The Death Of Blue Mountain Cat Part 25

"Hold on a minute," Thinnes told him. He went back into West's bedroom, to the closet where he'd seen what looked like clean laundry. There were towels folded beneath the other stuff. He pulled out three and brought them back to Noir. "I'll owe you one."

Noir swallowed whatever he was going to say and took the towels. He stalked off, with the dog trailing.

Bendix had finished with the scene and hauled his box of tricks away, and the coppers had packed West up and s.h.i.+pped him by the time Noir returned with the dog. He waited with it in the hall. The animal was wet but clean. Noir had changed his leather duty gloves for latex. His uniform was damp and splattered with what Thinnes hoped was just mud.

"I used up all my disinfectant," Noir told him. "And they're going to be able to skate down the alley. Oh, and I tossed the towels."

"Thanks, Noir." Thinnes pulled out his wallet and extracted a ten. "This cover cleaning your uniform?"

Noir looked surprised, then as if he wanted to say something. He did say, "Yeah, thanks," as he took the bill.

Thinnes handed him a twenty. "You and Azul have one on me when you get off."

"Thanks," he said again. This time he sounded like he meant it. He pocketed the money. "What do you want me to do with the dog?"

It was still sitting where Noir had parked it when they'd come back from its bath.

Thinnes got out his keys. "Put him in the back of my car. And start it up so he doesn't freeze. We'll be down in a minute. Oh, and give Animal Control another call. Tell 'em to pick him up at Area Three."

Before Noir could comply, Bendix came back into the hall. "Thinnes, you-" He broke off when he spotted the dog, then grinned slyly. "That a witness?"

"What do you want, Bendix?"

Bendix never pa.s.sed up a chance to get his licks in. "It's your offender in the Uptown case, isn't it? Great detective work, Thinnes. You got him cold-for littering, anyway. And if you play your cards right, maybe even conspiracy to commit loitering."

Noir folded his arms across his chest and covered his mouth with one hand, but he still couldn't stop his shoulders shaking as he laughed. Thinnes glared at him, and he turned quickly toward the door Bendix had entered by. The dog was up and after him like an obedience-trial champ.

Thinnes turned on Bendix. "What?"

Bendix checked the hall, then said, "I been thinking. Even though this looks like a busted pipe, I'll bet it was murder."

Oster came out of the apartment to stand in the doorway. Folding his arms, he leaned against the jamb. His presence seemed to make Bendix more belligerent.

"Twenty bucks!" Bendix said. He pulled out his wallet, removed a twenty, and waved it in front of Thinnes.

Thinnes said, "You're on!"

Bendix handed the bill to Oster. "You can hold it."

Oster took the money and shrugged. Thinnes got out his wallet. He had a twenty and a five left; he gave Oster the twenty. Bendix turned and walked away.

Noir and Azul were sitting in their squad, making sure the Caprice was safe from car thieves and dognappers. Oster and Thinnes got in it, and Thinnes waved to them. They turned on their lights and took off.

Inside, the Caprice was warm as Florida in August, but the car smelled like the wet dog s.h.i.+vering on the backseat. It figured. Thinnes turned off the heat and cracked the window before he pulled away from the curb.

When they'd gone about eight blocks, Oster put his hands over his face and said, "Christ! Six more hours."

Until quitting time.

"You could call in sick, Carl."

Oster thought it over. "Nah. I'll be okay soon as I get some coffee in me."

The long silence, as they drove, was interrupted when the dog thumped its tail against the backseat. Oster twisted around to look at it. "Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d probably hasn't eaten in days. Maybe we oughta swing by McDonald's and get him something."

Thinnes had been trying to figure out why Bendix would make a sucker bet, when West obviously died of natural causes. He dragged his attention back to the car. "Huhn?" McDonald's. "McDonald's?"

Oster gave him a hurt, you-weren't-paying-attention-again look.

"Why don't you just take the d.a.m.n thing home with you, Carl?" They came even with Addison, and Thinnes turned west. Toward McDonald's.

"Can't. My daughter's allergic."

"How's that working out?" He stopped for the light at Western.

"So far, so good." Oster looked out the window as he answered. Even at 10:30 P.M. there were plenty of people out and about, and a fair amount of traffic on both Addison and Western. "She seems to have ditched her att.i.tude with the b.u.m." The light changed, and the car started forward. "It's like having my little girl back."

