She peered at him and said, “Ruth Frost.” Her voice was quite certain of itself.

“Of course.”

“You could have made an appointment, and not disturbed the little ones. Some of them won’t want to come back. You scared them.”

“Can’t they catch mice or crayfish around here?” Nina said.

“Not if they grew up in a nice warm house with cat food in the kitchen.”

“It’s nice of you,” Nina said.

“They’re starving. I have to do something.” They all watched the cats as they polished off the tins of cat food. These cats were thin, unkempt, and suspicious. Nina tried not to generalize as she looked back at Ruth Frost.

“It must get expensive,” Paul said.

“I would be happy to accept a contribution.” This lady was smarter than she looked. Paul raised his eyebrows, said “It’s a good cause,” got his wallet, and gave her a twenty. She tucked it in her pocket.

“May I have five minutes of your time?” he went on.

“We can sit right here at the boathouse.” They sat on a concrete step in the sunshine. Across the street to the east the Siesta Court sign hung disreputably from its pole, and Nina could just see the riprap. Rosie’s Bridge crossed the river just in front of them.

“Your address?” Paul said.

“I live with various friends around here. I sleep in my car sometimes.” Nina glanced at the Cutlass and thought she saw a mattress in the back seat.

“Do you have a phone number where I could reach you?”

“No. I’m usually here in the middle of the afternoon. If you need to talk to me again.” She kept her eye on the cats, who were beginning to melt into the surrounding trees. “Bye, dearies,” she said.

“Where are you from, Ms. Frost?”

“Ruthie. I’ve been here forever. When I was young we lived in Milwaukee.”

“You and your parents?”

“Yes. They’re dead.”

“How do you get along?” Nina asked.

“Just fine. I’m not just a homeless person, you know. I am not a welfare case or some anonymous person to be pitied. I am a writer.”

“How interesting. What kind of-”

“I’m writing a book on political philosophy. How do you vote?”

“What?”

“Republican, Democrat, you know. How do you vote?”

“Um,” Nina said. She looked at Paul.

“How do you vote?” he asked Ruth Frost.

“I don’t. Voting is futile since both political parties are interchangeable. Here. These are my Twelve Points. The Monterey Herald published them in the Letters to the Editor last year.” She handed Paul a folded piece of paper from her pocket. “I am going to revolutionize American society when the Twelve Points are fully explained in my book,” she said. “But it’s hard to get an agent. Ayn Rand had the same problem at first.”

“I will study them,” Paul said.

“Somebody has to cut through it and tell the truth,” she said.

“Now, Ms. Frost-”

“Ruthie. I don’t like the patronymic.”

“I understand that you saw a building burn down two weeks ago here in the Village.”

“Yes. The Newbie Café. That’s what the locals called it. It used to be Village Auto Repair. The owner used to let me feed cats in the parking area behind the shop. But he lost his lease to a couple from San Jose and they opened a restaurant for rich people this spring. All on behalf of almighty Moloch. A useful business was replaced by fatty Atlantic salmon sandwiches. Which are farmed and live out their lives in unhealthy conditions. Only buy wild Alaskan salmon. That is my advice.”

She paused for a breath, then went on, “Sometimes twenty cats came. It was the middle of the night on a Thursday and I was asleep in the lot in my car. The new owners told me I couldn’t park there overnight anymore, as if they had some use for the lot in the middle of the night. What do you think of the notion of private property? Ayn Rand was brilliant, but what a rightist capitalist apologist she was. What do you think of Ayn Rand?”

“So you were awakened from your sleep?”

“My sleep in the car? Or the great sleep we all pass our lives in? What do you think of Buddhism?” She paused and smiled a little, obviously not expecting an answer. Her attitude was one of benevolent condescension, as though they were a few more benighted strays who had come from the forest to receive her help.

“Oh, you want to limit yourself to your small incident. Yes. I was awakened from my sleep. I smelled smoke and the fire exploded out the windows. Glass everywhere. I started my car and drove on Carmel Valley Road toward the fire station. A van passed me and took a hard left onto Esquiline. The windshield was covered with ash and they were running the wipers-”

“They?”

“As I reported, there were two of them. Two heads, but I couldn’t see them well, and the license plate was covered with smoky black stuff. It was an old van, beige, I think.” Paul wrote this down, his forehead a map of concentration. “I’m not much good about cars. I knew they had set the fire-”

“How did you know that?”

Ruthie rolled her eyes. “Because they threw an empty can of kerosene out the window as they turned the corner. I have reported this several times.”

“No kidding,” Paul said. “I didn’t know about that.”

“I suppose your bureaucracy doesn’t communicate with the other bureaucracies. So. They were ecoterrorists, I suppose. I am against this sort of ecoterrorism because living things perish. The issue is quite simple if you look straight at it.”

“Did you stop for the can?”

“No. I followed the bastards. I didn’t stop for anything. I was way behind them at first and I don’t think they saw me. I followed them down the hill and watched them turn left after Rosie’s Bridge. Onto Siesta Court, right across the street there. I was going after them but just then a sheriff’s car and two fire trucks came roaring down the hill and over the bridge and I had to wait. Then I turned. And I heard a door slam shut. And I saw the van or whatever it was start up and go careening around the far corner.”

“Which house was the van in front of?”

“I couldn’t tell. The other investigator asked me that. I know Danny Cervantes lives in one of those houses on that street, and I know he was killed in the latest fire, so it must have been his house. But I can’t say I saw which house at the time. Some people came out of their houses to see what the commotion was about. They stood in the middle of the street and blocked it.”

Paul chewed on the tip of his pen. “Did you know Danny Cervantes, Ruthie?” Nina said.

“He used to hang out at Kasey’s in the Village in the morning with the other laborers, looking for work. He never hassled me like some of the others.”

“Did you ever talk to him?”

“No. I can’t believe how many innocent animals have been killed in these fires. Massacres. They didn’t have a chance. Cats, squirrels, moles, snakes, bobcats, owls, wild turkeys-how many insects? The heavens shrieked.” She started gathering up the empty cans and putting them in a trash bag.

“Well. Thanks for talking with us,” Paul said.

“I hope you catch the other one. I hope he rots in hell. Hell being, of course, an absurd concept.”

“So long.” Nina and Paul walked back across the street. Nina’s jaunty mood had evaporated.

They got back into the car. Hitchcock stuck his head between the seats.

Once they were back on Carmel Valley Road, she said, “I keep thinking that if she’d been born rich, she’d be considered an eccentric grande dame. She’d be a philanthropist and receive humanitarian awards at fancy receptions. But-”

“She gave up on humanity and cast her fate to the cats,” Paul said. “I always liked oddballs.”

“I think she’ll make a credible witness anyway.”

“Then it’s someone on that block. But consider this. She’s a big woman. She makes her own rules. She could have set the fires.”

“But she loves all the animals!”

“Who knows how her mind actually works?” Paul reached into his pocket with one hand and gave Nina the folded paper. “Here’s a clue. Let’s hear the Twelve Points she gave me.”