Fantastic Detectives

by Dean Wesley Smith

  “An Incursion of Mice” isn’t alternate history, but it does feature a detective—of a sort.

  An Incursion of Mice

  Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Here’s what I know: You can’t have a crime without an explosion.

  I know this from my vast study of crime, criminal behavior, and detective work.

  I do this study from my couch in the basement. Sometimes I sit on the large recliner, usually resting on a blanket in the lap of one of the servants. I prefer the male servant because he caters to me. The female servant feeds me, but doesn’t brush me or coddle me.

  She claims that I am convinced that I am the center of the universe.

  As I understand the universe—and granted, I understand it less than crime and criminals—it has no center. She means that I am self-involved and self-centered.

  I am not. I have never claimed to be the center of any universe.

  The servants have a variety of names for me, which they believe are mine. Those names are not mine, although the four cats in my pride have adopted one of them for me.

  They call me Wall T.

  I prefer to think of that as my street name—if I ever went to the street and/or needed a name. I prefer remaining inside.

  In an earlier life, one I do not discuss, I was a show cat. I had several names, all delineating my lineage, which is old and storied and Quite Upstanding. I won many awards. I am “stunning” and “good humored” and “one of the most beautiful males ever witnessed” especially when I’ve had a proper bath, blow-dry, and brushing.

  My first servant knew how to tend me, but felt that my mission in life was to show my beauty to the world. I let him take me to shows, introduce me to other cats, and make a Good Impression. Then, he died of a terrible wasting disease, and the people who came for him tossed me outside.

  I lived on the street, hooked up with a scruffy orange male who never shared his name, and who had a soft spot for clueless beauties. He taught me the ways of street cats. I would have thrived, I’m sure, but he believed I needed servants.

  So he found me these.

  I’m unable to convince the servants of a proper routine. They do not know that breakfast starts at 7:30, that second breakfast occurs at 10, and that lunch follows shortly thereafter. They believe in kibble treats left out all day, and the occasional soft meal.

  They do not believe that cats should be bathed and blow-dried. They had to be convinced about brushing.

  But they have no interest in shows and ribbons and awards, at least for me, although they have discussed my past history. They honor it. They call me “retired.”

  I would step back into the ring if need be, but I prefer my study of crime and criminals and all-around bad behavior.

  I prefer my couch, and my reputation. Not as a show cat, which does not impress the others in the pride. But as a street cat.

  As Wall T.

  I might be pretty, but I’m not soft.

  And I’m smarter than anyone gives me credit for.

  ***

  It started with a mouse incursion.

  Why mice thought they could invade this household is beyond me. Yes, we live near a wooded area, and yes, the house is huge, with enough room for the entire pride (plus more, if I were to allow it, which I will not). But we patrol.

  My second in command, a beautiful silver-and-gold girl we call M, handles household organization. We all lived on the streets at one point, but she arrived here, young, battered, pregnant, and alone, mostly feral like my orange friend, and after healing, she made it her duty to make certain that our home is perfect.

  In my research, I have learned that such types are often called anal or obsessive-compulsive. The human experts recommend therapy. I have found that an obsessive-compulsive has her uses—and one of them is making certain the household runs on time—or as close to on time as it can with recalcitrant and somewhat stubborn servants.

  M set up the patrols and commands them. Each cat (aside from me, of course) has an assigned area of our home, and each must maintain that area.

  M handles the kitchen, and she is the one who found the first mouse. She guarded it until I could see it. She left it in the able paws of King, who is the only other male in the pride. He predates me in this location, but simply does not care for command (nor does he do it right).

  King watched the mouse for thirty seconds before smashing it beneath his left paw. The mouse tried to scamper away, but King scooped it in his mighty jaws, and with one single crunch, killed our only witness.

  At the time, we were unconcerned—although M was furious. She had curtailed the witness, cordoned it off, and maintained its imprisonment until she was relieved of sentry duty. Then she came to me to discuss the interrogation, only to discover there would be none, thanks to King’s impulsive and somewhat reckless behavior.

  I believed interrogation, particularly of a rodent, a complete waste of time. In the olden days, before kibble and delicious soft food, rodents were considered little more than food. Once kibble and delicious soft food became the diet of choice for rich cats, the makers of such delicacies never included rodent, believing it tainted the palette.

  I agreed and, frankly, still shudder at the thought of that hairy, flea-infested body inside King’s mouth, the squirty warmth of blood and bitter taste of mouse-flesh. Yes, I’ve eaten mouse in my street days, and I’ve lived to tell of it.

  But I am here to tell you that Fancy Feast, in all flavors, is ever so much better.

  I digress. (Although, honestly, when is a culinary discussion ever a digression?)

  I did not discipline King. It’s not my place, really. Besides, he was doing his duty as he saw it, and I cannot argue with that. M knew better than to argue with a male, although she glared at him angrily. He is such a laid-back creature and he is so used to M, that I doubt he even noticed.

