Кроха - Dedication

Bonnie, tanned and slim, was dressed in pale jeans and a light blue T-shirt, her metal brace snug to her left leg. “It was me they were after,” she said shakily. “Not my husband. They didn’t . . . they didn’t care who else they killed.”

Celeste said, “The trial itself was stressful enough for Bonnie. And then, all those weeks later, the accident—what we thought was an accident. I headed for the city, stayed in the hospital with her. It was terrible. Gresham gone so suddenly, that long surgery on Bonnie’s shattered leg . . .” Celeste looked across at her sister and went quiet.

Bonnie’s direct, steady voice was more in control now than her sister’s. “After all those days sequestered, sitting in the cold, stuffy courtroom, finally it was all over, the ugliness, the stress. I was just beginning to feel normal again. Gresham and I needing to be with each other, staying close, going out to dinner at our favorite little restaurants, going to movies, long walks through the park. And then . . . the accident.”

Max was quiet, giving her time. Then, “The jurors,” he said at last, “could you identify them all, do you remember their names?”

“I’d know them to see them. I’d know their pictures, of course. But I’m not sure I can remember all their names—in most cases, just a first name.

“But I’ll try,” she told Max. “I’ll start a list, write down descriptions and the names that I can remember. Maybe the full names will come to me. After the accident, it took me a while to realize what . . . what had really happened—that it wasn’t an accident. When I read about that waiter, Jimmie Delgado, going home from work after midnight, his bicycle hit, Delgado killed . . . he was on the jury. It was then I began to put it together and got scared.”

“I’d like you to come down to the station,” Max said gently. “Tomorrow morning if you can. See if you can identify the murder victims? I can have someone pick you up, if you like. If I’m not there, one of the detectives will work with you, show you the pictures.”

Bonnie nodded. “I read something in the paper about James Allen, saw the paper some time after he was killed. I remembered him, maybe because it’s such a simple name, and because he was in a walker. An older man, nearly bald, gray fringe of hair around his ears. He complained, said he was too old to be on jury duty. But I guess the attorneys didn’t think so.”

Max said, “We may need to get a release of the names of the jurors, that may still be sequestered. A list would help you put names and faces together.” He was quiet, then, “You’re sure you didn’t know the boy who followed you?”

Bonnie shook her head. “All bundled up. A boy? A small man? I’d say a boy, though. A good runner. But the couple you mentioned, in red sweatshirts? A rather portly pair. I recognized them, but they weren’t on the jury, I never knew their names. I saw them in the visitors’ gallery several times. And during the verdict and sentencing? She was crying, both days. He had his arm around her, hugging her. I couldn’t tell whether she was crying from grief or was happy. It was that kind of crying,” she said, looking across at Max.

Max nodded. He picked up some newspaper clippings from the arm of his chair. “May I make copies of these, return them when you come in?”

“Yes, of course.”

Joe glimpsed the headlines for only an instant as Max folded the articles into his notebook and slipped it in his briefcase.

. . . dies when car goes over cliff north of . . .

. . . on a rainy street south of . . .

Bonnie said, “Would first thing in the morning suit you? Say, eight o’clock?”

“That’s change of watch,” Max said. “I’m tied up until, say, nine?”

She smiled. “Nine’s fine. That will give Celeste and me a chance to have breakfast out, splurge a little.”

When Max rose, the tomcat backed deeper into the petunias. Though the evening was growing dark, his white paws and white nose were always a problem, too bright in the gathering dusk, even among the tangled leaves. Watching Max head for his pickup, Joe wanted to leap in the truck, ride home with him unseen, slip into the Harper house, paw through Max’s briefcase and read the clippings. What trial was this? What was the offense? Who was the plaintiff? If someone was out to kill the jurors . . . a friend or relative of the plaintiff . . . then he must have received the ultimate sentence . . . life in prison or the death penalty. Joe wished he had run faster over the rooftops, that he hadn’t missed half the conversation, missed the telling facts.

But now, as much as he wanted to know the rest of Bonnie’s story, he decided not to hitch a ride, not chance getting caught snooping up at the Harper ranch. He’d see the clippings in the morning, once he hit the station. Though even that wait annoyed him, he was wired with curiosity. He watched the chief cross the yard, step into his pickup and back out—and Joe Grey hit the rooftops, his paw-beats thudding across the shingles of the neighborhood cottages as he headed not for the Harper ranch, that long haul up the hills, but for Ben’s place.

