He stayed far from the house as he walked around it, but moved closer when there was cover. He looked at the eaves and gutters all around, studied windows, doors, the foundation. When he had made a full circuit, he had confirmed that there was no sign of an armed security service that answered alarms, but there seemed to be a system of some kind installed. Visible through a window was a keypad near the front door with glowing red and green lights.
At the rear of the house was an open stone patio that looked as though it had been laid recently enough to be the work of the current owner. There was an irregular pattern of sandstone slabs with sand between them, and just one lawn chair in the center not far from a small portable barbecue. Just as Varney was moving in that direction, the light in the upper window went out. He looked at his watch. It was nearly twelve-thirty.
The barn was a small one, not the kind that had been built to house forty cows, but the kind where machinery was parked on the lower floor and bales of hay were stored in the loft. The door had a padlock on it, but it was unlocked and the hasp open at the moment, so he supposed there was nothing of interest inside.
He found the septic tank, and in the dark it looked to him as though it had probably just been replaced, because it had been covered with turf strips that still had lines between them, and there was a hatch that seemed nearly new. There were a couple of long, four-inch pipes on the ground, and he supposed they had something to do with it.
Then Varney made a lucky find. The upstairs window that had been lit was open about two inches, and so was the one on the other side of the house directly across from it, probably to set up a cross-breeze. If the alarm system was on but the upstairs windows were open, then the alarm was only protecting the ground floor. He could go in the window across the hall from Kelleher’s room without setting off any bells and whistles.
It was not going to be without risk. He had to make his way to that window, open it farther, and slip inside without letting Kelleher hear him. Nobody who thought there were people who wanted to kill him went to bed without having a gun where he could reach for it in the dark. Varney moved to the corner of the house and judged the possibilities. There was a low roof over the front porch that he could easily climb onto, but he would still be twenty feet from the open window. No tree was near enough to let him climb and jump for the sill. Even if he could have done such a thing and held on, it would have made a lot of noise.
He looked down and saw the pipes on the ground. He raised his eyes to the window, then judged the length of the nearest pipe. He stepped closer to it. The material was hard and heavy and smooth like iron, but it seemed to be made of some kind of ceramic material. He knelt and looked at the open end. It was rougher inside, and narrower. The rim seemed to be three quarters of an inch thick.
He stepped to the center, squatted, and lifted the heavy pipe, then adjusted his grip to find the balance point, and walked toward the house with it. He set it down. Then, below the open window and about ten feet from the house, he used his knife to dig a hole in the lawn. He set the end of the heavy pipe over the hole. He went to the other end and lifted the pipe, hand-walking up its length until the pipe was vertical and the butt end of it was in the hole. Then he stepped between the pipe and the house and slowly, carefully, stepped backward, letting the pipe tip toward the house until its upper end rested against a clapboard beside the open window.
Varney went to the end in the hole and tested its immobility, then gripped it as high up as he could reach and pulled himself upward until he was straddling it. The pipe was at a steep angle to the house, but it was not difficult for him to shinny up to the top. He was beside the window. He lifted his pant leg, pulled the knife out, punched a small slice through the screen, and used a finger to slip the hook out of the eye. He pulled the screen out a bit, and slowly pushed the window open wider. Then he eased himself carefully off the pipe into the window. When he was inside, he pulled the screen back and slid the hook through the eye so it wouldn’t make a flapping noise.
He moved to the side of the window before he stood, so he would present no silhouette. He waited and listened. His heart was beginning to speed up again. He had done this a hundred times, and each time still felt like the first. The moment after he had crossed into the enclosed space where the target was, his eyes always grew sharper, his muscles stronger. His ears heard every sound. Sometimes he was sure that he had other, forgotten senses that most human beings had thrown away with soft living. Everything they did worked to insulate them and pad them and put them to sleep. He often felt that he could detect objects in the dark by the changes their weight made in the elasticity of a man-made floor under his feet. He used differences in the motion of the air on his face to help him find a doorway.
He slowly, carefully screwed the silencer onto the barrel of his pistol and disengaged the safety with his thumb. He became still again and listened. Moving silently was not just a question of care, but of time. He had certainly made sounds when he had come in. If they had reached Kelleher’s ears, maybe he had explained them to himself. But his subconscious mind would not be so easily reassured, and it was incapable of forgetting anything. Down there below the level of thinking, Kelleher’s mind would be waiting to hear them again, its instincts aware that noises at night were never good news. Varney had to be sure the next sounds he made did not come too soon.
Varney was a being that moved through the night with heightened alertness, as though his skin had been peeled off and his nerves exposed. He could feel the rhythms of the enemy. He knew he did not have to wait for any particular number of minutes. He had to wait until the mind in the other room had listened long enough. When it had, it would stop. Any sounds he made would not be grouped with the first sounds as a pattern that had grown consistent with danger. They would be random sounds, maybe the noises that wooden houses made as they settled or stood up to a breeze.
The time elapsed and Varney advanced, placing each small step gently so his foot set flat and distributed his weight evenly. When he was satisfied the floor would not creak, he cautiously let more of his weight onto that foot as he moved the other foot forward. He kept his knees flexed and his body low, in an attitude that would let him leap ahead, back, or to either side, or drop and roll more quickly than an opponent’s mind would be likely to expect. If Kelleher saw him, what he would see was not the shape of a human being—something six feet high with a discernible head and shoulders. He would hesitate while he tried to distinguish it from the shadows and resolve it into something he knew.
As Varney moved into the hallway, he felt an urge to put away the gun. The metal, the weight were jarring to his mood. This felt like a time to slip in like a shadow and use only his hands, the strike chosen by the position in which he found Kelleher’s sleeping body. But Varney knew he was being foolish. He was letting his eagerness overwhelm his judgment, just because he was so excited to be working again. He would step into the room, see the head against the whiteness of the pillow, and sensibly fire a shot into it. Then he would spend some time searching for the money.