere of the village, he wanted to settle in one place, he loved the small community. He was lonely, Max. He was just so young, he was just getting started making a life for himself.”

“And you’re sure he had no other problems? Bad trip with a girlfriend that he didn’t want to mention? Any other reason to leave the city, besides his dissatisfaction with work?”

“Not that he ever said. Surely you’re not thinking drugs, not that clean-cut boy.”

Max was quiet, looking absently at his notes, his thoughts to himself. Ryan, seeing that he had no more questions, rose and scooped Dulcie up from the couch. “Come on, my dear, I’m taking you home, you need some supper.”

Watching them, Joe dropped down to the desk and came to the edge—thinking of a phone, a fast ride to the nearest phone. Ryan gave him a startled, then amused look. She came around the desk carrying Dulcie and gave Max a hug. She scooped Joe up over her shoulder and they left the office.

And Ryan, like Dulcie, seemed to know exactly what was on Joe’s mind. She hurried out, thinking, Phone, he wants a phone. That wild, intense look in his eyes—like he wants to shout right out at Max. He’s been scanning Max’s desk, reading everything in sight. Something he found really grabbed him; he’s burning for a phone, burning to share it with the chief.

13

With the tomcat twitching to get to a phone, Ryan took him home first. She meant to pick up Rock, drop Dulcie off to be coddled by Wilma, then head for the beach. No matter how heavy her workload or Clyde’s might be, the big dog needed his twice-a-day gallop. The minute she stopped in their own drive Joe scrambled over her shoulder, out the driver’s window, and up to the top of the king cab. She watched him leap to the roof and vanish across the shingles. He’d be through his tower and onto Clyde’s desk before she’d backed out again. She could hear Rock pounding down the stairs barking, ready for his run. As she let him out the front door and loaded him up, she envisioned Joe on the phone talking with Max—the gray tomcat sitting straight and tense at one end of the line, Max Harper swinging his feet off the desk, sitting up, alert, when he heard the snitch’s voice—and that too-familiar craziness hit her: that Alice in Wonderlandgiddiness. None of this was happening, none of this was possible. But all of it was happening, right now, right in her face.

Joe dropped to Clyde’s desk, listening to Rock thunder down the stairs, to the front door slam and the king cab pull away. Then listening to the silent house, the upstairs rooms empty and still, a few golden dust motes floating. He looked across at little Snowball curled up on the love seat all alone now, one white paw over her pink nose. When he leaped to the couch to nuzzle her, the cushions were still warm where Rock had lain napping beside her. Joe snuggled close for a few moments, gave her a warm lick on her ears, but then he returned to the desk.

He didn’t use the house phone, he pawed the hidden cell phone from among a stack of papers, the phone that Clyde had bought him and registered in a false name: Joe’s insurance against some moment of failed caller ID blocking on the Damens’ landline. He sat for only a moment washing his paws, going over the items he needed to tell the chief, hoping Max and Billy hadn’t left yet. Turning on the phone, he punched in the single digit for the desk at MPPD. Half the time, Max didn’t turn on his own cell, knowing he could be reached by radio. Joe was sorry to hear Evijean answer.

Any of the younger officers who might be standing in for a moment would have put him directly through to Max. Speaking patiently, he asked for Captain Harper. He knew what was coming. Evijean’s voice was cold and authoritative. “What is your name? You will need to give me your name.”

“This is a personal call, Evijean. Everyone in the department knows my voice. I need to speak with Max now.”

“I can’t connect an unidentified caller, that’s against departmental rules. You will have to identify yourself.”

“Rules? What rules?” The woman was nuts. “What? Security rules? What damage do you think I can do over the phone? If you don’t connect me, Max will know it pretty quick and you, my dear, will be pounding the street for a new job.”

He could feel Evijean’s rage through the phone line, could almost smell the smoke.

“I cannot connect you without identification.”

He thought of calling Max’s cell, but it would probably go to voice mail. He didn’t want to leave a message, he wanted to talk with Max. He could try for Juana or Dallas, but he’d get the same routine. The silence stretched out unbroken and then there was a click. Evijean had hung up.

Immediately he called her back. “I have information for him regarding the current murder investigation. Put me through to him now.”

“If you want to see Captain Harper you’ll have to make an appointment.”

