Cat Seeing Double (29 page)

When Ryan
left the job at noon with Rock, heading for the PD, she had more stowaways than she'd accommodated coming down from San Andreas. Hidden under the tarp in the truck bed the three cats crouched as warm and cozy as three football fans snuggled under blankets in the bleachers awaiting the big game.

Despite the hard bouncing of the truck, Dulcie and the kit purred and dozed; but Joe crouched tense and excited, ready to scorch out the minute Ryan parked, and slip inside the station. If their luck held, if the timing worked, this might be the game of the season.

He had placed one phone call just after breakfast. Using the extension in Clyde's bedroom to dial Ryan's cell phone, where she worked in the attic above him, he had suggested that today at noon might be the optimum time to have that talk with Curtis Farger, and he had shared with Ryan his take on the matter.

“Have you wondered why Rock pitched a fit, the day you took him to the Landeau cottage?”

“Yes, I have,” she'd said softly. She didn't ask how he could know about that. Like Max Harper and Dallas,
she kept her answers brief, and she listened.

“Davis and Green will be bringing Marianna in from San Francisco around noon,” Joe said. “Would it be instructive to let Rock have a look at her—kill two birds with one…stone?”

She was silent, as if thinking about that.

“Couldn't hurt, could it?” Joe said.

She remained quiet. But then when she spoke, there was a lilt of excitement in her voice. “I'll be there at noon,” she said softly. Then in a faintly seductive voice, “You know a lot about this case. I can keep a secret, if you care to tell me who you are.”

Joe had hit the disconnect, pushed the headset back on its cradle, and left the house by his cat door. Slipping along beneath the neighbors' bushes, he'd followed a route away from the house that he well knew was invisible from the room above.

And now as he rode into the courthouse parking in Ryan's truck, he was highly impatient, tense to fly out. Ryan found a parking slot just to the right of the glass doors, one of those spaces marked
Visitors Only, Ten Minutes,
where the cars nosed up to a wide area of decorative plantings. Stepping out of the cab, commanding Rock to heel, she locked the door behind her. While she stood waiting to be buzzed inside, Joe dropped from atop a toolbox into the bushes. Behind him, the kit and Dulcie would take another route. As Ryan moved inside, Joe slipped in behind her and under the booking counter. Rock rolled his eyes at the tomcat, but didn't make a wiggle.

The shelves under the counter were stacked with rolls of fax paper and computer paper, cartons of pens and
pencils, and all manner of forms, neatly arranged. Slipping in between boxes of printer cartridges and computer disks, he crouched where he could see both the front entry and the holding cell, but could pull back quickly out of sight. Curtis sat in the cell looking glum. He had apparently been brought up where he could speak freely, out of earshot of Gramps. Joe could hear from above the ceiling the faintest rustle of oak leaves as Dulcie and the kit swarmed up like a pair of commandos to the high, barred window that looked down into the cell.

But where the sun shone in against the cell wall, silhouetting the oak branch, it silhouetted, as well, two pairs of feline ears, sharply pricked. Joe prayed Dulcie would see the reflection, that she and the kit would back off.

Ryan stood outside the cell with Rock waiting for an officer to unlock the door. Rock stared in at the boy, whining. And beyond the glass doors of the front entry, a police unit pulled into the red zone. Talk about timing! Joe could see, behind the unit's wire barrier, the golden-haired passenger. He watched Detective Juana Davis and Officer Green emerge from the car observing the area around them, then quickly unlock the back door and order Marianna out.

She slid from the car maintaining her grace despite being shackled by handcuffs. Immediately Davis marched her toward the glass doors. The dispatcher hit the admittance button. Joe glanced to the cell's telltale shadow again, and saw that the two pairs of pricked ears had vanished. The officers and Marianna were hardly inside, with the door locked behind them, when all hell broke loose. A roar of anger greeted Marianna,
and a leaping gray streak went for her, held back only by Ryan, crouching with the leash across her legs. The dog fought the leash snarling and barking. Joe glimpsed, in Ryan's eyes, a terrible hunger to let the dog loose. She held him as he fought her trying to get at Marianna, ignoring her command to sit.

