It was possible that someone had stolen the cat. Before Deena had moved in, the apartment had been vacant for a while as it was redecorated. People came and went during that process-painters, plumbers, carpenters, city inspectors. There must have been keys floating around. It would have been easy enough for one of the tradesmen, or even a prospective tenant, to come into possession of one. Deena decided she should have the locks changed. She would call about that tomorrow.
It was hard to imagine someone letting himself in and stealing a cat. And there seemed no way for Empress to have left of her own accord without someone opening a door or window.
Deena picked up the remote from the coffee table, and was about to switch on the TV, when she caught sight of tabby fur beneath the old wing chair across from her.
Empress!
Deena broke into a big grin and forgot her sore legs as she jumped up and crossed the room to scoop up the errant cat.
Empress withdrew from her so she couldn’t be reached. Deena got down on her hands and knees, then lay on the carpet and reached back in the darkness beneath the wing chair and grasped the red leather collar. Empress yowled and scratched her.
Shocked, Deena drew back her hand.
This was odd. Imperious though she was, Empress wasn’t the sort of cat that would bite or scratch the hand that fed and petted her.
Deena moved more carefully, getting down lower now so she could see and wouldn’t be working by feel. She clutched the cat by the loose flesh on the back of its neck and pulled it out.
Empress seemed docile enough now, and made no further attempt to scratch or bite her.
Deena petted the cat, then felt a quiet chill. She hefted Empress in one hand, and looked closely at the collar and tags. Same collar. Same tags. There was the cat’s name: Empress. With Deena’s address. Everything proper.
But Deena knew this wasn’t Empress.
Not the real Empress, anyway.
Deena stared intently at the pattern of gray-striped fur flecked with brown. She saw now what she was sure were slight variations.
Quickly, she put the cat down and watched it hurry back to the wing chair and scoot beneath it.
Not like the sociable if superior Empress.
Deena swiveled her head, frightened now. Knowing she was alone, yet making sure anyway.
Someone must have been in here. He or she had for some reason switched cats, substituting this one, who looked almost exactly like Empress, for Empress.
But why?
There had to be a reason. This was insane.
It was that last thought that terrified her. Maybe it was insane. Either she was going insane, or some insane person had made this substitution.
A practical joke? Deena didn’t think so. She barely knew anyone in New York, much less someone with this kind of sick sense of humor.
Someone had been in here while she was at work. Doing what? Seeing what? Feeling what?
She realized with a sense of dread that she was more afraid of what must have happened than she was sad about the loss of Empress.
She would probably never again see the real Empress. But at least Empress was the kind of cat that could take care of herself, a survivor in the jungle of the city.
Deena told herself to stay calm. There might be a reasonable explanation for all this. Even if there wasn’t one, she had to act as if there might be. Whatever was happening, she’d cope with it. Hadn’t she just made it through an ugly divorce in Chicago?
Another jungle, that city.
It was time to be practical. One thing Deena knew for sure was that, though it wasn’t Empress, she had a cat. She went into the kitchen and got a can of liver-flavored cat food from a cabinet. As she used the electric can opener, she automatically looked toward the kitchen door for Empress to come strutting in.
No cat.
She scooped out the entire can of food into the heavy ceramic bowl on the floor. Surely the pungent scent would draw the shy animal from its shelter beneath the chair.
No cat.
She ran a glass of tap water and poured it into the bowl next to the food bowl. Then she moved to the other side of the kitchen and waited.
No cat.
The wall phone in the kitchen jangled and she went to it and snatched the receiver from its cradle on the second ring.
No one was there.
After a few seconds she heard a click, and then the dial tone.
Deena hurried to her small desk in the living room and checked caller ID on her other phone. She pecked out the unfamiliar number and waited.
Her call was answered on the fifth ring with a man’s tentative, “Hello…”
“Who the hell are you?” Deena asked.
“I don’t think you need to know, lady. Who am I talking to?”
“You know damn well.”
“This is a public phone, dumb-ass. It was ringing so I picked it up. Thought maybe somebody might be in trouble. You in trouble?”
Deena didn’t know what to say.
“Listen, are you in trouble?”
Deena hung up.
Someone was deliberately doing this to her.
Definitely, someone is messing with my mind.
For laughs?
Or something else?
Who do you call about a missing cat that isn’t missing?
No one, she decided. There was no one to call for help. No one who’d believe her, anyway.
… Am I in trouble?
Am I?
27
The Q and A office, 9:15 PM.
Sultry despite the rattling air conditioner mounted in the window with the iron bars, illuminated in yellow light from the glowing desk lamps.
They were talking about murder.
Quinn was behind his desk, leaning back in his swivel chair, his fingers laced behind his head, as he listened to Sal and Harold describe the neighboring super’s sighting of a woman emerging from the boarded-up apartment building where Ann Spellman was later murdered. Then the conversation with Spellman’s neighbor in her building, Audrey Ackenheimer.
Quinn said, “Why do they keep doing it?”
“You mean killing people?” Harold asked.
“No. Why do the neighbors only remember later seeing something that might be useful to us, and then never remember seeing the faces of the possible perpetrators?”
“If they saw the faces, they might remember.”
