PRECINCT 20: DEAD STRANGE
(Web serial, 2002 - ) - stories by A.R.Yngve
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NATURAL ENEMY
By A.R.Yngve
I
Detective Innis Garris rarely visited the local cop waterhole. He usually felt too tired after a shift to go drinking. But this Thursday, a cold March evening, he went to the Snake & Cross pub because Sergeant Bolland had been nagging him to drop by.
"We're welcoming the new Chief of the Homicide Squad," Bolland said, "and it'd look real bad if you didn't show up. It's a kinda surprise party for her, so we'd appreciate if you don't tell the Captain. She'll be sworn in, according to the tradition."
"Her?"
"Yes, sir."
"Who?"
Bolland shrugged.
"All right," said Garris. "But I can't stay late."
There were no almost female police officers in Precinct 20, so Garris assumed it had to be an outsider.
Garris had asked Captain Collins who the long-anticipated new head of Homicide would be. (The rumor mill had even mentioned Garris himself, despite the fact that Garris had repeatedly turned down any offers for further promotion since he made lieutenant.)
Collins had been unusually tight-lipped: "I shouldn't be saying anything until it's official. The Commissioner and the mayor have been dragging their feet back and forth so long, it's crazy. You'll know when everybody else knows."
And then Collins had given him a strange secretive glance.
So it was a somewhat annoyed Garris who entered the green-painted lobby of the Snake & Cross after work. The entrance was still partially decorated after the recent St. Patrick's Day.
The interior lighting was much gloomier than he had expected, and he could just barely make out the customers. Warily making his way through the crowd, he headed for the bar... when suddenly someone threw a switch and the entire pub lit up.
"SURPRISE!" shouted the entire crew of Precinct 20, and tossed confetti at him. He stood open-mouthed, while a grinning Sergeant Bolland rolled a tray with a large square birthday cake into the room.
"Wife made the cake, so you'd better say you liked it, sir!" On the cake was written in red dye: HAPPY 45th BIRTHDAY GARRIS - ONLY 10 YEARS TO RETIREMENT.
Then they started to sing, and Garris blushed; he wanted to sink through the floor, but his colleagues had him surrounded.
"Speech! Speech!" The call became a chorus. Garris peered around and spotted Collins in a corner of the bar, seated next to a stunning brunette in a conservative dress suit. The new chief of Homicide?
He gave a very brief awkward, stuttering speech and immediately forgot what he had said. Bolland gave him a small wrapped package bearing the label From the Crew Of The 20th, To Our Bashful Bulldog.
Garris mumbled that he wanted to save the present until he got home, but Bolland and the others loudly insisted that he must open it at once. Inside it was a digital camera, the size of his palm.
"Thank you very much," he said, and took a snapshot of his colleagues. In a soft voice he added: "I'll shoot many crooks with this." They laughed.
Ducking handshakes and shoulder-pats afterward, he accepted a slice of cake on a paper-plate and made his way to the captain and the brunette.
"Happy birthday, Innis," said Collins and shook his hand. "Have you met Captain Detective Patricia McKinnick? She came over today from New York. I guess I can tell you now: she's our next Chief of Homicide."
"Detective Garris," said Garris and blinked uncertainly as he faced her.
"Lieutenant detective," Collins corrected him. "He keeps calling himself 'detective' no matter how many times I remind him."
"Hard to believe such a big man can be so modest," Patricia McKinnick said with a slight smile.
Garris shook her pale, thin hand. He noticed that even though she wore trainers, McKinnick was only an inch short of his own six feet. He wondered if she could feel the racing pulse in his hand.
This close, he saw streaks of red, black and grey in her shoulder-long hair. She seemed the cool type, with marked cheekbones, piercing black eyes and light freckles.
"What's a career officer doing in a dead-end district like this?" he asked, and immediately thought it sounded crude. But McKinnick's hand lingered in his for a second, and withdrew slowly. The little smile played on her red-painted lips, wavering. Her reply came after a moment's hesitation.
"Tell the truth, I was looking for a calm and quiet corner of the world. Somewhere with no terrorism, no anthrax scares, no airports... just good old-fashioned murder."
Collins received a phone call and excused himself: he had to go with his wife to a charity stunt at City Hall. "Franklin will take care of the initiation," he said and left.
Garris struggled not to show his concern when McKinnick sized him up with cool, appraising eyes.
"Ma'am... what exactly have they told you about the 20th?"
Her smile died, and she became... Garris couldn't quite interpret it, but settled on "aloof."
"I'll find out, won't I?"
"Well..." He shrugged. "I wish you luck. We need someone to take charge of Homicide."
"The Captain says you've done a splendid job of holding the fort pretty much without his supervision."
Someone interrupted his reply with a loud question. "Were you always a cop, doll?" asked Satten, a detective in the Narcotics department who Garris did not like. Bert Satten was large, wore a big mustache, a flashy suit, and Garris often smelled alcohol on the man's breath during work hours. "I mean, you could've easily been a model."
He moved in so close he practically leaned on McKinnick's shoulder.
She bared her lower teeth in a joyless grin, and turned her back on Satten. "I swear I will never marry a cop again," she said firmly, "much less sleep with one. Your workplace is very old-fashioned, Garris."
"We've got the latest equipment," he began, but was interrupted again by Satten, who was trying to shoulder his way past Garris in a feeble attempt to reach McKinnick.
"I wasn't talking about hardware," she said. "The force. I counted two women in here, none of them ranking higher than sergeant."
Garris hesitated. "I thought no women wanted to work here, before you came. We've got this reputation as a career sink."
"What, the force?"