Marianna did not back away. “
Hold
!” She snapped at him. The dog froze stone still, his lips drawn up over killer teeth.

“Rock, sit!” Marianna commanded.

Rock sat, but he kept snarling, torn between hatred and what he'd been trained to do. So, Joe thought. So they had indeed found Rock's owner. Ryan stepped to the dog's side, taking hold of his collar.

But a catch of breath made Joe look past the rigid tableau to the holding cell where Curtis Farger stood at the bars, his face white, his dark eyes burning not with anger but with fear. The boy's knuckles were white where he clutched the bars.

Marianna-Martie, drawn by that hush of breath, turned. The look between Marianna and Curtis was so filled with hatred that Joe Grey backed deeper among the boxes, shivering as if their mutual rage were daggers flying or lethal gases ready to explode.

The keys, Joe thought. Curtis
did
take those keys for Marianna to copy. Somehow he did it and brought them back again. And now…now her look has warned him, Don't talk, Curtis. Don't dare tell them…

At the sound of Rock's barking, Garza and Harper had appeared in the hall with several officers. The whole station seemed to be gathering, crowding down the hall, all the officers watching the dog, Martie, and
Curtis. Only Davis and Green remained focused totally on their prisoner. Rock, though still sitting as he'd been commanded, was tensed to leap, his gaze fixed on Marianna's throat.

“Down, Rock. Back and down.”

Now, he defied her. He backed one step, but he wouldn't lie down for her. He stood snarling as, beside him, Ryan turned to look at Curtis.

She said no word, just looked. Curtis looked back, his eyes huge.

“Whose dog is this?”

“Her dog. He's
her
dog.” His voice was unsteady.

“Shut up, you little bastard!”

“Hers. She tried to train him like the others, like those rottweilers, but she only made him mad, made him turn on her.” Curtis looked terrified. “She beat him, beat him bad. She shot at him with a shotgun. You feel his skin, the little lumps? Buckshot where she shot him to run him off the place because half the time he wouldn't mind her. He wouldn't attack for her so she didn't want him anymore.”

Marianna swung around, fixing on Detective Garza. “You have no right to allow this dirty little boy to say such things. I still have rights. My lawyers will take you apart, officer. Get that little bastard out of my sight, get him out of here.”

Dallas looked at Curtis. “How do you know who owns him?”

“I…Someone I know works up there. I went with him sometimes. I saw her try to train Rock, her and that real-estate guy. It takes two to train a guard dog. That Williams was the…I don't know what to call it. He wore the padded suit.”

“The agitator?” Dallas said.

Curtis nodded.

Marianna was very white. “I've heard enough of this. If you insist on arresting me—and you will ultimately be very sorry for that, officer, then I insist on being shown to my cell or whatever you call it, and afforded some modicum of privacy—if your little hometown jail can offer such a thing.”

“Larn was good friends with her?” Dallas asked Curtis.

“I
said
…” Marianna began. But Davis gripped her arm in a way that silenced her.

“He was all over her,” the boy said. “Her husband never knew, he was gone half the time. Hu—my friend saw Williams sneaking around.”

Dallas said, “Why didn't you tell me before, who owned the dog?”

“Afraid you'd take him back to
her
.”

“And what about the sheriff?” Dallas asked Curtis. “Did he know where the dog belonged?”

“He knew. He didn't want him taken back there and penned up. She'd have killed him. So Sheriff just…” Curtis shrugged. “Sheriff keeps his mouth shut. Maybe he hoped Ryan would take him. Then when you didn't,” he said, looking at Ryan, “and my gramps told me…” He stopped speaking, and his face reddened. “When I decided to hitch a ride home to Mama, I brought Rock with me. Well, he wanted to come. Couldn't drive him away if I'd tried. Couldn't leave him there.”

“And your gramps wanted you to come back,” Ryan said softly.

“No! I told you, I decided to come back to Mama.”

“Then why didn't you go on down the coast to your mama?”

“I called her to come get me but she wasn't home, she didn't answer the phone. I thought to stay with Gramps for the night and call her again.”

“Did you take my keys?” Ryan said. “Did you give them to Marianna?”

“I want my lawyer
now!
You can't question that boy like that. I want…” Davis twisted her arm, hard.

