Cat to the Dogs (21 page)

Fulman drew back against the cliff. Lucinda huddled at the edge, staring down at the heaving sea.

As Wendell cuffed Fulman, the cats scrambled up the cliff, past him. From above, they watched Wendell put a leg chain on Fulman, then tie a rope around Lucinda, making a harness, preparing for the officers above to hoist her to the road.

Clyde and two officers lifted her to safety. Her face was very white, her pale hair clinging in damp curls. She said no word. She kept her eyes closed until she was again on solid ground.

The next moments, as the paramedics took over, examining Lucinda and Fulman, Joe and Dulcie fled into the tall, concealing grass.

Pity,
Joe thought,
that Fulman didn't crash on the rocks and die. Pity Lucinda didn't shoot him, he deserved shooting; she would have saved the state of California a good deal of trouble, to say nothing of the money they'd spend prosecuting this scum.

 

“What is it with humans?” he asked Dulcie, watching Clyde clip leashes on the chastened pups—chastened not from any scolding Clyde had given them. How could he scold them for their wild behavior, when they had helped to capture Fulman? But chastened from the fall; the two dogs were very quiet, the whites around their eyes showing. It was an amazement to Joe that no one, in that ten-foot slide and fall down the cliff, had any broken bones.

What Max Harper would have to say about his and Dulcie's part in Fulman's capture did not bear considering. Joe guessed he'd better come up with a good story—coach Clyde on it, and fill Wilma in. Set up a scenario about how these two cats got along so well with the pups, that when the pups got excited, the silly cats got excited, too, went kind of crazy—feline hysteria.

Sitting hidden in the grass, out of the way of the police, Joe
and Dulcie watched the first rescue unit pull away, transporting Sam Fulman to the hospital. Two police guards rode with him.

“Look at the damage Fulman's done,” Joe said. “Shot Harper in the arm, and Lucinda's lucky she isn't dead. Three men
are
dead at Fulman's hands—and for what? To line his greedy pockets. But the paramedics took care of him just like he was worth saving.”

“Civilized,” Dulcie said. “The result of thousands of years of civilization.”

“I don't call that civilized, I call it silly. And if humans are so civilized, how come all the crime—the rise in murder statistics? Rape statistics, robbery, you name it.” He looked at Dulcie intently. “If you think there's been progress, then how come the jails are so full?”

But Dulcie only shrugged; she was too tired to express an opinion on matters as complicated and diverse as human ambiguities.

Sitting close together, the cats watched Wilma hurry to retrieve Lucinda's car, preparing to follow the second ambulance, which was taking Lucinda to Emergency. Suddenly Dulcie crouched to race down the hill, to go with her.

But she stopped, turned to look at Joe. “Come on—don't you want to be with Lucinda?”

Joe licked her ear. “You go. I want to be sure Harper finds the bag—see you in Jolly's alley.” And he was away after Harper, racing up through the grass as Harper climbed toward Hellhag Cave. Joe paused only once to look back, as Wilma pulled away behind the rescue unit; when he and Dulcie had faced danger together, he never liked to be parted from her.

But what could happen? He watched Clyde's yellow roadster spin a U-turn, following Wilma. The pups rode as sedately, now, as a pair of middle-aged sightseers; he wondered how long that subdued frame of mind would last. Only Harper's squad car remained, beside the highway, where one of the officers had put it
after retrieving it from the trailer park. It looked lonely there, strangely vulnerable. Quickly, Joe followed Harper on up the hill.

As the captain stepped into the darkness of Hellhag Cave, Joe glimpsed a movement among the rocks.

Maybe it was only a shadow cast by the light from Harper's swinging torch, as the captain disappeared inside. Joe didn't wait to see. Swallowing back his fear of the place, he followed Harper.

J
OE WATCHED
the light of Max Harper's torch move quickly into Hellhag Cave, its bright arc slicing through the darkness. Joe took a step in, and another. Swallowing his distaste, he followed Harper, slipping along close to the wall, his whiskers brushing cold stone.

Harper moved slowly, studying each crevice until, ahead, a flash shone out between the stones as icy white as snow gleaming in the torchlight.

Before Harper touched the bag, he slipped on a pair of thin gloves. Carefully lifting out a letter, he held it by a corner, bright in the beam.

In a moment, as he read, that lopsided grin lit Harper's dour face, that smug, predatory smile that made Joe Grey smile, too.

Glancing around the cave, Harper bundled the bag inside his jacket. Instead of leaving, he moved deeper in, swinging his torch so the cave floor was washed in moving rivers of light. Joe could hear loose stones crunching under the captain's shoes. He remained still until Harper turned back, his beam seeking the mouth of the cave again.

Harper stopped before a narrow shelf. Joe heard him suck in his breath.

“Well, I'll be damned,” Harper said softly.

