But suddenly just below him four patrol cars took off fast in four directions, racing silent and swift along the narrow streets. Joe knew the sound of the big Chevys that Molena Point PD drove, knew their purr as well as he knew his own. Approaching the scene over the shingles, he paused, waiting and watching, half his mind even now on old Rube, on Clyde and on Snowball.
Clyde would be alarmed when he got home and Snowball wasn't in her bed, when she wasn't anywhere downstairs or in the patio. Eventually he'd look upstairs, where she sometimes went when she was very upset, when the other two household cats took her toys or took all the food. Clyde would find her in the leather chair and would likely take her into bed with him, to comfort her-to comfort each other. Clyde would be feeling low himself, maybe very low, Joe thought forlornly.
Long before the first alarm sounded on the police switchboard, before any call came in to the dispatcher, Max and Charlie Harper had settled in for the evening, replete with their good Mexican dinner. They had made a pot of coffee and brought the two dogs in for a relaxed evening before the fire. Charlie, tired and happy after her pack trip, lay on the rug before the blazing logs, lulled by the fire's crackle, by the faint crashing of the distant surf, and the music from an Ella Fitzgerald CD. The two big dogs lay near her, eyeing her coffee, though they didn't like that bitter brew. Max sat sprawled in one of the two red leather chairs, enjoying the beauty and peace of their home and admiring Charlie's neat butt in her snug jeans.
Above them the ceiling of the great room rose to a high peak that towered over the rest of the house, its cedar rafters perfuming the room. In the daytime the long glass wall offered a wide sweep down across the pastures to the open hills and to the sea beyond and, off to the right, the rooftops and dark oaks of the village. The thin, pleated blinds pulled high and the lamps unlit they enjoyed the night sky. As yet there was no hint of trouble, no faint finger of red touching the sky, no faint, distant sounds of unrest in the small village.
The furnishings of the room were simple, the red leather chairs, the bright primitive colors of the Turkish Konya rug that Charlie had found at an estate sale, the long wicker couch with its fluffy pillows. Opposite the windows, the fireplace wall was faced, floor to ceiling, with round river stones and flanked by tall bookcases. The other two walls of the room were stark white, setting off Charlie's framed drawings of horses, dogs, wild animals, and of the three cats. One wall was broken by a sliding glass door that led to the wide stone terrace; the terrace, in turn, joined the kitchen. Charlie was telling Max about the quarter horse ranch where she and Ryan and Hanni had spent two nights, when Max's cell phone buzzed. "Damn!" she said violently.
"Maybe it's nothing," Max said, flipping the phone open.
The next moment, she could tell by his face that it was the end of their quiet evening. He listened, asked several questions, then rose. Neither said anything. Charlie got up from the floor and kissed him. He hugged her hard, grabbed his jacket and was out the door-gone while she stood there wondering, for the thousandth time, why she had married a cop.
But she knew why.
Pouring another cup of coffee from the pot by the fireplace, she lay down again among the cushions, thinking that she should pull the shades now that she was alone. Thinking she really ought to turn the police scanner on, find out what was happening. But she was far too comfortable to do either. She'd know what was happening soon enough. Rolling over on the rug, snuggling between the two dogs, she said a prayer for Max, as she always did. He would not like knowing that she prayed for him; this was his job. But she prayed anyway. What could it hurt; she couldn't help how she felt, no matter how she tried- and then she began to worry about the three cats.
They'd be right in the middle, you could bet on it, drawn to the crime scene like kids to a fire. Three little cats, so small, three rare little souls, so strangely blessed with human talents, out in the night peering down from the trees or rooftops, keen with predatory enthusiasm for whatever crime was coming down.
Though her prayers might not make anyone safe, and though she would not change the cats any more than she would change Max, Charlie prayed for them all.
8
As Max headed down the hills to the village, their friends listened to the sirens that he hadn't heard from his distant position, and saw the reflections of flames up around the high school, and they paid attention. Max and Dallas would be heading up there, as would their other friends on the force. In the hospital, Wilma Getz woke from dozing before her TV, turned off the set, and listened. The tall, thin, wrinkled woman wished she had the little police scanner she had bought recently for just such occasions, for times when she knew Dulcie would race off into the middle of danger.
Dressed in her own red flannel nightgown instead of the hospital gown that had left her chilled and irritable, Wilma was comfortable enough despite the fact that she didn't like hospitals. Her long, silver-white hair had, until tonight, been bound into a bun in an effort to keep it confined under the cap they put on you before surgery. Now that she had been allowed to wash and blow-dry it, she felt better. Her clean hair lay smooth and comfortable, pulled neatly back in a ponytail.
Reaching for the little mouse that would allow her to raise the back of her bed, she tried to track more precisely the scream of the sirens as they hurried up the hills. Swinging her feet to the floor, wincing at the pulling pains, she made her way to the window, supporting herself on the night table, then along the back of the visitors' chair.
It hurt to raise the Venetian blind. Lifting her arm high and pulling hard sent a sharper pain cutting along her incision. Time to start exercising, get herself back in working order. Her young, enthusiastic surgeon, Jim Hallorhan, had only this morning pronounced her ready to start some serious rehabilitation.
It hurt less to slide the window open. The chill night air felt fresh and good on her flushed face. Her room faced east, away from the village, toward the hills. High up, cutting the blackness, she could see a thin smear of red dancing against the sky, very near the high school. She made out the whirling red lights of the patrol cars and fire rig and what was probably a rescue unit. She prayed that the three cats, if they insisted on racing up there, would keep to the residential rooftops and out of the way. She thought it wasn't a big fire, maybe trash cans or an outbuilding. Very likely the units would quickly get it under control. She had been watching for some time when something else alerted her. She stood still, listening in the other direction, from the village beyond the hall and the opposite line of rooms. Had she heard a shot, faint and muffled?
Crossing the hall, she slipped into an empty room where the blinds were open to the village below, to the dim, narrow streets and little shops that lay snug beneath the leafy canopies. She watched the moving beams of police torches flashing along the faces of the buildings, and shadowy uniforms searching among the shops; farther away along the darkest streets she sensed, as much as saw, occasional swift movement. This was a strange, phantom kind of search. She stood for a long time, making little sense of it. What had gone down? Burglary? Robbery? Murder? There would be nothing on TV until it was over. She stood worrying about the cats, knowing that if they weren't already down there, they soon would be. She wished she had her binoculars. She tried to spot Joe Grey's stark white markings stalking the roofs; he was so much easier to see than her own Dulcie or the kit.
Perhaps it had been a break-in that the officer in charge had decided to handle with a quick canvassing search, while the perps had successfully fled or were hiding nearby. She could only pray the cats kept clear. After a lifetime of considerable control over the criminals she handled, she felt helpless as a civilian. Helpless, indeed, when the action involved the three cats.