Shirley Murphy: Cat Under Fire

He was about to turn away when he saw, far down between two cottage gardens, a large patch of darkness moving, and he stiffened, watching.

That was not his hunting companion; that shadow was too big. Now it was still again. Maybe it had been only dark bushes shaken by the wind. When he saw no sign of Dulcie he hunched down, feeling lost and lonely. She almost always joined him on such a perfect hunting night, with the wind not too fierce. And the sky, as she would say, as beautiful as black silk strewn with spilled diamonds. He reared again, searching disconsolately, studying the narrow village streets that wound and lost themselves and appeared again, climbing higher up the grassy hills. She could have spared a few moments to join him, even preoccupied as she was.

Though he did wish, if she came to hunt in the predawn dark, that she'd keep her mouth shut about the trial. I'm sick of hearing about the damned trial. These last weeks Dulcie had been interested in nothing else, she seemed able to think only of the fire in Janet Jeannot's studio and of Janet's terrible death-and of Rob Lake, who was being tried for the murder. Dulcie was so sure that Lake was innocent, and so damnably intent on proving she was right.

The day Janet died, they had come up the hills as soon as the fire was out, drawn by the activity of gathering police cars, by what appeared to be a full-blown investigation. Concealing themselves above the burn, where the ground wouldn't scorch their paws, watching the police working within the cordoned-off expanse of smoking, blackened rubble, Dulcie had been both repelled and fascinated. They had watched unmarked cars arrive, watched the forensics people examine Janet's body. But when forensics lifted Janet gently into a body bag, Dulcie had turned away shivering.

And then, when Rob Lake was arrested for Janet's murder, she had gone to watch him in his cell, seething with curiosity.

Observing Lake in his solitary confinement, slowly making friends with him as she crouched at the barred window above his cubicle, listening to him talk out his fears to her-baring his soul to a cat-she had become convinced of Lake's innocence. Soon she had completely bought Lake's story.

Lake has to be a strange dude, Joe thought. What kind of guy spills his deepest thoughts to a cat - not even his own cat? Sure Dulcie was charming, probably she'd given Lake that bright-eyed gaze that enchanted tourists and inspired shopkeepers to invite her right on in among their precious wares. So she charmed him. So big deal. But to let the accused charm her, to buy the idea that Lake was innocent was, in his opinion, stupid and dangerous. The grand jury wouldn't have indicted Lake if mere hadn't been sufficient evidence. Anyway, this trial was not cat business; it was police business.

But Dulcie didn't see it that way.

And you can't tell her anything; she's going to go right on prying like some hotshot detective until she gets herself in trouble.

He hissed at the empty night and scratched a flea. She was only a cat, one small cat, but she thought she knew more than a court full of attorneys. Thought she was smarter than twelve court-selected jurors and a state judge. One small, defiant tabby whose arrogance was enough to make any sensible cat laugh.

He did not consider, in his assessment, that they had, together, already investigated one murder this summer and had helped police nail the killer. That case had been different.

Down the hills, wind scudded the grass in long waves, rolling as the sea. Above him, riding the wind, the nighthawk dived suddenly, skimming straight at him swift as a crashing aircraft. He didn't duck from the bird, though another breed of hawk would have sent him scooting for cover. At the last instant it banked away, sucking up insects-the poor bird could eat nothing but bugs. Joe smiled. God had, in his wisdom, designed some mighty strange creatures.

As he turned, looking down the hill again, he started, then smiled. There she is. She came streaking up across a patch of lawn, a swift shadow so lithe and free she made his heart leap. He avidly watched her every move as she fled up across a narrow street and disappeared into the tall grass above, watched the grass ripple upward, stirred by her invisible flight.

She burst out of the grass high up the hill, racing up across a last flower bed, then an empty street, and into a tangle of weeds, steeply up, a dark bullet of speed. Halfway up the hill she stopped. Reared up. Stood looking up the hill searching for him. His heart trembled.

She saw him. She stood a minute on her hind legs, her front paws curved softly against her belly, then she sped up again, racing and leaping. When again she vanished, the grass tops heaved and swayed, as if shaken by a whirlwind.

She exploded out of the grass inches from his nose. She leaned into him warm and purring, tense from running, her heart pounding against him, her green eyes caressing him. She was all fire, switching her tail, licking his face. For weeks she'd been like this, a bundle of passion, her tempest generated not by love, though he knew she loved him, but by her fevered involvement with the murder, by the compulsion of purpose that blazed in her green eyes, and in her unexpected bouts of quick temper.

He liked her all keyed up, bright and vibrant, but she worried him. She visited the jail too regularly, listened too intently to Rob Lake, had become totally obsessed. Life had just begun to settle down after he and Dulcie solved Samuel Beckwhite's murder, and now Janet's death had thrown her into high gear all over again. The passion of her involvements tumbled and shook him like a dog shaking a rabbit. He was beginning to wonder if life with Dulcie would ever be anything but chaotic. He did not consider-did not choose to remember-his own intensity, once his own curiosity was aroused.

And Dulcie was possessed not only with the murder itself, but with trying to discover, as well, what made humans kill so wantonly.

Premeditated murder was quite beyond the normal feline experience. A coldly planned killing was totally different from the way a cat killed. Such destruction had nothing to do with hunger or survival or with practice training, or even with instinct. From a cat's view, Janet's death had been pointless. Insane. And Dulcie kept trying to understand, in one huge gulp, such human folly. Searching for answers scholars have been seeking for centuries.

Who could tell her that this was a task, for one small cat, as impossible as a gnat swallowing the sun?

But he couldn't stay angry with her, she was his love, his gamin, green-eyed charmer. Now, as she snuggled close, her gaze melting him, he licked the soft peach-tinted fur on her darkly striped face, licked her ears. She lifted a pale silken paw and smiled at him, then flopped down to roll in the grass, flirting.

But the next minute she leaped away again, feinting a run. As he raced after her, she paused to look back, wild-eyed, then ran again, light and swift as a bird in the wind. He chased her up the hill, careening up through the blowing grass, then crashing through a forest of Scotch broom, up toward the crest of the hills, climbing until at last they collapsed, panting, so high they could see nothing above them, and lay stretched close together, Dulcie limp and warm and silken.

"Needed to run," she said. "To get the kinks out. I got so cramped yesterday, crouched on that ledge above the courtroom, I thought I'd pitch a fit."

So don't stay there all day, he thought, but didn't say it.

"And then I kept going to sleep during the boring parts-in spite of those pigeons cooing and blathering all around me. And those attorneys aren't much better, dull as the drone of bees. That prosecuting attorney can put you right to sleep."