Dillon had joined Pet-a-Pet so she could look for Jane Hubble; she had dyed her hair so the nurses wouldn't recognize her. And maybe because of Dillon more than any other reason, he'd let himself get hooked into a predawn break-and-enter that could get plenty hairy. He thought of getting locked into that hospital wing among half a dozen antagonistic nurses, nurses who could wield a variety of lethal medical equipment, and he could almost feel the needles jabbing.

The doll lay in a small dark enclosure just large enough to accommodate her eight-inch height. Her blond hair was matted. Her blue eyes, dulled by grime, stared blindly into the blackness. Her little hands were raised as if she reached but there was no one to pick her up and cuddle her or to examine the knife slit across her belly beneath her little dress.

Her porcelain skin, which had once been clear and translucent, was grayed with dust. Her flower-sprigged blue-and-white frock, made of the finest sheer lawn, and her white lacy slip, all hand-sewn with tiny, even seams, now hung yellowed and limp. And beneath her pretty dress, where her cloth body had been ripped, the three-inch gash had been sewn up again with ugly green thread in large, ragged stitches jabbing any which way into her white muslin body, and the thread knotted with a heavy, lumpy closure.

The walls around the doll were of thick oak, and the container bound outside with brass corners. Someone had hidden the doll well. If anyone had ever loved this doll, she lay forgotten, abandoned. If someone should find her there, they might have no notion of her significance-she was simply a grimy old doll ready for the trash or the Goodwill. Very likely, if she had a tale to tell, no one would know or care. No one would question who had ripped her apart and sewn her up again, or question why. And if there were significant fingerprints remaining on her porcelain face or arms, who would think to look for such a thing? She was not, at this juncture, a clue to any known crime.

17

As the cats crouched on the moonlit hillside, above them the high grass stems thrust black and sharp as knives against the moon. Through the grass they looked down onto the rooftops of Casa Capri, the sloping tiles struck into patterns of curving shadow. Far down beyond the retirement villa and beyond the village roofs, the moon's path cut like a yellow highway across the dark Pacific.

Nothing moved. No wind. The night was still and bright.

Just above the main building of Casa Capri, the rows of small retirement cottages climbed up toward them, their moonlit roofs gleaming pale, their little streets lit at intervals by the decorative lamps spaced along the winding lanes. But the cottages themselves were dark. No light shone, no curtain stirred where retirees slept. The time was 4:00 A.M.

The main building of Casa Capri was dark at the front. Along the sides, a thin glow from the softened hall lights seeped out from the residents' rooms. At the back of the building, in the Nursing wing, bright lights burned. One imagined sleepless patients suffering late-night changes of IV bottles, or perhaps restless with pains and discomforts and with the fears which can accompany old age.

Glancing at each other, the cats slipped on down through the grass, down between the dark cottages, and across the little narrow streets. Pausing in a geometrically neat bed of pansies, they studied the Nursing wing.

The windows in Nursing were high and securely closed, as if perhaps those shut-in patients disliked the cool night air. There was no access there, through those windows. They had crossed the last street into the shadow of the building when suddenly a clashing explosion of sound hit them, loud as the crash of wrecking cars. Metal clanging against metal. They crouched belly down, staring wide-eyed, frozen to the earth, ready to run.

But then they identified the harsh metallic music of a radio booming out from the Nursing wing, a blare of Spanish brass, of trumpets blasting and snorting, and they crept on again, ears tight to their heads, slinking.

The next instant someone turned the volume down, and the noise subsided to a nearly tolerable decibel level.

Eight cars stood in the parking lot, their metal bodies pale with dew from having been parked most of the night. Not a car among them was more than two years old, and they were all top-of-the-line Buicks, Chevys, even two Mercedeses. Skirting the parking lot, the cats headed for the Care Unit, and there, slipping in through the wrought-iron fence that guarded the little terraces, they searched for an open glass door, for access to a bedroom and the hall beyond.

Most of the glass doors were closed. The two that had been left open a few inches were secured in place by a bar, and the screens were latched. As if the occupants worried seriously about human intruders scaling the six-foot fence and strangling them in their beds.

The cats could hear the soft breathing of the shadowy sleepers, but some of the occupied beds looked hardly disturbed, the covers nearly flat and only a small, thin mound where the sleeper lay. Other occupants had tangled their covers and twisted them or thrown them on the floor. One old man, wrapped in a cocoon of blankets, snored like a bulldog with bad tonsils.

Trying each door and screen, they were nearly to the end of the row before they found a glass standing open and the screen unlatched, or perhaps the latch was broken. The room smelled of cherry cough syrup. Slipping inside, they crept past the bed and its mountainous occupant. A metal walker with rubber feet stood beside the open door to the hall. They crouched beside it, looking down the empty corridor, then fled along it toward the social room.

In the darkness, the room seemed huge, the hulking shapes of couches and overstuffed chairs looming like fat, misshapen beasts. Beyond their hunching black forms, the white-clothed dining tables were moonlit, the moon itself shining in through the glass. To the left of the dim room, the patio gleamed pale through its glass doors. They leaped to the back of a dark sofa, listening.

From down the hall, toward the admitting desk, two women were talking; and the cats could smell coffee. Leaping from the couch to a chair, and to a couch again, they moved in that direction, then quickly through the open doors and down the hall.

At the parlor they slipped into the deep shadows beneath a chair. Staring out, they studied the brightly lit admitting desk and the open doors of the two lit offices.

The admitting desk was deserted, but in one of the offices the two women were laughing, and a coffee cup rattled. The cats fled past and down the hall, toward the closed door of Nursing, where they could hear the brassy music playing softly. Sliding into the nearest darkened bedroom, they sat close together, looking out through the crack of the door, studying the secured entrance to Nursing.

The door was one of those pneumatic arrangements which, the cats knew from past experience, was beyond their strength to open. If they waited long enough, someone had to come through; all they needed was patience. Behind them, in the dark bedroom, the sleeper moaned and turned over; the room smelled sour, of sleeping human, and was too warm. Soon Dulcie began to fidget, and then a flea began to chew at Joe's rump. He bit at it furiously, easing the itch, trying in vain to catch the little beast. Lately he'd begun to think of his minor but stubborn flea infestation as a serious breach of personal hygiene, a scourge on the civilized being he had become, a source of deep embarrassment.

Clyde had suggested that if he hated flea spray so much, he might try a daily shower. Well, of course, Clyde would offer some incredibly stupid solution. Joe was surprised Clyde hadn't bought him a razor, encouraged him to take up shaving; certainly that would get rid of the fleas.