Die Again (Rizzoli & Isles, #11)(11)

The tabby’s cries turned frantic as Maura opened the can, releasing its fishy fragrance. She emptied the sardines into a bowl and opened the cardboard box. The cat shot out and attacked the fish so ravenously that the bowl skittered across the kitchen tiles.

“Guess sardines taste better than human, huh?” She stroked the tabby’s back, and his tail arched up in pleasure. She had never owned a cat. She’d never had the time or the inclination to adopt any pet, unless she counted the brief and ultimately tragic experience with the Siamese fighting fish. She wasn’t certain she wanted this pet, either, but here he was, purring like an outboard motor as his tongue licked the china bowl—the same bowl she used for her breakfast cereal. That was a disturbing thing to consider. Man-eating cat. Cross-contamination. She thought of all the diseases that felines were known to harbor: Cat scratch fever. Toxoplasma gondii. Feline leukemia. Rabies and roundworms and salmonella. Cats were veritable cesspools of infection, and one was now eating out of her cereal bowl.

The tabby lapped up the last fragment of sardine and looked up at Maura with crystal-green eyes, his gaze so intent that he seemed to be reading her mind, recognizing a kindred spirit. This is how crazy cat ladies are created, she thought. They look into an animal’s eyes and think they see a soul looking back. And what did this cat see when he looked at Maura? The human with the can opener.

“If only you could talk,” she said. “If only you could tell us what you saw.”

But this tabby was keeping his secrets. He allowed her to give him a few more strokes, then he sauntered away into a corner, where he proceeded to wash himself. So much for feline affection. It was Feed me, now leave me alone. Maybe he truly was the perfect pet for her, both of them loners, unsuited for long-term companionship.

Since he was ignoring her, she ignored him and attended to her own dinner. She slid a leftover casserole of eggplant Parmesan into the oven, poured a glass of Pinot Noir, and sat down at her laptop to upload the photos from the Gott crime scene. On screen she saw once again the gutted body, the face stripped to bone, the blowfly larvae gorged on flesh, and she remembered all too vividly the smells of that house, the hum of the flies. It would not be a pleasant autopsy tomorrow. Slowly she clicked through the images, searching for details that she might have overlooked while at the scene, where the presence of cops and criminalists was a noisy distraction. She saw nothing that was inconsistent with her postmortem interval estimate of four to five days. The extensive injuries to the face, neck, and upper limbs could be attributed to scavenger damage. And that means you, she thought, glancing at the tabby, who was serenely licking his paws. What was his name? She had no idea, but she couldn’t just keep calling him Cat.

The next photo was of the mound of viscera inside the trash can, a congealed mass that she would need to soak and peel apart before she could adequately examine the individual organs. It would be the most repellent part of the autopsy, because it was in the viscera where putrefaction started, where bacteria thrived and multiplied. She clicked through the next few images, then stopped, focusing on yet another view of the viscera in the trash can. The lighting was different in this image because the flash had not gone off, and in the slanting light, new curves and fissures were revealed on the surface.

The doorbell rang.

She wasn’t expecting visitors. Certainly she didn’t expect to find Jane Rizzoli standing on her front porch.

“Thought you might need this,” said Jane, holding out a shopping bag.

“Need what?”

“Kitty litter, and a box of Friskies. Frost feels guilty that you’re the one who got stuck with the cat, so I told him I’d drop this off. Has he torn up your furniture yet?”

“Demolished a can of sardines, that’s about it. Come in, you can see for yourself how he’s doing.”

“Probably a lot better than the other one.”

“Gott’s white cat? What did you do with it?”

“No one can catch it. It’s still hiding somewhere in that house.”

“I hope you gave it some fresh food and water.”

“Frost has taken charge, of course. Claims he can’t stand cats, but you should’ve seen him down on his hands and knees, begging kitty, pretty please! to come out from under the bed. He’ll go back tomorrow and change the litter box.”

“I think he could really use a pet. He’s got to be pretty lonely these days.”

“Is that why you took one home?”

“Of course not. I took him home because …” Maura sighed. “I have no idea why. Because he wouldn’t leave me alone.”

“Yeah, he knows a patsy when he sees one,” Jane said with a laugh as she followed Maura to the kitchen. “There’s the lady who’ll feed me cream and paté.”

In the kitchen Maura stared in dismay at the tabby, who was on top of the kitchen table, his front paws planted on her laptop keyboard. “Shoo,” she snapped. “Get off!”

The cat yawned and rolled onto his side.

Maura scooped him up and dropped him onto the floor. “And stay off.”

“You know, he can’t really hurt your computer,” said Jane.

“It’s not the computer, it’s the table. I eat at that table.” Maura grabbed a sponge, squirted it with spray cleaner, and began wiping the tabletop.