Shirley Murphy - Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Telling_Tales_BookFi

“ I crawled in,” Dulcie said. “You didn’t worry about me spoiling my looks, or gassing myself or getting splinters in my paws.”

“You’re tougher than a human woman,” Joe said, cutting her a look. “And far too beautiful to ever spoil your looks, even with dirt in your fur.”

They could see into the cellar for only a little ways, could see, in the painfully bright lights, deep marks in the earth where the body had been dragged in. Kathleen hunkered along at the side, away from these. Twice she paused to look at Dulcie’s paw prints, and both times, she’d photographed them. The first time, she had called out to the waiting officers to ask if Sammie had cats.

“Did she have to notice that?” Dulcie said.

“Of course she’d notice, that’s her job,” he said smartly.

Officer Brennan, looking like a tent with legs in his wide black slicker, had said Sammie had two cats, that when they found Emmylou Warren in the house she said she had come up to feed them, said she couldn’t find them. Kathleen had nodded, and disappeared. There’d been a long silence in which they imagined her inching her way back toward the furnace, placing her lights as she went.

They imagined her finding the partially buried fingers, envisioned her carefully uncovering them until she had, like Dulcie, revealed the buried hand and arm; she would photograph them, and photograph the surround. She would be kneeling on a small sheet of plastic, and as she resumed digging, she would brush away a few grains of earth at a time with a soft paintbrush. To find what? Only the hand and arm? Or the murder victim? Was this Sammie Miller? And, beneath this bloated but intact body, what would she find to account for the far more sick-making smell that seemed to come from underneath?

Sounds were becoming muffled as the snow accumulated. On the snowy roof, the two cats huddled together shivering as the temperature dropped degree by falling degree. Dulcie hoped Wilma’s garden wouldn’t freeze, she hoped Wilma wasn’t out there in her slippers and robe, covering her prize plants with newspapers and old sheets.

In the cellar, the position of the lights changed again and again, coming from different angles as Kathleen photographed the grave. They heard her talking on her cell phone, there was a little silence when the call ended, then the lift of her voice as she made a second call. At the third call, Dulcie eased forward. “Maybe I can just slip in and listen.”

“No way,” Joe said, hauling her back with a nip to the butt that got him a swat on the nose. “You want to get caught in there? She’s already wondering about the paw prints.”

Sighing, she settled back, pawing snow off her ears. Silence again, only the soft mutter of the police radios. Kathleen would have a black-and-white camera in there, one for color, and a video. She would already have photographed the drag marks and, who knew, maybe she’d found a trace of the killer’s footprints. By the time Dallas Garza’s tan Blazer pulled up next to Kathleen’s car, Sammie’s yard and drive were more white than brown, and the pines and cypress trees looked like a Yosemite postcard.

Dallas stepped out of the Blazer looking as if he had just rolled out of bed, his heavy boots pulled over the gray sweats he might have slept in, his black slicker hanging crookedly, his short dark hair mussed from sleep. Walking the narrow path between two barriers of yellow tape, to the lighted cellar door, he knelt down, looking in, touching nothing as he talked with Kathleen.

“We have a body,” she said. “Smells like more than one. I called the state forensics lab, two techs are on the way. We’ll have another in the morning, and possibly their entomologist. And I called Ryan. I’m thinking we could cut away the outside wall nearest the grave, give them space to work, room to move back and forth, and get the body out without trampling the surround.”

Dallas considered this, and nodded.

Atop the roof, Dulcie said, “Working in there, with that stink, has to be like working right inside the grave. Why does anyone do that, why do people choose this kind of work?”

“The need to know,” Joe said. “Why are we here freezing our butts and starving? You ever think what life would be like, if no one went after the bad guys?”

Dulcie sneezed. “So, all this work, and the courts let half of them loose again.”

Joe didn’t have an answer to that. They were licking snow from their fur when Ryan’s red king cab came up the street. Parking just beyond the squad cars, she moved down along the house following the officers’ footsteps on the narrow, muddied path between the yellow tape. Crouching beside her uncle Dallas, she peered in. The conversation came in snatches as they considered ways to keep the scene from being trampled and contaminated by sawdust as she removed a portion of the wall.

“I can prefabricate a frame,” she said, “then bolt it together inside the cellar, a barrier between the basement wall and the grave. Staple a sheet of plastic to it, seal off the site before we start the tearout.”

Dallas nodded. “That should contain the debris, keep it off the surround and body.” They discussed the details of the construction, then he headed around the house to the front, to work the scene inside. Joe wanted to follow him, but there was a limit to how much they could push. Cats in the office. Paw prints at the scene. Cats following him around that little crowded space inside wouldn’t be a good idea. Dulcie said, “I’m freezing and I’m starving, and there won’t be much more action for a couple of hours, until the techs get here.”

He looked at her like she was abandoning the mission.

“Even then,” she said, “it could take them the rest of the night to free the body, bag the evidence underneath, take samples, get the corpse onto a gurney. And maybe have to dig out a second body. While we freeze our tails and starve, and then they’re off to the lab, and we don’t know any more than we do now.”

“I guess,” he said reluctantly. If he’d been alone he’d have stayed all night, hungry and cold or not. But he saw how cold she was, her ears down, her tail tight around her, trying not to shiver, and he knew she needed breakfast and a warm bed. “I guess they won’t bring the first body out until daylight,” he said. Another patrol car had arrived with two officers to help secure the scene if onlookers or the press began to gather. Maybe, with the amazement of snow, the villagers’ attention would be elsewhere. As the officers worked, one or another would look up at the falling snow, look around at the white yard, the accumulating snow weighting down the trees, and they’d start to grin. Snow, and it was nearly Valentine’s Day.

Nearly Valentine’s Day, Joe thought, nearly Ryan and Clyde’s first anniversary. And here Ryan was, pulled out of bed on a freezing morning to work in the middle of a foul-smelling murder scene—plus, the happy couple was saddled with Debbie Kraft, whining to be taken care of. He looked at Dulcie again, at the way she was shivering. “Let’s cut out of here, my ears are freezing off.” He looked toward Ryan’s truck. “If we hurry, we can hitch a ride.” They were poised to drop down the nearest tree and race to the truck bed when Ryan turned away from the cellar, headed for her king cab to go gather the materials she’d need, and swung in. The cats were halfway down the tree when she started the engine, and backed out and pulled away.

Hadn’t she seen them? It had looked as if, when she glanced in her side mirror, she was looking right at them. “Well, hell,” Joe said. Sopping wet and cold, they looked after her longingly, then took off across rooftops, bounding like rabbits in the cover of snow. Hadn’t she guessed they’d be there? Who did she think called in the report? When she was summoned out of her warm bed, didn’t she wonder why Joe didn’t come bolting down from his tower? Where did she think he was, but already at the scene? When she saw it was snowing, didn’t she worry about her poor little cat, out in the freezing night? And where was Clyde? Still home in bed sound asleep and not a worry in his thick skull? Humping across the white roofs beside Dulcie, freezing his paws, he had worked himself almost into a temper when, two blocks from the crime scene, they saw the red king cab parked at the curb, the engine running, its exhaust flume rising white on the cold air.