Cat Under Fire (18 page)

The dog snarled. Dulcie froze. He came flying off the truck, straight at her.

But he flew past, leaped at the photographer. Knocked him backward, sent the camera flying. Before the officer could roll away, the dog was at his face. The officer beat at him and fought; the dog was all over him, it would kill him. Dulcie launched in a flying leap onto the dog's back and dug in. Raking and clawing, she grabbed a floppy ear and clamped down.

The dog whirled shaking his head. Loosing the officer, he plunged and bucked, snapping at her. She clung, raking. His teeth gnashed so close she smelled his meaty breath. One more twist and he'd have her. Clawing his face, she leaped away, ran.

Speeding up the hill with the dog behind her, she heard Stamps shout, “Get back here, get the hell back in this truck.”

And Varnie screamed, “Leave the damn dog.”

The dog was gaining.
Why did I do that
? She fled in panic toward a stand of thick brambles, dived beneath the matted growth.
What the hell did I do back there? Beg to be eaten alive. That young cop could have shot the damn dog
.

Except the dog had knocked him off-balance, was at his throat, could have severed the jugular before the man drew his gun.

The dog plunged into the brambles behind her. She streaked away beneath the branches, and he crashed behind, breaking through—he couldn't see her, but he could smell her. She ran, dodging.

The bushes ended.

She crouched, panting, at the edge of the open hill. He was nearly on her, panting, seeking.

There was nothing above her but a vast plain of short grass. No building, no real tree, only a few spindly saplings.

She bolted out and up the hill, racing for her life.

Her paws hardly touched the ground, skimming over the matted grass. Fear sent her flying uphill. There was no shelter above her, only a few tiny trees, hardly more than tall weeds. And behind her the dog gave a burst of speed, snatching at her tail. She jerked away, the tip of her tail blazing with pain. Scorched by terror, she desperately angled toward the nearest sapling, wondering if it would hold her. Leaping for the thin trunk, she swarmed up.

She was hardly above him when the dog hit the tree, bending it. She clung only inches above his snatching mouth, and the tree snapped back and forth under his weight, the little trunk whipping as if it would break. She tried to climb higher but the thin branches bent. The bark was slick, the trunk too small to grip securely. The tree heaved. Its dry pods rattled, and the smell of bruised eucalyptus filled the wind. The dog leaped so high his face exploded at her, teeth snapping inches from her nose, and she could not back away.

She slashed him again, bloodied him good—his muzzle streamed blood, his ear was torn.

But she couldn't stay here. And if she leaped away, out of the tree, there was nowhere to run. All was open grass. Except, up the hill, maybe fifty feet above her, a drainpipe protruded from the hill. She could see its open end, oozing mud. She couldn't see inside very far, just the mouth of the drain, the slick-looking mud, the
three smaller hills which clustered above it, probably grass-covered leavings of earth from when the drain was dug. The opening was plenty big enough for her, but maybe big enough for the dog as well. If she was caught in there with the dog crowding in behind her…Not a pleasant thought.

But she had no choice. The tree was going to break or bend to the ground under the beast's lunging weight. Assessing the distance, she scrabbled among the thin branches to get purchase, praying she could hit the hill far enough ahead for a successful fifty-foot sprint.

She crouched, every muscle taut, adrenaline pumping her heart like a jackhammer.

She shot over his head out of the tree, hit the ground running. He was on her, lunging to grab her. She spun and raked his face and rolled clear. Streaking for the pipe, she bolted in inches ahead of him and kept running, didn't look back, fled deep into the blackness, slipping in the mud, terrified he'd squeeze in behind her.

Deep in, when she didn't hear him behind her, she turned around in the narrow tunnel to look back.

The end of the pipe was blocked. The dog had his head in and one leg. He was trying to roll his shoulder in.

But he wasn't going to fit. If he pushed harder, he'd be stuck for sure. Smiling, she trotted back down the pipe toward him.

The sight of her sent him into a frenzy. He fought to push inside, his bloodied mouth slavering, his eyes blazing with rage.

