"You'll—"
He nodded. "Yes."
She stopped halfway up the stairs. "That was a rotten, rotten thing for anybody to do."
"Yes. We'll try to find out who."
She left the door open. A moment later she came out and laid on the porch railing a square of heavy cloth, covered with shed hair. Then she went in again and shut the door.
He rolled up the cat's body and stopped at the garage for the spade. He did not spend time searching for any brick or heavy stone or other missile. Nor did he examine closer the heavy footmarks he fancied he saw in the grass beyond the service yard.
Lightning began to flicker as his spade bit into the soft ground by the back fence. He kept his mind strictly on the task at hand. He worked steadily, but without undue haste. When he patted down the last spadeful of earth and started for the house, the lightning flashes were stronger, making the moments in between even darker. A wind had started up and was dragging at the leaves.
He did not hurry. What if the lightning did indistinctly show him a large dog near the house toward the front? There were several large dogs in the neighborhood. They were not savage. Totem had not been killed by a dog.
Deliberately he replaced the spade in the garage and walked back to the house. Only when he got inside and looked back through the screen did his thoughts break loose for a moment.
The lightning flash, brightest yet, showed the dog coming around the corner of the house. He had only a glimpse. A gray dog who walked stiff-legged. He quickly closed the door and shot home the bolt.