Satten's alcoholic breath wafted over them both.
"The district. It can get pretty strange. But I'm sure you've seen your share of weird stuff back in New York."
Satten, pushing to get near McKinnick, spilled beer over Garris's sleeve - and Garris snapped. "Goddammit, Bert! Can't you leave us alone?"
The din of conversation in the bar suddenly stopped dead, and the other policemen stared at Garris, McKinnick and the red-faced Satten. In the silence, Satten straightened himself and walked out of the pub.
Franklin, the black officer who headed the Narcotics squad, came over and apologized to McKinnick for Satten's behavior. "I'll have his ass suspended tomorrow," Franklin promised. "I don't want you to think we're running a slack workplace around here, Mrs. McKinnick."
"I don't intend to run a slack department either," she said and shot Garris a piercing glance that sent a cold shiver down his back. "Now, what about this inauguration ritual I heard of? I'm not required to do something obscene, I hope? Because I'm packing heat." She patted the side of her jacket.
Franklin took her aside and explained the ritual which every new head of Homicide had to go through the evening before the job began. Folklore had it that the first man who led the first police precinct in the district, one immigrant named Flann Chulain, was extremely superstitious. He claimed that the "fairy folk" lived underneath the City, and must be appeased unless they might curse the streets.
And by the tradition which Police Captain Chulain founded, all new superior officers must first of all pay tribute to the "fairy folk."
Garris tried to stay awake, but gave up and bid his colleagues goodnight around eleven. Then he walked back to the station to pick up his car. He thought the ritual was silly, and he felt old.
The minute before midnight, Collins and the other officers escorted McKinnick into the street, and to an old sewer grating. She took out all the coins in her wallet, as Collins had instructed her, and held them over the grating. The moon cast a beam of light at them, and she uttered the ritual words.
"For the spirits of Anwynn... the spoils of the living."
She dropped the coins into the grating; the officers cheered and sprayed each other with beer from their bottles and cans.
Somewhere nearby, cats screeched and knocked over a carbage can.
***
"Bert Satten is missing. He hasn't been heard from since he left the pub last night."
It was Franklin who called at seven in the morning. Garris had not gotten out of bed. "Have you tried his cell phone?"
"Yes. An old woman found it in the street, just one block from the pub, around six thirty. She came into the station and gave it to us just a few minutes ago."
Garris thought immediately: What was an old woman doing in the street near the Snake & Cross before seven o'clock on a Friday morning?
"Well, you've got the phone. Check all the calls made to his number since last night. Call every number in its phonebook and ask for Satten, ask if he's called in during the night."
"Whaddya think we've been doing all morning? We haven't gone through his entire phonebook yet, but so far... nothing. My guess is he lost the phone shortly after he left the pub."
"Did you question the woman?"
"She left before we could take a statement. Some crazy homeless person. Reeked of cat piss."
"Have you told McKinnick?"
"No... I wanted it to come from you. I think she's a hardass, Garris. Don't look slow on her first day. Make it a good start."
"We'll find him, Franklin. I promise."
"He's probably sleeping it off somewhere, the son of a bitch."
"I never assume anything. You know that."
Franklin ended the call and Garris thought about what he told McKinnick the night before... that they had the latest hardware. Too bad Satten had been separated from his cell phone. But maybe the coordinates of the phone had been logged somewhere and could be retrieved? He had to ask Melvin, the station's resident tech expert.
He called the station and ordered an APB to all officers in the precinct: Look for missing officer Bert Satten. The bulletin was automatically forwarded by text-message to the listed cell phone numbers of every security guard and traffic cop in the district.
Thirty minutes later, Garris walked out of his apartment and Sergeant Bolland was waiting outside with a patrol car.
"Where do we go, sir? I haven't had time to drive around the area and look for him yet."
"Where is that phone?"
Garris slumped into the front seat and felt, more than the post-birthday blues, a new sense of uncertainty. He had a new boss, and he probably should be attending her first morning briefing at the station. The boss was beautiful and tough, not that he ought to get preoccupied with that. And Satten was not a friend. His instinct told him not to waste precious minutes on a meeting, when a person had just gone missing. The sooner he started looking, the better the chances of finding Satten.
But Satten was not a friend...
He grabbed the radio mike from the dashboard and called for Captain Detective Patricia McKinnick.
"McKinnick speaking," said her voice over the radio.
"This is Garris. Captain, I'm sorry I can't be at the morning briefing. Officer Satten, the man who hassled you at the party, has gone missing. I've got a fresh lead, and with your permission I'll pursue it right now."
Her reply came quickly. "Call me back as soon as you find something. Anything." She gave him her number and cut off.
"Drive," Garris said. "Remember that bag lady on the streets around here, the one who smells real bad, and her clothes are full of cat hair that makes allergic people sneeze when she's nearby?"
"The cat lady," Bolland said. "I don't remember her name, but I've seen her a few times. Shopkeepers call in and complain about her every now and then."
Garris snapped his fingers. "Got the number to the district welfare office?"
***
II
He spoke into the antiquated door-phone, at the front door of a very narrow four-story brownstone building, located in a corner between upper Chippewa and Ratboro.
"Miss Margaret Loch Vey? I'm Detective Innis Garris, Homicide. Can I come in and ask you a few questions, please?"
Garris waited thirty seconds, then tried again. "Miss Marg -"
"What do you want?" said a tinny, strained female voice from the loudspeaker.
"Was it you who delivered a lost cell phone to the local police station early this morning?"
The voice did not reply. "The social worker who knows you, Mrs. Keane, she identified you. We are searching for the missing owner of the phone. Please help us find him."
