Judas Cat (3 page)

Doctor Jacobs came then and Alex waited in the dining room until Waterman returned. They went in together. “Well, what do you think, Jake?” Waterman asked after the doctor had made a cursory examination.

“About what?”

“What caused his death?”

“Offhand, I’d say he was scared to death. Had a shock, maybe. Heart naturally weak at his age.”

“But those scratches, Doctor,” Alex said.

“I see them. Had nothing to do with him dying. Not direct, from what I can tell now. Died soon after getting them though.”

“But they wasn’t the cause of death?” Waterman said.

“I just said that. Can’t tell for sure just looking at him. Want me to do an autopsy?”

“I just called the sheriff’s office. Better wait till they get here.”

“What did you call me for then?” the doctor said irritably.

“An opinion,” said the chief. “I hadn’t made up my mind to call them in when I called you.”

“All right. You’ve had an opinion. Now forget I was here.”

“Don’t go talking like that, Jake. I know how you feel. But you know what they’re like up there. The old man and Addison was thick as buttermilk. Supposing he was murdered? We’d be in a hell of a jam if I wasn’t to call them. They’ll want your opinion anyway.”

“Then let them ask for it. They got a coroner. An undertaker, that’s what Mark Tobin is. What does he care why a man dies? How can he tell? He can just about make sure he’s dead and put in a bid for the burial. I’ll be in my office.”

“Brother, is he a sour apple this morning,” Alex said when Jacobs was gone. “What’s eating him?”

“Altman tried to get him on the county slate for coroner last election,” Waterman said. “You know how he does every once in a while, trying his power with the county boys. Happens this time he was right, but Jacobs didn’t have a chance against that outfit.”

“And Tobin really is an undertaker, isn’t he?”

“Sure. Same way up in Bay County. It ain’t uncommon. People just got sold on the idea undertakers know more about dead people than doctors.”

Alex and Waterman sat down on the window seat in the dining room. “Waiting’s a slow business,” the chief said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “I wish we could open some windows, but I don’t think we ought to.”

Gilbert came out of the living room. “I don’t feel so good, Chief,” he said.

“Go outside then. See to it nobody comes rummaging around here, and don’t talk to anybody.”

“I wonder if Mabel Turnsby can’t tell us something,” Alex said. “If anybody in town knows a thing about the old man it should be her.”

“I don’t know. You can’t believe half what she tells you, anyway. Makes it up to fit the pattern.”

Alex was looking out of the window. “She’s got a coopful of biddies on her front porch.”

“They can mobilize quicker than a posse.”

“What gets me,” Alex said, “is the door there being closed. The cat in here and him in there.”

“One sure thing, it didn’t blow shut.”

“They’ll look for fingerprints,” Alex said.

Waterman nodded.

“How much do you know about Andy, Chief?”

“Not enough to put on his tombstone. He’s lived here thirty years at least. Kept to himself. Never talked much. Bid you time of day, but that’s about all. He never worked that I know of.”

“Where did he come from?”

“I don’t know that either. I guess the only thing I do know about him is that old Henry Addison came to see him once a year or so.”

“When was he here last?”

“Maybe Mabel could tell you that, Alex. I think he died some time last spring.”

“Do you suppose he brought Andy the cash to live on?”

“Not by his reputation. Tight as a beer cap. Except to institutions and the like.”

Alex lit a cigarette. He held the match until it was cool and then put it in his pocket. “You know, Chief, I’d like to know something about Andy Mattson. A man who knew the likes of Addison that well doesn’t just come to Hillside for no reason at all and then spend the rest of his life alone in a bare house like this. And now the way he died …”

“It does seem kind of queer,” Waterman said. “But you better wait and see what the county has to say about his death. That cat was vicious. Maybe she got rabies or something. It’s August.”

“But the door, Chief. The sliding door.”

“Yes, boy. I know.”

“Besides,” said Alex. “She was a he. Shocked hell out of Miss Turnsby, wooing her Bessie.”

Waterman grinned. “I’ll bet.”

