“What’s this?” the driver asked, climbing out. It was a plain white van. When he slammed the door, I saw the ANIMAL CONTROL sign on the door. This was Hill, the dogcatcher. And he looked like his house: ugly and mean. He was maybe forty, an inch under six feet, deep through the body with a short, thick neck. His face was permanently tightened in a frown, making knobs of his cheeks and chin and nose. He wore his hair in a Korean War crew cut, and his forehead had that flattened, shiny look that you see on bar brawlers. Like Dessusdelit, he wore a stressed-out face, compounded of anger and weariness. We’d taken well over three hundred thousand out of his house

“Painting,” I said. I was sitting on a canvas stool, and he moved in close, looming over me. He stuck out one thick finger and tapped the French easel, making it shiver.

“I can see that,” he said. “You got a permit?”

“I didn’t know I needed one,” I said. “The mayor didn’t mention it.”

His eyes tightened. “The mayor? You got permission?”

“She sent me up here,” I said. “She and Mr. Ballem.”

“Huh.” He looked skeptical but backed off a step. He was about to say something else when the screen door on the Trent house slammed and Gloriana Trent came striding across the yard.

“Old bitch,” the dogcatcher muttered under his breath.

“Duane Hill, you get out of here and leave Mr. Kidd alone,” she said. Her voice was pitched up a notch. Under her flinty exterior she was afraid of the man.

“Just goin’,” Hill muttered. He looked at me, his lips moving silently, as though he were memorizing my face, glanced resentfully back at Gloriana, got in the van and slowly pulled away. Gloriana watched him go.

“Bluff sort of fellow,” I said.

“He’s a chrome-plated asshole,” Gloriana snapped. She looked back at me. “The people downtown say he has his uses. Sometimes I wonder.”

“He’s not one of your friends,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“No. When he was in third or fourth grade, he used to steal from my husband’s store; we own the department and sporting goods stores in town, the family does. I caught him once and sent him on his way. The second time I took him by the ear and dragged him down the street to his parents’ house, for all the good that did. The Hills were always

trashy, I suppose. The third time I caught him, I took him down to the police station, and he went to juvenile court. He’s not forgotten those trips with his ear stretched out like a rubber band.” She smiled. “I like to think his head is lopsided, but I suppose it’s wishful thinking.”

She had me laughing. “I hope this won’t cause you any trouble,” I said.