Shirley Murphy - Cat Breaking Free

How often did this happen? She could hardly believe what she'd seen.

The house she had passed was a tall, old stucco badly in need of paint, two stories in front, one story behind, old-fashioned lace curtains at the windows, unpainted picket fence along the steep drive. Halfway up the drive, pulled to the side into some concealing bushes, or perhaps so another car could go past into the closed garage, stood a brown Toyota pickup.

It was maybe ten years old, dull and battered and with a dented tailgate and a missing back bumper. It was without doubt one of the two getaway cars the department had ID'd. Glancing in her rearview mirror, she hit the button for the station.

Max Harper was headed downstairs to the department's indoor firing range when the dispatcher came out from behind her counter and called down the hall to him. "You might want to take this, Captain. Caller won't give her name." Mabel smiled; she knew that voice. She didn't know who it belonged to, no one did, but this was a caller the chief always found of interest. "I tried to take the message," she said, amused. "She wasn't about to do that."

Harper turned into his office and pushed the door closed, shutting out the joking and laughing of several officers heading downstairs. As he sat down at his cluttered desk, he could hear through the floor the faint, random popping of the first group as they fired at the moving targets. With his usual wariness at talking with this particular snitch, he picked up the phone.

"Captain Harper, I watched that woman again. She was making notes about the shopkeepers again early this morning before opening time. Just after seven. The Gucci shop, and Hanni Coon's studio. Maybe it isn't important, but…"

"I'm always interested," Harper said softly. She sounded hesitant this morning, as if she thought he might not like her calling. "I always welcome your calls." He sure didn't want to lose her; this snitch and her partner had been responsible for a considerable number of arrests and prosecutions. Hitting the RECORD button, he snatched up a pen and pad. Harper liked to hedge his bets, not rely totally on electronic equipment.

"That same blond woman, writing down when people get to their shops or when they close up, if they open the door early to sweep or take deliveries. This morning she wrote down that Mrs. Harkins swept the front walk and watered the flowers then locked the front door again and went down the street for a cup of coffee at Ronnie's Bakery. She wrote down the time that she left, and how long she was gone."

Where had the snitch been, to see all that and to see what Chichi had written? He burned to ask her how she'd done that, ask her some details of her own movements, but she'd hung up on him.

She told him she had seen Charlie and Ryan inside Hanni's studio, looking at rugs, and that made him smile. Charlie would be high just looking at those rugs-the soul of an artist, he thought. Same kind of kick he got from locking up some skuzzy felon.

When the snitch had hung up, he sat at his desk trying to put down the uneasy feeling her calls gave him.

Yet every one of these calls, though they made him squirm, had supplied the department with valuable leads. Facts and evidence they might otherwise never have uncovered; or would have done so only after a long and expensive, drawn-out series of searches. Dallas called it uncanny. Max didn't like the word "uncanny."

Pouring the last of his cold, overcooked coffee into a mug, he sipped the bitter brew, studying the notes he had made, taking advantage of a moment of seclusion that his private space and closed door offered.

This kind of solitude had been unavailable when the department was one big open squad room with its clatter and bantering officers and constantly ringing phones. He didn't miss the busy friction and din. His new, well-organized space added up to a welcome sense of ease. The tall oak bookcases, Charlie's drawings of Bucky on the paneled walls, the leather couch and chair and the handsome Oriental rug-Charlie had combined the furnishings to create a comfortable retreat where he could enjoy a few moments of peace-except for, as at the moment, whatever edgy feeling he brought in with him.

Chewing over his notes, he at last gave up wondering how she'd gotten the information, and rose to head downstairs. He stopped when Mabel put through another call. "It's your wife, Captain. It's Charlie."

He returned to his office, picking up the phone to Charlie's excited voice.

"I think I found the second car, the brown truck. Toyota pickup, maybe 1980 or so. No back bumper, and a dented tailgate." She gave him the address up in the north hills, described the house and how the car was parked.

"How close are you? Get away from it, Charlie. Did you see the plate?"

"I couldn't see the plate for bushes. I didn't want to get out and be seen from the house. I drove on past."

"Good. We'll take a look. Don't go back there, for any reason."

When they'd hung up, he called for two cars to meet him several blocks away from where the truck was parked. As he headed out, Dallas met him by the front desk.

Joe and Dulcie crouched beside the metal cage describing for the three captives how Charlie had freed the brindled tom from the humane trap. "That's Stone Eye," Coyote said, narrowing his ringed eyes and flattening his long, tufted ears. "Stone Eye, our self-appointed leader. Your friend should have let him rot. How did he get himself caught?"

"Hitler with claws," Cotton said, hissing. Both the white tom, and the dark, striped tom lashed their tails and kneaded their claws, crouched as if for battle.

But the bleached calico female clung in the corner of the cage looking as fearful as if she faced Stone Eye himself. "Brute," Willow hissed. "His henchmen are just as bad. I'm not going back there. If… if we get out," she said, with a frightened mewl.

"We'll get you out," Dulcie whispered, pressing against the bars to nuzzle Willow. "But if Hernando's dead, why are they keeping you?" Dulcie's green eyes widened. "Do they know he's dead? Or do they think he's coming back?"

"They know," Cotton said. "They saw it in the paper. They haven't told Maria and the old lady-not that there's any love lost."

"Then why are they keeping you here?" Dulcie repeated, frowning.

"Hernando talked wild," Coyote said. "His brothers believed him. Foolish talk about performing cats on TV and in the movies, about Hollywood and big houses and expensive cars. Tons of money, like in the newspapers and on TV we hear through people's windows. He could never make us do those things; no cat I know would want to live like that." Coyote licked his striped shoulder, his circled eyes narrowed with rage.

"He might make you do those things," Joe said.

"What, torture us?" Cotton hissed. "What kind of performers would he have, if we were half dead?"

Dulcie said, "Maybe he thought that soft beds and servants and gourmet food…"

"He wouldn't ply me with such things," Willow mewed. She had a small little voice that didn't seem to match her elegant stature and markings. "I would not be slave to some hoodlum!"

"Luis has to know that's a foolish dream," Joe said.

"There's more to it," Cotton said, licking his silky white paw. "Hernando thought we knew something about them stealing cars and about two old murders, in L.A., wherever that is."

"We don't know anything," Willow said, growing bolder and coming to press against the bars. "We couldn't make much of what we heard. And what would we do about it? Go to the police?"

Dulcie and Joe exchanged a glance; they said nothing.