A
S IT HAPPENED, CHIEF
Waterman’s call to the sheriff’s office was inopportune for the county officials. Both the sheriff and the state’s attorney were on vacation. A young deputy sheriff came down with the coroner. The two men looked at Alex as though he had no right being here, which, when you came right down to it, he thought, was the truth.

Jim Olson, the deputy, asked Waterman a lot of questions while the coroner examined Andy’s body: when he had received the call, from whom, exactly what she had said, how long it had taken him to get there, why he had killed the cat.

“You must have done a lot of talking by the crowd that’s out there,” the coroner said, looking up.

“I know better than that, Mark,” he said. “That’s Turnsby. She’s been chattering like a gopher since she called me.”

“You took your time getting here,” said Olson. “Any particular reason for the delay?”

“I don’t put much stock by Mabel,” Waterman said. “She’s got more imagination than sense. But I should have come right along.”

The coroner was working with a tape measure. He looked efficient, Alex thought, but he had the feeling that he was going through motions he himself did not quite understand. He could not forget Doctor Jacob’s remark about his being an undertaker.

“Just to be on the safe side we’ll take him up and do a post-mortem on him,” the coroner said. “But I think he died a natural death.”

“With those scratches?” Alex said.

“Yes,” said Tobin, “with those scratches. Probably monkeying with the cat. This weather, it must of turned on him. Shock was what killed him.”

Alex wondered why he bothered with an autopsy if he was that set in his opinion. “His position doesn’t make that kind of sense to me,” he said persistently.

The coroner stared at him. Mark Tobin looked exactly what he was—an irritable old man who expected his word to be taken for law. “Are you qualified to pass on the causes of a man’s death?” he said as though that should have ended it.

Alex was tempted to throw the question back in his teeth. Instead he spoke quietly. “Maybe not. But I’ve seen a few men die.”

“That’s the trouble with you guys out of the army. You’re experts on everything.”

The deputy sheriff was examining the house. “Doors all locked from the inside?” he asked.

“That’s right,” the chief said.

“Windows?”

“The way they are now, excepting the one I broke to get in the house.”

“Blinds?”

“I pulled up the one in the bedroom.”

Alex looked at those in the living room. They were drawn. There were two windows to the front of the house, and two to the south—Mabel’s side. One small window that opened on hinges into the room faced north. The deputy had climbed up on a chair to examine it. “Locked like the rest of them,” he said, jumping down.

He picked up Andy’s cane from where it lay in front of the couch. “No indication this was used?”

“No,” Tobin said.

“See any reason Waterman can’t take over here?”

“None.”

“I’ll go over the place for prints just in case something shows in the autopsy. Meanwhile it’s all yours, Waterman.” He turned back to the small window.

At that moment the vibration of heavy footsteps came through from the back of the house. Waterman knew the step. “Altman,” he said.

The mayor appeared in the doorway, a big, red-faced man. Alex had never liked him. He was too much politician, he explained to his father once, not quite sure of what he meant by it beyond a smoothness that enabled Altman to slip in and out of situations with credit when it was due, but without blame when that was due.

“What’s this all about, Fred?” Altman demanded, his eyes taking in the people in the room and the form of Mattson.

Before Waterman had a chance to speak, Mark Tobin had sized the mayor up. “We’re investigating a man’s death. Who let you in here?”

“I let myself in. I’m the mayor of Hillside.”

“I don’t give a damn if you’re the lord mayor of London. When I’m conducting an investigation, I’ll say who’s to be on the premises and who’s not. This ain’t no side-show at a circus. Now take yourself out of here till we’re finished.”

The color in Altman’s face deepened, but his voice had all the smoothness Alex disliked. “I’m only trying to be helpful, Mark. I wondered if anyone had contacted the Addisons on the old man’s death.”

Of course, Alex thought, the Addisons. Altman had been working for years to get one of their plants for Hillside.

“What have they got to do with it?” Tobin asked.

“I don’t think Mattson had a friend left on earth after Henry Addison died,” the mayor said. “The old gentleman used to visit him regularly until his death.”

Alex caught a quick exchange between Tobin and the deputy. “You don’t volunteer any useless information do you, Waterman?” Tobin said. “All right. Let’s get Jacobs up here so’s he can make out a death certificate before the ambulance gets here.”

