Robert Crais - The sentry

Pike used the hidden key to unlock the gate, then went past the house to the fence at the edge of the canal. The smell of the water was strong. He quickly picked out the construction site where Gomer had been murdered. He was not trying to hide. He wanted to be seen.

Pike wondered if the killer used night vision gear. Pike had the equipment, but had decided not to use it. If the killer was here, Pike wanted him to feel like he had the upper hand. Pike noted the cuts and shadows along the banks and between the houses where a spotter could hide, and hoped the man was watching. His presence would mean he had not yet found Dru and Wilson, and they would still be alive. If the killer was watching, he might grow curious why Pike was in their yard, and decide to take a closer look. The killer might decide to kill him, which would be even better. The killer would need to move in close to use his knife, and Pike was fine with close. Pike wanted to learn what he knew.

Light danced on the water. Traffic noise from the surrounding streets was loud, as was the music and voices that bounced along the canals, but all of these living sounds would fade as the night grew deeper.

Pike waited alone in the dark, wondering where Dru and Wilson were, and how the man with the knife knew them, and whether or not they were living or dead. He wondered where they had come from, why they were here, and why he decided to put air in his tires on that particular morning at that particular gas station at that particular time.

None of it mattered, there in the darkness. He had told her he would take care of it. Told her they wouldn't bother her again.

Pike whispered.

"I am here."

Whoever and whatever she was did not matter. If she needed him, he would be there.

Pike whispered again.

Pike changed locations several times during the night, drifting from Dru's house to positions where he had a view of likely areas where someone watching the house might hide. Pike found no one, and as the eastern sky lightened, he grew convinced the killer no longer watched Dru's house. This meant the killer had what he wanted or had tracked Wilson and Dru to another location. Either was bad, and left Pike hungry for a new trail.

At twenty minutes after nine that morning, Pike was crossing the Dell Avenue Bridge when Elvis Cole called.

"Laine came through. He messengered over a disk."

Charles Laine. Dru's neighbor with the surveillance system.

"Show anything?"

"It just arrived, but I need you here to look at it. I've never seen these people. I don't know what they look like."

Pike studied Dru's house across the water with a lack of enthusiasm. Cole was right, but Mendoza and Gomer were dead, so even if they lucked into a glimpse of the abduction, leaving to view a recording of questionable value now felt like a waste of time. Then another possibility occurred to him that left him more interested.

"How many hours of camera time do we have?"

"Seven days from whenever he burned the disk, which was sometime last night. Why?"

Pike told Cole about his conversation with Straw and explained his belief in the killer's professionalism. He had probably reconnoitered Dru's house as well as the takeout shop, and was likely the person who jimmied the kitchen window. This meant it was possible the killer had moved past the camera.

"Okay, get here, and let's see if this stuff is even usable. Laine told me we'll be able to see a little of the street, but we won't know what that means until we see it. We might see nothing but shadows."

The trip through the city took forty minutes, but shortly Pike pulled up outside Cole's A-frame and let himself into the kitchen.

Pike poured himself a cup of black coffee, grabbed a raisin bagel from Cole's stock, and followed his friend to a desk in the living room. They pulled over chairs from the dining table with Cole sitting in front of his Mac. Cole slipped in the disk, and the drive spun up with a soft whine. Neither of them spoke while they waited, as if their expectation wrapped each man in silence.

A few moments later, a disk player appeared showing four screen-capture images. They were from each of the four cameras monitoring Laine's home, one on either side of his house, one in the rear, and the front entry camera. Pike saw Cole relax when the images appeared.

"Here we go. The cameras record concurrently on different tracks. Laine said we can watch each track separately, and move back and forth like watching a DVD."

Cole clicked on the entry image, which expanded to fill the screen. The picture was a ghostly wash of grays and blacks with a time code at the bottom showing the image had been recorded at PM 11:13:42 the night before. Cole glanced over.

"Not bad. We can see a little of the street here in the background, and the clarity is pretty good."

It didn't look so good to Pike. The camera was parallel to the street to focus on visitors who were in a small alcove at Laine's front door. This left its field of view limited. The right third of the screen was the steel door. The center third was the alcove wall directly opposite the camera where a visitor would stand when they pressed the bell. The left third of the screen showed a narrow wedge of street in the camera's peripheral background. If they were going to see anything useful, it would be in this narrow wedge.

Pike said, "Murky. It's hard to see anything past the wall."

"Think positive. This was shot at about eleven-fifteen last night with infrared light. The background will brighten up during the day."

Cole crossed his arms and glanced over again.

"You want to look for the killer?"

"Yes."

"Okay, think about it. Seven days means we have one hundred sixty-eight hours here. Fast-forward runs about eight times the real-time speed, so it will take us twenty-four hours to watch what's here if we go back to the beginning. You really want to spend that much time looking for a guy we won't recognize?"

Pike thought he could narrow the time.

"We can start smaller. The day they went missing, I checked their house around ten and you were there about one. Whoever jimmied the window did it during those three hours. Three hours isn't so bad."

Cole nodded, but it was a slow nod, and Pike knew he was thinking. Cole thinking was a good thing because he came up with good ideas.

"Tell you what, let's start earlier that morning. If you're right about the killer casing their place, he might have made two or three passes before he entered the property. He also might have followed Wilson home from his shop, so we might catch him on the follow. You see?"

Pike nodded. Good ideas.

"Also, if we get a glimpse of the abduction, we might see what kind of vehicles were involved and get an idea what condition Dru and Wilson were in when they were taken. This might help us find them even though Mendoza and Gomer are dead."

"Start whenever you want."

Pike wanted to get on with it.

Cole used the skip-reverse button to jump back through the recording in one-hour increments until the morning of the abduction. As the still images moved backward in time from night into day, Pike was relieved to see the images gained clarity, depth, and color.

When the time counter showed AM05: 13:42 on the morning of the abduction, Cole clicked the play button, then increased the playback speed. Though dim in the early-morning light, the real-time image now grew sharper. The landscape remained frozen, but the ambient light changed and colors grew richer as the time counter advanced.

They saw the first sign of life at 5:36. A figure zipped past on the far left side of the screen, and vanished before Cole hit the pause button.

Cole said, "Jogger."