Cat Shout for Joy Read Online Free PDF

with a phone call to alert that it was at the back door or inside a squad car, there were no questions. “Found” evidence, useful Visa bills, or a “lost” cell phone? The detectives used what they got and then generated their own follow-­up investigation, digging out background facts that would stand in court.
    If ever in the future the cats were careless and were caught in the act, discovered talking on the phone, Joe didn’t want to think about the consequences. Their well-­oiled and effective deception would be down the tubes, the work they loved destroyed in one careless moment. A cop was all about facts; his thinking was no-­nonsense and meticulous. Clues, hints, anonymous tips, a good detective might put those together in new and creative combinations and come up with the missing piece. But no cop believed the impossible.
    Hopping on the couch beside Charlie, Dulcie stretched out across her lap. Joe looked up into Charlie’s lean, freckled face; Charlie always had a happy look even when life, for the moment, took an ugly turn. She petted them both, her green eyes amused at their private secret. She didn’t glance up when Max’s phone buzzed, but continued to stroke Dulcie and Joe. She did look when Max said sharply, “When? What time? Put Davis on.”
    He listened, scribbling notes on a printout that he’d inserted in a yellow pad. “You have his belongings? Davis, is his wife there? Stay with her, and see her home. See that she has someone with her.” He listened again, then, “I’ll talk with the coroner.”
    He hung up, looked over at Dallas. “Merle Rodin’s dead. Cerebral contusion, from the blow he took. You want to go on over, finish up the paperwork while Davis takes care of the wife, gets her statement, makes sure she has friends or family around her?” This part of police work was never pleasant. They did what they could, to ease the pain that nothing could ease.
    The Latino detective rose and pulled on his jacket. He gave Charlie a brief hug, and left the office, and Max looked across at Charlie, filling her in. “Lab has the brick that may have hit Rodin. A brick from the border of the flower bed, with what looks like bloodstains. Dr. Alder says there are particles embedded in the scalp that could be the same material.” Now it was the coroner’s and the lab’s job. Charlie’s hand was tense, poised on Joe Grey’s shoulder.
    She said, “He could have fallen on it? Or that street scum picked it up and hit him? That poor old man.” Charlie was stoic about most village crime, or appeared to be. The cats knew she often concealed her distress from Max—­he had problems enough without worrying about her, too. He didn’t need a distraught wife. But these senseless attacks on frail citizens had left her enraged, feeling helpless—­as frustrated as the department when the attacks continued and they had no viable clue yet, to give them a lead.
    â€œThe blood type on the brick,” Max said, “matches Rodin’s. But it will take a while for the DNA.” The lab in Salinas was always backed up. Max turned off his computer and rose. The cats waited until he and Charlie left for a quick lunch, then they hit the chief’s desk.
    Pawing through the stack of files, Dulcie took the corner of Max’s yellow pad in her teeth, pulled it out from under the folders, and opened it with her claws.
    Beneath pages of notes was a printed list of the seven attacks, with Max’s penciled notes in the margins. The victims’ individual files, with additional information, would be kept secure on the computer. This page needed no securing; most of this—­until the attack on Rodin—­had already been in the local paper, on local radio or TV. There had been seven previous victims including one death when banker Ogden Welder died in the hospital. Merle Rodin was the eighth