Out beyond the garden, two officers were clearing the street and putting up cordons at the ends of the block. At both corners, pedestrians had gathered, idle onlookers drawn to tragedy, some out of empathy but most with prurient curiosity. Of all those who crowded to look, Joe was the only observer enjoying a rooftop vantage. Lying with his chin propped on his paws and his paws resting on the roof gutter, his alert gray ears caught every whisper.
He watched the evidence officer lift lint and debris from the bodies and the surround and mark the evidence bags as to content and location. Watched him go over the victims' clothes with the department's tiny vacuum cleaner and wondered if any lint had fallen from Greeley's clothes when he knelt over Dora-or, for that matter, if the lab would find black cat hairs-or traces of their own fur where he and Dulcie had sniffed at the victims' faces.
Well, so Harper found cat hairs. So what was he going to do? There'd been cat hairs at other murder scenes. He watched the fingerprint specialist dust the deceased's clothing and skin and the window and the slick green lily leaves, carefully lifting prints. Watched the forensic pathologist arrive-a white-haired man stepping out of an ancient gray Cadillac-to examine the bodies, place bags over the victim's hands, and wrap Dora and Ralph for transport to the morgue. As the courthouse clock chimed ten-thirty, the forensics team moved inside the library, and so did Joe Grey, heading for the book stack where Dulcie sat twitching her tail, highly amused as she listened to a little group of irate mothers.
Lieutenant Brennan, heavy in his tight uniform, stood talking with the five women and their excited preschoolers, the little ones wiggling and shouting. Three-year-old James Truesdel wanted to know why those people were asleep in the garden, and Nancy Phillips, with five-year-old superiority, told him they were not asleep, they were dead. She wanted to know: "How did they get dead, with their clothes off?" And five-year-old Albert Leddy, trying to drag his mother back toward the window seat from which he had been extricated, pitched such a tantrum, kicking his mother in the shins, that if he'd been a kitten Dulcie would have whacked him hard and nipped his nervy little ears.
But she had to smile, too, because from the temper of the parents, the pro-library cat group had snatched the day just as Joe had predicted, had grabbed opportunity by the tail. As Freda Brackett left Captain Harper and came back inside, nine parents converged on her, and James Truesdel's mother began to question her in a manner that indicated there would soon be a hotly phrased letter in the Gazette.
Behind Freda, Bernine Sage manned the three constantly ringing phone lines-word traveled fast in the village-giving dry, uninformative answers. It was hard to tell whether Bernine was an island of efficiency or of total indifference. Dulcie glanced up to the door as a young man bolted in, having talked his way past the police guard.
Danny McCoy was disheveled and breathing hard, his red hair tousled; having obviously rushed over from the Gazette offices, he exchanged a look of complicity with Mrs. Leddy.
Danny, too, was a mover and shaker on Dulcie's behalf. He had done several columns supporting the library cat and had made a big deal that library cats were a growing trend across the country. He had done a really nice article on the Library Cat Society, interviewing its president and several of its members and quoting from the society's quarterly newsletters about the popularity of individual library cats in Minden, Nevada, Eastham, Massachusetts, and, closer to home, El Centro. Now, deftly trapping Freda between the checkout desk and a book cart, he began with the standard questions: Who had found the bodies? What time where they discovered? Then he moved on to the question of why the children had been allowed to see the murder victims, why they had not been supervised, to avoid such ugly experience.
"We didn't know the bodies were there," Freda snapped. "One does not come to work expecting to find dead bodies outside the children's room. The police are supposed to patrol that street. Why didn't they see the bodies? This Captain Harper was extremely lax to allow such an occurrence. This is not New York City. This is a small, quiet town. What else do the police have to do, but keep the streets and public buildings safe?"
"But, Ms. Brackett, why were the children allowed to view the corpses?"
"I told you. We didn't know they were there! Can't you understand me? It was the children who discovered the tragedy. We don't go into the children's room first thing in the morning. We are far too busy preparing to open the library, preparing the checkout machine, clearing the bookdrop, starting up the computers…"
"No one looked out the window before the children arrived?"
"Of course not. Why would we? Don't you listen? We had no reason to look out. The children's librarian was at her desk getting ready for story hour. This work takes a good deal of preliminary attention. My staff does not have time to dawdle, gawking out windows, Mr. McCoy."
"So you let the children run in there, without any supervision, and view a shocking and frightening death scene."
Dulcie smiled with appreciation. Danny was being totally unfair. Taunting Freda and shaping his own biased agenda. The article he was preparing to write would be scathing-he was going to cream Freda.
Purring and rolling over, she watched Joe slip in the front door and across the reading room behind the feet of several officers. He made one leap to a reading table, another to the top of the book stack, landed beside her with a soft thud, purring.
"Where's Mavity?" she whispered. "Did someone go to find her, to tell her about Dora and Ralph? Did they go to look for Greeley?"
"Harper sent an officer to find Mavity. I don't know about Greeley." And he settled down to watch Danny torment Freda, the young reporter playing her as skillfully as any cat baiting an angry rat.
"Exactly what degree of damage, Ms. Brackett, might this event have done to the children? Is it possible, would you say, that some of the children will need psychiatric help? Perhaps trauma counseling? Is the library insured for that kind of…"
"The city sees to our insurance, Mr. McCoy. I don't have time for this foolishness. If the children glimpsed a murder scene, that is no different from what they see on television."
Mrs. Truesdel moved closer to join them. "That is not what you told Captain Harper, Ms. Brackett. You said the children would probably need therapy. And as far as television," Mrs. Truesdel said, "I don't let my five-year-old watch violent TV. Nor do my friends. We try to protect our small children from undue violence. Certainly we don't expect them to witness two shocking deaths during story hour."
"This experience," Danny said, "will give them far worse nightmares then any TV show." He moved closer to Freda. "Certainly this ugly look at death has been far more harmful to the children than, say, finding a little cat in the library."