The lid of the box did not close fully. Crouching in the black interior, she had seen the cougar looking in. She had prayed so hard she thought her heart would stop, prayed that her black and brown coat was invisible. That the stink of ashes would conceal her scent. They were old, wet ashes, packed deep.

The kit did not know or care that the fires of the nursery hearth, laid down forty years before, had, over generations, been augmented by the fires of hoboes and then of occasional flower children, then of the present-day homeless wandering the Molena Point foothills, seeking shelter on cold nights. But indeed, the accumulated charcoal and lime, sour water and rot and mildew hid many scents from the lion.

The kit cared about none of that. She cared only that she was still alive and uneaten. But when, warily, she slipped out and padded across the nursery to hide herself at its edge, looking down, she forgot even her debilitating fear.

He was down there.

The kit, standing on the edge of the broken floor, peered shyly over, watching the golden king.

The cougar, out in the air again, forgot the elusive and confusing scents from the nursery and centered on the fresh trail of a doe, looking up the hill searching for any faintest movement, for the twitch of an ear, the gleam of dark eyes.

He was the color of the sun-struck desert. He was thirteen feet long from tail tip to nose, weighed a hundred and thirty pounds, and was still growing. Forced from the territory of his mother, the young male had come to claim a home range with water and sufficient game.

The Pamillon estate had water trapped in the old cellars, and there were plenty of deer and raccoons, and now, today, that strange, tantalizing whiff of human blood that he had earlier followed. And the vanishing scent of some small feline cousin, lost too quickly in the ashes.

But deer were his natural food, his game of choice. Moving uphill, away from the fallen walls, he padded along the well-used trail, stalking the doe, forgetting the small cat that stood above, so raptly watching him.

The sight of the lion made her shiver clear down to her soft little middle. Shiver with fear. Shiver with wonder, and envy. He was huge. He was magnificent. He was master of all the cat world. She had never dreamed of such a sight, so filled with powerful, arrogant grace. If she had any more lives yet to live, the kit thought, next time she would be a cougar. She would be lithe. Sleek. A golden lioness, amber bright She was so overwhelmed by the wonders the lion stirred in her that it took a long time to remember that behind her in the nursery she had smelled the blood of a human child. It took her more time still to decide what to do about that.

FROM HARPER'S KITCHEN,the smell of coffee drifted out across the porch as the cats watched through the screen, Joe Grey fidgeting irritably, rocking from paw to paw, his ears back, every wary alarm in his feline body clanging, as he listened to Max Harper, at the kitchen table, giving his formal statement to Detective Ray.

Harper's long, Levi's-clad legs were stretched out, his thin, lined face was expressionless, his brown eyes shielded in that way he had-a cop's closed face-so you could read nothing of what he was thinking.

From the time he had left the Marners and Dillon at the restaurant, until he arrived at the station three and a half hours later, an hour after he was due to go on watch, he had been in contact with no one. As far as Harper knew, no one had seen him.

"I left Cafe Mundo at about one twenty-five, maybe five minutes after Dillon and the Marners. I rode home along Coyote Trail, around the foot of the hills. That's the shortest way. The Marners and Dillon headed north up that steep bridle trail behind the Blackwell Ranch."

"And Crystal wasn't with you?"

"No, the horse she was leasing was to be shod today. I got home about two, unsaddled Bucky and cooled him off, sponged him and rubbed him down. Cleaned his tack and did some stable chores. Fed him, gave the dogs a run, and fed them. I had just come in the house to shower and change when the phone rang.

"It sounded like a woman. I couldn't be sure. Husky voice, like someone who has a cold. She wouldn't give her name. Said she thought I'd be interested in Stubby Baker because I was the one responsible for his going to prison. Kathleen, do you remember Baker?"

Officer Ray looked up at him. "Paroled out of San Quentin about three months ago. Mile-long list of scams."

Harper nodded. "She said Baker had come back to Molena Point to work a land scam involving the old Pamillon place. Said there was a problem with the title, one of those involved family things, and that Baker thought he could manipulate the records. Work through a fake title company, pretend to sell the land, and skip with the money. She said he had fake escrow seals, fake documents. Said he was working with someone from Santa Barbara, that the buyers were a group of older people down there, professionals wanting to start their own retirement complex.

"I'd seen Baker up around the Pamillon place, I'd ridden up there several times because of those cougar reports. And I knew Baker had been nosing around in the Department of Records. That, with her story, made me want to check him out.

"Baker's staying in a studio apartment over on Santa Fe. The informant said he was scheduled to meet with his partner at four that afternoon, at Baker's place. That they were getting ready to make the transaction. That the buyers were going to put a lot of money up front, that they had complete faith in Baker.

"The last scam he pulled here in Molena Point was so shoddy I can't envision anyone trusting him. But I caught a shower, dressed, and went over there. I thought if I could make his partner, get a description and run his plates, we might come up with enough to search the apartment, nip this before those folks got taken. I drove the old Plymouth."

Some months earlier, Harper had bought a nondescript 1992 Plymouth to use for occasional surveillance. Usually the detectives picked up a Rent-A-Wreck, a different car for every stakeout, so the local no-goods would find them harder to spot.

"I parked at the corner of Santa Fe and First behind some overgrown shrubs, sat with a newspaper in front of my face. Watched the apartment for over an hour. Not a sign of Baker. Only one person went up the outside stairs-the old woman from Two D. Baker's in Two B. No one came down, no one left any apartment I could see, and there's only the one entrance, there in front, except fire escapes. Even the garbage is carried out the front. I could see all of the second-floor balcony, could see Baker's door and window. Didn't see any movement inside, no twitch of the curtain, no light burning.

"Maybe Baker made me and had a quick change of plans. I left at ten to five, swung by my place to pick up my unit, got to the station at five."

Detective Ray pushed back her long, dark hair. "Did anyone see you, anyone you knew?"

"If they did, they didn't speak to me. I didn't notice anyone, just a few tourists."

"Did you know the woman who made the call? Recognize her voice?"

"As best I could tell, she wasn't anyone I've talked with in the past. No, I didn't recognize her." Harper frowned. "It wasn't that woman snitch who bugs me, at least not the way she usually sounds. That woman speaks so softly, with a touch of sarcasm…"

Outside the screened door, the soft-voiced snitch twitched her whiskers and smiled.

"This one-yes, probably disguised," Harper said. "Sounded older, rough and grainy. If it was a disguise, I bet it gave her a sore throat."

And both cats watched Harper with concern. This giving of a formal statement and all that implied had them more than frightened, left them feeling as lost as two abandoned strays in a strange city.