Cemetery Dance

Chapter 74

Alexander Esteban turned from Pond Road, through the automatic gates, and onto the immaculate gravel driveway that wound among the thick — trunked oaks forming the approach to his estate. He drove slowly, savoring the feeling of returning home. Next to him, on the seat, lay a simple, two — page vellum document, signed, sealed, attested, and legally bulletproof.

A document that would, after a bit of a struggle no doubt, make him one of the richest men in the world.

It was late, almost nine o'clock, but there was no more rush. No more planning, directing, producing, executing. It had consumed practically his every waking moment for more months than he cared to count. But that was all behind him. The show had gone off perfectly to a standing ovation, and now there was just one little loose end to tie up. One last curtain call, as it were: a final bow.

As the car eased to a stop before the barn, Esteban felt his Black — Berry begin to vibrate. With a hiss of irritation he checked it: the rear kitchen door was registering an alarm. His spine stiffened. Surely it was a false alarm — they were a frequent occurrence on his large estate, one of the drawbacks of having such an extensive security system. Still, he had to be sure. He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out his favored handgun, a Browning Hi — Power 9mm parabellum with tangent sights. He checked the magazine and found it with its full complement of thirteen ball — point rounds. Slipping it into his pocket, he rose from the car and stepped out into the fragrant night. He checked the freshly raked gravel of the driveway — no sign of a car. Strolling across the broad expanse of lawn, he glanced down at the deserted pier, at the twinkling lights across the Sound, and found all in order. Gun in hand, he passed the greenhouse, entered a walled garden, and approached the back door of the kitchen, the one that had registered the alarm, moving noiselessly. He came to the door, tried the handle. It was closed and locked. The old brass keyhole showed no signs of being forced, no scratches in the old verdigris, no broken panes, nothing to indicate a disturbance.

False alarm.

He straightened up, checked his watch. He was almost looking forward to what was to come. A perverse pleasure, to be sure, but an ancient one. A pleasure encoded in the very genes: the pleasure of killing. He had done it before and found it a curiously cathartic experience. Perhaps, if he hadn't been a movie director, he might have made an excellent serial killer.

Chuckling to himself at this private little sally, he took out his key, opened the kitchen door, and punched in his code, turning off the alarm system in the house. But as he walked through the kitchen toward the door leading to the basement, he found himself hesitating. Why a false alarm now? They usually happened during thunderstorms or high winds. It was a calm, clear night, without the breath of wind. Was it a short circuit, a random static discharge? He felt uneasy, and that was a feeling he had learned never to ignore.

Instead of heading down to the basement, he turned and walked quietly through the darkened halls until he came to his study. He woke up his Mac, entered the password, and logged onto the Web site that handled his security cams. If someone had come in through the kitchen door, he would have had to cross the lawn behind the old greenhouse, where a cam would have picked him up. There was virtually no way to get into the house without being seen — coverage was more than one hundred percent — but if you were going to try, the kitchen side of the house, with its walled garden and ruined greenhouse, was perhaps the weakest point of the entire system. He tapped in the second password, and the live — cam image popped onto the screen. Checking his BlackBerry, he saw the alarm had registered at eight forty — one pm. He punched "8:36" into the digital timestamp field, selected the camera to monitor, and began to watch.

It was well past sundown, and the image was dark — the night vision hadn't kicked in. He fiddled with the controls, enhancing the view as much as possible. He wondered at his own paranoia; he was, as usual, micromanaging. He thought, with a smile of irony, that it was both his worst, and his best, quality. And yet the uneasy feeling remained…

And that was when he saw a flash of black cross the corner of the screen.

Esteban stopped the action, backed it up, and moved it forward in slow motion. There it was again: a figure in black, flying through the very edge of the camera's field. He felt ice along his spine. Very, very clever; if he were to try to slip into the house, that's how he would have done it himself.

He stopped it and backed up again, frame by frame. The running man was only visible in six frames, less than a fifth of a second, but the high — def camera had caught him well; and in the middle frame he had a clear glimpse of the man's pale face and hands.

Esteban rose abruptly, knocking over his chair. It was that FBI agent, the one who had first visited him one week before. A momentary rush of panic threatened to overwhelm him, a suffocating tightness gripping his chest. Everything had gone perfectly so far — and now this. How did he know?How did he know?

With a great force of will, he exhaled the panic. Thinking under pressure was one of his strengths, something he had learned in the movie business. When things went wrong on the set, in the middle of a shoot, and everyone was standing around at a thousand dollars a minute waiting for him to figure things out, he had to make split — second, accurate decisions.

Pendergast. That was the FBI agent's name. He was alone. He'd left that beefy sidekick of his behind, the one with the Italian name. Why? It meant he was there on a hunch, freelancing as it were. If the man had hard evidence, he would have come in with a SWAT team, guns blazing. That was point one.

Point two was Pendergast didn't know he'd been smoked out. Perhaps he'd seen Esteban arrive by car or suspected he would come. But he didn't know Estebanknew he was there. That gave Esteban a distinct advantage.

Point three: Pendergast didn't know the layout of the estate, especially the extensive and confusing basements. Esteban knew them with his eyes closed.

He remained at his desk, thinking furiously. Pendergast would be headed for the basement — of that he was sure. He was looking for the woman. He'd have probably gone down via the back kitchen stairs, very close to the door through which he'd entered. And that's undoubtedly where he was right now: under the house, poking around among the old movie props, working his way through the south cellars. It would take him at least fifteen minutes to find his way through all that junk to the tunnel that ran to the barn.

Fortunately, the girl was in the barn cellar. Unfortunately, there was that tunnel connecting the house basements to the barn basements.

Abruptly, Esteban made a decision. He slid the gun into his waistband and rose, walking briskly out the front door and across the lawn to the barn. As he crossed the drive, a small smile broke out on his face as a plan took shape. The poor bastard had no idea what he was getting himself into. This little drama was going to have a charming finish — very charming. Not unlike his last movie,Breakout Sing Sing. Pity he couldn't film it.