Кроха - Dedication

But Juana seldom missed anything. Like all Harper’s detectives, Juana Davis was nosy and thorough, prodding and snooping until she had found every last thread and torn fingernail. No, Joe thought at last, to search Ben’s apartment after Davis was finished was an exercise in futility. He sat down in his tower among the pillows, stared out through windows at the streaks of sunset trailing above the Pacific. He thought about Ben, who never forgot or misplaced those two items. Why, this morning, would he have left them at home? He thought about Ben at work, the phone and notebook safe in his pocket. The sun just pushing above the eastern hills. Ben, alone, up on the ladder nailing down the new roof gutter . . .

He glimpses a shadow move in the yard below? Maybe hears the click of the automatic as a shell slides into the chamber? He turns, sees the gun, sees the killer? He knows in that split second that he will die there, so his gut reaction is to hide whatever evidence he carries, leave it for the cops to find. He turns, shoves the notebook and phone—not in the gutter but hides them under the roof tiles, slips them under those pliable composite shingles.

Now certain where the phone and notebook had to be, Joe fled out his window, racing across the rooftops heading for the remodel. He could almost see the two items tucked down under the black shingles. As thoroughly as Dallas Garza would have searched the scene, Joe thought this time the detective had missed that small hiding place. Had missed Ben’s message that lay waiting. With stubborn certainty he knew Ben had seen his killer and had left a trail for the law to find.

14

Ryan and Rock arrived home fresh and sassy from their walk, both smelling of the sea and the tide pools, and covered with wet sand. She took the big Weimaraner around into the backyard and gently hosed him off. She dried him with a towel, dried his feet. She removed her own shoes and socks, and in the privacy of the walled patio she pulled off her jeans, shook everything out in the flower bed. Leaving Rock sunning on a lawn chair, she rolled up the wet items, carried them in through the kitchen to the laundry and dumped them in the washer. Her face burned from wind and sun; her short, dark hair was sandy and windblown. Rock had chased half a dozen seagulls, threatened a big Rhodesian Ridgeback until she called him off, and had run her some three miles up the hard, wet shore. She wished she had more time with her dog. She envied Clyde the mornings that he took Rock running, pulling on his sweats, returning an hour later feeling just as high as she felt now, and of course just as hungry.

But in the kitchen, meaning to fix herself a snack, she stopped, shocked at the sight of Joe Grey: the tomcat lay on the table on his belly, his head down between his paws, his ears down, his eyes closed in misery. She hurried to him, but she touched him only gently. “Are you hurt? Oh, Joe! What is it, what’s wrong?”

He stared up at her, forlorn.

“Where do you hurt? What happened? Was there an accident?” She slid soft fingers down his side and his legs, feeling for an injury. “Talk to me! I’ll call Dr. Firetti.” Leaving him she stepped to the phone.

“No.” Joe shook his head and closed his eyes again.

“What’s the matter?” she repeated. Then, alarmed, “Is it Dulcie?” She turned back to the phone, but Joe grumbled and sat up.

“Dulcie’s fine.” He stared grimly at Ryan. “Prescience, hell,” he said. “Cop insight is all rubbish, I don’t buy that stuff!”

Ryan sighed and sat down. “What? You act like you’re dying, and all that’s wrong is . . . some investigative glitch? You made a wrong guess?”

He scowled at her, ears and whiskers flat. She was getting as cranky as Clyde.

“Joe, every cop has bad days! Just because you’re a cat, why should you be any different?”

Silence.

“Tell me!” she snapped, losing patience.

“I thought . . . Dulcie says sometimes I have the same precognition as a cop. A subconscious thing . . . putting together vague hints . . . coming up with a solid fact.” Joe looked up at her balefully. “Sometimes she has me believing it.”

“So what happened? You had an idea, you put things together and . . . it didn’t fly?” Ryan willed herself to speak softly.

“I was so sure. Ben’s phone and his notebook are missing. When neither Juana nor Dallas found them, I thought—I had a clear picture of the phone and notebook tucked down under the roof tiles, I could almost see Ben shoving them there.” Joe sighed. “I bought into Dulcie’s theory and thought it was second sight, a cop’s intuition.”

“And you found nothing.”

“Only the smell of Dallas’s aftershave, where he’d already looked.”

“Then maybe he found them,” she said logically.

“He didn’t,” Joe said with certainty.

“Maybe the department is holding back.”

“They’re not,” he said with equal conviction. From the look on Joe’s face she didn’t ask how he knew that.

“Max would have told me,” he said. “Max . . . Max talked to me this evening. When I called. He answered my questions. A real two-way conversation,” Joe said, looking at her with amazement.

She was as surprised as Joe, then as uneasy. “He gave you information when he never has before?” She looked at him, frowning. “Why would he do that?”

“Trust?” Joe said hopefully. “He’s decided after all these years that I’m an informant he can trust?”

They looked at each other, questioning.

“It’s no more than that,” Joe said, feigning a conviction he didn’t feel.

“Yes,” she said uneasily. “But I’d call what you were thinking no more than common sense. Ben was on the ladder. He saw or heard something, maybe heard the gun click. If the phone and notebook do contain something of value, he hid them in the only place handy. But what could be so important about the notebook? Ben used it for measurements and lists.”

“And maybe other things,” Joe said. “I saw him more than once watching and listening to Tekla, frowning, moving away when she noticed him.”

“Maybe Tekla has some suspicion about who this assailant is, about why he’s doing this? Maybe she said something to Sam, and Ben overheard? Ben made notes, trying to figure it out, to make sense of it?

“But,” she said, “if Tekla had a suspicion, why wouldn’t she talk to the department? Why didn’t she speak up this morning, the minute she knew Ben was dead? Why didn’t she tell Dallas or Juana?”

“Tekla wouldn’t talk to a cop. All she could think of was how inconvenient and embarrassing the murder was for her. She doesn’t care who killed Ben. She doesn’t trust cops any more than she’d trust the killer.”

Ryan rose, took a glass from the cupboard, opened the refrigerator, and poured herself a beer. From a big covered bowl she dished up Rock’s supper, a concoction she cooked up every week for Rock and Snowball, and kept frozen in manageable portions. Setting the bowl in the microwave for a moment, she put it on the floor. She stood back as Rock rushed to his meal, scarfing up a mix of meat and a variety of steamed vegetables. She smiled when Snowball came trotting down the stairs, yawning, and tucked into her own bowl, close beside Rock’s gulping muzzle. Gently the big dog made way for her, not touching her food.

“Snowball might be getting on,” Ryan said, “but with this new diet you’d never know it.” She looked down at Joe, sprawled across the table patiently waiting for his own supper, for Clyde to get home and start cooking. Joe wasn’t having even the most artfully prepared dog food. Ryan was saying, “If you’d just try a few bites . . .” when the intercom buzzed. She turned on the speaker.