Firebreak

9

Once, some years ago, there had been people inside Claire's house that Parker hadn't wanted there, and he'd come in that time at night, in a rowboat taken from another house on the opposite side of the lake, guided by the lights gleaming from houses along the shore. He did the same now, but later, three in the morning, no light visible from any of the houses around him. That other time he'd come across from the far side of the lake, but tonight he started looking for a boat about a quarter mile east of Claire's house, out near the state road.

All the houses along here were shut for the winter. The first two had no boats that he could find, but the third came with a boathouse, like Claire's, and beside it on a concrete dock a small fiberglass dinghy lay facedown. When he rolled it over, its oars were on the concrete beneath it. He put the boat in the water, took one oar to use as a paddle, sat in the boat facing front, as though it were a canoe, and started along the shoreline.

Farther out, starshine defined the water, but this close to shore he was shadowed by the surrounding trees and hills. The houses were hard to tell apart in darkness this complete. It would be the boathouse he'd recognize, not the house itself.

He slid through the water, almost completely silent, the faint whisperings of boat and oar blended into the cool silence of the night. Soon the boathouse was a blacker black ahead of him, blocky, looming. He shipped the oar, let the boat coast forward, then leaned out with one palm to fend off from the corner of the boathouse, keeping the boat clear. Hands along the rough wall of the boathouse on his right, he eased around to the wooden dock, and stopped it there before it could clatter against the concrete patio.

His pistol was in his inside jacket pocket. He put it on the dock in darkness in front of him, at chest height, then stood, leaned forward, went from standing in the boat to kneeling on the dock, the boat shying backward away from him, turning lazily back out toward the lake. He held the pistol, both knees and one palm on the dock, and looked toward the house.

Nothing. Pitch black, under its surrounding trees. The trees were tall and skinny on this side, sparsely placed between house and lake. He moved forward cautiously, left hand out so he wouldn't run into one of those trees, and eventually came to the screened porch. The door there opened without a sound.

It was the inner door that had been broken into, from what Claire had said, and it wouldn't have been fixed yet. Parker crossed to it, and felt the broken glass, then eased open the door and stepped inside.

The next hour was slow and careful. Parker moved as though the house were foreign to him and full of enemies. He searched for people, for booby traps, for signs of the interlopers. But at the end of it, there was no one and nothing here.

The electricity was turned off, and he left it like that. He went to the living room, sat on the sofa there, and from time to time dozed until dawn, then got up and made another very slow circuit through the house, this time touching nothing, looking at everything.

They hadn't searched the place. They hadn't taken anything. The only sign they'd been here was the broken glass on the lakeside door.

They'd had a reason to come. If not to take anything, then to leave something.

Yes. Full daylight, and at last he saw it. Above the main door into the living room from outside, in from the front of the house toward the road, a narrow brown hair now dangled down from the top of the frame. If he were to open that door, it would brush the hair slightly.

Parker got a chair from the dining room, put it against the wall a few feet to the right of the door, and stood on it. Resting atop the door frame was what looked like a very small jeweler's loupe, dulled black metal, round, with a flat non-reflecting glass front. The hair drooped down from that.

A radio camera. If anyone came in that front door, the primary entrance to the house, the hair would move, and the camera would switch on, to broadcast the scene in this living room to its base.

How far would the base be from here? They'd want to be close enough to act, far enough away to be out of sight.

And there'd be a second camera, too, in the garage, in case he were to come in that way. He didn't need to look for it, he knew it was there. Or maybe not even a camera out there, but merely something to tell them when the electric garage door opener had been operated.

Parker put the chair back in the dining room, walked to the screened-in porch, looked out at the lake. Last night's rowboat floated way out there, turning slowly. In crisp fall sunlight, it was vermilion. All the houses he could see were blank-faced, closed for the season.

They could be in any house around the lake. He didn't have the time to search the whole area, and he couldn't cover all that territory without being seen.

Would they come here sometimes, check on the house, on the camera? He didn't want to leave here during daylight, so he went to the kitchen, where he could see the lake and the living room, and waited.

The refrigerator was turned off, door open, but there was dry food in the pantry. He ate, and waited, and no one appeared, and after dark he went out through the screen porch and walked down other people's yards to where he'd left the car.

For now, they could have the house.