Рита Браун - Claws And Effect

Usually when humans returned, the animals bolted outside, but they wanted to hear the events. Once Harry told about the chicken they bolted and now they sat, fur ruffled against the cold with the northwest wind kicking up. Harry planned on taking the chicken home to feed the fox living on her land.

"I say we go to the hospital." Tucker was resolute. "It's a fifteen-minute jog." Tucker cut time off the trip to make it more attractive.

"We'll last five minutes. You know how fussy humans are at hospitals. Insulting, really. We're cleaner than they are. All those humans with diseases." Pewter shuddered in distaste.

"We won't go in the front door." Tucker knew Pewter was trying to get out of the walk in the cold to the hospital.

"Oh." The gray cat ducked underneath the truck to escape the wind. It was a good idea but the wind whipped underneath the truck as well as swirling around it.

"We go to the back door."

"Tucker, the back door is closed." Pewter didn't like this idea one bit.

"The loading dock isn't," Murphy thought out loud. "We could slip in there and work our way to the basement."

"What if we get locked in? We could starve in there."

"Pewter." Mrs. Murphy maliciously smiled. "You could eat cast-off body parts. How about a fresh liver?"

"I hate you," Pewter spit.

"Well, fine, you big weenie. You stay here and we'll go." Tucker wanted to get over there.

"Oh sure, and hear from you two for the next eleven years about what a fat chicken I am." She thought about the chicken a moment, then continued, "Besides, you don't know everything. I see things you miss."

"Then shut up and come on. Time's a-wasting. Harry will be out of here at five and it's already one-thirty." Mrs. Murphy looked down both sides of the road, then scampered across heading north toward the hospital, the wind in her face.

The three animals stayed off the road, dashing through lawns, hopping creeks, and eluding the occasional house dog upset because three animals crossed his or her lawn.

They reached the hospital by two-ten. To test their luck they hurried to the back door first. The doorknob was reachable but the cats couldn't turn it.

By now they were cold so they ran around the side of the building to the loading dock, one level up from the back door. It was child's play to elude the humans working the dock. There was only one truck and one unloader. Neither noticed the animals. Once inside the building, grateful for the warmth, the three headed away from the dock.

Murphy led them to an elevator pool.

"We can't take that," Tucker said.

"I know but stairwells are usually near elevator pools so start looking, genius." Her voice was sarcastic.

Sure enough, the stairwell was tucked in the corner, the door unlocked. Tucker, a strong dog for her size, pushed it open and the animals sped downstairs, opening the unlocked door with a red BASEMENT neatly painted across it.

They had landed on the east side of the building, site of the elevator bank.

"Come on, let's get out of here before someone steps off that thing." Murphy turned left, not out of any sense of where she was going but just to escape possible detection. They raced past storage rooms, finally arriving at the boiler room, the hub of all corridors.

"Oh." Pewter saw the blood on the wall; most of it had been washed off, but enough had stained into the old stone wall that she could see it.

The three sat down for a moment, considering where Hank Brevard's body had been crumpled.

"This is where Mom got hit on the head. In this room." Tucker put her nose to the ground but all she could smell was oil from the furnace.

"She should never have come in here by herself," Pewter complained. "She has no fear and that isn't always a good thing."

"Boy, you'd think the hospital could afford better lights." The dog noted the low wattage.

"That's why we're here." Mrs. Murphy systematically checked out each corner of the room. "Let's go outside."

"Which door?" Tucker asked.

"The one in the opposite direction. We came in from the east. Let's go west."

"I hope you remember because it all looks the same to me." The basement gave Pewter the creeps.

"Wimp."

"I'm not a wimp." Pewter smacked Murphy, who smacked her back.

"Girls," Tucker growled.

The cats stopped following the dog as she pushed open the door, which wasn't latched. A hallway led to the end of the building. The light from the small square in the door was brighter than the lights overhead.

"Is that the door we first tried?" Pewter asked.

"Yes. It's the only door downstairs on the west side."

They slowly walked down the hall, the storage rooms appearing as innocuous to them as they had to the humans. Satisfying themselves that nothing was amiss in that hall, they returned to the boiler room and went down the southerly corridor, the one which contained the incinerator.

Tucker sniffed when they entered the room. "This incinerator could destroy a multitude of sins."

"And does, I'm sure," Pewter said.

"Nothing in here." Tucker had thoroughly sniffed everything.

They returned to the corridor, poking their heads in rooms. Hearing voices, they ducked into a room that had empty cartons neatly stacked against the wall.

Bobby Minifee and Booty Weyman walked by. Bobby had been promoted to Hank's job and Booty had moved up to day schedule. Engrossed in conversation, they didn't even glance into the storage room.

Tucker put her nose to the ground once the men passed. The cats heard them turn toward the boiler room.

"Someone's been here recently." Tucker moved along the cartons.

"That doesn't mean anything. People have probably been in each of these rooms for one thing or another." Pewter was getting peckish.

Tucker paid no attention to her. Murphy knew her canine friend well enough to put her own nose to the ground. She could smell shoes, one with leather soles, one with rubber.

"Hands." Tucker stopped over a spot on the old slate floor. "I can smell the oil on their hands. They've been here today."

"Hands on the floor?" Pewter's gray eyebrows shot upward, for the dog was sniffing where the wall met the floor.

"Yes." Tucker kept sniffing. "Here, just above the floor."

"Pewter, look for a handle or something," Murphy ordered her.

"In the wall?"

"Yes, you dimwit!"

"I'm not a dimwit." Pewter declined to further the argument because she, too, was intrigued.

The animals sniffed the walls. Murphy, claws out, tapped and patted each stone, part of the original foundation.

"Hey." Pewter stopped. "Do that again."

The two cats strained to hear. Murphy rapped her claws harder this time. A faint hollow sound rewarded her efforts.

"Flat down," Tucker whispered as Bobby and Booty returned, but once again the two men didn't look toward the room full of boxes.