Dedication - Кроха

At last, quietly, he looked up at Ryan and Clyde.

“Ben Stonewell,” the boy whispered. “Ben is . . . Ben is dead. Lying there, the ladder fallen over him . . . blood everywhere. I . . . I called Max on my cell. Dead,” he repeated, looking at them, lost and pale. “Lying there in the side yard, so much blood . . . the ladder down on top of him.” He wiped his eyes. “I guess he’d been working on the roof gutters. I thought at first he fell, then I saw the blood . . . then the bullet wound. A terrible hole, had to be a gunshot.” He wiped at his eyes. “He couldn’t have lived . . . A hole in the back of his jacket and up through his throat. Blood underneath where he fell . . .”

Ryan put her arms around the boy. She held him tight, her cheek against his forehead, her hands gripping his shoulders to steady him.

“I shouldn’t have left him there alone,” Billy said. “Dead, and alone. I was afraid the killer . . . that they might still be there. That they’d think I saw them and would come after me, too.”

“Did you see anyone?” Clyde said.

“No one.” Billy looked up at Clyde. “Ben never hurt anyone, never wanted to hurt anyone. How could someone . . . Why would somebody . . . ?”

Joe stretched out across the table close to the boy, put his paw on Billy’s arm. Billy had already been through the trauma of his gram’s death. The shock of seeing Gram’s frail, charred body on the medics’ stretcher, covered with a sheet outside their burned cabin, a memory that could never go away. That had been about a year ago, when Billy was twelve. Now Joe hurt for the boy in a different way than he hurt for poor Ben. Ben was dead, was at peace now from whatever horror had happened to him; he was hopefully in a kinder place. But Billy was feeling it all, the shock, the pain, the terror. why would someone hurt Ben Stonewell? What had he done that someone wanted him dead?

It was a while before Billy quieted, before he grew steadier and some color returned to his face. When he seemed stronger, he and Ryan and Clyde piled into the king cab and headed for the remodel. Joe Grey, slipping out behind them, leaped into the truck bed among the tools and folded tarps and old jackets. A stack of oak boards was strapped to one side. Clyde’s glance back at him, as Clyde stepped up into the passenger seat, told Joe he’d better make himself scarce at the scene.

Clyde knew that no one could keep him away. Clyde’s Get lost look was only an empty threat. Riding in the bumpy truck the four blocks to the brown cottage, Joe, despite his pain for Ben, was thankful it wasn’t Ryan or Scotty or Billy lying dead. Had some drug-crazy vagrant, seeing the property vacant and under construction, maybe camped there overnight? And when Ben came to work early they’d panicked. Maybe the killer had a record, maybe there was a warrant out for him. He didn’t want Ben calling the cops, and in a panic he’d shot Ben? Maybe someone on drugs with his brain all scrambled?

According to Billy, Ben must have been up on the ladder when he was shot, working on the roof minding his own business, not confronting some trespasser. But they shot him anyway, Joe thought. And what if Billy had gotten to work first? Would they have killed Billy instead? A murder as coldly senseless as the random street attacks.

Senseless? Joe thought. Random? We don’t know that. No one thinks those attacks were without reason.

Ryan slowed the truck a block from the remodel and drew to the curb. Officer Jimmie McFarland stood in the center of the intersection rerouting traffic, sending rubberneckers down the side streets. McFarland with his boyish smile, his brown hair fallen over his forehead, looked like he should still be in college, not in a police uniform. Seeing it was Ryan and Clyde, he waved them on through to the next intersection, which was blocked off with sawhorses. There, when Ryan parked next to the coroner’s van, Joe leaped out of the truck bed and into the bushes. The Bleaks’ cottage was three doors down. He hightailed it through overgrown back gardens and beneath the yellow crime tape that now marked off the Bleaks’ weedy property. At the far side of the cottage he slipped into the neighbors’ hedge and peered out.

Max Harper and Detectives Garza and Kathleen Ray were working the scene. Kathleen stood against the house a few feet from Ben’s twisted body, photographing the scuffed earth with its tangle of footprints from the building crew, angling for shots of the fresh prints on top. Dallas and Max were working on grids and a rough map, and making notes. Outside the crime tape the coroner waited to seal up and remove the body. Dr. John Bern was a thin, pale man, his dark-framed glasses placed firmly on his small button nose; his hair was graying, but he still looked strong and fit.

