Black Cat Crossing

by Fitz Molly

  “Georgia,” Valeria responded. “This is the Peach Plains PD headquarters.”

  “PD?” I asked, sitting down on the sidewalk. “You’re all cops?”

  “Not exactly,” she said, pulling a small black box from her jacket pocket. “We’re the Paranormal Division. We’re known as hawkshaws, kind of like the old term gumshoe.”

  She pushed a button on the box, and like magic, a car started up on the street. When I saw it, I had to do a double take. Sleek lines, glossy black finish like it’d been waxed to a mirror shine. It looked more like some sort of spaceship than a car.

  Valeria laughed. “Pick up your jaw, Officer Cat. It’s just an Impala.”

  Now I knew she had to be lying to me. “C’mon, Val. This ain’t no Impala. I drove an Impala when I was off duty. This is like some sort of f…”

  An odd thought crossed my mind. I was a cat, but I remembered driving my 1967 Tuxedo Black Impala. It’d cost me a couple grand, but even with all the options, it hadn’t looked like this thing.

  “What year it is, Val?” I asked, my heart thumping in my chest.

  “C’mon, hop in and I’ll fill you in on the way. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us, and you’ll need to be briefed on our assignment,” she said hurriedly. I knew she’d intentionally dodged the question.

  I looked her in the eyes and asked again. “What year is it, Val?”

  She looked around for a moment, unable to meet my gaze. “It’s 2021.”

  Once again, my head felt light, and dizziness overtook me. Darkness rose up from the ground, enveloping me in its warm embrace.

  Chapter Three

  “Captain Flaherty, I found Scavo’s mole in the department.”

  I snapped back awake at the sound of a gunshot. My surroundings were strange, flashing lights and the heavy smell of leather and something else. There was a warmth underneath me, and I felt like I was moving even though I wasn’t.

  “You’re up,” Valeria said from the driver’s seat next to me. We must’ve been inside that spaceship she was calling an Impala. “You feeling okay?”

  “What happened to me?” There was so much wrong and so much I just didn’t know.

  “You passed out,” she said, keeping her eyes fixed on the road. “They warned me not to give you too much information right away. I’m sorry.”

  “No, what happened to me?” I said, trying to gesture to the rest of me. “I’m a friggin’ cat and I’m in the future. Are we even on Earth or is this some sorta Martian colony or somethin?”

  “Okay,” Valeria said as she took a deep breath. “We are on Earth, there are no colonies on Mars. But a lot has changed. Your form wasn’t decided by me. It was your spirit.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, holding up a paw. “I’m dead?”

  “You were,” she said sadly. “Do you remember any of it?”

  “Such a pity.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure. I keep getting flashes of something, but it’s just echoes or something. Do you know how I died?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Valeria said. “I just know that the ritual seeks out a Spirit of Justice. And you’re the one that came.”

  Ritual? “What do you mean Spirit of Justice?”

  “Normally, someone who in life strove for justice.” She paused for a moment. “And normally, their life was cut tragically short.”

  “So this is what? Some kinda second chance to make a difference?” Reflexively, I began licking my paw.

  “Something like that, I guess,” she said, touching some raised metal bumps on the dashboard.

  “And you’re a… what? A witch?”

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  “And you’re kinda like a cop?” I realized I was licking my paw and stopped. This cat thing was getting out of hand.

  “Yes,” she said again. “But a hawkshaw. It’s an outdated term, but witches like to hang on to antiquity.”

  “Okay,” I said with a sigh. “What’s the case?”

  “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Valeria asked, taking a moment to look at me.

  “Hey, I’ve had what, fifty years to rest?” I stretched out. “Let’s catch some bad guys.”

  Aside from the magic-type stuff, the case was relatively straightforward. Crime ring in Maine. They were breaking into businesses, robbing them, and then fencing the items at a later date. If it were normal people, the cops would’ve been able to crack it easily.

