The Unscratchables Page 2

  I turned back up the wharf toward Bud.

  “Get the bodies to the bone house,” I ordered. “Have the tooter towed to forensics. Call Amity Bridge—I want a report on all Lupuses that crossed from Kathattan today. Just in case.”

  “Sure thing, Crusher.”

  “And get the water dogs in. I want the harbor trawled. I want a carcass. I wanna see a dead alley cat.”

  “Where ya gonna be?”

  “Not much I can do till I see those reports, is there? And then I won’t be getting any shut-eye for a long time. So guess where I’m going?”

  “Back to your blankets?”

  I smirked on the way past. “You’re sharper than your snout, Bud.”

  “What if the reports come in early?” he called out.

  But I didn’t even turn. “Let sleeping dogs lie, Bud, let sleeping dogs lie.”

  BUT I DIDN’T snooze well. I couldn’t get the stench of cat out of my nostrils. There was something about this particular stink that wasn’t right. I’m no expert, but I’d sniffed cat blood before, plenty of it. And apart from little things it’s all basically the same: You can smell the fish, you can smell the cream, you can smell the superiority. But what was lingering in my muzzle was rawer than that. It was what a tiger might smell like.

  I lived in the Tenderloin district, a few sprints from the Dog Force HQ in Dishlick. Across the road, on the site of an old sewage treatment plant, the government was building a massive stadium, Peace Park, future home of the Globe Games. But construction had fallen way behind and work packs were hammering and drilling right through the night. The biggest, half-finished grandstand oozed right across the street, throwing my tenement into permanent shade. Sometimes bolts and nails rained down on the roof and some idiot would jolt awake and start barking. Then someone else would join in. Before long the whole block would be yapping. Even worse, the activity attracted packs of hoondogs like moths, swirling around the construction site, snarling and snapping, trying to snatch tools, trying to sneak inside, trying to get caught—anything to beat the boredom of youth.

  I rolled out of bed just before dawn. I was still in my shirt and tie. I did my usual 150 push-ups and sprayed some flea powder down my back. I went outside, puffing clouds of steam, and drained myself against a sapling. There were new scratch marks on my Rover, I saw, and the tires looked nipped. I told myself I’d get a new tooter, but I told myself that every week. I’d do a lot of things next week. When my pups grew up. When vet care was free. When things got better.

  I stopped at an all-night pump. Gas prices had skyrocketed because of the looming Afghan-Persian war. I dribbled less into the tank than I’d sprinkled across the tree, counting on costs to drop a little overnight. Optimism, my pappy used to say, is like a rawhide bone—good to have around when you’ve got nothing else.

  I took breakfast in a little muncheonette three doors down from the cophouse. The place was packed like an egg carton. I plucked the Daily Growl off the rag rack and settled into a smoky corner with a meatball and a coffee. The headline howled BLOODY SLAYINGS SCARE CITY. There was a grainy snap of me bent over the wharf, sniffing blood. Nipper Sweeney had put me in yap-marks: “Probably hoodlums.” Not that I remembered saying that.

  Chester White, an old buddy from academy days, greased past with a quip: “Look good in the scrapbook, Crusher.”

  “Gave up scrapbooks years go, Chesty. The glue was making me dizzy.”

  In the cophouse, still working his toothpick round his snapper, Bud Borzoi was waiting with a couple of folders and a shirt-eating grin. “Get a good snooze, Crusher?”

  “Better than you is my bet. What’ve you got for me?”

  “Registration check on the Lupus. Bogus plates. Got ID on the bodies, too. And we fished a victim out of the soup, just like you said we would.”

  “Settle down, boy.” I dragged him into my office and shut the venetians. “First things first. Did you check with Amity Bridge?”

  “Uh-huh. No Lupuses fitting the description passed from the island in the past twenty-four hours.”

  “Good start.”

  “Then there’s the cat carcass we hooked out of the bay, not far from the wharf. Smells like a real trashmuncher.”

  “ID?”

  “None on him,”

  “From the Cradles?”

  “Could be, Crusher. The body’s in forensics.”

  “What about the ’weilers?”

