But while Clyde stood holding Joe, feeling ashamed of doubting the tomcat, Joe’s mind was on the vanished murder victim and on the little girl. Wondering where the man and child had come from. Strange to have such a young child out in the middle of the night-unless they had just arrived in the village.

“So the department was able to lift prints?” Clyde said.

“Prints from the decorations and toys,” Joe said. “It’ll take a while to get everyone who worked on decorating the tree into the station for sample prints-take time to check for missing children statewide and then national, check the airlines, go through the missing adult lists…”

“No description,” Clyde said. “And no one saw the car. They’re asking in the paper for witnesses.”

“There was no one on the street to see a car. Not a soul, Kit said. With the storm, the whole town was deserted, except for patrol cars.”

“And the victim and his killer.”

“It all takes time,” Joe said. “That’s what makes you want to claw and yowl, the damn waiting. Dulcie and Kit and I know the blood was human, but the department has no proof until the coroner’s lab tests it. The cops only know what Kit told them. Though I have to say, they didn’t hesitate. Moved right in, on her word-on the word of a tortoiseshell cat,” he said, smiling. “But the blood…Depends on how backed up the lab is, how soon the coroner gets to it.”

“Maybe the child will tell them something when she recovers a little from the shock.”

“If she can talk at all,” Joe said. “She didn’t say a word last night, but maybe she’ll open up for Davis. Maybe…” He twisted around on Clyde’s shoulder, his whiskers tickling Clyde ’s cheek. “It would be pretty neat if the kid did ID that bastard. To shoot a man like that while he’s holding a little child. That experience will sour Christmas for that little girl for all the rest of her life. I hope that little girl nails him good,” Joe hissed. “I want to see that guy burn.” The tomcat’s yellow eyes blazed at Clyde -and this was one time when Clyde Damen and Joe Grey were in perfect agreement. If they had their way, that killer would burn slowly and forever, with unthinkable agony and pain.

H AVING BACKED THE car into the small garage, Kuda hid the two duffel bags in a storage cupboard, but left the pillows and blanket in the car. He tore up the car rental agreement and registration, stripped off the rental stickers, tore all of it into confetti and stuffed it, a few pieces at a time, into the drain of the laundry sink, running all the pieces on down with a lengthy cascade of water.

With tools he’d found days earlier in the garage, he removed the license plates, then, taking off his shoes, he stood atop the car in his stocking feet, shoved the plates up into the attic through the crawl hole, and pushed them under the soft blanket of fiberglass insulation, smoothing it back over them. He was still wearing white cotton gloves. Last thing, he put the bike in the trunk of the car and tied the lid closed over the protruding rear wheel.

He waited a long time, his ear to the crack in the garage door, listening for the soft sounds of cop cars moving outside on the narrow streets, and trying to be patient. Had to make sure the cops had given up looking-given up, depending on what that witness had told them. Where the hell had that unseen witness been? What had they seen? Someone had called the law. He knew he’d been careful. He was certain the cruising patrol hadn’t seen him. And he sure as hell hadn’t seen anyone on the streets or standing in the shadows. Hadn’t heard anyone-until that sound of running, almost like it was overhead, a sound so soft. Most likely some animal. Or could have been some kid on the street, the echo playing tricks? Some kid slipping out at night to see the Christmas tree?

Time to get moving, everything quiet out there. The cops would still have a guard at the plaza, but he’d use the back or side entrance. He looked around the garage to make sure he’d tidied up. No, nothing there but the two small duffel bags in the cupboard, under a bunch of old rags, and they wouldn’t be there long. Silently he stepped out the side door to see if the street was clear, before opening the garage door.

W HILE CLYDE DAMEN stood in the kitchen holding Joe, staring out at the predawn dark, and while James Kuda prepared to dispose of the body, across the village in her condo apartment Juana Davis was tucking the little girl into a hastily made bed on the wide velvet love seat. She had placed the child so she would not face the Christmas tree. She thought of covering it or moving it to another room, after the trauma the child had suffered.

But there were Christmas trees and decorations everywhere, all over the village, no matter where they went. She would be taking the child to the station in the morning, and dispatcher Mabel Farthy had a small, beautifully decorated tree on the counter beside the in-box.

Juana thought sometimes it was a lot of fuss and extra work for a person living alone to buy and decorate a Christmas tree-but she always did, always had a fresh, live tree, and she guessed she always would.

Though it would soon be dawn, Juana had slipped into a pair of warm, comfortable pajamas, over which she had rebuckled her shoulder holster with her automatic. She had lit a fire on the hearth, only gas logs but real enough to be cozy, and had brought out an extra blanket and pillow from the bedroom so she could sleep lightly in the upholstered chair near the sliding-glass door to the balcony with a view of the street below.

Davis’s one-bedroom condo rose just across the street from the courthouse complex-with her husband long dead and her two sons gone from the nest, she had sold her house up in the Molena Point hills and rented an apartment while she waited, it seemed forever, for the right condo to come on the market. When this one became available diagonally across the street from the station, it was hard to make a low offer and chance losing it. Hard not to snap it up. But as both the real estate agent and the seller well knew, the market for a condo where two women had been murdered was somewhat limited-this was a small town, and no one had missed the details of that brutal killing.

The fact that this had been the scene of a double murder last summer didn’t bother Juana. The one-bedroom unit had been listed for less than a week when her low offer was accepted. She had worked the case, so she knew the apartment well, and she had no complaints about it except for a leaky bathroom faucet and the noisy refrigerator; she was not a person to worry about lingering ghosts. All traces of blood had been cleaned away and the walls freshly painted in a pleasing off-white; she had installed new, off-white carpeting-and she took a quiet pleasure in being so near to work.

From the wide balcony she could see down onto the block-long courthouse building and its surround of old twisted oak trees and bright gardens, and the wide parking lot on its far side. She had a clear view of the end of the two-story complex and the single-story wing that housed Molena Point PD. She could see the department’s back door and smaller police parking area and the small jail, all enclosed within a woven wire fence. She could see, beneath the gnarled branches of an ancient oak that hung over the red tile roof of the building, the small bared window that was cut into a raised clerestory, allowing light and ventilation for the department’s one small holding cell that opened off the front entry. Now, at just before six on this cold winter morning, beyond her drawn draperies, Juana’s balcony was black and chill, a light dew clinging to the teak chair and love seat and the three potted camellias that were in full bloom. But here within the bright, firelit living room, she and the child were cozy. This was nice, the cheerful blaze on the grate, the little girl curled down, her tummy full of cocoa and a cookie, hopefully falling into welcome sleep.