Кроха - Dedication

10

In Anchorage, as Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw prepared for their trip into Denali Park, worry still rode with them. They couldn’t get their minds off Kit. Shopping, adding a few things to their light backpacks for the trip, adding heavier boots and canvas jackets, they toured Anchorage for another half day—but all the while their minds were on Kit. As they walked the town’s rough streets, with the great, snowcapped peaks towering over them above the steep rooftops, unease nagged the gray-haired couple. Worry followed them as it had for the whole excursion, even as they thrilled at the sight of calving glaciers, at polar bears swimming in the icy waters and roaming the shores, at hundreds of bald eagles descending together toward an icy fjord. All the while, their thoughts didn’t leave Kit and Pan for long.

When Lucinda had asked Clyde on the phone if Kit and Pan were still gone, when he really couldn’t talk much, all he said was, “Yes, they are, Lucinda . . .” Someone came into the room, and then shortly they had hung up. Not a satisfactory discussion. She knew he’d call when they did return. Meanwhile, she and Pedric fretted. Lucinda pictured the two cats back in the village curled before a warming hearth fire, maybe with Kate in the downstairs apartment or with Wilma and Dulcie. If she thought hard enough, maybe she could make it happen.

But Kit and Pan were not curled before any fire. They were shivering cold, their paws nearly frozen as they clawed up through the dark earthen tunnels, up and up the wet, slick boulders, climbed in blackness, leaving the Netherworld behind them.

They had taken their leave with tears and with longing from that land of green light, of rolling fields and jagged cliffs, that realm of gentle unicorns and dwarves and elven folk; from the short-tempered Harpy who had carried them aloft winging through the green glow of the Netherworld’s granite sky.

They had left their own kind, too. Had left behind the small clowder of speaking feral cats with whom they had traveled down from their own land, who had chosen to stay longer in the one Netherworld realm that welcomed and understood their singular feline race.

The green light followed them into the tunnel for only a little way, staining the ragged walls but quickly growing dim, eaten up by shadows. Kit grieved at leaving but she yearned for home, for her own loved ones. They trotted close together, Kit’s mottled black and gray coat dark against the heavy stone walls, Pan’s red-gold coat glowing for a little while and then darkness swallowed them.

In the Netherworld they had stayed clear of the blighted kingdoms to the west that had long ago grown corrupt and lost their own magic. They had cleaved to the one small country where life still throbbed with the bright hopes and endeavors of its peoples, the one unspoiled corner of that lost and phantasmic world.

Now, ahead they could see only the faintest shadow-shapes in the blackness, their own eyes wide and black with their night vision. Echoes led them, echoes of a mewl to see what might bounce back to them, echoes of their own claws scraping stone. Vibrations against their whiskers led them, too, as they padded up and up in the velvet dark; up and up through the dense and incomprehensible earth, Kit’s yearning fierce for home, for space and light, for Lucinda and Pedric, for Joe and Dulcie and Misto, for all their human and cat family.

Is this always the way? Kit thought. You long so hard for something, as we longed to see the Netherworld. You reach that place, you dive headfirst into the wonders there, you embrace those who greet you, who take you to their hearts—but then you start to grieve for home and all you left behind, to grieve for those you loved first?

Oh, she thought, will Lucinda and Pedric be home, will they be there to hug and welcome us? Or are they still in Alaska? Will the house be empty and dark, no cheerful blaze on the hearth, no one to hug and snuggle us, no good smells of supper cooking? Are they still there at the top of the world even as we leave the world’s very depths? She imagined Alaska’s mountains of glacial ice breaking and falling, its huge and hungry beasts; she saw the two tiny figures in that vast land which, to Kit, seemed far more threatening than the enchanted realms that they had left behind. Now the last breath of the Netherworld had long ago vanished. The higher they scrambled up through darkness, the deeper up into the vast and heavy earth, the more they longed for the open sky. For their own stars, billions of light-years above them, for the night winds blowing down from heaven, for their own bright moon. Crowded against stone shoulders too close to the edge of dropping chasms, they knew fear: fear of falling, panic sometimes at the tunnel’s confinement, terror that they were lost, but they mustn’t let fear take them. On they climbed, drawn by their terrible longing, up and up, it seemed forever in the overwhelming dark.

Joe and Dulcie bounced along in the back of Ryan’s pickup, slyly peering out. She pulled up before a tall old dark-shingled house that hugged the side of the canyon. Two stories plus a peaked attic and, down at the daylight basement level facing the canyon, a small apartment tucked into the concrete foundation. Even the sight of Ben’s small home brought tears to Dulcie’s eyes and left Joe grim and silent.