  “In there too. Dr. Barnabus is having a sniff.”

  “Barnabus? This early?”

  “I called him out of bed. Figured you’d want the best.”

  I grumbled inwardly. Barnabus was the best, sure—problem was he knew it. “Anything turn up so far?”

  “Tongue prints.” Bud looked pleased with himself. “Sixty-percent match.”

  “Just sixty?”

  “The tongues were sandpapered, gangster-style, but it was enough for a trace.”

  He handed over the files and I flipped immediately to the photos.

  “Hell,” I said, “this is Savage Brown and Lucifer Thorn. They used to do bite-and-grind work for Cujo Potenza.”

  “Cujo’s dead, ain’t he?”

  “Run over by a car, well before your time. Ever since then Savage and Lucifer have been doing contract work in the Kennels. Anything for a cookie.”

  Bud sniggered. “No more cookies where they are now.”

  I snapped the folders shut and shoved them back at Bud. “Two known hoodlums, a dead alley cat, and plenty of crime-scene blood—now all we need is a killer.” I yawned and headed for the door. “I’m off to see Barnabus.”

  “Did I do good, Crusher?”

  I looked back at Bud’s dinner-table face. “You’ll know you’ve done good when you don’t need to ask, Bud. Go home and have a flop—it’s your turn now.”

  “Sure you don’t need me?”

  “Can’t see why. This is looking easier than I thought.”

  But in my ears, even as I said it, the sentence sounded hollow as a tennis ball.

  I WASN’T HALFWAY across the squad room when the chief whistled me into his office. I scored an eye roll from Chesty White that said “the chief ain’t happy.” But I wasn’t panicking. The chief and I went back to our airport days, when he was in luggage inspection and I patrolled the fences. We knew each other’s dirty secrets.

  “Close the swinger, McNash.”

  “Something wrong, Chief?”

  “Call it an itch on my rump.”

  “Something I can scratch?”

  “I sure hope so, McNash, for your sake.”

  When he got promoted the chief stopped calling me Crusher. He also stopped eating doodah in the local park. He got braid on his collar and a fancy spread in Baskerville with a backyard big enough to herd sheep in. He took a shampoo every week, had a coat trim every month, and got his nails filed every quarter. He got so much respectability that I even stopped calling him by his first name, Kaiser. But I never forgot what he was—a contraband-sniffing Kraut with a permanent ten o’clock shadow, a rheumy right eye, and breath that would kill a yak.

  “Busy night down in Fly’s Picnic, I hear.” The chief had that show-day stiffness about him.

  “It ain’t over yet,” I said. “I’m on my way to Barnabus right now.”

  “I’ve spoken to Barnabus. He told me Bud Borzoi had called him out of bed.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Barnabus was surprised. And he has every right to be. Summoned to an autopsy by a junior detective?”

  “Barnabus should get with the times.” Inwardly, I cursed the old basset for stirring trouble.

  “Really?” The chief was giving me his German Shepherd killstare. “A double murder? Possibly triple? And the detective-in-charge sends himself home for a snooze?”

  “It was the best thing to do.”

  “Never heard of pouncing on a lead, McNash? While the trail’s still fresh?”

  “It was me who needed to be fresh, Chief. I hadn�
��t flopped in hours.”

  “So you were happy to leave the case in the care of a toothpick chewer, is that it?”

  “I trust the pup like a son.”

  The chief made a growling sound. “Well, did your pup happen to tell you about your choice-cut witness?”

  “Flasha Lightning?” I made sure I didn’t look surprised. “What about him?”

  “Seems Borzoi didn’t put a leash on him quick enough. Soon as heads were turned the whippet bolted out the swinger like his tail was on fire.”

  “No big deal,” I said, quick as a flash myself. “He’d said all he was gonna say. And I figured the cophouse would give him the squirts, anyway.”

  “No kidding?” The chief grunted. “You should check his file—it’s long as a dragline. Snatch-and-run work. Powder-dealing. Even tunnel work for Cujo Potenza.”

  “That a fact?” Some years ago Potenza had tried digging a hole under the Old Yeller to Kathattan from an abandoned storehouse in Ribeye. All sorts of bony mongrels had worked day and night on the operation, only to have the river collapse on the tunnel, washing half of them away. “I figured he was a lowlife.”

