Winter Moon

stretch of driveway and stopped in front of the garage. He picked up the remote control and pressed the single button.
        The automatic garage door rolled up. Inside the three-vehicle space, the overhead convenience lamp, which was on a three-minute timer, shed enough light to reveal that nothing was amiss in the garage.
        So much for the power-failure theory.
        Instead of pulling forward ten feet and into the garage, he stayed where he was. He put the Cherokee in Park but didn't switch off the engine. He left the headlights on too.
        He picked up the shotgun from where it was angled muzzle-down in the knee space in front of the passenger seat, and he got out of the station wagon. He left the driver's door wide open.
        Door open, lights on, engine running.
        He didn't like to think that he would cut and run at the first sign of trouble. But if it was run or die, he was sure as hell going to be faster than anything that might be chasing him.
        Although the pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun contained only five rounds-one already in the breech and four in the magazine tube-he was unconcerned that he hadn't brought any spare shells. If he was unlucky enough to encounter something that couldn't be brought down with five shots at close range, he wouldn't live long enough to reload, anyway.
        He went to the front of the house, climbed the porch steps, and tried the front door. It was locked.
        His house key was on a bead chain, separate from the car keys. He.fished it out of his jeans and unlocked the door.
        Standing outside, holding the shotgun in his right hand, he reached cross-body with his left, inside the half-open door, fumbling for the light switch. He expected something to rush at him from out of the night. downstairs hallway-or to put its hand over his as he patted the wall in search of the switch plate.
        He flipped the switch, and light filled the hall, spilled over him onto the front porch. He crossed the threshold and took a couple of steps inside, leaving the door open behind him.
        The house was quiet.
        Dark rooms on both sides of the hallway. Study to his left. Living room to his right.
        He hated to turn his back on either room, but finally he moved to the right, through the archway, the shotgun held in front of him. When he turned on the overhead light, the expansive living room proved to be deserted. No intruder.
        Nothing out of the ordinary.
        Then he noticed a dark clump lying on the white fringe at the edge of the Chinese carpet. At first glance he thought it was feces, that an animal had gotten in the house and done its business right there. But when he stood over it and looked closer, he saw it was only a caked wad of damp earth.
        A couple of blades of grass bristled from it.
        Back in the hallway, he noticed, for the first time, smaller crumbs of dirt littering the polished oak floor.
        He ventured cautiously into the study, where there was no ceiling fixture. The influx of light from the hallway dispelled enough shadows to allow him to find and click on the desk lamp.
        Crumbs and smears of dirt, now dry, soiled the blotter on the desk.
        More of it on the red leather seat of the chair.
        "What the hell?" he wondered softly.
        Warily he rolled aside the mirrored doors on the study closet, but no one was hiding in there.
        In the hall he checked the foyer closet too. Nobody.
        The front door was still standing open. He couldn't decide what to do about it. He liked it open because it offered an unobstructed exit if he wanted to get out fast. On the other hand, if he searched the house top to bottom and found no one in it, he would have to come back, lock the door, and search every room again to guard against the possibility that someone had slipped in behind his back. Reluctantly he closed it and engaged the dead bolt..The beige wall-to-wall carpet that was used through the upstairs also extended down the inlaid-oak staircase, with its heavy handrail. In the center of a few of the lower treads were crumbled chunks of dry earth, not much, just enough to catch his eye.
        He peered up at the second floor.
        No. First, the downstairs.
        He found nothing in the powder room, in the closet under the stairs, in the large dining room, in the laundry room, in the service bath. But there was dirt again in the