Cat Deck the Halls (7 page)

Turning back inside, she locked the slider, feeling secure within her own space. Cheerful fire on the hearth, her old familiar Christmas ornaments on the tall, fragrant tree, her grandmother's Creech on the mantel, the hand-carved Creech she'd had since she was a child in Ventura in their close Mexican family—a childhood of safety and warmth, in sharp contrast to what this sleeping child might have known.

Moving to the kitchenette, she started a pot of coffee, then went to take a shower. Stripping off her holster and pajamas and stepping into the pelting hot water, Juana had no notion that the storm that now battered the shore was about to claim another victim. No notion that the black water crashing up the cliffs was already licking at its prey, hungry to receive the sacrifice offered. No idea, as she soaped and rinsed off and wrapped her towel around her body and moved into the bedroom to put on clean clothes, that the eager sea was already doing its best to swallow what murder evidence might remain.

T
HE GRAY TOMCAT
strolled into Molena Point PD yawning, and full of breakfast, still licking sardine oil from his whiskers. He had, crossing the roof of the courthouse complex heading for the station, seen Juana Davis leave her condo building, hurrying in the same direction.

Scorching down an oak tree and racing across the parking lot, he'd moved inside behind her through the bulletproof glass door, receiving only an amused glance from the detective. Slipping into the shadows of the empty holding cell that faced the reception area, he tried to hold his breath against the faint odor of old urine and the stronger nose-twitching stink of disinfectant. Tried to breathe in only the fresh, forest smell of Mabel's little Christmas tree on her dispatcher's counter.

The child wasn't with Juana. He hoped to hell she hadn't taken the kid to Children's Services. He didn't think Juana would do that. From his shadowed retreat beneath the single bunk, he watched Juana move away down the hall to
the back of the building, watched as she checked the overhead surveillance camera that showed the officers' fenced parking area, then opened the steel back door a few inches to look out. He heard a car pull up, caught a glimpse of a white patrol car close outside the door. Watched Juana step aside as Officer McFarland entered, his black trench coat bulging so severely one would think Jimmie McFarland was pregnant with twins.

Behind McFarland, four officers crowded in, effectively shielding him from anyone standing outside the fence or looking down from one of the second-story windows across the street. When the door had safely closed, McFarland removed the black coat.

The little girl clung to him, her arms around his neck, and didn't want to get down. As Joe heard the car take off again and move away out the gate, he came out of the cell, crossed the reception area, and padded toward them down the hall—just Damen's tomcat come to freeload, to cadge his morning handout of doughnuts or coffee cake.

Juana took the child from McFarland, cradling her against her shoulder—but as the child looked over Juana's shoulder, her big dark eyes looked straight down the hall and into Joe Grey's eyes. She opened her mouth as if she would speak; but then she closed her eyes and turned away, her face pressed against Juana, quiet and unresisting. As if she didn't care what happened to her. Juana came up the hall carrying her and talking softly to her, and turned in at Max Harper's office, where a light burned, and where Joe could hear the chief and Detective Garza talking.

As Davis's voice joined the men's, Joe wandered in behind her and lay down beneath the credenza, with
another wide yawn. Juana was tucking the child up on the couch with a lap blanket around her.

“They gave her a little sedative last night,” she said. “She drank some cocoa when we got home, and had a cookie. Didn't want anything this morning but a few bites of oatmeal.”

“No disturbance during the night?” Dallas asked.

“Nothing. Did the coroner identify the blood?”

“Human,” Dallas said. “All of it. He called about an hour ago. Blood on the toys, all the samples—same blood type as from the child's clothes.” Joe knew it would take several days, at best, to get results on the DNA that might, with great good luck, help identify the victim.

“Question now is…” Juana said, glancing at the child on the couch and then at the chief, where he sat behind his desk.

Max was silent for a moment, then, “If I talk with the director of Children's Services, maybe—”

“No,” Juana said. “They don't know what security means. You could take her up the coast and lock her in juvenile hall, she'd be safer.”

Max just looked at her.

“She's better off in my apartment,” Juana said, “with guards on all watches. I know it's a big-budget item, but there's no way around a guard, wherever she is, sure not in Children's Services. Not until we lock up the shooter.”

Max glanced at the sleeping child, and his thin lined face softened. “We don't know what she saw. Don't know what the killer thinks she saw. I don't like keeping her in your apartment long enough for someone to notice activity there.”