  But then there was the magic stuff. The perps were shifters, people that were animals or animals that were people—I didn’t quite understand it—but they would case the joint as an animal, and people aren’t as cautious around animals. They got codes for the buildings or security systems, where they hid keys and whatnot. Then, they’d come back and poof, no sign of a break-in.

  Valeria had been called in because the crime ring recently branched out to murder. A shopkeeper had come back during the robbery and was mauled to death. Naturally, regular cops ruled it a Fish and Game issue and assumed the goods were stolen after the old guy had been killed.

  “Do we think the robbery scheme is linked to any other crimes in the area?” I paced back and forth in the back seat.

  “What do you mean?” Valeria looked at me in the rearview mirror.

  “Well, are these just a buncha punks, or is this group part of a larger whole? I’ve seen something like this where robbery was a minor money maker, but a way to test the newer guys to see if they could be trusted.” I knew it deep down, but for the second life of me, I couldn’t remember how I knew it. “These guys like to have a circle of trust, and you don’t get to the inner circle until you prove yourself or someone vouches for you.”

  “You took an oath, Davis. We all did! And you betrayed us! And for what? Dirty money from a sleazeball like Scavo?”

  Was I a good cop? A spirit of justice like the witch in the front seat seemed to think? Did I even want my memories back? Who was I?

  “You okay back there, Officer Cat?” Valeria asked, breaking me from my downward spiral.

  “Uh, yeah,” I stammered. “I just… You know, I don’t remember my name. Can we think of something better than Officer Cat?”

  “How do you feel about Fluffy?” she asked with a chuckle.

  I leapt deftly into the passenger seat and flexed my claws. “How do you feel about your upholstery?”

  “Okay, okay,” she said, taking her hands off the wheel momentarily to put them up. “You’re from Boston, right? How about Sox?”

  “You do know I’m not a real cat, right?” I asked. Sox. Way to pander to stereotypes. What, just because I was from Boston, I had to love the Red Sox? I mean, they were all right, but I was more of a Celtics fan.

  “Okay, how about Jack?” she asked.

  I narrowed my eyes. “Jack, huh?” She was up to something, trying to sneak something by me. “Why Jack?”

  “Because,” she said, stifling a laugh. “You’re a black cat.”

  “Uh-huh…” Where was she going with this?

  “You’d be Blackjack.” Valeria burst out laughing.

  I couldn’t help myself. Her laughter was infectious, and I started laughing as well—a weird hissing cough of a laugh, but laughter nonetheless.

  “Okay.” I nodded when the laughter had subsided. “Blackjack and—you know I’m not going to keep calling you Valeria, right?”

  She nodded, a smile still spread across her face.

  “I’ll stick with either Val or… What was your last name again?” Man, this memory thing was starting to bug me.

  “Mason,” she said, putting a hand out for a handshake.

  “Mason,” I repeated. “Good to be working with you, partner.”

  I put both of my paws in her much larger hand and she shook them. We both started laughing again after that for the next few miles.

  Chapter Four

  Our route took us up through Massachusetts, but sadly not through Boston. I’d watched wistfully through the window as we passed b
y. Val promised we’d go there once we took care of our assignment in Maine, and I believed her, but I didn’t know what to think. Should I even go back? I’d supposedly died there. Would it be tempting fate to go back?

  I’d been lost to my own thoughts, still trying to come to grips with how much the world had changed, when Val put a hand on my head. It felt nice, which was a bit odd for me.

  “We’re here,” she said softly. It seemed like something was bothering her, too.

  Paws on the dashboard in front of me, I craned my neck to see out the windshield.

  “Blueberry Bay,” she explained. “There are a few normal towns around, like Glendale, Misty Harbor, Cooper’s Cove, and Dewdrop Springs. Then there’s a… Well, let’s just call it a magic town. Caraway Island. You can see it there, in the bay proper. There’s a ferry that goes back and forth from there.”

  “Magic town?” I asked, scanning the shoreline. “What do they got, a minotaur mayor or somethin’?”

  She shrugged, which threw me off. There were minotaurs? I shook myself out. That wasn’t what I needed to focus on.

