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daughter focused on the morning with Eleni and away from the conference in Marblehead .
    As Hanna went with Vickie to gather her things for the ride home, Eleni tugged on my sleeve.
    ”Things, they go well?” she said, without much confidence.
    ”No violence. A tough negotiation, but I’m no expert at judging lawyer talk.”
    Eleni rested her forehead in the palm of a hand. ”When the husband come here, I see him. He smile at me when he leave. Not a nice smile, John.”
    ”I’ve seen it.”
    ”And not a nice man, John. Not just bad. He have the look.”
    ”The look?”
    ”The look of the men I leave Greece to get away from. A man who does the gambling, visits the whores, beats the wife. The look of a man who like to hurt.”
    I could hear Hanna and Vickie coming back into the room behind me. Eleni said, quietly but insistently, ”Watch good for them, John. Chris, he... cannot.”
    We got in my car, Vickie pleased with the ancient bucket seats fore and aft. She babbled on the way kids do, about her friends in Swampscott (”There’s Ginny, and Karen, and Fred, but nobody ever wants to play with him”), her cat (”I know Cottontail’s kind of a funny name for a kitty, but she’s all white all over, and...”), her starting kindergarten in the fall (”I hope Fred’s not in my class, but I don’t know how they do things like that”). Ordinarily, I can’t abide kidnoise, but it was nice to have something filling the air.
    We arrived at the dilapidated three-decker and Vickie said, ”Oooooh, wait till you see Cottontail! You’ll love her, too.”
    Before I had turned off the motor, Vickie was out of the car, urging her mother to hurry. Once in the building foyer, Vickie ran to their apartment door. ”Cottontail? Cotton? We’re home!” She put her ear up to the discolored wood and concentrated. ”I can hear her crying. She must have missed us. It’s okay, Cottontail, we’re coming.”
    Hanna put the key in the lock, and Vickie burst in, calling the cat’s name and getting a mewling sound from the back. ”Oh, she must have got all tangled up again.” She darted down the hall.
    Hanna said, ”You like something to drink, maybe?”
    ”No, I—”
    The screaming cut me off. Hanna veered and raced the way her daughter had. ”Vickie! Vickie!”
    I caught up with them at the entrance to a rear bedroom. Vickie’s face was burrowing into her mother’s stomach, her screams muffled by Hanna’s dress. Hanna’s eyes were closed, and she was saying, ”Don’t look, don’t look.”
    I pressed by them into the room. Although the wallpaper was dingy and scaly, there were some bright yellow curtains around the window and a yellow blanket covering the twin-size iron frame bed. The window itself had a pane of glass missing, and the broken shards were scattered on the sill, bed, and floor. But that wasn’t the major damage.
    Centered on the bed was a stained white kitten. The stain was red, from the blood that was still seeping into the blanket. Someone had taken a knife to the creature, peeling back its fur to expose musculature, bone, and an organ or two where the blade had slipped.
    Cottontail looked up at me, squeezed its eyes shut, and let out a heartrending yowl.

I called the Peabody police emergency number. The sergeant on duty said he thought the closest animal hospital was in Saugus . I dialed the hospital and was told to bring the kitten in immediately. Hanna wrapped Cottontail in the blanket, and I drove with flashers and horn while the cat cried on Hanna’s lap in the front seat and Vickie cried in the back.
    A veterinarian with long brown hair and warm brown eyes met us at the door. She pointed toward an admissions desk and rushed the cat into a back room. Hanna tried to comfort Vickie in the reception area while I filled out the paperwork. The woman behind the counter graciously allowed me to use her phone. I called the Peabody police back and provided some details on the break-in. They said