W HILE KIT SEARCHED the dark gardens, deftly avoiding the fast-moving hard shoes of the uniforms, across the street from the plaza, inside the empty store that he had scoped out earlier, James Kuda stood among sawhorses and stacked lumber, looking out, watching the dark-clad cops searching the street. Because the store was undergoing extensive renovation, he had wandered in there days ago, out of curiosity. Investigating the back room, he had found only a simple, punch-type lock on the backdoor, which, tonight, he had easily jimmied. Now, wearing a black sweatshirt and black pants, and a black stocking cap that amused him, he stood among a half-dozen upright rolls of black construction paper, his face turned away into the shadows-black on black to the cops’ lights that flashed like explosions through the glass, picking out bare stud walls, stacked plywood and two-by-fours, and sliding over Kuda, who stood like another roll of strong-smelling building paper.

From this vantage he couldn’t see much inside the plaza. An abbreviated view through its side entry, part of the Christmas tree, a half-dozen cops clustered around, and the back end and open doors of the EMT van. Body or no body, it looked like they were running the scene. A Latino detective taking photographs. Next thing, he’d be dusting for prints, taking particle and blood samples, then walking the grid. Kuda wasn’t worried about prints, not with cotton gloves-generic gloves whose fibers they probably couldn’t trace. He still had the gun and silencer, though, and was debating where to dump them.

Well, not likely they’d find the body. The car was well hidden, and not even a window in that garage; and he wouldn’t be pulling out again until the uniforms cooled off, had gone off duty or back to their regular rounds. Glancing above to the plaza roof, he glimpsed something dark and small slipping along the tiles, some animal or maybe an owl; maybe that was what he’d heard earlier, an animal running across the roof.

Except, there’d been a person, too. Someone had called the cops, no animal could do that.

F ROM THE ROOF, looking down on the dark gardens as the officers searched, Joe Grey caught only glimpses of the tortoiseshell kit prowling among the flowers and bushes, her darkly mottled coat hardly visible against the night-dark patterns of leaf and shadow. She’d been down there a long time. Had she found nothing? Restlessly, he dropped down a tree to join her, and together they sniffed and shouldered through the darkest, back portions of the garden, as deeply intent as a pair of tracking bloodhounds.

They found not the faintest scent of the child. Until…

Joe stopped and reared up. Sniffing. Listening. His white paws and chest and the white stripe down his nose gleamed in the night as he spun around toward the center of the plaza-and swiftly Kit leaped to join him.

“There,” he said softly.

They approached a tangle of flowering shrubs where a tiny pond and waterfall had been built, set aside as a special drinking fountain for visiting canines. No one had thought to dedicate anything to the village cats! “There! Do you smell her?” Joe hissed.

Kit’s nose twitched. Smell of water, of dog and dog pee, all so heavy around the little pool that she had missed the child’s scent. Now she caught it, and they circled the pond to where the smell was sharpest-scent of child. Scent of blood.

Behind the rocky waterfall, the fountain’s pump was enclosed in a small shed some two feet high. The child’s smell came from there. Approaching the little closed door, fearful of what they would find, they caught no scent of death. But now, on the door handle, another smell. The smell of peanut butter.

And then, listening, the rhythm of soft, ragged breathing.

Pawing and fighting the door handle, then hooking their claws underneath the door itself, they were able to pull it open.

A T THE BACK of the shed, the little girl was crouched in a dark niche between the small water pump and the rough wall, her face pinched and white, her dark eyes huge with fear, eyes as black as obsidian-but when she saw that it was only cats, she drew in her breath with startled relief.

Kit approached her softly. When the child didn’t cringe away, Kit nosed at her, then stepped into her lap. Standing with her paws on the child’s shoulders, Kit licked her on the nose. Shyly the child stroked Kit, drawing in a tremulous breath. Behind them, Joe Grey managed, with stubborn claws, to draw the door closed again. And in the dark, small space the two cats snuggled close to the little girl, nosing at her as they tried to see if she was hurt, tried to find a wound.

The blood on her sweater was drying. They found no fresh blood, and there seemed to be no physical hurt, and they decided this was, indeed, the dead man’s blood. They didn’t want to discuss the matter, didn’t want to speak in front of the child, their commitment to secrecy was far too important. Even a six-year-old could tell tales. They simply curled up on her lap and smiled up at her, purring-and wondering if they could nudge her into leaving her hiding place, if they could lead her back to Detective Garza; the child was so rigid with fear that they didn’t think she’d follow, didn’t think she’d leave her tight little refuge.

Joe thought the fastest way to bring help was to race home and phone the dispatcher, tell Mabel where the child was so Dallas Garza could come and get her. He was about to push outside when footsteps came pounding up the walk straight toward the shed, heavy steps that paused, then began to circle the fountain. The child cringed deeper in, shivering. The cats, leaving her huddled, crouched by the door, tensed to leap in the face of whoever entered, their claws flexing with predatory lust. Beyond the door, the man stood inches from them. The child swallowed, her thin body rigid with fear-but then a radio mumbled softly, and they caught the man’s scent.

T HE LOW DOOR to the pump house flew open, and a gun was thrust in at the cats and child, and a dark, crouching figure peered in, the black automatic held in his meaty hand. The cats didn’t breathe, the child didn’t breathe. He switched on a light, blazing in their faces. And suddenly he laughed. Brennan, Officer Brennan, his belly protruding over his belt as he bent lower and reached in. Brennan’s gruff voice was unusually soft.

“Come on, honey, it’s all right. It’s all right now. I’m a police officer, I won’t hurt you.”

But the child pressed away from him, pushing so hard against the metal pump that she was surely embossing its imprint into her thin arm. Brennan drew back so as not to frighten her further, and for an instant his brown eyes met the cats’ eyes in a surprised, searching look that sent a shock of wariness through Joe and Kit.

While Joe thought fast-and came up with no logical excuse for being there-Kit looked at Brennan with big round eyes, gave a soft little mewl that would charm the hardest cop, and rubbed against the child, purring and waving her tail. Taking Kit’s cue, Joe snuggled closer, shaken by the child’s trembling.

Brennan’s voice softened even more, and slowly and gently he reached to stroke Kit, then tried to entice the little girl out to him. She only stared at Brennan, her eyes as glazed as those of a trapped deer.

Brennan had been on the force for as long as Joe Grey could remember, and he had never hurt or been harsh with a child; he had never touched Joe or Dulcie or Kit except gently. But the child’s fear of the stranger did not ease. Watching them, Joe longed to speak, to tell the cowering child that this officer would never hurt her.

Once, when Brennan, answering a security alarm late at night, had discovered Joe and Dulcie inside Sicily Aronson’s art gallery, when they had stared out at him fearfully from beneath Sicily ’s desk, face-to-face with the startled cop, Brennan had not snatched them up and thrown them out as some patrolmen might do. But there had been more embarrassing moments, the most recent when Kit leaped from a rooftop onto a thief’s head, knocking him straight into Brennan’s arms. That kind of caper did make a cop wonder. Now, with Brennan finding the cats at another scene just after the snitch’s call, they trembled at what that good officer might be thinking.