Кроха - Dedication

She had to get the shoes out before any tractor or heavy truck made an appearance and the shoes would be gone forever.

Maybe she’d better call the chief. Get the cops out here to stop them.

But in the time it took to gallop home, even if it was only half a block, the tractor might arrive, hitch up, and move out.

No, she had to do this now. Scrambling down an oak tree, she slipped across the street beneath the pickup, then under the Dumpster on the far side. Nearly hidden from the men, she leaped up, hung from the Dumpster by her front paws, then scrambled up on the thin metal rim.

The piled-up branches were thick with twigs and leaves crisscrossed and tangled together. Carefully poking in between them she could see, deep down, the toe of a tan running shoe. The whole load smelled of pine and willow sap. She didn’t want sap in her fur, she’d have to chew it out. Easing down between the branches, willing them not to slip and fall on her, she reached deep with a careful paw. She stretched farther down and down until she snagged the shoe with two claws.

Gingerly she hauled it out. Sliding it up between the branches, hoping she wasn’t smearing fingerprints, she pulled it onto the edge of the Dumpster. Balancing it there she took it in her mouth, her teeth clamped on the very edge. Don’t smear the prints, she kept telling herself. She glanced up to the pickup, praying no one would notice her.

She saw no movement in the truck, just the dark silhouettes of the three men, two of them wearing baseball caps. Dropping down with the shoe, holding her head high, she hauled it across the street beneath tree shadows. There she laid it under the lacy leaves of a low-hanging pepper tree and went back for the next one.

It took her a long time to find five shoes among the tangled branches, to back out hauling each one, without toppling limbs on herself. She dug and wriggled, searching, but couldn’t find any more. The sun was well past noon. Watching the three men, she thought, Eat slow, eat more! Talk and laugh, take your time!

Did the shoes hold fingerprints? Maybe not the canvas, but the plastic or leather parts? She prayed they did, and hoped again that she hadn’t smeared them. And what about DNA? Could that be inside a shoe, or would sport socks have soaked it all up?

Not that it made much difference. The county lab was so far behind it would take maybe a year to get DNA evidence back to the department. By then, who knew what else might happen?

When she had the five shoes hidden under the pepper tree, she hauled them one at a time across the neighbors’ yards, staying to the shadows and beneath bushes. She dragged each one to her own yard, four houses down from the Dumpster, and nosed it under the front steps. When at last she’d hidden them all, she scrambled up the oak to her tree house. She lay down for a little rest, and to work the sawdust and leaves out of her long coat. There was tree sap; she’d deal with that later. She rested only a few moments, then crossed the oak branch to her cat door and slipped inside.

Max Harper’s cell phone number was on the Greenlaws’ speed dial. She hit the single digit, listened to the ring, was coughing from sawdust when Max answered.

“Shoes,” she said, swallowing. “Are you looking for shoes, maybe evidence to the assaults?”

“Yes,” Max said. “What have you got?” He didn’t ask who this was. Those days were long past when anyone in the department, except Evijean, would be so gauche as to question one of their prime snitches.

“Shoes thrown away in a Dumpster,” Kit said.

“Recently?”

“Yes. While they were clearing this lot. Looks like they’re all done, like maybe they’re just ready to leave now, but I have the shoes.”

“Yes, we’d like a look,” Max said. “The Dumpster’s where? Can you identify the person who dropped them?”

“No. I saw only their backs for a minute.” She didn’t want to say when she learned the shoes were of value, or when she saw them dumped. “I hauled five shoes out, hid them under a porch across the street.” She gave him the address where the Dumpster stood. Then, shivering, she gave him the address where the shoes were hidden, the address of her own house.

“Under that front porch,” she said. “That tall house with the children’s tree house in the back.”

She felt sick, taking a more than foolish chance, leading him to a hiding place so close to the truth. But her own front porch was the only one near that had a hollow beneath it; all the others were just a couple of concrete steps, solid and impenetrable. And if she hid the shoes among scattered bushes, neighbors’ dogs might find and chew up the evidence.

No, her porch was the safest. No neighbors’ kids poked around there, and it had been a long time since any unruly dog, facing her own claws and teeth, had invaded her yard.

“I know the house,” Max said uneasily. “Why that house?”

“It’s the nearest one to the Dumpster that has a good place to hide them,” she said coolly. “And that house looks empty, not a soul around. I pass that place every day on my way to work. There’s no car in the drive and never a newspaper and the shades always the same, half drawn, like they’re on vacation.”

She hoped she sounded businesslike and detached when in fact she was shaking with guilt. “Will you send someone for them?” she said innocently.

“We will, pronto. And thanks for the help.”

Smiling, Kit hit the button that ended the call—and prayed that Lucinda and Pedric’s ID blocking was working. With a nationwide phone company, one never knew. She shivered at having put the snitch in her own neighborhood. I pass that place every day on my way to work. That did scare her, to draw Max’s attention there—but it made her laugh, too. A cat going to work every day?

And how could she implicate Lucinda and Pedric, when they were far away in Alaska?

Max Harper reached the attack scene as the caller hung up. He pulled to the curb in front of the western shop where the little alley ran back, flanking the bakery. The street was blocked by the medics’ van and two squad cars. Parking beside the white van, but before stepping out, he called Dallas, sent Dallas over to retrieve the snitch’s evidence.

“Shoes?” Dallas said. “Under the Greenlaws’ porch? How come, after all these weeks, the snitch just now finds discarded shoes in a Dumpster? And near the Greenlaws’?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I don’t think they’ve been working long up there, clearing out those dying pines. Just go get the shoes,” Max said. “And get shots of any footprints the snitch left,” though of course Dallas would.

He sat a minute in his truck watching the four medics crowded around Sam Bleak, a woman medic taking his blood pressure, Sam huddled in his wheelchair looking pale and frightened. Tekla stood beside him, her hand protectively on his shoulder. Her stance was stiff and military, her face filled with anger as she raged loudly at Officer Crowley. The six-foot-six officer looked silently down at her, no smile, no frown, his face as still as stone. Max stepped out of the truck, approached the medics and three officers. Watching Tekla scolding, he took a second look at her black jogging pants, at the smear of dirt on the cuff.

He moved closer. Was that not a smear, but a small tear? He thought about Ben’s photographs, the one that showed a tiny rip in the cuff of black jogging pants, pants with the same satin stripe as these. Stepping away, he dialed Dallas again. “You still there?”

“Just out the door.”

“Before you leave,” he said softly, “send Kathleen over here with the big camera for some detail shots.”

Hanging up, he headed across to sort out the Bleak couple, Tekla’s angry diatribe filling his ears like swarming bees. Trying to hold his temper, he didn’t see Joe Grey peering out from the truck bed, didn’t see Joe’s smile as the tomcat thought about the phone call from Kit, about Kit leading Max to what? New evidence? Or only more useless shoes?