Sliding closer, Joe reared up to look, cursing the great cat god who had given him white markings. If Harper flashed the torch in his direction, his white parts would shine like neon.

And even when he stood on his hind paws, he couldn't see what Harper had found; Harper's broad-shouldered, uniformed back blocked Joe's view. Slipping close behind Harper's heels, he peered around the captain's trouser legs.

Harper, bending over the stone shelf, was studying two small, dark objects. Barely touching them, he lifted one, placing it in a paper evidence bag. The billfold was thick and bulging, made of dark, greasy leather.

The black plastic tubing smelled like ether-laced pancake syrup. As Harper bagged it, and his light swung around, Joe slid into blackness, lowering his face over his paws and chest.

He didn't move until the light swung away, leaving a pool of night behind it. He looked out covertly at Harper.

Harper was grinning as if he'd just won the lottery. Folding the tops of the evidence bags and tucking them into his jacket beside the bulge of Fulman's letters, he was still smiling as he headed back for the entrance. Joe hurried out behind him, as pleased as Harper—but deeply puzzled.

There had been nothing on that shelf when he and Dulcie dragged the plastic bag into the cave. He remembered pausing there. The shelf had been empty. And certainly they couldn't have passed the stink of brake fluid without smelling it.

Stopping in the shadows of the cave's entrance, Joe watched Harper descend Hellhag Hill to his police unit.

Had Fulman hidden those objects in the cave, maybe been afraid to throw them in the ocean, afraid they'd wash up on the shore again, or someone would fish them out? Maybe Fulman didn't want to take time to bury them, and was wary of dumping
them in some trash can—you read about that stuff, some homeless guy finding the evidence in a trash can.

So Fulman had stashed the brake line and the billfold in the cave?

But not in plain sight, not on that shelf.

Frowning, Joe stood up on his hind paws studying the dark, grassy hillside around him. Turning, he stared back at the mouth of the cave.

He trotted in again, listening and scenting out, studying the velvet dark. When nothing stirred, he hurried deeper in, forgetting his fear, sniffing along the cave walls, sniffing at the ledge where Harper had found the evidence.

Nosing at the stone shelf, he smelled not only Harper's familiar tobacco and gun-oil scent, and the sharp whiff of brake fluid, but, besides these, a yeasty, sweet kitten smell.

Looking deep into the cave, Joe Grey called to her.

There was no answering mew, no small voice coming out of the dark.

He was greatly amused and impressed that the kit had found those items. But where did she find them? And how did she know they were important?

What fascinating worlds of thought, Joe wondered, ran in that small, wild mind?

Again he called to her. Why was she so shy? When a third time he called and nothing stirred, when the blackness of the cave lay around him empty and still, he pressed back toward the cave's mouth, hungering for open space.

And there she was.

A small silhouette, black as soot, against the starry sky. A tiny being stretching as tall as she could against the sky's jeweled glow.

“Hello, Kit.”

The kit purred.

He sat down beside her, at the cave's mouth. “What did you do back there, Kit?”

The kit's eyes widened, she cringed away from him.

“It's all right,” Joe said. “You did just fine. Are you hungry?”

“Always hungry,” said the kit.

He wanted to know where she had found the evidence and why she had put it on the ledge. He guessed his questions would wait. “Come on, I'll show you something to please you.”

The kit followed him slowly at first, slinking along behind. Joe felt protective of her; he wanted to pat and wash her—and was deeply embarrassed at such maternal thoughts. Joe Grey, macho tomcat, wanting to mother some scruffy little hank of cat fur.

“Come
on
, Kit. Don't dawdle.” He turned to wait for her. The kit was so small and thin, but so bright-eyed and alive. Her gaze at him was as brilliant as stars exploding. She galloped up and trotted happily beside him, her head high, her long, bushy tail waving.

Down into the village they wandered. Joe Grey couldn't hurry her. She had to stop at every new scent, had to look into every shop window, examine every tiny patch of garden.

“I was here before,” she said. “When I rode that dog. I jumped off and ran. This is not like big-city streets. Not like the alleys where I was before.”

She stood up to peer in through the glass at a display of brightly painted pottery, yearning toward it, lifting a paw as if to touch it, much as Dulcie would do. She stopped to sniff a hundred smells, and to pat a hundred shadows.

Down the oak-shaded, flower-decked streets she and Joe Grey walked, dawdling, creating endless delays, until they arrived at last at the small, brick-paved alley behind George Jolly's Deli.

Despite the late hour, a light burned in the deli kitchen, and Joe could hear cooking sounds, a spoon scraping a bowl; George Jolly was working late preparing his delicious salads and marinades and sandwich spreads.

Jolly must have just set out fresh plates for the village cats; the nicely presented feast had not yet been sampled. No other cat was present.

The kit said, “This is not for cats to eat.”

“This
is
for cats to eat.”

The kit smelled each individual serving—salmon, caviar, an assortment of cheeses.

