“I have a cat shelter,” Ashe said suddenly. “I can call and check to see if the cat has shown…”
The woman waved Ashe’s worry away.
“No,” she said. “Someone took Oswald.”
My brows rose.
“Oswald’s your cat’s name?” Ashe asked, infusing worry and regret into her tone.
“Yes,” the woman sniffed. “He was taken right off my porch!”
The woman looked around then, eyes going wide, as she bounced her eyes around the neighborhood, waiting for someone to shoot her where she stood for talking to the cops.
And the bad thing was that it could’ve possibly happened.
People ‘got dead’ when they talked to cops in this neighborhood. Even if it was over a cat.
“Can I call you and explain?” the woman suddenly explained, her hands fisting in front of her. “They’re gonna see.”
By ‘they’re’ she meant her neighbors.
Ashe quickly fished out her card.
“Here,” she said. “You can call me.”
I looked at the card she handed out that had her telephone number on it and her information.
Once we were back in the car, we weren’t in it for more than two minutes before the woman called back.
“So it’s like this…” the woman started.
I snorted, causing Ashe to flick me on the forearm with her fingers.
“I was at work and got the notification that someone was at my door,” she said. “Since I was expecting a package, I decided to look at it just to make sure that the UPS guy hid it good. Except, when I looked at the camera feed, I saw that it wasn’t a UPS guy but a man in his twenties. He was picking up Oswald and walking away with him. I tried to talk to him through the doorbell app, but the guy just kept right on walking.”
“What did the guy look like?” Ashe asked, sounding genuinely concerned.
“I can send you the feed,” she said. “But I didn’t get a good look at the guy. I was kind of distracted at work.”
With promises to call if she had any more information, Ashe hung up the call that she had on speakerphone, then turned to me.
“What do you think about that?” she asked curiously.
Before I could answer, something hit the windshield, causing her to flinch.
I’d, of course, seen the man on the side of the road.
I’d also seen his arm swing as if he was about to throw something.
Though I hadn’t expected that ‘something’ to be a dead animal.
“Was that a… was that a dead armadillo they just threw at the cruiser?” she asked, staring at the disgusting stain as if it was a severed hand instead of a smudge.
I turned on the windshield spray and watched as the stain smeared across the whole entire window instead of just on her side.
Gross.
“Yeah,” I answered. “One of the guys had a dead cat and a raccoon thrown at them last week.”
She looked over at me with surprise. “I notice that you didn’t say the raccoon was dead.”
I grinned. “I didn’t.”
“So it was alive?” she gasped.
“Yep,” he said. “It’d been hit by a car but was struggling to live. Was kind of sad, actually.”
Ashe turned her head and faced forward.
“Eleventh Street is disgusting,” she muttered darkly.
“No arguments from me,” I said. “What do you think about the cats?”
According to the woman who had reluctantly spoken with us after Ashe’s testimonial, there’d been a rash of cats going missing all over the South Side.
At least ten that she knew of.
Meaning that someone was out there stealing cats like they steal dogs for dog fighting rings.
Only, cats weren’t going to get them anywhere that I could think of.
“I think…” She paused, her head tilting as she got a look at someone on the side of the road mowing their lawn. “Was that Patman?”
I looked in my rearview mirror. “Yeah. Patman.”
“He lives on Eleventh Street?” she asked in surprise.
Eleventh Street was the city’s worst part of town. If you lived on Eleventh Street, you likely were a badass because you had to go through some shit to stay there.
“Why do you think he’s such an asshole?” I teased. “Eleventh Street has changed him.”
The rest of shift went about as smooth as one could possibly get for a night shift.
Obviously, there were plenty of speeding tickets that I’d handed out. Plenty of warnings as well.
“That woman should’ve gotten a ticket,” Ashe said. “She totally played you.”
I looked at her as I sucked down half of my sweet tea in one gulp.
Why the fuck were the cups so fuckin’ small?
“Why’s that?” I asked curiously.
“She used her bountiful breasts to entice you,” Ashe said. “It was more than obvious.”
It was.
The young woman had done exactly that.
“She knew exactly what she was doing, too.” Ashe rolled her eyes as she took a bite of the lettuce wrap she’d gotten.
I picked up my fork and dug into my salad.
The place that we’d come to was more of a healthy food chain. It wasn’t my favorite place in the world to go, but they did have good salads. And my body probably needed more leafy greens in its life.