P. Parrish - Claw Back

Moses smiled slightly. Then he turned to Katy.

“Did Hachi hurt you?” he asked.

“He didn’t mean to,” Katy said.

“Did he hurt the panther?”

“He didn’t know how to help her. That’s why he brought me here.”

Moses went to Keno and knelt by his side. He carefully removed the cloth Katy had put on Keno’s bare shoulder and examined the wound. Then he tilted Keno forward and looked at his back.

“It doesn’t look bad,” he said, looking up at Louis. “The bullet went right through.”

Moses rose and began to search for something, running his hand along the wood planks near the door. Louis realized he was looking for the bullet.

“It’s to your left,” Louis said.

Moses pulled out a pocket knife.

“Leave it there,” Louis said.

Moses popped the bullet out of the wood.

“You just contaminated the crime scene,” Louis said.

Moses looked at him. “There was a crime committed here?”

“There was a shooting, damn it!”

Moses gave him a small smile then put the bullet in his mouth and swallowed it.

“What shooting?” Moses said.

Louis stared at him, stunned.

Zeedler was suddenly back. He thrust a radio at Louis’s chest. “Mobley wants to talk to you,” he said. “You’re on a secure channel.”

Moses slipped out of the shack. Louis stood in the doorway watching him.

“Kincaid! You there?”

Louis keyed the radio. “Yeah…yeah, I’m here.”

“Sheriff Zeedler tells me you’ve got a mess out there. You shot the suspect?”

Louis rubbed his face. “Yes, sir. He’s okay.”

The radio was silent and Louis knew Mobley was thinking that this was going to be shit storm for him, too.

“You stay put,” Mobley said finally. “I’ll call the reservation and talk to Chief Gilley. Maybe I can save your ass.”

Louis looked outside at Moses. He was just standing there, smoking a cigarette and looking up at the sky.

“I don’t think you’ll need to, sheriff,” Louis said. “I don’t think the tribe is interested in prosecuting me. I think they consider this a family thing.”

“You telling me they don’t care you shot one of them?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you, sir.”

Mobley was quiet again.

“How’s the woman?” he asked finally.

Katy was still sitting on the floor by the cage. Her head was down on her knees.

“Katy’s fine. But I need to get her out of here.”

“And the cat?”

Louis moved over to the cage. Grace seemed to be sleeping. One of the kittens had crawled away. It was the one Louis had delivered. He could tell because it had more spots than the other one. It raised its tiny head and looked up, its eyes as blue as the sky. He wanted to think the kitten was looking at him but he knew it was probably only attracted to the sunlight coming from the door.

“The cat is fine, sir,” Louis said. “So are her kittens.”

“Kittens?”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a long silence.

“They have blue eyes,” Louis said. “They’ll photograph well.”

There was no response and Louis thought Mobley had just clicked off, probably satisfied that he wasn’t going to have to wade through the jurisdictional swamp of the Seminole sovereign nation thing over one of his deputies. No, not even a real deputy. A private eye he had semi-hired during an alcoholic haze and sent him on a joke of a case so he could justify not giving him a real chance to wear a badge.

There was a huge spider web in the corner of the open door. Louis stared at it, watching the yellow and black spider move slowly toward a squirming exhausted fly.

A burst of radio from the radio brought him back.

“You still there, Kincaid?”

“Yeah, I’m still here.”

“Well done, deputy Kincaid,” Mobley said. “Well done.”

It was too hot to eat. It was too hot to sleep. It was too hot to even move.

Louis lay still on his bed amid the damp tangled sheets, staring up at the ceiling fan. It did almost nothing to cool the cottage down but it was all he had now. Yesterday the air conditioner had finally died and his weasel landlord Pierre said it would be at least three days before he could get a new unit installed.

Louis looked down at the foot of the bed. Issy was sprawled on her side, all four legs extended, unmoving. He rose on one elbow to watch her. It took a minute but he finally saw the gentle rise and fall of her thin chest.

It was almost too hot to even breathe.

He rose, pulled on a pair of shorts and went out into the living room, glancing at the stove clock. Almost five. He had napped for two hours.

Louis grabbed a Heineken and started toward the porch, stopping as his eyes fell on the telephone and the answering machine. The machine’s steady red light stared back at him like a taunting eye.

He had called Lily this morning but there had been no answer and he had to assume — hope — that Lily and her mother were still away at ballet camp. He still hadn’t told her he wasn’t going to make it up to Michigan in time for her birthday but he was determined not to break the news with a message.

Louis took a swig of beer. He had called Joe, too. No answer at her cabin and he hadn’t had to guts the call her office, afraid he’d be told she was still on vacation.

He took another long drink of beer. He didn’t want to think of her, lying in some big bed at the Ritz Carlton in Montreal with some guy.

He brought the cold beer bottle up to his sweating forehead and closed his eyes.

Screw this.

He grabbed a second beer and went out onto the porch. The sea oats on the low dune beyond his yard were swaying slightly. If there was any air to be found, it would be down by the water.

The beach was deserted. No one searching for shells, no one braving the bite of no-see-ums. Late August on Captiva. Even paradise could sometimes feel like hell.

Louis dropped down onto the beach, wedged the unopened beer in the sand and took a drink from the open one. As he watched the sun’s slow descent into the gulf, he tried to will his mind to go blank. But Joe was there at his side.

Have you ever heard of the green flash?

No, Louis, but I suspect you’re going to tell me about it.

It’s an atmospheric phenomenon where if conditions are just right, the top of the sun will turn green just before it disappears. The Celts believed that anyone who sees it can never be hurt by love.

He had shut his eyes, giving in to the lull of the surf and he didn’t hear her come up behind him.

“Hey there, stranger.”

He looked up into Katy’s face.

“I followed your footprints down here,” she said.

He smiled and patted the sand. “Have a seat.”

She sat down, cross-legged on the sand next to him. “Where have you been? I called you a couple days ago.”

“I had to go down to Bonita Springs for a deposition. I’m testifying in an insurance fraud trial next month.”

“I tried the sheriff’s office, too, but they said they hadn’t seen you around.” She paused. “So the job there didn’t work out after all?”

He took a long draw from the beer. “Haven’t heard,” he said.

Katy was quiet for a moment. “You see that picture of Mobley in the paper?”

Louis nodded. “Yeah. He was holding my kitten.”

“How do you know it was yours?”

“I just did.”

She chuckled. “I named it Lou.”

Louis turned to her. “Lou?”

She shrugged. “The only rocker I could think of was Lou Reed. The other kitten is named Nico, after his girlfriend.”

“Lou…close enough.” He held out the second beer. “You want one?”

She nodded, took the bottle and popped the top. After taking a drink she set it down in the sand front of her. “I called you because I wanted to explain about Hachi.”