Read The Orange Cat & other Cainsville tales Online
Authors: Kelley Armstrong
The Orange Cat & other Cainsville tales
All rights reserved copyright © 2016 KLA Fricke Inc.
Cover and interior artwork © 2016 Xaviere Daumarie
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Author’s Note
If you’re reading this, it means you bought or library-borrowed a copy of
Betrayals
at release. That’s the only way you can get this mini-collection—my thank you to the readers who’ve jumped on board
Cainsville
.
Starting a new series after finishing a successful one isn’t easy. As business people, we know the smart move is to stick with the tried-and-true. As creative people, though, we know when it’s time to move on to new worlds. For me, the creative part always comes first.
Readers made the switch to
Cainsville
easy. Not everyone moved into my new world, but I expect that—the new place can’t have all the elements every reader loved about the old one. But
Cainsville
gained me new readers, too, and I’ve watched as the series grew to that wonderful stage where readers hotly anticipate the next installment. There are few things more gratifying for an author than that. So to everyone who was awaiting this next voyage into
Cainsville
? Let me say thank you in the best way I can: with stories.
In this mini-collection, you’ll find three tales of Cainsville.
The Orange Cat
is a Gabriel prequel, based on Poe’s
The Black Cat
, and originally published in
Nevermore
.
Bad Publicity
is a Patrick prequel and is brand new.
Lady of the Lake
is a novella, also new for this collection.
Lady of the Lake
is set just after
Deceptions
, when Liv and Ricky take off for a much-needed vacation in Cape Breton. The art here is all original, and provides the first glimpse of my Cainsville crew. All art is by Xaviere Daumarie, who has brought my characters to life for about ten years now. At the back, you’ll find the opening scenes for
Rituals
, the final
Cainsville
novel, coming August 2017. Don’t read it until you’re done
Betrayals
, though!
If you enjoyed this collection, let me know. Maybe I’ll do it again next year
THE ORANGE CAT
“The killing of the cat was unimportant, though not inconsequential,” Gabriel said as his aunt walked into the parlor with a pot of tea in one hand and a plate of cookies in the other.
“You’d better not say that in front of a jury.”
“That I believe the cat’s death played a role in the later crime?” He took a cookie. “Yes, I’m still deciding how to frame that in the defense. It is an important factor, yet it may be difficult to explain.”
“I meant calling the death of a cat unimportant.”
“My client is hardly on trial for killing an animal. I could bargain that down to a misdemeanor. This is felony murder. But it started with the cat.”
“Such things often do.”
Gabriel sipped his tea. “It’s not that sort of crime, where one begins with small animals, and moves up the food chain. That’s a natural progression. The cat? Nothing about the beast was natural.”
When she waited for him to continue, he took his time eating his cookie. She glowered. Then he said, “It began two weeks ago . . .”
#
As Gabriel walked into the office at eight Tuesday morning, he hung out his shingle. That was the common phrase for it, derived from the Old West, when lawyers and doctors would use shingles as business signs. Of course, in 2007 one didn’t hang out a real shingle. One put a brass plate on the door or a discreet sign in the lobby. Unless one was a new lawyer who time-shared the space and literally had to hang out his sign when he started work for the day.
Gabriel Walsh had passed the bar two years ago. To have his own office already did not speak of a brilliant career. It spoke of failure, of being unable to find a position in a law firm and hanging out a shingle in hopes of bringing in clients foolish enough to hire a twenty-five-year-old barrister. Or it did if one actually wanted a position in a firm. Gabriel did not. When he’d finished interning for Mike Quinlan, the lawyer
had
offered him a job. And had breathed an undisguised sigh of relief when Gabriel refused.
“I had to ask,” Quinlan said. “You’re fucking brilliant, and I’d be a fool not to try. But . . .”
He didn’t need to finish that sentence. Gabriel knew what he was. Cold, ruthless and unscrupulous. Also driven, tireless and ambitious. That made him an exemplary defense attorney. It did not make him someone even Mike Quinlan wanted on staff. What Gabriel wanted was Quinlan’s title: Most Notorious Defense Attorney in Chicago. And most successful.
