"What the hell now? You already owe me a big one, boy."
"True. And I haven't forgotten. Just call Randy Starr and give me a good introduction. You know, lifelong friend, prince of a fellow, best PI in seven states."
"Horseshit! Best con man in seven states. But if it'll get you off my back, I'll do it. When did you plan to talk to him?"
"I'll give you a thirty-minute head start. How's that?"
Toby exhaled noisily. "You know, you're really a prince of a fellow, Hill."
When Burke called Starr Security Fence Company, Randy Starr was waiting for him. He spoke with a classic Southern accent, unhurried, smooth as whipping cream.
"Callahan said you'd be calling shortly. What can I do for you?"
Burke was ready with a plausible story. "I've got a client who wants my advice on a perimeter security setup for a small island," he said. "I'd like to chat with you about what's available. Could I take you to lunch?"
"As my sainted father, who practically lived off traveling salesmen, would say, 'Never turn down a live one.' What time will you be here?"
"How about noon?"
"Be looking for you."
Starr Security Fence's pea-green block building was located behind a tall chain link fence that bore a sign suggesting "This fence could be your security blanket." When the rented van broke the beam of an electric eye at the entrance to the parking lot, a speaker nearby announced, "You are entering a secured area. Please check in at the front desk." It was impressive.
The “About” page of the company website told how Randy Starr had parlayed a technical school electronics associate degree and a lively imagination into a thriving industrial security business. He had started out in his father's hardware store, which in the frightening turmoil of the sixties became a hardware and fencing operation. He gradually moved it toward a specialty in burglar alarms and other systems to detect trespassers. With his father's death, he had dropped the "Hardware" from the name, shortening it to Starr Security Fence. But it was characteristic of his sense of history that he declined to completely break with the past by lopping off "Fence" from the name.
Burke found him lounging comfortably in a plush upholstered chair behind his sturdy oak desk. While strangers from the North might have mistaken his slow, easy-going manner for indolence, Burke quickly saw an incisive mind that had learned the true meaning of "work smarter, not harder." The people under him appeared mostly young, bright and hustling. He leaned back in the chair, fingers locked behind his thinning brown hair, and smiled.
"The first thing you need to do, before talking about a security system, is to analyze the threat. What's your client afraid of?" Starr put it pure and simple.
"Intruders of any kind," Burke said. "He's rich, eccentric, doesn't want visitors he hasn't cleared in advance. I was thinking in terms of a perimeter system that could be powered off batteries charged by solar collectors. He's loaded with sunshine."
Starr nodded. "And money. If he's got the dough, go high tech. You can use infra red, microwave, ultrasonic, all sorts of motion detectors. Course, if he's got dogs, any sort of animals running around, you could have problems from false alarms."
"I heard about some kind of installation, something that involved two strips buried in the ground a few feet apart."
"Wires, you mean? Yes, sir. You're getting real fancy there. You could set up an electrical field using two insulated conductors buried just below the surface. When somebody sets foot in it, the capacitance would change. Then sensors would tell a microprocessor, and that would trigger floodlights, alarms, or signal a warning at a security station." He grinned. "That's the theory anyway. I've never seen it done, but I heard about a setup like that at a convention. Seems a big conglomerate that owns an island off Apalachicola uses it. They buried the lines in concrete just below the sand, partly to counter the effects of the sea water."
"How far apart would the lines be?"
"You'd want it wide enough somebody wouldn't step across. Maybe five feet."
"Couldn't you jump across it?" Burke asked.
"Sure, if you knew it was there, and if you jumped high enough. That's why you don't advertise it. You hide it, like that one off Apalachicola, beneath the sand."
"How high would the protection go?"
"Would depend on the strength of the field. Something like this I'd say a couple of feet. You could also avoid the animal problem by programming the microprocessor with a signature of, say a dog. Then it would recognize something the size of a dog and not sound the alarm."
Burke checked his watch and pushed up from his chair. "Say, I promised to take you to lunch. I don't know the area, so I'll let you pick your poison."
Starr grinned. "Know just the place."
They ate at a small restaurant located in a large old house. Burke realized it was the first meal he had really slowed down to savor in days. He ate like a condemned prisoner at his last supper while Starr talked on about narrow, focused microwave beams, lasers, ultrasonic waves and other sophisticated devices. He said the company that owned the island in the Gulf had experimented with microwave motion detectors. After a short time, however, they had abandoned the idea because of problems with heavy fog breaking the beams and triggering the sirens. It would have been very costly anyway, he added, because of the distance involved, requiring hundreds of separate transmitters, all subject to breakdown.
Burke listened intently, knowing he had found what he came after. All he needed now was to call Kevin McKenzie, ask him to have Buddy go to the print where the buried lines had been exposed and measure the distance between the two. If it were no more than five feet, he would find a way to get over it.
He arrived at the airport just in time for Lori's flight. He spotted them coming out of the gate area.
"Pleased to meet you, Burke," said Walt Brackin with an enthusiastic handshake. He had a deep voice that had won him solo bass parts while singing in an undergraduate college chorus. "The way Lori talked, I had you figured for a cape and a blue shirt with a big 'S' on it." He was about Lori's age, taller than Burke, hard-muscled and handsome, with a pencil-thin mustache.
"Nice to meet you, Walt. Lori said you were a neurologist. Must mean you got some nerve."
Brackin grimaced and turned to Lori. "Tell him no puns, please."
"Okay, you two," she said like a mother separating two boys. "You've met. Let's go claim our bags and get on the road."
When they boarded the van, Brackin quickly surveyed the equipment in back of him. "You're really prepared for this expedition, aren't you?"
"Almost," Burke said. "I need to make one more call to my photo interpreter. Then we'll be ready to breach their security."
He told them about his conversation with Randy Starr.
"Good work," Lori said. "I feel better already. I promised Chlo to keep this guy out of trouble."
"I understand you're a former Green Beret," Burke said. "That's a tough outfit."
"You better believe," said Brackin. "I wasn't assigned to a team, of course, so I didn't keep up the everyday training that the combat types went through. But I learned things at Fort Bragg I'd never pick up anywhere else."
"It's unfortunate some ex-Berets go bad on the outside and taint their reputation," Burke said.
"Know what you mean. Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald sure didn't help us medical types with that family killing spree at Bragg. Don't waste any tears on that outfit, though. They can handle it."
He didn't say it, but he might have added not to waste any sympathy on Walter Luther Brackin, either. He had been raised in a tough black section of Philadelphia. His middle name had been taken from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and true to King's dream, he had freed himself from the bonds of the ghetto. His struggle against the drugs and violence had culminated in admission to medical school, with a commitment to military service upon graduation. The Army Special Forces training was as tough as he could have imagined, but life in inner city Philadelphia had been a good prep school. After the Army, he had pursued with equal vigor specialization in neurology and his former med school girl friend, Chloe Essary. He had succeeded equally well on both counts.