Neither of them said anything more until Thinnes stopped to give their order at McDonald's drive-up. He looked back at the dog and said, "What do you want?"

The dog wagged its tail.

Oster started to take out his wallet, but Thinnes beat him to it. "Just coffee, or d'you want something else?"

Oster sagged back in his seat. "Coffee'll do it."

"A large coffee and a Quarter Pounder," Thinnes said into the speaker. When he pulled up to the pay window, he gave the girl his last bill, a ten. He stuffed the change she gave him into his pocket without counting it. The girl at the next window asked, "Cream or sugar?"

Oster said, "Yeah."

She dropped a handful of paper sugar packets and three plastic cream containers in a cardboard tray that already held a large polystyrene cup and a paper bag decorated for Christmas with the golden arches. When she handed the tray to Thinnes, he pa.s.sed it to Oster and drove on.

The dog was sitting up on the backseat, watching hopefully, brus.h.i.+ng the car door with his tail. Oster balanced the tray on the seat while he unwrapped the Quarter Pounder, broke it in quarters, and offered one to the dog. The animal took it delicately, then swallowed it in one gulp. By the time a break in traffic gave Thinnes the chance to pull onto Addison, the Quarter Pounder was history.

When they got to headquarters, the dog created only slightly less of a stir than a lost toddler. Western and Belmont was, after all, the station where they'd cordoned off a scene with police-line tape so Maggie the duck, a not-so-wild mallard, could incubate her eggs undisturbed in a planter near the door. And the same hardened cops had given the duck and her family a police escort to the river when the hatchlings were ready for their first swim.

Thinnes walked the dog on the little fringe of gra.s.s east of the parking lot before he brought it inside, and before he got it upstairs, four people offered to walk it and three others offered it food. n.o.body wanted to take it home. One of the Property Crimes d.i.c.ks raided Lost and Found for an old coat, so it wouldn't have to lie on the bare squad room floor.

Upstairs, Thinnes put his papers on the table and threw the borrowed coat under it. He tied the dog to a table leg and ordered him to sit on the coat and go to sleep. It did.

"Rossi!" Oster whispered fiercely. He grabbed his McDonald's cup and rushed to the coffee machine, near Rossi's office door.

Both of the Property Crimes d.i.c.ks sitting across the room got up and came over to stand in front of Thinnes. One spread his Tribune out on the table and leaned over it as if fascinated by the story.

"What the h.e.l.l...?" Thinnes said.

"You want to have to explain your friend to the boss?"

As Rossi neared the table, he was distracted by the sound of a large cup of coffee hitting the floor near his office, followed by Oster's resounding, "G.o.dd.a.m.n it!"

The ploy worked. Rossi rushed past the table to survey the damage, and the Property Crimes detectives hurried after him, positioning themselves between him and the sleeping dog.

Rossi muttered a curse and shook his head. "Clean it up," he said, and hurried into his office. Oster went to get some paper towels.

There was something familiar about the name of Abner West's nephew, more than just because he was named after a sainted celebrity. Thinnes got the files out for his three unsolved cases-the dead-Indian cases-and began to page through them. He found what he was looking for in the Uptown Indian file-recently rechristened for Thomas Redbird. "Poke Salad Annie." The drunken bag lady who'd insisted, "Elvis done it," when the beat cop questioned her.

"Carl," Thinnes said, "what do you think would make a long-winded old boozer like West keep his mouth shut about a shooting he witnessed?"

"Fear," Oster said.

"Maybe. But it looks like he was close enough so the shooter must have seen him. What do you think would keep a stone-cold killer, like the one who did Redbird, from killing a long-winded old boozer like West? Just for insurance?"

"They were friends, maybe?"

"According to his neighbors, West didn't have any friends but his dog."

"Kin!" Oster said. "Relatives. 'The kind of b.u.m that's got a prison record.' What was the nephew's name?"

"Elvis Hale."

"Then we got a witness. Poke Salad Annie said Elvis did it."

"I wouldn't want to try to convict anyone on her say-so, but it's a start."

Oster stood up. "I think I'll just go put a wanted-for-questioning out on Elvis, and we'll see what he has to say for himself."

"And get me a copy of his arrest record, will you?"

