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Would she prefer reassurance, or the truth, which was that Jane didn’t know the answer. She couldn’t promise that anyone was ever safe.
    “Until we know more,” said Jane, “it would be a good idea to take precautions.”
    “What do you know?”
    “We believe it happened sometime Sunday night.”
    “He’s been dead all this time,” Nora murmured. “Right next door, and I had no idea.”
    “You didn’t see or hear anything unusual Sunday night?”
    “You can see for yourself, he has a tall fence all around his yard, so we never knew what was going on there. Except when he was making that god-awful racket in his backyard workshop.”
    “What kind of noise?”
    “This horrible whine, like a power saw. To think he had the nerve to complain about a crying baby!”
    Jane remembered seeing Gott’s hearing aids on the bathroom counter. If he’d been working with noisy machinery Sunday night, he’d certainly leave out those hearing aids. It was yet one more reason he would not have heard an intruder.
    “You said you got home late Sunday night. Were Mr. Gott’s lights on?”
    Nora didn’t even need to think about it. “Yes, they were,” she said. “I remember being annoyed because the light on his backyard shed shines directly into my bedroom. But when I went to bed, around ten thirty, the light was finally off.”
    “What about the dog? Was he barking?”
    “Oh, Bruno. He’s always barking, that’s the problem. He probably barks at houseflies.”
    Of which there were now plenty, thought Jane. Bruno was barking at that moment, in fact. Not in alarm, but with doggy excitement about the many strangers in his front yard.
    Nora turned toward the sound. “What’s going to happen to him?”
    “I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to find someone to take him. And the cats as well.”
    “I’m not crazy about cats, but I wouldn’t mind keeping the dog here. Bruno knows us, and he’s always been friendly with my boys. I’d feel safer, having a dog here.”
    She might not feel the same way if she knew Bruno was even now digesting morsels of his dead owner’s flesh.
    “Do you know if Mr. Gott had any next of kin?” asked Jane.
    “He had a son, but he died some years ago, on a foreign trip. His ex-wife’s dead, too, and I’ve never seen any woman there.” Nora shook her head. “It’s an awful thing to think about. Dead for four days and no one even notices. That’s how unconnected he seemed to be.”
    Through the kitchen window, Jane caught a glimpse of Maura, who’d just emerged from Gott’s house and now stood on the sidewalk, checking messages on her cell phone. Like Gott, Maura lived alone, and even now she seemed an isolated figure, standing off by herself. Left to her solitary nature, might Maura one day evolve into another Leon Gott?
    The morgue van had arrived, and the first TV crews were scrambling into position outside the police tape. But tonight, after all thesecops and criminalists and reporters departed, the crime scene tape would remain, marking the home where a killer had visited. And here, right next door, was a mother alone with her two children.
    “It wasn’t just random, was it?” said Nora. “Was it someone he knew? What do you think you’re dealing with?”
    A monster was what Jane thought as she slipped her pen and notebook into her purse and stood up. “I notice you have a security system, ma’am,” she said. “Use it.”

M AURA CARRIED THE CARDBOARD BOX FROM HER CAR INTO THE house and set it down on the kitchen floor. The gray tabby was mewing pitifully, begging to be released, but Maura kept him contained in the box as she hunted in her pantry for a cat-appropriate meal. She’d had no chance to stop at the grocery store for cat food, had impulsively taken on the tabby because no one else would, and the only alternative was the animal shelter.
    And because the cat, by practically grafting himself to her leg, had clearly adopted her .
    In the pantry Maura found a