Now, above the rooftops, above the hurrying cats the moon lifted higher, increasing its glow and diminishing the size of the shadows. The night wind blew colder. Their hard-won package grew heavier, pulling at neck and shoulder muscles, making their jaws ache. Joe and Dulcie pushed ahead, dodging patches of light, ducking beneath branches, their teeth deep in the heavy packet. The kit trailed behind, unusually quiet, not pressing to help them. Then just across the last street lay the long expanse of the courthouse roof and the roof of Molena Point PD, the rounded clay tiles gleaming in the moonlight.
The chasm of the street was wide. One ancient oak spanned above the concrete, its branches meeting the smaller branches of its counterpart that grew close to the opposite sidewalk. Dragging their burden across the thick, leafy limb, trying not to hang it up among the twigs or to drop it, Joe and Dulcie felt as graceful as a pair of clipped-wing pigeons flopping among the branches. The kit crossed on a branch above them, precarious and uncertain herself as she watched their unsteady progress.
Reaching the courthouse roof, the three cats together hauled their prize the long length of the courthouse, bumping on the round tiles and into the oak tree that stood beside the police department. Now they had three choices.
They could haul the envelope down to the front entry and prop it against the glass door. They could hike it around back, to the locked back door that opened on the police parking lot where Harper and the two detectives usually left their cars, where Harper himself would more likely find it. The time was seven P.M. Watch would change at eight. Most of the officers and the dispatcher would leave by the front door, heading for their personal cars that were parked in the front lot. The first officer out would see the package and retrieve it, and go back to log it in and alert the watch commander. Voila, mission accomplished.
Or, third choice, they could shove the plastic package through the high bars of the holding cell window. It would land behind the barred door, not ten feet from where the dispatcher ruled over the front of the station. Surely she would see it and take it into safe custody-if she didn't hit the panic button.
Looking through the depths of the oak leaves to the cell window, Dulcie was in favor of that route. "We drop it down there, no one outside on the street is going to see it and pick it up."
"Right," Joe said, padding along the branch to the barred window and peering down inside. "Except that the cell's occupied. Can't you smell him?" He twitched his nose, flehming at the scent-but then, that cell never smelled like a flower garden.
Below them, stretched out on the bunk lay a rumpled, sleeping body, his arms flailed out, one hand resting on the floor. A tall, thin guy maybe in his late twenties, with long dirty hair, dirty ragged clothes, and a handlebar mustache. He did not look or smell like someone they wanted to trust with the evidence. Even if he was indeed asleep, the thud of the dropping package would very likely wake him.
"Maybe he's just been arrested," Dulcie said. "Maybe he's waiting to be booked, then they'll take him on back to the jail."
"And maybe not," Joe said. "Do you see anyone down there getting ready to book him?" Beyond the bars of the holding cell door, the area around the dispatcher's counter and the booking counter was empty. They saw only the dispatcher herself in her open cubicle, talking on the radio, apparently to an officer who, somewhere in the village, was just leaving the scene of a settled domestic dispute-always a touchy call.
Dulcie watched the drunk sleeping below them. "I'll take the package in. I can drop down there with it, a lot quieter than we can toss it. I can haul it through the barred door without waking him, without anyone seeing me."
"And what if he isn't asleep? What a story he'd have to tell the cops, to trade for a quick release. 'I know how that package got in here, officer. I saw a cat drop down in here carrying that thing in its mouth.'"
"He's drunk, Joe. They're going to believe him? I can be in there and down the hall to Harper's office before his boozy head clears, before he figures out what he saw."
"And even if no one sees you, Dulcie, when Harper finds the evidence deposited neatly on his desk, what then? He won't ask how it got past the dispatcher? And past his new, state-of-the-art security system? He won't start suspecting one of his own officers?" He stared at Dulcie. "He starts suspecting Garza or Davis, who both know he wants those bills. Then it would hit the fan."
"He's going to ask questions anyway."
"He isn't going to ask questions if it isn't found inside."
"But…"
"Wait," Joe said. "Someone's coming."
And, like Diana smiling on sainted lovers, good luck smiled on the two cats. They watched Officer Brennan coming down the hall, his uniform tight over his protruding stomach.
Below them, metal clanged against metal as Brennan opened the barred door, hustled the drunk awake, and marched him out of the cell. The guy half fell against the dispatcher's counter, staggered against the booking counter, then stumbled away in front of Brennan, down the hall toward the back door and the jail.
The minute he was gone the cats hauled the package through the oak tree's snatching foliage and over the sill and shoved it through the bars. It fell with a hushing, sliding thump just inside the cell door that brought the dispatcher to her feet, startled.
This particular dispatcher was a full-fledged officer. She was armed, and she approached the cell with her hand on her holstered weapon. Above her, the gun-shy cats backed away up the tree. They could just see her studying the packet then staring above her, searching the high, open window. Then she whirled away, back to her station. They heard her quick footsteps, then the building's shrill alarm.
Officers came running from the back offices, and out the front door. Before the cats could leap across the moonlit roofs to freedom, cops were swarming out wielding handheld searchlights, shining them toward the roof and into the tree. They hunched down deep among the deepest leaves, their reflective eyes tight shut.
Beside Dulcie, the kit was not secretly smiling at the commotion, as she usually would be. Her tail was not twitching and dancing with excitement. She was deeply quiet. The kit's grieving worried Dulcie.
When the torches swung away at last, to sweep on across the parking lot and gardens, within the prickly leaves the three cats peered out. Below them, patrol cars had swung around from the back of the building to angle across the driveways and along the street, blocking the escape of all other vehicles. And officers on foot surrounded the gardens, their searchlights leaping from bush to bush and into the parked cars. The lights shone across the moon-bright roofs behind the cats. They were trapped like three treed possums.
But while the cats crouched within the heavy oak leaves wishing the moonlight and searchlights would vanish, wishing mightily for absolute darkness, Kate Osborne was doing her best to avoid the dark.
She had left work a bit late, finishing up some ordering and some computer sketches. It was just six thirty, but she was so tired and so ravenously hungry that she hardly cared if tonight a whole battalion of strangers followed her. Going down the elevator from her office to the parking garage, slipping quickly into her car and pulling out into the lighted street, half of her wanted to go straight home, wolf down a sandwich, and fall into bed. The other half wanted a nice, warming dinner that she didn't have to lift a hand over, wanted to sit at a cozy table and be waited on-wanted not to be alone for a while longer, but to remain safely among people.