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“We’ll also take specimens of soil from different neighbor­hoods around here. Then if this specimen from D.C.‘s paw matches any of the others, that may mean D.C. was in that particular area last night. As you may know, the soil in neighborhoods varies. The soil in your yard may not be any­thing like that a half mile away.”

Ingrid sighed. “I don’t get it.”

Zeke sneezed. “I don’t either but you’ve got to admit I make it sound good in a confusing sort of way.”

He proceeded to set up a flash camera. “I want to get a good picture of him to show the children around here. He may have been in some of their homes, or they may re­member having seen him, and maybe we’ll learn about other neighborhoods he has gone into that you don’t know about.”

When he was ready, he said, “Can you get him to sit up? I’d like a straight-on shot.”

Ingrid lifted D.C. and shoved his haunches into place, but when she let go he sank like a heap of jelly. She tried again, coaxing him and rubbing his ears. “I guess he’s weak from hunger. I’ll get him something to eat.”

After she left the room, Zeke tried to prop the cat up. “Come, kitty, please, kitty,” he said in his most endearing tone. “Nice cat, nice cat.” D.C. reared back and hissed and spat. He recognized a hypocrite when he saw one, and brother, here was one.

“Why you little so-and-so,” Zeke muttered under his breath. “Just you try that again.”

Ingrid returned unexpectedly, bearing a dish of canned cat food. She said coldly, “I heard you swearing. I didn’t think an FBI agent – “

“I was not swearing. I was using some perfectly good king’s English to work off a few repressions.”

“Don’t you like cats?”

“I love them.” He sneezed again. “Honest to goodness, I love them.” Allah forgive me, he thought, and J. Edgar Hoover, and the Kennedy brothers.

“I don’t think if you’re a dog man Patti will like you. She can’t stand dog men. We’ve got a neighbor across the street – he’s awful nice – but Patti can’t stand him because he has a dachshund, and this dachshund comes over all the time to our apricot tree, and the tree is dying, and Patti, who never gets mad about anything, says she’s going to call the police or the fire department or someone.”

She asked unexpectedly, “Do you have a dog?”

“No, not now. I did, a long time ago.”

He had been six that Christmas when his father brought the collie pup home, and Zeke had named him Tom after an old, gnarled ranch hand. The collie had grown up along with Zeke. For seven years they roamed the hills and can­yons together, and went to a country school where the teach­er didn’t mind a dog curled up under a desk. Then one morning Zeke got up to find Tom missing, and went calling him. He found him behind the clump of dark red oleanders, by the corral, shot by an unknown prowler. Two of the ranch hands helped Zeke bury him under a cottonwood, and Zeke carved Tom’s name with his pocketknife across a fence board and put it up as a marker. The last time he was home, two years ago, he had sauntered down to the cottonwood and propped up the marker that years of wind and rain had toppled.

Zeke was proud of the strategy he worked out for tak­ing D.C.‘s picture. It proved, he told Ingrid, that man was smarter than a cat, a moot point in certain circles. It was all a matter of timing. Under Zeke’s instructions, Ingrid lifted the plate of cat food to a calculated point in the air, and D.C. pushed himself up on his haunches to reach for it. He did this only after a certain amount of rumination. He took into consideration, with a glance through nar­rowed eyes at Zeke, that this might prove a trick. But the smell of fish was strong, and he figured he could trust his girl.

As he reached for the plate, Ingrid withdrew it, and in that second before D.C. could follow it, Zeke took his picture.

The flash momentarily blinded them. Afterwards, in tell­ing his fellow agents about it, Zeke credited D.C. with pulling off the fastest cat-disappearing act in history. One second he was on the bed reaching for the dish, and the next he had vanished. Talk about genii. This cat had a built-in one.

“I should’ve taken his prints first,” Zeke said regretfully.

After a brief search they found D.C. under the bed where he dared them to come after him. The FBI be hanged. Ingrid, on her knees, tried to reach him, but he only backed off, look­ing hurt. It was getting so you couldn’t trust anyone.

“I can’t go all the way under,” she said, looking up at Zeke from a position that reversed the head and derriere. “I’ll get dirty and Patti will murder me. I’m supposed to keep my room as clean as Mom does while she’s gone.”

She offered a suggestion. “If you get on the other side, and we both use our arms, one of us can grab him.”