Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro 4)

“Yeah. A guy and his girlfriend.” Helene looked up and around at the three-deckers casting their shadows over us.

A window behind us shot open, and we spun toward the sound.

“Jesus Christ,” Helene said.

A woman in her late fifties stuck her head out a second-story window and peered down at us. She held a wooden spoon in one hand, and a strand of linguine fell off the edge and dropped to the alley.

“You the animal people?”

“Ma’am?” Poole squinted up at her.

“The SPCA,” she said and waggled the wooden spoon. “You with them?”

“All five of us?” Angie said.

“I been calling,” the woman said. “I been calling.”

“Pertaining to what?” I asked.

“Pertaining to those friggin’ cats, smart-ass, that’s what. I gotta listen to my grandson Jeffrey whining in one ear and my husband bitching in the other. I look like I got a third ear at the back of my head to listen to those friggin’ cats?”

“No, ma’am,” Poole said. “No third ear I can see.”

Broussard cleared his throat. “Of course, we can only see your front from here, ma’am.”

Angie coughed into her fist and Poole dropped his head, looked at his shoes.

The woman said, “You’re cops. I can tell.”

“What gave it away?” Broussard asked.

“The lack of respect for working people.” The woman slammed the window back down so hard the panes shook.

“We can only see your front.” Poole chuckled.

“You like that?” Broussard turned to the door of the small house and knocked.

I looked in the overstuffed trash cans by the gas meter, saw at least ten small tins of cat food.

Broussard knocked again. “I respect working people,” he said to no one in particular.

“Most times,” Poole agreed.

I looked over at Helene. Why hadn’t Poole and Broussard left her in the car?

Broussard knocked a third time, and a cat yowled from inside.

Broussard stepped back from the door. “Miss McCready?”

“Yeah.”

He pointed at the door. “Would you be so kind as to turn the doorknob?”

Helene gave him a look but did so, and the door opened inward.

Broussard smiled at her. “And would you take one step inside?”

Again, Helene did so.

“Excellent,” Poole said. “See anything?”

She looked back at us. “It’s dark. Smells funny, though.”

Broussard said as he jotted in his notebook, “Citizen stated premises smelled abnormal.” He capped his pen. “Okay. You can come out, Miss McCready.”

Angie and I looked at each other, shook our heads. You had to hand it to Poole and Broussard. By getting Helene to open the door and step in first, they’d avoided the need for a warrant. “Abnormal smell” was good enough for probable cause, and once Helene had opened the door, just about anyone could legally enter.

Helene stepped out onto the cobblestones and looked back up at the window where the woman had complained about the cats.

One of them—an emaciated orange tabby with sharply defined ribs—shot past Broussard and then around me, leaped into the air, landed atop one of the trash cans, and dove its head into the collection of tins I’d seen.

“Guys,” I said.

Poole and Broussard turned from the doorway.

“The cat’s paws. There’s dried blood on them.”

“Oh, gross,” Helene said.

Broussard pointed at her. “You stay here. Don’t move until we call for you.”

She fished in her pockets for her cigarettes. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

Poole stuck his head in the doorway and sniffed. He turned back to Broussard, frowned, and nodded at the same time.

Angie and I came up beside them.

“Bloaters,” Broussard said. “Anyone got cologne or perfume?”

Angie and I shook our heads. Poole produced a small vial of Aramis from his pocket. Until then, I hadn’t known they still manufactured it.

“Aramis?” I said. “What, they were out of Brut?”

Poole raised his eyebrows up and down several times. “Old Spice, too, unfortunately.”

He passed the bottle around, and we each applied it liberally to our upper lips. Angie doused a handkerchief with it as well. Nasty as it smelled as it scorched the insides of my nostrils, it was still preferable to smelling a bloater without anything at all.

Bloaters are what some cops, paramedics, and doctors call bodies that have been dead for a while. Once the body’s gases and acids have been allowed to run rampant after rigor mortis, the body will bloat and balloon and do all sorts of other really appetizing things.

A porch the width of my car greeted us. Winter boots caked with dried salt sat stuck to last February’s newspapers beside a spade with gashes in the wood handle, a rusted hibachi, and a bag of empty beer cans. The thin green rug was ripped apart in several places, and the bloody footprints of several cats had dried into the fabric.

The next room we entered was a living room, and light from the windows was joined by the silver shaft from a TV with the volume turned down. The inside of the house was dark, but gray light came in from the side windows, filling the rooms with a pewter haze that didn’t do much to improve the squalid surroundings. The rugs on the floors were a mismatched shag, patched together with a drug addict’s sense of aesthetics. In several places, you could see the tufts rising in ridges where the sections had been cut and placed side by side. The walls were paneled in blond plywood, and the ceilings flaked white paint. A shredded futon couch sat against the wall, and as we stood in the center of the room, our eyes adjusting to the gray light, I noticed several sets of sparkling eyes brighten from the torn fabric.

A soft electric hum, like cicadas buzzing around a generator, rolled out from the futon, and the several sets of eyes moved in a jagged line.

And then they attacked.

Or at least it seemed that way at first. A dozen high-pitched meows preceded a scratch-and-scramble exodus as the cats—Siamese and calicoes and tabbies and one Hemingway—shot off the couch and over the coffee table, hit the shag carpet sections, burst through our legs, and banged off the baseboards on their way toward the door.

Poole said, “Mother of God,” and hopped up on one leg.

I flattened against the cheap wall, and Angie joined me, and a hunk of thick fur slithered over my foot.

Broussard jerked to his right and then left, whacked at the hem of his suit jacket.