Residents fear that town might have changed

Its miles of dirt roads with stunning vistas of rolling hills and open fields made for paradisiacal running. Her stone-walled yard always needed mending of one sort or another. Residents close by were neighborly, baking cookies for one another on Christmas and sharing gifts on Halloween.

But Cates harbored a reservation about Mont Vernon. The isolation of her neighborhood, heavily forested with white pine and hemlock and nary a street light to ward off the deep black of moonless nights, could make her feel vulnerable. She confessed this to her next-door neighbor Yuki Chorney, and the two made a pact: They would keep an eye out for each other.

“We always thought that if anything happened, we’d hear because we’re right next door,’’ said Chorney.

But Chorney did not hear. At home on the night of the killing, Chorney slept some 50 feet away without hearing a sound, not even when Cates’s 11-year-old daughter apparently ran from the house toward hers.

“She was trying to come and get us. Why couldn’t I have helped her?’’ Chorney asked.

In this town 60 miles from Boston, population about 2,400, there has long been a covenant of faith - that small town ways meant civility, perhaps even a kind of gentility that kept away theft and robbery and bodily harm. To be truly of Mont Vernon, one had to abide by the covenant and act accordingly. Not locking house doors is a common practice in town, announced with pride.

Many are rethinking that habit, and wondering whether their town is the place they thought it was.

“I guess we were a little naive to think that Mont Vernon was any different from the rest of the world,’’ said one woman, who, like many residents, declined to give her name for fear of offending fellow residents.

By looks, Mont Vernon is a step back in time. Its winding roads are studded with ancient Capes and gingerbread Victorians. Its downtown is much as it was a century ago, when the town was ending its run as a summering destination, with a timbered library, white-washed town hall, general store, and not much else. And while most of its dairy farms are gone and pasture land has given way to faux Colonials, many residents are still keen on livestock. Goats and horses are not rare sights.

Today, many residents work for Fidelity Investments or BAE Systems, the defense contractor, and the town is mostly well-to-do.

Cates, a hospital nurse, lived with her husband, David, an engineer for BAE, and her 11-year-old daughter. Their street, Trow Road, is dirt, with just four houses. Yesterday, the only sounds that could be heard were blasts from a shooting range a few miles away and a dim insect buzz.

The road gets little traffic, but a resident said it is a common shortcut to get to a favorite teen hangout - Purgatory Falls, a series of waterfalls cascading off slate-gray boulders. Come nighttime, teenagers can be heard hooting and hollering as they drive down the road on their way to the falls, she said.

The Cates home is a modern ranch, lighted by tiers of windows that Cates liked to throw open, even on the hottest days, the ones that reminded her of home in Arizona. Several acres of woods stretched behind the house and David Cates had plowed trails for snowshoeing and hiking.

Kim Cates was always on the move, whether mowing grass or involved in a project or activity.

“She was a fixture around here,’’ said Jim Peacock, owner of the Mont Vernon Karate Studio, above Police Department headquarters in the center of town, where Cates’s daughter had earned a black belt in May. “She was not some drop-off parent.’’

Peacock said that Cates encouraged her daughter to pursue karate because of the values it taught: self-discipline, work ethic, and respect for others.

Come summertime, Cates and her daughter would walk 1 1/2 miles uphill to the general store for ice cream. Last winter, they learned to snowboard together - an undertaking that ended only when Cates hurt her wrist on the slopes.

Her daughter “respected her mom and Kim respected her,’’ Chorney said.

Chorney said that she and Cates had moved into the neighborhood around the same time and had quickly bonded around their girls, who became dear friends, though Cates’s daughter is six years older. “They were like sisters,’’ said Chorney.

Chorney said she had seen Cates a few weeks earlier and they chatted like they often did, about quotidian tidbits of life - on this occasion tanning lotions. Cates had not mentioned that her husband would be going on a business trip, she said.

“I wish I had known,’’ Chorney said. “I would have cracked a window.’’

Globe correspondent John S. Nicas contributed to this report.