A Matter of Malice

by Thomas King

  Thumps got on his hands and knees and looked under the cabinet. Nothing. Then he shoved the broom handle under the cabinet and wiggled it around. Nothing.

  “I don’t think she’s here.”

  “Hell.” Beth put the bucket down. “Help me move the cabinet.”

  Behind the cabinet was a small hole in the stone wall.

  “That look large enough for a squirrel to get through?”

  “‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,’” said Thumps, letting the solemnity of his voice fill the room. “Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Kill the squirrel,” said Beth. “Elmer Fudd.”

  “All you have to do is put a patch over the hole.”

  Beth went to her desk and sat down. “Why are you here?”

  “To help you catch a squirrel?”

  “Ora Mae send you?”

  “No.”

  “Then the sheriff has conned you into helping him again.”

  “Duke’s a friend.”

  “I haven’t started the autopsy yet.” Beth opened a drawer and took out a file. “But it would appear that Belly Butte is an accident-prone zone.”

  “As in Samuels and now Maslow.”

  “As in.” Beth took out a second file. This one was yellow with age, the edges bent and frayed. “Quite the coincidence, don’t you think?”

  Thumps pulled up the hard metal chair that Beth kept in the basement to discourage visitors from staying too long. “And?”

  “You know anyone who believes in coincidences?”

  “Nope.”

  “Me neither.” Beth opened the older of the two files. “Trudy Samuels. Female. Eighteen. One hundred and fifteen pounds. Body found at Belly Butte.”

  “Was she dead before she went over the edge of the butte?”

  “How should I know?”

  “So you weren’t the coroner then?”

  “Just how old do you think I am?”

  Thumps held up his hands. “A joke.”

  Beth resettled her glasses. “Here’s the interesting part: there was never an autopsy.”

  “No autopsy?”

  “Not a proper one,” said Beth. “The coroner, some guy named Wiseman, did a drive-by examination. He didn’t open the body. He didn’t check any of the organs or the stomach contents. There was no collection of samples and no examination of the head and brain.”

  “Photographs?”

  “Not many. Seven to be exact.” Beth laid the photographs out. “These are of the body at the crime scene. These are of the body in the morgue.”

  “Why’d they photograph her hands?”

  “No idea.”

  “What are those marks on her palm?”

  “No idea.”

  “They look like thin scratches.”

  “Could be injuries from the fall.” Beth picked up the photograph. “Look at her nails.”

  “Because?”

  Beth shook her head. “I suppose you chew your nails.”

  Thumps instinctively tucked his fingers into his palms. “I keep them trimmed.”

  “With your teeth?” Beth used a pencil to touch each of Trudy’s nails. “She took care of her nails.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you see any damage?”

  “Not much.”

  “That’s right,” said Beth. “The nails are intact.”

  “As though she made no effort to save herself.”

  “Or she couldn’t.” Beth put the photograph back in the file. “Wiseman made a note that the body showed signs of trauma that might not be associated with the trauma of falling down the side of Belly Butte.”

  “As in?”

  “He doesn’t say.”

  “And Maslow?”

  Beth opened the second file. “Nina Maslow. Female. Thirty-one. One hundred and thirty pounds. Body found at Belly Butte.”

  “Thought you said you haven’t done the autopsy yet.”

  “True,” said Beth, “but I’ve done the Wiseman drive-by.”

  “And you want me to look at the body?”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Didn’t you take photographs?”

  “I did.”

  “Let’s look at the photographs.”

  Beth opened the stainless steel cabinet. Cold air spilled into the room, along with the sickening sweetness of decay. Thumps began breathing through his mouth.

  “Bruises, cuts, and abrasions consistent with a fall.” Beth waved a hand over the body. “But look at this.”

  Thumps found himself wishing that the squirrel would make an encore appearance.

  Beth turned Maslow’s head to the side. Just behind the right ear was a nasty-looking wound.

  “Most of the other injuries are superficial or at least not life-threatening.”