The door-lock buzzed; Garris grabbed the door-handle and opened. "I'll go alone," he said to Bolland. "We don't want to intimidate her."
"I want to go searching, sir." Bolland sounded just a touch determined. "Let me cruise the area and you can call me as soon as you find out more."
"Good idea. You drive ahead."
The interior of the lobby opened to a lower doorway, which was closed, and a wooden staircase which led to the upper doorway. Nymphs of carved wood, covered by dust, adorned the posts by the foot of the stairs. The place smelled of cat urine and fur.
Garris thanked fate that he wasn't allergic.
The door by the top of the stairs creaked open, and a gray-headed lady peeked out. She stared down at him with owlish, bewildered eyes and Garris thought: Oh boy. I hope she's not too senile to answer questions. Just be your natural affable self, old man.
As he climbed the steps, treading on a faded, frayed carpet, several cats emerged from the open doorway and lined up on the uppermost step. They regarded Garris quietly, with their tails raised high. The posts that supported the rail had been deeply etched by their claw-marks, and Garris thought the stairs wobbled just a bit beneath his feet.
Their eyes...
He couldn't quite put his finger on what was odd about the cats' eyes - their shape, maybe, or their unusually pale yellow hue. Then his attention fixed on Ms. Vey. According to the social worker Garris had called, Vey was only 55 years old.
Now that he saw her face to face - short, forward-stooping, with unkempt shoulder-long gray hair, very pale, wearing a lavender-colored sweater, rumpled jogging pants and slippers with holes in them - he would have guessed her age at 60-70.
And she did reek of some sour organic smell. Surrounded by a dozen cats, she pressed her arms against her stomach and refused to shake hands.
"I won't take up much of your time, Ms. Vey," said Garris and spoke as softly as he could. "But we just wanted to know where and when you found that phone -"
"You are a dog person, aren't you?"
He smiled sheepishly. "Well, I had a dog once..."
"That's just what I thought," she said and nodded, not to him but perhaps to her cats. Garris noticed how the cats stayed one foot away from him, and did not try to touch his legs. "That's right. But don't you be scared of my kitties. They like you. Don't you, kitties?"
Garris was not going to try and pet the cats to appease her - and the social worker had warned him not to touch them, for health reasons.
"Please, Ms. Vey, we are in sort of a hurry, a man is missing -"
"Call me Margaret," she said. "I'm not senile, you know." She tapped her forehead. "I remember when I found it. I was taking my kitties for a morning walk..."
Ms. Vey bent down and picked up a very large tomcat with gray fur. She held it like a baby, stroking its head, and it purred with its eyes shut. Only then did Garris realize that only grey and black cats were present in the room; they might all be related to the big tomcat.
"That's right, I heard such weird noises from an alley between Bayliss Street, and the Irish pub, and I went to look. The place was full of trash, and I think I heard rats... I saw a few red stains on the ground that looked like blood, and I found a phone. It was one of those models that fold together. I picked it up... I didn't know how to use it, and I was afraid, so I went to the police station two blocks down Chippewa and gave it to the nice black woman behind the front desk."
"I see. Why didn't you remain in the station longer, so that you could answer questions right there and then?"
Vey grinned; she still had all her teeth, yellow but whole. "I couldn't leave my kitties unsupervised, Mr. Garris. I had to buy them breakfast. I have a responsibility for them."
Her gaze aimed right through him; Garris thought he saw signs of dementia in her eyes, which made it hard to judge her sincerity. Painstakingly, he described Bert Satten's appearance and explained that he had probably been drunk at the time, and asked if she had seen him earlier in the night.
She shook her head and a lock of gray hair fell into her face. "I don't leave my house that late, officer. It's not safe. People my age get mugged, you know. By those people from Ratboro, that's right."
Garris frowned, despite his attempts to act non-threatening. "Did you perhaps look out your window in the evening? Do you leave your windows open at night? You might have noticed something that way."
"I'm sorry, officer. I sleep with earplugs to keep out the noise."
He thanked her, and made to leave. When he was halfway down the staircase, she called out: "Officer Garris! I remembered something."
He stopped and looked up at the woman who stooped at the top of the stairs, with the big grey tomcat in her arms. He looked back at Garris with his eyes half-shut.
"That's right, I did see a suspicious dark van drive away from the other end of the alley, toward the midtown district, when I found the phone. Its license plate read... A, T, C, I can't remember the rest."
Garris nodded. "Thank you, Ms. Vey. You have good eyes."
"We all do," she said, in an almost bubbly tone.
He waved goodbye and walked out of the smelly lobby. Right then, his phone beeped. He snapped it up.
"Yes?"
"They found him. He's messed up real bad, sir. Real bad."
"Can he speak?"
There was a pause. Dr. Schmidt's familiar voice sounded over the phone. "Satten's been dead for several hours. I'll have to take the body to the lab for a more thorough examination, but you should know that it has no face. We identified him by the wallet and badge in his pocket. Something chewed off his face, Garris."
Garris swallowed.
"Chewed? You mean, like an animal?"
"Or several animals. Maybe rats, maybe dogs, I can't say right now." Schmidt sounded unusually distressed.
"Don't move the corpse yet. I'll be right over. Where are you?"
"Backus Lane, between the Snake and Cross and Bayliss. Follow the trail of cops, you can't miss it."
Garris ran; he could get there faster on foot than through the morning traffic. A freezing rain began to fall.
***
Minutes later, when Garris arrived at the site of the corpse, the rain had turned to sleet; a layer of slush began to cover the street. He went past the police cordon, which was surrounded by police vehicles, and met Dr. Schmidt.
