Cat Breaking Free

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Dallas rose, too, handed Harper a ten, and he and Juana headed back to the station. From atop the wall, Joe Grey watched them as he dispatched Garza's bacon. He liked and respected Juana Davis; she was a thorough, no-nonsense detective, yet with a frightened victim or with a wrongfully accused arrestee she was warm and understanding. Juana's proper, dark uniform and regulation dark stockings and black Oxfords contrasted sharply with Garza's faded jeans and old tweed sport coat, and Harper's jeans and boots and Western shirt. In this casual village, it was Juana Davis who stood out. Wondering what "matter" Harper and the two detectives meant to discuss, Joe slipped off the wall into the alley and headed for the station.

  By the time Clyde and Harper rose, and Clyde turned to speak to the tomcat, Joe was long gone. Not a leaf stirred atop the wall where the gray cat had crouched. He'd vanished like the Cheshire cat. Only the empty plate remained, tucked among the leaves and licked to a fine polish.

  Juana Davis’s office was down the central hall, past Harper's and Garza's offices and past the staff room. If Joe had continued on, he could have entered the large report-writing room with its individual cubicles and latest electronic equipment, or the interrogation room. At the end of the hall was the locked, metal-plated door leading to the officers' parking area, and the jail. Having slipped in through the glass doors at the front of the station on the heels of a hurrying rookie, he double-timed back to Davis's office, hoping she wouldn't wonder why he'd shown up there so soon. But he might as well put a bold face on it. Strolling on in, he made himself comfortable atop her coffee table and stretched out, licking bacon grease from a front paw. Coming in behind him, Davis gave him a stunned look.

  "You little freeloader. You spend all morning stuffing yourself, and now you think I have something to feed you?" She looked up as Garza entered. "Talk about pigs!"

  Garza picked Joe up off the table and laid a stack of papers down in his place. Setting Joe on the couch, the detective made himself comfortable beside the tomcat. This kind of behavior never ceased to amaze Joe. All his life Garza had raised and trained gun dogs, their pictures were all over his office. Garza was not a cat person.

  "There was a time," Juana said, "when you wouldn't be caught dead petting a cat."

  "He's getting soft," Harper said, coming in. "You behave like this around those two old pointers of yours, they'll pack up and move out."

  On the center cushion of the leather couch, Joe Grey washed his shoulder with deep concentration. He had to admit, he'd done a number on Garza. The guy was becoming almost civilized, turning into a regular cat fancier. For this, the tomcat had to congratulate himself. He had, very smoothly, charmed the department's upper echelon, while all the time maintaining a persona of simple-minded feline innocence. And as he lay purring and dozing beside Detective Garza, Joe realized he was smack in the middle of a major departmental planning session.

  The confidential discussion he was witnessing was a brainstorming, nuts-and-bolts logistical plan of action, as the three officers laid out departmental strategy for handling a really big jewel heist-maybe the biggest jewel burglary this village had ever witnessed.

  If their information was good. This wasn't intelligence that Joe or Dulcie had provided; Joe listened with curiosity and with rising anger. Why was it that the small, lovely village attracted these hoods? Why couldn't they leave Molena Point alone, go somewhere else to make trouble!

  Well, but there was money here. Plenty of money. Movie stars; executive types coming down for conferences and for their brainstorming getaways; upscale tourists. And when the Colombian gangs in L.A. had discovered Molena Point and put the village on their thieving roster, every crook in California tried to copycat them. Didn't matter that Molena Point had one of the finest small departments in the country-with a little help undercover, Joe thought modestly-every sleazy no-good thought he could beat the odds.

  Davis said, "Doesn't seem possible that L.A. bunch would undertake this kind of operation, after they messed up so badly down there."

  Dallas shrugged.

  "Maybe not possible they can do it," Harper said. "But given their past attempts, I'd say it's way possible they'll try, that they think they can pull it off."

  "Big dreams, short on brains," Davis said.

  "I wouldn't bet on it," Max said. "They've pulled a few good ones. And with Dufio out of the way…"

  They were quiet a moment. "You think they killed him?" Davis said.

  Max refilled his coffee cup from the pot Davis had set on the coffee table. "We should have the ballistics, end of the week. I'd give a month's salary to get my hands on the gun."