  “Could have got the wound from the fall,” said Thumps. “Could have hit a rock on the way down.”

  “Could have,” said Beth. “And her hands?”

  Maslow’s nails were blunt but trimmed and cared for.

  “Clear-coat nail polish,” said Beth. “Gets a professional manicure now and then.”

  “Same as Trudy?”

  “Maybe.”

  “How deep is the head wound?”

  “Won’t know until I open her up,” said Beth, “but I expect to find that it’s what killed her.”

  “But it won’t tell us why.”

  “No,” said Beth. “That’s your job.”

  “That’s the sheriff’s job,” said Thumps.

  Beth pushed Maslow’s body back into the cabinet. “You think I can just glue a piece of plywood over the hole?”

  “Might want to use concrete filler,” said Thumps. “Squirrels can chew their way through wood.”

  Many of the cops Thumps had worked with had been able to draw a line between the living and the dead. When they looked at a corpse, all they saw was a corpse, an inanimate object that had little relationship to a living person. This was an essential skill for the kind of work that first responders did, a skill he had never learned.

  Trudy Samuels’s folder was still open on the desk.

  “When you do the autopsy on Maslow,” he said, “maybe you could reference it against what we know about Trudy.”

  “You mean such as look for similarities?” said Beth. “Now why didn’t I think of that?”

  “I used to be a cop.”

  “Is this where you say, ‘Elementary, my dear Watson’?”

  “That comes later,” said Thumps. “When we solve the case.”

  “How about we catch the squirrel first?” Beth closed both files and put them back in the drawer. “I think your chance of success is going to be better with the rat.”

  Twenty-Six

  The walk home, under a glowering sky, didn’t improve his mood. There was nothing that so described a life without purpose, Thumps told himself, as spending an afternoon chasing a squirrel around a morgue. With each block he walked, the more the rodent became a metaphor for all those things he had lost and the things that he had not been able to find.

  The house was dark. Not a single light in a single window to welcome him home. So this was how self-pity felt. Not so different from depression.

  “Mr. DreadfulWater.” Dixie and Pops were on the porch in the shadows. “Guess what?” Pops began pounding his tail against the wood railing as though he were beating out a drum roll. “Pops and I have found your cat.”

  “Freeway?”

  “That’s the good news.”

  Thumps waited a moment. “There’s bad news?”

  “Not exactly bad news,” said Dixie. “It’s more like complicated news.”

  “Okay.”

  Dixie looked at Pops as though he was hoping the dog would step in and explain the situation.

  “There’s a real nice family four streets over. Blue house with white trim. The Passangs. Dorjee and Tenzin. From Tibet. They have three kids. I forgot their names, but they look to
be great kids.”

  Pops heaved himself to his feet, waddled over, and leaned against Thumps’s leg.

  Dixie took a deep breath. “That’s where your cat is. With the Passangs.”

  Pops farted.

  Thumps held his breath for as long as he could. “Freeway is with another family?”

  “Yeah,” said Dixie. “They thought she was a stray, so they took her in.”

  “She’s not a stray.”

  “Sure,” said Dixie. “I know that. But they didn’t.”

  “Blue house with white trim? Four blocks over?”

  “They’ve been taking good care of her. They even took her to the vet.”

  “The vet?”

  “To get her spayed.”

  Pops folded himself into a warm lump at Thumps’s feet.

  “Freeway’s been spayed.”

  “Yeah,” said Dixie, “that was unfortunate.”

  “They spayed her again?”

  “The vet said it wasn’t a problem.”

  “Jesus.”

  “When Pops and I found her, I told the Passangs about you and how you had to go to Seattle and how I was supposed to look after the cat and how she had disappeared and how we didn’t know where she went.”

  “I’ll go by in the morning and pick her up.”

  Dixie shifted from one foot to the other. “Yeah,” he said, “see, that’s the complicated part. They don’t want to give the cat back.”

  “She’s my cat.”

