"So what's he going to do?" Dulcie said. "If he finds the bills missing and reports the theft, then we're staking out the wrong mouse hole. But if he's guilty," she said, smiling, "you won't hear a word." She gave Joe a long and appraising stare, her green eyes darkening in the slowly falling evening. "He reports it, you can write him off as a suspect. So what's the big deal?" She touched his nose with a soft paw. "Relax, Joe. Relax and roll with it."
But she gave him a narrow look. "You're all fidgets and claws. You know this whole business is a gamble." She leaned to nuzzle his whiskers. "I'll bet my best wool blanket that you've nailed him, that you've got your thief."
Joe looked at her and tried to shake off the edginess. As he licked the last grain of sand from the Dorriss front yard off his paw, dusk began to thicken slowly around them, a gentler light to soften the rooftops. He looked at Dulcie and Kit reclining on the new pillows in his tower and he had to smile at how much they enjoyed a bit of luxury. And soon beyond the arches of the tower the dark foliage of the pines and oaks began to blur. In the east the gibbous moon began to rise, a lopsided globe far brighter than they would have chosen for this particular trek. When at last darkness deepened across the rooftop shadows, the three cats rose and stretched.
Leaving Joe's tower, Joe and Dulcie dragged the package between them. Hurrying across the roofs from concealing chimney to darkening overhang to sheltering branches, they skirted around second-floor windows where some apartment dweller or late office worker might be idly looking out. They remembered too well how Charlie had first glimpsed them on the rooftops and had heard Dulcie laugh, and how she began, then, to wonder.
Walking home from a later supper, Charlie had looked up to see the cats running along the peaks and had recognized against the bright night sky Joe Grey's docked tail and white markings. Hearing a young, delighted laugh, she had been puzzled. That incident combined with several others had led Charlie to guess the truth about them-but Charlie was an exception. Most humans would not make that leap, would not be willing to entertain such an amazing concept.
Now, above the rooftops, above the hurrying cats the moon lifted higher, increasing its glow and diminishing the size of the shadows. The night wind blew colder. Their hard-won package grew heavier, pulling at neck and shoulder muscles, making their jaws ache. Joe and Dulcie pushed ahead, dodging patches of light, ducking beneath branches, their teeth deep in the heavy packet. The kit trailed behind, unusually quiet, not pressing to help them. Then just across the last street lay the long expanse of the courthouse roof and the roof of Molena Point PD, the rounded clay tiles gleaming in the moonlight.
The chasm of the street was wide. One ancient oak spanned above the concrete, its branches meeting the smaller branches of its counterpart that grew close to the opposite sidewalk. Dragging their burden across the thick, leafy limb, trying not to hang it up among the twigs or to drop it, Joe and Dulcie felt as graceful as a pair of clipped-wing pigeons flopping among the branches. The kit crossed on a branch above them, precarious and uncertain herself as she watched their unsteady progress.
Reaching the courthouse roof, the three cats together hauled their prize the long length of the courthouse, bumping on the round tiles and into the oak tree that stood beside the police department. Now they had three choices.
They could haul the envelope down to the front entry and prop it against the glass door. They could hike it around back, to the locked back door that opened on the police parking lot where Harper and the two detectives usually left their cars, where Harper himself would more likely find it. The time was seven P.M. Watch would change at eight. Most of the officers and the dispatcher would leave by the front door, heading for their personal cars that were parked in the front lot. The first officer out would see the package and retrieve it, and go back to log it in and alert the watch commander. Voila, mission accomplished.
Or, third choice, they could shove the plastic package through the high bars of the holding cell window. It would land behind the barred door, not ten feet from where the dispatcher ruled over the front of the station. Surely she would see it and take it into safe custody-if she didn't hit the panic button.
Looking through the depths of the oak leaves to the cell window, Dulcie was in favor of that route. "We drop it down there, no one outside on the street is going to see it and pick it up."
"Right," Joe said, padding along the branch to the barred window and peering down inside. "Except that the cell's occupied. Can't you smell him?" He twitched his nose, flehming at the scent-but then, that cell never smelled like a flower garden.
Below them, stretched out on the bunk lay a rumpled, sleeping body, his arms flailed out, one hand resting on the floor. A tall, thin guy maybe in his late twenties, with long dirty hair, dirty ragged clothes, and a handlebar mustache. He did not look or smell like someone they wanted to trust with the evidence. Even if he was indeed asleep, the thud of the dropping package would very likely wake him.
"Maybe he's just been arrested," Dulcie said. "Maybe he's waiting to be booked, then they'll take him on back to the jail."
"And maybe not," Joe said. "Do you see anyone down there getting ready to book him?" Beyond the bars of the holding cell door, the area around the dispatcher's counter and the booking counter was empty. They saw only the dispatcher herself in her open cubicle, talking on the radio, apparently to an officer who, somewhere in the village, was just leaving the scene of a settled domestic dispute-always a touchy call.
Dulcie watched the drunk sleeping below them. "I'll take the package in. I can drop down there with it, a lot quieter than we can toss it. I can haul it through the barred door without waking him, without anyone seeing me."
"And what if he isn't asleep? What a story he'd have to tell the cops, to trade for a quick release. 'I know how that package got in here, officer. I saw a cat drop down in here carrying that thing in its mouth.'"
"He's drunk, Joe. They're going to believe him? I can be in there and down the hall to Harper's office before his boozy head clears, before he figures out what he saw."
"And even if no one sees you, Dulcie, when Harper finds the evidence deposited neatly on his desk, what then? He won't ask how it got past the dispatcher? And past his new, state-of-the-art security system? He won't start suspecting one of his own officers?" He stared at Dulcie. "He starts suspecting Garza or Davis, who both know he wants those bills. Then it would hit the fan."
"He's going to ask questions anyway."
"He isn't going to ask questions if it isn't found inside."
"But…"
"Wait," Joe said. "Someone's coming."
And, like Diana smiling on sainted lovers, good luck smiled on the two cats. They watched Officer Brennan coming down the hall, his uniform tight over his protruding stomach.
Below them, metal clanged against metal as Brennan opened the barred door, hustled the drunk awake, and marched him out of the cell. The guy half fell against the dispatcher's counter, staggered against the booking counter, then stumbled away in front of Brennan, down the hall toward the back door and the jail.
The minute he was gone the cats hauled the package through the oak tree's snatching foliage and over the sill and shoved it through the bars. It fell with a hushing, sliding thump just inside the cell door that brought the dispatcher to her feet, startled.
This particular dispatcher was a full-fledged officer. She was armed, and she approached the cell with her hand on her holstered weapon. Above her, the gun-shy cats backed away up the tree. They could just see her studying the packet then staring above her, searching the high, open window. Then she whirled away, back to her station. They heard her quick footsteps, then the building's shrill alarm.