Cat In An Alien X-Ray

“Chupacabra tracks!” Louise’s longish jet-black best coat is having an electric static hair attack, she is so outraged. “These dumbskulls are too blind to see the obvious.”

“Look at it their way, Louise. They have already been conditioned to think that the dead guy fell out of the sky or at least a revolving high-rise restaurant-to-be. Who would suspect that an avenging pack of domestic cats would have scratched him up one side and down the other, and his partner-in-crime too, and disarmed them both?”

“The Cat Pack is not composed of domestic cats,” she growls. “We are all feral and semiferal, except for the one indoor lounge lizard of our acquaintance, you. And you are not the boss of us. Ma Barker is.”

“And you are a floating member, as am I. You do your lounge lizarding under a tanning bed by the Crystal Phoenix pool, so that exempts you from true feral status. Whatever the fine points, you all need a link to the ruling human class, and I am the expert at that.”

“You mean the dominant race. Cats rule—dogs just wish they did, and people are fooling themselves.”

“Now is no time to talk politics. I am thinking up a plan to storm this jail of the dead and get a good look at the ancient alien.”

“My testimony is not good enough?”

“I see the big picture, Louise. That is my job. Now, here is the plan. We need to stake out the back entrance and make like we rode in on a Black Maria.”

“A black Maria? What kind of jimsonweed have you been masticating now? You always were of the slacker generation.”

“That is what meat wagons were called back in the day when the classic detectives walked the mean streets.”

“As I recall, we hitched a ride on a meat wagon a while back during one of your so-called self-assigned cases.”

“That was a genuine meat wagon, and that is one place where the mob still operates in Vegas, selling illegal meat.”

“That is not very glamorous. I do not see a revival of the Godfather movies on that subject forthcoming soon.”

“You gotta admit there is a gore quotient.”

“So is there inside. This expedition is not a crabcake walk.”

“It will be.” I say “All we have to do is slip under the next incoming deceased’s gurney and keep pace with it. Morgue attendants have a lot to do at above-the-waist level, which is always a boon to us.”

“But we need to see a body already in the morgue. It will be in a freezer. Those have one-way doors.”