The stranger had peered in at the potted flowers and shrubs, idly studying the inky recesses beneath the benches and around Joe’s concealing vine. Joe, already crouched down, ducked his head to hide the white stripe down his nose, concealing as well his other white markings. Hunched there like a rolled-up porcupine, he had felt icy fear course through him, puzzling but quite real.
Maybe the guy had stirred an ugly memory. Triggered an unpleasant association. Maybe jarred in him some emotion from that other incident in Jolly’s alley, three years earlier, when those two men entered and Joe witnessed one kill the other with a crescent wrench. Maybe this little man’s appearance reminded him of that singular and shocking moment.
And maybe not. A cat couldn’t always account for his fear-driven reactions. But a cat had the sense to pay attention.
Watching the small man, Joe had licked his shoulder, which was wet from the recent rain, and had wondered why this tourist was out in wet weather. A little rain was no big deal to a cat; there were countless niches where one could shelter out of the downpour and lick one’s fur dry. But not many tourists walked for pleasure on a rainy night. The man had seemed so interested in the stained-glass doorways of the little out-of-the-way shops that lined the alley that Joe had wondered if he was planning to break in.
Yet his body language had seemed wrong for a breakin, relaxed but not stealthy. Not watchful enough of the street behind him, not attentive enough to the two open ends of the alley.
The stranger was such a small guy. His bones looked as thin as bird bones. His skin was very white, his hair as sooty black as the crows that bedeviled Joe from their clumsy perches among the oak trees. The guy’s cheeks were thin and narrow, his pointed chin darkened by black stubble. His pale, child-size hands looked frail and weak. Moving suddenly, he had entered the alley.
Wandering along the narrow brick walk, he glanced without interest at the empty paper plate in its wooden shelter; he looked into the jasmine vine but didn’t seem to see Joe, who was still rolled up like a frightened caterpillar. Joe thought the guy was maybe fifty or sixty, he could never be sure about human age. To interpret a person’s age from a set of facial features was for Joe a far more difficult science than reading their body language.
The guy’s high forehead was feathered by wispy black hairs that lay thinly across his pearly scalp. Thicker hair grew on his thin arms and the backs of his small hands, as if the maker of all living creatures had somehow gotten his wires crossed and put most of the hair in the wrong places. Joe imagined that if this man were to shake hands with a normal-size person, one would hear his bones cracking. The man seemedunfinished.Moving on through the alley, he paused beside a wrought-iron bench. What did he find of such interest in Jolly’s alley that he remained standing there, looking? What was he lookingat?But then when a car came down the street, its tires swishing on the wet pavement, he headed out of the alley fast, as if he didn’t want to be seen there.
Joe looked up at Lucinda, feeling cold. This had to be the same man the kit had been watching. How many child-size men were there? The population of Molena Point wasn’t all that big. If Kit had seen him tonight, whathadshe seen? Joe imagined too clearly the kit’s yellow eyes, round and huge with curiosity, with shock at Patty’s death-and perhaps with secret knowledge. If Kit had seen the killer, there was no telling where her rage and determination would lead her.
Earlier that night as the detectives and coroner worked over Patty’s body, photographing and videotaping, collecting fingerprints and lab samples, and then as Joe and Dulcie and their human friends searched for the kit, Kit moved alone through the windy night tracking Patty’s killer. Or, she started out to track him.
Frightened and cold, filled with hatred of the man, she had followed the geranium scent as far as she could, hurrying along the icy concrete, her small body shivering with chill and grief, hurting so for Patty that all her senses seemed numbed. Besides geranium, she had picked up the stink of dirty socks and dog doo, all three mingling in the same gusts of air. As nasty as that was, it made her tracking faster; she galloped along following that wafting sourness, scanning the airy drafts like a small bird dog. His trail led her straight to Molena Point Little Theater.
The movie crowd that had enjoyed Patty’s films was just dispersing. Had there been no announcement, then, of Patty’s terrible murder? Maybe not. The cops had had enough trouble keeping people out of the inn’s patio and away from the crime scene. Maybe they’d encouraged the theater personnel to say nothing, to simply continue with the filmed interviews that followed the movie. The programs were sometimes quite long. That was why Lucinda and Pedric had skipped this one after four nights’ running. Drawing back among the bushes at the edge of the sidewalk, Kit watched people hurrying to their cars, or starting to walk home bundled up against the stormy cold. Rearing up on her hind paws trying to see through a forest of human legs, she looked and looked for the man-she could smell him close to her, he’d come here, all right, to mix with the crowd, as if this would this be his alibi, that he was at Patty’s movie.
There, she saw him-the small man who had watched Patty, and who carried the scent of the killer. Kit wanted to leap on him and claw him, hurt him as he had hurt Patty. Dulcie said, and even Joe said sometimes, that in the case of human crime it was better for human law to punish the killer. But right now it would be more satisfying to tear at the evil creature as she would at a rat, dismembering it. Racing between hard oxfords and women’s high-heeled boots, she slid into the bushes behind him.
Phew. The scent of dog doo laid over geraniums and dirty socks. When the man turned and nearly stepped on her, she spun away. If she were a cop, she could stick a gun in his ribs. So frustrating sometimes, being only a cat. When he moved away through the crowd, she followed, dodging people’s feet and drawing surprised and interested looks. She followed him up the sidewalk, swerving and running, falling back behind people then hurrying ahead. After five blocks he got into a car, an old gray Honda parked at the curb a block from the library. Got in and took off, the smell of exhaust choking Kit. She followed the car, running down the middle of the street, until she had to streak for the curb or be crushed, landed pell-mell on the sidewalk, tumbling and scared out of her little cat wits.
The car had vanished, its stink lost among other cars, among the smell of tires and asphalt and diesel. She crouched on the concrete, shivering at having been so close to being hurt, so foolishly close to moving cars, telling herself she must not do that again.
But at last she shook herself and licked her cold paws, then started on in the direction the car had gone, looking ahead for any gray car, hunting stubbornly.
As she searched hopelessly along the endless dark streets, rearing up, scanning the side streets, twice she heard, far behind her, Lucinda calling her. She did not turn back, she kept on even when her friend’s voice grew louder, closer. Lucinda would pick her up and hold her and make a fuss over her-and force her to go home. Later as she raced up to the roofs to better see the streets below, she heard Clyde, and then Pedric’s low, gruff voice calling and calling her. Obstinately she turned away and kept on searching.
She had watched this man for nearly two weeks as he hung around the inn. She knew he was watching Patty but he’d never seemed threatening, such a small, frail man. Lucinda had seen him once, and they’d thought he might be a fan of Patty’s. Now he had turned suddenly into the most terrible of monsters. Kit felt guilty, deeply guilty that neither she nor Lucinda had told anyone about him, and that Lucinda had never asked Patty about him.