“From inside that house,” María said.

They covered the last thirty feet without a word.

A dog barked at them from two houses down, then quit.

A woman in a housedress stood on her own front steps with a leash looped twice around her wrist.

“You here about the noise?”

“What kind of noise,” María said.

“Back in August.

Somebody up on the pole with the phone box at two in the morning, banging on it like a woodpecker.” The woman jerked her chin toward 1427.