SO MUCH FOR A QUIETSaturday night with Maegan. Red and blue lights bounced off all the houses on our street from the three patrol cars that responded to my call while our neighbors watched the flutter of activity in and out of Maegan’s home from their lawns, porches, or big picture windows.
Adrian pulled up in front of the house and shook his head when he got out of his car. “We gotta stop meeting like this,” he said when he joined Jones, Wen, and me on the sidewalk. “Where’s Maegan? Is she okay?” he asked Jones. Why’d he ask him? Did they have a history, Jones and Maegan?
“She’s at my house with Officer Kasey,” I replied, trying to keep the possessiveness I felt out of my voice. “She’s okay; just a little shocked from everything that’s happened in the last thirty hours.” I thought Maegan was taking it better than most people would, but I couldn’t tell if that was a front for me, or just the way she handled things.
“Did you find any prints or evidence to nail this bastard?” Adrian asked me.
“There were no signs of forced entry, and we didn’t find any traces of an intruder in that house. In fact, if the cat hadn’t darted out the front door, we wouldn’t have known that our killer had paid her a visit.”
“Do we really know for sure he was here? Maybe the cat darted in the house when Maegan was letting her dog out before she headed to her parents’ house,” Jones suggested.
“The very same cat that startled her in the alley where the killer left the murder weapon?” I asked him.
“Do we really know it’s the same cat? There are a lot of black cats in the world,” he countered.
“Sure, both things are true, Jones, but my gut tells me that isn’t the case,” I said. “My instincts tell me that the killer lay in wait to observe Maegan’s reaction when she found the evidence. He was close enough to snatch the cat when it ran out of the alley. Then he waited for Maegan to leave, found a way inside her home, and put the cat inside to let her know he was there.”
“I don’t know, man,” Jones hedged. “That seems farfetched to me.”
I blew out a frustrated breath and willed myself not to snap. I was new to the department and making enemies of veteran cops on the force during my first week wasn’t a good idea. “Look—”
“Too much of a coincidence, Jones,” Adrian interrupted, winking to let me know he had my back. I took a few more calming breaths to get my shit under control. “There’s nothing neat and tidy about someone clearly unstable enough to kill. Don’t try to rationalize the irrational. The facts are that someone killed Thom Renzo not long before Maegan arrived at the house. We don’t know if the killer knew Maegan was due to arrive or not. Approximately twenty-four hours later, Maegan finds what we believe is the bloody murder weapon behind her business. Fast forward a few more hours and Maegan returns home to find a strange cat in her house that is either the same cat or similar to the one behind the alley. If we could find the cat, we could check its paws for blood. Did anyone see which way the cat went?”
“Up there,” I replied, pointing to a bare tree in Maegan’s front yard. Of course, the cat was perched close to the top of the huge oak.
“Meow.”
“I’m afraid of heights,” Adrian said.
“I pulled a muscle playing basketball,” Jones added.
“That means you need to shimmy up the tree, Romeo, and grab that cat,” Adrian told me. “Unless you want us to call the fire department. They’ll be happy to flex their muscles for Maegan.”
“Hey, I’m starting to feel better now,” Jones said, moving toward the tree. He suddenly sounded eager to impress Maegan or prevent the firemen from impressing her. I wasn’t happy either way.
I wondered if I was the only one who heard the low growl in my throat. “I can handle this,” I said calmly. I grew up climbing trees and playing rough. I didn’t need some damn do-gooder with a ladder trying to impress my girl. I…My girl?I tabled that thought for later as I made my way to the tree.
I leaped up and grabbed a sturdy branch above my head and pulled myself up until my head and shoulders rose above the limb. I repositioned my hands over the top of the branch, grateful that there wasn’t a layer of ice making my task more difficult, and continued to use my upper body strength to push up until the limb was even with my waist. Then I swung my left leg up and over like a gymnast until I straddled the thick branch.
I carefully got to my feet and reached above me for the next branch and repeated the process. Luckily, the limbs were denser the further I climbed, and I could just step between them like stairs as I got closer to the ball of black fur huddled at the top. The downside to the denser limbs was that they also became thinner. I had to test each limb before I moved onto the next. The cold made them brittle and likelier to break, so I tuned out the pseudo-encouraging words like “don’t fall and break your neck” and “only fifteen more feet to go” from down below.
“Elijah!” Maegan yelled. “What the hell are you doing up there?”
I made sure I had a good grip on the limbs above my head before I looked down at her. She stood on my front porch with her arms crossed over her chest. “I’m trying to interview a witness. What does it look like I’m doing?”
“It looks like you’re taking unnecessary risks with your life,” Maegan fired back. “There’s a much easier way to get that cat out of the tree.”
“How? Ask it nicely?”
“No, smartass.” Even from the distance I could clearly see her eye roll. “Watch and learn.” Maegan marched across both our yards and into her house. She returned less than a minute later with a can of something in her hand. “Watch yourself,” she warned as she popped the top. “Here, kitty kitty kitty.”
The black cat scrambled down the tree, using my shoulder as a launch pad to leap to the lower limbs. Maegan knelt and placed the can on the porch. The cat had devoured half the contents before I made it back to solid ground.
“Tuna,” I said once I reached the porch and could smell what the cat was wolfing down as fast as it could.
“Works every time.” Maegan stroked the cat’s back and it began to purr, but who could blame it? I’d had those lovely hands on my body and I reacted similarly. “I can feel every rib and vertebra of his spine.”
“How do you know it’s a he?” I asked her.
