The Last Day

TWENTY

After Dr. McCarty left the house at five A.M. on Tuesday morning, Watcher went into the garage and removed the GPS from under Ward's BMW and dropped it into his rucksack along with the stuffed bear. Inside the house he collected his recorder, since he wasn't going to need video going forward from here. He moved silently through the house collecting the other cameras and microphones that were tied into the recorder, leaving only the ones that transmitted so he could access them remotely.

He looked at the thrown- back covers and he leaned down so his face was inches above the sheets. Watcher drank in the scent of the doctor. Smiling, he made up the bed, pulling the sheets and spread tight enough to bounce a quarter on, and all the while wondering what it was going to be like to get a good look at her internal organs.

He looked at the curtains and couldn't see the microphone that was pinned into the top seam. There had been no need to visually record people sleeping.

He eased Dr. McCarty's door closed and crossed to the bedroom where Ward slept. He pressed his ear to the wood, and was rewarded with the sound of McCarty's light snoring. He pressed down the lever carefully, eased the door open. Watcher moved to the foot of the bed, studying the sleeping man's relaxed face. The man was still wearing the clothes he'd been wearing the evening before. Watcher put his hand to the hilt of the survival knife, and suppressed the desire to do something like slit the shirt off Ward's body. Watcher tensed when Ward suddenly rolled over onto his side, but he doubted he'd awaken yet. The Scotch should be good for another few hours.

It was odd, standing there studying a man sleeping like he didn't have a care in the world. And it was exhilarating to know you would be carving him up in forty hours, give or take. Deciding he should not do anything more, he left the room, closing the door behind him.

He went into the child's bedroom, opened the dresser, and placed a special object he'd fashioned under the child's folded underwear.

Outside, the heat hit him like a blast from an open oven door. Watcher made a beeline up through the woods, passing his hide. He kept going until he arrived at the back door of the small house in the subdivision that bordered the McCarty acres. He went to the guest bedroom, his media room, and listened to the audio of the dinner conversation he'd captured. He especially enjoyed the part about the baseball. Being in denial, not seeing themselves as evil people, they dismissed the idea that someone from the outside could violate their precious and expensive security system. The McCarty home was a house divided, and it was going to get much worse.

He looked at the stuffed bear, picked it up, and pressed the hand to hear the message a mother had put there for a child who could never hear it again. He laughed and, holding the animal by its arms, made the bear perform a dance of death.