Last Light

13 Round Two

Pogo regretted drinking the beers earlier and chased them now with black Armenian coffee potent enough to keep a tree sloth in a frenzy. Mug in one hand, pistol in the other, dog dutifully at his side, he drank as he patrolled the house, listening for suspicious noises.

He had never met this Rainer Sparks, never heard of him until this evening, which meant the guy wasn’t tight with the local surf community. Sparks must have been a lone wolf since, at the age of fourteen, he had suddenly been different from everyone else, gifted and corrupted by his gift, living out his sick dreams, fulfilling his darkest desires, even in the bright and waking world.

A year ago, Pogo would have had a more difficult time believing that anyone could do the things Makani claimed Rainer could do. But then he’d been through an epic and life-changing experience with Beebs — Bibi Blair — his best friend ever and always, and Pax Thorpe, the guy she loved. Now he knew the world to be a fascinating place where what could never happen occasionally did.

Beebs was twenty-three, two years older than Pogo. He had known her nearly all his life. She taught him to surf, polished him from a clueless young goob into a credible waverider. He loved her and she loved him. They were tight. Nobody could have been tighter, but by the time either of them was old enough to give a thought to romance, their bond was so much like brother-sister that hooking up in an intimate sense would have been too creepy to contemplate.

He didn’t have to get along without women in his life. Women came after him. In fact, it was embarrassing sometimes. He couldn’t help the way he looked, and they couldn’t seem to help themselves. But he didn’t want it that way, as easy as all that. The world was full of users. He didn’t want to be one. He couldn’t use anyone, and when sex was easy, it felt like using. Anyway, the man-woman business could be a lot more than sex; it could be everything. He had learned that much from Bibi. He knew what it could be, and that was what he wanted. He didn’t have to get along without women, but for the most part, that’s the way it was — until the right one came along, if she ever did.

There were days when he thought Makani might be the one, and not just days but weeks at a time. Although sweet and smart and kind and more, she had always been…distant. Not cold. Not aloof. She held the world at arm’s length. There was an essential part of herself, the core of herself, that she wouldn’t share. Now he knew what and why. The thing is, I’m a witch or something. As he and Bob patrolled the house, Pogo wondered if the revelations she made would at last bring them together — or if the very fact of her psychic gift made intimacy too difficult.

All was quiet on the Laguna coast. The air was pleasantly cool and dead still. The trees without rustle, the night birds without song. The breaking surf only a whisper.

Rainer parked a block from Ollie Watkins’s house.

He was rested and on his game.

He walked the silent night. Past the ’54 Chevy, as black and shiny as a hearse that had been washed and waxed and made ready for a funeral.

Lights glowed in some rooms of the single-story house. The draperies were drawn at all the windows.

Makani and Ollie were probably waiting for him.

They might have a gun. Or guns.

No problem.

A hundred guns wouldn’t worry Rainer. He had no fear.

A privacy wall and a tall ficus hedge separated Ollie’s place from the house next door.

A wrought-iron gate with worked-iron privacy panels. No lock. Just a gravity latch. The hinges didn’t rasp or squeak.

Between the hedge and the garage wall, a narrow brick-paved walkway. A little moonglow, a lot of moonshadows.

The side door to the garage. No window in it. Neither the side door nor the roll-up doors for the cars were on the security system, which was standard procedure, for convenience coming and going.

Like most side garage doors, this one had no deadbolt. Rainer was able quickly to loid the simple lockset with a credit card.

He stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind him.

Using a penlight, he navigated the three-car garage and located the connecting door to the house. Beside it was one of the three security-system keypads.

He wore a three-quarter-length khaki jacket. Epaulet straps on the shoulders. Faux-ivory buttons. Velcro cuff closures. Several bellows cargo pockets. Large interior pockets.

Cool. Stylin’.

And just the thing for carrying a burglar’s gear.

The lighted keypad featured four labeled indicator LEDs in the upper left corner: POWER, HOME, AWAY, STATUS. The first glowed yellow, the second red, and the other two were dark.

The system was set on HOME. So the perimeter was armed, door and window sensors, but not the motion detectors in hallways and public rooms, which would have been engaged if no one was at home or if the residents were in bed.

Someone must be moving around in there.

Good to know.

Of the fifteen lighted buttons on the keypad, ten bore numbers. Four others were labeled STATUS, MONITOR, A, and H. The fifth featured an asterisk.

If he entered the numerical code that would disarm the system, a tone would sound throughout the house as each button was pushed. The occupants would be alerted.

Not good.

Besides, Rainer didn’t have the code. It wasn’t known to Worry Free Security. So it couldn’t be obtained from their computer. Only the homeowner — and whomever he shared it with — knew the code.