  “Point is,” said the chief, “you’ve got a prime witness who’s gone to ground. You’ve got a case that’s already growing mold—it’s in the Growl, for Bacon’s sake—and no leads.”

  I shook my head. “What you got is a dead Tom Doe in the slice-and-dice rooms. You got two ’weilers beside him who aren’t getting any notices in the lost-and-found columns. And a detective with a fresh brainpot who’s gonna get to the bottom of this or he never snoozes again.”

  The chief’s eyes narrowed. “Sound pretty sure of yourself, McNash.”

  “With a clear head I’ll back myself at any odds, Chief. With a furry one…”

  But I didn’t need to say anymore. In one of my first cases as a ranking detective I’d blown a crucial case by flopping asleep on a stakeout. A murderer had jumped clean over the back fence without me even noticing. But what could I do? I hadn’t slept for three days. Not even smelling salts—not even six spoonfuls of coffee—could stop my eyelids dropping. But the fallout stuck to my shoes like you-know-what. The stink never really left the room. I still wasn’t betting on any surprise promotions.

  “All right.” The chief’s leaky right eye had flickered at the memory. “But don’t count on any slack, McNash—not now. We’ve got elections coming up, case you hadn’t noticed. Maybe a new law enforcement commissioner. Whatever. Word in the park is that the SU is in for a shake-up, maybe just for the fun of it. Know what that means? No more naps. No more oversights. Or we both could be back at the airport, sniffing for nitro.”

  “We always did make a dynamite team,” I said, flashing my crocodile smile.

  “On your way, McNash.” The chief jerked a nail. “And don’t show your fat snout until you’ve got some answers. I’m in no mood for jawback.”

  When I left him he was reaching for his rubber worry-bone. The thing was half the size it used to be.

  MY DISLIKE OF Dr. Barnabus didn’t make me any lone wolf. His droopy features matched his personality. His fully flared nose, which made him look constantly in the presence of a bad smell, put even close colleagues on edge. His wrinkly brow, his weary voice, his habit of peering over his half-moon spectacles—his whole air of superiority—gave everyone the feeling he was looking down on them. In short, he was a caustic old fleabag who’d spent far too much time sniffing at dead meat without taking a bite—the sort of discipline that’d send any breed ’round the bend.

  “Teeth marks of 1000 psi in lower sternum…evidence of talon lacerations to esophagus and pylorus…”

  When I entered he was hunched over the bodies, drawling into a hanging microphone. His assistant—a good-smelling Labrador bitch—was taking notes.

  “Multiple fractures of the scapula…scoring of the humerus…”

  I took a look over a huge chrome table where the ’weiler parts were pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle.

  “Bit neater than when I last saw ’em,” I said.

  Barnabus didn’t stop making notes, didn’t even look up. “Observe the number of tooth incisions,” he said to his assistant. “Thirty exactly. Notice the number of premolars—ten. Notice the radius of the bite marks, the character of the scratch marks…”

  “Got a fix on the killer?” I asked, tired of being ignored.

  Barnabus finally raised his wrinkly bobble and stared at me. Ranks of fluorescent tubes glinted in his glasses. “Detective,” he sniffed, “I’ve been here for three hours.” Like it explained everything.

  “And?” I shrugged. “Any theories on the killer?”

  He took off his spectacles and folded them into his top pocket. “Perhaps,” he said, “the detective-in-charge would care to avail us of his own theories?”

  I could tell he was setting me up. “I got no theories. That’s why I’m here.”

  Barnabus frowned like he couldn’t believe it. “The Rottweilers were murdered at approximately nine o’clock last night.” He glanced at a wall ticker. “That’s over ten hours ago. And you mean to tell me the Slaughter Unit’s prime detective has yet to formulate a theory?”

  I didn’t need to field any lip from a carrion-sniffer, but I didn’t need to make trouble for myself either. “You want a theory?” I said. “Okay, cop this. Two ’weiler hoodlums take an alley cat down to the docks. They plug him. Then they get whacked before they get away. Probably an ambush. Any objections so far?”