  "One thing sure," Dallas said. "The oak tree bark, outside his cell window, doesn't pick up prints worth a damn. But we have a nice collection of fibers."

  In spite of himself, Joe felt his ears go rigid with interest. It took all his effort to keep his head down and appear to doze. With Garza on his right and Harper on his left and Juana looking straight at him from behind her desk, it was almost impossible not to stare from one speaker to the other like a spectator at a tennis match.

  He could see Harper's notes, though. He was only a foot from the clipboard that Max balanced against his crossed leg, from the chief's bold handwriting. And he had a front-row view of the map that Dallas had laid out on the coffee table. Rising to rub against Harper's knee, he took a closer look at the map, getting a strong, pleasant whiff of Harper's horses.

  Harper had marked twelve jewelry stores on the map, and five other upscale shops. He had noted, beside each, the store name, the opening and closing times and the names of the owners. Every officer, even the rookies, would have all the information at hand-every officer and one tomcat. Joe concentrated as hard as he could to set the layout clearly in mind. He wished Kit were there; with her photographic memory, she'd have the diagram down cold.

  Through narrowly shuttered eyes, he studied Harper's notes, which included hidden video cameras both inside and outside the targeted stores, several still photographers and a team of officers hidden near each location-in one huge departmental sting. A sting that would employ not only every officer in the department-no one off duty or on leave-but a dozen or more men Harper would borrow from surrounding districts up and down the coast.

  "Have them down here in time to get familiar with the layout. Billet them among us."

  Dallas said, "I can take four comfortably, more if needed."

  "Two, maximum," Davis said. She had, a little over a year ago, sold her house and moved into a small condo. Harper said he and Charlie could take the rest. "Ryan should have the upstairs finished by then-finished enough."

  "Maybe not a shot fired," Garza said hopefully. "Not a piece of jewelry unaccounted for."

  "If we're lucky," Harper said tightly. "Don't count your chickens."

  "Jewelry stores still happy with their plan?" Juana asked.

  Max nodded. "They've already collected every piece of faux jewelry they could lay hands on. This whole thing makes me edgy, it's too pat. The fact that we have a specific date, specific hits… If our intelligence is valid."

  Joe closed his eyes so he wouldn't stare at the chief. What intelligence? These guys were talking about things that neither he nor Dulcie were aware of. Nor the Kit, surely. Who was passing information to the department? And was it good information?

  Or was someone playing snitch, meaning to double-cross the cops? His anger at that made his claws want to knead into the leather cushion. Hastily he shifted position, scratching a nonexistent flea. These officers thought their information was coming from their regular snitches, and they could be walking into a trap, being set up big-time. Joe's heart was pounding so hard he thought Harper and Dallas must hear it or notice its hammering blows right through his fur. He closed his eyes, trying to get a grip.

  Juana said, "This snitch has never let us down. Without her, we wouldn't have a clue. If she's setting us up…"

  She? She, who? Dulcie hadn't made those calls. Kit had made a couple of call
s when she spotted Chichi spying. But did she have all this other information, that Luis planned to hit all the stores at once? As far as Joe knew, Kit hadn't been privy to any one specified time and date. Unless she hadn't told them- hadn't had time to tell them?

  Had Kit learned this and called Harper while they were locked up? And in her panic to save them and to help the ferals escape, she hadn't thought to tell them?

  It was earlier that morning, long before dawn, when Kit woke in the dark in the branches of the pine tree and thought about Luis chasing them and about his dead brother Hernando. She looked over at her three sleeping companions and shivered and was hungry again and lonely and didn't know whether to go home or to keep running with them, didn't know what she wanted. Didn't know if they would search for their clowder and their cold-hearted leader and return to that miserable life, or if they would go off on their own, as she wanted, just the four of them, and start their own clowder and be free of Stone Eye? Or defy him, battle him, run from him forever?

  Was that what she wanted? This morning she wasn't sure, she didn't know. But a voice inside whispered, "Lucinda and Pedric love you. You will hurt them terribly if you don't go back."

