“You’re such a romantic. I think it’s over money, pure and simple.” Harry folded her arms across her chest. “And the mutilation of the bodies is to keep us away from the real issue.”
“Which is?” Josiah’s eyebrows raised.
“Damned if I know.” Harry threw up her hands.
“No. Damned if you do, because he would kill you—according to your analysis. According to my analysis you’re perfectly safe.”
“Let’s hope you’re right.” Officer Cooper smiled up at Josiah.
37
Lolling under the crepe myrtle behind Maude’s shop, Mrs. Murphy, Tucker, and Pewter waited for Harry to be released from her obligatory socializing.
Pewter batted at a red ant scooting through the grass.“Black ants are okay but these little red ones bite like blazes.”
“Better than fleas.” Mrs. Murphy lay on her back, her four legs in the air, tail straight out.
“Last year was the worst, the absolute worst.” Tucker pricked her ears, then relaxed them.“Every week I was drenched with a bath, doused with flea killer, the worst.”
“For me it was flea mousse. Harry doesn’t like bathing me, for which I am grateful. But, Pewter, this mousse smells like rancid raspberries and it’s sticky. Rolling in dirt, grass, even rubbing against the bark of a tree does no good. This year I’ve been moussed once.”
“Market embraces the concept of the flea collar. The first week the fumes were so intense my eyes watered. After that I figured out how to wriggle out of them. He’s so slow it took four lost flea collars before he gave up.”
“Do you like humans?” Tucker addressed Pewter.
“Not especially. A few I like. Most I don’t” was her forthright reply.
“Why?” Mrs. Murphy twisted her head so she could better observe Pewter. She stayed on her back.
“You can’t trust them. Hell’s bells, they can’t even trust each other. Take a cat, for instance. If you wander into another cat’s territory, you know it right away. Unless there’s an important reason to be there, you leave. The lines are clear. Nothing is clear with humans, not even mating. A human being will mate with another human being for social approval. They rarely sleep with the person who’s right for them. But humans are much more like sheep than cats. They’re easily led and they don’t look where they’re going until it’s too late.”
“They aren’t all like sheep,” Tucker responded.
“No, but I agree with Pewter—most of them are. Something terrible happened to the human race way back in time. They separated from nature. We live with a human who has some connection to the seasons, to other animals, but she’s a country person. They’re few and far between. And the further humans move from nature, the crazier they get. In the end it’s what will destroy them.”
“I don’t give a damn if they die, every last one. I just don’t want to go with them, if it’s the bomb you’re talking about.” Pewter slashed her tail through the grass.
“The bomb’s the least of it.” Mrs. Murphy shook herself and sat up.“They’ll kill the fish in the rivers and then the fish in the oceans. They’ll wipe out more and more species of mammals. They won’t have good water to drink after they kill the fish. They won’t even have good air to breathe. If you don’t have an adequate oxygen supply, how can you thinkclearly? Worse, they have no sense of when and how much to breed. Even a squirrel can read a bad acorn harvest and hold back breeding. A human can’t read harvests. They keep reproducing. Do you know there are over five billion humans on the earth right now as I speak? They can’t feed what they’ve got and they’re breeding more.”
“Plus they’re breeding sick ones because they won’t cull.” Tucker’s eyes were troubled.“Sick in body and sick in mind. If I have a weak puppy, I’ll kill it. It’s my obligation to the rest of the litter. They won’t do that.”
“Do it! My God, they scream murder, and when they have to raise taxes to pay for the criminal acts of the sick in mind, or pay for the increased care of the physically weak, they pitch a fit and fall in it. They just won’t realize they’re another animal and the laws of nature apply to them too.” Pewter’s pupils expanded.
“They think it’s cruel. You know, Pewter, you are right. They are crazy. They won’t kill a diseased newborn but they’ll flock by the millions to kill one another in a war. Didn’t World War II kill off about forty-five million of them? And World War I axed maybe ten million? It almost makes me laugh.” Mrs. Murphy watched Harry and Officer Cooper leave Maude’s shop by the back door.“I don’t much care if they die by the millions, truth be told, but I don’t want Harry to die.”
Pewter trilled, a sound above a purr.“Yeah, Harry’s a brick. We should make her an honorary cat.”
“Or an honorary dog,” Tucker rejoined.“She says that cats and dogs are the lares and penates of a household, the protective household gods. Harry’s big on mythology but I fancy the comparison.”
Harry and Officer Cooper walked over to the crepe myrtle.
“A kitty tea party.” Harry scratched Pewter at the base of her tail. Tucker licked her hand. “Excuse me, a kitty and doggie tea party. Well, come on, troops. Back to work.”
38
Bob Berryman prided himself on his physical prowess. Stronger in his early fifties than when he played football for Crozet High, he’d grown even more vain about his athletic abilities. Time’s theft of speed made Berryman play smarter. He played softball and golf regularly. He was accustomed to dominating men and accepting deference from women. Maude Bly Modena didn’t defer to him. If he thought about it, that was why he had fallen in love with her.
He thought about little else. He replayed every moment of their time together. He searched those recollections, fragments of conversation and laughter for clues. Far more painfully, he returned to the railroad tracks today. What was out here halfway between Crozet and Greenwood?
Immediately before her death, Maude had jogged this way. She took the railroad path once a week. She liked to vary her routes. Said it kept her fresh. She didn’t run the railroad path more frequently than other jogging routes, though. He backtracked those also, with Ozzie at his heels.
Kelly and Maude had never seemed close to him. He drew a blank there. He reviewed every person in Crozet. Was she friendly to them? What did she truly think of them?
A searing wind whipped his thinning hair, a Serengeti wind, desert-like in its dryness. The creosote from the railroad tracks stank. Berryman shaded his eyes with his hand and scanned east toward town, then west toward the Greenwood tunnel.
She used to joke about Crozet’s treasure, and given Maude’s thoroughness, she’d read about Claudius Crozet. The engineer fascinated her. If she could only find the treasure she could retire. Retail was hard, she said, but then they shared that thought, since Berryman moved more stock trailers than anyone on the East Coast.
It wasn’t until ten o’clock that evening, in the silence of his newly rented room, that Berryman realized the tunnel had something to do with Maude. Impulsively, driven by wild curiosity as well as grief, he hurried to his truck, flashlight in hand, Ozzie at his side, and drove out there.
The trek up to the tunnel, treacherous in the darkness on the overgrown tracks, had him panting. Ozzie, senses far sharper than his master’s, smelled another human scent. He saw the dull glow at the lower edge of the tunnel where dappled light escaped through the foliage. Someone was inside the tunnel. He barked a warning to his master. Better he’d stayed silent. The light was immediately extinguished.
Berryman leaned against the sealed tunnel mouth to catch his breath. Ozzie heard the human slide through the heavy brush. He dashed after him. One shot put an end to Ozzie. The shepherd screamed and dropped.
Berryman, thinking of his dog before himself, ran to where Ozzie disappeared. He crashed through the brush and beheld the killer.