She ran at him, hissing, raked him in the face, brought fresh blood flowing. Uselessly he fought to get at her, as she backed away. She turned, switched her tail at him, and moved deeper into the pipe.

Something was bothering her, a picture in her mind kept nudging for attention, she kept seeing the three mounds above at the base of the larger hill, two of them round, the third hill clipped off sharply, as if sliced straight down by a gigantic ax.

She shivered. Touched by images impossible to understand, she sat down in the mud, staring away into the darkness, seeing the hills from her dream.

Everything was the same, the dark tunnel, the sense of tight walls pressing in, threatening to crush her. Even the slime beneath her was the same, turgid and sour-smelling, just like the mud in her dream.

Drawing a shaky breath, she padded deeper in, drawn on shivering into the darkness.

Moving warily, ears tight against her head, tail low, she crept deep into the confining pipe, pulled in, swept by a powerful chill. And something lay ahead, something waited for her within the tunnel's black reach.

Far ahead something pale lay in the mud. She could see it now, and she wanted to turn and run.

As she drew closer, trying to understand what she was seeing, the pale form began to take shape. It was absolutely still, a vague scattering in the mud. She smelled death. She drew nearer.

Before her lay a little heap of bones.

Thin little bones, frail fragments.

The little skeleton lay on a mound of silt that had gathered against a stone. The bones were gnawed clean, the legs and ribs disarranged as if rats had been at them. A few hanks of pale fur clung to the shoulder blade. The skull was bare of flesh. The curved cranium, the huge eye sockets, the brief insert of the nose were readily identifiable. Within its mouth the tiny incisors and daggerlike canines were unmistakably feline.

She stretched closer, studying the small, nearly hidden object which lay beneath the cat's skull attached to its gaping collar.

The collar stood up like a hoop, circling the tiny vertebrae of the dead cat's frail neck, a collar that had once been blue but was now faded nearly to the color of mud. Attached to it was a small brass plate, the three words engraved on it were smeared over by mud. With a shaking paw, she wiped the mud away. She read the cat's name,
and the name of its owner. Crouching over the skeleton, she studied the other object lying in the slime. As she leaned to look, her whiskers brushed across the cat's skull.

A wristwatch had been buckled securely around the cat's collar.

Even through the coating of mud she could see how heavy and ornate it was, could see a portion of the gold case flanked by two gold emblems like the wings of a soaring bird. She sniffed at it and backed away, stood looking at the pitiful remains of the white cat and at the last link in the puzzle of Janet Jeannot's death.

She shivered, but not with chill. She was hardly aware of the tunnel and the slime and the dog that still fought to crawl in, struggling to snatch her. All her attention, all her amazement, was fixed on the white cat. He had led her here, to the last clue.

And not only had the white cat sought to show her this final evidence; he had, in coming to her in dream, told her far more.

He had reached out to her from beyond a vast barrier. From somewhere beyond death he had spoken to her. When she dreamed of the white cat she had touched an incredible wonder, had sensed for a little while a small part of a dimension closed to ordinary vision. She had glimpsed what lay beyond death.

She was so engrossed she didn't realize the light in the tunnel had brightened. When she turned to look, the mouth of the culvert was empty. The dog had freed himself and had gone—or he was crouched outside licking blood from his face, waiting for her.

Feeling strong, almost invincible, she headed for the mouth of the tunnel.

Stepping from the pipe, she studied the bushes, the hills falling away below her. She reared up to look above.

The dog was gone.

She sat down just inside the mouth of the pipe, wondering. Strange that he would give up so easily. She cleaned herself up, sleeking her fur, thinking about the
white cat. About Janet's death. And about the wristwatch—Kendrick Mahl's watch—that ostentatious piece of jewelry which matched exactly the watch in Mahl's newspaper picture.

How did the watch get fixed to the white cat's collar? Did Janet put it there, maybe just before she died?

The picture was taken only days before the opening; Mahl had the watch then. Did he lose it the morning of the fire? Was he waiting in the studio when Janet came upstairs? Did he let himself in as she prepared her work, laying out her welding equipment, filling the coffeemaker?