Step one toward achieving that goal was hanging out his shingle in this rented office. Step two would be getting his
own
office. He could afford one. He’d put himself through law school running a gambling ring, where he’d played all the roles, from bookie to loan shark to enforcer—Gabriel did not work well with others. It’d been far more profitable than law, meaning he could easily find the money to rent an office. Yet he’d set his sights on purchasing one of the historic greystones on this very street. The neighborhood was safe and quiet and within a short walk of the Cook County Jail. Until he could justify such a purchase to the IRS, he would share this office. The rent was cheap, which could be explained primarily by the faint chemical smell wafting up from the basement. Gabriel pretended not to notice, promised he would never be in the office between sundown and sunrise, and offered pro bono legal advice to the owner, all of which resulted in a very low monthly rent.
Gabriel had just settled at his desk when a man walked in. Mid-forties. Average height. Above-average weight. Balding. Dressed in a department store suit. Strikingly ordinary.
Seeing Gabriel, the man stepped back out the still-open door and checked the sign.
“Uh, you’re . . . waiting for Mr. Walsh?” he asked Gabriel.
“I am Mr. Walsh.”
Gabriel rose and the man’s gaze rose with him. Then the man stepped back again. At six-four, Gabriel wasn’t simply tall—he was big. Not overweight, though it was easy to slide in that direction if he paid too little attention to his diet and exercise.
“Ben said you were, uh, young. Just caught me off guard there.” A slightly nervous laugh. “He’s the one who recommended you. Benjamin Hall. You helped him out with a problem last year.”
By
helped out with a problem
, he meant
got him off on a DUI charge that put a woman in a wheelchair
. It’d been one of Gabriel’s finer moments. Not setting free a drunk who’d permanently disabled a mother of four—that was nothing to be proud of. But the case had been turned down by Quinlan himself, who’d deemed it unwinnable. Yet Gabriel had won, which got him his first front-page story, his first hate mail and his first full roster of clients.
“Yes, of course,” Gabriel said. Then added, a little belatedly, “How is he?”
He didn’t listen to the answer. He didn’t care, but this was the expected response, so he made it.
“Now I have a problem,” the man continued. “And I’m hoping you can help.”
Gabriel waved him to a chair. He did not offer refreshments. There was a difference between civility and servitude.
“It’s about a cat,” the man said. “I think I might need to kill it.”
“I would advise against that.”
That’ll be one hundred dollars, please, and the door is behind you.
“
Strongly
advise against it?”
Gabriel considered. While he understood that he shouldn’t need to, what he thought was very different, because emotion had no place here. He was a lawyer, not a priest.
“Is the cat a nuisance?”
The man shifted in his seat. “Kind of.”
In other words, not really.
“That is the crux of the matter,” Gabriel said. “If the animal is a danger to you or your children or your own pets, then you could argue it is a nuisance animal. The first step, however, would be to contact animal control. I presume it’s a stray?”
“No, it’s mine.”
“Oh. That, I’m afraid, is a whole different matter, falling under the animal cruelty laws. In that case, I would even more strongly suggest animal control.”
“I’ve taken him to the shelter twice. He comes back.”
“Ah.” Gabriel tapped his pen against his legal pad. “I’m going to need more information then. Why do you wish to get rid of the cat? Is it a health issue? Allergies? Or a financial one, such as medical needs you cannot fulfill?”
“I . . . just want to get rid of it.”
Gabriel waited for a better answer. The man squirmed, then said, “It’s bothering me.”
“Attacking you? Being abnormally noisy?”
“No, it just . . . stares at me. I know that sounds . . .” The man pushed to his feet, and began to pace. “It sounds crazy. But you don’t understand. It just sits there and it stares and it stares. One yellow eye, staring at me all the time.”
“One?”
The man ran a hand through his hair, upsetting the fine balance of his comb over. “It was a mistake.”
“A mistake? You mean the loss of the other eye? You blinded—”
“
Half
blinded. The cat can still see perfectly well. It’s not a big deal.”
Gabriel was not particularly empathetic. All right, not one bit empathetic. But when the man said that, with a plaintive whine in his voice, it was all Gabriel could do not to say,
And if I blinded you in one eye? Would you consider it ‘not a big deal’?
He decided then that he did not like the man. Which had absolutely no bearing on the case—or on his ability to defend him. If it did, Gabriel would have no business at all.
“I was drunk,” the man said. “I came home and it was screeching at me, and I get enough of that from my wife. So I had this penknife in my pocket—”
“I understand,” Gabriel said, which was not true, but comprehending the reasons for a client’s behavior was as unnecessary—and improbable—as liking him. “So you half-blinded the cat and now it follows you about and stares at you accusingly.”
“Not
accusingly
,” the man said. “It’s a cat. It doesn’t think that way.”