Maybe Juana had missed nothing at all—and maybe not. Either way, she was sure to have cleared the scene by now.

Maybe, in the process of removing crime tape, she had aired the apartment of cat-box smell, had opened the windows and, if luck were with him, she had not relocked them all. Not likely, knowing Detective Davis, but he meant to find some way inside.

Up across the roofs and oak branches, racing above the dropping canyon until he saw the tall old house ahead, Ben’s small basement apartment at the back. The outdoor security lights were on, but no interior lights at all, even in the big house. He came down two gardens away.

There was no sound from within as he crossed the darkening yards onto the brightly lit lawn. Juana had removed the crime tape, and luck was with him. She, or maybe the landlord, had left the apartment wide open, to air. Strange, he thought, to leave it unlocked at night. Maybe that’s why the security lights were on, shining brightly into the tiny room, brighter than Joe wanted. His nose twitched at the lingering stink as he leaped to the sill of an open window.

The screen was old-fashioned with just the kind of latch he liked. With careful claws he ripped a small hole in the bottom. Reaching through, he flipped the hook, pulled the screen open, ducked under, and dropped down inside.

The room was just as it had been except for the empty space before the windows where the two big cages had stood. Dent marks from their stands marked the carpet. He scanned the room looking for a hiding place that Juana could somehow have missed. Though still he found it strange that Ben would have left notebook and phone at home that morning. There was a better chance the killer already had them. Joe couldn’t get it out of his head that Ben had secretly taken pictures that he felt might lead to perpetrator of the street crimes—pictures that Ben didn’t know might lead to his own killer?

In this little square room, could there be some hiding place so small and out of the way that even Juana had overlooked it? She had surely gone over the carpet feeling for lumps underneath. Beside the narrow bed was a little writing desk that served as a night table, cluttered with cough drops, a battery-operated travel clock, a couple of paperback mysteries. Marks in the thin coating of dust described the shape of a laptop and what could be the feet of a small printer. Maybe one of those giveaway color jobs where the company made most of its profit selling cartridge replacements. In the far corner of the room a tiny refrigerator stood beneath a small counter with a bar-sized sink. On the counter were a dozen cans of cat food, a few clean mugs and plates, and a microwave. And now, even with the windows open to air out the lingering stink of cat kennels, another scent touched Joe. He could smell, when he took a good whiff, the whisker-licking aroma of young mice.

Having missed supper, he spared a few moments to stalk the trail, hoping to assuage the hollowness in his belly. Slipping across the room following the mousy enticement, he had doubled back where it was stronger—when a swift small shadow fled past his nose. Damned mouse exploded right past him! Enraged to have missed it, he leaped where the shadow paused for an instant. He missed again, the tip of its tail vanishing beneath the bed. Well, hell!

Bellying under the bed among inert dust mice, he found where the little beast had disappeared. Where the molding was warped, concealing a sizable hole behind the wooden trim.

Crouching to peer in he saw a tangle of chewed-up paper, and the smell of mouse was strong. He was staring at the edge of a mouse nest: torn papers deep and cozy. He tensed when something small stirred within. Hungrily he flashed his paw in, fast as lightning he grabbed—and drew back faster, hissing, pain shooting through his paw.

A half-grown mouse clung to his paw, its sharp teeth sunk deep in his tender pad. The tiny animal glared at him with rage. Joe shook his paw and backed away, the angry mouse clinging.

In all his days, in all his battles with enemies twice his size, from fighting raccoons to enraged dogs, he had never been attacked by a mouse. He stared at it, shocked; he was about to pull the cheeky youngster off his paw and crunch and swallow it. But it was so small and so damnednervy. The stupid mouse had way more courage than sense. Joe bared his teeth over it. One chomp and it would be gone, warming his hungry belly.

In the second that he hesitated, the mouse bit him harder. Angrily Joe swatted the little bastard off with his other paw. It was so bold he couldn’t eat it. It stared up at him, squeaking angrily, then fled back into the hole.

Peering in, Joe prayed the little varmint wouldn’t charge out and grab his whiskered nose. He couldn’t believe the nerve of the creature.

But now the nest was empty, the mouse had vanished. There were no others. Had they run away at his disturbance? Nothing there now but the soft paper bed itself. Joe studied the tangle of chewed-up paper, each piece colored as bright as Christmas wrappings. Tiny scraps gleaming red, green, blue: a nest of scraps as brilliant and shiny as . . .

