I went around with my flashlight on the ground. I found some footprints, such as they were.
“Anything?” Ringgo asked.
“Yeah.” I showed him one of the prints. “Made with rags tied around his shoes. They’re no good.”
We turned to the fire again.
“This is another show,” I said. “Whoever killed and cleaned the pup knew his stuff; knew it too well to think he could cook him decently like that. The outside will be burnt before the inside’s even warm, and the way he’s put on the spit he’d fall off if you tried to turn him.”
Ringgo’s scowl lightened a bit.
“That’s a little better,” he said. “Having him killed is rotten enough, but I’d hate to think of anybody eating Mickey, or even meaning to.”
“They didn’t,” I assured him. “They were putting on a show. This the sort of thing that’s been happening?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the sense of it?”
He glumly quoted Kavalov:
“Captain Cat-and-mouse.”
I gave him a cigarette, took one myself, and lighted them with a stick from the fire.
He raised his face to the sky, said, “Raining again; let’s go back to the house,” but remained by the fire, staring at the cooking carcass. The stink of scorched meat hung thick around us.