The pathologist, who usually worked at Antonioni University, sometimes volunteered as coroner at crime scenes. He pointed a flashlight beam into a narrow blind alley, about two feet wide, between two ten-story brick walls. In the gloom, one could glimpse the outline of a dressed corpse lying on a pile of garbage, under the cover of a transparent sheet. The sleet fell on it with a smattering noise.
"I haven't moved it," Schmidt assured him, "but I had to shield it from the rain. Your people are busy sweeping the area for traces, and Franklin's people are knocking on doors in the neighborhood to find witnesses."
"Is he here?"
Behind Garris, McKinnick's sharp voice said: "Nah, Franklin can't stand still. He's searching the neighborhood." He turned around. She was wearing a baggy jumpsuit, a police jacket and her badge around her neck. The baseball cap on McKinnick's head, holding in her long hair, carried the NYPD logo.
"What've you got for me, Garris?"
He showed her his handwritten notes and summed up the interview with Ms. Vey. "She lied to me. I just know it. Maybe she saw or heard something, but she's scared. Think of how she delivered Satten's phone and disappeared. It was a cry for help. I don't believe that story about a van she tacked on at the last minute."
McKinnick nodded. "Okay. Question her again, nicely, and offer protection if she's afraid to give full testimony. Now let's have a look at the body."
Garris, McKinnick and Schmidt had to stand closely together at the mouth of the tiny blind alley. Schmidt gently lifted the sheet and the two officers squatted below him to peer inside. McKinnick took over the flashlight. The scanning flashlight beam fell on Satten's feet, still wearing his brown leather shoes.
The shoes were riddled with parallel scratches and claw marks, and the socks around his ankles had been torn to shreds - together with much of his ankles. The legs of his slacks were nothing more than ribbons, sticking to his bloodied skin.
When the light-beam reached Satten's crotch, McKinnick muttered a curse. Higher up, Satten's shirt and jacket showed the same sign of having been shredded. Finally, Garris aimed the flashlight at what had been Satten's neck and head. Even though Garris had never liked Satten, the sight brought tears to his eyes. He hoped that Satten had been dead before the animals had attacked his body with such unimaginable frenzy. Then he recalled his new digital camera, and took a few snapshots.
He looked away and noticed how pale McKinnick looked.
She instantly retorted: "Your face is pretty green too." She stood up, took a deep breath and told Schmidt: "Let's move the body to the lab before the weather gets worse."
"Wait," said Garris and forced himself to kneel and lean closer, until his nose almost touched Satten's shoes.
A small, dark curved object stuck out of the shoe leather. He got out a pair of pincers and yanked it out, took a photo of it, then put it in one of the miniature plastic bags he always carried in his pocket. When he showed the claw to the others, they recognized it almost instantly.
"A cat's claw," McKinnick said. "Seems like it was torn loose from its owner's paw. Do people often get attacked by alley cats in these parts?"
"No," Garris replied. "Never like this. By the look of him, the body was swarmed by a whole herd of them. I'm not saying cats killed him..."
"You better not," McKinnick said. "I'm not in the mood for jokes today. Walk with me to the station."
He gave the claw to Schmidt. The ambulance personnel came over with a stretcher for the corpse, and McKinnick took a phone call while she and Garris walked back to the police station. Garris got a text-message from Bolland, that he had joined the rest of Homicide and Franklin's narcs in a search of the entire neighborhood.
"It was Franklin," she said. "He thinks Satten was killed by drug dealers because he saw something. Have you told him about the 'mystery van'?"
"I'll log it in my report file," Garris said, and became aware of her sudden telling silence. "Did you want to ask me something, sir?"
"Don't 'sir' me, Garris. Where were you last night after you left the pub?"
An involuntary reflex made him swallow, despite his innocence: the accusation made rational sense and he knew it, just as he knew that he had walked to his car and driven straight home last night.
"I live at the edge of the district. I had the car parked down at the station, and I knew the sidewalk outside the pub was going to be packed, so I left the car at the station's parking lot after work and walked up to the pub.
"Around eleven I walked back, got into my car, drove straight home, went to sleep. The night clerk at the station might've seen me through the security cameras. My colleagues can testify that I'm not in the habit of staying up late. Besides, what's my motive for killing Satten? I didn't know him. Ask his boss. If Franklin had the least bit of suspicion, he'd tell you."
"Only doing my job, lieutenant," McKinnick said - and her smile could frighten children. "So what's your hunch?"
"Gimme a break, we haven't even established a C.O.D. yet."
"I saw the body too. I've seen rat bites in New York, people attacked by dogs, but never like this. Looked like he'd been chewed on by a school of piranhas."
Garris's stomach rumbled; he remembered that his breakfast had consisted of a few spoonfuls of cold porridge eaten out of a can. "Can you hold down an early lunch? We'd better grab some food now, because pretty soon the results of the big search are going to come flooding in, and we'll be spending all day in our offices."
"Sure."
***
They went to the local McDonald's. She ordered a burger, salad and coffee; he ordered three Filet'O Fish, salad, a mug of coffee and ice cream.
"Your stomach must be made of pig-iron," she remarked as Garris began to eat. Deeply buried memories of his marriage stirred in his mind; he immediately pushed them back, and generated a snappy answer to stop himself from remembering more.
"You're not scolding me for eating after a colleague just died?"
"I think you're into comfort food. You didn't drink much at the party."
"So what's your vice?" he said, and gulped down the last bite of his first fish burger.
Her face froze momentarily. Then, with a wry smile: "I'd never tell a colleague."