  “Course she is,” said Dixie. “But you have to look at it from their point of view. They did pay to have her spayed, and their kids are real attached.”

  Pops stood up and wandered over to Dixie, the flatulence trailing off the dog like a ground fog.

  “And your kitty seems to like it there.”

  “I’ll go talk to them.”

  “I told them you’d stop by,” said Dixie. “They work all day, so the best time is around supper. After that they’re busy putting the kids to bed.”

  Thumps could feel his body sag just a little.

  “But this is good news,” said Dixie. “The cat’s alive. And she’s happy.”

  THE SELECTION AT the Cash and Carry wasn’t as good as at Albertsons, but the discount grocery was open. Thumps eased the truck into a parking space and tried to remember what he needed.

  Everything.

  Milk, bread, butter, meat, cheese, vegetables. He’d pick up a box of those chocolate-coated cookies and maybe some ice cream. It was a well-known fact that depression responded to sugar. Sure, it was a temporary fix. The high and then the low. And sure, as a diabetic, sugar was the last thing he needed.

  In any quantity.

  When he got to the frozen-food section, he looked at the nutritional chart of several different ice creams to see if the sugar content was as bad as he suspected.

  It was.

  Fruit. Okay, he’d be smart and get fruit instead. He knew there was sugar in fruit, but grapes, thankfully, didn’t have that information stamped on the skin. He could look up the sugar in grapes in the little book on carbohydrate counting that had come with his diabetes supplies.

  If he wanted to.

  He had been somewhat abrupt with Dixie, and he’d have to apologize to the man for his poor behaviour. Freeway wasn’t his neighbour’s problem. Thumps wasn’t sure there was a problem at all. Freeway had always gone where she wanted to go and did what she wanted to do. Thumps had fed her, had given her a place to live, had even provided a warm lap for the cat when she was in the mood for a lap. But he didn’t own her, had no claim to her other than the friendship they shared.

  Now she was with another family. A family with kids. Thumps wouldn’t have thought that Freeway would have liked kids. Not that he had ever asked the cat about children. Not that she had ever expressed an opinion.

  So. No Claire. No car. And now, no cat. There was a pattern here, one that Thumps wasn’t sure he wanted to contemplate. As he walked the aisles, he was struck by the realization that, as it were, he had little left to lose.

  If he had anything at all.

  “Howdy, buckaree.”

  Stas and Angie Black Weasel and their three kids materialized from behind a display of bottled water.

  “Buckaroo, honey,” said Angie.

  “Yes,” said Stas. “Buckaroo. Because you are man, yes?”

  “No, honey,” said Angie. “Buckaroo is for male and female.”

  “Yes,” said Stas. “Gender politics. What a great country.”

  “How are you, Thumps?” Angie’s face looked as though it had just come back from a funeral.

  “Fine.”

  “You remember Mikhail and the twins. Lucy. Koko.” Angie touched the head of each child in turn.

  “We’re getting a dog,” said Mikhail.

  “Maybe there is dog,” said Stas.

  “You said we’d get a dog,” Lucy and Koko said in unison and began spinning around as though standing still had been too much to bear.

  “Yes,” said Stas, “yes, maybe there is dog. But small dog.”

  “Big dog!” shouted the kids together.

  “You don’t have children, do you?” Angie was holding on to Mikhail’s jacket with one hand.

  “Dog, dog, dog, dog, dog, dog . . .” Mikhail and his sisters marched around their parents, whacking Stas and Angie on the thighs with their hands.

  “Have you talked with Claire?”

  “When?”

  “Then I shouldn’t say anything,” said Angie.

  “Like what?”

  “Come on, kids,” said Angie. “Let’s get some ice cream.”

  “Ice cream!”

  Thumps watched Angie chase after the kids.

  “Children,” said Stas, leaning on the cart. “You must get some. Then you must get dog.”

  Thumps tried to imagine a family. Anna Tripp. He tried to remember Anna’s face when she was happy, and Callie’s laughter when she was tickled. That memory was slipping away, leaving his body like blood flowing out of a wound.

