“All she’s got is door contacts. No motion sensors or glass breaks, none of the usual shit that goes off.”

“And before April twenty-ninth?”

“That previous Friday, the twenty-seventh,” he says. “A couple ins and outs, and then someone left around six p.m., reset the alarm, and it wasn’t disarmed again until Sunday the twenty-ninth at the time I just told you. At almost midnight.”

“Possibly on that Friday night it was she who went out. She went somewhere, possibly in her car. And the person who came back late on Sunday was someone else.”

“I’m with you so far.”

“Did you happen to notice if her garbage cans had anything in them?” I ask.

“Totally empty,” he says.

“Trash collection’s on Mondays,” I reply. “I’m wondering if this person emptied her refrigerator of perishables, took out the garbage, and rolled her super-can curbside.”

“Then rolled it back under the side porch?”

“Yes. Possibly when this same person cleaned out her mailbox and suspended her newspaper delivery.”

“Jesus. Who does that? Not some stranger.”

“She might not have been a stranger to him. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a stranger to her. I’m not saying their paths didn’t cross, but that doesn’t mean she was personal with him or even aware of him.” I think of everything Benton said about who we’re looking for. “What I’d like to do is get trace and latent prints started on her car first thing in the morning. In other words, a full-court press. Not just checking mileage and the GPS but checking everything. Can you come in?”

“With bells on.”

“And if you happen upon paperwork such as vet records or bills? Maybe something will have the cat’s name on it?”

“She could have one of those chips.”

“I’ll have her scanned at the vet’s office,” I reply. “Maybe Bryce can take her in tomorrow. We’ll see if there’s an ID number we can check with the National Pet Registry.”

I get off the phone, turning right on White Street, and feel terrible that I don’t know what to call her.

“I’m really sorry, but I can’t just call you ‘the cat,’” I say to her, and she purrs loudly. “If you could talk you could tell me who put you out of the house, what bad person did that. Not just a person who isn’t nice but an evil one, and I suspect you were scared of him because you sensed what he really is. A man nobody thinks twice about. But he’s cruel. And you picked up on it, didn’t you, when he let himself inside your house? You wouldn’t come up to him until he tricked you with those treats I saw on the counter?”

I stroke her flat-eared head, and she rubs her face against my palm.