After a while he began feeling drowsy, finally, and turned off the light.
He had no idea how much later it was when he was awakened by a rapid beeping tone. Eddie’s installers had set the system to go off only in his bedroom or his study, and not too loud, when he was in the house.
He sat up, his heart pounding, his head filled with sludge. For a moment he didn’t know where he was or what that strange insistent beeping was. When he realized where it was coming from, he leaped out of bed and squinted at the green touch pad’s LED.
It was flashing: ALARM***PERIMETER***ALARM.
Keeping his footsteps light, in order not to wake the kids, he went downstairs to investigate.
12
Nick padded barefoot downstairs, the house dark and silent. He glanced at one of the new touch pads at the foot of the stairs. It too was flashing: ***ALARM***PERIMETER***.
His brain felt viscous and slow. It was an effort to think clearly. Only the rapid beating of his heart, the adrenaline-fueled anxiety, kept him moving forward.
He paused for a moment, considering which way to go.
Then a light came on inside the house, flooding him with panic. He walked quickly toward the light-his study?-until he remembered that the software that ran the cameras had been programmed to detect pixel changes, shifts in light or movement. Not only did the cameras start recording when there was a change in light, but the software was connected to a relay that automatically switched on a couple of inside lights, to scare off potential intruders by making them think someone in the house had been awakened, even if no one was home.
He slowed his pace but kept going, trying to think. The motion-sensor software worked by zones. That meant that whoever or whatever was there was on the side of the lawn nearest his study. Eddie’s guy had set up the system so that the alarm company wasn’t alerted unless the house itself was broken into, since a large animal moving across the lawn was enough to set off the perimeter alarm. Otherwise there’d be too many false alarms. But if something did cross the lawn, the cameras started and the lights went on.
A deer. Probably that was all it was.
Still, he had to be sure.
He kept going through the family room, down the hall to his study. The lights were on.
He slowed as he entered the study, the sludge in his head starting to clear. No one was here, of course. The only sound was the faint hum from his computer. He looked at the French doors and the darkness beyond. Nothing there; nothing outside. A false alarm.
The room went dark, startling him momentarily, until he remembered that the lights were also programmed to go off after two minutes. He walked through the study, approaching the glass panes of the French doors, staring out.
He could see nothing.
Nothing out there but watery moonlight glinting on the trees and shrubbery.
He glanced back at the illuminated face of his desk clock. Ten minutes after two. The kids were asleep upstairs, Marta presumably back from her night out and asleep in her bedroom in the wing off the kitchen. He glanced back out through the windowpanes, checking again.
After a few seconds he turned to leave the study.
The lawn outside lit up. The floodlights came on, jolting Nick. He spun back around, looked outside, saw a figure approaching from a stand of trees.
He moved closer to the glass, squinted. A man in some kind of trench coat that flapped as he walked. He was crossing the lawn slowly, headed directly toward Nick.
Nick went to the touch pad and deactivated the alarm system. Then he reached for the French doors’ lever handle, thought for a moment, and went to his desk. He took the key from the middle drawer and unlocked the bottom one, slid it open, took out the pistol.
He removed it from its oilcloth.
Blood rushed through his head; he could hear it in his ears.
Despite assuring him he’d never have to use the thing, Eddie had left it loaded. Now Nick gripped the weapon, pulled back the slide to chamber the first round, as Eddie had instructed, let the slide go.
He turned slowly, the weapon at his side, careful to keep his finger away from the trigger. With his left hand he turned the handle and opened the French doors. He stepped outside, the soil of the newly seeded lawn cold against his bare feet.
“Stop right there,” he called.
The man kept advancing. Now Nick could make out his heavy black eyeglasses, his ogling eyes, his brush-cut gray hair, his bent figure. The man, his name was Andrew Stadler, walked straight ahead, heedlessly.
Nick raised the gun, barked: “Freeze!”
Under the flapping trench coat, Stadler wore white pants, a white shirt. He was muttering to himself, all the while staring at Nick as he came closer and closer.
He’s a fucking nutcase, buddy…
The guy kept coming, goggling eyes staring as if he didn’t even see the gun, or if he did, he didn’t give a shit.
Eddie’s words. A maniac. The guy’s been in and out of the locked ward at County Medical.
“Don’t you fucking take another step!” Nick shouted.
Now the man’s mutterings were starting to become distinct. The man raised his hand, pointed a finger at Nick, his expression malevolent, enraged. “Never safe,” the man croaked. He smiled, his hands fluttering to his sides, to his coat pockets. The smile was like a twitch: it came and disappeared several times in succession, no logic to it.
Stadler was questioned in the possible murder of an entire family that lived across the street.
“One more step, and I shoot!” Nick shouted, raising the weapon with both hands, aiming at the center of the lunatic’s body.
“You’re never going to be safe,” the man in white said, one hand fumbling in his pocket, now rushing toward Nick, toward the open door.
Nick squeezed the trigger, and everything seemed to happen all at once. There was a popping sound, loud but not nearly as loud as he’d expected. The pistol bucked in his hands, flew backward at him. An empty shell casing flew off to one side. Nick could smell gunpowder, sulfuric and acrid.
The maniac stumbled, sank to his knees. A dark blotch appeared on his white shirt, a corona of blood. The bullet had entered his upper chest. Nick watched, his pulse racing, still gripping the pistol in both hands, leveling it at the man until he could be sure the man was down.
Suddenly, with surprising agility, the madman sprang to his feet with a throaty growl, shouting, “No!” in an aggrieved, almost offended voice. He propelled himself toward Nick, said, “Never-safe!”
The man was less than six feet away now, and Nick fired, aiming higher this time, wild with fear and resolve. He was able to stabilize the weapon better now, felt a spray of powder sting his face, and he saw the man tumble backward and to one side, mouth open, but this time he did not break his fall. He landed on his side, legs splayed at a funny angle, expelling a guttural, animallike sound.
Nick froze, watched in silence for a few seconds.
His ears rang. Gripping the weapon in both hands, he stepped to one side to see the man’s face. The lunatic’s mouth was gaping, blood seeping over his lips, his chin. The black glasses had fallen off somewhere; now the eyes, much smaller without the magnification of the lenses, stared straight ahead.
The man exhaled with a rattling noise and was silent.
Nick stood, dazed, flooded with adrenaline, even more terrified at this moment than he had been a minute earlier. He pointed the pistol, almost accusingly, at the man and walked slowly up to him. Nick thrust out his right foot, nudged the man’s chest, testing.
The man rolled backward, his mouth open, a mouthful of silver fillings glinting, the eyes now staring into the night sky, blood seeping. The high metallic ringing in Nick’s ears had begun to subside, and everything was strangely, eerily silent. From very far away, Nick thought he could hear a faint rustling of leaves. A dog now barked, far in the distance, then stopped.