Joe had been watching the child, wondering if she was really asleep. Now suddenly she stirred, looking up at Davis and Harper and Garza—and then straight across the room into the shadows beneath the credenza, staring again straight into Joe Grey's eyes.

Why did she do that? Joe wondered.
Don't do that! Look away from me!
She was way too interested in him. Above him, the discussion had ceased, the three officers were all watching her. Then Juana rose and knelt before the credenza, and gently hauled Joe out. He hung limp, didn't complain as she carried him to the couch and knelt, holding him up to the child and gently stroking him. Joe cut Juana a look. But the child reached out to him, her dark eyes needy. And of course, ham that he was, he slipped into her arms and snuggled against her—and found himself purring like a steam train.

Dallas and Max chuckled, which made Joe scowl. But the child stroked him and buried her face against his shoulder, and when he looked up at the officers again, they looked only pleased. They looked, in fact, almost admiring—as if Joe's role in calming the kid was not at all to be laughed at.

But they looked puzzled, too, and Joe could almost hear the questions churning—questions he didn't want to think about. Juana said, “She was like that with the cats last night, when we found her. Cuddled up to Joe and that tortoiseshell cat. Maybe,” she said, “she only feels safe around animals.”

Both officers, being dog men and horsemen, could relate to that. Max said, “We have dogs at the ranch, she might do well up there—isolation could be to our advantage. Or not,” he said, concerned about the lack of security among the open hills and woods and pastures.

“What about the seniors?” Dallas said. “Those two big dogs are pretty protective, a good early-warning system. Their place would be easier to patrol.”

“Cora Lee's good with kids,” Juana said. “Our little girl could hang out with Lori and Dillon while they work on their playhouse for the contest. With a couple of guards…” She looked down at the child snuggled with Joe. “It's a beautiful big playhouse, big enough for you to really play house in, two stories, a slide, a ladder…And the dogs…A big brown poodle who'll lick you all over, I bet. And a spotted, firehouse dog…”

The child looked up at her trustingly with, Joe thought, a spark of anticipation—but a spark that was quickly gone again, drowned by sadness.

This was a hard call, Joe knew, to adequately protect their small, frightened witness, and yet put her in a friendly and comforting environment where she'd loosen up enough to talk, to tell them what she'd seen. With a six-year-old child, time was of the essence—before the event morphed, in a child's naturally imaginative mind, into any number of dark and twisted fantasies only loosely based on the facts.

Max said, “Maybe a couple of hours up there, to be with the other girls and play with the dogs. I'm not sure about overnight. See what the senior ladies say. We can't jeopardize anyone, nor put the older girls in danger.

“Take McFarland with you,” he told Juana. “The young lady seems to like him.” Max smiled. “When Cora Lee sees this little girl, she won't be able to resist.” He buzzed the dispatcher, asked her to get Jimmie McFarland on the radio.

“I'll call Cora Lee,” Juana said. “She…” She paused
when the dispatcher buzzed through, and Max switched on the phone speaker.

It wasn't McFarland, but Officer Sand on the line.

“I'm bringing in a homeless man, he was asleep in the alley behind Green's Antiques, an empty billfold shoved under the newspapers he was sleeping on. His shoes are way big for him, look like they could fit my casts, and there appears to be blood on one. Old jogging shoes,” she said with excitement, “waffle soles. Looks like a speck of garden dirt—and some shiny red flecks.

“Says he lifted them from a Dumpster out on the highway, early this morning, that his own shoes were worn-out and sopping wet. He seems more than usually nervous, looked all around when I cuffed him and put him in the car.”

“Get him in here,” Max said.

“Holding cell?”

“Let's call him a person of interest. See if you can get any identification, then bring him on back to my office, tell him we just want to talk.” Max clicked off the phone. He was smiling.

Davis glanced at the child. “You want us out of here?”

Max shook his head. “First reaction's worth a lot—her reaction, and his.”

The child was still stroking Joe. She smelled nice, the cat thought, a sweet little-girl scent. Snuggled up with her, Joe Grey began to feel protective—so protective that he began to wonder if the prisoner would try to hurt her, and he felt his claws tense.

