Derla and Big Tim stand heatedly jawing at each other from opposite sides of the four-foot-high chain link fence bordering Derla's front yard. Big Tim is trying to keep cuddled in his massive arms a medium-sized gray tabby feline which is altogether too squirmy right now to be properly comforted, unnerved as it is by the continuing barrage of cat-unfriendly yaps emanating from Derla's fox terrier as the dog jumps to bounce his front paws time and again against the fence, repeatedly producing an irritating metallic rattle.

"I've had enough of this shenanigans, Derla!" Big Tim blusters, a small buildup of white spittle visible at the lower corner of his lopsided mouth. The broad brow of his huge head furrows with emotion as he speaks. His face is turning red with inadequately vented anger, but his completely exposed scalp is lightly sunburned to pale pink, the color Big Tim's scalp always is. "Why'd you sick him on her, huh? Do you get some kind of weird kick out of being cruel?"

Derla wears a stubborn expression, her eyes squinted down to narrow slits beneath a dark-streaked gray mantle of tightly pulled-back hair. She holds her arms resolutely crossed before her torso.

"You listen here, Mr. Mess-sender," she begins, the volume of her voice rising with each succeeding word. "You have a lot of nerve telling ME you've had enough. Well I'm telling you that I'VE had enough. Enough of all the messes you've been sending into my yard day after day, week after week, year after year...from those flea-bitten hairball strays that you claim are pets! It's always amazed me how anyone could be so irresponsible as to keep so many cats as you do -- doing no more than feeding them and just letting them run loose, breeding disease, noise, filth and stink for the rest of the neighborhood to put up with.

By now she's yelling. "Well I'm NOT going to put up with it any more, Mister! I've paid good money for this particular dog, and that's because he's well-trained in the matter of those worthless vermin you send messing into my yard! And I don't care if you DO see him taking apart one of your precious little fleaballs from time to time. You are NOT to enter my property without my permission again, and if you do, I'll have you locked up for trespassing!"

Her yelling has gotten Trooper, her trained cat-killing fox terrier, worked up into an even more feverish frenzy of barking and fence-rattling. Big Tim is simply too exasperated to effectively respond. His eyes bulge blankly at Derla and his lips mutely quiver while the cat in his arms claws about desperately for its freedom.

Something suddenly clicks in your head and you turn back to your earlier course, cursing yourself for having allowed yourself to linger too long at this last distraction.

You entertain no doubt that Sadie has put considerable distance between herself and you, so you now effect no pretensions in your pace: you are fairly trotting along West 9th across Borah and along nearly the entire span of the single long block immediately north of Borah. You run on the sidewalk fronting the row of stucco-framed homes, still the only true tract development in Catfield. Across the street from these cookie-cuttered homes lie dozens of undeveloped acres still in agriculture.

Just before you reach the Dolan Canal you slow back to a walk, out of breath. At the canal you abruptly stop, frustrated, and stand beside the guardrail there to gaze eastward over the muddy-watered ditch and back into town, through which this man-created stream has flowed the past sixty-plus years to slake the thirst of the fertile fields of Catfield Flat spreading far and wide behind you.

You consider for a moment resuming your pursuit, but you know that it would be pointless. And now you are momentarily startled by a sound so faint, you're not even certain you heard it at all: a resonant tone like that from a church bell distant nearly beyond the edge of hearing. Was it real?

Your line of sight north, the direction your quarry would have traveled, offers little beyond an unremarkable agglomeration of houses and shrubs fading farther into obscurity in the deepening gloam of approaching night. But far in the background, projecting itself just above the obstruction of tangled nothingness surrounding you here, the stone tower of the old Institute's main hall at the town's outskirts barely manages to catch the day's final waning rays of orange sunlight, and even momentarily glints at you from the side of its long-unused bell. And in that very moment you experience an unfamiliar sensation. It starts in the pit of your stomach but quickly wells up to fill you with something you begin to realize is nothing but certain knowledge. Bidden or unbidden, it has come regardless, and you won't even have to wait for the days to pass to confirm your sudden understanding that nobody in Catfield will ever again lay eyes upon Sadie Simmons.

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