Curtis glanced at Marianna and looked away. He nodded. “Yes,” he said softly. “I got them for her.”

“Do you know what she did with them?”

Curtis shook his head. “She said she'd keep her mouth shut about…certain things, if I'd get the keys.”

Ryan, keeping Rock close to her, had moved nearer to Curtis. She stood just beside his door, her back to the gathered officers and to Marianna. Rock stuck his nose through the bars, licking Curtis's hand. Looking around at Dallas, Ryan nodded. Dallas nodded to Davis, and the detective led Marianna away, down the hall toward the jail. Ryan stayed focused on Curtis. She spoke quietly, as if they were alone.

“Would you testify for me, Curtis? This is a murder charge. I could be facing life in prison. Or worse.” She reached through the bars, to touch his hand. “If Marianna killed my husband, she should be convicted. If she is, she'll be locked up for a long time where she can't get at you.”

She looked at him deeply. “Would you tell a jury the truth? That you took my keys for Marianna? Things…might go easier for you, at your grampa's trial,” she
said softly. “No one could promise such a thing, but the judge or jury might look on you more kindly, if you've already told the court the truth about Marianna.”

Curtis looked back at her. “Would you keep Rock? For good? For your own dog?”

“I promise I'll keep him for good. For my own dog.”

“Could I visit him?”

“You could visit him,” she said softly. “Or he could visit you.”

Curtis nodded. “If you'll promise to keep him, I'll tell…testify.”

“Please understand, Curtis. I want you only to tell the truth.”

Curtis nodded. “If you'll keep him, I can do that.”

And Joe Grey heard, from high above him, the faintest mewl echoing through the roof, the kind of murmur Dulcie or the kit made when they got emotional, a plaintive cry too soft for human ears. A tenderhearted mutter that made him frown with male superiority.

Licking his own salty whiskers, the tomcat did not consider that he was emotional.
He
was only wired, only congratulating himself that his timing had worked out for optimum results. Worked out in a manner that seemed to him to cap both cases—testimony to help hang Martie Holland, certainly. But in the process, perhaps a change of heart in Curtis Farger? A greater willingness to tell all he knew about the church bombing as well as about Martie Holland?

Perhaps, Joe Grey thought. He hoped so.

But in the case of young Curtis, the only proof would be time—and what Curtis decided to do with that time.

For a long moment, the uncertainty of a boy's life,
heading either for good or for the sewer, left Joe a bit testy, as if he had a thorn in his paw.

And it was not until later that night that Joe began to look with equanimity upon the unanswered questions regarding Curtis Farger. When, as Clyde and Ryan sat in the expanded attic watching the stars through the newly cut windows, Joe began to unwind and take the longer view.

Dulcie and the kit lay on the rafters looking out at the sea, their paws and tails drooping over. But Joe prowled among the beams looking down on Clyde and Ryan where they sat on the floor leaning against the newly constructed wall, sipping coffee. Rock lay sprawled beside Ryan, deeply asleep, his coat silver in the faint light.

Moving restlessly along the heavy timbers, Joe tried to work off the tangle of thoughts and events that crowded inside his head, as irritating and insistent as buzzing bees. Maybe he needed some down time, needed to slaughter a few wharf rats, some uncomplicated bit of sport to get centered again, now that the human rats were locked up.

But when he glanced across to Dulcie, she too was restless, the tip of her tail twitching, then lashing. Joe, leaping from rafter to rafter, brushed against her and led her along the center beam and up into his small, private tower that rose above the new structure.

The cat-sized retreat was still only framed, its six sides standing open to the night. It would have glass windows that Joe could easily open. Its hexagonal roof was fitted with pie shapes of plywood, and shingles. There would be cushions later, and a shelf to hold a bowl for fresh water.

Sitting close together beneath the little roof, Joe and Dulcie watched the ocean gleaming beyond the dark oaks. They were mesmerized for a long moment by the endless rolling of the white breakers, by the sea's beating thunder. Nearer to them humped the village rooftops, the cats' own exclusive world, its angles and crannies and hiding places far removed from human problems and human evils—though Dulcie, as usual, could not divorce herself from human needs.