As brightly colored photographs.

Photographs, diligently chewed into hundreds of pieces, torn to line a rodent’s nest.

Gingerly he reached a paw in, hoping the coast was still clear. Carefully he examined the edges where the mother mouse’s mastication had not been so thorough. She had created a soft bed in the center, but had left the outer portion in larger scraps only lightly torn apart. Joe clawed out a few pieces, some nearly an inch across.

Yes, torn photographs. A shot of green grass with a streak of muddy path. The toe of a jogging shoe, mud-stained. The cuff of black jogging pants. All common items, but views that had, for some reason, stirred Ben to record them.

Once he’d printed them, had Ben hidden them in the hole not thinking about mice? And the mouse, typical opportunist, had begun at once to line her nest. Or had Ben hidden them somewhere else in the room, and the mouse dragged them here to make her nest?

He imagined Juana, in her straight black uniform skirt, having to crouch low, her face to the floor to peer into the opening beneath the warped baseboard. Crouching so low might have put more stress on her mechanical knee than she wanted, and she’d made short work of the search.

How, Joe wondered, do I report the torn photographs without making Juana look bad for missing them? And how, in fact, do I report this at all without hinting at my identity? How many snitches crawl around under beds looking in mouse holes? Why had this supposedly human snitch thought to peer inside a mouse nest; why would he ever imagine a mouse might be hoarding useful evidence?

Maybe he should just forget this one, abandon this particular tip. Were the torn photos worthreporting and thus stirring anew whatever suspicions Harper already had about the snitch? Maybe the department would gather enough information without this very dicey report.

But as he leaped to the windowsill and slipped out of the apartment, latching the screen behind him, he knew he would make the call. This one was too good not to pass on to the chief. Time to head home and call Max again, he thought, smiling. And, listening to his rumbling stomach,Time to hit the refrigerator—leave the mouse, go for the cold spaghetti. Then call Max. Licking his whiskers, he took off across the rooftops.

16

Joe’s second call to Max was disappointing.

After the intelligence that Max had shared with him earlier in the day, he’d thought their relationship had geared up to a new and more intimate confidence.

Not so.

As Joe sat on Clyde’s desk using the cell phone, trying to maintain the heightened relationship, telling Max about the mouse nest, the chief dropped back to his closemouthed demeanor of earlier calls, the one-way snitch-to-cop dialogue that Joe was used to. Well, what could you expect? Listening to Joe’s wild tale of a mouse and torn photos, of course he’d clam up. “What were you doing poking around in mouse holes, what were you doing in Ben’s apartment? That’s a crime scene.”

“The crime tape was gone,” Joe said. “The windows were open. I was standing at the window looking in, wondering if your detectives missed anything, when this mouse ran across the floor. I guess mice take over right away when a place is empty. It had a piece of shiny red paper stuck to its fur.

“I remembered what you said about photographs. That paper was bright and shiny enough to have been chewed off a photo, and it made me wonder. I climbed in the window, had a look under the bed where the mouse had gone, and found the nest.”

Max’s heavy silence made him want to hang up and pretend he’d never made the call. Sitting among the clutter of Clyde’s bills and catalogs, he knew he’d talked himself into a corner.

But then Max said, sounding only slightly reluctant, that someone would investigate the mouse hole, and he thanked Joe and hung up.

Now Joe lay in his tower speculating on what would come from that phone call. Hoping the photos would be worth the effort—his bitten paw still hurt. And then thinking about the one missing fact that Max and Bonnie Rivers knew and that he didn’t. About the real heart of the puzzle: the rest of the information on the San Francisco trial, the facts that he’d missed when he arrived late at Bonnie’s to eavesdrop through the front window.

A murder trial, but whose trial? What kind of murder? And when? He had left Celeste Reece’s house knowing more than when he arrived, but not knowing enough, not knowing what the department knew.

First thing in the morning he’d find out, when he hit Harper’s office. Now, curling among his pillows, looking out his tower windows at the night, he tried to be satisfied with that. At least now his belly was full of supper: cold spaghetti and smoked salmon that he’d scarfed down before he called Max. Yawning, he was dropping into sleep when below in the house, the phone rang. Two rings, then Ryan or Clyde picked up on one of the downstairs phones; he could hear no voice from Clyde’s study. All was silent again and he drifted off, he was down into heavy sleep, into a deep dream, when the doorbell rang and Ryan’s excited squeal jerked him wide awake.