“Go on, Kit. You're not hungry?”

The kit gave him a questioning look, then set to gulping and smacking, sucking up the feast with a fine, robust greed.

She came up for air with cheese on her nose and chopped egg in her whiskers.

And now, her first hunger sated, she looked around her at the little shops that faced the alley, admiring their mullioned doors and stained-glass windows. Her round eyes widened at a bright red-and-blue rocking horse, at the little potted trees beside the shop doors, at the decorative wrought-iron lamps that lit either end of the cozy alley, at the tall jasmine vine heavy with yellow blossoms. She smiled. Then she ate again, rumbling and shaking with purrs.

Dulcie found them there, Joe Grey washing his whiskers and guarding the sleeping kit. The kit lay sprawled on the bricks, softly snoring, her little stomach distended, her face smeared with chopped egg, one paw twitching now and then as if, in dream, she still pawed at the delectable morsels of salmon and sliced Brie.

“Guess what she did,” Joe said, as proud as a parent.

“Made a pig of herself.”

“Besides that. Something—incredible. She found the brake line and the billfold. Harper has them.”

“She didn't!” Dulcie began to wash the kit's face. “Oh, she is clever.”

The kit woke, yawning.

“Did you really find those things, Kit? How did you know…?”

“In a crevice,” the kit said. “They smelled of that man that came running, the man that hurt Pedric. He was there before. A long time ago he hid those things. Then he hurt the old man, and I didn't like him.

“Then today you hid that white bag. It smelled of him.” The kit looked up at them with round yellow eyes. “When he came running into the cave, I thought he would see the bag. But the woman was there. He saw her instead. He hurt her; he hurt that kind woman.”

“She's all right,” Dulcie told her. “She'll be all right.”

“I saw her go in that big car.”

“Ambulance. That's an ambulance. The paramedics took good care of her. But why…?”

“After the loud noises and blood and he dragged her over the cliff and everyone was shouting and those dogs barking, I went to the cave. Then the man came and”—she looked at Joe—“you were behind him. He was happy to find the bag. And you looked happy. So I quick brought those things out of the crevice and put them for him to find.”

“You were in the cave the whole time,” Joe said.

The kit purred.

“You have done more than you can guess,” Joe told her. “But what was Lucinda doing in there?”

“She likes the cave. She is peaceful there. She likes to be quiet there.”

The kit swished her long, bushy tail. “I never knew a human. The others say humans are bad. Out on the hill, where the others could see, I stayed away from her. But in the cave, when she came today, I went close to look at her. She petted me.”

“Did you—talk to her?” Dulcie asked.

“Oh
no
.” The kit looked shocked, her yellow eyes widening. Neither Dulcie nor Joe had ever seen a cat with eyes so round; the kit's little thin face was vibrant with life, with the deep, shifting lights of amusement and intelligence.

“Why do the others haze you?” Dulcie said.

“I don't know. I don't care; they will go away soon. They don't like the quakes. They will go where the earth doesn't shake.”

“And where would that be?” Joe said.

“They don't know. They mean to search until they find such a place.”

“And will you go with them?” Dulcie asked softly.

The kit was silent.

“Will you stay here alone, then? On Hellhag Hill?”

She didn't speak.

Dulcie was very still. A terrible longing filled her. “Would you go home with me?” she whispered.

But still the little, mottled kit did not reply.

“Oh,” Dulcie said. “You will go to Lucinda?”

“I will go—with the one who needs me,” said the kit. “With the lonely one who needs me.”

Dulcie turned away and began to wash, trying not to show her disappointment.

The kit patted at Dulcie's paw. “I can't be with humans the whole time. Humans can't climb and hunt.” She snuggled close to Dulcie. “I have no one to teach me to hunt.”

Dulcie brightened. She sat up straighter, lashing her tail with pleasure.

Joe Grey was embarrassed to hear himself rumbling with purrs.

“And when will you go there, to Lucinda?” Dulcie said.

“When the other humans are gone. Those people that, she says, fill up her house. And when that old man comes back from the hos—hospital, and they are together.”

“Together? What do you mean, together?”

“Of course, together.” The kit glanced up the hill to the Moonwatch Trailer Park. “Maybe together there in that little house with wheels.”

Dulcie stared at her, puzzled.

“They are friends,” said the kit. “They need one another. The time is now for them to be together. To start new,” she said, “just like me.

“The time is now for me to go away from the clowder. I have
been with them long enough. The time is now for me to start another new way to live.”

“Then you had best come home with me,” Dulcie said in a businesslike manner, “until it's time for you to go to Lucinda.”

The kit rubbed against Dulcie's shoulder, extravagantly purring.

And so the nameless kit joined the great and diverse community of Molena Point cats who had fallen, in this one of their nine lives, into an earthly heaven; so the tattered kit was brought home to Molena Point's bright and nurturing village; now she had only to find herself a name, and find her true calling in the world.