  “Where do you wanna start? Magic types might fit in better in magic town, but magic town would have more clue that animal people could be doing stuff,” I said, some residual instinct kicking in. “I’m guessing the robberies are centered on the normal towns, right?”

  “Yup,” Val responded.

  “Okay, so, you said there’s a ferry to and from the island to magic town, right?” I asked. “Do these robberies happen just before the ferry stops running for the day or just after it starts?”

  “Neither. It’s always after business hours and normally pretty late.” She stopped at a crossroads, waiting for me to choose the direction.

  “Let’s save magic town for last, because I’m guessing these creeps are sticking close to home.” I tilted my head, looking at the street signs. Just on the corner of one of the signs was a small shimmering mark. “Do you see that on the sign?”

  Val leaned forward and stared for a minute before shaking her head.

  “Okay, let’s head to this Glendale place,” I said. “There’s a mark on the sign pointing in that direction, and if I can see it but you can’t, it’s a sign for animals.”

  “Or shifters.” Val nodded her approval. “Okay, Glendale it is. That’s also where a majority of the robberies have taken place. That makes it seem like these might be low level thugs like you mentioned.”

  We drove into the town, a quaint little coastal number like the picture on a postcard simply titled ‘Maine.’ It wasn’t a sprawling cityscape by any stretch of the imagination, but it was big enough to hide trouble from a first glance.

  “Does the PD here have a station we need to check in with or something?” I asked, looking for other shining symbols.

  “Kind of?” Val said, making it sound more like a question.

  “Uh-oh.” I could feel a shiver across my tail. Another weird thing to get used to. “Why does that sound bad?”

  “Well, as of now, you’re in the closest thing the BBPD has to a station.” Val gestured to the grand interior of the Impala. While it was big by my standards, I was a cat. I’d feel bad if Val was planning on sleeping in the car.

  “Well, Captain Mason.” I tried to give my best version of a salute and nearly fell over. “If you go establish our HQ, I’ll go on a scouting trip and see what I can find out by just taking a lap.”

  “We’re not ‘establishing an HQ’ in Glendale, Jack,” she said. I still liked the sound of the name. It made me purr. Which in itself was not something a Boston cop would expect to do. “We’re authorized to set up shop on Caraway Island and possibly even recruit some new agents.”

  “At least get a hotel room or something, Mason,” I said as sternly as my cat mouth could muster. “I’m not going to let you sleep in the car.”

  She saluted me this time, and we both broke out in laughs. I wasn’t sure if her moods were just infectious or if the whole familiar thing meant her moods influenced mine.

  Okay, it was game time. I had to get into my cop headspace. I’d start with the basic side streets and work my way across town in the seedier parts and then track down Val after I finished my lap.

  With my tail swishing behind me, I propped my front paws on the door handle for the car and struggled to paw it open. I pulled myself up a bit and tried to use one of my hind legs to kick it open.

  I probably would’ve had it, but Val’s snickering broke my concentration. My tail twitched as I spun around to face her.

  “Here,” she said with a warm smile. With a simple nudge, her door opened and a weird electric noise started pinging. I hopped up on her lap and then off onto the sidewalk. “Don’t worry about getting lost. Our bond will lead you right to me,” she added as I began to walk down the street.

  I would’ve answered her, but she’d mentioned that this was a normal town, so talking cats were probably unheard of here. I’d need to be cautious.

  With the aid of a stack of cardboard on the side of a building, I lifted myself up onto just my hind legs and sniffed the air. It wasn’t Boston, but a beat cop always knew the smell of the streets.

  Time to catch some criminals. Magical or not, scum was scum. And they always messed up somewhere. I just needed to find out where.

  Chapter Five

  More than anything, I missed my old patrol car. There was something about the old white and blue cars slowly driving down a road that sent the cockroaches scurrying for cover. Like turning on the light in a seedy public bathroom. That’s how you knew who the troublemakers were. Not too many innocent people ran from the cops.