  “Who?”

  “Who what?”

  “Who killed the Rottweilers?”

  “How would I know? That’s what you do, ain’t it? Sniff out clues?”

  “But you must have some idea by now?”

  I couldn’t work out his game. “A rival gangster. A mad powder dealer. Someone with a serious beef. How would I know?”

  “But a dog—you’re definitely saying it was a dog?”

  “So what?”

  A smirk crept from under Barnabus’s droopy basset jowls. “Detective McNash…these Rottweilers were killed by a cat.”

  I looked at the jigsawed bodies. I looked back at Barnabus. I glanced at the smug-looking Lab assistant. And I snorted. “Gumrot,” I said.

  Barnabus looked extra-waggy now. “The evidence is undeniable. The tooth incisions. The claw marks. The musk.”

  “Musk.” I tried to detect something, but all I could smell was the nasty stink from my nightmares. “You’re telling me this was done by a cat.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “A panther…a lynx…a wildcat?”

  Barnabus shook his head. “A house cat.”

  “No…”

  “Blood and saliva samples have already been dispatched to pathology. If you don’t believe me perhaps the official reports will convince you. The killer you’re looking for is a cat—a particularly large and powerful specimen, admittedly, possibly twice the usual dimensions.”

  “No…” I thought of the “gut-clawing squeal” Flasha Lightning had heard on the wharf…but I just couldn’t swallow it. A worthless alley-cat victim was one thing. But a killer cat, on top of that, meant a major scandal. It meant a detective from Kathattan. It meant the FBI.

  I shook myself. “What about the victim?” I tried. “The Tom Doe hauled out of the harbor?”

  The gleam hadn’t left Barnabus’s eyes. “Ah yes, the fishing haul.”

  He waddled to a second chrome table, where a bloated cat carcass—a common tabby, by the look of him—lay in tattered alley-cat threads.

  “I’m afraid,” said Barnabus, “that you’re going to have to throw your nets a little wider, Detective.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “I mean my preliminary examination suggests that this cat here was not murdered at all.”

  “Drowned?”

  “A stomach full of catnip and toxoplasma medications. I’d suggest suicide.”

  “No bullet holes?”

  “Nothing that killed him.�
��

  “Contusions? Abrasions?”

  “Nothing fresh.”

  “So you’re telling me this cat has no connection to the ’weilers?”

  “I hate to disappoint you, Detective.”

  But he didn’t look disappointed at all. He looked as happy as a butcher. I felt like taking a bite out of his floppy ear, just for irritating me. But I reminded myself that my fighting days were over. So I could only steam, feeling my hackles stiffen.

  “Seems like there’s a lotta work to do,” I said between my teeth.

  “And I’d hate to hold you up,” said Barnabus, already slipping his spectacles back onto his snout.

  “Sure thing,” I gnashed, “I got no time to yap with dry-nosed bassets anyway.”

  When I left the room I heard the old fleabag in the background, returning to his autopsy: “Massive trauma to the lower intestine…detached coccygeal vertebrae…deep fissures in the poststernum…hand me the buzzsaw, Blondie.”

  I SLUNK PAST the chief’s office like I’d just wet the welcome mat. I stopped at my desk long enough to order a new search of Belvedere Bay. Then I called the beagles in Sensory Investigation, telling them to meet me at Fly’s Picnic in thirty small ones. I thumped my chest—that wishbone still hadn’t passed through—and was about to sneak off again when the jangler sounded.

  “McNash.”

  “Crusher, it’s me!” It was Spike, my beta-buddy, and he sounded waggy.

  I kept my voice low. “I told you never to call me on duty.”

  “But it’s about tomorrow’s prizefight!”

  “Listen, Spike, things have—”

  “I got tickets—two tickets!”

  “Tickets?” I lowered my voice again. “To Solidarity Stadium?”

  “Twenty-second row! So close we might get some blood sprayed on us!”

  “Sheesh!” I couldn’t believe it. “Two tickets? How’d you get your fangs on them?”

  “My number came up, Crusher, just like I knew it would!”

  “A raffle?”