And Joe Grey felt warm and smug. Three no-goods were about to receive the benefits of the American legal system, the system they had tried to manipulate.

The cats had come to the jail directly from the courthouse, from a gathering in Lowell Gedding's office in which they had again assumed the roles of unseen observers, behind the curtain of the bay window.

The city attorney had called the small group together to ease tension among those involved, to clear the air and set matters to rights before the trial began. Those present had included Molena Point Chief of Police Max Harper, duly reinstated; his officers and detectives; San Francisco detective Dallas Garza; Dillon Thurwell and her parents and a few of their close friends; four members of the Marner family; the mayor and five members of the city council; and Clyde Damen, Charlie Getz, and Wilma Getz, who had sat with their backs to the bay window, effectively blocking any chance glimpse of its occupants.

Gedding had made no accusations as to possible collusion among the city council and the offenders. No innuendos slipped into his statement, yet the cats observed a coolness on Gedding's part, as if perhaps in the next election he might do some heavy campaigning against certain council members. Joe Grey had watched the proceedings with a more-than-relieved air.

The night before, he'd had a nightmare that left him mewling like a terrified kitten. He'd dreamed he was in Judge Wesley's courtroom, that Max Harper stood before the bench facing the judge not as a police officer called to testify, but to be sentenced himself for first-degree murder. The nightmare had been so real that Joe had waked fighting the blanket, growling and hissing with rage.

"Stop it, Joe! What's wrong?" Clyde had poked him hard. "What's the matter with you!"

He'd awakened fully, to find himself lashing out at Clyde. Shocked, he'd stared confused at Clyde's lacerated hand.

"Wake up, you idiot cat! Are you awake? Are you having a fit? You clawed me! What's wrong with you!"

From the angle of the moonlight seeping in under the window shade, he'd guessed the time at about 2:30. Rising up among the rumpled blankets, he was still seeing the Molena Point courtroom, watching Max Harper sentenced to life in prison.

A dream.

It had been only a dream.

He'd tried to explain to Clyde how real the vision had been. His distress must have gotten to Clyde, because Clyde got up, went down the hall to the kitchen, and fixed him a bowl of warm milk. Carrying it back to the bedroom, Clyde let him drink it on the Persian throw rug, one of the few really nice furnishings in their rough-hewn bachelor pad.

"That was very nice," Joe had said, licking his whiskers and yawning.

"You didn't spill on the rug?"

"I didn't spill on the rug," he snapped. "Why can't you ever do anything nice without hassling me?"

"Because you spill, Joe. You slop your food, and I have to clean it up. Shut up and come back to bed. Go to sleep. And don't dream anymore-you don't need bad dreams. Harper's been cleared. He's back home, back at work, and all is well with the world. Go to sleep."

"The trial hasn't started yet. How do you know-"

"Go to sleep. With the amount of evidence the department has, what's to worry? Much of that evidence," Clyde said, reaching to lightly cuff him, "thanks to you and Dulcie and the kit."

That compliment had so pleased and surprised him that he'd curled up, purring, and drifted right off to sleep.

But then, all through the meeting in Gedding's office, which amounted mostly to friendly handshakes and smiles, and then later hearing practically a confession from Stubby Baker, he still found it hard to shake off the fear-hard to shake the feeling that this was not a good world with some bad people in it, but a world where any decency was temporal. Where any goodness was as ephemeral and short-lived as cat spit on the wind.

In the cell below them, the lawyer had left, and Joe was prodding Dulcie to do the same when Officer Wendell came along the hall, pausing at Baker's bars.

Wendell looked like he'd slept in his uniform. He spoke so softly that the cats had to strain to hear. Joe glanced at the tape. It was running.

"Mahl called," Wendell said.

"So?" Baker snarled.

"So if you involve him in this, you're dead meat. Said he has people out and around. If you make a slip, you're history."

"Oh, right. And what about you?"

"There's nothing to pin on me."

Baker smiled.

"What?"

Baker lay back on his bunk looking patently pleased with himself. Wendell turned a shade paler-making Joe and Dulcie smile.

Dallas Garza had plenty of evidence to tie Wendell to the murders and to the attempt to frame Harper: Wendell did not file Betty Eastman's report that she had seen Captain Harper the afternoon of the murder. Wendell did not file Mr. Berndt's report about Crystal's grocery-buying habits, and he did not put Dillon's barrette into evidence until Garza asked him about it. And no one even knew, yet, that Wendell had been in Crystal's apartment looking for Dillon the night that she escaped.

If there was anything Joe Grey hated, it was a cop gone bad.

But now, he thought, glancing at Kathleen's little tape recorder, now the department had additional evidence against Officer Wendell.

"Very nice," he whispered, winking at Dulcie. And they leaped into the tree and down, and went to hunt rabbits.

IT WASLATE that afternoon that the cougar returned to the Pamillon mansion, prowling among the broken furniture and rampant vines, flehmening at the smell of dried human blood. Investigating where he had downed and bitten the two-legs and where the loud noises had chased him away, he watched down the hill, too, where a small cat crouched, looking up at him, thinking she was hidden among the bushes. It was not magnanimity that kept him from dropping down the hill in one long leap and snatching the kit and crunching her. He was sated with deer meat; he had killed and gorged, and buried the carcass under the moldering sofa. At the moment, his thoughts were on a light nap on the sun-warmed tiles of the patio.

Earlier, before he hunted, prowling farther down the hills, he had sat for some time watching the gathering of two-legs around the fences and buildings of the ranch yard, fascinated by their strange behavior. The sounds they made were different than he had heard before from the two-legs, noises that hurt his ears. He had watched the gathering until he grew hungry. He had studied the horses in the pasture, but they would give him a hard battle, and the two-legs were too close. Trotting away higher into the hills where the deer were easy takings, he had killed and fed.

Now, leaving the carcass buried in the parlor, and glancing a last time where the small cat thought itself invisible, he strolled onto the Pamillon patio and stretched out in the sun.

The kit watched the cougar as he arrogantly put his head down and closed his eyes. She watched until he seemed to sleep deeply. When she was certain his breathing had slowed, she crept up the hill, closer.

Peering out from the tall grass, she wondered.

Could she touch the golden beast? Could she reach out a paw and touch him, and reach out her nose to sniff his sleek fur?

But no, she wouldn't be so foolish. No sensible cat would approach a sleeping cougar.

And yet she was drawn closer, and closer still, was drawn right up the hill to the boulders that edged the patio.

From behind a boulder she looked at him for a long time.

And she stepped out on the tiles.

She lifted her paw. The cougar seemed deeply asleep. Dare she approach closer? Hunching down as if stalking a bird, making herself small and invisible, she crept forward step by silent step.