  But here I was a man… er, cat out of time, and it made things just that much more difficult. It meant that in addition to tracking animals that were humans or vice versa, I was stuck trying to deal with the abundance of future technology. Val had showed me her phone, if you could call it that. It was a small squished brick with no buttons. And according to her, it had more computers in it than NASA had used to put a man on the moon. I was more inclined to believe it was just a magic thing until I saw nearly every person on the street using one.

  I watched as a man not using a magic calculator ducked down one of the side streets, constantly looking over his shoulder. At least suspicious people never changed. My whiskers twitched in a pleasant fashion as I darted across the street and ducked around the corner of the alleyway.

  He ducked down another side alley and a small smile crossed my face. That was a dead end. Checkmate, you snake. I stopped just before the alley and peeked out. He fired another shot at me and I was forced back a bit.

  “Why couldn’t you just leave well enough alone?”

  The hairs along my back bristled as the memory came rushing into me. I double checked the alley I’d seen Suspicious Guy go down, but there was no sign of him. Shoot.

  I walked the rest of the block without seeing anything else that looked like a lead to follow, so with a dejected sigh, I began to methodically pace through the town in an old police search pattern.

  By the fifth block, I was so lost in thought that I almost answered when a tall woman wearing a dress covered in multi-colored polka dots called out.

  “Is there something I can help you with, kitty?” she asked.

  I tilted my head and glanced around, sure she wasn’t talking to me. This must’ve been normal for her because she crouched down and added, “It’s okay, I can understand you.” What a weirdo. Did she always talk to cats?

  Not wanting to blow my cover, I simply looked at the kook and offered a simple “Meow.” I don’t know if I’d expected a cat sound of some sort to come out, but instead, it just sounded like I’d plainly said the word meow. Crap. Instinct kicked in at that moment and I ran.

  I made it to the hotel Val had picked without much trouble. It was actually pretty easy to find her, almost like I had a compass that always pointed to her when we were apart.

  She’d been nice enough to leave the door cracked open so I didn�
��t have to bang my paws on the door or do another embarrassing “meow” to be let in. With a double check to make sure we were alone, I leapt onto the bed.

  “Well, that was a bust,” I griped. “I thought I had something, but it didn’t pan out. And then I almost had my cover blown by a polka-dotted pedestrian.”

  “That’s okay,” Val said, tacking a map on the wall above the bed. “While you were scouting around, I reviewed the case notes and found a pattern to the robberies.”

  Ruefully, I watched as she continued to place marks on the map and add little sticky notes in places.

  "You took an oath, Davis. We all did! And you betrayed us!”

  “Hey, Mason,” I said as the memory continued to echo in my brain. “I’m sorry you got stuck with me.”

  “Nonsense, Jack,” she said, continuing her work. “You’ve been a great help and we’ve only just arrived. We’ll crack this case in no time.”

  “No,” I said, curling up on a pillow. “You’re doing great. I’m just going through the motions of an outdated police reject. My memories keep bugging me and… I get the feelin’ I wasn’t a good cop. And… Well, you deserve better.”

  “Have you gotten all your memories back?” Val asked, sitting next to me on the bed and running a hand over my back.

  My tail flicked of its own accord. “No. Not quite. I just…” How was I supposed to tell her? All my memories pointed to one unescapable truth. I was a dirty cop. “I’ve been catching bits and pieces of things. There must’ve been a mistake in your ritual or somethin’. I ain’t a Spirit of Justice or whatever it was.”

  “Jack, look at me.” Val’s voice was stern. Maybe she’d banish me back to the oblivion of wherever I’d been before I was a cat. “Are you trying to do a good job?”

  My ears twitched and I sat up. “Yeah. But—”

  “No buts,” she said holding up a finger. “You’re trying to do a good job. That’s all I can really ask from you. I don’t care about what your past was or what type of cop you were. We’re not just a witch and her familiar. Right now, you’re my partner and that’s what matters. You keep doing your best and watch my back because I’m going to keep doing my best and watching your back.”