“Why not use your pockets?” I asked.

“Running with thomething heavy in my pocketth is a good way to have my pantth fall down. More comfortable for lying around.”

The phone was the kind that served as a hybrid between a flip-phone and a smartphone, oval and hinged at the top, with up to three ‘windows’ fanning out from the hinge. Low resolution, and not much depth of color, which marked it as maybe ten years old. The panes were scratched and the hinge had what looked like a splinter of a shell from a sunflower seed stuck in it.

“Counts as a computer. Can I look?” Tattletale asked.

Ratcatcher touched the rat that clung to her neck and hid in her tangled hair without looking at it, then nodded, snapping the phone closed, opening it, pressing her thumb to the middle pane, and then handing it over.

“The messages line up to a time you got drunk?” I asked.

“Not thure, but wath it after five?”

“Yes,” Tattletale said. “I found the first one. Six p.m.”

“Then yeth. I wait until five to drink. They thay you’re thuppothed to wait until later in the day to drink. That way you’re not an alcoholic.”

“What time do you get up?” I asked.

“Three or four?” Ratcatcher asked, like she was unsure and wanted my verification.

“In the afternoon?” I asked.

“Yep,” she said, with enough affirm in the affirmative that it felt like she was very satisfied the question when she’d asked me the time had some resolution. “Thleep when I’m tired, eat when I’m hungry, walk when I’m rethtleth. Annoy people when lonely. If I’m hired I work the hours I work, thober.”

“Usually sober,” Tattletale murmured.

Ratcatcher considered, then shrugged and nodded.

Tattletale didn’t look up from the phone. “Were you especially lonely a few weeks ago? We’re trying to figure out if this was you or something bigger.”

“I have company,” Ratcatcher said, touching the rat at her neck again.

“I’m hearing that as a yes, you were lonely.”

Ratcatcher considered, then nodded again. The body language was subtly different from the answer about whether she’d been sober. Less carefree.

“And did you have a prior working history with Countenance?” Tattletale asked.

“This ithn’t fun,” Ratcatcher commented.

“Sorry,” I said.

She shrugged. The rat stirred, moving around behind her neck to the other shoulder. “No. No hithtory. I had a little bit of a cruth. You know when you’re in a bad plathe and any boy with a nice voice and cute butt is nice to you, you get hopeth up?”

Not so much, I thought.

“And these messages, you thought about this sort of thing?” Tattletale asked.

“Doeth it matter?”

“We’re not sure you sent them,” I told her. “People are going around messing with people. Maybe something more insidious.”

Ratcatcher tilted her head to one side. The rat perked up, reaching up to her ear.