He still desired to learn why she had voluntarily applied for this obscure precinct instead of staying in New York. Sensing that it might be a sensitive matter, Garris asked another question. "Did you come here by yourself? Without family, I mean?" He indicated the wedding-ring on her finger, and chewed down on his second burger.
"This," she said and held up the hand with the ring, "is to keep other cops at arm's length. Not that it seems to work. I'm happily divorced."
"Get a bigger ring. With a huge diamond on it."
For the first time, Garris heard his new boss laugh.
"Any children?" he asked.
"One daughter. In her teens now. She lives with her father in another town. You?"
"Single. No kids. Well, there was this weird woman a few years ago, who claimed I was the father of her newborn child... but she soon married some other guy and moved out of here."
Garris didn't admit it, but he vaguely hoped that the woman had been telling the truth about the child. As he finished the second burger his mood began to sink again; he thought of his advancing age, how he had virtually no life outside of work, and the sting of recalling his marriage had left a lingering unease. But he wasn't going to bother Patricia with his personal problems... and maybe she had similar problems of her own.
McKinnick began to say something to Garris, when their phones beeped almost simultaneously. She walked away to a corner with the phone to her ear, while Garris sat down.
His call came from Rob Ferment, the pesky tabloid reporter. The intense voice talked in clipped urgent sentences. "Garris, my man!"
"How did you get my new number?"
"Please don't hang up! I can help you with the case. The cop killing. It's all over the town. Loads of witnesses, too. They're calling and mailing the National Surveillor with information about the killer -"
"And you know it's bogus," said Garris. "Your readers say anything to get quoted in your rag. I will end this call in ten seconds."
"C'mon, Garris! We've helped each other in the past! Can you confirm, anonymously, that Bert Satten was found in Backus Lane this morning?"
Garris sighed. "Yes," he said impatiently.
"Can you confirm that he had been partly eaten by a herd of vicious rats before or after his death?"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"One of my sources said he saw this huge flock of big rats, black and grey, come running out of Backus Lane..."
"When?"
"Around eleven, eleven-fifteen last night."
"Listen, Ferment..." Garris halted himself. Would it help or hinder the investigation if the National Surveillor printed some idiotic story about killer rats? Would it keep people off the streets, away from whatever might have killed Satten?
In a slower, deliberate tone he told the reporter: "Pending a complete autopsy of our esteemed colleague Bert Satten's body, we have not yet established whether he died of natural causes, from accident or injury. But it is evident that animals of some kind mutilated his body either before or after his death. For the time being, citizens should be careful to avoid groups of wild animals in the 20th precinct. There's your anonymous police source, Ferment. Happy now?"
"As a bug in a sugar-bowl. Now, here's something that might interest you. Call this guy, Larry Judd..."
***
III
"Mr. Judd? It's Garris, from the police! I called you about your testimony to Rob Ferment..."
The man stepped off the back of the passing garbage truck, and tipped his cap in a greeting. Garris did not try to shake hands, for the man's gloves looked dirty.
The local garbage dump stretched out for acres around them; a light coating of slush had covered the large waste mounds, and the sleet had just stopped falling. They had to shout over the noise of trucks and excavators.
Larry Judd was a skinny, short-haired man of indeterminate age, with squinting eyes set deep into a long, lined face. "My shift ends in a few minutes! Can this wait?"
"Afraid not," said Garris, and wished he had brought a thicker overcoat. The site, located at the northern edge of the city limits, lay close to the bay; a cold breeze blew in from the east. "A police officer died in the city this morning, Mr. Judd. What you say might prove vital to the investigation."
"All right." Judd picked up a handkerchief and wiped his brown-skinned face. "What did that reporter tell you I saw?" He walked to a garage near the fence that surrounded the site, and Garris followed.
"He said you had seen a flock of four-legged animals in the city on your morning shift, last month. Big rats, maybe."
"They didn't have pink tails, of that I'm sure. More like gray. But it was so dark in that alley and they moved so quick, I never got a good look."
"Just tell me, in your own words, what you saw and when."
Judd frowned. "Y'see... my profession, we have kind of a silent peace agreement with the rats. They've always been here, under the ground. As long as they don't try to bite, we leave them alone.
"My usual shift is Chippewa Alley and part of Ratboro. I've been working that beat since 1990, I know the animals and how they behave. The district's got plenty of wild cats, I seem them kill rats now and then, but they're just upholding the balance, see? Culling the herd, like. A city is part of nature and the whole ecosystem."
He gestured toward the vast landscape of garbage. White seabirds circled over it. "You people over in the clean world just don't realize it."
He led Garris into the garage and a cramped heated room with a kitchenette and a dining table. The mixed furniture seemed to be a mishmash of items collected from the garbage outside. Another worker was seated by the table, reading the Surveillor.
Judd took off his gloves, removed his coat and cap, and poured them coffee.
"Around February, things changed. There were much fewer rats in Chippewa than what's normal for this time of the year. And you didn't see as many single cats, either. As if something had scared them off the street."
The other garbage man looked up from his paper. "It's the bird flu. They got the bird flu and died, but the authorities covered it up -"
"Gene, I'm talking, okay?" The other man grunted and returned to his reading. "Anyways, we'd parked the truck in Backus Lane, and I was going for the trash cans. Suddenly, a whole herd of grey animals, rats or cats, appeared from a niche between two walls, and just swarmed the alley. They ran away and disappeared around a corner. It took about two seconds. Didn't make a single noise."
"Did you feel threatened? Did they notice you?"