  Crouching in the pine boughs shivering from exhaustion and cold and the effects of fear, Kit wanted to run on across the open hills forever and she wanted to return to Lucinda and Pedric, to her human friends, to human civilization with all its faults and goodness. To her own dear Dulcie and Joe, to Wilma and Clyde and Charlie and all her human family, to a life so layered in richness and the mysteries of humankind that she would never truly learn it all.

  She wanted both. Wanted everything. Crouched miserably among the branches, she might never have known what she wanted if she hadn't grown thirsty and backed down the tall trunk to find a drink of water-and come face to face with Stone Eye.

  She dropped the last six feet into the soft cover of pine needles smelling the scent of water on the wind and there he stood on a fallen log. Watching her. Stone Eye. Broad of head and shoulder, heavy of muscle, ragged of ear. His eyes blazed with rage, his fangs were bared. He looked up into the pines where Willow and Coyote and Cotton slept, and he snarled with fury. As if they had purposely escaped him, had defied him and intentionally run away. And as he closed on Kit lifting his knifelike claws to strike, Kit ran.

  35

  When Charlie looked up from her computer, she was surprised to see that the predawn dark had brightened into morning. She glanced at her watch. Max had been gone for nearly an hour. He'd been quiet this morning, solemn and distracted as he often was when police business presented a knotty problem. Breakfast in the village with his officers was good for him, he hadn't done that in a long while; and it lent her some extra time, which she appreciated right now.

  She had wondered, slipping out of bed at four a.m., if she was raving mad to be getting up at that hour. She'd eaten yogurt and fruit at the computer, and now she was ravenous. But she was so into the world of the book that it was hard to leave-hard to leave the kit, cold and shunned by the older cats, wandering the winter hills alone. The story was so real to her that sometimes she was the homeless tortoiseshell, feeling sharply the terror of the thin, frightened creature creeping through the night, hiding from the clowder leader among jungles of dense, tall grass. Charlie's rough sketches for the book marched across the cork wall behind her, sketches for which Kit had been the model. At first Charlie had meant the story for young children, but it had grown of its own accord, enriching and complicating itself until it had become a far more involving novel.

  Rising from her desk she headed for the kitchen, her thoughts partly on her empty stomach but mostly still on the book. While the cat in the story looked and acted like Kit, the real challenge was that this fictional cat was an ordinary feral, and she must show the cat's life from that aspect. No speaking, no uncatly notions. The fictional cat's vocabulary was limited to mewls and caterwauling, to growls and hisses and body language. She had no name, there was no human to give her a name. Charlie called her, simply, the cat. But the details of a feral cat's life were as real as she could make them-facts right from the cat's mouth, Charlie thought, smiling. Immersed in Kit's story, the words flowed out in a rush, all the joys and terrors of that feral cat's perilous existence.

  She was standing at the kitchen table making a peanut-butter-on-whole-wheat sandwich when she heard rustling and scrabbling outside, beneath the bay window. Crossing to the window seat to kneel on the scattered cushions, she looked down into the bushes.

  Within the tangle of geraniums and camellias and ferns, she could see nothing. Looking up across the yard, she saw nothing unusual around Ryan's truck where it stood beside Scotty's car in front of the barn. Rock was out in the pasture playing with their own two dogs. Turning away, she spun around again when a thud hit the window behind her.

  A dark shape clung to the sill. The kit stared in at her, pressing so hard against the glass that her whiskers were flat; her round yellow eyes were huge with fear.

  Hurrying to open the door, Charlie was nearly bowled over as Kit flew into her arms. The little cat clung against her, shivering, her heart pounding so hard that Charlie feared for her. Holding Kit close, she returned to the window seat and sat down to cuddle her. Kit's coat was matted and wet from the early morning dew, and full of trash and leaves. Her paws were ice-cold. She stared, terrified, into Charlie's face, but she said no word.

  "It's all right," Charlie said softly. "We can talk, Ryan and Scotty are both on the roof, I can see them. No one else is here." Tucking Kit warm among the pillows, she rose long enough to snatch up the milk bottle, pour some in a bowl, and nuke it for half a minute. Setting it down, watching Kit inhale it, she opened a can of chicken, which Kit gobbled.

  Sitting down beside her again, Charlie rubbed her ears. "What happened? What happened? What chased you? Where have you been? We thought…"

  Kit looked up at her tiredly, still shivering.