Beside the house, the driveway from the street had been widened so one could pull on back next to the little rental. Ryan turned the truck around, backed down against a heavy wooden barrier, and set the brake. Beside Ben’s plain front door, a wide window faced the drive. Through it the cats could see two big cages facing larger windows that looked down the falling canyon. There could be no other windows, the way the apartment was tucked beneath the big house, up against the hill. The inner space looked cramped and dim. Both cats shivered, both cats felt for an instant that in that shadowed room the spirit of Ben might linger, that Ben wasn’t ready yet to leave this earth, to leave his new home, his friends, his little cats. Joe and Dulcie ducked out of sight when Juana’s patrol car pulled down the drive and parked beside them.

Ryan stepped out of the truck, untied and retrieved the three small carriers—and gave Joe and Dulcie another warning look. Stay put. Do not make trouble in front of Davis. Do not slip in and try to toss the apartment—until Davis leaves. Joe scowled at her but obediently the cats crept deeper behind the lumber. Ryan was getting as bossy as Clyde. When everyone’s backs were turned, Juana unlocking the apartment door, Ryan and Billy hauling the carriers inside, Joe and Dulcie scrambled out of the truck bed, up over its roof, in through the driver’s open window, and to the backseat. With its dark-tinted glass, they could see out but remain nearly invisible. Only the white strip down Joe’s nose was a problem, but maybe it would look like a simple reflection of light.

It was one thing to lounge on Max Harper’s desk snooping and listening; the department was used to freeloading cats making themselves at home. But their presence at a crime scene was never smart, particularly one as out-of-the-way as this. Why would cats hitch a ride way up here? Why would they hitch a ride anywhere? Most cats, unlike dogs, didn’t enjoy going along to savor new smells or new views; most cats didn’t like the noise and jolt of a car or truck.

Though sometimes a cat would crawl into a warm vehicle unseen, maybe a mover’s van, go to sleep, and end up half a continent away. That cat might make the national news if he was discovered, identified, and found his way home again via human intervention. Or not. He might spend the rest of his life as a homeless stray, or might luck out and adopt a new family but never see his own people and his own neighborhood again. All because he had foolishly chosen to nap in the wrong hideaway.

Inside the dim apartment Juana flicked on the dull overhead bulb; she left the door open for additional light as she examined the small, shadowed room.

Knowing that Ben would never again sleep in that narrow bed, eat a meal at the little table, or pet his three rescue cats made Joe swallow hard and look away.

As Juana examined the big wire cages, the three rescue cats eyed her warily: a half-grown black female, a big white tom, and a black-and-white tuxedo male. Juana photographed the cages, the walls, the concrete floor, then began to lift fingerprints from the cage handles and from their flat metal latches. Why would the killer, if he had been in there, have any interest in cat cages? Whywould the killer have come there?

Had he planned to kill Ben here in the apartment this morning, but Ben had already left? Or did Ben have something he wanted, something so valuable that before following Ben to work he had slipped in here to search?

This whole case seemed so senseless. Innocent victims, four of them dead. Banker Ogden Welder; Merle Rodin; James Allen, who had been attacked while wiping the windshield of his car, and died shortly afterward, in ER. And now Ben Stonewell. While the other assault victims had been left alive as if their attacker had no desire to finish them. None of this, Joe thought,none of it adds up.

He watched Juana bag a cluster of short black hairs from the bed, and that gave him a start. Anything involving cat hairs unsettled him. But those weren’t his hairs, they’d belong to one of the rescues. When Juana finished with the main room, Ryan and Billy lifted out the three rescue cats and put them in the carriers. Setting these outside the front door, they got to work breaking down the big cages into flats. Davis watched them carefully; civilians were never left alone at a crime scene, even the most trusted friends. That was, in part, for their own protection, if questions should arise later about the possibility of contaminated evidence.

Fighting the bolts on the old cages, Ryan and Billy slowly removed the sides and tops. Before loading the big wire flats in the truck, Ryan stepped outside with her cell phone. The cats, slipping into the front seat beneath the open window, crouched listening. She made two calls, the first to Wilma, to tell her that Dulcie and Joe were safe, and to talk a moment about Ben. But then when Wilma asked if Dulcie was all right, the tabby hissed and lashed her tail. Do they have to fuss over me? Just because I’m with kitten, do they have to treat me like I’m helpless?

