Shirley Murphy - Cat Seeing Double

The blond, matronly dispatcher, glancing in at Ryan, handed a large paper bag through the bars. Boy and dog sniffed as one, eyeing the grease-stained bag.

Tearing open the bag, Ryan spread it out on the bunk, revealing four burgers, a box of fries, a large box of onion rings and a tall paper cup that, when the boy began to drink, left a smear of chocolate across his lip. Curtis didn't wait to be asked. Gulping most of the first burger, he slipped a few bites to the dog. Ryan said, "If you can't tell me where he lives, I'll have to take him to the pound."

Curtis glanced around the tiny cell as if thinking the dog could stay there.

"I work all day, Curtis. I can't keep him. Maybe the pound will find him a home before they have to gas him."

For the first time, the boy's defiance faltered. "You looked all over up there for his owner. There's no way you'd take him to the pound."

"I have no choice, unless I can find his owner. I'd drive him back up to San Andreas, to people who'd take care of him, if you'll tell me where. Otherwise it's a cage at the pound and maybe the gas chamber."

"You won't do that."

"Try me. I can't keep him, and I don't know anyone who can. I'd rather take him home. If I have to, I'll call the weimaraner breeder's association. They'd have the name of the registered owner."

The boy nearly flew at her. "You can't! They'll kill him."

"Who would kill him?"

The boy reverted to glaring. Beside him, the dog's brow wrinkled as he looked from one to the other, distressed by their angry voices.

"You want to fill me in, Curtis? Tell me where he belongs?"

"The dog's a stray. I meant-the place I was staying, they… they don't like dogs. They ran him off."

"Where were you staying, Curtis? Who were you staying with?"

Curtis turned his back, and said no more. The cats were nearly bursting, wanting to shout the name Hurlie, burning to tell Ryan about the uncle that the old man wanted so badly kept secret.

Ryan stayed with the boy for perhaps half an hour more, but nothing was forthcoming. She gave up at last and left the cell. The cats could hear her talking with Dallas, out near the dispatcher's cubicle, then their voices faded as if they had headed back to his office. "Maybe," Joe said, "Ryan's cell phone is in the truck, and we can fill them in about Hurlie?"

"She'll have locked it," Dulcie said. "But she's meeting Hanni. Hanni leaves her phone in the car with the top down."

Joe Grey smiled.

Dropping from the oak tree, they crossed the parking lot running beneath parked cars and leaped into the back of Ryan's truck, settling down beneath the tarp ready for a ride up the hills.

A cat, at best, is not long on patience. Ask any sound sleeper whose cat tramps across his stomach at three in the morning demanding to be let out to hunt. Joe Grey was fidgeting irritably by the time they saw Ryan coming. Burrowing flat as pancakes beneath the folded tarp, they were glad that Rock had taken over the front seat, that he wouldn't leap into the truck bed nosing at their hiding place.

But as it turned out, it would be Rock who would nose out, for the cats, the connection between the church bomber and Rupert Dannizer's killer.

Ryan was pulling out of the parking lot when a horn honked. The cats didn't peer out from beneath the tarp, but when she slowed the truck they heard Clyde's voice over the sound of the idling antique Chevy.

"Can I do anything?" he said quietly.

"Thanks, but it's all in hand-at the moment."

"You okay?"

"So far. Just on my way over to the Landeau place to meet Hanni."

Clyde's car moved ahead a little. "Free for dinner?"

"Matter of fact, I am. That would be nice-something early? Burgers and a beer? And we can go over some last-minute details on tomorrow's work. Could I come by for you, and put this fellow in your yard?"

"Sounds good, and you can tell me about him. Around six?"

"See you then."

Clyde pulled out, shifting gears. As he drove away, and Ryan turned into the street, Joe's thoughts returned to the Farger clan, to Curtis's uncle Hurlie. Riding beside Dulcie half-smothered by the tarp, he was all twinges and prickling fur, the San Andreas connection compelling and urgent. Did Gramps get the makings for the bomb up in San Andreas with the help of Hurlie? Hurlie gave that lethal package to Curtis, and Curtis carried it down to Molena Point in the back of Ryan's truck? Curtis delivers the gunpowder or whatever in Ryan's truck, Gramps makes up the bomb, then sends Curtis up on the roof to set it off.

Of course the law would be onto it. Now that Ryan had found a connection between Curtis and San Andreas, Garza and Harper would be onto it like pointers on a covey of quail.

But was the law missing one piece of vital information? As far as Joe could tell, they had no clue yet about Hurlie Farger. Or, if they knew that Hurlie existed, they apparently didn't know that he was in San Andreas, that he was the San Andreas connection.

But Joe forgot Hurlie as Ryan turned into the drive before the Landeau cottage. As she pulled up to park, the big dog began to lunge at the window, leaping at the half-open glass roaring and snarling, pawing to get out.

The old man was a fast driver. He took the winding road at such a pace that, on the floor behind the driver's seat, the kit had to dig her claws hard into the thick black rug. The Jaguar fishtailed and skidded around the tight curves swaying and twisting ever higher into the hills. Against the late afternoon sky, she couldn't see any treetops but sometimes she could glimpse the wild, high mountains toward which they were headed. Behind the car, the sun was dropping, shifting its position as the road turned. She had no notion where he was going or how she would get home again; she was sorry she'd hidden in the old man's car. She'd started to be sorry when she heard him come across the parking lot and open the car door but already it was too late, he was starting the engine. Now the cold wind that swooped down to the floor of the convertible snatched at her fur and whistled inside her ears, and the sharp chemical smell that clung inside the small space burned her nose so that tears came. When the car began to climb even more steeply she felt her stomach lurch until soon she thought she'd have to throw up as she always did when riding in cars. But she daren't, he would hear her retching.

Soon, above the ugly stinks, she could smell sage and mountain shrubs. At every squeal of tires she hunched lower. When at last he skidded to a stop on dirt and gravel, she thought she must be a hundred miles from home. Even Joe Grey would not have been foolish enough to get in the car with this man. She could smell dry dust, and the rich scent of chickens, and more chemical smells. She was terrified he would look in the backseat and find her.

But he didn't look, he got out and slammed the car door. She heard him go up three wooden steps and into a house or building and slam that door too. She waited, shivering. When after a long time she heard nothing more she slipped warily up the back of the furry zebra seat and poked her nose over the edge of the door, looking.

She was so high up the hills that only the jagged mountains rose above her, tall and rocky and bare, their thin patches of grass baked brown from the heat of August and September, brown and dry. Down below her, the road they had taken wound sickeningly along the side of the cliff. The rough clearing where the car stood was only a shelf cut into the bank, just big enough to hold an unpainted cabin and two sheds, all so close to the edge that she imagined at the slightest jolt of earthquake the buildings sliding off into the chasm below.