Cat Seeing Double

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Bonner's shiny black shoes and the pant cuffs of his uniform were muddy. He sniffed the barrel briefly, as if he had already made a determination. "It smells of burnt gunpowder. I'd say it's been recently fired. The trigger-guard bluing is worn off."

  "Bag it," Garza said, and turned to Ryan, his face unreadable, that reined-in cop's expression bearing no discernible message of love or familial closeness, offering her no support or encouragement.

  Ryan looked back at him, very white. "How did this happen? That gun was locked up! You yourself unlocked the cab door after you collected evidence about the boy. Just now, you unlocked the glove compartment. How could-?"

  Neither mentioned that such storage of a gun was not legal, that in California one had to have a special lockbox that could be removed from the car, a law that had never, to Joe Grey and Dulcie, made any sense. What good was a lockbox if it could be removed by a thief?

  "Who else has keys to your truck?" Dallas asked.

  "Scotty has a set because we used it on the job, but he's family. I've only had this truck three weeks-I bought it in San Andreas." She looked hard at Dallas. "Could someone in the truck sales, someone…?"

  "Not likely, but we'll check. Has anyone else driven it, besides your uncle Scott?"

  "Dan Hall, once or twice. He used Scotty's keys or mine. There was no one else up there but Dan and Scotty."

  "No one?"

  "No one to drive the truck. Some kids were hanging around, the Farger boy and his friends, but they weren't… they couldn't…" She looked at him, shaken. "They had no chance, they couldn't have taken my keys."

  "The kids were in the house trailer where you were staying?"

  "A couple of times, but I was with them. They were never alone. I let them make sandwiches one day, while we were eating. They… well… there was one time," she said faintly. "They… when I was surveying one day, they wanted to use the bathroom. I was right there, down the hill," she said lamely.

  "And your keys?"

  "Either in my purse or on the table. I kept my purse in the bedroom closet." She stared at Dallas. "That boy… why would he take my keys? Anyone," she said more forcefully, "anyone could have gotten into the truck with a door tool, then used a lock pick on the glove compartment."

  "Could have," Dallas agreed. He hesitated, glancing at the tape recorder. Then: "That boy very likely set a bomb, Ryan. Set it or helped someone set it. You think that was innocent, that bomb?"

  She said nothing.

  "Did you use the truck every day?"

  "No, sometimes not for several days if we could get a lumber delivery in good time. But if he did take my keys," she said softly, "what was the connection? Between the boy and Rupert?"

  The two cats looked at each other. You are, Joe Grey thought. At the moment, Ryan, it looks like you're the connection. The tomcat shivered. If someone wanted to harm the Molena Point police, first with the bombing that, lucky for everyone, hadn't come off as planned, maybe they'd meant to ruin reputations, too, as a backup move.

  So they chose Ryan, Detective Garza's niece, as the patsy. Pin a murder on Ryan, they'd put Garza in an embarrassing position.

  And, the tomcat thought with a soft growl, this scenario was far too much like the vicious attack earlier in the year when Police Captain Harper was set up as a killer.

  Were Rupert Dannizer's death and yesterday's bombing connected to that other murder? Were all three crimes part of some planned vendetta against Molena Point PD? The possibilities rattled around in Joe Grey's head as wildly as those little plastic balls in some diabolical pinball machine. He felt he was racing back and forth across the glass top swatting uselessly at unrelated facts, the little bright spheres forming, as yet, no logical configuration.

  10

  The images of death remained with Ryan long after Dallas and his officers left the crime scene. Rupert's torn face, the coroner working over him, the strobe lights reflecting shatters of raw color across his body from the broken windows. The coroner wrapping Rupert in a body bag as if he were trussing up a side of beef, the emergency van hauling Rupert away through the village with no final ceremony, no tenderness, no one in attendance.

  So what did she want, banks of roses strewn in his path embellishing his journey to the county morgue? Roses scattered by his former lovers? She imagined the coroner sliding Rupert into a cold gray storage locker, to remain forever alone. But the vision that clung most vividly was Rupert's shattered face, his bloody broken face. That picture would remain with her for all time, generating a distressing internal response to every hurtful thought she'd ever entertained about Rupert Dannizer, to every angry wish she'd ever made about Rupert's ultimate fate.

