The Purrfect Murder

understand men like Mike. Intellectually we know why he did what he did, but emotionally it doesn’t compute. Never will.”
    “Let me let you in on a little secret: it doesn’t compute with a lot of men, either. I find Mike more disgusting than Jonathan Bechtal. Bechtal is a fanatic, a lunatic. Mike abused public trust as well as abusing women. He’s a liar, a thief, in my mind a rapist, and a corrupt official. Anything that breaks down trust in government, to me, is a sin. And God knows, there’s a lot of it out there.”
    “I agree. Without trust you have nothing in any kind of relationship. You know what I see now that I didn’t see before? I see the trust that Harry has with her pets and they have with her. Those animals may well have saved her life.”
    “They did.” Rick’s cell rang and he flipped it open, listened intently, flipped it shut. “Come on, partner.”
    She followed him at a run.
    Closing the squad car door behind her, Coop breathlessly asked, “Penny?”
    “No.” He hit the sirens and roared off. “Mike.”

    They reached the jail. Mike’s crumpled body lay on its side in the outdoor exercise area. His bloodshot eyes testified to strangulation even before Rick knelt down to examine the bruises on his neck.
    The guard, Sam Demotta, stood helplessly next to the body. “I turned my back for a minute. Chief, honestly. I heard a gurgle and Jonathan had his hands around his throat. I couldn’t stop him. I blew my whistle. By the time Tom got here, Mike was toast.”
    “Snitch,” was all Rick said as he rose, heading toward the cell block.
    Coop followed.
    No need to explain the judgment reserved for snitches in prison, or the armed forces, for that matter.
    Smugly sitting on his bunk, Jonathan did not rise to greet them.
    Rick said, “You kill him?”
    “I did.”
    “Would you like to give me a reason?”
    “Oh,” Jonathan airily commented, “I tossed him a few morsels, knowing he’d run to you when he could, and that way I had reason to kill him. He was a pervert. He deserved to die.”
    Coop said, “Couldn’t you have killed him without tossing him morsels?”
    “I could.” Jonathan spoke patiently, as though to a dim-witted child. “But it’s boring in here. This helped pass the time, and he deserved to die. It’s God’s will, you know.”
    The two law-enforcement officers walked outside the cell block, shutting the door behind them.
    “Jesus Christ, he’s crazy. He’ll get off because he’s crazy!” Coop uttered in total despair.
    “He knows it, too. He’ll be spared the death sentence and spend the rest of his worthless life in a high-security mental ward.” Rick appreciated the twisted prisoner’s intelligence. “And there’s not a damned thing we can do about it. But I am going to do something he doesn’t like, even if we have to strap him down, and I bet we will.”
    He did, too. One hour later, Sam Demotta had the honor of cutting off Jonathan’s beard, then shaving him. Tom had to hold his jaw tight, but they did it. A few cuts appeared on Jonathan’s good-looking face.
    “I should have done that when we first arrested him,” Rick declared. “All right. I want photographs and, Sam, the best one better be in tomorrow’s paper. I’ll call them right now.”
    “They won’t run it,” Coop told him as they hurried to the jail office. “Newspapers always use their own photographer.”
    “They’ll use this, because I am going to tell them that the prisoner is far too dangerous for anyone to be near him and he has killed again.”
    The next day, Friday, October 17, the newspapers, the television news, and the radio carried the story of Mike McElvoy’s murder.
    The photo in the paper startled Benita Wylde. She remembered where she’d seen Jonathan Bechtal.

36
    B enita, good with names and faces, remembered that she had once seen someone who looked like Jonathan Bechtal talking to Kylie Kraft outside Will’s office. Benita had gone by to drop off a salad for Will since he was being careful about his eating habits.
    She also remembered that when Kylie came back into the office after only minutes outside, she made a crack about men not understanding that no means no. Given Kylie’s ever-changing string of boyfriends, Benita had discounted it.
    However, Kylie had seen the photo in the paper, too. Taking no chances, she was at the airport one half hour after seeing the picture.
             
    By the time Rick and Cooper reached