  “What about car?” said Stas. “You keep horse? You shoot horse?”

  Thumps put a bag of unbleached flour into his cart. “Don’t know.”

  “Okay,” said Stas, “time for dog.”

  “A dog?”

  “Angie say dog opens heart. Makes you forget sorrows.”

  “She says that, does she?”

  “Yes,” said Stas. “Also say same thing about children. And chocolate.”

  THUMPS TOOK HIS time walking the aisles. Now that he was here, there was no point in rushing. Nothing waiting for him at home. Maybe a dog wasn’t a terrible idea. They could go on photography trips together, take walks along the river. He could watch television with the dog on his lap. Roughhouse with the dog on the floor.

  A medium-sized female. Molly. Coco. Muffy.

  He made a detour down the pet food aisle and contemplated the array of wet and dry food and doggy treats that came in an assortment of disquieting flavours and combinations.

  Chicken and brown rice. Lamb and barley. Coq au vin with beets. Alligator chips and beer biscuits. Strawberry licorice chews and emu bars.

  By the time Thumps got to the meat section, he had sorted his way through various breeds, trying to come up with the perfect dog. A lab perhaps or a retriever or one of those poodle mixes he had heard about.

  By the time he reached the eggs and butter, he had gotten past the romance and moved on to dog reality. Biweekly nail clippings. Teeth brushing. Obedience training. Vet bills. Warm doggy poop in plastic sacks.

  Thumps waited in line with his cart. Stas was two checkouts over. Angie unloaded the cart while Stas wrestled with his son. The two girls pulled gum and candy off the displays by the register and tried to hide them under the broccoli and behind the squash.

  Family life. Thumps couldn’t help but smile. Noisy, animated, with lots of laughing and shouting and crying. There were probably quiet moments as well, when the kids were asleep and the parents
had a moment to catch their breath.

  Angie pushed the cart out to the parking lot with her son hanging off the front end by one hand like an unwieldly hood ornament, while Stas brought up the rear, rocking from side to side, his daughters wrapped around his legs like a pair of counterweights.

  Thumps stacked the groceries on the belt. Maybe, he told himself, when you considered the alternatives, lonely and depressed wasn’t so bad after all.

  Twenty-Seven

  Thumps took his time putting the groceries away. Milk and juice on the top shelf. Butter and cheese in the door. Eggs, chicken, and sausages on the bottom shelf. Lettuce and tomatoes in the crisper.

  The bread went into the freezer, the crackers and the dry pasta into the cupboards. Bananas on the counter in a bowl. He set the green bottle of olive oil next to the stove, alongside the jar of coarse ground pepper with its distinctive red cap.

  The play of colours and the organization of shapes made him feel as though he were back in control of his world. Each time he opened the refrigerator door, the whole kitchen felt festive and structured.

  On any other evening, Freeway would have been waiting for him, turning figure eights around his ankles, demanding to be fed or petted or both. It was a different house without the cat. Thumps checked the pet door. It was working just fine. If Freeway wanted to come home, she could. Her water bowl was full, and there was dry food in her dish.

  What had Dixie said? Four streets over? His neighbour must have meant to the south. To the north, the neighbourhood only ran for two blocks before it hit the railroad tracks. And the house? Blue with white trim? If Thumps was lucky, he might be able to spot Freeway through a window.

  As he walked down the street, he imagined that the cat had been kidnapped and was being held against her will and that he would rescue her and bring her home. Thumps wondered if this impulse was hard-wired into the gender, the male need to save something. He suspected it had more to do with ego and control, much less admirable traits.

  Still, if he had to swim the moat and scale the battlements to save the cat, he would.

  Thumps was in luck. There was only one house on the fourth block that was blue with white trim. He had always snorted at the TV crime dramas where forensics would find a piece of a plant or a lump of dirt or an enzyme in a sample of water that could only be found in one place. He had never recalled police work being that easy.