Russell Andrews - Hades

Justin wondered if Ellis had taken it with him. Hard to know. If Ellis had preplanned this whole thing and had information on his computer he knew he'd want to hide, then it was possible. Unlikely, though, the more Justin thought about it. If he was going away for a weekend, it's much more likely he'd take a laptop. If he wanted to have information disappear from his desktop machine, he could just erase it before he left. It didn't make sense that he'd take a difficult-to-carry part that wasn't useful on its own. No, much more likely that someone had been in this apartment before Justin and had taken it.

Justin jumped, startled, as he felt something graze his leg. He looked down-it was one of the cats. This one was solid gray with a fat stomach. He wondered if she was Esther or Binky. Didn't really matter. The cat started rubbing up against him and meowing plaintively. Justin decided that what mattered right now was that he should feed them both as long as he was here.

He went into the kitchen and saw three cat bowls on the floor. One was for water, two were food. One of the food bowls was empty. The other was a quarter full. He opened the door to what he assumed was a pantry. It was. He saw a couple of dozen cans of cat food in several even stacks. He took one can, split it in half and put it in the two bowls. He didn't bother to clean out the bowl that already had food in it. Let them party hearty, he thought. He put fresh water in the third dish and, as the gray cat began to pick at the new food, Justin went back to Ellis's den.

He stared at the desk where the computer had been. Then he noticed a closet off to the side of the room. He opened it, saw that it had been professionally organized with built-in shelves on the top and a double rack for hanging clothes-shirts and pants-below that. The shelves were filled with office supplies and remnants of things that didn't seem to belong anywhere else-empty gift boxes and ribbons and wrapping paper, some DVDs, framed photographs that didn't merit public display any longer. And Justin now also saw the other cat. This one was black-and-white and was on the floor of the closet. She wasn't moving or meowing. She couldn't. Her neck had been broken.

Justin stepped back. The question of whether or not Ellis St. John had taken his hard drive with him seemed to be answered. And the answer was no.

Someone had come into the apartment. Someone had taken the computer. And someone had killed Ellis St. John's cat.

He took out his cell phone, called Reggie. She started to make some comment about his date, but he cut her off, asked if she could get a fingerprint guy over to Gramercy Park. She said she thought she could. He told her to do it, said he'd fill her in in the morning.

He waited in the apartment, and someone from the FBI showed up less than half an hour later. Justin told him he could concentrate on the desk where the computer had been and on the closet in that room. The FBI guy did a quick check of the dead cat, said there was no trace of prints or blood. Justin nodded, not surprised, then he went and found a black plastic garbage bag under the kitchen sink, picked up the cat, and put it inside the bag.

The FBI agent told Justin he knew what to do, no need for him to stick around. He said he'd get the results to Agent Bokkenheuser and Agent Fletcher as soon as he had any.

Justin thanked him and left. Out on the street, a quarter of a block away from Ellis's building, there were three trash cans left out for pickup in the morning. He opened the lid of one of them, put the cat inside.

All he had to do now, before catching his train home, was walk the few blocks back to Belinda Lambert's apartment. Earlier, he had decided he would leave her keys-and Ellis's-with her doorman. There was no reason she couldn't return to her routine now. She'd just be feeding one cat, but she probably wouldn't even realize that for a while. She said one of the cats never came out to see her. So she could do her duty, blissfully ignorant of what had transpired.

But the theft of Ellis St. John's computer made him realize there was something else he needed.

So when he got back to Belinda's building, he dangled her keys in front of the doorman and said he had to go upstairs to return them. The doorman wanted to call Belinda first, but Justin grabbed his arm, told him he was a cop, and said he'd prefer to do things a little differently. The doorman nodded, waved his hands to show that it was no problem whatsoever.

Upstairs, Justin opened Belinda's front door. She was still sacked out on the couch. It didn't look as if she'd budged so much as an inch. And he wasn't shocked to find out that she snored.

She didn't stir as he moved around her apartment, and it took him only a couple of minutes to find Belinda's BlackBerry and slip it into his jacket pocket. If he were a praying man, he would have thanked someone or something for giving Belinda Lambert a big mouth.

Before leaving, Justin looked at the note he'd left for her earlier. He picked it up, crumpled it in his hand. There was no need for her to know that anything had happened now. So he wrote a new one. This one just said, "Thanks."

Back on the street, as he began heading toward Penn Station, he thought about the cat that had been killed. It saddened him and, as always, he was surprised that he'd become inured to the death of human beings but not to the killing of an animal. He supposed it was because animals were, for the most part, innocent. And people were, for the most part, anything but innocent. And he thought about how the murder of a human being almost always had a purpose. A twisted purpose, but there was an underlying reason, whether it was jealousy or greed or power. Murder was always a distorted means to a desperate end. But killing an animal. There was no purpose, no means, no end. To hurt a little animal meant that all you had to be was one sick, mean son of a bitch.

He thought about how he'd tossed the cat into the garbage can on the street.

Not much of a burial, Justin decided, not for something that only gave pleasure to people.

On the other hand, he thought, it served its purpose as well as most.

The only thing better than the quiet, late-night train ride back to Bridgehampton would have been half an hour in a crazy-hot steam room and a long, cold shower. But Justin was content to let the solitude and the relative quiet help wash the soiled feeling off his body. By the time he'd taken Fred's Taxi Service from the train station back to East End, he was relatively relaxed and guilt free.

He got into bed and decided he didn't even need a drink to help him sleep. Then he heard his cell phone. He'd left it downstairs and he'd also left it on vibrate, but he could hear the vibration as it resonated against the hard surface of his desk. He swung his legs out of bed and made it downstairs in time to catch the call. When he heard the caller's voice at the other end, he wasn't sure if he was glad or not that he'd moved so fast.

"Jay?" Abby Harmon said.

He didn't answer.

"Jay?" she repeated. "It's Abby."

"I know," he said.

"I'm sorry I haven't called you."

"Uh-huh" was the best he could muster.

"I wasn't allowed to talk to you. My lawyer forbade it."

"And what changed?"

"Nothing. I just wanted to talk to you."

"Okay," he said.

"You sound so cold," she told him. And when he didn't answer-what could he answer?-she said, "I don't know who's on my side anymore."

"I'm on your side," he said.

"Yes, I know you are. I do know that. But…"

"But what?"

"Everyone's telling me something different."

"What are they telling you, Ab?"

"I'm not supposed to discuss it with you."

"You're not going to fall for it, are you, if I ask you what it is you're not supposed to discuss?"