Ryan’s next call, to Celeste Reece, was a long and tearful conversation. The cats could tell from Ryan’s gentle words that Celeste was shocked and upset. After a long while, Ryan said she’d bring the rescues on over if Celeste had room. Ryan listened, nodded, and hung up. As she and Billy loaded the flats into the truck bed, Joe peered out, torn between staying with them or remaining behind. He glanced at Dulcie. “We could just slip inside, search in the shadows behind Juana.”

“Oh, right. Just how do you propose, in that tiny space, to keep out of Juana’s sight? You know her better than that.”

Waiting wasn’t Joe’s style, but they stayed sensibly in the truck. Peering from the cab window into the apartment, they watched Juana meticulously photographing the little table beside Ben’s cot, paying close attention to some kind of marks on its surface. Juana stepped outside once, as Ryan headed for the backseat with the first carrier. “Did Ben have a laptop? And a printer?”

“He may have,” Ryan said. “He submitted a printed résumé. But he could have done that anywhere. Library, UPS, Kinko’s.” Ryan looked at Juana questioningly.

“Table’s a bit dusty,” Juana said. “Two items have been recently removed. Clean underneath and with slide marks. Did Ben have a smartphone? Did he take and print any pictures?”

“He had a smartphone. I never saw any prints he’d made. I think he took some shots of work in progress. Probably just for the record and didn’t bother to print them. I keep the same kind of record. Unless . . .”

Ryan paused, frowning. “Unless Tekla criticized something more than I knew. Unless she was onhis back, too, when I wasn’t around, and he wanted proof of the work he’d done? If he did take pictures for that reason, I’d like to know what it was about. I guess his phone would be at the coroner’s, he usually kept it in his jacket pocket.”

But Juana had already keyed in a call to Kathleen Ray.

“You’re still at the coroner’s. Did you find a phone, was there one on the body?” She waited, then, “And Dallas didn’t find it at the scene?”

Joe wanted to shout, Ask about a notebook, too! Did she find a spiral-bound notebook? Beside him Dulcie was strung tight, they both wanted to slip into the apartment to scent the marks on the table, see if they could detect what a human sleuth might miss. But one look at Ryan, as she opened the back door of the king cab, and he knew they’d better stay put. They were already in trouble for not staying in the truck bed.

They watched, peering back between the bucket seats as she strapped the cat carriers onto the backseat. When she’d finished, they leaped to the floor back there, in the shadows where Billy might not notice them. Glancing up at Ryan, they tried to look small and defenseless, but Ryan only scowled.

Billy got in the front next to Ryan, she started the engine, and they headed down the hills to deliver the rescues to Celeste Reece. Maybe by the time Juana got back to the station, she’d have found something of interest, have pulled more pieces together. Maybe by the time they slipped into the station again, Davis’s written report would be on the chief’s desk? And, with luck, Kathleen’s list of Ben’s possessions? Maybe she would find the notebook. Maybe then the odd bits of intelligence might start to make sense. Then, it would be time to slip away and call Harper.

Kit and Pan pressed on up the tunnels in blackness, their whiskers brushing outcroppings, their keen ears catching the echo of empty spaces that halted them in their tracks. They found their way sometimes by the luminescence of scuttling crabs, the iridescence of blind fishes flashing through dark rivulets. Scrambling up through the blackness toward their own world across underground springs that soaked their paws, they didn’t know day from night. They crossed stone bridges trusting their whiskers, trusting the tiniest movement of air. They wondered if they werefollowing the same path that they had descended. Or would they keep climbing and circling forever?

“I don’t think. . . .” Kit began. But Pan eased closer to her and purred and licked her ear to steady her and on they went, Pan’s bold attack on the darkness soothing and calming to the tortoiseshell. And then at last as they rounded a bend the tunnel grew wider—and they saw ahead the faintest glow, the thinnest shaft of light. “Sunlight!” Kit whispered. “Oh, sunshine!” Soon golden light blazed in at them, the portal shone wide open, and they bolted out into the brilliance. “Our sky,our world,” Kit cried, reaching tall, whirling around on her hind paws, staring up into Earth’s infinite spaces that swept away forever; beside her Pan, too, leaped for the sky. They were home, reveling in the vastness of their own bright and endless domain, their own universe.

11

Celeste Reece worked hard for CatFriends’ rescued strays, finding homes for lost and abandoned cats. She lived south of Ben’s place, down along the canyon nearer the village, a square, sturdy woman, her iron-gray hair layered short and neat, her voice low. Her way with a cat was understanding and always gentle. She attended CatFriends meetings at the Damens’ house where Joe liked to lounge among the group and slyly enjoy the variety of snacks laid out on Ryan’s tea cart.