  We knew, however, that we faced an incursion later in the day, when the second mouse appeared. Our lame and slightly crazy female, Diva, found him.

  I tend to write off her disposition. She is a tortoise shell, and we all know that torties are born crazy. Plus a car smashed her hind leg when she was barely six months old. She arrived in this household post-surgery, paranoid, angry, and addicted to pain meds.

  I learned a word for her condition in my nightly research. Or rather, an acronym: PTSD.

  If anyone were to kill anyone, it would be our Diva, and it wouldn’t be her fault.

  But murderous she is not. She saw the incurring mouse, and screamed, slapping it until it retreated.

  M put 24-hour guards on the entrance, and I thought the problem over.

  Of course, the servants, late to the game as usual, found the mouse body we had conveniently left near the door, and panicked. Servants are so useless. They don’t take guidance. They overreact to everything.

  At least they tossed the body outside.

  M saw that as charity—the starving street kittens would have extra meat tonight—but I knew it for what it was. Wealthy cats throwing away perfectly good food. Even my old street buddies wouldn’t eat that thing. Someone else’s kill? Rodent doesn’t taste good in the first place. Charity rodent tastes particularly foul.

  The servants called more servants, the ones who kept us and the house “pest” free, and they had some kind of consultation about the whys and wherefores of mice, whether or not we had an “infestation” and if that was even possible with five cats running the house.

  The servants contended that we were lazy and pampered, ignoring, of course, who killed the mouse in the first place, and said the house could have been infested for years.

  If I didn’t like the servants so much, I would have fired them on the spot. I would not run a household infested by mice.

  No self-respecting cat would.

  Shortly after the extra servants put out mouse traps that would not injure the paws of our Diva (who never paid attention to do-not-touch instructions), M came to me.

  —I have been thin
king about this, she said. The servants might not be wrong. Food has disappeared at an alarming rate.

  My tail dipped. I hadn’t noticed a decrease in the food supply, and said so.

  M sat out of the reach of my paws. She tilted her lovely head and said, I thought perhaps you were indulging a bit too often, Wall T.

  She blamed me for the food disappearing? I ate my share, of course, and my share included bits of everyone else’s—after they had tasted a bit first, so that I knew it wasn’t poisoned—but I did not overeat, much as I subscribed to the idea that no cat could be too rich or too fat.

  —I have access to all the best treats, I snapped. Why would I feel the need to sneak food?

  She raised her head. She had a superior little expression that she usually used on the others, not on me. Only this time, she did use it on me.

  —I never said you sneaked anything, Wall T. I didn’t think to monitor who was taking the food. Only that the servants had to refill our bowls more often than usual.

  I had noticed that too, and blamed Sweetie, the newest of our tribe. She had spent a year outside, abandoned by the boyfriend of the servant who pampered her. When she entered our household, she did so after much consideration. Sweetie was a thinker, but if M hadn’t already had firm paws on the household, Sweetie would run it all with an iron claw.

  —I am now thinking that mice have been stealing our food, M said.

  I wanted to slap her with fury. Theft? In our house? By mice? She was impugning my catness.

  —You’re wrong, I said.

  —I’m not so certain. Sweetie sat near the food bowls. She’d been watching the servants argue over the mice, but now she turned her attention to us.

  She was a beautiful black and white cat with long hair that she kept in order. I tried to convince her to command the male servant to brush her, but she preferred the female, and she wasn’t all that certain human touch was something to be invited regularly.

  —Have you seen the weather? Sweetie asked.

  I didn’t pay attention to weather. Now that I did not leave the house for shows, I had no need to brace myself against cold. On the street, I had found the weather to be my enemy.

  I preferred indoor weather. Gray days, with rain pelting the windows, were great for sleeping. Sunny days, with warmth filtering through the glass, were great for sleeping. All days, indoors, had the perfect weather.

  —No, I said, with a tail switch that implied weather watchers were stupid. Why would I?

  —We’ve had snow and ice and wind and storms and cold, cold air for weeks now, Sweetie said, her paws touching before her. She did haughty very, very well.

  She had spoken of this snow before. I had never experienced it, although I did take a look at it after she moved in. On the night she joined us, she said it wasn’t because we looked handsome or pampered or even happy. It was because she remembered how warm and dry felt. And six inches of snow (which fell near her outdoor food bowls) reminded her that life could be better.

  —Who cares about the weather? I snapped.

  —You should. King sauntered in and sat beside Sweetie. Because you let a major crime occur on your watch.

  —My watch? I said, my tail switching even more. You’re King of the house.

  He wrapped his tail around his front paws. He did that when he was feeling particularly self-satisfied.

  —I’ve heard you, he said. You’ve told everyone you’re in charge, but you’ll let me believe that I am. So I let you run things for a while.

  I had no idea why that statement made me shiver. But it did.

  —No crime occurred, I said.

  —Mice have been stealing food for weeks now, Wall T.

  —And you didn’t stop them? I asked.

  —When M got involved, I couldn’t watch any longer, he said. You don’t make the women work extra hard because you’re blind, Wall T.

