by Brian Harper
A week ago, feeling restless and lonely on her first night in town, Trish had gone by herself to the movies. The screen sagged, and the picture had been projected out of focus. Fewer than a dozen patrons had occupied the wheezing straightback chairs. She left before the start of the second feature.
She watched the marquee shrink in the sideview mirror, a rectangle of light diminishing to a postage stamp, gone, and then there was only darkness again.
“He read you the L.A. speech,” Wald said, “didn’t he”
“Speech”
She saw his cheek dimple as the threatened grin was realized. “Every boot on his watch gets to hear it. Ed waits for the first mistake, then launches into his routine.”
Trish felt a little better.
“Of course,” Wald added, “he could be right.”
She flushed, her momentary relief fading. “About me”
“About L.A.-and here. A lot more happens in the city, you know.”
“I realize that.”
“Out here you’re a hundred miles from the nearest riot zone. Even Santa Barbara doesn’t have all that much going on, and when you get this far inland-well, it’s rural America. Strictly small-town.”
“I knew that when I signed up. But …” Trish looked away into the dark. “Sometimes bad things happen-even in small towns.”
For a moment she forgot the humiliation of roll call, the flush of shame, her beating heart. She was wrapped in old memories, memories that melted into half-remembered fragments of dreams.
Then she realized Wald was studying her, eyes narrowed and thoughtful.
She shrugged, as if the thought had been safely philosophical. “Or so I’ve been told.”
5
The dinner party was going smoothly, really wonderfully well, until Barbara Kent saw the prowler in the backyard.
At least she thought it was a prowler. She got only a glimpse of what appeared to be a dark figure moving furtively through the olive trees near the gazebo.
Then shadows swallowed the man-if it was a man-if it had been anything at all.
She flipped a wall switch. White glare spilled over the patio and the hedge-lined flagstone path to the gazebo, but the gazebo itself, pale and stark, was barely touched by the glow.
Though she leaned closer to the kitchen window, her nose brushing the screen, she saw nothing more.
Imagination She wasn’t prone to seeing things that weren’t there. Her father had called her a level-headed pragmatist while she was still in elementary school; she remembered looking up pragmatist in Webster’s and being pleased by the definition.
Daddy had been right too. She was a realist and a skeptic, and if she thought she’d seen someone in the yard, then surely she had.
She was turning toward the phone on the wall when Charles and Ally entered the kitchen, carrying the last of the dinner dishes.
“Sink or dishwasher” Ally asked.
Barbara put on a false smile. No need to alarm her daughter. “Sink.”
Ally deposited the dishes in the soapy water, and Charles did the same. Impatiently Barbara waited for them to go.
Her gaze ticked from the countertop Quasar television with built-in VCR to the Krups espresso machine on the central island, currently brewing four demitasses, then to the hand-rubbed pine cart laden with stainless steel Ottoni cookware, then to the matching hutch, its shelves lined with Waterford crystal.
Expensive things. She thought of what she was wearing-sterling silver earrings from Neiman-Marcus; a herringbone choker, eighteen karat, from Tiffany’s; a gold bangle on her left wrist from Eximious of London. There was more, much more, in her jewelry box and in the wall safe in the den.
“Great dinner, Mom.” Ally’s voice pulled her back to the moment.
“You helped.”
“I didn’t cook anything.”
“You helped by being here. And by lighting up the room.”
Ally blushed, and Barbara felt a blind surge of love for her, mingled with relief that Charles’s misgivings-and her own-had proved groundless.
At fifteen, Alison Kent was going through a rebellious phase. Of course, it was probably hard not to be rebellious when your parents argued all the time, when your home life was a succession of angry fights and ominous silences.
Still, there had been embarrassing incidents-that messy business at the Carltons’ cocktail party last Christmas, for one.
Fearing a similar disaster, Charles had argued for sending Ally to a friend’s home tonight. Barbara had stood her ground on that. Their daughter was good enough for the Danforths and for any other guests who might be hosted in this house.
But privately she’d fretted-and for no cause. Ally behaved beautifully. Wearing a sleeveless white cotton dress and her best manners, she charmed the adults, making not a single misstep. Perhaps her parents’ good behavior brought out her own.
Then in a wrenching shift of perspective, Barbara saw her daughter the way a desperate man might see her, a man who lurked in shadows and violated people’s homes. Her smile faltered.
The clock was ticking. She had to get on the phone.
“You’re the life of the party.” Barbara patted Ally’s arm. “Now get back in there and keep Philip and Judy entertained.”
“I think those five whiskey sours are keeping Philip plenty entertained as it is.”
“Naughty. Now scat.”
Ally left, giggling-she was still not too old for that-and Barbara turned instantly toward the cordless phone. She lifted the handset.
Charles, pouring espresso, arched an eyebrow. “Who are you calling”
“The police.”
6
Crouching low, Cain approached the bay window of the living room.
From twenty yards away he could hear the faint murmur of conversation and the clink of tableware, broken abruptly by a woman’s high-pitched laughter, brief and stabbing like a scream.
