Dulcie's purr bubbled into laughter. Joe lay grinning, thinking about what he'd have to say to Clyde.

"Before Harper could get them sorted out, Selig jerked loose from him, snatched a sheaf of reports from Officer Blake's desk, and ran off chewing on them. Three officers caught him but, without a collar, he slipped free of them-snatched Lieutenant Brennan's ham sandwich, then grabbed the photo officer's reflex camera. The officer tackled him, rescued his camera, stood cradling it like a baby. Harper was so mad, he told me, and was laughing so hard, that he could feel tears."

"And I missed it all," Joe said. "The event of the-"

A tremor shook the bed. Joe leaped up. Dulcie rose into a wary crouch. Wilma's cup rattled in its saucer.

But then the room was still again.

They waited, but no second jolt hit. The three friends looked at each other, and shrugged. A second later, the phone rang.

Wilma picked up, listened, then pressed the speaker button.

Lucinda's voice was weak and unsteady. "… he's… I'm at the hospital. He's hurt, Wilma. Broken arm, some broken ribs. He was soaking wet and so cold, shivering. I only hope… I don't know how long he lay there, in the cold and rain."

Wilma leaned close to the phone's speaker. "Start at the beginning, Lucinda. Tell me what happened. Take it slowly, please."

"The police found him-not our police," Lucinda said. "The highway patrol. They-in the dark. Pedric was lying halfway down Hellhag Hill. Someone…" Lucinda's voice shook "Someone tried…"

"How would they find him in the dark and rain? What were they doing… Never mind. I'll come. Who's the doctor?"

"Dr. Harliss."

"I'll be there." Wilma slipped out of bed. "I'll be…"

"No. Don't come here. I'm… I'll stay with him. Go there. Go to Hellhag Hill. Find out… Talk to the police. Find out who-what happened."

"But…"

"Hurry, while they're still there. Please find out what happened."

"But they won't be…"

"They'll still be there. I came away in the ambulance. They were still there, seeing to Newlon."

"Newlon?"

"Newlon's dead. They found him lying on the highway in the rain. Please find out, Wilma." Her voice shook. "Find out who killed Newlon, and tried to kill Pedric."

Wilma hung up the phone and sat looking at the cats. "First, Chambers is stabbed. Now, another man in the hospital, and a man dead. And all of them," she said, "connected to Shamas Greenlaw."

Swinging out of bed, she snatched up some clothes and slipped into the bathroom to wash and dress. Within minutes, she and the cats were headed for Hellhag Hill, Joe and Dulcie staring out through the rain-soaked windows, shivering in the cavernous, cold car.

17

TWO HIGHWAY patrol units were nosed in along the shoulder, their lights shining across the rain-matted grass at the base of Hellhag Hill. Passing them on the wet black two-lane, Wilma pulled up ahead, behind two Molena Point black-and-whites. Beyond these stood the coroner's gray sedan, its headlights shining on a makeshift tent, a green police tarp erected to keep the rain off Newlon Greenlaw's body. Other illumination was provided by three large butane lanterns. The coroner, John Bern, a thin, button-nosed man wearing a yellow raincoat, knelt beside the body. As Wilma stepped out of the car, she saw Max Harper leave the tent and start up the hill, his torchlight bouncing off curtains of blowing rain. She saw, up the hill just below the trailer park, in the beam of other torches, two more uniforms and a gathering of onlookers.

"Up there," Officer Davis told her, coming up to Wilma, wringing water from her uniform skirt. "That's where Pedric Greenlaw fell, just above those boulders. Ambulance left with him about half an hour ago." Davis was a middle-aged woman, solidly built, short dark hair, dark and expressive Latin eyes.

"What happened?" Wilma said. "I've only talked with Lucinda Greenlaw, and she was pretty upset."

"You knew Newlon Greenlaw?" Davis said, gesturing toward the body.

"I've met him."

"Head cracked open. We've found no weapon. Apparently the two men were fighting, up around the trailers. It's dark as hell up there at night; they've never had good lighting.

"People in the trailers woke up, heard thumps and scuffling, then groans. Grabbed flashlights and ran out. Someone thought there were three men, but they couldn't be sure. We've not found any traces of a third man. Pedric fell maybe twenty feet, into those rocks just above the cave.

"When the people up there called 911, California Highway Patrol was just up the road. They came on down to see if they could render assistance, spotted Newlon's body in their headlights here beside the road.

"We won't know much until it gets light," Davis said. "And maybe not then, with this rain. Sure makes a mess."

Moving to the tent, Wilma watched the coroner examine the dead man's head wound and take the temperature of the liver, a procedure which never failed to make her queasy. She flinched as the needle went into the abdomen.

She had left Joe and Dulcie in the car. She hoped they'd stay there, hoped the heavy rain would keep them confined. Knowing those two, she doubted it. A promise from either of them was subject to all manner of feline guile.

As Harper's light moved up the hill, someone started down toward him with another torch. The rain had slacked off, but the damage to the crime scene would be significant, blood washed away, evidence destroyed. When she glanced down the road toward her car, the torch of one of the CHP officers caught four bright flashes low to the ground racing across the highway, accompanied by a gleam of white.

"Damn cats," she muttered; but already the cats had disappeared. Joe and Dulcie were doing as they pleased, and no one was going to stop them.

The turmoil on the hill, men shouting and striding through the dark grass with lights swinging, had terrified the clowder of wild cats. Already disoriented by the heavy rain, by the jolting of the earth, and by the earlier violence of the men fighting and then the crowd gathering and the scream of the ambulance and not knowing where to escape, they had withdrawn to cower among the rocks in a state of near shock Even the bellowing mewl of the ragged kit, which they had heard earlier, had seemed terrifying, coming alone out of the night.

Still cowering against the boulders as men moved all over the hillside, they refused to go into the cave; none of them would enter the cave when the earth shook.

Long after the police cars and most of the men had left and the world grew quiet once more, they crouched in the soaking grass, belly to ground, waiting for further disaster-perhaps for the earth to open entirely, for the hill beneath their paws to crumble away.

All but the tattered kit. The ninth and smallest, she was of another mind.

The cave did not frighten her. She sat in its mouth, where the others wouldn't go, had sat there earlier, stoically enduring the earth's trembling. If she died, she died. She wasn't going to run away.

After the earth stopped shaking she had stood up on her hind paws like a little rabbit, looking all around her, delighted at the brilliance of the sky. When the quake ceased, the rain had ceased for the moment, too, and a strange, thin gleam lit the sky. Not the light of dawn, but a silver glow shimmering beneath the rain clouds. Ignoring her soaking fur and the icy chill that reached down into her thin little bones, she had looked around her, thrilled with the beauty of the world.

But at the same time, too, she tasted fear. She could still smell the blood from the man who had lain among the boulders. She had seen him fall. She had seen another man die. These matters deeply distressed her.