"Didn't come near me. Maybe they don't like the smell of the truck." He grinned. "Ever hear about the black squirrels in Eastern Europe? The trashmen over there get attacked by whole flocks of them, if they try to take away food the squirrels have claimed for themselves. The animals are getting smarter, I tell ya. We're forcing them to live in our cities, eat our leftovers, listen to us speak, follow us around. You bet they're gonna get smarter. Rats, too. I can see them look at us when we come in the mornings. They don't like us, but they want to feed on our scraps... the little ingrates."
"By the way, who collected the garbage in that area on Friday morning?"
"From Friday to Monday, we don't collect in your district. The city's cut our budget. Lemme show you something."
They went into the garage. Judd opened the door to his truck and showed Garris the gun rack. A sawed-off shotgun was lying there. "Got a permit. Had to say it was for muggers, but it's really in case the rats put up a fight for the garbage. They have their crazy periods. I hope this ain't another one."
***
Garris thanked Judd, gave him his phone number and email address, and asked him to get in touch if he observed anything else on the job. He drove home to take a shower and change his garbage-scented clothes and shoes.
An hour later, when he had dressed and was looking into the fridge for a quick bite, his phone rang. It was McKinnick.
"Did you leak to the press?"
A sinking feeling started in his gut. Should he lie to his new boss and get off to a bad start? He liked her style. It would be stupid to earn her mistrust on day one.
"I wouldn't call it a 'leak.' You're talking about that tabloid rag, the National Surveillor, right? He didn't print my name, did he?"
"No, but I figured it was you, what with the ‘animal attack' angle and the wording of the quote. Now I hear some local DJ is talking about it on his radio show. What were you thinking, Garris? Do you realize it makes us look like a bunch of clowns? We haven't even established a C.O.D. yet, and you talk to the tabloids about rats? Collins didn't have to give me a chewing, all he did was show me the evening edition."
"I expressly did not confirm it was rats. Look, McKinnick, it's in the interest of public safety that -"
"I'm sorry, Garris, but you give me no choice. I'm taking over this investigation. You're off the Satten case. That's an order. And you will not talk to the press about it again, ever, or it's your badge. I'm serious."
"Yes, sir."
"You got another case to work on?"
"Several. There's the Sanford Bay murder..."
"Get back on it. Send me all your notes on the Satten case today. Everything."
"Yes, sir. I will."
"Good. Everyone on the force is itching to find someone to pin Satten's death on. It's always the same thing when 'one of ours' dies. I've seen it before. It's obvious from what happened at the party last night that Satten wasn't popular with the rest of you. In his dossier is a list of complaints about his conduct: drinking problems, conduct unbecoming, failed to show up several times, violent episodes during arrests and questioning of suspects, harassing a female officer... Franklin was going to suspend him."
"That's two female officers, with you."
"Picture this scenario: I finished the initiation ritual around 24:15, and took a cab to my hotel."
"You live in a hotel?"
"Still trying to find an apartment. Let's say the others leave, the pub closes at one in the morning. Someone goes to take a leak in Backus alley, finds Satten passed out and drunk, and decides to get even. The person or persons beat him up and leave him for dead, or dead. It doesn't matter which, because he freezes to death during the night. Then the rats and cats feed on the corpse."
"I don't know anyone who hated him that much, even when drunk. And Satten was the kind of drunk who stays up all night. I never saw or heard that he'd fall asleep outdoors. You got the autopsy report yet?"
"Due tomorrow; your friend Schmidt was nice enough to work the weekend. Why do you use university personnel, anyway?"
"We can't afford better, and they're happy to help. Gives their med students something to do. Many of them want to become 'corpse cops,' because they've seen 'CSI'."
"I don't watch that crap. Is there something about Satten's death that you think I ought to know?"
"Look, even if I suspected a colleague I'm not a rat. Wait, I just remembered - have Melvin check the position of Satten's phone, you can get the data from the phone company. And you should question that Vey woman again. She's hiding something -"
McKinnick's voice had an urgency that came from New York rather than her temper. "You are off the case, Garris. Off, off, off. I've already told Collins. Don't test my patience, is that clear? No 'lone hero cop' bullshit. None, zip, zilch. I mean it."
"Yes, sir."
"You will attend the morning briefing on Monday, and you will be on time."
"Yes, sir."
"Fine. Now take your mind off work this weekend. I want you rested and alert. That's an order."
Ending the conversation came as great relief to Garris. He took a deep breath and rubbed his tense jaw muscles. "Hardass..." But he knew she was right in so many ways.
Before he went to his car, he ate two aspirins. Perhaps, he wondered as he took the elevator down to the street, she was part of his penance.
***
IV
Garris drove to another part of the city, and found a herbal shop that sold catnip in glass jars. He bought two jars and put one in his coat pocket.
He ate dinner out, drove to Chippewa Alley and parked the car by the Roman Catholic chapel. Then he walked to Margaret Loch Vey's house.
Before he did something he might regret later, he needed one question answered.
He spoke into the antiquated door-phone. "Ms. Vey? It's Garris, from the police. Do you have a minute?"
She opened the door herself this time, and stood in the open doorway. "Yes?" Vey's tone of voice hovered between lucid and fractured. "I have nothing more to tell you."
"Just one more question, then I won't bother you again."
Her eyes narrowed. "What?"
"I'm just curious. The cell phone you found... why did you bring it to the police station?"
Vey fluttered her eyelids and smiled uncertainly. "Well, like I said, I found it in the morning and decided there and then that the police might be able to find the owner..."
"Ms. Vey, you said yourself that you were taking your cats for a morning walk. You said you walked into the alley when you heard strange noises. Did your cats follow you?"
