Cat Seeing Double by Shirley Rousseau Murphy Read Free Book Online Page A

“There will be a wedding.” That boy had destroyed the wall of the church, but he hadn’t destroyed anyone’s spirit. He had not destroyed love, or human will.
    She watched officers stringing yellow crime tape, securing the area. She had heard Captain Harper calling for a bomb team, she supposed out of San Jose. She knew that those forensic technicians would spend hours going over the area, photographing, fingerprinting, bagging every possible bit of evidence. But once the team arrived, when the work at hand was organized, would there be a wedding? Surely somewhere within the village, Charlie and Max Harper would be married.
    Beside her, the kit was hunkered down among the branches looking so small and miserable that Dulcie nosed at her with concern. “What, Kit? What’s the matter?”
    The kit shut her eyes.
    â€œDon’t, Kit. Don’t look sad. You saved lives. You saved hundreds of lives. You’re a hero. But how did you know? How did you know what he planned?”
    â€œI heard them. I heard that old man telling the boy what to do, an old man with a beard and a bent foot. He shook the boy and told him to wait until everyone was in the church, the bride and groom and minister and everyone, then to punch the opener. I didn’t know what he meant. He said to punch it and run, to get off the roof fast and get away. The boy was angry but he climbed up to the roof and the old man hobbled away. I didn’t mean for the bomb to explode, I wanted to stop whatever would happen, I didn’t mean for a bomb to go off,” the kit said miserably.
    Dulcie licked the kit’s ears. “If you hadn’t jumped that boy, then warned Clyde, then jumped the boy again, he would have killed everyone. You’re a hero, Kit. Do you understand that? Who knows how many lives you saved.”
    Dulcie twitched an ear. “To those who know, to Clyde and Wilma and Charlie—to all of us , Kit, you’ll forever be a hero.”
    â€œAbsolutely a hero,” Joe Grey said softly, nudging the kit. “But where did the old man go? Did you see where he went? Did he have a car?”
    The kit shook her whiskers. “I didn’t see which way. I didn’t see him get in a car, but…” She paused, thinking. “He said to the boy, ‘The truck will be gone.’ And there was an old truck parked down the side street, a rusty old pickup, sort of brown. And when…when I jumped the boy and the man ran, I think…I think I heard a rattley motor.”
    Joe’s eyes widened, and immediately he left them, backing down the tree and streaking for Clyde’s open convertible. He would not, among a crowd of humans,ordinarily be so brazen as to leap into the car and paw into the side pocket, hauling out Clyde’s cell phone. But he had little choice. Looking up over the car door, seeing no one watching him, he punched in a number.
    Dulcie and Kit heard Max Harper’s cell phone ringing, across the garden. How strange it was that Joe’s electronic message could zip through the sky who knew how many miles to some phantom tower in just an instant, and back again to Harper’s phone where he stood only a few feet away.
    Harper answered, listened, and gave an order that sent officers racing away on foot through the village, and sent squad cars swerving out fast to cruise the streets looking for an old brown truck and for the old man who was the boy’s accomplice. And above the searching officers, Dulcie and the kit raced away too. Flying across the rooftops they watched the sidewalks below, peering down into shadowed niches and recessed doorways where a hidden figure might be missed; and soon on the roofs two blocks away they saw Joe, also searching.
    For nearly two hours, as dusk fell, and as the police combed the streets and shops below, the cats crossed back and forth along balconies and oak branches and across peaks and shingles, peering into dark