  When all the vehicles had gone, she stood in the empty drive feeling small and scared. Wishing Dallas could have stayed with her, feeling like a child in need of strong male support and assurance.

  But Dallas had been shaken too. He would never show it, but he was upset and worried for her.

  He would do everything possible, he wouldn't give up until he had unraveled the facts and put them in their proper order. Even if he had to step off the case, and surely he would, he'd remain in the background making certain that everything was done right, seeing that no clue was ignored, no investigative procedure disregarded.

  She stood thinking about death, wondering if Rupert, as he lay in her garage gazing blindly up toward the rafters, might have experienced some final metamorphosis of the spirit, wondering if he'd perhaps undergone some sudden change of view. If Rupert, transformed into the eternal state, had awakened to face the error of his ways.

  She was not a churchgoer. But she'd never doubted that there was more to the spirit than this one life.

  However, given Rupert's earthly performance, she really didn't imagine that in some great toting-up he would be a candidate for a medal in exemplary behavior. More likely Rupert had, in his final moments, felt the searing heat and witnessed his first glimpse of the eternal flames. And that was all right with her.

  Turning to go upstairs, she looked across the street at the neighbors' blank windows imagining people peering out from behind their curtains wondering what kind of woman had moved into their neighborhood bringing murder, neighbors already certain that she had killed the victim, neighbors wondering who he was and what kind of stormy relationship had led to this particular act of violence.

  Well, they'd know soon enough. The papers would have it all, every dirty aspect of hers and Rupert's marriage. Some reporter would dredge up every harlot and married woman Rupert had ever bedded, every incident that would throw suspicion on her, his estranged and bitter wife.

  Heading for the stairs, she stopped to inspect the truck again, and to brush some of the mud from its sleek red paint. Even her nice new truck, this solid and reliable symbol of her new and independent start in life, had become a part of the mess. Dallas and Officer Bonner had dusted it inside and out for fingerprints, a thorough job that had taken them the better part of an hour. Now, moving to the cab, she looked in at the red leather upholstery that puffed luxuriously over the two bucket seats. No hint of mud there. The day she bought the truck she had promised herself that the soft seats and pristine red carpet were going to stay as clean as her kitchen sink. No sawdust, no candy wrappers or greasy hamburgers or leaking Coke cans dripping their long sticky trails. No open tubes of caulking, no getting in the cab with wet paint or plaster on your jeans.

  She had not imagined a strange dog tramping mud all over the truck bed-nor some evil little boy hiding under the tarp planning his sickening crime. She was incredibly tired from the morning's adrenaline-heavy emotions. And scared of what lay ahead.

  Innocent or not, if another suspect wasn't found, the next few months would be ugly. And now that Dallas had taken away her gun, she had no protection against whoever was out there.

  Did Dallas really think the killer wouldn't return, that he'd have no further interest in her? She leaned on the truck, light-headed.

  She neede
d a hot shower and some breakfast. She needed food, needed to get her blood sugar up, dump some protein into the system. Needed to get away from the house for a while.

  As she started up the stairs she saw movement across the street in a window, the slats of a Venetian blind shifting. Scowling at the snooper she beat it up the steps, her face burning.

  Her door wasn't shut, it stood ajar. And a sound startled her, a soft hush through her open window that made her wrists go cold.

  The stirring came again, a shuffling noise.

  But she knew that sound, it was only the breeze through the open window rifling the papers on her desk, disturbing the stack of letters and bills and junk mail that had collected.

  While she was gone, Hanni had come in every few days to go through her mail, to call her with anything important, but had left the rest for Ryan to clean up at her leisure. The mail blowing, that's all the soft sound was.

  But why was the door ajar?