He had her now. "I... that's right, they followed me. Not all at once, of course. I usually walk only a third of them at a time. Especially in the spring, when they get a little excited... that's right."
"And what did your cats do when you found that phone lying on the ground? They didn't act strange, do anything unusual, react to anything in their environment?"
Please confess, he thought, giving her the cop stare. I know you've been lying all the time. Confess now and spare me a lot of trouble. You were returning to the scene of the crime, weren't you? It's a cliché, but there's a lot of truth to it. After your cats came home at night all bloodied up and licking their lips, you got nervous and thought maybe the victim had survived, called someone on his phone and blabbed.
You had to make sure. So you went back in the morning, found the phone, and checked if he had called 911. But you didn't just leave the phone there. Why?
Garris raised his eyebrows in an expression of surprise: the old woman smiled in a wicked way, like a naughty child who had just committed an act of defiance against the adults.
"You can't arrest me, you know. I'm a harmless little old lady. There's no way I could have overpowered a big grown man. I found the phone and like a good citizen I delivered it to the police. How could I possibly have been involved in anything unlawful? That's right, a guilty person wouldn't have done that."
Garris wanted to groan out loud. If that was her half-assed idea of establishing an alibi, she had to be senile.
With as much calm as he could muster, he said: "You must stop them, Ms. Vey. When they get hungry again, they will go hunting again."
"Are you saying I don't have them under control?"
"Do you?"
The childlike smirking stopped. "Cats are intelligent. They understand what I say."
"You know what has to be done when wild animals start attacking humans... don't you?"
She made an angry grimace. "I won't let you shoot my kitties! They're mine. I'll take them away somewhere and release them if you try."
"I don't think that's a good idea. Please. I appeal to your sense of civic responsibility -"
She clasped her forehead. "My head hurts. I'm very tired, officer. Can you please let me have my beauty sleep?"
With an effort, he bid her goodnight without raising his voice, and left. As the door shut, he glimpsed many cats gathering behind her.
He crossed the street and walked back to his parked car. He never heard the cats come after him, but when he glanced behind him, he saw the reflexes of their eyes as they crossed the dark street. Traffic was light on Chippewa Alley on Friday nights; the cats ran but were in no danger of being run over.
There seemed to be at least a hundred of them, milling after him in a tightly packed herd, without a sound.
Garris gasped; he couldn't believe that so many cats could run so quietly.
His heart raced and he ran mindlessly - until he remembered the jar in his pocket. His fingers seemed to move in slow-motion as they struggled with the lid; it was tightly screwed on and his sweaty fingers kept slipping. Then he gave up and tossed the unopened jar at the pavement. The catnip scattered, and the cats stopped their pursuit to sniff and roll in it.
A breathless Garris reached his car, unlocked it and locked himself in it. He had to sit and catch his breath for a minute before he could drive away.
He wanted to make a phone call, but it wasn't safe; calls could be traced. In a phonebook, he found the addresses he needed.
***
When Garris attended the Monday morning briefing at the precinct station he was alert and rested, with two cups of coffee in his belly.
All of Precinct 20's squads had gathered in the briefing room - minus Satten and one officer who had called in sick. Captain Collins sat next to McKinnick, who stood up before the blackboard. She wore a full, dark-blue uniform; her long multicolored hair was plaited into a neck braid.
The other officers had not taken the weekend off. The wall behind her had been completely covered with their photos, street maps, printouts and handwritten notes. She had spent Sunday compiling and analyzing the material.
With a pointer, she tapped the TV set in the corner and turned on the VCR.
The tape came from a surveillance camera placed outside a shop across the street from the Snake & Cross. She played the tape on fast-forward; hours passed rapidly as pedestrians and traffic flitted past the camera; windows and streetlights lit up.
As the time counter on the screen raced toward the fateful moment on Thursday night, the street empted of people; buses passed by. She pressed PLAY and Satten rambled out of the pub's front entrance. He walked toward the Eastern entry to Backus Lane, and disappeared from view behind a car in motion. When the car had passed the camera, Satten was gone.
McKinnick froze the frame; the timer read 22:46.
Garris thought: Which still makes me a suspect. I left at eleven.
McKinnick pointed to the autopsy photos that covered one sheet of pasteboard. "The cause of death was not the claw marks and bite marks. Most of them were inflicted after he died - from choking on his own vomit."
Garris glanced at Franklin, whose face visibly reddened under his dark skin; the man's lips moved, and Garris imagined that Franklin was muttering "F***ing drunk."
McKinnick held up a transparent evidence bag. It was full of small grey hairs. "Forensics found this cat hair in his mouth. By the way, something had chewed off his tongue. But it was almost certainly the cat hair that made him choke on vomit. Bert Satten was highly allergic to cats."
Garris raised a hand. "Did you spot anything odd on the tape between 2300 and 23:15?"
She gave him a blank look and played that segment of the surveillance tape. At the 23:01 mark, a silhouette that clearly resembled Garris left the pub. It walked past the entrance to Backus Lane and continued down south, headed for the police station not far away.
"Keep playing," he said, leaning forward.
Everyone in the room followed the rest of the tape. The street had darkened so much that pedestrians showed only as gray-black figures. The timer reached 23:13.
"Freeze!" he said. "Rewind a sec. There. Can you zoom in on the alley, please?"
They all scrutinized the frozen image. The eastward mouth of Backus Lane, a tall black rectangle that seemed to swallow the streetlights, seemed empty at first. McKinnick worked the remote and found the ZOOM button. The black rectangle swelled to double size. At its bottom, a cluster of speed-blurred white dots, as tiny as fireflies, were emerging from of it.