Or had he been there already, perhaps the day before, losing his watch then?

She licked the wounded tip of her tail, removing the congealing blood, smoothing the raw skin where hair had been pulled out—and puzzling over Mahl's watch. He would not deliberately have left it in Janet's studio; he had no business there.

Licking her tail, she found that none of her little vertebrae was broken. She was lucky, the way that dog grabbed her, that half her tail wasn't missing, like poor Joe's—though he seemed to get along fine with a docked tail, seemed as proud of that short appendage as if he were some kind of fancy retriever, an elegant feline bird dog.

For herself, she would be lost without her tail. She took great pride in that dark, mink-colored, silky, tabby-striped extremity. Before ever she could speak human language, she had talked with her tail as much as with her eyes and her twitching ears. Her repertoire of tail dances could convey a whole world of needs and emotions to a perceptive viewer. She'd detest some debilitating injury to that elegant appurtenance.

Well her dear tail was intact, her wound was only a scratch. It would heal, the hair would grow back.

Mahl killed her
, she thought nervously.
Janet's last act on this earth was to buckle Mahl's watch around Binky's collar and somehow chase him away, make him run away from the burning building
.

She thought about the white cat's appearing to her in dreams long after he was dead, showing her things she could not know in any other way—-extending to her a heady promise. The promise there would be something else, another life after her own small bones had shed their earthly flesh. Promise of
Joy
, as Wilma had read to her once,
Joy, different from ordinary pleasure. The brightness of another kind of light…from within another dimension
.

She rose, stepped out of the pipe to the fresh green grass, sat down in the thin wash of sun fingering down across the hills behind her. Wrapping her tail around herself, she sat looking down the falling hills and up to the mysterious sky, and a deep, pure happiness sang through her, pulsing and shaking her.

It was there that Joe found her, sitting happily in the sun rumbling with purrs.

Under the hill, deep within the dark and slimy drainpipe, Joe crowded beside Dulcie, looking down at the little pile of bones, the frail skull, the faded collar and its metal plate, the mud-caked watch—Mahl's watch.

He looked for a long time, said nothing. Then, “Too bad. Really too bad it can't be used as evidence.”

“Of course it can.” Her green eyes blazed. “Why couldn't it? Why else would it be on Binky's collar unless Janet put it there before she died, unless she buckled it on during the fire, chased Binky away when she couldn't get out herself. It has to prove Mahl set the fire, why else…”

“But Dulcie—

“If Mahl stole the paintings, he could have lost the watch then. He was in a hurry, he didn't know it was gone.”

“But this is all conjecture.”

“That Monday morning when Janet found the watch, she knew Mahl had been there. She had to wonder what he was doing in her studio, but maybe she saw nothing disturbed. The racks were filled with paintings. Easy not to notice the edges had thumbtacks instead of staples. It was early, she wanted to finish the fish sculpture, was anxious to start work. Maybe she dropped the watch in her pocket, meaning to find out later what Mahl had been doing there.”

“But even if…”

“Let me finish. She made coffee and drank some. As she stood looking at the sculpture, she began reacting to the aspirin that Mahl had put in the pot. She didn't know what was wrong, maybe she thought she was just sleepy. Maybe she drank some more coffee, trying to wake up. She turned on her tanks to get to work.

“The minute she turned on her oxygen, it exploded. By now she was dizzy and confused. As the fire blazed up, Binky ran to her, frightened.”

“But even if that's the way it happened, we can't…”

“She was weak, faint. Maybe she tried to crawl away. Maybe Binky came to her, he must have been terrified, confused by the fire. They clung together.”

“Dulcie…”

“Then she remembered the watch—Mahl had been there, he was responsible for the explosion. She was so dizzy, sick, maybe hurt by the explosion, too. She dug in her pocket, buckled the watch on Binky's collar. With a last effort she chased Binky away; he fled out the window.”

She paused, searched his face, lifted a paw. “It could have happened that way.”

“But even if it did, we can't tell that to the police.”

