The other officer was Lieutenant Sacks, a young rookie cop whose dark curly hair and devilish smile drew the women. Sacks had recently married, the heavily made-up blonde with the nice ankles and red shoes had to be his new wife. Joe thought her name was Lila. Absently he nosed at Clyde’s poker chips until the neat round stacks fell over, spilling chips across the table.
“Oh, Christ, Joe. Do you have to mess around?”
He gave Clyde an innocent gaze. Clyde’s second card was a four of clubs, and Joe wondered what he had in the hole. With Clyde’s luck, probably not much. He tried to think what he’d done on poker nights before he understood the game. Just lain there, playing with the poker chips. The smell of the feast, which had been laid out onthe kitchen counter, was making his stomach rumble. Clyde always served fancy, in the original paper plates and torn paper wrappers. He tried to remember his manners and not dive into Clyde’s loaded plate, which sat on the table just beside him, but the smell of smoked salmon made his whiskers curl. Watching the bets, he studied the two women.
Charlie Getz was Clyde’s current squeeze, a tall, liberally freckled redhead, friendly and easy, the kind of woman who did most of her own automotive repairs and didn’t giggle. She wore her long red hair in a ponytail, bound back, tonight, with a length of what looked like coated electrical wire in a pleasant shade of green. Charlie tossed in her chips to raise Harper, and absently petted Joe, then handed him a cracker piled with smoked salmon. Across the table the little blonde watched this exchange with distaste.
He tried to eat delicately and not slop salmon onto the table, but when he took a second cracker, this time off Clyde’s plate, the blonde shuddered, as if he’d contaminated something.Who the hell are you, to be so picky?
Though the fact did cross his mind that he’d recently been gnawing on a dead rabbit and had, moments before that, bitten and ripped at a flea-infested rat.
Sacks bet his king, and Lila folded on a six of hearts. On the last card, Clyde dealt himself another four. Across the table, Max Harper’s lean, leathery expression didn’t change. There ensued a short round of bluffing, then the hole cards came up and Harper took the pot on a pair of jacks. Charlie made a rude remark, rose, and filled her plate. She prepared a plate for Harper, too, and set it before him, then fixed a small plate for Joe, a nice dollop of crab salad and a slice of smoked salmon cut up small so he needn’t make a mess, so he wouldn’t have to hold it down with his paw and make a spectacle of himself chewing off pieces. Charlie did understand cats. He feasted, standing on the table beside her, thoroughly enjoying not only the fine gourmetic delicacies, but the scowling blonde’s disgust.
When he had finished, he gave Lila a cool stare and curled up next to Charlie’s chips, ducked his head under one paw, and closed his eyes. He was dozing off when Charlie said, “Oh, hell,” and tossed her three cards toward the center of the table.
Joe reared his head to look. Harper had a pair of aces showing. With Harper’s luck, probably his hole card was an ace. Clyde started to bet, glared at Harper, and changed his mind. He folded. Sacks and Lila folded.
“Bunch of gutless wonders,” Harper said, gathering in the few chips. “What kind of pot is this?” He did not turn over his hole card, but shuffled it into the deck.
“His luck won’t last,” Sacks said. “It’s the full moon-screws up everything.” Sacks rose and opened the refrigerator, fetched five cans of beer, and handed them around.
Lila gave her bridegroom an incredibly sour look.“Honey, that’s such a childish idea. I wish you wouldn’t talk like you really believe in that stuff.”
Harper looked at her.“Believe in what stuff?”
“In these silly superstitions-that the full moon changes your luck. The moon can’t affect people. The moon-”
“Oh, it can affect people,” Harper told her. “You’d better read the arrest statistics. Full moon, crime rate soars. Moon’s full, you get more nutcases, more wife beatings, bar fights.”
Charlie, petting Joe, had discovered his wounds. She sat examining them, parting the fur on his paw and leg, holding his head so she could see his cheek. Anyone else tried that-except Clyde-he’d get his hand lacerated. But for Charlie, he tried to behave, waited patiently as she rose, opened the kitchen junk drawer, and fetched the tube of Panalog. Returning to her chair, she began to doctor him, drawing from Lila a look like Lila might throw up.
“The presumption is,” Harper said, “that the increase of crime is caused by the pull of the moon, same as the moon’s pull on the ocean causes the tides. That people emotionally or mentally unstable lose what little grip they have on themselves, go a little crazy, teeter on the edge.”
Lila studied Harper as if he had suddenly started speaking Swahili.
“It’s the same with animals,” Charlie said. “Ask any vet. More crazy things happen, more cat fights, runaway animals, dog bites during the full moon.”
Lila looked at them as iftheycame from the moon. Joe had never seen a more closed, disgusted expression. The woman had no more imagination than a chicken. He wanted badly to set her straight, tell her how he felt when the moon was full-like he was going to explode in nine different directions. The full moon made him wild enough to claw his way through a roomful of Doberman pinschers.
But he couldn’t speak; he could tell Lila nothing. She wouldn’t buy it, anyway. She stared at Charlie and Max Harper as if they were retarded. “You can’t really believe that?”
“Come down to the station,” Harper said. “Take a look at the stat sheets, check them with the calendar. Right now, today, full moon. Seven domestic violence, five dog poisonings, and one little old lady brought in a human finger.”
Lila shuddered.
Joe raised his head, watching Harper.
Clyde said,“A finger?”
“Nettie Hales’s motherin-law called the station.” Harper sampled the crab salad from the plate Charlie had fixed for him. “The Haleses live up the valley, a little five-acre horse farm up there. Her terrier brought the finger in-just a bare bone, dirt-crusted.”
Harper tilted his beer can, took a long swallow.“The old lady didn’t know where her dog had been digging. Said he’d brought the bone in the house and was chewing on it.” Harper laughed. “Gumming it. Old dog doesn’t have a tooth in his head. Still, though, even gumming it didn’t please the lab. Bone was fractured, and covered with dog slobber. Don’t know what kind of evidence it might have destroyed.”
Lila’s blue eyes had opened wide. “You mean it might be a murder? Al, you didn’t tell me there’d been a murder. You didn’t tell me anyone was missing.”
Sacks gave his new bride a sour look.“The finger is old, Lila. Old and dark and brittle. And when do I ever talk about that stuff?” He glanced uneasily at Harper.
Lila grew quiet.
It was Joe’s turn to study the blonde.This woman isn’t only a snob, she isn’t too bright.He didn’t realize he was staring until Clyde began to stroke his back, pressing down with unnecessary insistence. He lay down again and shuttered his eyes, tried to look sleepy.
Clyde said,“What did the lab come up with?”
“Nothing yet. That finger’ll be sitting under a stack of evidence until Christmas. They’re so backed up, the place looks like a rummage sale. The court’s putting all criminal investigations on hold, waiting for the lab. Victims’ relatives can’t even collect insurance until the lab is finished, can’t do anything until they get a death certificate. Thirty investigators working the county lab, and still they can’t stay on top.”
Harper sipped his beer.“That Spanish cemetery up the hills, it may have come from there-that old graveyard on the Prior place. It’s only a mile from the Haleses’ house.” For Charlie’s benefit, because she hadn’t lived in Molena Point long, he said, “It was part of the original Trocano Ranch from Spanish land-grant days. Family members were buried at home, tradition to be buried on family land. Even after the land passed down to the children and grandchildren, the family still buried their dead there. The funerals-”