"Fallout?" Jerry prompted.
"Fallout. The calls questioning my motives, saying I was excusing the girl. I was just trying to save her!"
"Amen," said Nick. Count on Nick to be super-supportive.
"I guess it was just such a shocking situation," Matt went on. "You don't realize it at the time, while you're in it. You're just trying to think how you can save the situation. Do the right thing. I mean, who would imagine that a girl would call a radio counseling line while about to deliver a baby? I mean, she sounded so young and innocent--"
"They all do," Nick put in, about to say something more.
"It's not your fault," Damien said.
"No, of course not," Jerry added. "You did the right thing. It doesn't matter what other people think."
"I guess," Matt said, "that they think I was excusing what she was thinking she had to do, instead of getting her to do the right thing. Anyway, it's enough to make me sick of even trying.
I'm giving up this radio gig. It's too . . . morally ambiguous. It's just not clear what the right thing to do is anymore."
"Nonsense!" Nick sounded angry. "You're being way too hard on yourself. She's the one in the morally ambiguous position, not you."
"But isn't that blaming the victim?"
"There's way too much wiggling out of responsibility by calling it 'blaming the victim,' "
Damien said. "That's the trouble these days. The center cannot hold. No one can hold to the center. We're all a bunch of wishy-washy wanna-be do-gooders. We've given up on the eternal verities."
"What about eternal realities?" Matt wanted to know. He took a deep breath. "I was just trying to be unjudgmental--"
"That's just the trouble!"
Matt glanced up. Damien was furious with him.
"You . . . wimp! You can't take people at their least. You must demand their best. What is wrong with the world? She was an unwed mother! She was ready to destroy her child rather than admit her guilt."
"That's not as bad as being ready to destroy another adult human being rather than admit one's sense of guilt."
"You. You . . . child. You don't know what it used to be like when right was right and wrong was wrong. Everything's middle now. Wiggly, weaseling-out middle ground. No fasting for Lent, no mortal sin, no Penance in no Confession. Not even Extreme Unction. 'Sacrament of Reconciliation?' What kind of wimpy theology is that?"
Before Matt could answer, an eerie wailing drifted in from the hall.
"What is that?" Jerry asked.
Paul just got up and went to check it out.
"Maybe lost souls in limbo," Norbert added with a nervous laugh, "in need of some old-time religious intolerance."
The last thing Matt needed now was comic relief.
Chapter 63
Witness for the Prosecution
Busting out of motorcycle stir is not easy.
Miss Midnight Louise and I tumble to the asphalt finally, serving as a landing zone for our
"third wheel."
"I do not know, Pop," Miss Louise says. "This one is pretty dazed. We might have been better off with one of the Beanie Babies. You know, we could have made like puppet-masters and talked for it."
"Just being here will make the difference. Come on. You hoist up one side, and I will hoist up the other. Now we have to break into the building, great!"
"A glass door," she notes as we arrive. "Terrific. Do you know much these things weigh?"
"At least they weigh less than l, according to certain sources,"
I say pointedly. "Opening it ought to be a cinch for a buff babe like you."
Miss Louise snorts in a most unladylike way. "Then l am for your usual modus operandi when you wish to get into someplace."
"What is that?"
"In this case, a ghostly wail ought to do it, especially in triplicate."
"I am too pooped to wail."
A razor-sharp claw reminds me of the power of the feline voice.
So we set up an ungodly caterwauling.
In time, of course, the door opens. It always does.
The doorman, a tall, portly guy with a surprised expression, stands aside as we stride in three abreast: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Miss Midnight Louise and I swagger forward (all right; we are still a bit wobbly on our pins thanks to that motorcycle ride, so it is more like a stagger). Between us is our secret weapon: Wilfrid Orth, recovered from his coma, and fresh from several days' private nursing duty at the vigilant paws of Miss Midnight Louise.
His tiger coat looks more like a tortie's; not a stripe is straight.
And he tilts a bit to the left like a bum pinball machine. But he walks inexorably into the open space made by the circled chairs and the seated men in them.
Miss Louise and l hang back. This is Wilf's big moment.
He looks around at the first human faces he has seen since being given a would-be fatal blow by one of them.
He is not a four-pound pooch. He cannot be trained to lift a leg and linger a perp on command. He does not have a perky little topknot and long fluffy ears. And at the moment, he is a mess.
But he is still a cat, and he possesses the infallible feline instinct for the human in the room least likely to welcome his presence. He reacts with the swift skill of a seasoned predator.
He takes a couple of running steps and launches himself at the lap of a white-haired man dead ahead.
It is not his fault that his target, at first frozen immobile like he has seen a ghost, stands up and backs away screaming as Wilfrid's ragged form comes bounding at him.
The chair tips over, but Wilfrid is already airborne.
It is not his fault that the object of his attentions has moved and removed the lap that was his original target. Wilfrid lands at chest-level, and, having nothing to catch onto, hangs eight (as the surfers describe their toe-clinging technique) onto the guilty man's shirt.
There is a quite a ripping and tearing sound as Wilfrid slides slowly to the ground.
The man is screaming and babbling as the other men rush to attend--or is it detain?--him.
Mr. Matt Devine, being a sensible person of our acquaintance, ignores the human hullabaloo and rushes to us as we rush to attend Wilfrid. He has obviously lost a lot of nail sheaths.
"Louie? Louise?" He seems otherwise speechless, and we certainly cannot comment, other than with a serious expression.
Luckily, the cavalry comes in at this point: Lieutenant C. R. Molina and a Mutt and Jeff pair of detectives. Mr. and Miss Detective go to the aid and custody of the killer.
Lieutenant Molina, being a seasoned veteran, comes to where the action is.
"Did you get enough on tape?" he asks her.
"Plenty, especially at the surprise climax. Did you hear what he was screaming? 'You're dead.' Proves he was on the crime scene."
"I do not see why, and how did these cats get here?"
"Hitched a ride in your saddlebags. We saw them disembark from outside."
"And just let them come in and disrupt things? Why?"
She points at poor Wilfrid, who is sitting ignored and dejected at the center of the empty circle. "That is the missing and presumed dead cat of Monica Orth. Apparently the killer swatted him during the attack and left him for dead. A neighbor lady found the cat and called animal control, but by the time the van came out the next day, the corpse was gone. We found signs of digging in the back yard, and presumed, ah, someone had buried the cat.
But when we excavated, there was nothing beneath the disturbed ground but insects."
"So . . ." Mr. Matt looks a bit drained as well. "The cat came here and freaked out---"
"Lieutenant?" A personage as petite as my Miss Temple is standing behind the group, looking like a schoolgirl who just got all As on her report card. "The suspect not only has an awesome set of fresh cat-scratches on his torso, he has scabs and inflammation from a set of old cat scratches."