Shirley Murphy: Cat Under Fire

Three stories above the alley, Dulcie crouched in the knotted, twisted tree, gazing intently across empty space to the window of Rob Lake's cell. On the brick windowsill two dozen pigeons strutted, dirtying the bars, eyeing her, and cooing inanely in their conviction that no cat could reach them across empty space. Peabrains. Can't they remember I've leaped that chasm every day for a week?

Gathering herself, fixing her attention on the narrow brick sill, she tightened down, flexed her haunches, lashed her tail, and sailed across. Pigeons exploded away loud as a clap of thunder.

Moving along the sill between pigeon droppings, she pressed against the bars and wire mesh. The high degree of security amused her. Max Harper took no chances with his prisoners. Below her in the dim cell, Rob sat hunched on his unmade bunk, his head in his hands, unaware of her. Hadn't even glanced up at the explosion of pigeon wings. He'd made no effort to clean himself up for the day, his brown hair was rumpled from sleep, his face stubbly, his prison blues wrinkled. His bedsheet and dingy blanket were in a tangle, his pillow fallen to the floor.

He was a young man, nice enough looking, though his soft face was perhaps a bit weak, a bit sullen. Maybe his very weakness drew her, stirred her pity- my maternal instincts, Joe says -and kept her coming back. He always seemed so happy to see her, as if she was perhaps the only visitor he had, besides his attorney.

And who could warm to that attorney? Deonne Baron might be a good defense lawyer, but she was abrupt and cold, and spoke with a harsh, precise voice that gave Dulcie a cat-sized headache. She could hardly bear to listen to Baron in court, had developed a deep, snarling dislike of the woman.

Now, she stared down into the cell at Rob's bent head, and mewled softly.

He looked up and grinned. The desolation, which showed for only an instant, left his face. He rose and came to the window, reaching up to press his fingers through the wire mesh and pet her. "Glad you're here, cat. I was getting the sweats real bad; the walls were closing in." He looked her over, reached a finger to rub her ear. "I don't know why, cat, but you always make me feel better. Somehow you take away the trapped feeling."

He frowned, scratched his stubbled cheek. "Another day in court. More endless testimony. And for what? They all think I killed her."

He looked at her deeply. "Why do you come here, cat? I'm sure glad you do, but hell, I don't even feed you, except a few scraps, sometimes. And I can't really pet you very well through all this metal. What brings you here, kitty? My sweet jailhouse smell?" He pressed his hand harder against the wire, seeking her warmth. She pressed back, rubbing her face against the cold wire, then winding back and forth on the narrow ledge, looking in at him inquiringly. Usually an inquiring look would get him to talk; this was how she had gotten him to tell her how he felt about Janet. He had sworn to her that he didn't kill Janet. And why would he lie to a cat?

Joe said maybe Rob was a pathological liar, maybe he'd rather lie than tell the truth, even to a cat, that maybe he lied to himself, too. Or maybe he liked to practice his lies on her, polishing them for his next court appearance.

But Joe was wrong. Rob Lake did not kill Janet.

She knew he felt trapped, trapped in the tiny cell, and trapped most of all by a legal system that should have protected him. Rob seemed, as the trial progressed, to grow more and more despondent. As if the whole world was against him, as if he didn't have a chance. And when he talked about Janet, Dulcie knew he had loved her, that he couldn't have hurt her.

Janet's death had shaken the whole village. The young artist had been such a bright part of Molena Point life, and so beautiful, her long pale hair, her slim build and easy stride, her cheerful, unassuming presence. She didn't fuss over her looks-she never wore makeup, and she usually dressed in old, worn jeans, which often had a welding burn or a paint stain. Of all their local artists, Molena Point had loved Janet best, and had loved her paintings best. Her big, splashy interpretations of the wind-driven rocky coves, her tiny cottages tucked between the huge and windy hills, were subjects which, treated by a lesser painter, would have been trite, but to which Janet brought a powerful vibrancy and magic. Dulcie had been deeply touched by her work. The transition Janet accomplished, turning an ordinary bit of the world into something new and wondrous, seemed to mirror exactly the transition in Dulcie's own life-from ordinary cat self into a world exploding with vistas and possibilities she'd never before guessed at.

She missed Janet, missed seeing her around the village, missed her casual visits to Wilma's when she would pop by for a cup of coffee and a few minutes of comfortable talk. The day of the fire, after Janet's body had been taken away, Dulcie came home and crept under the couch into the quiet dark and curled down into a little ball, her nose pressed to her flank, her tail tight around herself. No one but Wilma or Joe could understand how a cat could grieve for a human.

The night before Janet was killed, she had driven home alone from a long weekend in San Francisco, from the opening of the de Young Museum Annual, where she had accepted first prize for oils and second prize for sculpture. That was a heady night for any artist, to receive two top awards in one major show. That was Sunday night. She had left the reception around ten, driving south along the coast, the only direct route, arriving home near midnight. She had pulled the van into her hillside garage-studio, and in a few minutes, a neighbor said, her lights came on in her downstairs apartment. Half an hour later the lights went out, as if she had gone to bed.

She rose early Monday morning as was her habit- she was up by five. A neighbor leaving for his job on the Baytowne wharves saw her lights. She must have dressed, gone directly upstairs, and made coffee in the studio as she usually did. The newspaper said she was under a tight schedule, finishing up the last small touches on a metal sculpture commission to be delivered that week. The county fire investigators weren't sure whether, when she turned on her oxygen gauge, the tank exploded, or whether fire broke out first and caused the tank's explosion. She was hit in the head by flying metal.

The Molena Point police found a liberal smearing of oil on Janet's oxygen gauge and in the lines. Oil which, when the tank was turned on, could have caused the explosion. But that wasn't what killed her.

Traces of aspirin were found in her blood, and Janet was deathly allergic to the medication; even a small dose would have dangerously slowed her breathing. The police had found traces of aspirin in the metal of the melted coffeemaker. The combination of aspirin and smoke inhalation had been sufficient to end Janet's life. And perhaps the explosion of her van had prevented her dazed escape.

Normally she did not weld with her van inside the studio complex, but she only had to do a little touch-up to the sculpture. When flames reached the van's gas tank the resulting explosion turned the fire into an inferno that leveled her studio and swept on across the hills. Fanned by the early-morning wind, it burned a wide swath of the residential hills, igniting a half-mile corridor of trees and houses to the south, but leaving Janet's apartment below the studio's concrete slab nearly untouched. The evidence soon pointed to Rob Lake. His old Chevy Suburban was seen in the drive just before the fire and his prints were recovered from the scene. Dulcie watched him now as he paced the cell, returning to her, reaching up again, then moving away. He could not be still.

Janet had broken up with Rob nearly a year before she died. They were not on good terms. They had parted when Lake began a professional relationship with Janet's ex-husband.