Кроха - Dedication

Peering over the bottlebrush blooms she watched the woman searching, watched her look all around and then turn back into the station as if to ask if she’d lost the scarf there. Gripping the soft scarf again, Dulcie hurried away beneath the leafy shelter. She stopped only when, glancing out toward the street, she saw a wheelchair coming down the sidewalk beyond the parking lot, a middle-aged woman gliding along turning the wheels with her hands; clearly she was being followed.

She was lean and tanned, her brown hair in a ponytail threaded through the back of a golf cap. She wore cargo pants, the fabric folded neatly beneath a long steel brace on her left leg. Dulcie could see the corner of a blue shopping bag pushed, bulging, into the back pocket of the wheelchair. Four strides behind the woman, a boy in ragged jeans walked silently, the hood of his heavy black sweatshirt pulled up around his face. He moved slowly, keeping his distance and looking in the other direction, but certainly he was following her.

Could this be the mugger, this kid? Dulcie couldn’t see enough of him to tell his age, but his walk was easy, like a boy. She sniffed, but at this distance she caught no turpentine scent, no smell of bicycle oil.

Was he waiting until the wheelchair had passed the PD and was in a more deserted part of the village before he attacked?

But again, why? What was his purpose? The attacker never stole anything; he shoved, pushed someone over, and ran. None of this made sense. A shout stopped the boy in his tracks, and stopped the woman. A shout from atop the roof, shocking Dulcie.

“Look out, you’re being followed. You, boy . . . Get away from her!” Joe’s voice. Oh, he wouldn’t cry out in public, he wouldn’t chance being seen!

She couldn’t see above her, she was too near the building; but Joe would already be gone, safely hidden.

As the boy stood looking, the wheelchair-bound woman spun to face him. When she started after him, the boy ran. He was fast, disappearing in the traffic, dodging cars. She was fast, too, but she stopped at the curb. Two pedestrians had turned to stare, but their attention was on the woman. A bus went by; when it passed, the boy was gone. The two portly tourists, dressed in red sweatshirts, watched the woman for a long moment as she headed away down the street; they talked softly between themselves, then they, too, turned away—and Dulcie’s thieving passion had cooled. Joe Grey’s shout had sharply upset her. It took a lot for a speaking cat to expose himself like that, a lot of nerve even to whisper, in public. Leaving the scarf beneath the bushes, she slipped out into the parking lot where she could see the roof above.

From that distance, rearing up, she could see that the roof was empty. She thought Joe would be behind that tangle of heat vents, of weathered gray pipes and metal boxes that rose up against the clearing sky. She waited, crouching at the edge of the bottlebrush until Joe appeared, slipping out from the galvanized jungle, and came leaping down the oak tree. Dulcie joined him. She would return the scarf later, to the PD, would leave it for the clerk to find. Maybe the woman had left a phone number in case someone discovered it. Guilt touched her only a little; her surge of greed had been deeply therapeutic. She felt like herself again, her passion to steal, her wild dash dragging that soft and silken prize, had left her refreshed and wide awake and like her old, wild self once more—no longer just a pregnant cat growing heavy and lethargic. She was her bright, kitten-self again. Her joy burned young and rash, she was a whole cat once more: thief cat when the mood took her, mother cat, cop cat. She was all together now; she felt strong again, and complete.

Beside her, Joe Grey was frowning. If he was annoyed or amused at her thieving, he said nothing. “Should we report that guy? Head for your house, and call the chief?”

“What are we going to report? He didn’t attack the woman. Maybe she’ll report it, maybe she’ll call in.”

“But we saw him. A kid . . .”

“What did we see, Joe? Dark clothes, a black hoodie, and he was gone. We don’t know if he would have attacked her. He was so bundled up, we don’t know if that was a kid. Maybe a small adult.”

Dulcie sat watching him, her tail twitching. “Let’s wait, see if she makes the call. If we call in on something so vague . . . that doesn’t help the department’s confidence in us. They have enough questions about our phone calls, we don’t need to make one that’s so . . . uncertain.” She looked at him steadily, her green eyes wide.

Joe Grey flicked an ear. He knew she was right. Every tip they offered the PD, like every bit of evidence, needed to be solid. Not just a quick glimpse of someone’s back, when they couldn’t identify him and didn’t know what he meant to do.

They lingered in the bushes until two officers left the station through the heavy glass door. Slipping in past their heels, the two cats swerved to the right through prisonlike bars into the shadows of the holding cell.

This was not their usual mode of entry. Ordinarily they would stroll into MPPD as brazen as a pair of two-bit lawyers come to bail out a scuzzy client. But today, crouching beneath the bunk that hung from chains in the wall, wrinkling their noses at the stink of stale booze and stale sweat from generations of detainees, they peered warily toward the reception counter.

They would not be greeted today with joy and petting and a little snack from their favorite clerk. No homemade cookies or fried chicken, no hugs and sweet words from blond, pillow-soft Mabel Farthy. Mabel was in the hospital’s rehab, recovering from back surgery. The cats missed her and they worried over her, as did all the department. And they knew, too, that if this sour-faced substitute clerk caught them in the station again she’d pitch a fit, would summon an officer to throw them out—though the officer would only smile, would listen to her complaint, but then would go about his own business, leaving the cats to do as they liked. And Evijean wouldn’t snatch them up herself; she was too afraid of long claws and sharp teeth.

3

The lobby of Molena Point PD featured the one holding cell just to the right of the glass doors as you entered. Here a drunk could be temporarily confined or prisoners held for a short period while waiting to be booked. Beyond the holding cell was an austere seating area: seven folding metal chairs, no coffee table strewn with magazines, no potted plants to cheer the nervous visitor. Civilians waited here for their appointment with an officer or detective, perhaps to offer information, to identify stolen items, to pore through a gallery of mug shots, or to file a bad-tempered complaint against some unruly neighbor. To the left of the waiting area ran the long reception desk on which, over the years, Joe and Dulcie had enjoyed Mabel Farthy’s gentle petting and ear rubs, her one-sided conversations and, most of all, her homemade treats. Mabel liked to cook; she often brought a freshly baked cake or cookies for the officers, and always the cats got their share. Mable could laugh and hold her own with the men she worked with; everyone loved her. Her replacement, Evijean Simpson, didn’t know how to smile.

Evijean didn’t bring treats for man or beast, she had no rapport with even the kindest officers, and certainly she had no fellow feeling for a cat. She didn’t want stray animals, as she described Joe and Dulcie, to be slipping in contaminating the station with fleas and cat fur.

Evijean was so short that, from the cats’ angle on the floor of the holding cell, she was barely visible behind the tall counter. They could see little more than the top of her head, her pale hair pulled back in a bun with ragged ends sticking out. She seemed hardly a presence at all as she moved about among the state-of-the-art radios and electronics. The cats watched until she turned away to stack papers into the copier; then they slid out through the cell bars, made a fast dash to the base of the counter below her line of sight. From there, a stealthy creep down the hall to the half-open door of the chief’s office, where they crouched listening.