Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Leopard Spot

“Then you don’t object to sanctioned hunting on designated preserves in season?”

Another deep breath. “Those people observe the law, and at least give the prey a fighting chance. But I still wonder why they have to kill something when it’s no longer necessary to survive.”

“I hunt killers myself,” Molina said suddenly, quietly, leaning closer. “There’s nothing worse than someone who violates another creature’s right to live. But I’ve never shot my firearm in tracking a killer. I let the laws levy justice. Did your group decide to levy justice for the law this time, in this case, for this man?”

“No! We protest. That’s what we do.”

“Who was to watch your protest, way out there? Those ‘security forces’ could have shot you all and buried your bodies hipbone-deep in sand for decades, eternity, and no one would have ever known. Just as no one would have ever known your group was out there to kill Van Burkleo if you hadn’t been spotted.”

“Who spotted us?” He was suddenly belligerent. “Not the security guys. They were looking for vehicles, and we hiked in. We’re good at subterfuge; have to be to spring ‘surprises’ on the killers. Who was it? That guy who claimed to be on his own out there?”

“Guy?”

“He dove into the same wash with us to avoid being spotted by a patrol. Somebody else must have mentioned him. You want a suspicious character, he was it.”

“I haven’t talked to the other suspects yet,” Molina said, “and I’m not interested in any lone wolf your imagination dreams up. I bet they don’t mention any such person when I get to them.”

“They will! He wasn’t one of us. We have no reason to protect him.”

“Glad to hear it. So tell me about this guy.”

“Well, he dives right on top of us. Broad daylight. Doesn’t want to be seen, all right, but he’s wearing black from head to tail. Foot, rather.”

“Black?”

“Yeah. Midday on the desert. Says there’s always a shadow so it’s a good cover. Black. He doesn’t know at first what we’re doing out there, but he figures it out real fast. Acted like he was sympathetic to the cause, but Alyce wasn’t buying any of it. We didn’t argue too much with him; any uproar would draw the patrols, but we never bought his lame story for being out there. And he got mad at us. Said we were fools and risking our lives. That the security forces would have us for barbecue. Well, they didn’t catch us. Your people did.”

“City slickers,” Molina said, pleased.

“That’s what this guy was. A city slicker. He had a lot of nerve to be out there with us.”

Molina was struck by the last sentence. A city slicker with a lot of nerve. All in black.

“What did he look like?” she asked blandly.

Sprague rolled his eyes as if the gesture would jump-start his memory. “Tall guy. I think. Lean as a whipsnake. Dark hair. Eyes…not sure. Thirty-four or -five maybe. Maybe younger. Acted…seasoned. We were kind of dazzled when he was there, and when he took off, we wondered what kind of line he was handing us.”

Molina leaned her head on her hand. Turned off the tape recorder. “Can you just sit here for a minute?’

Sprague looked startled to death at her question. What the heck else could he do until someone told him he could leave or bailed him out?

She left the room, peeked in on the detectives. “Hang on,” she told them. Then she did a straight-line dive back to her office and a certain manila folder in her bottom file drawer.

In four minutes she was back, sitting across from Evan Sprague and flipping open the folder.

“Look anything like this?” she wondered. Idly.

Sprague frowned at the single sheet of paper inside the open folder. “Bad hair. Worse jewelry.”

“Can’t argue with you.”

“I guess it could be him. Yeah. The face structure is the same, but the effect is…way different.”

“Can I call that a strong maybe?”

“Maybe.” He frowned at Janice Flanders’s sketch of Vince from Secrets. “Like the same person inside a way different skin, you know what I mean?”

“Oh, yes,” Molina said, spinning the sketch to face her. “I do.”

Snakes shed their skins all the time…. And at last one of them had done it on the scene of a crime in her jurisdiction.

Chapter 22

Likely Suspects

Max was waiting in Temple’s living room when she schlepped Midnight Louie up from the car in his carrier.

“Just in time,” she announced, not a bit startled to find Max arranged like an art deco print (Big Black Panther on Big White Sofa in a Big White Hollywood Set from the ’30s) in her locked condo. “Let the revels begin! Louie and I have triumphed in the courts of justice.”

Max sat up to watch Temple liberate the cat from his grille-front carrier. “I thought Louie the Wonder Cat was such a good traveler that he didn’t need a carrier.”

“ He doesn’t. But courts of law require animals to be ‘contained,’ unlike even the worst human criminal, even just to show up to collect a judgment. It makes me boil. Did you know that animals are legal nonentities? Mere property! Like they didn’t have feelings, and we humans didn’t have feelings for them. Would you believe this magnificent cat has a courtroom value of thirty-two dollars?”

By now Louie had emerged from durance vile and was regarding the Max-occupied sofa with loathing, but definitely not fear.

Max regarded Louie in turn. “Thirty-two dollars seems generous.”

“Oh, come on, guys! Get over it! Louie, sit on the other end of the sofa, there’s plenty of room, even for you. Max, just sit. Don’t move a muscle. If you stir, Louie may not go up on the sofa.”

“This is mentioned to encourage me to play statue?”

“It’s my sofa and if either of you want to sit on it you’ll just have to get along.”

Even Louie seemed to understand this last threat. After giving Temple a long green stare over his black shoulder, he stretched to pointedly sharpen his claws on the nubbly fabric. Then he leaped atop the arm farthest from Max and began smoothing the saw-toothed dishevelment of the hairs along his spine. Presumably the presence of the Mystifying Max had turned his usually sleek coiffure into an instant Afro.

“Okay,” Max told Temple, “now that we’re friends”—the two were five feet apart—“I’ll let you tell me about your court date before I tell you about the court date I’ve just avoided. So far.”

“Really.” Temple regarded the two black figures on her sofa with the satisfaction Roy might take in a pair of white tigers’ going to their proper stools. “Well, first I’m going to get a glass of wine, then I’m going to take my shoes off, and then I’m going to sit down.”

She headed briskly to the kitchen while Max took belated stock of her shoes, a beige suede pair of pumps apparently judged sober enough for a court of law.

He checked the cat, which was glaring at him while whipping its tongue over its muscular shoulders and showing its teeth in the process. At the moment, Louie reminded Max of the disapproving father of a teenaged daughter.

Not that Louie could possibly know what fatherhood was all about, having the morals of an alley cat.

Temple had not offered Max any refreshment, alcoholic or non, which meant that she was in a ruffled mood. Despite her air of celebration—zip-a-dee-doo-dah—not everything was going her way.

Temple always tended to micromanage when she was under stress, even cats and lovers. Nobody had ever said she wasn’t a brave woman, and her recent excursions into crime-solving proved the point.

So Max sat back, and waited. Once Temple had settled down, he would get his chance to astound and amaze. He always did.