"The trial hasn't started yet. How do you know-"
"Go to sleep. With the amount of evidence the department has, what's to worry? Much of that evidence," Clyde said, reaching to lightly cuff him, "thanks to you and Dulcie and the kit."
That compliment had so pleased and surprised him that he'd curled up, purring, and drifted right off to sleep.
But then, all through the meeting in Gedding's office, which amounted mostly to friendly handshakes and smiles, and then later hearing practically a confession from Stubby Baker, he still found it hard to shake off the fear-hard to shake the feeling that this was not a good world with some bad people in it, but a world where any decency was temporal. Where any goodness was as ephemeral and short-lived as cat spit on the wind.
In the cell below them, the lawyer had left, and Joe was prodding Dulcie to do the same when Officer Wendell came along the hall, pausing at Baker's bars.
Wendell looked like he'd slept in his uniform. He spoke so softly that the cats had to strain to hear. Joe glanced at the tape. It was running.
"Mahl called," Wendell said.
"So?" Baker snarled.
"So if you involve him in this, you're dead meat. Said he has people out and around. If you make a slip, you're history."
"Oh, right. And what about you?"
"There's nothing to pin on me."
Baker smiled.
"What?"
Baker lay back on his bunk looking patently pleased with himself. Wendell turned a shade paler-making Joe and Dulcie smile.
Dallas Garza had plenty of evidence to tie Wendell to the murders and to the attempt to frame Harper: Wendell did not file Betty Eastman's report that she had seen Captain Harper the afternoon of the murder. Wendell did not file Mr. Berndt's report about Crystal's grocery-buying habits, and he did not put Dillon's barrette into evidence until Garza asked him about it. And no one even knew, yet, that Wendell had been in Crystal's apartment looking for Dillon the night that she escaped.
If there was anything Joe Grey hated, it was a cop gone bad.
But now, he thought, glancing at Kathleen's little tape recorder, now the department had additional evidence against Officer Wendell.
"Very nice," he whispered, winking at Dulcie. And they leaped into the tree and down, and went to hunt rabbits.
28
IT WAS LATE that afternoon that the cougar returned to the Pamillon mansion, prowling among the broken furniture and rampant vines, flehmening at the smell of dried human blood. Investigating where he had downed and bitten the two-legs and where the loud noises had chased him away, he watched down the hill, too, where a small cat crouched, looking up at him, thinking she was hidden among the bushes. It was not magnanimity that kept him from dropping down the hill in one long leap and snatching the kit and crunching her. He was sated with deer meat; he had killed and gorged, and buried the carcass under the moldering sofa. At the moment, his thoughts were on a light nap on the sun-warmed tiles of the patio.
Earlier, before he hunted, prowling farther down the hills, he had sat for some time watching the gathering of two-legs around the fences and buildings of the ranch yard, fascinated by their strange behavior. The sounds they made were different than he had heard before from the two-legs, noises that hurt his ears. He had watched the gathering until he grew hungry. He had studied the horses in the pasture, but they would give him a hard battle, and the two-legs were too close. Trotting away higher into the hills where the deer were easy takings, he had killed and fed.
Now, leaving the carcass buried in the parlor, and glancing a last time where the small cat thought itself invisible, he strolled onto the Pamillon patio and stretched out in the sun.
The kit watched the cougar as he arrogantly put his head down and closed his eyes. She watched until he seemed to sleep deeply. When she was certain his breathing had slowed, she crept up the hill, closer.
Peering out from the tall grass, she wondered.
Could she touch the golden beast? Could she reach out a paw and touch him, and reach out her nose to sniff his sleek fur?
But no, she wouldn't be so foolish. No sensible cat would approach a sleeping cougar.
And yet she was drawn closer, and closer still, was drawn right up the hill to the boulders that edged the patio.
From behind a boulder she looked at him for a long time.
And she stepped out on the tiles.
She lifted her paw. The cougar seemed deeply asleep. Dare she approach closer? Hunching down as if stalking a bird, making herself small and invisible, she crept forward step by silent step.
Claws grabbed her from behind and jerked her around, deep and painful in her tender skin. A pair of blazing amber eyes met her eyes-and a terrible fear filled the kit.
"Go down, Kit! Go down now, away from here! Away from the lion! Down the hills at once!" Joe hissed. He belted her hard, boxed her little ears. "Go away through the bushes. Stay in the bushes. Don't run-sneak away slowly."
The kit slipped away without a word, Joe Grey behind her, the cats keeping to the heavy growth, listening for the lion-and knowing he would make no sound. Sensible fear drove Joe Grey. Terror and guilt drove the kit.
When they were far away, they ran. Down and down the hills they flew, and under the pasture fence, which the cougar could leap like a twig. And across the pasture into the hay shed, two streaks flying up the piled bales.
High up, beneath the tin roof, they looked back across the pasture.
Just beyond the fence, the cougar stood on a boulder looking across the green expanse straight up into the hay shed, staring straight at them.
The kit began to shiver.
The cougar started down along the fence, watching and watching them.
But the cats and cougar were not alone. Jazz music started up again, from the party in the ranch yard. The lion stopped, watching the crowd. The cats saw him flehmen, tasting the strange smells. He laid back his ears at the smells and the loud talk and laughing and the jazz music; he stood only a moment, puzzled and uneasy. Then he wheeled and was gone again, up the hills into the forest.
He left behind a strange emptiness. One moment he had glowed against the hill huge and golden. The next moment, nothing was there.
The kit looked and looked, unblinking.
Joe Grey nudged her. "Did you want to be eaten?"
"I didn't. He is the king, he wouldn't eat me."
"He would eat you in one bite. Crunch and swallow you whole. First course in a nice supper."
"The first course," Dulcie said, leaping up the hay bales. "And all your roaming ways and yearning for another world would end. You and your dreams would be gone, Kit. Swallowed up the way you swallow a butterfly."
The kit sat down on the hay, looking at the two older cats. She was indeed very quiet. She looked at Joe's sleek, pewter-colored face, at the white strip down his face, wrinkled now into an angry frown. She looked into Dulcie's blazing green eyes, and she lifted a paw to pat Dulcie's striped face and peach-tinted nose.
The bigger cats were silent.
She turned away to look down at the stableyard, at the tables and chairs all set about, at the long table covered with food and wonderful smells rising up, at all the people gathered talking and laughing and at the banners whipping in the breeze.
WELCOME HOME, MAX
HAIL TO THE CHIEF, MAY HE REIGN FOREVER
THE FORCE IS WITH YOU
Everyone looked so happy and sounded happy. Someone shouted, "Open another keg," and the kit watched it all, forgetting her fear and shame, and filling up with delight. What a fine thing was this human world, what a fine thing to be part of human life. She wanted to be a part of everything. She wanted to be down there. She wanted to try all the exciting food. She wanted to be petted and admired. She licked Dulcie's ear, forgetting that she was in trouble, and leaped away down the hay and into the middle of the celebration.