Кроха - Dedication

“No, I’ll stay on the line,” the man said irritably. He spoke again to the dog, to quiet him, then he knocked and called out to Tekla. His shadow shone through the obscure glass, waiting, listening, the dog a dark mass moving restlessly against his knee.

When no one answered, he knocked harder and called out again. He waited, then, “They’re not home,” he told the dispatcher. “But my dog don’t bark for nothing. Yes, send the patrol. My dog don’t bark for no reason.” When Joe heard keys jingle, he raced halfway down the hall. There, Joe Grey did the unthinkable.

He backed up against the wall and sprayed.

Streaking to the bedroom, he did the same on the bedroom door and then hastily sprayed the bed. Storming back to the entry, he heard the key turn in the lock. Diving beneath the jackets, Joe was out of sight when the door edged open. The Rottweiler, pressing his face at the crack, got a good whiff of tomcat and let out an echoing roar. Joe was peering out, ready to leap up for the closet shelf, when the Rottweiler lunged through, exploded into the entry as black and huge as a rodeo bull, jerking the leash so hard the big man could barely hold him. Charging toward the hall, he bolted for the smell of Joe’s markings, the man double-timing behind him, leaving the door wide.

And Joe was out of there.

Leaping from beneath the jackets, he flew out through the open door as two cops answered the landlord’s call, pulling in behind the van.

Parking their police unit, Officers Brennan and Crowley got out and approached the open door, their hands poised near their holstered weapons. Joe watched from the bushes for only a moment and then he was off, scrambling up the oak to the roofs, streaking away home. Racing for a phone, to get the message to Brennan and Crowley before they cleared the house and left again. He wanted them to find the gun, not leave it there unguarded. He wanted them, in proper police procedure, to bag it at once, fresh with Tekla’s prints.

27

Dulcie, having been chauffeured home by Charlie—like an invalid, she thought irritably—woke much later warm and cozy curled in Wilma’s lap. It was late afternoon, the westering sun slanting in through the living room windows across Wilma’s cherry desk. How hard she had slept. She woke filled with strange dreams, though already they were fading. She tried to bring them back, but they had flown apart, vanishing into fragments. Why did dreams do that?

All that remained was the sense of danger, of Joe Grey’s fear. But now even that was fading—and as fear vanished, she was filled with Joe’s wild amusement. She could hear faintly from the dream the roar of a barking dog. She sat up, puzzled, kneading Wilma’s leg, pushing Wilma’s book aside.

Wilma stroked her, watching her. “What?” she said softly.

“A dog, a huge dog threatening Joe. A gun. And . . . Tekla. Tekla Bleak,” she said, hissing. “But now . . . Joe’s all right, it’s all right. He’s all right,” she said, purring. She looked into the fire that burned on the hearth, trying to sort out what she’d seen, what exactly had happened. As she reached for the dream again, trying to slip back into its shadows, faces and action overlapped into softer visions, and soon she dozed once more and Wilma returned to her book.

But then as she fell into sleep a brighter vision touched Dulcie, not a dream at all but something more alive and urgent shaking her awake, her heart pounding.

“It’s time,” she said, leaping down from Wilma’s lap. “Something’s happening, it’s time.”

“The kittens!” Wilma said, shoving her book aside and getting up.

“No,” Dulcie said, “not the kittens. It’s Misto.” She shivered, staring at Wilma. “It’s time to go to Misto.”

Wilma grabbed her purse, smothered the fire with ashes, found a jacket on the hook in the kitchen. She never questioned Dulcie’s perception. She picked Dulcie up gently and they were out the kitchen door into the bright afternoon, into the car, backing out. “What did you see? What did you dream?”

Dulcie snuggled close against her. “I was with Misto in another place, not Molena Point, not this world but a place so bright, larger than our world could ever be, the sky stretching away more huge than our sky and millions of miles of green hills rolling on and on and up into endlessness . . . And yet,” Dulcie said, “at the same moment we were in our own village, so tiny in those vast spaces. I can’t explain how that could be, we floated in eternity but still were in our own tiny village, and then . . . And then Misto and I were in the village library but the room, the book stacks, were dwarfed like a tiny jewel in endless space. We were looking through old, old books at pictures of my little calico, the way I dream of her, the way Misto describes her. We were looking at our girl kitten over the centuries. The same sweet face, sly and clever, the same faded calico markings and dark swirling stripes, and her little soft paws.

“There she was in those ancient tapestries and books, in lives so many generations gone. There, in one century and then another, born to different times, though Misto said she will remember little of those lives. But now,” she said, “he has shown her to me for the last time. Now Misto himself is going home. My dream of Courtney is his parting gift.”

Slowing the car, Wilma turned onto the Firettis’ street. She felt cold, her hands shaking. Parking before the cottage, she lifted Dulcie as if, Dulcie thought, she were as frail as porcelain. Contritely Dulcie leaped from Wilma’s arms into the fern bed by the Firettis’ front door, the fronds soft beneath her tummy and paws. She waited as Wilma knocked, both strung tight with heartbreak—but both would smile and comfort Misto. They would offer only brightness to the old cat, would lay only love before the venerable cat they so treasured.

In much the same way that Dulcie knew Misto needed her, Kit looked up suddenly from hunting gophers in Lucinda’s garden. She had come home from MPPD alone, abandoned by Joe, left on her own by Dulcie and Ryan and Charlie; had padded home feeling lonely and not sufficiently praised for finding and retrieving the evidence of shoes; had padded home to her empty house, to hunt alone in her empty garden. But now suddenly she turned from the gopher hole, startled. She listened. She sat very still looking away across the village, hearing in her thoughts a bright whisper. She felt awash suddenly in brilliance. Joy filled her, a need filled her, the old cat was calling to her . . .

She was distracted suddenly as the gopher stuck his head out. She grabbed and killed it all in a second, in a fast reflex, and then she bolted away, left the dead gopher lying limp and forgotten. The old cat was calling her. She raced away through neighbors’ gardens and up to the roofs and down and down across the shingles and peaks of cottages and shops, hurrying, sprinting for the Firettis’ cottage.

But Joe Grey, bolting home from the Bleaks’ empty rental, was driven by another mission. Still smiling at his well-timed escape from the Rottweiler, he leaped into his tower and through it onto the high rafter and dropped down onto Clyde’s desk. From the love seat Snowball looked up at him sleepily. She was alone; likely Rock was with Ryan. The little white cat yawned, watching him paw at a pile of papers. Finding his cell phone he punched in the one digit for Max Harper. He waited only two rings.

“Harper,” the chief said shortly.

“The Bleaks have skipped. Left town in another car, a small brown SUV. Clothes, suitcases, maps, like they’re set to travel. I didn’t get a good look at the car, can’t tell you the make, couldn’t see the license. It was in that little garage where they were renting, it was gone when your officers got there. If they’re still there,” Joe said, “there’s a gun in the bedroom, under the armoire. A loaded automatic, in a gun case. Get it out before the damned dog—”