The sun’s first predawn pallor was just staining the far horizon as I turned off Orchard Street into the Heights in George’s borrowed squad car. I didn’t need to check for the house number-I recognized it from the photo in Phillips’s puppy album. It would have been hard to misughs in any event. Of the several homes I could see, it was the only one lit up like a bonfire, complete with strings of Christmas lights. It was a tan brick, one-story affair with columns in front and a carport on the side-as unique to Vermont as to Pasadena, California.

One half of the paneled double front door jerked open as my finger approached the bell. A wreath hanging on the door’s knocker fell to the ground and rolled into the snow. The woman I’d seen holding the poodle stood before me, fully dressed and made up, her face drawn and anxious.

Her eyes flicked from me to the police car and back again. “Oh shit,” she muttered and turned and walked away. I followed her in and closed the door behind me.

Through the hallway, I saw her sit down on a living room couch. She crossed her arms tightly over her stomach and stared furiously at the floor-a curious mix of sorrow and rage. As I entered the room, its festiveness struck an incongruous note: the fire was burning, the tree lit up, poinsettias and evergreen boughs abounded, and strings of cranberries and popcorn laced back and forth in front of the mantelpiece. Christmas had been over a week ago, yet all this looked like a permanent display, as in a museum of American culture or an advertisement for Smirnoff vodka.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“I’m afraid he is.”

“That stupid dog.”

Her tone was so flat I couldn’t tell if she meant her husband or the poodle in the pictures, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to ask; her reactions were odd enough already. I waited hopefully for more, but she was silent, so I sat on the end of the armchair opposite her and kept quiet, watching her rocking back and forth in her seat. I don’t get much practice telling people their companions have had their necks atomized by little old ladies with shotguns.