“Crazy?”
Peter shook his head. “Just careful. He probably can’t help himself. It might not even be a set of conscious decisions, just choices that felt right. He sure didn’t plant all those trees. Those have been there for fifty years.” Peter shrugged. “Or maybe he just liked the house.”
June came to a stop sign and glanced at her notebook. “Dexter Smith. He was the oldest of them. Twenty years in the Army, a master sergeant.”
Peter nodded. When he was hanging from June’s redwood at the end of a rope, eavesdropping, one of the men had been silent, working his way slowly through the brush, intent on the search. He was the one that Peter had been most concerned about, the one that had finally noticed him. That was probably him. The master sergeant.
“You understand these guys,” she said.
“Sure. We were forged in the same fire. But I’m the flip side of their coin. They went one way, I went the other.”
“Which way did you go, exactly?” She glanced at him as she turned the corner.
“I’ll let you know when I get there.”
She feathered the gas, easing her way back around the long, irregular block.
“Would you need to live in a house like that? Like a fortress?”
Peter kept his head on a swivel. “I have no idea. I haven’t slept inside anything but a tent or my truck for almost two years.”
“But is that the kind of place you’d want?”
“Honestly, I have no idea.” He looked at her now. “But I’m starting to think about it.”
She pulled the car up to the gate and he got out with the bolt cutters and a can of spray paint. They already had their hats on to shield their faces from the cameras. Keeping the brim of his hat down, Peter took the can of spray paint and hit the lenses with a quick blast. The cops would be here as soon as the master sergeant’s body was identified by the burned Tahoe. No reason to give them any more information than necessary.
The fat padlock’s shank was hardened steel, and he was glad he’d sprung for the long-handled version of the bolt cutters. Leverage is all. The shank broke with a distinct pop.
He removed the ruined lock and swung the gate wide. June pulled the van inside and he walked the gate shut behind her. There was a piece of heavy steel channel that slid in a track to lock the gates together from the inside. The master sergeant didn’t fuck around.
Peter saw another camera above the attached garage and hit the lens with his spray can.
If there was anyone watching the monitors, he didn’t show himself.
June parked behind a big orange-and-black three-quarter-ton Dodge Power Wagon from the eighties, the truck looking like new and freshly waxed, raindrops beaded up on the paint. This was one of three vehicles June had found registered to Smith. The other two were a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and a Lexus sedan, which were not in evidence. Probably parked wherever the burned Tahoe had been garaged.
She got out and stood looking at the house. The windows were covered with some kind of reflective film, so they couldn’t see in. Peter walked very carefully around the building, finding three more cameras and touching them up with spray paint as he went. The man’s perimeter defenses made him nervous. He didn’t figure there were claymores on tripwires, but Peter was finding his life more valuable by the minute.
He’d feel pretty stupid if he got himself killed due to a basic lack of attention.
The only thing out of the ordinary was the garage, which was bigger than it looked from the front. It was only two cars wide, but it was also two cars deep. Twin white pipes poked through the roof at the back, looking like the exhaust and air intake for a sealed-combustion furnace. So the garage was heated. There was also a big sheet metal vent, eight feet off the ground, with a chemical smell. A spray hood. The master sergeant was fabricating something in there.
When Peter got back to the deep front porch, the door was open and June was gone.
He ran up the steps and inside, the truck driver’s gun still in the tool bag. “June!”
He found her wandering through the house, blue gloves on her hands, turning on the lights. “He had a fake rock with his key inside,” she said, almost apologetically. “I have the same one by my front door.” She spread her arms with a flourish. “Surprise!”