Shirley Murphy - Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Coming_Home_BookFi

For a moment, Joe paused at the edge of the roof looking down at the officers below, but then he moved on. He supposed they had about all the information they’d get until Kathleen’s report lay on Max’s desk tomorrow morning and he could read it at his leisure. And off he went, following the tomcat, wanting to know how this newcomer fit into the action. Was he a friend, or was he part of the problem?

He followed the scent to the next roof and the next, Dulcie and Kit running beside him through the rising sea breeze. Where the trail descended to cross Ocean, they came down, too. For an old cat, he was making good time—heading straight for the center of the village where the sky glowed with the red reflections of police activity. Only as they approached the scene, their noses tickling at the smell of spilled wine, did they lose his trail.

Kit circled the roofs for a while but couldn’t pick it up again. Joe and Dulcie crouched at the roof’s edge watching the action around the Blue Bistro, the sidewalk beneath them glittering with shards of broken glass. This restaurant had been a fixture in the village long before the cats were born; favored by village residents, it featured locally grown produce, local wines, locally raised lamb. The dining room’s oversize fireplace, and the many photographs of famous village residents, offered a cozy aura in which one might happen on a movie star, a famous musician or sports figure. Now, not only had the big front windows been shattered, the portraits had been jerked from the walls and lay smashed on the floor, the frames bent, the glass broken, the pictures ground into the debris. Dallas Garza was lifting fingerprints from the shattered front counter where a smiling hostess should have been welcoming diners. Even the swinging kitchen doors had been ripped off their hinges, and the kitchen beyond torn apart, huge cook pots littering the floor, the counters pulled from the wall and smashed. It was hard to imagine three or four men doing this amount of damage in a short time, but maybe there were more than that. Joe guessed if a person put his mind to it, he could accomplish a lot of destruction pretty fast. Was all this, indeed, simply to divert patrols from the invasion and make the cops look bad? That, coupled with the pleasure of violence just for the hell of it? He’d be willing to bet the officers would find very little missing, maybe the cash box gone and the safe breached—all this to destroy confidence in the police and in Max Harper.

24

BEFORE LEAVING NANNETTE Garver’s house, Max had gone through her personal phone list and called her daughter in Sacramento and her son, who lived in Orange County. They both said they’d be there by the next morning, the son arriving as soon as he could get on a plane. Max had called the hospital shortly after Nannette was checked into the ICU. She was suffering severe contusions to her throat and face, but no bones were broken. Her hands and arms were scraped raw; she was shaken, and descended easily into tears. Max had left Kathleen Ray photographing and lifting prints, and taking casts of several shoeprints in the garden beside the front door. An inventory of items missing would have to wait until Nannette was released from the hospital, but he doubted it would amount to much. Neither of the two televisions had been taken, but both were smashed beyond repair. It enraged Max that innocent people were suffering because someone wanted him removed from office. The MO of these attacks, coupled with the newspaper’s pressure, could lead to no other conclusion.

He never doubted he’d done a good job over his twenty-five years of service. Molena Point’s crime rate was down by thirty percent just in the last four years, while in the surrounding towns, as in much of the country, crime rates had risen as the breakdown in moral restraints increased. Appointed by the mayor, with a two-thirds vote approval by the city council, Max could be removed by the same process. If that was to be the result of this concerted attempt, he would be laying the village open to a new chief he couldn’t trust, no doubt backed by the same element that wanted Max out. This was a power grab, and if he could help it, it wasn’t going to happen.

He and Dallas had discussed bringing in an FBI profiler. So far, their own take was that the vandals were young, but were working under more experienced direction. The mastermind was very possibly someone their department had arrested with enough evidence to see him prosecuted. Officer Ray had set up a computer program listing all the convictions in their district for the past ten years, with release dates for those who were now out of prison. With access to personal information and fingerprints, they had nine possible suspects so far who had lived in the area or had friends or family here. Two were on probation, four on parole, three out without any restrictions. None was now living close enough to be operating conveniently in the village, but with county probation caseloads so high and its officers spread so thin, cases could slip through the cracks. The man they were looking for might easily be driving down from San Francisco, where three of the parolees were living, or from San Jose, where a fourth resided. Between a parole officer’s visits, a parolee would have plenty of time for short and unauthorized forays outside the jurisdiction. This, Max thought, was one situation where he really appreciated the belated help from one of the phantom snitches; the 911 call this evening was the first unidentified tip they’d had. Dispatcher said it was the lady, this time. Despite how edgy the anonymous phone calls left him, he felt remarkably encouraged. This call tonight had put them on the scene hours before Ms. Garver could have summoned help; in fact it might have saved her life. The older woman, weakened from shock and loss of blood, might never have been heard by her neighbors, she might have died in that house alone. How the snitch had found her, had heard her, was a matter he didn’t want to pursue.

As for the two restaurant break-ins, they followed the same pattern of extensive vandalism as the others. Dallas had left the Blue Bistro to work the Flying Galleon call, and it was the same MO over there. Lots of damage, nothing much missing, cash still in the cash box at the Galleon. Shoe prints that matched none of the others. What did these guys do, change shoes for every job? He’d had a man checking the Dumpsters for weeks, thinking they might be tossing the shoes after each use. And again no fingerprints. But thanks to the snitch they now had a description of a car and a truck that had fled the invasion scene shortly before the 911 call was made—but no license numbers. Snitch said the plates were smeared with mud. They had Be On the Lookout alerts out on both vehicles. A black four-door Cadillac had been spotted, but it belonged to a new bartender up on Fifth, had been parked in front of the bar, and there was a whole restaurant full of witnesses to vouch for his presence.

Swinging by the Flying Galleon, he found Dallas had finished photographing and dusting for prints, and was trying to rouse a carpenter to board up the windows. He still had to go over the area for trace evidence, but it would take a carpenter a while to show up. “Joe Wood’s out of town,” Dallas said. “Ditto, Jim Herndon. He and his wife are in Tahoe. I got the restaurant’s head chef on the phone, he’s over there talking to Brennan. I’ve called three other carpenters, with no answer. I’m just going to try Ryan, see if she has any plywood. What about the Blue Bistro?”

“Jimmie Chu is on his way,” Max said. “He’s sending his sons over with plywood, said he didn’t need our help. He’s mad as hell, says we’re not doing our job. I’ll swing back by there and talk to them.”