Shirley Murphy: Cat Playing Cupid

Clyde didn't know where he was. Nor did Dulcie. And Kit was too involved with mooning and sulking over Sage to think of much else. He was alone. Stuck in an unfamiliar and unfriendly airport. He didn't know whether he was more scared or more angry.

How do I get out of this one? How the hell do I get home? He was almost tempted to slip into one of the remaining patrol units, hitch a ride to San Jose PD.

Oh, right. Just his luck to link up with a cop who, finding a presumably stray cat crouched in the back of his unit, would take him straight to the pound.

He listened to the casual exchanges between the two forensics officers. He licked his sweating paws. He tried to ignore the chill in his belly that was fast turning into panic. This was the way an abandoned pet would feel when it was coldly dropped on some unfamiliar street miles from home. Torn away from home and hearth, from its humans and its blanket and food bowl. Set adrift, expected to survive among strangers in a heartless world. And he was filled with the same panic he'd known as a homeless, starving kitten in San Francisco alleys.

Except, now he was far more familiar with the cruelties a cat could encounter in the human world.

But only for a few moments did the tomcat indulge himself in his dramatic bout of self-pity before he remembered the old, horse-scented pickup truck with Ryder's cell phone hidden behind the crates.

He took off running under the rows of parked cars, almost forgetting to listen and look for moving vehicles, praying the pickup with the cell phone was still there, that some disembarking passenger hadn't thrown his bag in the back and taken off for a far-flung farm.

He smelled the truck before he saw it. The sweet scent of horses that made him nostalgic for the Harper ranch. The truck was still there, and the driver wasn't, and he leaped into the metal bed scrabbling for the phone. Half expecting it to be gone, half expecting that Ray had somehow found and retrieved it. He hadn't seen him do that, Ray hadn't had time; but for a moment Joe let his imagination run wild, he envisioned Ray finding another phone hidden in the Audi, imagined Ray slipping back to cruise the parking lot, windows down, calling Ryder's phone and following the familiar ring tone to its source in the pickup.

But of course nothing like that had happened. The phone was where he'd left it. He pawed it free of the crates and dialed Clyde's cell number.

He listened to it ringing. Tried not to think about what would happen later if the cops investigated Ryder's phone bills, checked out the numbers called on this date and wanted to know why Ryder had called Clyde.

One ring. Two…If it got to the fifth ring, it would go on message. Did Clyde have the phone off? Joe waited, growing cross. Turn your phone on! Turn it on, Clyde!

Or was Clyde looking at the incoming number and, not recognizing it, wondering with his usual annoyance if this was some unwelcome sales pitch?

Three rings, four. Desolation drowned Joe. Maybe he should ride home to the farm with the driver of the pickup. Better that than the city pound, than a cage, dry cat kibble, and forced adoption or the gas chamber.

"Damen," Clyde said gruffly, just before the fifth ring.

"I'm in San Jose," Joe said. "I need a little help here. No money for a cab, or a bus ticket," he said, hoping to get a laugh out of Clyde.

No laugh. Only a long silence. A heavy, demoralizing silence.

"Clyde? I'm at the San Jose airport. I need a ride. Do you think-"

"We're on our way," Clyde said before Joe could grovel and beg. "We just passed Gilroy."

"How did you…? What're you doing in Gilroy?"

"Hold on," Clyde said none too sweetly. There was some muttering, then Ryan came on. "Joe, are you all right? Where are you, exactly? Where at the airport? How do we find you?"

"How did you…?"

"Dulcie figured it out. How will we find you?"

He gave her directions from the A tunnel entry. "I am, at the moment, in the bed of a 1999 Honda pickup. Green, with three wooden crates tied in the back, and smelling of horses. If the pickup's gone, I'll be…" Rearing up, he looked around short-term parking for a likely retreat. "I'll be near the shuttle stop, under a bench. Did this number show on your screen?"

"It did," she said. "We'll call you when we get there. It's nearly supper time. We brought you a little something. Wait, Clyde wants to talk."

Another silence while she handed the phone back. Joe heard her whisper, "Be nice. The poor cat's scared, all alone in that place. I'd be scared silly." And Joe thought, My God, I love this woman .

Clyde came on. "I wish, Joe, when these things happen, you would use a little judgment. That you would at least call me. What did you do, stow away in Lindsey's car?"

"Ryder Wolf is dead," Joe told him. "Gibbs shot her. Dallas and Mike are on their way to San Francisco to meet Lindsey-she followed Ray. Hopefully SFPD will find him first."

There was another long silence that made Joe wish he hadn't tried to sort it out on the phone. "Sometimes…," Clyde began, then, "Where did you find a phone?"

"It's Ryder's phone."

Clyde sighed and didn't ask any more questions. "If we can't find you, we'll call that number. That's a big airport. Stay put if you can. Hold on." There was another pause as Ryan took the phone.

"Fast-food burger okay? With fries?"

"Sounds like heaven," Joe said, licking his whiskers. If Clyde had ever shown good sense, it was when he asked Ryan Flannery to be his wife. He hung up thinking fondly of a hot, greasy hamburger and greasy fries.

Pushing the phone back among the crates, he curled down on the hard metal floor of the pickup, yawned, and closed his eyes. He'd be sure to wake if the driver appeared. Cats are light sleepers, a cat hears every slightest sound, senses every movement. And, curling his front paws under him, Joe Grey dropped into sleep.

GULLS SWOOPED LOWover Fisherman's Wharf, winging beneath the low clouds. Circling and screaming they dropped down among the rich smells of raw and frying fish to land on a restaurant roof; there they strutted, stomping softly like little thumping drumbeats, directly above Lindsey Wolf's head where she sat inside at a window table.

Having angled her chair behind a potted palm, she was out of sight from the hotel across the street. Distracted for a moment by the pitter-pat above her, she abandoned her surveillance, looking up-she looked back just in time to see Ray Gibbs pull aside the second-floor curtain, as he had done twice before.

Standing in plain view, he peered down at the narrow, crowded street, watching the wandering tourists, then looked across at the restaurant windows. She was sure he couldn't see her behind the palm and crammed among other diners. The interior of the restaurant, despite its big windows, was shadowy in contrast to the bright street.

He had the TV on, she could see its light flickering behind him through the thin curtain. She wondered, shivering, if the shooting was on the news yet, if that was what he was watching.

If she'd hesitated when he shot Ryder, she'd be dead, too. She was certain Ryder was dead, she couldn't have lived, the way she was shot. She grieved for Ryder, guilt had ridden with her as she hailed a cab, following Ray. Praying for Ryder, and riven with hate for Gibbs, she wanted to see him burn. Burn for Ryder, and for Carson, and for Nina Gibbs.

Why had he come here after he shot Ryder? Why not catch his flight, for which they must have had last-minute reservations? Or head up the coast among the small fishing and lumbering towns of northern California and southern Oregon, with all the open land and woods where he could disappear?