  Very likely she hadn't closed it tightly when she and Dallas went back downstairs. It had a tendency not to want to latch. Certainly there was no one in there, no one would be dumb enough to enter with cops all over the place. Moving inside she thought she'd take a long hot shower then head out again and treat herself to a nice breakfast, try to get hold of herself, to get centered. She thought of calling Hanni, see if she could join her. Hanni wouldn't let her get the shakes, she'd put a positive spin on any disaster. A few smart retorts, a touch of twisted humor. So you cut the cost of the lawsuit, so quit bellyaching, you've inherited the whole enchilada.

  Shivering, she decided against calling Hanni. Stepping into the kitchen to turn off the coffeepot, she stopped.

  She was not alone.

  He stood beside the breakfast table, a muddy dog so big his chin would have rested easily on the tabletop. His short silver coat was smeared with dried mud. His pale yellow eyes watched her with a look so challenging that she stepped back.

  He was bone thin, deep jowled and with long floppy ears. Built like a pointer, his tail docked to a length of six inches. The tail wagged once, a brief and dignified question. He had left a trail of flaking mud across her kitchen and into the studio, had tracked to her unmade bed then back to the drafting table and desk, apparently quartering the room in a thorough inspection. While she stood looking at where he had wandered, his gaze on her turned patronizing, as if she was very slow indeed to make him welcome.

  And certainly she should welcome him, she had done so several times before but not in Molena Point. Up in San Andreas he had in fact been far more welcome than the three eager children with whom he had sometimes come to the trailer.

  The kids said he was a stray, that he roamed all over the hills. That had seemed strange and unlikely for such a handsome purebred. But surely he'd been very thin, and though she'd reported him lost to the sheriff and had run an ad in the paper, no one had claimed him. She'd seen him only with the children, happy to be running with kids-kids didn't demand that a dog follow rules, they themselves were rule breakers. Kids, still young animals in spirit, made fine companions for a wandering canine.

  There was no question that this was the same dog, there could not be another weimaraner exactly like him, not with the same challenging look in those intelligent yellow eyes nor with the same small, lopsided cross of white marking his gray chest and the same notch in his left ear. The same old, cracked leather collar without any tags. She thought there could not be another dog anywhere with quite this insolent air. She knew that if she were to stroke his side and shoulder she would feel the little hard lumps where buckshot, sometime in his unknown past, must have lodged beneath his skin, gunshot likely administered by some angry farmer not wanting a hungry dog nosing around his chicken coops. She held her hand out to the big weimaraner, wondering what she had in her bare cupboards to feed him.

  The dog stood assessing her, gauging her intentions.

  "Hungry?"

  His yellow eyes lighted, his long silky ears lifted, his short tail began to move slowly back and forth in a hesitant question.

  She found a jar of peanut butter in the nearly empty cupboard and spread it on some stale crackers. When she held them down, he didn't snatch them, he took each gently from her fingers. But he gulped them as if truly starving, and when she filled a bowl with water, he drank it all, never lifting his head until the bowl was empty. She stood considering him.

  Looked like Curtis had a companion when he hid in her truck. She could just see Curtis climbing in and calling to the dog, the big weimaraner eagerly joining him. This had to have happened in the small town itself when she stopped to pick up the windows. She could imagine Curtis slipping into the truck after she loaded up, while she was inside paying her bill, and coaxing the dog under the tarp with him. What did Curtis think would happen to a nice dog like this running loose in the city? The kids had called him Rock, because of his color like an outcropping of gray boulders, though when clean his coat was more like gray velvet.

  The dog was, in fact, exactly the same color as Clyde Damen's tomcat, she thought, amused. Not only the same color, but both animals had docked tails that stuck up at a jaunty angle, and both had wise yellow eyes. How droll. Even their expressions were similar, bold and uncompromising.

  The silly humor of dog and cat look-alikes helped considerably to ease her stress. She gave him all the crackers and peanut butter. There wasn't anything else in the cupboard that would interest a canine, only a can of grapefruit. When she picked up her truck keys, thinking to go buy some dog food, he brightened and headed for the door looking up at her with eager enthusiasm, as if they did this every day.

