Robert Crais - The Watchman

She stood in the door, breathing.

“You can’t come with me, Larkin. I’ll see you this evening.”

Pike tugged at the door, nudging her. Time was still passing. It ran up his back with cleated boots, and here was this girl, blocking the door. Pike made his voice harder.

“Step away from the car.”

She didn’t move.

His voice hardened more.

“Step away.”

Cole said, “You want me to knock her out?”

The girl stepped back, uttering a final word as Pike pulled the door.

“Asshole.”

Pike drove away without looking back, heading for Culver City.

Once Pike was alone, he felt the way you might feel when you float in a pool on a windless day, the sun hot on your skin, the sky overhead clean. He did not fear what he would find or think much about it. The men who set off his alarm would either be waiting for him or not, and you had to take such things as they came.

Twenty-five minutes later, Pike stopped under a sycamore tree on a residential street six blocks from his condo. Two girls and a boy scorched past on bikes. Three houses away, two older boys traded fastballs. A white dog bounced between them, barking when the ball flew overhead.

Pike got out of the car, took off the long-sleeved shirt, then went to the trunk. He looked through the things Ronnie had left. He drank half a bottle of Arrowhead water, then collected his SOG fighting knife, a pair of Zeiss binoculars, the little.25-caliber Beretta, and a box of hollowpoints for the.45. He wouldn’t need anything else.

Pike got back into his car, then drove to a Mobil station located on the other side of the wall outside his complex. He parked behind the station next to the wall. Pike bought gas there often and knew the staff, so they didn’t mind. Before he left his car, he fitted the.25 to his right ankle and the SOG to his left. He made sure the Kimber was loaded, then clipped it behind his back.

Pike went to the office and waved at the man behind the counter.

“I have to leave my car here for a while. That okay?”

“Whatever, bro. Long as you want.”

Pike moved quickly. He dropped into the condo grounds behind a flat building that faced an enormous communal swimming pool. A lush curtain of banana trees, birds-of-paradise, and canna plants hid a sound wall baffling the pool equipment, and continued around the pool and walkways. Pike slipped behind the greenery and made his way across the grounds.

People were still out and about, but Pike moved easily, twice covering almost two hundred yards to avoid an opening thirty feet wide. Pike didn’t mind. He enjoyed the freedom of not being seen.

Pike worked his way from pod to pod, around three parking areas, and finally to his condo. He did not approach his door, or try to enter. He took a position behind the rice paper plants at the corner of his building, and settled down to watch. It was a good spot with a clean view of the parking lot and the buildings that faced his own. If they were waiting, they would be inside his condo or positioned with a view of his door. It wouldn’t make sense for them to be anywhere else.

Pike studied the cars in the parking lot, and the curtains on the far windows, and the wall of plants that was exactly like the wall of plants in which he was hidden. Pike never moved, and for the first time that day did not feel the passing of time. He simply was; safe in his green world, watching. He watched until he knew the shadows between the branches and how the lowering light dappled through the leaves, and which residents were home across the way and which were not. Two hours later, Pike was finally satisfied no one was hiding, but he still didn’t move. If someone was waiting for him, they were inside his home.

Pike watched the world grow golden, then burnish to a deep copper, then deepen with purple into a murky haze. Cars came and left. People banged through their gates, some wearing flip-flops on their way to the pool. Pike watched until it was full-on dark and his world behind the green was black, and then he finally moved, rising with the slowness of melting ice. He crept along the side of his condo, checking each window as he reached it, and found that the second window had been jimmied. Raising the window had tripped Pike’s alarm.

Pike peered inside but saw only shadows. Nothing moved, and no sounds came from within. He removed the screen in slow motion, then slowly raised the window and lifted himself inside.

The room was dark, but the doorway opening into his living room was bright. Pike had left on the lamp. He drew the Kimber and crept into the living room, moving with absolute silence. No one sat on his couch or on the Eames chair in which Pike read. The only movement came from the fountain in the corner-a bowl with water burbling quietly over stones. Pike listened beyond the water, straining to feel the sense of the space, but the only sounds were the water and the whisper of the air conditioner.

Pike found no one. They had tried to be careful so Pike wouldn’t know, but an address book was missing from the kitchen, and the phone in his bedroom was in a place Pike never left it. The clothes in his closet were not in their usual positions.

Pike returned to the living room. His television sat in an entertainment center opposite the fountain, along with a CD player, a TiVo, and other electronics. A security camera Pike had installed himself fed into a hard drive stacked among the equipment. Pike turned on his television, then watched the recording. Single-frame captures taken in his living room had been made at eight-second intervals, so the pictures appeared as a jerky slide show. A man with a pistol entered from the same room through which Pike had entered. He wasn’t wearing a mask or gloves or face-black; just a dark T-shirt and jeans and running shoes. His hair was longish, and straight, and dark. He was Anglo or Latino, but Pike couldn’t tell which. The pictures showed his path in sharp jumps-first as he entered, then across the room, then at the stairs. A man could cover a lot of ground in eight seconds. Then the man was at the front door, and now a second man entered. This man was smaller than the first man, and wore a dark shirt with the tail out over jeans. His hair was also longish and dark, but his skin was darker, and Pike decided this man was Latino.

In the next picture, the first man had returned to the kitchen, and the second man was kneeling at the door. A small black case was on the floor, and the second man seemed to be holding the doorknob with both hands. The pictures progressed, and Pike realized the second man was making keys. The first man returned from searching the house as the keymaker tested the keys.

Pike froze the picture. It was the best view yet of the first man, showing a three-quarter shot of his face. Pike took out the pictures Bud had given him, and compared them. The keymaker wasn’t among them, but the first man was one of the three men who invaded Larkin’s home. He wasn’t the man who beat the housekeeper, but he was present.

Pike backed up the images until he found the best angle on the keymaker, pressed a button, and a laser printer in the entertainment center hummed. Pike tucked the new pictures away.

The remaining security captures showed the two men leaving.

Pike turned off the television. He stood in his empty home, listening to the fountain. It was the good sound of a stream in the deep woods, natural and comforting.

Pike powered up his cell phone and called Ronnie.

Ronnie said, “Yo.”

“I need you and Dennis on the house. Two men, twenties to thirties, dark hair straight and on the long side, five-eight to five-ten. The shorter guy is probably Latino.”

“They at your place now?”

“No, but they’ll be back. They made keys.”