But what could some old tramp do with four cops guarding the little girl? Still he waited, nervous and alert, until,
ten minutes later, Eleanor Sand escorted the ragged, smelly old man into Max's office.

The old fellow entered hesitantly, Eleanor walking behind him. He smelled so ripe and looked so rough that Joe wanted to rise up defensively in front of the child. Instead he slipped off the couch, sensibly out of the way. These officers wanted the little girl's reaction, not that of a cat; and they wanted the tramp's first reaction to her, without distraction. And Joe sat down quietly beside the couch, unobtrusive but ready to leap and defend her.

From the floor beside Dallas's chair, Joe studied the old guy. He sure as hell could use a bath. His wrinkled old clothes were worn-out and dirty, his long gray hair tied in a ponytail, his head bald on top and sunburned. Wrinkled cheeks with an inch of stubble. And the smell of unwashed body and clothes was overlaid with the acrid stink of wood smoke as if from innumerable campfires.

On any cold morning Joe could see, from the treetops and highest roofs of the village, smoke rising down along the Molena River where homeless men slept, building up their campfires to get warm and to make coffee.

Well, the old guy had his coffee this morning. He was carrying a full Styrofoam cup that Eleanor must have picked up in the squad room.

He wore no shoes. They would be in the sealed bag that Eleanor had probably dropped off in the evidence room. Padding onto the Persian rug in bare feet, he looked warily at Dallas and the chief and then his eyes widened in surprise at the child on the couch. Everyone was still, watching the two of them.

The child looked at him without interest. Not fright
ened, not at all alarmed. Her only reaction was a wrinkled nose, from the smell of the old man. He looked at her, caught sight of Joe, and scowled around at the four officers.

“Didn't expect to see no kid in a police station. Sure didn't expect cops to keep no cat—well, hell, didn't expect to see no Christmas tree neither, out there in the entry.”

“You know the girl?” Eleanor said softly.

He shook his head. “Never seen her.” He looked at Eleanor with the beginnings of alarm, and backed away a step. “How would I know her? Why would I know her? I ain't done nothing, I never laid eyes on the kid.”

“Just asking,” Eleanor said quietly. “Where did you get the shoes?”

“Told you. Dumpster, couple miles out, on the highway. By that tourist café out there.”

“That's what you told me. What else did you take from the Dumpster?”

Joe expected, knowing Eleanor, that she had already sent an officer back to search the Dumpster for anything suspicious, anything with visible blood.

“That empty billfold is all else I found,” the old man said testily. “Don't know what good a billfold does me, ain't got nothing to put in it. I thought maybe to sell it.”

Dallas rose, pushed Joe Grey gently aside, and motioned the old guy to sit down. He filled up the old man's coffee cup from the pot on the credenza, and then settled on the couch so the child was between him and Davis. Sand stood leaning in the doorway. Joe, anticipating an informative interrogation, slipped back under the credenza.

The old man, very likely imbuing the leather chair with
a permanent stink, looked at Dallas and Eleanor, and raised a bushy eyebrow. “You worried about that kid?”

No one answered.

“I might know something about kids—not her, exactly. Other kids—guess she might be one of 'em.”

The officers waited, silently alert.

“Something that might be…of interest, as you like to say.”

“Go on,” Max said.

“Mighty cold morning,” the old fellow said. “Long time since I've had a good hot breakfast.” He watched without expression as Dallas slipped a twenty from his pocket, added a ten, and handed it over. The old guy sighed. “Might be pretty valuable information.”

Dallas fished out another ten and passed it across. “That's it. Let's hear it.”

“That orphans' school up toward the hills? That one that movie star owned?”

“The Patty Rose School,” Dallas said.

“Big tan mansion with these brown timbers crisscrossing the walls?”

“We know the place,” Max said.

“Guy watching them kids up there, I seen him twice standing in the woods peeking out. I, ah…got me a little shelter place up there. Place I can go sometimes, out of the storm. Rain coming bad, I go up there.”

“Why weren't you there last night?” Dallas said.

“Came up the highway last night, headed right into the village to get me something to eat. I don't go there much, they watch that place. All locked up, but they watch it. Last night, found me a bit of overhang to sleep under.” He
looked hard at Dallas. “I wouldn't want to lose my good shelter, up there. Winter ain't over yet. That wind and rain, fellow could die of pneumonia.”

“That stone building?” Max said.