Cora Lee lay among the rubble, her white dress twisted, her face grayish and sick. When the kit saw Joe and Dulcie she bolted into them mewling.
"She's dead. Oh, she's not dead! Oh, help her!"
Sirens screamed again as another squad car roared through the side streets. Pushing the kit away, Joe nosed at Cora Lee trying to detect breathing. Yes, a faint, warm breath, though her skin was chilled.
"She's alive, Kit. We need the medics, the cops. But you called-"
"From Cora Lee's car phone like you showed me. I told them there was a dead woman in the window."
"You told them Cora Lee was here?"
"She wasn't-I didn't know she was here. Just that Fern woman in the window."
"Stay with her, Kit. Stay until we-"
But Dulcie had already raced away, headed for Cora Lee's car and cell phone.
20
The ambulance had gone, taking Cora Lee to the hospital bundled onto a stretcher, tucked up under a blanket. Dulcie imagined her in surgery surrounded by doctors and nurses working over her. Stubbornly she imagined Cora Lee awake again, sitting up in a white hospital bed with flowers and get-well cards around her. And, crouched in the shadows of the alley, cuddling the kit close, she tried to stop the little tattercoat's frightened shivering. Licking the kit's ear, Dulcie purred against her, whispering, "It's all right. She'll be all right, Kit." But they couldn't be certain of that.
"She ran from that man," the kit said. "He chased her, he must have hit her. When I found her here she was so cold, then sweating, and then cold again. She looked at me and cried, 'Don't!' and tried to get up and then she twisted, and cried out, then fainted." The kit looked wildly at Dulcie. "All those terrible tubes hanging when they put her in the ambulance. What did they do to her?"
"The tubes could save her life, Kit. The medics will do all they can, and we must be patient." But Dulcie didn't feel patient.
The kit's dark mottled fur stuck up in frantic wisps, and her yellow eyes were as round as moons. "She was taking me home to Wilma's, she…"
"I know, Kit. I was there when she called Wilma. She said she'd stop here to look in the shop window at the new display. She'll be all right, Kit. She'll be fine. Did you have a nice evening?"
"Oh, yes. Custard and chicken and music and such a pretty house and a nice creamy blanket on her bed, but I had a bad dream and then this morning it came true. When we got here the window was all broken, and I could see someone lying in there. Cora Lee rushed to look, she was so upset and wanting to help that she left the car door open, didn't think about a cat running away. But I didn't run, I jumped on the dash and watched her through the window. She looked in at the dead woman, then she whirled around toward the car like she meant to call the police, but there was a little white packet nearly under her feet, like papers. She snatched it up, hardly stopping."
"What papers, Kit?"
"I don't know, papers tied in a ribbon, and she was almost to the car when a man burst out of the window and hit her and grabbed at them. She kicked him and hit him and twisted away and ran. She still had the little packet. Ran around the side of the building. I remembered about the phone and punched the numbers like I saw you and Joe do, and told them about the woman in the window.
"He chased her, and I followed them. I was so scared and I wanted to claw him. He chased her into the alley and hit her hard. When she fell he grabbed the papers and ran. Left her there all huddled up clutching her middle. I heard a car roar away. She tried to crawl but she was hurt too bad and I didn't know what to do. She looked at me like she didn't see me right, like she didn't know what I was. I licked and licked her face and was going to go talk in the phone again, but she was so hot and then cold and then I heard the siren, and then you came."
"Kit, what did the papers look like?" Dulcie said.
"Folded up and tied with an old faded ribbon. Old brownish paper like if it's been in the trash a long time."
"What did the man look like?" Dulcie glanced around for Joe but didn't see him.
"Just a man. I don't know. Tan clothes. Tall, sort of thin, running away."
"What color hair? Would you know him? Recognize his smell?"
"I don't know. Maybe." The kit looked crestfallen, her head down, her ears back to her head. "I'm not sure. Maybe I would." She began to sniff around the alley. But the medics and police had been there; the smells were all mixed up.
"Come here, Kit," Dulcie said. "It will be all right, we'll find him." But her mind was on Joe Grey, uneasy because Joe had vanished.
Was he back there among the officers? Had he followed them into the shop through the broken window? Armed officers going in after a killer would be alert to any smallest movement. The faintest disturbance among the shelves and furniture, and their guns would be on him.
But she was being foolish. Police officers didn't fire blind-not like some untrained deer hunter shooting at a sound in the brush.
Yet still she worried, pacing the alley, afraid Joe would do something foolish, something macho and foolish.
Within the shop, Joe looked far from macho. Crouched under a rack of women's dresses with a lacy hem dragging over his ears, he peered out from between swaths of silk and velvet, watching Dallas Garza clear the premises. The resale store was so crowded with racks and shelves and overflowing boxes that he felt like he was back among the heaped refuse of some San Francisco alley-except these cast-offs were a far cry from the junk he'd encountered in the city; that trash had been so tacky that even the homeless didn't want it. This shop had some nicer cookware than Clyde's kitchen, some handsome lamps, and typewriters and even a microwave oven. In the center of the room between the clothes racks stood a child's desk, a faded easy chair, a pink crib, three dining chairs, and a sign proclaiming that all mechanical items were in working order.
Slipping along beneath the ladies' hems, flinching as clothes slithered down his back, he followed Detective Garza. Garza was taking his time, photographing and making carefully recorded notes in a small black notebook.
Pausing under a rack of men's pants and shirts, Joe followed Garza through an archway, creeping belly-to-carpet among the shadows, into the back room-into chaos. A bookshelf lay toppled, its books scattered open across a cascade of phonograph records and broken china. An accordion lay crushed beneath an overturned table, among a spill of mismatched shoes. And there were splatters of blood, the smell of human blood.
Beneath the fallen books and records, he saw a small, carved chest. A second chest lay half hidden by a scatter of baby clothes. Both looked old, dark, and roughly made, very much like those in the newspaper picture. Watching Garza photograph the scene, Joe slipped behind an upended suitcase for a better look. He wondered if Garza had seen the morning paper, if he was aware of the wooden casks. One was the size of a small bread box, incised with primitive birds and painted in soft greens and blues. The other was half that big, carved with flowers and stained in red and green. The pieces of a third box lay beneath it, smashed and split, with the lid torn off. Joe studied the scene of what must have been a violent fight, and sniffed the tangle of smells.
He had, following Garza in through the front door, reared up to look into the window at Fern's body where she lay waiting for the coroner. The two bullet holes, one through her chest, one through her throat, were both small and neat. As the detective turned away, Joe had nipped into the window for a better look.
The bullet holes were larger in front, raggedly splattering blood and flesh, as if she'd been shot in the back. Certainly she had been shot at close range. He couldn't see her back, to know if there were powder marks. The unpleasant smells of death mixed sickly with Fern's perfume.