Joe watched Dallas kneel beside Ben, photographing the body from different close-up angles, then taking blood and debris samples with as little disturbance as possible. Ben lay twisted from the way he had fallen, his jacket skewed around him, the ladder still lying across him. The blood on his face and jacket bristled with dirt and debris. Dallas reached to remove the items from Ben’s pockets, but he paused, looking at the blood and dirt smeared down across Ben’s lumpy pockets and down into the folds of his clothes. He looked up at Max. “The removal of his possessions will be better done at the morgue. This mess—we could contaminate a lot, here.”

Max nodded and glanced at Kathleen. She would, Joe assumed, be accompanying the coroner and the corpse. “You’ll want a second witness,” Max said. “Get Jane Cameron over here.”

This meant Detectives Ray and Cameron would have custody of the evidence, would examine and photograph it, log it in, seal it in the appropriate individual bags, and transport it to the station to the evidence room. Joe watched Max and Dallas remove the ladder. Dallas shot another round of pictures and then, with John Bern, carefully lifted and wrapped the body in clean sheets—as clean as they could be kept. Joe watched them seal Ben into a body bag. Feeling sick and cold, he started suddenly thinking about Ben’s construction notebook.

He had seen Ben, alone at odd hours, as during a coffee break, writing in the last pages of the little spiral-bound tablet. Not making his usual brief measurement and product memos on the front pages, but writing away in longer passages at the back, frowning, deeply occupied; he had watched Ben drop the notebook in his pocket if anyone came to join him. What was on those pages?

Could Ben have known the killer? If this wasn’t a random shooting, if someone had killed Ben on purpose, would the notebook shed some light on the murder?

He’d like to have a look, but there was no way. He watched Max and John Bern carry the body to Bern’s van. When they had him strapped in place, Dallas turned back to the house, picked up the ladder that he had already fingerprinted and photographed, set it in place and climbed up to examine and photograph the roof where Ben had been working. Watching him, Joe crouched in reflex when Tekla’s angry voice echoed sharply from down the street. He reared up above the bushes to look.

Down at the corner, Ryan and Clyde stood facing Tekla Bleak, her angry harangue exploding in their faces. She was alone, Joe didn’t see Sam. Maybe she’d left him in the van, parked beyond Ryan’s truck nosed into the sawhorse barrier. Tekla’s voice was shrill enough to take a cat’s ears off. Joe had to grin at Officer McFarland’s annoyed scowl.

“Of course it’s your fault! Whose fault would it be! One of your people murdered right here in my house. How could you let such a thing happen! Why would you allow this? I can’t live where someone’s been murdered, where there’s been a dead body! How could you . . .”

Joe threaded through the hedge, raced through the backyards to the corner and slipped under a lavender bush. The murder was Ryan’s fault? Right. This woman was certifiably nuts. He wanted to leap in her face, show her what claws felt like.

“It’s a good thing Sam isn’t here, I can’t have Sam upset and distraught—”

“Where is Sam?” Ryan said, to distract her. “He’s always with you.”

“Why is that your business? Sam’s home with Arnold, the boy has a cold. Don’t change the subject, Ms. Flannery. I cannot have this mess in my yard. I cannot have police all over my property. This is intolerable. I won’t—”

She looked shocked when Clyde forcibly took her arm and turned her toward her van. “I suggest you wait in your vehicle, Tekla. Captain Harper will want to talk with you. You don’t want to tramp around mingling your footprints with those of the killer?” Clyde asked, smiling. “You don’t want to add your footprints to the possible evidence? This is a crime scene now. This is police territory.”

Tekla jerked her arm away from Clyde and turned her back. She was standing stiffly by the barrier glaring at McFarland when a second squad car drew up, nosing into the shade beneath a cypress tree. Detective Juana Davis got out, square, dark uniformed, and severe. The no-nonsense officer was still limping, her knee replacement giving her trouble. Ignoring Tekla, she put her arm around Billy and took Ryan’s hand, her dark Latina eyes warm and caring. She talked softly with them for a few minutes, then turned to Tekla, her black eyes unreadable, a cop’s closed look. Silently Tekla looked at her. Joe settled more comfortably among the bushes hoping Davis would question Tekla right there, where he wouldn’t miss anything—Davis would question Billy and Ryan, too, for whatever information they might have, whatever they had observed.

These first interviews were best done at the scene, when the crime was fresh. Where had the ladder been stored? Did Ben have a key to the house or garage? Did Billy? Had any of them given someone else a key? Did Ben always come to work so early? Was Billy sure no one else had been there when he arrived? But it was Tekla’s answers that Joe burned to hear. Davis would ask where Tekla had been this morning, would ask for all kinds of details while, later at the station, Dallas would repeat those questions and more, the detectives alert for incongruities, for conflicting answers.