  —Blind? I snapped. I’m not blind. I run a tight household.

  —Is that why M does all the work? King asked. Why Sweetie makes sure that the Diva doesn’t damage herself in her midnight crazies? Why I have to inform the servants when it’s meal time and someone in the pride needs medical attention?

  —None of that happens, I said. I would know.

  They all watched me, all except Diva, who was sleeping without dreams in her favorite corner. When she achieved dreamless sleep, we indulged her, because she had nightmares much too often.

  Plus, her testimony would be tainted by her paranoia.

  I was certain.

  —I would know, I said again.

  Sweetie sighed and walked past me. M gave me a sad little glance and headed toward the kibble.

  Only King remained.

  —The servants will prevent the mice from coming in. They were starving, you know. Those mice. That’s why they stole food. They’re not used to the weather you claim you don’t need to know. He made a little snorting sound. Disgust.

  I bristled. He had no right to snort at me.

  —A major crime on your watch, King repeated. Fortunately, it was one we could afford. Or I would have stopped it sooner.

  He snorted again. The hackles rose on the back of my neck.

  You couldn’t even bring yourself to sniff the body, he said. You are a pathetic excuse for a tom.

  Only I wasn’t a tom. And neither was he. We had somehow given consent for life-saving drugs, and while under, the servants went crazy and removed our tomness.

  Had we still had our tomness, we would have fought it out. King had lifted his left paw, which he had dubbed The Paw Of Doom one catnip-strewn night. He would use it on me and we would have to fight to establish dominance.

  Or I could see if he would run things better. Clearly, he liked the taste of rodent. He believed in paws-on governance. He would waste good sleeping time in pursuits such as window-watching, mouse-trap guarding, and servant-tending.

  I thought of raising my own paw of doom. But honestly, I’d never seen the need to name my body parts.

  I sighed, and stood with the incredible poise and dignity I had learned at a hundred cat shows.

  —Well, I said, if you think you can do better…

  I let the last of it hang. He understood.

  I went down the stairs to my couch. I preferred study anyway.

  But it wasn’t until I had curled up with an NCIS rerun (that a lazy servant was sleeping through) that I should have argued at least one point.

  No major crime had occurred.

  Yes, there had been a dead body, but not a murdered one. And the theft wasn’t a theft at all, since it occurred under the watchful gaze of King.

  King had mischaracterized the events. They did not constitute crime.

  I know crime better than I know anything else (except, perhaps, cat shows).

  Crimes, you see, have patterns.

  First, a body gets discovered. Then a human investigates. Cars chase. Someone tries to escape on foot. A criminal gets slammed into a wall and sometimes dies.

  And in the middle of it all—usually halfway through—there is an explosion, whether it’s caused by car on car or car into a wall or a bomb under a hood or a lucky gunshot into a propane tank.

  We had no explosion. Ergo, we had no crime.

  Unless you consider a planned coup a crime.

  King allowed the theft. King allowed the mice to invade our domain. King convinced the women that I was unfit for leadership. And when the moment was right, King took my leadership and crushed it beneath his mighty paws, like he had crushed the mouse and left it for the servants to find.

  King would say this is all political, like the newscasts the servants watch daily, as if the news makes any difference at all. He would say that politics and crime have nothing to do with each other.

  And since politics rarely involves car chases or explosions, he might have a point.

  All I know is this: It requires more study.

  So I shall spend some time on my couch, investigating.

 
Because that’s what I do best.

  Introduction to “They’re Back!”

  In my introduction, I mentioned that Fiction River probably can’t support a series of short stories about the same character, yet somehow Dean has managed to publish three stories about his poker-playing superhero Poker Boy in the volumes. Poker Boy has turned up in our first issue, our fifth issue, our seventh issue, and now this one.

  I’m not supposed to admit that I have a favorite character in my husband’s oeuvre, and yet I do. It’s clearly Poker Boy. When I edit something, I find myself asking for another Poker Boy story, because I want one, even though Dean’s writing a lot of them these days for his own magazine, Smith’s Monthly. (You can also find the stories as standalones in ebook and paper format.)

  The first Poker Boy novel, The Slots of Saturn, just appeared this summer. It’s truly wonderful, and it shows the origin of Poker Boy’s team.

  “They’re Back!”—a Poker Boy short novel—came from a confluence of events. Dean, who is a professional poker player himself, had just returned from a successful trip to Las Vegas, where he saw more examples of the mythical ghost slots. (For those of you who don’t know, there are supposedly slot machines that actually gobble up people’s souls. Dean’s not the first writer to mention them. See Harlan Ellison’s classic “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes.”) He also had just finished revising The Slots of Saturn. Somehow his mind decided to return to those villains—who of course can’t be defeated the same way twice.

  They’re Back!

  Dean Wesley Smith

  1

  NOT POSSIBLE, BUT FACT

  “The Slots of Saturn are back,” Stan, the God of Poker, said to me as he slid into the booth beside Patty.