10
MAX HARPER'S words kept ringing in Joe's head. If there was some trace of Dillon, that the dogs couldn't find, it's beyond what any human could detect.
Had Harper been unwittingly asking for other-than-human assistance?
Not likely. Not Max Harper.
But as the two cats emerged from the grass at the edge of the Pamillon estate and trotted beneath the chain barrier, Joe's mind was filled with questions. The scarred horseshoe, Harper's boot prints, the anonymous phone calls to Harper and then to Gedding.
Behind them down the hills, the red village rooftops and dark oaks shone in a bright patchwork against the blue sea-a chill winter day, clear and sharp and filled with potential.
Slipping in among the fallen walls, their whiskers sliding across broken bricks, threading between overgrown rosebushes whose thorns caught at their fur, they knew that something had drawn them here. A scent left undetected? Some small clue overlooked? Something that puzzled them and pulled them back.
Springing up the trunk of a broken oak tree, they studied the massy growth below them, the jungle of tall, wild broom and upturned tree roots. Vines woven across a rusted wheelbarrow. A wrought-iron gate standing alone, slowly being pulled down by vines. A world as impenetrably green and mysterious as Rima's haunted Green Mansions, in the book that Wilma and Dulcie liked to read.
Seeing nothing below them to draw their specific attention, they dropped down again among the foliage where the afternoon light filtered to jade.
Scenting along through the bushes, they could detect no human trail. Only wild green smells and animal smells, filling every pocket of air. They had to rear up, every few steps, to see their way.
Where the ancient adobe bricks had been dished out by fifty years of wear, rainwater was cupped, and the cats drank, lapping among the leaves. Down beneath crushed leaves and broken foliage, the earth was a mass of crisscrossed hoofprints, boot and shoe prints, small animal tracks and the tracks of the hounds that had come searching.
Hours before the police teams arrived, before anyone knew that the Marners were dead, the civilian search party had ridden here, trampling any amount of evidence, so that later when Harper's people went over the land, they could record only fragments.
Joe and Dulcie came out of the weeds onto a broken terrace so covered with rubble that it was impossible to tell where the rotting timbers of the veranda ended and the decaying floor of the house began.
Carved mantels stood half devoured by creeping vines. Fragments of torn and curling wallpaper hung from broken walls, as delicate as butterflies.
Prowling the parlor through forests of nettles that thrust between the rungs of broken chairs and curtained crippled bookcases, one wondered why the locals hadn't long ago taken every piece of furniture. Vines covered a capsized table to form a den that smelled of raccoon. Scraps of water-soaked, mouse-gnawed sofa cushions had moldered into mush beneath a mass of yellow flowers. All around them, they saw the old house being sucked back into the earth from which it had sprung.
They found no footprints small enough to belong to Dillon Thurwell. They could detect no scent of Dillon. But Joe smelled the cougar, and warily they watched the shadows. And then, near the stink where the lion had sprayed, they caught the scent of the child. Dillon's scent, leading across the parlor and up the broken stair to the nursery.
The morning glories had arrived upstairs long ago, to festoon a cane-backed rocking chair and to crawl up the faded wallpaper across cartoon rocking horses, the vine's heart-shaped leaves and tendrils fingering out through the broken windows. Morning glory crept across the nursery fireplace that stood alone where the walls had fallen into landslides of timbers and bricks.
The fireplace stank of wet ashes spilling out onto the floor. Across the ashes led a trail of small, neat pawprints that continued beneath the fallen wall.
The cats were scenting among the rubble when they heard voices, someone in the garden below.
Padding to the edge of the broken floor, they watched two young women approaching. "Kate," Joe said softly. "Kate Osborne."
"What's she doing here?" Dulcie gawked at the other young woman. "That beautiful white hair. I've seen her before, in the village."
"I think that's the woman Kate works for. Hanni something- this detective's niece. Maybe they came down with him. Detective Dallas Garza." Joe sat down, licking ashes from his paw. "Maybe it was Kate who called Clyde last night. He got all excited. Shouted, 'When did you get in town? Where are you?' I was half asleep. It's all right if he wakes me in the middle of the night. But let me scratch an itch or wash my face, jiggle the bed a little, and it's a federal case."
"So when did Kate come down?"
"Last night, I guess. He made a date for breakfast-was off like a flash this morning, all polished and scrubbed, nearly forget to make my breakfast. And he's meeting her tonight for dinner. Didn't give a thought to Charlie. Apparently didn't wonder if Charlie would be jealous."
"It would do Charlie good to be jealous," Dulcie said darkly.
"Clyde called Charlie this morning before he left the house; I think Kate asked him to. Sounded like Kate wants to see Charlie's drawings. I didn't want to shove my ear in the phone; Clyde can be so bad-tempered in the morning."
Below them, the white-haired woman had fished a camera from her leather tote and was taking pictures of the ruined gardens and house. Kate sat idly on a broken wall in a patch of sunshine, her short blond hair as bright as silk. She was dressed in pale faded jeans and a creamy sweater; Kate always wore cream tones or off white. Hanni's sweatshirt was bright red, her earrings long and dangling.
"The walks could be repaired," Hanni said. "This is a lovely patio, the way the old walls rise around it." She kicked away some rubble to look at the brick paving. "This part looks good. And maybe even some of the old building could be kept and reinforced. And if these plants were pruned and cleaned up-a gardener could do wonders."
"Hanni, I'm having trouble keeping my mind on this, with the murder and the missing child."
"It's terrifying, I know. But there's nothing we can do, Kate. At least at the moment. The department will work overtime- every department in the country has the information, every search team is looking for the child. And Dallas will be down in the morning."
"I keep thinking of Max Harper, suspected of murder. Keep thinking of Dallas investigating Harper as if he were a criminal. It makes me feel sick. Makes me want to rip and claw whoever did this." Kate looked surprised at her turn of speech, looked embarrassed. "I… To think that someone has done this terrible thing, has killed and kidnapped people, in order to hurt Harper…" She looked hard at Hanni. "There can be no other explanation. Don't people know that!"
"I'm sure they do. But the department has to do it by the book, Kate.
"This kind of tragedy goes with the territory. For every cop who does a good job, there are a hundred guys out there wanting to destroy him, and not caring who else they hurt."
Kate sighed. "And Lee Wark's out there somewhere. He hates Harper."
Hanni shook her head. "The whole state's looking for Wark. He'll have left the country by now."
"I hope. Harper was very kind to me when Jimmie hired Wark to kill me, when I was trying to get away from them. This new city attorney-what's he like? How will he treat Harper?"
"I don't know anything about him. I haven't been down to the village for over a year." Hanni removed a roll of film from the camera and inserted another. "Not to worry, Dallas will get to the truth. He won't let anyone railroad Harper."