“So after half-blinding it, it randomly follows you about. I can see where that would be disconcerting.”
And I don’t blame the cat one bit.
“If you wish my legal advice . . .”
“I do.”
Gabriel scratched numbers on his pad and then turned it toward the man. “That would be my fee for the advice. Any further consultations would be an additional charge.”
The man hesitated at the amount, and then said, “That’s fine.”
“First, you will provide me with the name of the shelter that took the cat. I will obtain confirmation that you did in fact deliver the animal and that it escaped. In the meantime, you will take the cat to a different shelter, for one last attempt to divest yourself of it.”
Gabriel hated to make the next suggestion but saw no reasonable alternative. He continued, “If that fails, you will do what a shelter would have done if unable to find a home for it—have the animal euthanized by a licensed veterinarian. There is no legal issue with euthanizing a healthy cat, but in the event of any such claim, you have proof of your attempts to get it adopted.” While Gabriel could not imagine any legal grounds for complaint, suggesting otherwise would have halved his fee. “Does that sound reasonable?”
“My wife won’t like me putting the cat down.”
“Then I would suggest you don’t tell her. Now, if you could provide your personal details and the name of that shelter . . .”
#
Gabriel made the phone call as soon as the shelter opened for the day. Naturally, the woman who answered did not wish to admit they’d lost the cat—twice. She insisted that the man had been playing some sort of game with them.
“He must have come in and taken the cat out,” she said.
“Is that possible? Anyone can simply wander in and open the cages?”
“Of course not, but we’re a shelter, not a jail. All I know is that the cat was there when we closed for the night and gone when we opened and Mr. Patton insisted it was on his doorstep. Which means not only did it need to open a cage and two locked doors, but it traveled clear across the city in a matter of hours. That is not possible. He must have taken it.”
#
The next morning, Gabriel’s phone rang almost before he had time to put down his briefcase.
“It came back,” Patton said by way of greeting. “I took it all the way out of the damned county and it still came back.”
Which was, Gabriel had to admit, odd. Not entirely impossible, despite what the woman from the shelter had said. Still, very improbable.
“You suggested your wife is fond of the cat. Could she be retrieving it from the shelter?”
“I didn’t tell her where I was going.”
Which did not mean she didn’t know, but Gabriel said, “Then do what you must. Just do it properly, at the appropriate facility, and be sure it’s documented.”
#
Gabriel thought no more of the cat that day. The matter had been dealt with. Naturally, he’d have preferred a conclusion that did not involve the death of an innocent beast. Even more, he’d have preferred a conclusion that didn’t involve the death of a wronged beast, since the blinding of the cat gave it every reason to torment Patton. But more desirable steps had failed, and it came to a choice between a painless death and a more terrible conclusion, with Patton losing his temper, as he had that night with the penknife.
Gabriel arrived at the office the second morning after Patton’s initial visit to hear the phone ringing. As he unlocked the door, it went to voice mail. Then, as he was removing his jacket, it began to ring again.
Gabriel answered. The voice on the other end rattled off an address. Then, “Get here. Now.”
Gabriel recognized Patton more by the home address than his voice, which was thick with rage.
“What has—?”
“I’ll pay double your rate. Just get over here, Walsh. Now.”
#
Gabriel was not in the habit of taking orders from clients. Of course they tried to give them, as if he was the hired help. Which he was, technically, but the balance of power in any relationship was critical. Being young and inexperienced already tilted it out of his favor. He’d wrench it back any way he could, including ignoring such a summons . . . unless the client offered him double his rate and he didn’t actually have an appointment for three hours.
He arrived at Patton’s home, a tiny house in a working-class neighborhood. When he rapped on the front door, Patton called, “Come in!” and Gabriel entered a dark and empty front hall.
“In here!” Patton’s voice came from an adjoining room.
Gabriel paused. He did not carry a weapon. He had many—relics of his youth—but they were in his apartment, security talismans, their existence quite humiliating enough. He’d certainly never carry one. His size usually kept him safe and when it didn’t? Spending one’s teen years living on the streets of Chicago meant one didn’t require weapons to fend off a threat.
He still paused, and when he walked into that room, he angled his entry so he would see Patton before he stepped through the doorway. The man sat on a recliner and stared at the coffee table. And on the table? A huge orange cat. With one good eye.
“Explain this.” Patton jabbed a finger at the feline and then glowered at Gabriel, as if he’d resurrected the creature himself.