Кроха - Dedication

When, in the truck, Max’s phone had buzzed and, answering, the chief had straightened up in the seat keenly alert to the caller, Joe had slid out from under the tarp and pressed against the back of the cab, listening.

Shoes? Joe had come sharply alert. From Max’s end of the conversation, from the fact that Max didn’t cross-examine the caller or ask his or her name—and from the way Kit had raced out of the conference room earlier, she had to be the snitch.

Having been gone so long from the village, having just gotten home and most of her thoughts on Misto, she hadn’t realized shoes might be important until this morning. In the conference room piled with shoes and photographs of shoes, listening to Max and the detectives, she’d raced off alone to fetch what she hoped would be evidence. She’d retrieved the shoes, she’d hidden them where they’d be safe, and then she’d called Max, and that made Joe smile. Kit, their scatterbrained Kit, was indeed growing up.

21

In the back of Max’s pickup, parked in the shadows of a cypress tree, Joe Grey reared up to peer over the side of the truck bed. He watched one of the four medics, a woman, tenderly clean up Sam Bleak’s forehead and his upper arm, cutting loose his torn shirt, wiping away blood from both injuries. Officer Crowley was present with two other uniforms, talking with the chief. Sam’s wheelchair lay fallen across a flower bed that edged a narrow brick walk. Sam sat on a carved wooden bench at the edge of the walk, which ran back between the buildings past the western shop, a boutique, a toy shop. A matching bench could be seen farther in between the windowed stores. Little lanes and half-hidden courtyards could be found all over the village, pleasing the locals and offering a longed-for charm to eager tourists. When Sam’s forehead and arm had been bandaged, a second medic, a slim young man, handed him a clipboard and pen.

“This is your release, Mr. Bleak, if you’re sure you don’t want to go to Emergency.”

Sam said he’d see his own doctor. Tekla leaned over, took the board from him, and began to read it out loud to him. As if he were too injured and unsteady—or too senile—to read the form himself.

When she had finished reciting the dull paragraphs, she handed it back for Sam to sign: a release of liability, to protect the medics and police. These days a human could hardly breathe without removing responsibility from everyone in sight. The day will come, Joe thought, when Clyde and Ryan have to sign a waiver so the garbageman can pick up our trash.

When the medics had finished with Sam and turned away, Joe dropped out of the truck into shadow and slipped beneath the shrubs at the curb. Hunkering there out of sight, he watched the three men and the woman gather their equipment back into the van, their blankets and oxygen tank and masks, their various black leather cases with the big syringes, packaged needles, and who knew what other kind of torture. As the van pulled away, Max began to question Sam, nodding to Officer Crowley to take notes.

“He ran right up behind me,” Sam was saying. “Tekla wasn’t here, she—”

“I’d left him for just a few minutes,” Tekla snapped, “left him here in what I thought was a safe place while I ran into the bakery. Does a person have to be on guard every minute in this village? Isn’t there a street patrol? I would think . . .”

Max stared at her with that dry, patient look. The same look as when he was about to strong-arm a drunk.

Joe looked up when Kathleen arrived. Stepping out of her car, she stood a moment taking in the situation; then she adjusted her camera and began to shoot the scene and the surround. Kneeling, the tall, slim detective photographed marks on the sidewalk the wheelchair had gone over, and close-ups of the area of broken flowers in the narrow strip of garden. She took time to lift latent fingerprints from the wheelchair, then photographed Sam and the chair at different angles; she included in her camera range several shots of Tekla’s pant legs. She was fast but careful and precise, covering the area thoroughly.

When Tekla started berating the chief again, Max asked her to step on over with Officer Ray. “She’s nearly finished photographing,” Max said. “She’ll want to interview you. You can wait on that other bench, back along the walk there.”

Tekla looked as if she’d refuse. Scowling, she moved closer to Sam as if to remain protective of him—as if Max or one of the officers might do him bodily harm. Max looked over at Kathleen and nodded.

Turning, Kathleen headed for her car, locked the big camera safely in the trunk. She hung the smaller camera over her shoulder, took Tekla by the arm, and gently ushered the shorter woman back along the walk to the bench. She sat Tekla down with just enough force to prevent her from striking out as she seemed inclined to do. Quickly Joe moved to the back of the cypress tree out of sight and scrambled up. Hidden in the heavy foliage, he slipped out along a branch that arched over the sidewalk nearer to Tekla and Kathleen, where he could listen.

And where, within seconds, Kit came slipping along behind him as if out of nowhere. Feeling the sway of the branch, he glanced back; she peered out at him half hidden, her mottled black-and-brown coat blending into the shaggy cypress. With a flick of her ears, she looked over.

Max was kneeling beside the wheelchair where he could look Sam in the face. “I know you’re shaken, Sam, but can you tell me what happened? Just take your time,” he said gently.

“He hit me so hard. I was sprawled on the ground before I knew what happened,” Sam’s voice was unsteady. “Like Tekla said, she’d gone on a quick errand, left me parked right here in the lane, said she’d only be gone a minute to the bakery. I was looking in the window at those fancy western boots, in plain sight of the busy street, when I was struck so hard from behind I thought a truck hit me.” Sam rubbed at the bandage on his forehead.

“I went sprawling, my wheelchair slid away, I heard someone running. I saw a dark figure running, but I was so dizzy . . .” He looked pitifully at Max, pale and shaken—but anger burned, too, deep in Sam’s eyes, and that shocked Joe. Sam Bleak, so mild and docile, suddenly burned with a cold rage that the tomcat had not seen before.

Max studied Sam with interest. “Did you hear anything before he hit your wheelchair?”

Sam shook his head. “Nothing. Nothing at all, the street was quiet. Then that terrible blow and I went over, I had no way to stop, no way to catch myself.”

“Can you describe the person? Do you remember his clothes? His height? Some idea of age? Was it a man, a boy?”

“A boy,” Sam said, looking directly at Harper. “Tan Windbreaker, I remember that. Old, worn jeans and scuffed leather boots. Running away, running from me so I didn’t see his face but . . . but I know him,” Sam said.

Sam Bleak was silent, looking at Harper. His next words shocked Joe and Kit right down to their paws, made Joe want to leap down and claw Sam’s lying face.

“The boy . . .” Sam said, “the boy . . . was Billy Young.”

Max stood up, narrowly watching Sam. “Are you sure of that?”

“He looked exactly like Billy, and dressed the same. I swear it was Billy Young.”

Max was silent, his look cold and hard. Joe wanted to shout, That’s a lie! What the hell are you up to?

“The boy who flipped me over,” Sam said, “it was Billy Young. That boy who works for Ryan Flannery—that boy who’s too young to be working in a construction crew. Who thinks he’s so smart because he has a grown-up job.”

Joe and Kit looked at each other, fear for Billy sparking between them, fear of what they didn’t understand. Max stood rigid and withdrawn. Maybe only the cats and his fellow cops saw that twitch at the side of his mouth, that quick inner fire that some humans wouldn’t notice. To the cats, even Max’s scent changed, had gone sharp with fury.