“What do you think the chief will say when he finds out you are blocking confidential information in the murder of Ben Stonewell? And that you are getting in the way of the investigation of the other three murders? No one, no one else in the department treats a valued informant so rudely.” Ears back, claws bared wanting to slash her face, he listened to another long silence, expecting her to hang up again.

A very long silence. But then he heard a click and Max came on the line.

The chief sounded short and impatient, as if he might be headed out the door for home. When he heard Joe’s voice, he calmed. Joe imagined him settling back in his desk chair, picking up a pen and notepad.

The tomcat laid it all out for him: the San Francisco connections he had found, people other than the dead victims but involved with them. Bonnie Rivers in her wheelchair, not a victim but shecould have been when she was followed there in front of the station. Bonnie’s husband recently killed in a San Francisco street accident, and Bonnie herself injured. And then, in the home of her sister, the .38 revolver on Bonnie’s dresser, a weapon that had been newly cleaned.

Joe didn’t like blowing the whistle about the gun—maybe the .38 had nothing to do with Ben’s murder. Maybe Bonnie was one of those rare Californians who had a carry permit? He wondered how she’d managed that. If she had a permit, maybe she’d been target practicing at some gun club on her way down from the city? Or she carried the gun without a permit, sufficiently frightened after her husband was killed that she balanced her own life against California’s restrictive gun laws. Whatever the case, he felt shabby, implicating the woman when he didn’t even know what caliber weapon had killed Ben.

Still, Bonnie was connected to this tangle somehow. What was that incident in front of the department, when the boy followed her and then ran? What was her relationship to the portly couple in the red sweatshirts, the woman so uncomfortable at seeing her? He gave Max the couple’s names and their San Francisco address. But besides passing along his uncertain tips, there were questions Joe himself would like to ask.

Oh, right. Harper had never yet answered the snitches’ questions. Nor did his detectives. It was all take and no give. Maybe if he were a human snitch, a drinking buddy, someone they talked with in the shops or on the street, it would be a different matter.

Yet the questions ate at him, and what harm to try? “Is there,” Joe said boldly, “a connection here, to San Francisco?”

“What’s your take?” Max said, shocking Joe clear to his paws. Max never asked his opinion.

“Maybe some soured workplace relationship?” Joe said. “A fired, disgruntled ex-employee out for revenge? Or . . . Illicit investments? Some kind of Ponzi game? The victims were on to the scam, someone trying to scare them off, stop them from reporting it?” But Joe shook his head. To torment the victims, yes. But to kill them? Still, the way crooks killed today, for no reason, anything could happen.

But what he really wanted to know was about the gun. “What weapon,” he asked Max, “did kill Ben? Could it have been Bonnie’s .38?”

He expected no response. Max was still for a long moment, then, “Not that gun,” the chief said. “It was a .32-caliber automatic.” He paused, then added quietly, “I’ve never given you information before. I expect the same courtesy of confidence that the department proffers to you.”

“You have that,” Joe said, his voice shaky. “Now, can you tell me whether in fact you found Ben’s phone? And the small spiral notebook he carried?”

“We’ve found neither,” Max said, rather tightly. “There’s the possibility they contain useful information, maybe photographs in the phone. We’d be indebted for a lead.”

Joe could hardly breathe. A whole new world had opened up, an enhanced one-on-one cooperation that made his head spin. Suddenly the chief was working with him, not just using the information that Joe or Dulcie provided.

Why the change? Why Max’s abrupt, increased confidence in the snitches he’d known and worked with—at paw’s length, Joe thought—through so many long and satisfying cases? What was happening here?

“I’ll do what I can to find them,” Joe said softly.

“Thank you,” Max said. And before Joe could say more he heard the soft click as Max broke the connection.

Switching off his cell phone Joe Grey sat on the desk absently batting at Clyde’s scattered invoices, mulling over the change in the chief’s response. Almost, he thought with interest, almost as if the chief were proud to be working the case right alongside his two snitches.

And didn’t that set a cat up!

Or, he thought with alarm, almost as if Max knows something?

As if Max had guessed the identity of his informers? His furry, four-pawed informants? And a deep, icy chill held Joe.

But no, not Max Harper. Not that hardheaded cop. If Max ever for a moment imagined that his snitches might be cats he’d . . . Joe couldn’t guess what the chief would do, he didn’t want to think how Max would respond. Sign up for psychiatric counseling? Check himself into rehab?The very thought gave Joe shivers.