Sound carried easily here, in the mountain stillness. He hoped the others had the sound suppressors tightly screwed to the gun barrels, hoped they remembered his admonition to economize on gunfire. Even the best silencer was only partially effective, and then for no more than three or four shots.
The Kent house was the only residence within miles. Still, he was taking no chances.
Though he had never been on the property before, he knew the estate intimately, could visualize every detail of its layout. The house, five thousand square feet on a fenced acre, was a Mediterranean ranch, facing south, with a detached garage to the west.
A paved path between the garage and the house led through the spacious, parklike backyard to a rear gate, then down to a lakeside dock a quarter-mile below. The path and gate were wide enough to accommodate a car, should the Kents wish to tow one of their sport boats into town for service.
Rich people. The wife was, anyway. She’d inherited her money, and hubby had married it.
Now they had all this, while Cain had spent half his life in one prison or another, busted for conning or stealing only a fraction of what the Kents had obtained with no effort at all.
Life was a bitch.
But tonight, for once, Cain meant to make that bitch put out for him.
The front yard was landscaped in rosebushes and jacaranda trees. Cain crept past tangled drifts of roses, avoiding the clutches of their thorns.
As he neared the windows, he seal-walked on his elbows, dragging his lower body. He remembered crawling this way in an alley in San Bernardino to surprise a careless man lying in ambush for him, a man who died in a gurgle of froth.
It was a hard world, kill or be killed, and Cain had learned hardness and made hardness part of him, and he had survived.
Five yards from the front of the house, he ditched the duffel bag behind a bush, then withdrew a folded pair of Tasco binoculars from his side pocket and lifted his head.
The front windows, open to admit the night air, looked in on the spacious living room and attached dining area. Only three people
sat at the dining table: the daughter and two dinner guests. Charles and Barbara Kent were out of the room, perhaps busying themselves with coffee and dessert.
Cain wondered what dinner had been like. Better than prison food, he guessed. And the beds in this house-more comfortable than the bunks in a twelve-by-twelve cell.
He took out his ProCom transceiver and activated channel three.
“Mr. and Mrs. Kent are off the scope. Who’s acquired them”
There was no risk in using names over the air. Under ideal conditions the transceiver’s maximum range was only four miles. Though the Kents’ nearest neighbors and the occasional passing car would be within reach of the signal, the odds of anyone other than Cain and his associates monitoring this particular frequency were infinitesimally small.
“I’ve got them.” That was Gage. “They’re in the kitchen.”
Cain tipped the binoculars again. At the rear of the dining area he could see the kitchen doorway, but the kitchen itself, in the back of the house, was cut off from view.
“Keep watching,” he said. “Let me know when the room is clear.”
“Right…. There’s one more thing.”
Cain waited, knowing from Gage’s tentativeness that the news wasn’t good.
“I, uh, I might’ve been spotted.”
Cain held his voice steady. “How”
“Kitchen window. I think the wife got a look at me. She turned on a light.”
“God damn it.”
Never should have let the kid tag along. A goddamned sixteen-year-old, zits on his face, a whining baby—
Calm. Stay calm.
“Can she see you now” Cain breathed.
“I’m hunkered down behind the gazebo.”
“Stay there.” Under the mask, a single droplet of sweat, like a cold fingertip, traced a meandering course from Cain’s hairline to his chin. “And pray you didn’t fuck this up.”
7
An arc of espresso splashed on the kitchen island. “The police” Charles said in a stage whisper.
“I saw someone in the yard.” Barbara switched on the phone.
He grasped the handset. “Wait a minute.”
From the dining area Judy Danforth’s laugh rose in response to one of Philip’s witticisms.
The thought flickered in Barbara’s mind that the Danforths had been married fourteen years, nearly as long as she and Charles.
When was the last time Charles had made her laugh
She pushed the question away. “Someone’s out there. I’m calling for a patrol car.”
“Nobody’s in our yard, for God’s sake.”
His hands were shaking slightly. He had been tense all day. The party, long-planned, was important to him, as he’d never tired of pointing out. Philip Danforth was rumored to be looking for partners in a new investment scheme likely to prove as profitable as his previous ventures. Charles wanted desperately to be in on it.
Now he must be worried about how it would look if a squad car showed up at the front gate just as the Danforths were finishing dessert.
Admittedly, it would put a rather unpleasant spin on an otherwise faultless evening. Later, the visit by the police would be what Philip Danforth remembered, not the filet mignon brushed with creamy Barnaise, not the baby carrots in sweet butter, not Ally in her white dress with her white smile.
Barbara understood all that, but still, facts were facts, and she was her daddy’s level-headed child.
“I saw something,” she said evenly.
Charles seized on the last word like a terrier snatching a bone. “Someone, you said a moment ago. Now it’s something. What did you see, exactly”
“I think it was a prowler.”
“You think.”
“I can’t be sure, but there was movement by the gazebo.”
“Movement.”
“Yes, movement, damn it.” He was pushing her buttons, as he did so well.
Charles released a little snort of disbelief, a haughty aristocratic sound typical of him. He glanced out the window at the floodlit yard. “Well, no boogeyman’s out there now.”