  "Worn out," Charlie said, hoping that was all. "You're exhausted. Oh, Kit, you mustn't be sick!" Picking Kit up and hugging her close, Charlie carried her to the table. She was reaching for the phone, to call Lucinda or the vet, when the phone rang. Charlie snatched it up with a shaking hand.

  Lucinda's voice, agitated, cutting in and out. "Have you seen her? Have you seen Kit? Is she there with you? She hasn't come home at all."

  "She…"

  Lucinda pressed on, giving her no chance to speak. "I thought she might come there to you because you're closer to Hellhag Hill. We've walked all over the hills and down into Hellhag Cave…"

  "You're in Hellhag Cave? Oh, Lucinda, come out of there. She's…"

  "We're out now, you can't use a phone in there. But if the ferals didn't go down into the caves," Lucinda blurted breathlessly, "then they've headed back where they came from to their clowder, and the kit…"

  "Lucinda! She's here!"

  "There? Oh, my dear…"

  "Kit's here! Right here beside me. Safe in my arms. What in the world happened?"

  "You didn't know? Is she all right?"

  "She's fine! Hungry, but that's nothing new. Didn't know what?"

  "Clyde found three ferals from Kit's clowder, locked cruelly in a cage. Kit led him there, and he freed them-but she ran off with them. We thought… Pedric and I thought…"

  Kit had her face in the phone. "I'm here, Lucinda! I'm fine. I'm right here with Charlie and I'm fine!"

  Lucinda sighed, then was silent. Charlie pushed Kit away. "I didn't know," she said in a small voice, looking sternly at the kit.

  "We thought she was just leading them away through the village and that she'd be back. When she didn't come home, we thought… No one told you? Wilma didn't call?"

  Kit looked up at Charlie. Charlie looked at Kit. A little smile touched the kit's darkly mottled face, the first smile Charlie had seen. Pulling the wet, dirty cat warm against her, Charlie imagined Lucinda and Pedric tramping up Hellhag Hill in the dark, imagined those two old people going d
own into Hellhag Cave, calling and calling the kit, and she shuddered.

  "When she didn't come home," Lucinda said, "we were terrified she'd gone forever."

  Kit scrambled back to Charlie's shoulder, nearly shouting into the phone. "I didn't… I didn't mean to worry you, Lucinda. I love you!"

  "We'll be there," Lucinda said. "Ten minutes, as soon as we can get down the hill, we'll be there to get you."

  When they'd hung up, Charlie gave Kit some more chicken, and finished making her own sandwich. "Those caves go on forever, Kit! They could have been lost down there!" Though it was hard to be mad at the kit. Charlie had never been able to find anything written, and had found no person who could tell her, where those black fissures ended; but the tales about Hellhag Cave were not pleasant. Carrying her sandwich and Kit back to her studio, she tucked the little cat into an easy chair, in a warm blanket, and sat down at her computer. Already Kit was nodding off.

  But she couldn't work, she sat watching Kit sleep, watching the nervous twitch of Kit's paws, as if she was still running; and Charlie's heart twisted at Kit's occasional sharp mewls of fear.

  As Charlie waited for Lucinda and Pedric to come for their lost kit, Joe Grey and Dulcie were preparing to search for Roman Slayter's gun, relying on Kit's information. They were flying blind, not at all sure what finding a gun would prove- unless it was the gun that killed Dufio. Or, if Chichi was looking for a gun, and if Chichi had been so pushy trying to learn where Slayter was staying… Though that didn't add up to much, it was enough to put them on Slayter's case. Cop sense or cat sense, Joe had the gut feeling this was worth a shot.

  If they did find a gun in Slayter's room, and could hide it where the cops could find it, they might fit together a couple more pieces of the puzzle-a puzzle that seemed as nebulous as smoke on the wind.

  They knew that Lucinda and Pedric were searching for Kit, that the old couple had been out since before daylight, and Dulcie was frantic for the kit; she alternated between feeling bad that she and Joe weren't searching, and sensibly admitting that Joe was right, that this was Kit's call, Kit's responsibility. Though Joe had, Dulcie noticed, glanced up to the southerly hills several times with a listening and worried frown.