“Why ever not? There's no reason…”

He laid his white paw on her small, brindle paw. “How does a human informant, talking to Captain Harper on the phone, tell him that the evidence is fifteen feet inside a drainpipe—a pipe no human could get into, or could see into?”

“But I…But we can't move Binky's bones and move the watch, we'd destroy evidence.”

She turned to lick her shoulder. “I could say I was walking my poodle, that he stuck his nose in the pipe and I…”

“And you—the human informant—could clearly see fifteen feet back in the dark, could see this little pile of bones.”

“Maybe I had a flashlight.”

“So with your light, you saw the bones. And you deduced from what you saw that this was Janet Jeannot's cat. That it was wearing the killer's watch attached to its collar, a watch invisible from the mouth of the pipe.

“With her flashlight, this human informant read the plate on the collar that isn't visible. So of course she knew it was the skeleton of Janet's lost cat.

“Don't you see, Dulcie? There's no way you can tell Harper this.”

“But we have to tell him. This is the only conclusive evidence that Rob didn't kill her.”

Joe glanced away toward the mouth of the tunnel. Dulcie's theory did make sense. What other explanation was there for the presence of the watch buckled around Binky's collar?

“Maybe,” Dulcie said, “maybe if we could find the missing paintings, Mahl's fingerprints would be on them. Maybe then we wouldn't need the watch. But,” she said, “if the watch isn't important, if it can't be used for evidence, then why did Binky bring me here?”

He didn't want to talk about that. The idea of a cat beyond the grave leading them here shook him; such thoughts thrust him head-over-tail into speculations far too unsettling.

Dulcie rose. “Come on, let's go sit in the sun, I'm sick of the mud and stink and of having to look at poor Binky.”

But at the mouth of the drainpipe she paused, looking out warily.

“No danger,” Joe said, pushing on out. “He's gone. By now that mutt's locked in the pound.” He stretched out in the hot grass. “I was hoping one of those cops would shoot the beast, but no such luck.”

“So what happened? Tell me what happened.”

“I just got settled above the second mark, up in that eucalyptus tree beside the stakeout car, when I heard shouting up the hill.

“I could see out through the branches some kind of disturbance, and I figured you were in trouble, or soon would be. I took off for the Hamry house.

“When I got there, Varnie was in the truck, goosing the engine, and Stamps was running up the hill, chasing the dog.

“Varnie took off in the truck—it looked like he was going to leave Stamps to take the rap. But the other two surveillance cars were already moving. They whipped in from both ends of the street to block him. Cops jerked him out of the truck, there was a lot of confusion. They handcuffed him and locked him in a police car, and three cops took off running after Stamps.

“The young photographer was torn up pretty bad, his face and throat bleeding. Two cops were patching him up, trying to stop the bleeding. I didn't hang around, I caught your scent mixed with the dog's scent going up the hill, and I took off again.

“All the way up the hill his scent was mixed with yours, and I smelled blood. And then I found the grass all torn up, around that little tree, and the smell of you and the dog and the blood, and I thought the worst.

“I kept running, following his track, then way above me I saw that the cops had cornered Stamps and were cuffing him. There was no sign of the dog.

“I had nearly reached them, trying to stay out of sight, when down they came, forcing Stamps ahead of them and dragging the mutt by its collar. I heard one of them say something about rabies, about locking up the mutt for observation. Of course they'd do that after he mutilated one of their finest.

“There was so much blood on its muzzle I was sure you were dead meat. The higher I got up the hills, the more certain I was.

“But then I came up the next rise and here you were. Sitting in the sun purring like you didn't have a care.”

She smiled, and licked his face. “So they're all in the slammer. Varnie. Stamps. The dog.”

He grinned. “You did a number on the mutt.”

She smiled modestly, gave him a speculative look. “Joe, even if we could find the paintings and prove that Mahl took them, that doesn't prove he killed Janet. Only Mahl's watch, if Janet's fingerprints are on it, could…”

“Mahl could say he'd given her the watch, maybe the night of the reception.”