“He’s hiding.”
“Or maybe he never existed.”
“I saw him.”
“The system’s armed. Nobody can penetrate the perimeter.”
She hated it when he talked that way, in pseudo-military jargon, as if he were a CIA intelligence officer fresh from the Peruvian jungle and not an overpaid defense attorney, his manicured nails innocent of dirt.
Still, she hesitated, wondering if he had a point.
“I thought,” she said slowly, “you turned off the system to open the gate when the Danforths arrived.”
“I did. But I reset it afterward. Look.”
He gestured toward the kitchen doorway. Barbara peeked out, looking past the dining area, across the spacious living, to the foyer. A wall of shelves hid the front door from her view, but the alarm-system keypad was visible, mounted alongside the intercom box and the remote front-gate control.
The foyer was dimly lit, and in the shadows a red diode glowed faintly beside the controller’s alphanumeric display.
“Satisfied” Charles added with his smirking smile.
A reply was unnecessary. In triumph he darkened the yard light and left the kitchen, toting a tray of demitasses.
Barbara wondered how she ever could have found that smile attractive, even manly. It was his good looks that had done it, she supposed-the high, patrician forehead and sculpted jaw. At twenty-six she had been young enough to assume that the outer man must reflect the man within.
Well, she was forty-three now.
Alone, she thought about the alarm system. It secured only the fence and the front and rear gates-the perimeter, as Charles liked to call it. She had rejected the idea of additional zones covering the house itself. Living in a fortress was not her style. She liked open windows and doors, moving currents of air, the fresh breeze off the lake.
Now she wondered if a fortress wouldn’t have been a better idea.
True, the boundaries of the property were protected. But if an intruder somehow got onto the grounds, he would face no further obstacles except the locks on the doors and the latches on the window screens.
In the dining area Charles started telling his story about the tennis tournament in Ojai. He thought the Danforths hadn’t heard it, but in fact he’d recounted the anecdote to them just last month at the country club.
Maybe he was wrong about this too.
Her mind made up, Barbara lifted the cordless handset and touched 9-1-1.
8
Crawling again, dragging the duffel bag, Cain approached the front door.
Through the bay window he could see Charles Kent, having returned to the dining area, serving coffee to his guests. A well-dressed man, Mr. Kent, tanned and urbane.
Nearly time to strike. By now the others must be ready.
Tyler and Lilith were at the northwest corner of the house, where a side door opened onto an east-west hallway. The hall led past the cellar door and the laundry nook, into the kitchen.
Blair was on the patio. Via the back door he would enter a rear hallway which fed into the dining area. Gage would join him when it was time to go in.
That left only Cain himself. He would use the front door at the house’s southwest corner. It opened on a small foyer that would permit him to enter without being seen.
Kitchen, rear hall, foyer-the only exits from the living room and dining area.
Each escape route soon would be cut off.
His radio buzzed. It was Gage. “She’s on the phone.”
Cain needed a moment to register the information.
She. Barbara Kent, of course. On the phone. There was a phone in the kitchen.
Calling the police. Hell, was she calling the police
The telephone line always had been a weak link in the operation. Cutting it would have been a sound tactical move. But if the phone service was interrupted for any reason,
an alarm automatically would be triggered at the security system’s central monitoring station.
“What do we do now” Gage asked.
Cain didn’t hesitate. “We’re committed. No going back.”
“If she got a look at Gage”-the demurring voice was Blair’s-“she might’ve called for a squad car.”
A gnat whined close to Cain’s ear. He caught it in a gloved hand, snuffed it between thumb and forefinger.
“We can handle a squad car,” he said coolly.
No one disagreed.
9
“All units.” The dispatcher’s voice crackled over the radio.
“We’ll take it,” Pete Wald said.
Leaning forward, Trish unclipped the microphone and keyed the mike. “Four-Adam-eight-one. What’ve you got, Lou”
Lou was Louise, one of two night-watch dispatchers. The other was Thelma. They’d both caught their share of grief about that.
“Caller reports a possible ten-seventy,” Lou said in her cigarette-froggy rasp. “Twenty-five hundred Skylark Drive.”
Wald gunned the engine, the Caprice speeding up. Trish’s heart accelerated with it.
A 10-70 was a prowler call.
“Get the details,” Wald said.
Lou didn’t need to be asked. “Nine-eleven operator says the caller was sort of vague. Might’ve seen an intruder in her backyard in some bushes or trees. Just a glimpse-dark clothes, no other description. Funny thing is, they’ve got a security fence, and the alarm didn’t ring. You want backup”
Trish looked at Wald, his face lit from below by the spectrum of colors from the dashboard. He shook his head.
“Negative,” Trish said into the microphone. “We’ll handle it.”
“I’ll have another unit in the area just in case.”
“Copy that. We’re en route, code two high. Ten-four.”
In answer Lou read off the time military-style. “Twenty-oh-five.” It was the one formality she consistently observed.
Wald shot onto a side street at sixty but left the light bar and siren unactivated. Only a code three call permitted their continuous use.
