She sighed. "Maybe you're right." She rose, prepared to jump down.

"Dulcie, believe me. If you go in there now, we might never get out of here. Not in time to see what Wark and Jimmie are up to."

"I suppose," she said, and settled back beside him, into the warm nest. "But I hate knowing she's worried about me."

He put his paw around her, laying his front leg over her shoulder, and licked her ear. "Do you think I don't feel bad because Clyde's worrying?" He yawned. "Go to sleep, Dulcie. There's nothing we can do about it; they'll just have to worry." He gave her a final lick, a little squeeze, and in an instant he was asleep.

Dulcie lay awake a long time, listening to Joe's faint, tomcat snoring. She longed to pad into the bedroom and snuggle down with Wilma. She had slept with Wilma ever since she was a tiny kitten, when Wilma brought her home, separating her from her litter because the bigger kittens kept pushing her out and wouldn't let her eat. She had vague memories of fighting those bigger kittens, but she never won.

She had slept in a little box, lined with something soft. At night, Wilma put the box beside her pillow, and whenever Dulcie woke hungry, Wilma would rise and go out to the kitchen to warm some milk for her. It didn't taste like the regular bottled milk tasted, that they used now. She supposed it was kitten formula, like in the ads on TV.

When she was big enough so Wilma wouldn't roll on her and crush her, she'd slept right on Wilma's pillow snuggled against her shoulder, into Wilma's long hair.

That was when Wilma first started reading to her, when she was snuggled on the bed late at night with her head on Wilma's hair.

She thought warily about the morning to come, when they would break into the automotive agency. She was just as curious as Joe was, about what those men were up to. But she thought she was more scared than Joe.

She wasn't afraid of dogs or other cats, but people could frighten her; and the automotive shop looked to her, when she hunted near it along the side streets, like a huge prison.

The idea of getting trapped within those high walls, of being cornered there by Lee Wark, was not pleasant.

But they had to do it. This was the only way she knew to stop Wark from pursuing them. Get the goods on him. Somehow, get him arrested. Then maybe the police would figure out about the murder, too, and Wark would be locked up for good.

But she couldn't sleep for thinking of being trapped inside that huge building. She tried to purr to calm herself, but she could only stir a small, uncertain growl. And she didn't sleep-she lay awake until time to wake Joe.

The Molena Point Police Bureau was in the center of the village, occupying the south wing of the courthouse. It was, like many Molena Point business buildings, a Spanish-style stucco structure with a heavy, red tile roof. The tower of the courthouse rose above it to its right, its peaked red roof the tallest point in the village.

At the curb before the front, glass door into the police station, two patrol units were parked. Identical units filled the back parking lot behind the building. There was a small public parking area directly in front of the courthouse. There, Clyde snagged the last space, pulling his red Packard in next to a rusting Suburban. The morning sun was bright. The time was nine-fifteen. From the number of parked cars in the public lot and on the street, he guessed that court was in session.

He left the top down, checking to be sure he hadn't left anything of value on the seat or in the glove compartment. There was nothing valuable behind the seat, only old shoes and junk. Anything deposited back there was quickly mixed with the tangle, and might never be seen again. He kept the outside and the front seat of the car clean. The backseat was no-man's-land, but he hardly ever had more than one passenger. He swung out and headed across the parking lot to meet Max Harper.

Entering the glass door of the police station he passed the fingerprinting bay on his right, beside which stood a stack of boxes labeled copy paper. An office boy was loading the boxes onto a handtruck, three at a time. He saw Harper at the back of the big room, past a tangle of desks where officers, coming off duty, were doing their paperwork. Harper motioned him on back, and rose to fill two Styrofoam cups from the coffeemaker that stood on a table against the wall. Clyde eased back between the desks, stepping over several pairs of rubber boots and around crammed wastebaskets. Who knew why they needed rubber boots in this weather? He wasn't going to ask.

Max Harper was tall and lanky, his thin face prematurely wrinkled, his expression habitually bleak. Though he was no older than Clyde, he joked that he could pass for Clyde's father. They had worked together for two summers, when they were still in their teens, on a cattle ranch north of Salinas. And for several summers they had ridden bulls in the local rodeos, raising a lot of hell, drinking too much.

Clyde reached the back of the room. They talked for a few minutes, then he picked up his coffee and followed Max down the hall toward one of thethree conference rooms, where they could speak privately.

In Clyde's parked car, the cream-colored cat leaped up to the back of the driver's seat and clung, crouching. Looking out past the windshield of the big open car, she watched Clyde head for the police station. She hadn't expected to see him going in there; she had imagined something quite different. She had imagined a clandestine meeting in a back booth of one of the darker bars, or perhaps two cars meeting outside the village on some lone strip of highway. When he disappeared inside, she jumped gingerly out of the car to the blacktop. The jolt hurt, but not as it had last night, when she woke in the vet's cage. She was convinced that there were no broken bones, but only trauma and deep bruises.

Trotting across the parking lot, she stood to the side of the glass front door, peering around the molding to look in.

The room was full of officers, most of them occupied at their desks. Near the front, behind an official-looking counter, two male and one female officer were bent over a book or ledger. She knew from Clyde that Captain Harper wanted to redesign the station, give the separate operations more privacy and security. But Molena Point's mayor was a hard man to deal with, stubborn and shortsighted. Though, from the talk she heard, the mayor was sure to be replaced, come the next election.

She could not see Clyde inside. She backed away from the door and slipped into the bushes that flanked the solid brick wall of the building.

She waited a long time. A woman went in, but she seemed nervous and kept glancing at her feet. A young couple entered but he held the door for her. There was no way a cat could slip past him, unseen.

Finally two officers entered arguing, swinging the door wide and hurrying on in. She nipped in behind their heels and slid behind a stack of brown cartons.

Concealed, out of sight of the preoccupied day watch, she peered out across the floor, studying the tangle of feet and desks and wastebaskets. The metallic bark of the police radio was low, but jarring. She thought communications was in a room to the left. Now she spotted Clyde, she got just a glimpse of him at the back of the room. He was moving away down the hall beside a uniformed officer.

She thought his companion was Max Harper, but who could see much from this angle? Everything was desk legs, human feet in black regulation shoes, and wastebaskets. She studied the room, weighing her options.

She could make a dash between the desks, hoping the preoccupied officers wouldn't notice her. Or she could go around through the courthouse, and in through the back hall. She had used that route from the courthouse the last time she renewed her driver's license. She watched an office boy making his way toward her, pushing a metal handtruck. As he approached the boxes, she hunkered low.