Now, circling ever higher through the deepening evening, Joe glanced back at Dulcie and looked down longingly at the red tile roof of Molena Point PD, almost directly below them. In the brightening light of the early half-moon, the department beckoned to Joe, distracted him from Dulcie’s problem and even from searching for the kit. Fixed on Max Harper’s domain, he wondered if the fax machine was already spitting out electronic information, or if the dispatcher’s computer was feeding her data from long-dead files, buried intelligence that would provide Max Harper and Dallas Garza, and Joe himself, access to the lives of missing children-and perhaps of that one dead child.
Gaining the parapet, the two cats leaped from its open piazza to the top of the brick rail, five stories above the streets. Crouched on the rail, they watched the moon-washed clouds above them, and the car lights below flicking in and out beneath the pine and cypress trees. Scanning the ever-changing shadows of the rooftops, their gazes sought any small, dark shape racing or lurking, but half Joe’s attention remained on Molena Point PD. On the files from across the western states and from archived FBI records that, combined with information the forensics team would develop, was all they would have to identify the small victim. Though Dulcie didn’t see how, in this very old case, she and Joe could be of help. Even if the department was able to identify the child, this wasn’t the kind of murder where a cat could track a suspect or toss his house. This killer was years gone, could be dead himself.
But, she thought, Lori was not an old, unsolved case. And she looked with speculation at Joe. She felt so strongly that Lori needed them now, needed their help now-if theyknewhow to help her, without stirring up trouble for the child.
Stretching along the top of the brick rail, in the slanting moonlight, she studied Joe, then studied the stark shadows below among the peaks and chimneys, the pale rivers of the streets, the dark pools of the crowding trees. The world below seemed totally empty of cats. From the other side of the parapet, Joe looked across at her, his gray coat gleaming silver in the moonlight, the white strip down his nose squeezed into a frown, his yellow eyes narrowed with impatience. “So, spill it, Dulcie. You’ve been as closemouthed as a crooked cop.”
Dulcie looked at him, her tail twitching with nerves. “If I tell you, this is our secret. You won’t tell anyone? Not Clyde, not Wilma or Charlie?” She wished with all her heart that the kit was there, so she could tell her, too.
“This can’t be about the grave,” Joe said, “about the dead child. So is it about Patty Rose? But why�?”
Dropping down to the parapet, Dulcie stared up at him as he began to pace the rail, spinning back and forth on the thin barrier five stories above the roofs, his white paws seeming at every step to slide away into the night. He knew she hated that, hated when he indulged in fancy footwork on the edge of space.
“Come down and I’ll tell you. Come down now.”
Smiling, Joe paused on the edge, moonlight catching along his muscled shoulder.
“Come down, please. I promise I’ll tell you if you won’t grandstand.”
He glared at her, but then he dropped to the bricks, a whiskery leer on his face.
“But you have to promise not-”
“I don’thaveto promiseanything.Don’t play games, Dulcie!” He crouched to leap up again.
She moved in front of him, stood nose to nose with him, her body drawn up tall, her paw lifted and her claws out, as sharp as razors. “If you want to hear, you’ll promise not to bring Harper or the detectives into this, or any human. Not until we know the whole story.”
Joe waited, his ears back, his whiskers tight to his tomcat cheeks, his yellow eyes wide with challenge.
“Promise?”
“Tentatively,” he snarled, more a predatory growl than consent.
“I found a child, Joe. A little girl hiding in the library basement, in a walled-off part like a cave. She’s around twelve, and so determined to keep herself hidden. She has food, a blanket, everything. But so alone.”
“So why couldn’t you tell me that? Where did she come from? How long has she been there? If she’s run away, we’ll have to-”
“That’swhy I didn’t tell you. Because you’d say we have to tell Harper, that we have to drag in the law. Harper will only call county welfare to take care of her. That’s what the law has to do. And I think that’s part of the problem, I think she’s afraid of someone in child welfare.”
“Then tell Wilma. If you tell her the kid’s afraid of someone in the juvenile system-”
“Joe, Wilma is service oriented. Family services, alcohol rehab, drug rehab, job placement. She depended on them all when she was a probation and parole officer.” Dulcie lashed her tail with frustration; Joe looked back at her, his yellow eyes slowly softening. “Tell me about her, Dulcie. Tell me why she’s locked herself in there; it has to be like a prison. Tell me why she’s afraid.”
But while Dulcie and Joe talked about Lori in her self-imposed confinement, the child was turning handsprings in the moonlight. Giddy with a few minutes of stolen freedom, she didn’t guess that she might soon take fate into her own hands, might set in motion her own salvation.
Tonight she had waited, as she did every night in her black concrete hole, until the front door thudded closed for the last time and she heard its heavy bolt lock slide home. Until the last muffled sound faded, of library patrons and staff moving away down the walk and across the garden. She never felt safe until the library closed and everyone had gone, until nothing larger than the library cat could get in. Then, she had two choices. Some nights she just lit her little lamp and curled up under her blanket to read. Some nights she ran through the empty rooms and did cartwheels and laughed out loud, celebrating her freedom.
Tonight she went up into the children’s room because she had finished the fourth book of Narnia and wanted the next one. She always hated finishing, no matter how many times she read them.
Moving the bricks and slipping out through the hole, she had pushed aside the little bookcase, leaving the space open for a quick return. Clutching her flashlight, she had hurried up the stairs. The library was hers, the big, empty, moonlit rooms were hers, all the thousands of books were hers. Lori had not the wildest idea that the library cat often had exactly the same thought. No notion that tabby Dulcie coveted the books as she did. That, like Lori, the library cat reveled in the fact that she could read whatever she chose, that she could read all night if she wanted.
Though if Lori ever discovered Dulcie’s true nature, she would have no trouble believing. She was only twelve, and she was a reader. Despite her ugly brushes with the adult world, Lori’s capacity for wonder had not yet been crippled; she was too strong for that. The powerful life-giving acknowledgment of wonder, that life force that should carry a child on through adulthood had not been twisted by the adults of the world. In Lori’s case, maybe it never would be; she was a stubborn child.
In the main reading room she turned off her little flashlight and shoved it in her jeans pocket. Moving across the carpet, she stretched up in the moonlight and danced; she turned handsprings swimming through wavering fingers of light thrown by the wind through the tall windows. She was filled with wild, giddy freedom; she ran, she shouted softly in a breathy mock of a shout. She attempted backflips and collapsed giggling, fell over giggling, rolling on the carpet as wild with release as any caged young creature, celebrating the only freedom she was able to gain. Handspringing between the stacks and whirling across the reading room between the long tables, surrounded by thousands of books, Lori thought of Mama saying, “Be happy, Lori.” Oh, Mama would laugh at her, Mama would love that she had hidden here, taking charge of her own life. Mama said you had to be a problem solver if you wanted to survive.