“Why would he give her his watch? He hated Janet.”

Joe sighed. “There's no point in talking about it, there's no way we can get that evidence to Harper. Even if we could, what would he tell the court? He just happened to find a dead cat, and this watch was buckled to its collar? He just happened to look up that drainpipe?

“And why, if she was conscious enough to buckle the watch around the cat's collar, couldn't she get herself out of the burning studio?”

“You don't want to see how it might have happened,” she said irritably.

“I'm just looking at it the way the police would, Dulcie. And the way an attorney would. Janet wasn't trapped under anything heavy, and she had no broken bones. If she could buckle the watch on Binky, why couldn't she get out—crawl through the window?”

“Don't forget that when her van exploded, it turned that fire into an inferno.” She licked her paw. “Janet was weak from the aspirin, sick and weak, trying not to faint. Her doctor's testimony—he said aspirin would make her pass out. She was just able to move her hands, buckle on the watch.”

“Maybe,” he said doubtfully. “But another thing—would Janet be welding, with Binky in the studio? Would she light her torch with her cat so close? His long fur…”

“I'm guessing she usually made him leave before she actually got to work. Maybe she'd taught him to go on outside, out the open window. But that morning he didn't go out, he was there when the fire started. She
was disoriented, maybe didn't realize he hadn't gone out until he ran to her after the explosion.”

She shivered. “Janet sent Binky to safety with the evidence. And Binky—Binky came to me. Now,” she said softly, “now we have to help.”

The morning had grown bright, the sun warm on their backs. “If we can find the paintings,” she said, “then Harper will pay attention to the rest of the evidence.”

Joe just looked at her. She was so hardheaded. “And where are we going to look for the paintings? Don't you think Mahl would have taken them back to the city that night?”

“He had to be in a hurry, he had only a few hours to get down here, switch paintings, load up Janet's canvases, stash them somewhere, and get back to San Francisco, to the hotel. San Francisco is huge,” she said. “Would he have time to hide them somewhere in the city? Don't forget he lives miles north, across the bridge.” She gave him a clear green look. “Maybe it would have been faster to hide them in the village.”

“Sure. Right here in his Molena Point condo.”

Mahl had kept the condo after he and Janet were divorced; he used it on weekends, and had seemed to enjoy running into her in the small village.

“If we can get into the condo,” she said patiently, “maybe we can find some receipt for a warehouse or locker. The receipt for Charlie's rental locker has the name and the locker number on it. Coast City Lockers, up on Highway One.” She nuzzled his neck. “We could try. We got into the gallery, that wasn't hard. So we can get into Mahl's condo.”

Joe looked at her a long time, then rose and prowled up the hill above the buried drainpipe. Pausing on the tallest of the three little hills, he cocked his head, studying the mound and the way it nestled up against the big hill behind.

Below at the mouth of the pipe she sat in the sun
watching him, curious—she had no idea what he was up to, but she could almost see the tomcat's wily mind ticking away, turning over some wild idea.

From the little hill, Joe smiled. “Go up the tunnel, Dulcie. Stand beside Binky and yowl—scream like the devil himself is tickling you.”

“Do what?”

“Sing, baby. Make a ruckus, scream and wail—sing like I sang to the Blankenships.”

She cocked her head, let her eyes widen. She smiled. She vanished within the tunnel, running.

And atop the little hill, Joe bellied down, his ear to the earth, listening.

He heard her, her voice louder than he'd imagined. Down there her yowling song echoing along the pipe must be loud enough, even, to wake poor Binky. He followed the sound beyond the little mound, where the earth curved down again, against the larger hill. Pausing to listen, he soon pinpointed her exact location, and there he clawed the grass away, inscribing a large ragged X.

When she joined him, racing up out of the tunnel, he was still picking up little stones from among the grass, carrying them in his teeth to drop them into the X. She helped him, pressing the stones down with her paw deep into the earth, constructing a sturdy hieroglyph.

And then, finished, they headed down the hills to pay an unannounced visit to the weekend apartment of Kendrick Mahl.