The Night Crew

Chapter 25

The two-faced man was dressed in a light Lycra full-length windsurfer's suit, pitch-black from the neckline to the black Nike gym shoes. With a nylon stocking over his head, he was a shadow.

He moved slowly, carefully, letting his body feel the way through the dark. He had a bum bag wrapped around his ribs, a rope wrapped around his waist, and the pistol under his arm.

Moving like a snake, sliding the last few inches toward the unsuspecting mouse.

Anna's house showed a light in a side window, but it was the kind of too-dim light that people left when they were gonea light in a hallway, somewhere. Not a reading light or a TV light or a work light; a waiting light.

He closed on the back porch. He'd been there before, but this time, she wasn't home. There was no one inside to hear him. unless the cops had set something up. Unlikely, but possible, and the possibility added to the intensity of the approach.

He sat in the shadow of the porch for five minutes, listening. And he heard voices, coming down from above, with a little music that he couldn't place. Old music, the kind you hear late at night when you're driving out in the desert. People on a porch, he thought, in the next house. He measured the unexcited voices, then slowly, carefully unhooked the bum bag, unzipped it, took out the screwdriver and the roll of duct tape.

He knew from the last time where the lock was. He planned to break out the glass again, but more carefully. He'd hold the pieces in place with the tape, rather than letting them fall inside.

But when he got to his knees on the porch, he found a piece of plywood covering the window. He tested it with the screwdriver. The plywood moved. Huh. More pressureand when he pried hard enough, he could feel the wood give.

He dropped the duct tape and worked the screwdriver around the perimeter of the plywood plug. After a minute, the top and left edges were free. He worked on the bottom edge, then pushed his hand through the slot and it opened like a little door.

He stopped to listen again, then reached inside. He had to stretch, to go in all the way to his shoulder, but the deadbolt was there and he flipped the handle; the door opened easily.

Inside, he listened again, then pressed the plywood window plug roughly into place. He used the penlight to navigate across the kitchen, followed the light down the hall, around the little office, then up the stairs to the bedroom.

The bedroom smelled of her: her perfume, or just her body.

He listened, then probed the bedroom. Went through the chest of drawers, through the closets, looked at photographs in a grass basket, dug through a trunk, through a jewelry, smelled her perfume, dabbed some of it on his throat.

Stretched out on her bed; turned his face into her pillow.

Hated her; but still loved her, too, he thought.

He was still there, on the bed, when she got back.

Felt a finger of panic: then remembered the closet.

Crept into it, made himself small, in the back, with the shoes, behind the hanging lengths of the hippie dresses.

Took the gun out, placed the long, cool length of it against his face.

Heard voices: she was with a man. The bodyguard.

He'd wait until he was gone, and take her.

End her.

And if the bodyguard stayed?

He worked it out: Take the bodyguard first. No warning, just step up and do it.

Then her.

He tried to control his breathing, but found it difficult.

Hate/sex/death/darkness. The odor of Chanel. The silken feel of her dresses on his face.

He waited.