"Those are animal eyes, reflecting the light."
She made the tape crawl three frames forward, and the dots seemed to rush out onto the sidewalk and scatter into the shadows on ground level. The image was too grainy and dark to make out individual animal shapes in the distance. They seemed to be moving too fast for rats.
"Does this tape run through the entire night and morning?"
He realized suddenly that McKinnick was glaring at him, and he leaned back on his chair.
She said: "The security company could only give us tapes from eight in the evening to four in the morning. I have seen them all. I have read the testimonies from all the residents we questioned in the neighborhood. No one was seen entering the alley after Satten did. Dr. Schmidt noted that Satten's bladder had been mostly emptied, so he probably went to take a leak. His lungs contained a good deal of vomit.
"Our IT expert has been in contact with the phone companies." She glanced at Melvin, who smiled back from the second row; he seemed almost smitten with her. "They gave us the approximate location of Satten's phone after he left the pub. Within a margin of error of about one block, the phone never moved further from the body than to this station. That is, when the little old lady who lives around here delivered the phone Friday morning.
"The cats came, one of them jumped him in the dark, he got some hairs in his mouth, gagged, threw up. His death was caused by a combination of accident, intoxication, allergic reaction, choking and possibly hypothermic shock. The mutilation by animals occurred during the rest of the night. He was probably dead before the rest of us left the pub. Case closed."
"Did the tapes show that cats or rats entered later, when he was dead?"
Franklin broke in: "They could have come from any of the narrow niches and spaces in the alley, Garris. Rats are not pedestrians. I think this is a satisfactory analysis of the evidence, and I'm relieved we could find such quick closure."
Garris frowned; his mind turned inward. Franklin seemed unhappy but calm. It was understandable that when one of his men had died like this, he wanted a quick, easy and superficially rational explanation.
And of course nobody had liked Satten; finding his possible killer was all about esprit de corps. But Garris did not feel "closure" from hearing the rationalization. The degree of mutilation had been violent and massive.
The shredding of Satten's clothes clearly proved that he had been viciously attacked, not just nibbled... they had removed his face, tongue and genitals because those were the softest parts, the easiest for a pack of small fanged animals to devour...
"Spit it out, Garris," said McKinnick. "What are you thinking?"
In his younger, more ambitious days he would have spoken his mind: The city's health and sanitation department must be warned that we have animals running around that may have developed a taste for human flesh. Satten wasn't attacked out of fear or aggression. He was prey for a new breed of urban cats.
Or rather, they represented the return of our natural enemy of the savannah we once came from...
The older, shyer Garris bowed his head and said to the assembled personnel: "I was wrong to talk to the press on Friday. It was meant as a return favor for a source I received, and I realize my error. If Collins or McKinnick choose to take disciplinary action, I will not protest it." He looked directly at her. "You did a great job taking the lead in this investigation."
McKinnick seemed phased for a few seconds. Then she nodded her approval. "Thank you, Garris. You're as good a cop as everyone told me."
The meeting broke up, Franklin shook hands with everybody and thanked McKinnick. Collins said he would go and bring the good news to the city's chief of police at once, and that he was going to recommend McKinnick for promotion.
When the others had left the room, she approached Garris. He stood by a window and observed the city.
"I used to smoke," he said. "I didn't quit because I have strength of character. I just outgrew the habit."
"That was quite a performance you gave," she said. "I hope they believed it, because I didn't. You're still worried about killer animals running loose."
"Yes. And it would take too much time to contain them through the Health and Sanitation department. Not to mention the animal rights' activists getting all worked up. Vey isn't the only person in town who thinks it's okay to have a whole house full of cats."
"So what do you suggest?"
"That you ask no questions, close the Satten investigation and stop worrying about it."
"I said no 'lone hero cop' business."
"I'm not going after Vey."
"I see." She sighed. "Need any help with your work?"
He smiled a little. "Yeah. I'm a bit short on cash right now. Could you get me a raise?"
"That was fast," she remarked. "We'll see. I'm only doing my job, Garris. Let the social workers and the bureaucrats take care of that crazy old cat lady. There's one like her in every precinct. We have bigger fish to fry."
"Right."
He checked the time on the wall clock, and excused himself.
***
Garris walked briskly down the station's front steps and stopped on the sidewalk. After a few minutes he saw the garbage truck approach from the north, slowly making its way through morning traffic.
The truck drove past the station and made a turn into the driveway leading to the parking lot behind the station. As it turned, Larry Judd stuck his head out the truck's open side window and looked at Garris - and gave him a thumbs-up sign.
Garris nodded and waved back; the truck rumbled out of sight to pick up the station's garbage.
He took a deep breath of the raw, polluted air and walked back inside.
When he crossed the front desk area, he noticed the old Vey woman standing by the desk. She was talking in an insistent, loud voice to Melvin Keck, the officer on desk duty. The bespectacled, thirtyish Melvin looked uncomfortable; it was not his usual job to deal with the public face to face.
"You have to catch the killers who did this," said Vey. "All my little kitties are dead. Poisoned! Someone put out poisoned fish around my house at night! Don't you see? You have to catch the ones who did this to my kitties... I am all alone now, too old to start over..."
Garris hunched down and slunk away to his office, trying to avoid the old woman's line of sight. Every time she said "my kitties," it sounded like she meant something else. And he realized another thing now, about those cats.
He could never mention it to Judd, or the other trashmen who had helped out with the money Garris had paid them from his own savings. He could never mention it to his colleagues, because they might seriously suspect he was going crazy over that flaky old woman and her pack of cats...
They all had her eyes.
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