  Out on the deck behind Ryan, the two cats sat on the windowsill looking in, watching with fascination this amusing relief from the morning's events. They had watched the dog earlier as he approached the police cars, trotting silently down the sidewalk, his tongue lolling in a happy smile as he headed for all the busy activity.

  But then he had paused suddenly, testing the air, and abruptly he had turned aside, slipping into the tall bushes. There he had lain down out of sight, remaining still, only lifting his nose occasionally then dropping his head again to rest his nose on his paws-something about the crime scene, perhaps the scent of death, made him keep his distance.

  When he had first pushed into the bushes the cats had tensed to race away to the nearest fence top. But the dog, sniffing idly in their direction and making eye contact, had only smiled with doggy humor and turned his attention to the human drama; he had exhibited no desire to haze or lunge at cats, had shown no inclination to snap up a cat and shake it-not at the moment. Though maybe another day, another time. One could not always be certain.

  He had remained hidden and watchful until the officers' attention was concentrated around the tailgate of Ryan's truck, then with no humans watching to shout at him, he had moved from the bushes up the stairs casually sniffing each step. Within seconds he was nosing the door open to disappear into Ryan's apartment. Soon they had heard the soft click of toenails on hardwood. And now through the window they watched Ryan feed him crackers and peanut butter, then pick up her truck keys.

  "He's beautiful," Dulcie said. "He's the same color as you."

  "What?"

  "Exact same gray. And your eyes are the same color." Her own eyes slitted in an amused cat laugh. "Even your tails are docked the same." She looked at Joe and looked in at the big dog. "Except for size, and his doggy face and ears, he's a mirror image."

  Joe Grey scowled; but he peered in again, with interest. He had to admit, this dog was unusually handsome.

  Wondering what to do with the dog, Ryan glanced to the window and saw the two cats staring in. They didn't seem afraid, only interested. Benignly the dog looked up through the window, giving no sign of wanting to chase.

  When she had left San Andreas, and Scotty stayed on in the trailer to put in some landscaping, he had planned to feed the dog and continue to look for his owner. Both she and Scotty had wanted him, but neither h
ad a decent way to keep him. She would be working eight and ten hours a day, and she had no fenced yard and none that could be properly fenced. The front lawn of the duplex was only a narrow strip, broken by the two driveways. Her side yard was six feet wide, not nearly big enough for a dog like this. And at the back, the hill went up far too steeply even for a billy goat. No place to keep a dog and no time to devote to this animal. Weimaraners needed to run, they needed to hunt or to work, that was what they'd been bred for. Without proper work, a dog like this could turn into a nightmare of destruction, fences chewed up and furniture reduced to splinters.

  And Scotty had no home at all, at present. When he returned to Molena Point he'd be staying with Dallas, who already had two elderly pointers that he was boarding until he could build a fence of his own, aged dogs who were past the need to run for miles. Dogs that had never known the consuming needs of this more active breed.

  The dog had appeared the first time, without the boys, on a moonless night as she and Scotty and Dan sat in the trailer eating supper. A soft movement at the open door, a pale shape against the dark screen so insubstantial and ghostly they thought it was a young deer stepping inexplicably up onto the tiny porch. Then they saw the dog peering in, sniffing the scent of food.

  Of course Scotty invited him in. The dog had come willingly, staring at their plates but he didn't beg or charge the table. He stood silent and watchful, observing them and their supper with those serious yellow eyes, studying each of them in turn. Scotty had hesitated only a moment, then blew on his plate to cool the hot canned stew, stirred and blew again, and set it on the floor.

  Not until Scotty stepped back did the dog approach the plate. He paused, looking up at Scotty.

  "It's okay. It's for you."

  The dog inhaled the stew in three gulps. They had fed him all their suppers and opened another can. After an hour they fed him again, bread and canned hot dogs. Over the period of several hours they cleaned out the cupboard. The dog had slept in the trailer that night, and the next morning they called the sheriff, thinking he'd gotten lost from some hunter. From then on the dog would show up every couple of days, usually with the kids, but always starving. The boys had no notion where he lived, nor did the sheriff or his deputies.