At first they heard only Max’s voice, but then Charlie laughed. Comfortable husband-and-wife talk followed, implying no one else was present. Pushing inside, they saw the two were not alone.
Max Harper was in uniform this morning, not his usual lean western shirt and jeans. He sat at his desk alternately going through a stack of files and entering information on the computer. Charlie sat at one end of the leather couch texting on her phone, though such electronic preoccupation was not Charlie’s habit. Her kinky red hair was freshly brushed, smoothed back in a ponytail. Her jeans and pink sweatshirt smelled of fresh hay and clean horses. She wore dangly gold earrings this morning, and had changed her work boots for a pair of handsome leather sandals, which meant that she and Max were probably headed out to lunch.
Detective Dallas Garza occupied one of the leather chairs, reading a report, his tweed sports coat thrown over the other chair, his polo shirt open at the collar. His smooth, tan face was clean-shaven, his short black hair neatly trimmed. He glanced up at Joe and Dulcie, his dark Latino eyes amused, as usual, at how the cats made themselves at home. Only occasionally did Dallas watch them with an uncertain frown.
Though no one in the department knew the cats could speak, they all knew, well, the phone voices of their phantom snitches. Max and the detectives had learned to trust implicitly those anonymous called-in tips; they took the information and ran with it, put that intelligence to good use. No one imagined the informants were their sleek, four-pawed visitors, the department’s favorite freeloaders.
So far, the relationship between officers and cats was comfortable and efficient. During the cats’ anonymous messages, no officer in the department cross-examined the caller or asked his name. They’d learned to trust the information they were given. If the cats dragged a stolen clue to the station and left it, with a phone call to alert that it was at the back door or inside a squad car, there were no questions. “Found” evidence, useful Visa bills, or a “lost” cell phone? The detectives used what they got and then generated their own follow-up investigation, digging out background facts that would stand in court.
If ever in the future the cats were careless and were caught in the act, discovered talking on the phone, Joe didn’t want to think about the consequences. Their well-oiled and effective deception would be down the tubes, the work they loved destroyed in one careless moment. A cop was all about facts; his thinking was no-nonsense and meticulous. Clues, hints, anonymous tips, a good detective might put those together in new and creative combinations and come up with the missing piece. But no cop believed the impossible.
Hopping on the couch beside Charlie, Dulcie stretched out across her lap. Joe looked up into Charlie’s lean, freckled face; Charlie always had a happy look even when life, for the moment, took an ugly turn. She petted them both, her green eyes amused at their private secret. She didn’t glance up when Max’s phone buzzed, but continued to stroke Dulcie and Joe. She did look when Max said sharply, “When? What time? Put Davis on.”
He listened, scribbling notes on a printout that he’d inserted in a yellow pad. “You have his belongings? Davis, is his wife there? Stay with her, and see her home. See that she has someone with her.” He listened again, then, “I’ll talk with the coroner.”
He hung up, looked over at Dallas. “Merle Rodin’s dead. Cerebral contusion, from the blow he took. You want to go on over, finish up the paperwork while Davis takes care of the wife, gets her statement, makes sure she has friends or family around her?” This part of police work was never pleasant. They did what they could, to ease the pain that nothing could ease.
The Latino detective rose and pulled on his jacket. He gave Charlie a brief hug, and left the office, and Max looked across at Charlie, filling her in. “Lab has the brick that may have hit Rodin. A brick from the border of the flower bed, with what looks like bloodstains. Dr. Alder says there are particles embedded in the scalp that could be the same material.” Now it was the coroner’s and the lab’s job. Charlie’s hand was tense, poised on Joe Grey’s shoulder.
She said, “He could have fallen on it? Or that street scum picked it up and hit him? That poor old man.” Charlie was stoic about most village crime, or appeared to be. The cats knew she often concealed her distress from Max—he had problems enough without worrying about her, too. He didn’t need a distraught wife. But these senseless attacks on frail citizens had left her enraged, feeling helpless—as frustrated as the department when the attacks continued and they had no viable clue yet, to give them a lead.
“The blood type on the brick,” Max said, “matches Rodin’s. But it will take a while for the DNA.” The lab in Salinas was always backed up. Max turned off his computer and rose. The cats waited until he and Charlie left for a quick lunch, then they hit the chief’s desk.
Pawing through the stack of files, Dulcie took the corner of Max’s yellow pad in her teeth, pulled it out from under the folders, and opened it with her claws.
Beneath pages of notes was a printed list of the seven attacks, with Max’s penciled notes in the margins. The victims’ individual files, with additional information, would be kept secure on the computer. This page needed no securing; most of this—until the attack on Rodin—had already been in the local paper, on local radio or TV. There had been seven previous victims including one death when banker Ogden Welder died in the hospital. Merle Rodin was the eighth mark, and the second to die. Max’s new notation gave the hour, location, and date. Cause of death would wait for the coroner’s report.
One interesting fact, new to the cats, was that three of the victims had only recently moved to the village from San Francisco; and that one had been vacationing there, taking a week off from his job at San Francisco General Hospital as a physician’s assistant.
“So, San Francisco vectors in,” Dulcie said. She cut a look at Joe, knowing what his take would be. Joe didn’t believe in coincidence. If you dug long enough you could usually claw out a connection. The tabby gazed hungrily at Max’s computer, thinking of the victims’ files. With cool speculation, she reached a paw.
Joe stopped her with a quick swipe of claws. “If Evijean barges in here, finds us alone before the lit screen, you want to guess what would happen?”
Dulcie smiled a crooked smile, but she jumped down. They’d have to wait until Max or one of the detectives was into the program, some moment when they could lie on the desk idly washing their paws as they shared departmental information.
Or wait until one or two officers stopped by Joe’s house after his shift, maybe for a few hands of poker with Max and Clyde. Max would talk freely in the Damen household, as would Ryan’s Uncle Dallas. Dulcie looked at Joe. “How long do we wait for a poker game?”
Joe shrugged, he wasn’t hopeful.
Dulcie said, “Talk to Ryan, she’ll get something going.” This wouldn’t be the first time Ryan would conduct behind-the-scene assistance—she was deceptively casual when she eased Clyde into an unplanned poker night for Joe’s benefit: Joe’s dark-haired, blue-eyed housemate did love a conspiracy.
But now, “I don’t know,” Joe said. “As hard as she’s working, and the cranky mood she’s in, I’m not sure she’s up for a poker night. Tekla Bleak, that woman with the remodel, she’s driving Ryan crazy. New complaints every day, foolish and arbitrary changes. Ryan comes home at night as snarly as a possum in a trap.”
They were quiet as two officers came down the hall. When they’d passed on by, Joe dropped from the desk and peered out toward the lobby. No sign of Evijean—maybe she was sitting at her desk, hidden by the counter. They made a dash for the front door as Officer Brennan came in herding a young man before him, unwashed and smelling of whiskey.