With a small tool that was illegal in most jurisdictions, Rainer extracted the spanner screws securing the keypad faceplate.

From a cargo pocket, he removed an electronic device for which he’d had to kill a highly placed Homeland Security agent.

The agent was corrupt. Rainer could have paid the guy to get the device. Killing was cheaper. And more enjoyable.

The size of a pack of cigarettes, the instrument bore no name, no logo. Black plastic casing. An LED readout. Four control buttons.

The Homeland Security agent called it a “circuit bridger.” But he was an idiot and only half understood how the device worked.

His colleagues who were equally highly placed called it “hack in a pack” or “packhack.”

The only keypad offering that interested Rainer was STATUS.

A six-inch probe extruded from the packhack. The last inch and a half appeared to be a flattened copper wire, though it was highly flexible and break-resistant.

He worked the tip of the probe past the side of the snugly fitted STATUS button.

When contact with a live wire was made, green letters appeared on the LED readout: READY.

The good but hyphen-challenged folks at Worry Free Security would say it was impossible to follow an electric current along a wire from the keypad to the dedicated logic unit that served as the simple — therefore defenseless — brain of the alarm system, penetrate the integrated circuitry on the microchip, and read the programming.

They would be telling you the truth. The truth as they knew it. Once, they would have been correct. These days, they would be wrong.

On the packhack readout, four numbers appeared, followed by an asterisk. The disarming code.

Rainer pushed a button.

The code blinked off the screen, one number at a time, and the asterisk disappeared last.

The tiny red indicator lamp, signifying that the system was armed to HOME, went dark.

The five tones, which would have accompanied the manual use of the keypad, were not sounded.

Proof that Rainer was superior to all other men. It gave him a little rush.

Pogo stood at the French doors in the family room, adjacent to the kitchen, at the back of the house. He had not fully closed the draperies because, on his patrol, he wanted to be able to survey the patio and backyard.

Of course, according to Makani, if Rainer Sparks used his mojo, he would not be seen or heard when he arrived. The murderer might be standing on the other side of the door, inches from the glass, face-to-face with Pogo, and be as invisible as the power-mad man in H. G. Wells’s novel.

At Pogo’s side, Bob stared out at the night, and he seemed not in the least concerned, which suggested that no one stood there. Or could Sparks cast his spell over animals as easily as upon people?

Shivering, Pogo pulled shut the draperies.

The door between the garage and the residence featured a deadbolt lock.

Not to fret.

From an inner pocket of his stylish khaki coat, Rainer Sparks withdrew a LockAid lock-release gun, a device sold only to law-enforcement agencies.

It was amazing what an unauthorized citizen could obtain if he was willing to bribe and kill for it.

Rainer inserted the thin pick into the keyway, under the pin tumblers.

There would be a little noise. Not much. Unavoidable.

He pulled the trigger. The LockAid’s flat steel spring made the pick jump, lodging some of the pins at the shear line. Three more attempts were required to fully disengage the lock.

Beyond the door lay a shadowy laundry room, revealed only by the hallway light spilling through an inner door that stood open a few inches. Washer. Dryer. Scrub sink.

He stepped inside. Waited. Listened. Closed the door to the garage behind him.

Easy-peasy, sweet and neat.

In the family room, when Pogo drew shut the draperies at the French doors, Bob suddenly turned away and stiffened. The dog raised his big black head, turned it slowly left and right and left again, as the dish of a radar telescope might turn, seeking data from the stars. His ears were pricked as much as a Labrador could prick them, but it was his talented nose with which he sought information. The nostrils flared and quivered, and the double dozen muscles in his noble snoot worked vigorously.

Pogo whispered, “What is it, dude?”

The dog looked at him and seemed puzzled.

“What do you smell?”

Bob lifted his head higher and once more turned his attention to the air that was, for him, if not for Pogo, alive with a symphony of scents. He mewled softly, as if less alarmed than puzzled.

Standing in the archway, Rainer watched the man and dog at the farther end of the family room.

The man was not Ollie Watkins. He didn’t appear to be the kind who would play competition bridge and go antiques shopping.

The guy had a gun. He held it somewhat awkwardly. As if he had seldom — or never — used one.

The dog was intrigued. He had caught a scent. Of what, of whom, he seemed not to be certain.

Rainer, too, had a pistol. And a Taser. And an excellent knife.

He was tempted to let them see him for just a moment, the better to terrify them when he disappeared an instant later.

In the interest of winning the game, such impulses had to be controlled.

The dog lowered his head and sniffed the carpet, padding this way and that, clearly confused.

Neither man nor animal posed a threat.

Rainer returned to the hallway and went in search of Makani.