All Shots

zones during declared snow emergencies, and during the rest of the year, you have to check the signs to make sure that you aren’t leaving your car on the side of a street scheduled for street cleaning. The towing for street cleaning is draconian: enforcement is vicious, and reclaiming your car is, as my neighbor Kevin Dennehy says, wicked expensive. Consequently, even the most unprepossessing little off-street parking space can go for a high rent.
    The owner of this house, however, apparently didn’t need the income. Like Mellie’s, the place was almost a cottage, two stories high, with a small porch and wooden steps, but it had been recently painted in the warm yellow familiar from the Longfellow House on upscale Brattle Street. The windows looked new and had off-white fabric blinds, all lowered. When Rowdy and I walked to the end of the parking area, I saw that the backyard was landscaped with diminutive shrubs that I couldn’t identify, a dwarf weeping tree of some sort, and a heavy layer of bark mulch. A five-foot-high wooden fence stained dark brown ran around the sides and the rear of the yard. There was no sign of the missing Siberian and no sign of anyone at home. Rowdy showed no particular interest in entering the yard. I continued mainly because the pale woman had said that the dog had been here. It was possible, I thought, that the owner of the pretty little house had taken her in and had perhaps called animal control. Only then did I realize that I’d neglected to ask Mellie whether Strike had an ID tag on her collar and, if so, whose name and phone number were on it. On second thought, would Mellie have noticed? Did Mellie know how to read?
    When we rounded the corner of the house, I saw the full extent of the renovations. At the back were large sliding glass doors, and across the entire rear of the house ran a low deck with teak planter boxes, matching benches, and a small teak patio table and chairs. I also saw unmistakable evidence of recent neglect: the lawn needed mowing, and the petunias in the teak boxes were wilted, as were the mums and patio tomatoes in large terra-cotta pots on the deck. Cambridge being the temple to academe that it is, the life of the mind always has top priority around here; the failure to mow the lawn and water the plants might simply mean that the owner was writing the final chapter of a book or completing preparations to teach a new course. Still, I felt mildly critical. This yard was about the size of ours, and if we could miraculously cure the dogs of ruining our potential oasis of urban greenery, I’d find a few extra minutes every day to water the plants instead of letting them wilt.
    When I stepped onto the deck and approached the glass doors, it was not, however, with the intention of delivering a lecture about horticultural responsibility. I merely wanted to take a close look at the planter boxes and the benches they supported, an attractive and sturdy set that I thought might stand a chance of surviving the dogs. No lights were on, and no sounds came from the house. Still, the bright blue subcompact was parked in the cutout. To avoid the embarrassment of being caught examining the furnishings on the deck, I made what I intended as the token gesture of rapping my knuckles on one of the glass doors. As I knocked, I looked in. Only a few feet from the glass door, on the tile floor of what proved to be a kitchen, a woman was sprawled facedown. Everywhere around her, in fact, everywhere I could see in the interior of the little house, were piles of broken crockery, cartons that had held milk and orange juice and cereal, emptied bags of flour and sugar, and books and magazines that had been tossed onto the floor. Potted plants had been knocked over. Next to the door was the carcass of a rotisserie chicken. Every cabinet door and every drawer was open, as were the doors of the oven and the refrigerator. Two gigantic fish tanks must have been shoved off their low stands; the glass had been smashed and dead fish lay amid glass shards on the damp tile. The stench of rot and death must have leaked out around the door frame. The spoiled remains of the rotisserie chicken contributed to it, I’m sure, as did the heaps of damp food and the sad little tropical fish, but its principal source must have been the body of the woman and the blood that had pooled, congealed, and dried around her. She wore cropped white jeans now stained red and a bloodied aqua T-shirt that