“He’s already been here,” Waterman said.

“Why in hell didn’t you say so?”

“Didn’t see no reason to.”

“What did he say caused the death.”

“He didn’t say. Said that was the coroner’s job.”

“Have him send me the certificate.”

“I don’t think he’ll make one till he gets the autopsy report,” the chief said.

The coroner made a sound of disgust. “All right, all right. Let’s have everybody out of here except Olson and me.”

Waterman and the mayor went down the back steps together. Alex stopped on the porch. For a man of ninety-two, Andy Mattson was remarkable. Apparently he took care of all his own needs. The grass was growing high around the place, but there was a neat fence with sunflowers growing along it, separating the place from the vacant lot to the north. On the other side the fence ran from the front sidewalk as far as the back yard between Andy’s and Mabel’s place. Alex wondered if the old man had run out of fencing there, or if he had deliberately left the opening between the two yards. Andy’s back yard was a mass of shrubbery, growing wild now. There was considerable depth to the yards on that side of Sunrise Avenue. Most of the people kept gardens, and a good many of them raised chickens enough to supply their tables. A path from Andy’s doorstep ran through the long grass and passed out of sight among the bushes.

Alex looked down at the carcass of the cat, stiff and open with the wound across its stomach it had received from the jagged glass. In front of one ear there was a small blood-stained hole from Waterman’s bullet. Alex waved the flies away with his handkerchief. It occurred to him that perhaps the cat had a sore paw or some sensitive spot the old man might have touched, prompting it to scratch him that way. He examined the paws and legs. In the soft fur under the right forearm, almost concealed in the smear of blood, he found a scab about the size of the nail on his little finger.

“Chief,” he called.

Waterman came up the steps.

“I’ll be in your office, Fred,” the mayor said. “You should do something about the crowd out front.”

“They’ll go as soon as the coroner leaves,” Waterman said. He looked at the carcass where Alex pointed with his pencil.

“That might be it,” Alex said. “Andy might have picked him up by that forearm.”

“Maybe,” Waterman said, straightening up. Alex dropped his handkerchief over the animal.

“Now what?” Tobin said from the doorway.

“I think you might do an autopsy on the cat while you’re at it,” Waterman said.

The coroner did not answer him, but a few minutes later when the attendants carried Andy’s body out, they wrapped up the cat and took it along.

Meanwhile, Alex walked out to the gate. It was strange, he thought, that people had not pushed through the old fence and swarmed all over the place. Certainly they were not cowed by Gilbert, straddling the railing on the front porch like a kid on a barn gate.

Dan Casey was amusing the people around him and it was altogether like a festive occasion. But they had not seen Mattson’s face, and Alex could not forget it. Cars lined the street all the way to the gas station. Durkin’s delivery truck was alive with youngsters squirming over it in order to see above the crowd. Mabel was commuting between the ladies on the porch and the mob trampling her forsythia bushes. She looked rather as though she were trying to shoo chickens out of the garden. The crowd broke around Alex, pelting him with questions:

“Who was screaming back there?”

“The shot? Somebody get killed?”

“What’s taking them so long?”

Alex glanced among them, women in aprons, men in shirt sleeves, their faces flushed and moist with the excitement and the summer heat. He knew them all, tradespeople mostly, anyone who could close up shop and come when word spread that Chief Waterman was at Andy’s house. Years of seclusion had given the old man the reputation of being queer, but the annual visit of Henry Addison gave him a distinction he would scarcely have attained with a visitation by the angel Gabriel.

“Take it easy,” Alex said. “They say it was nothing but his heart giving out. You wouldn’t expect him to live forever, would you?”

“I always said he wouldn’t live long after Addison went,” Mrs. Oakes said. She lived across the street.

“That’s the way with old people when their friends go. I had an aunt once …”

“Poor man could have starved to death without a soul knowing it. I always say …”

“Didn’t old Addison leave him anything? With the millions he had you’d think …”

“You’d think Mabel’d have the decency to look in on him once in a while, the way she carried on about him twenty years ago …”

“I saw him at Durkin’s last week. Terrible feeble he looked. When people get up in years …”