Now, at the far side of the house, Dallas was searching for trace evidence where the body had been removed. Soon he would photograph the ground there, would process for fingerprints on the window frames, would examine and take samples from all the surround. Before they finished up this morning, the officers would search Ben’s car and his apartment; both were now a part of the crime scene. Meanwhile Joe waited impatiently for Tekla’s interview, for Davis to sit her down right there, on the porch steps, to conduct the inquiry

But instead, Davis walked Tekla to her squad car, got her settled, and began the preliminary questions. Joe was poised to slip over under the car or ease up on top beneath the cypress branches when Max came out of the house and down the steps. He put his arm around Ryan and drew Billy to him. Curious, Joe waited.

“Juana can do your interviews later,” he told them. “As soon as Davis is through with Tekla, she’s headed for Ben’s apartment. I’d like you two to follow her, get the rescue cats and their cages out of there so she can work that part of the scene. I have an officer up there, he got a key from the landlord. I don’t want the place unguarded until we’re done with it.” The rescue cages were unlikely receptacles for any item of interest, but in a search, they needed to be cleared.

Ryan and Billy waited through Juana’s interview, sitting on the steps close together out of Dallas’s way. Joe did slip under the squad car but he couldn’t hear much; Tekla’s voice was sullen and low. When at last Tekla stepped out scowling and got into her van, and Ryan and Billy headed for Ryan’s king cab, Joe Grey slipped into the truck bed. He was startled nearly out of his paws when Dulcie landed beside him in a flying leap from beneath the hedge.

“What the hell!” he hissed. “How long have you been here? Can’t you be more careful! Those are our kittens you’re carrying! My God,” he snapped. “Are you all right? Are they all right?”

Dulcie smiled sweetly. “I’m fine, the kittens are fine. It was just a little leap.” She rubbed her whiskers against him. “Wilma heard the call on the police scanner.” She yawned in his face. “Scanner woke me up. Guess I slept in this morning, I was so full of mice. She . . . Wilma called the station to find out what had happened. I left her crying,” Dulcie said sadly. She settled quietly on the folded tarp beside him, and there were tears in her own eyes. “I still can’t believe it. Ben. Such a dear, gentle fellow.”

Joe clawed at the jackets that lay tossed in the bottom of the truck, pulled them up onto the folded tarp to make a softer bed for her. She gave him a whisker kiss and curled up there. She looked so sad. The engine started and they were on their way, following Juana’s patrol car up to Ben’s place. Joe supposed that until Ryan found new foster homes for Ben’s rescue cats they would reside in the Damens’ downstairs guest room.

Riding in the truck bed close to Dulcie, he wondered if Ben’s notebook had been in his jacket pocket when he died, along with the cell phone he always carried. Why did the notebook keep nudging at him, why did he think it important? And now the phone, too—the phone he’d seen more than once aimed casually at Tekla’s feet as Ben stood near her ordering supplies or checking on a delivery.

Was his curiosity one of those moments Dulcie called cop sense? “Cop thought,” Dulcie would say. “Detective intuition? Feline intuition? Who knows?” Now, curling closer to her, Joe was glad she was beside him.

But then, heading for Ben’s place, the truck slowed too soon, in only a few blocks. Joe tried not to be seen in the side mirror as he reared up to peer out—at his own house. Why were they stopping? Did Ryan not want him and Dulcie in on the search, did she mean to haul them out and leave them? That would be tacky, she wouldn’t hear the last of that.

Or maybe she didn’t want Billy to know they were riding along. Billy was too perceptive, he was sure to wonder why the cats had hung around the crime scene and why now they wanted to ride up to Ben’s place. The cats trusted Billy, but enough people knew their secret: Ryan and Clyde, Wilma, Lucinda and Pedric, Kate Osborne, the Firettis. Every new confidant became, unwittingly, a new danger to them. One careless word, one innocent remark that might imply too much, and their cover could be destroyed.

Pulling into their drive, Ryan got out but didn’t turn back to the truck bed; she didn’t snatch the cats out and dump them on the lawn. She and Billy headed for the garage. Joe and Dulcie, slipping behind the tied-down lumber, watched the two return with three cat carriers and extra blankets, safe transport for Ben’s rescues. Ryan loaded these in the truck bed, hastily tying them in place as Billy stepped back in the cab. Ryan’s scowl into the shadows of the lumber said clearly, Stay out of sight! Stay out of the way and out of trouble or I’ll make trouble. Swinging into the truck, she headed up into the hills where crowding cottages overlooked a wild canyon, where Ben Stonewell had rented his small basement apartment.

10