First watch had begun by the time Thinnes was done working on the preliminary for Abner West's death investigation. He couldn't finish the report until he got the ME's report or the autopsy report-if they decided to do an autopsy. West had been old and sick and under a doctor's care, and there'd been no suspicious circ.u.mstances. Thinnes outlined the case for the watch commander-Rossi'd left by then-and put away his open case files. He had his coat on and was on his way down the stairs when the sergeant called him back.

"Thinnes, you forget something?" He pointed to the table Thinnes had been sitting at to do his paperwork.

Thinnes looked. Under the table, the dog was curled up like a sled dog.

"Animal Control was supposed to come for him," he told the sergeant.

"Well, they didn't. So it's all yours."

"I don't need a dog."

The sergeant shrugged, shook his head, and held his arms away from his sides in an it's-out-of-my-hands gesture. "Well, then you take it to the pound. You're not leavin' it here."

d.a.m.n!

Thinnes went to a phone and called Animal Control.

"Whadda ya mean, when're we gonna show? We sent a truck out for that dog an hour after you called. They said they never heard of any dog."

"Who did you talk to?"

"I don't know. Whoever was on the desk."

Thinnes called down to the District Nineteen desk, even though whoever was on duty when Animal Control allegedly showed would've gone off by now.

When the desk sergeant came on the line, he chuckled. "They probably went to South Cal."

d.a.m.n!

It happened all the time. You told anyone who'd been around a while to go to Area Three, and they went to 3900 South California, which had been Area Three headquarters until January.

Thinnes said, "Thanks," and hung up. He went over to the dog and untied it from the table. "Come on, dog. Animal Control will have to pick you up at my house."

He got home at 9:00 A.M. He stopped by the door to hang his jacket on the newel post, at the foot of the stairs, and put his .38 on the top shelf of the closet. The dog, meanwhile, sat where he told it to, even when Skinner came bounding down the steps, stopped with his fur all fuzzed out, and hissed. He didn't even move when Skinner flew back up faster than he'd come down.

Surprised, Thinnes said, "Good dog." He judged the animal to be just past half-grown; he hadn't seen as much self-control in middle-aged police dogs. When he started toward the kitchen without it, the dog stood and wagged its tail, but stayed put. "Oh, all right. Come on," he told it. The dog was instantly at his heels.

The kitchen was light and cheerful, thanks to Rhonda's flair for decorating and the weeks of OT Thinnes had put in to pay for it. Rob was sitting at the table, breakfast laid out in front of him-milk and cornflakes. There was a banana peel next to his bowl, on one side, and the Sun-Times, open to the funnies, on the other.

"Hi, Dad," he said. "Whose dog?"

"No one's." Thinnes pointed at the dog and it sat. "Animal Control was suppose to pick it up but they never showed. Aren't you late for school?"

"You must be getting old. Don't you remember about Christmas vacation, or didn't they have it in the Stone Age, when you were a kid?"

"No. And I had to walk five miles to school in the snow."

Rob laughed. "Yeah. I'll bet you've got this great bridge you'd like to sell me."

"Actually, it's lakefront property just east of Monroe Harbor. You gonna be here a while?"

"Till ten, anyway."

Thinnes nodded. He got a gla.s.s from the cupboard and filled it from the gallon on the table in front of his son. He drank half of it before going to the phone. When Animal Control answered, he said, "Thinnes. Area Three Detectives. I need a dog picked up." He gave them the address. "Someone'll be here until ten." He hung up. "I'm beat," he told Rob. "Give the dog to Animal Control when they get here, will you?"

"Sure." Rob looked at the dog, who was wagging its tail tentatively. "Can I give him something to eat?"

Thinnes shrugged. "If you walk him afterward."

"What do dogs eat? Can I give him some of Skinhead's food?"

There was something about cat food that was bad for dogs..."It'll give him the runs." Funny the trivia you picked up investigating homicides. "See if there's any meat loaf left. But don't tell your mother what you did with it."

As he left the kitchen, Thinnes looked back to see the dog watching intently while Rob rummaged through the fridge.

Skinner was sitting on the corner of the bed, looking like he owned the place when Thinnes woke up. He came awake enough to think about it and decided Animal Control must have finally picked up the dog. Downstairs, he found a note stuck to the refrigerator: Dad, Gone to Greg's. Back? Love, Rob.