Tim skipped to the obituaries. Sure enough there was Dumone, wearing his Boston City Class-A’s, looking stern, imposing, and-as always-slightly smirky, as if he were in on a joke lost on the rest of humanity. The cause of death was listed as terminal lung cancer, not suicide, and there was no mention of his involvement with the Vigilante Three. Tim wondered how Dumone would have felt having his eulogy appear in a paper publicizing Baltimore car salesmen emulating Charles Bronson.
Flipping back to the front page, Tim studied the photos of the Vigilante Three. The Stork’s, in all likelihood pulled from his FBI file, framed his rigid passport-style pose against a washed-out backdrop.
His moral apathy and keenness for money made him a hell of a recruitment candidate-Rayner and Dumone had proved that once already. The good thing about greed is that it’s a clean motive. It makes people predictable. Robert and Mitchell, driven by emotion, were a bit tougher to keep a leash on.
Another ten minutes had passed, so Tim hit “redial” again. He could hear Dray typing in the background even as she spoke. “Deputy Rackley.”
“Me again.”
“The PT Cruiser comes in steel blue and patriot blue. Edward Davis, aka Danny Dunn, aka the Stork, has one in patriot blue. He picked a new alias for the registration-Joseph Hardy. Ha, ha. From the look of his driver’s-license shot, Nancy Drew is more on the money.”
Tim sat up sharply, pushing away the plate of ripped-up pancakes. “Address?”
“You were right about El Segundo. One forty-seven Orchard Oak Circle.”
43
Since the Stork’s face had been plastered on every TV and doorstep in the state, his fleeing in the past two days would have been difficult. His distinctive features made a disguise unlikely, and nothing Tim had come across suggested that his technical proficiency extended into facial disguise. Tim figured he was holed up in his safe house, waiting for the media’s ADD to kick in. Then it would be back to reports of shark attacks or terrorist cells, and he’d be able to slip on a plane to somewhere with lots of sand and umbrellaed cocktails.
The house was isolated, as Tim had anticipated, located at the rear of a large lot covered with foliage. Positioned at the end of a three-house cul-de-sac, the Stork’s place was set back in the shadow of a surprisingly steep hill, the unwelcome terrain of which had probably saved it from development. No address numbers nailed near the front door, adhered to the mailbox, or sprayed on the curb. The house to its right was for sale, the picture window looking in on a barren room, and a remodel had ravaged the house to the left, tearing it down to its pressure-treated skeleton.
Crouching beside a construction Dumpster, Tim used a compact pair of binoculars to scan the foliage in the front yard. At least two security lenses peered out from leafy cover, craning on thin metal necks that had been spray-painted camouflage green. He picked apart the yard sector by sector. Another camera resolved from the foliage, and two motion sensors. The windows were barred internally, and the oversize front door looked to be solid oak. A gate blocked the backyard from view; a position up the hill would permit him a clear angle to the rear of the house.
Dusk cast a graininess over the street, lending it the slight unfocus of gritty war footage and washed-out black-and-white photographs. Somewhere, miles away, the rumble of waves rose into audibility.
Tim plotted a path up the hill, around the back of the house. He moved swiftly and evenly, ducking remembered camera lines of sight and IR beams. He had to acrobat his way through crossing motion-sensor fields near the side of the house, then it was free movement up the hill. He’d snugged his gun back into the hip holster so as not to worry about slippage.
He lay on his stomach and studied the backyard in the dying light, disappointed that he’d left his night-vision goggles in the war bag in the Acura’s trunk. The only good thing about the chest-high fence, topped with a Slinky of concertina wire, was that it adhered to residential zoning heights. With matching iron bars, the rear windows appeared to be equally impenetrable as those to the front. A virtual colony of security cams angled toward the back door like attentive prairie dogs. He picked up a motion detector over the back door, an ominously quiet doghouse blanketed in shadow, dog shit on the kidney-shaped lawn.
Keeping a nervous eye out for Fido, he inched down the hill and zoomed in with the binocs on the back door, barely visible through the wide mesh of the security screen. Single pane framed with a thick wooden stile. Though he couldn’t confirm it from this distance, it seemed the edges of the pane bore a dark strip, a Plexi-coating that would indicate bulletproof glass. A latch protector extended past the doorknob and overlapped the frame, guarding the bolt from a credit-card lift; that, and the visible hinges, meant the door was outswinging. The knob itself housed a series of locks with immense key slots, probably custom-made.
He would have expected nothing less from the Stork.
The bulletproof pane looked in on a laundry room and another locked door, this one solid. Two shiny circles on the second door suggested standard locks, probably pick-resistant Medecos. A shimmering of metal near the doorknob indicated a wraparound mag plate to reinforce against jimmying. Tim would’ve put money on both doors’ having reinforced strikes, long screws to beef up the plates against a kick-in.
He certainly had his work cut out for him.
He was just pulling back when a light clicked on deeper within the house, revealing a dining table overburdened with keyboards and computer monitors and surrounded by a copper-mesh cage. The Stork shuffled into sight, wearing a pair of baby blue pajamas, entered the cage, and plopped down in front of the cluster of equipment.
Tim lay in the darkness, his eyes resting on this man who had played a part in his daughter’s dismemberment. He felt his heartbeat in his fingertips, his ears; his entire skin seemed to move to the heightened pulse. He pictured the Stork behind a telescopic lens, calmly focusing as Kindell stumbled out from his shack, Ginny’s blood across his thighs to…what? Bay at the moon? Breath the crisp air? Catch his breath for continued sawing? The Stork wouldn’t have cared; he’d have taken apart his camera lovingly, nestled its parts in foam, collected his paycheck.
The Stork typed for a few moments, then paused to rub out knots in his cramped hands. Through the well-barred window, Tim briefly watched him resume work before withdrawing back up the hill.
It took him nearly ten minutes to extract without tripping any alarms or crossing any lenses. He sat in his car a few blocks away, plotting, regretting he’d given up dipping tobacco again, since he felt like working something over physically to mirror the activity in his head.
Though he was competent with a pick and a torsion wrench, he had none of the Stork’s finesse or training. He didn’t stand a chance against those locks.
Finesse would have to go out the window.
•He paid cash at the Ace Hardware counter, spending most of what Dray had given him. The checkout woman, an old biddy with the rough hands of an inveterate gardener, whistled over a strapping coworker to help Tim get his purchases out to his car. Tim waved him off, loading up the equipment in an enormous black duffel bag he’d pulled from an overstuffed wire bin in Aisle 5.
“Must be a hell of a project.” The woman’s breath smelled of Polident.
Tim hefted the bag up on a shoulder. “Yes, indeed.”
•Moving along the prescribed path through the Stork’s front yard was trickier with the bulky duffel in tow, especially in the full dark of night. There was no way he’d get through the dueling motion sensors at the side of the house, and he didn’t have the patience or tools to size out a mirror to bounce the IR beam back on itself. Instead he pulled a small shaving mirror from the bag, shattered it, and deflected the beam with a shard momentarily so he could smear Vaseline over the housing.