Animal Appetite

stand. I glanced at the book it held open: The Unredeemed Captive by John Demos, the story of Eunice Williams. As a young girl in Deerfield, Massachusetts, Eunice had been captured in a raid in 1704 and taken to a settlement near Montreal, probably the same one, I guessed, where Hannah Duston and Mary Neff would have ended up if Hannah had accepted her captivity. Eunice Williams had more than accepted hers: She’d horrified her family and, in fact, all colonial New England by refusing to cooperate in efforts to release her and, indeed, by marrying within what she must have considered her own tribe.
    “George! George!” the neighbor persisted. Swinging open a door that led to the kitchen, she came to an abrupt halt. Veering around, she accidentally slammed into me. Her apple cheeks were suddenly white. “Dear God,” she breathed. “Dear God.”
    I brushed past her. Sprawled facedown on the shiny, speckled linoleum of the kitchen floor was the body of a man I barely recognized as Professor Foley. Everything about the scene—the awkward twist of the legs, the strange angle of the neck, the hand outstretched toward the spilled coffee mug, the little puddle of liquid by the mug, the glare of the harsh lights—was a duplicate of what I’d seen in the police photo Claudia had given me of Jack Andrews’s dead body. Professor Foley’s most distinctive feature was hidden: His blue eyes had glinted with the charm and curiosity of a bright toddler’s. Now his head faced away from me. I approached slowly and tiptoed around the remains. The eyes were open. They were still, of course, blue. In all other respects, they were no longer George Foley’s. The stench was strong and vile, like the reek of a dirty nursing home that somehow housed a filthy dog kennel. I felt sickeningly relieved that I didn’t have to touch the corpse. Death was all too apparent; there was no need for me to verify it.
    “His heart, I suppose,” said the neighbor, Lydia. Suddenly losing control, she bent over, covered her mouth with her hand, and gagged.
    “Go outside,” I told her. “I’ll call for help.”
    The outdated kitchen had the kind of old gas stove that’s coming back in fashion as an antique. A few clean dishes rested in a rack by an empty soapstone sink. The new white refrigerator looked out of place. The walls were the ubiquitous lime green of the 1950s. I couldn’t find a phone. Even if there’d been one, the stench would have driven me out. I don’t know why we hadn’t smelled it the second we’d entered the house. We hadn’t been expecting it, I guess. And the walls were thick, the rooms immense. Obeying my instruction, Lydia headed back through the dining room and out through the front door. In the hallway near the door stood a small desk that served as a telephone table. Sucking air from the outdoors, I picked up an old beige Princess phone, called 911, gave Professor Foley’s address, and said that I was certain he was dead. Hanging up, I spotted among the scraps of paper by the phone one that bore my own name and number. Friday, Professor Foley had written on the slip of paper. Tea. Next to the telephone was a neatly trimmed newspaper clipping that I recognized as the Globe’s, article about the Cambridge rat invasion. I wondered why the article was by the phone. Had Professor Foley placed a call about the rats?
    Just outside the door, Lydia was sobbing and retching. Although I didn’t know her at all, I put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “They’ll be here soon,” I added, without specifying who they were. “I’ll wait. Do you want to go home?”
    Pulling herself upright, she said, “No, no. I’ll stay here.”
    “He was a close friend?” I asked.
    Before she could reply, something moved in a nearby flower bed. Although it was dark out, the light mounted over the front door illuminated a wide area. A clump of salt-marsh hay rose and fell. A dark shape appeared and vanished.
    “A rat!” Lydia cried. “Damn, damn those things!”
    “I’m not sure it was—”
    “Oh yes it was! That hay is attracting them! I’ve told George—” Breaking off, she took a rattling breath that suggested asthma. She reached into a jacket pocket, groped, and removed an inhaler. “Pardon me,” she said. As she dosed herself, I asked whether she needed a doctor.
    “No, I’m used to it. This does the trick. What doesn’t help is all that hay.”
    “It’s what serious gardeners always