Кроха - Dedication

He didn’t use the house phone, he pawed the hidden cell phone from among a stack of papers, the phone that Clyde had bought him and registered in a false name: Joe’s insurance against some moment of failed caller ID blocking on the Damens’ landline. He sat for only a moment washing his paws, going over the items he needed to tell the chief, hoping Max and Billy hadn’t left yet. Turning on the phone, he punched in the single digit for the desk at MPPD. Half the time, Max didn’t turn on his own cell, knowing he could be reached by radio. Joe was sorry to hear Evijean answer.

Any of the younger officers who might be standing in for a moment would have put him directly through to Max. Speaking patiently, he asked for Captain Harper. He knew what was coming. Evijean’s voice was cold and authoritative. “What is your name? You will need to give me your name.”

“This is a personal call, Evijean. Everyone in the department knows my voice. I need to speak with Max now.”

“I can’t connect an unidentified caller, that’s against departmental rules. You will have to identify yourself.”

“Rules? What rules?” The woman was nuts. “What? Security rules? What damage do you think I can do over the phone? If you don’t connect me, Max will know it pretty quick and you, my dear, will be pounding the street for a new job.”

He could feel Evijean’s rage through the phone line, could almost smell the smoke.

“I cannot connect you without identification.”

He thought of calling Max’s cell, but it would probably go to voice mail. He didn’t want to leave a message, he wanted to talk with Max. He could try for Juana or Dallas, but he’d get the same routine. The silence stretched out unbroken and then there was a click. Evijean had hung up.

Immediately he called her back. “I have information for him regarding the current murder investigation. Put me through to him now.”

“If you want to see Captain Harper you’ll have to make an appointment.”

“What do you think the chief will say when he finds out you are blocking confidential information in the murder of Ben Stonewell? And that you are getting in the way of the investigation of the other three murders? No one, no one else in the department treats a valued informant so rudely.” Ears back, claws bared wanting to slash her face, he listened to another long silence, expecting her to hang up again.

A very long silence. But then he heard a click and Max came on the line.

The chief sounded short and impatient, as if he might be headed out the door for home. When he heard Joe’s voice, he calmed. Joe imagined him settling back in his desk chair, picking up a pen and notepad.

The tomcat laid it all out for him: the San Francisco connections he had found, people other than the dead victims but involved with them. Bonnie Rivers in her wheelchair, not a victim but shecould have been when she was followed there in front of the station. Bonnie’s husband recently killed in a San Francisco street accident, and Bonnie herself injured. And then, in the home of her sister, the .38 revolver on Bonnie’s dresser, a weapon that had been newly cleaned.

Joe didn’t like blowing the whistle about the gun—maybe the .38 had nothing to do with Ben’s murder. Maybe Bonnie was one of those rare Californians who had a carry permit? He wondered how she’d managed that. If she had a permit, maybe she’d been target practicing at some gun club on her way down from the city? Or she carried the gun without a permit, sufficiently frightened after her husband was killed that she balanced her own life against California’s restrictive gun laws. Whatever the case, he felt shabby, implicating the woman when he didn’t even know what caliber weapon had killed Ben.

Still, Bonnie was connected to this tangle somehow. What was that incident in front of the department, when the boy followed her and then ran? What was her relationship to the portly couple in the red sweatshirts, the woman so uncomfortable at seeing her? He gave Max the couple’s names and their San Francisco address. But besides passing along his uncertain tips, there were questions Joe himself would like to ask.

Oh, right. Harper had never yet answered the snitches’ questions. Nor did his detectives. It was all take and no give. Maybe if he were a human snitch, a drinking buddy, someone they talked with in the shops or on the street, it would be a different matter.

Yet the questions ate at him, and what harm to try? “Is there,” Joe said boldly, “a connection here, to San Francisco?”

“What’s your take?” Max said, shocking Joe clear to his paws. Max never asked his opinion.

“Maybe some soured workplace relationship?” Joe said. “A fired, disgruntled ex-employee out for revenge? Or . . . Illicit investments? Some kind of Ponzi game? The victims were on to the scam, someone trying to scare them off, stop them from reporting it?” But Joe shook his head. To torment the victims, yes. But to kill them? Still, the way crooks killed today, for no reason, anything could happen.

But what he really wanted to know was about the gun. “What weapon,” he asked Max, “did kill Ben? Could it have been Bonnie’s .38?”

He expected no response. Max was still for a long moment, then, “Not that gun,” the chief said. “It was a .32-caliber automatic.” He paused, then added quietly, “I’ve never given you information before. I expect the same courtesy of confidence that the department proffers to you.”

“You have that,” Joe said, his voice shaky. “Now, can you tell me whether in fact you found Ben’s phone? And the small spiral notebook he carried?”

“We’ve found neither,” Max said, rather tightly. “There’s the possibility they contain useful information, maybe photographs in the phone. We’d be indebted for a lead.”

Joe could hardly breathe. A whole new world had opened up, an enhanced one-on-one cooperation that made his head spin. Suddenly the chief was working with him, not just using the information that Joe or Dulcie provided.

Why the change? Why Max’s abrupt, increased confidence in the snitches he’d known and worked with—at paw’s length, Joe thought—through so many long and satisfying cases? What was happening here?

“I’ll do what I can to find them,” Joe said softly.

“Thank you,” Max said. And before Joe could say more he heard the soft click as Max broke the connection.

Switching off his cell phone Joe Grey sat on the desk absently batting at Clyde’s scattered invoices, mulling over the change in the chief’s response. Almost, he thought with interest, almost as if the chief were proud to be working the case right alongside his two snitches.

And didn’t that set a cat up!

Or, he thought with alarm, almost as if Max knows something?

As if Max had guessed the identity of his informers? His furry, four-pawed informants? And a deep, icy chill held Joe.

But no, not Max Harper. Not that hardheaded cop. If Max ever for a moment imagined that his snitches might be cats he’d . . . Joe couldn’t guess what the chief would do, he didn’t want to think how Max would respond. Sign up for psychiatric counseling? Check himself into rehab?The very thought gave Joe shivers.

No, Max doesn’t know. Maybe he’s just mellowing, growing more comfortable with his longtime snitches, easing into a more direct relationship. That’s it, Joe thought, and the idea pleased him. If Max really believed his snitches were cats he would have challenged them straight-out, would have made them speak to him in person.

Whatever the case, I’m not solving anything prowling the desk messing up Clyde’s tax receipts. Leaping up to the rafter, he pushed out into his tower. He’d just gallop across the rooftops to Ben’s apartment, for a little break and enter. The notebook and phone had to be in there, and somehow Juana had missed them.