That wasn’t it.
Yes, it was another break-in, they’d said, but this time he really needed to come by. What the hell could that mean?
Over the past year or so, Nick had gotten used to the periodic calls from the alarm company or the police. The burglar alarm would go off in the middle of the day. There’d been a break-in. The alarm company would verify that the alarm was genuine by calling home or Nick’s office and requesting a code. If no authorized user said it was a false alarm, the company would immediately dispatch the Fenwick police. A couple of cops would then drive by the house, check it out.
Inevitably it happened when no one was there-the crew working on the kitchen were taking one of their frequent days off; the kids were at school; the housekeeper, Marta, was out shopping or maybe picking up Julia.
Nothing was ever stolen. The intruder would force a window or one of the French doors, get inside, and leave a little message.
Literally, a message: words spray-painted in Day-Glo orange, all capital letters formed with the precision of an architect or mechanical engineer: NO HIDING PLACE.
Three words, one on top of another.
Was there any doubt it was a deranged laid-off employee? The graffiti defaced the walls of the living room, the dining room they never used, the freshly plastered walls of the kitchen. In the beginning it had scared the shit out of him.
The real message, of course, was that they weren’t safe. They could be gotten to.
The first graffiti had appeared on the heavy, ornate ashwood front door, which Laura had deliberated over for weeks with the architect, a door that had cost a ridiculous three thousand dollars, a fucking door, for God’s sake. Nick had made his feelings known but hadn’t objected, because it was obviously important to her, for some reason. He’d been perfectly content with the flimsy paneled front door that came with the house they’d just bought. He didn’t want to change anything about the house except maybe to shrink it to half its size. There was a saying that was popular at Stratton, which Old Man Devries was fond of repeating: the whale that spouts gets the harpoon. Sometimes he thought about having one of those bronze-looking estate wall plaques made for him by Frontgate, the kind you see on stone entrance pillars in front of McMansions, saying in raised copper letters, SPOUTING WHALE HOUSE.
But to Laura, the front door was symbolic: it was where you welcomed friends and family, and it was where you kept out those who weren’t welcome. So it had to be both beautiful and substantial. “It’s the front door, Nick,” she’d insisted. “The first thing people see. That’s the one place you don’t cheap out.”
Maybe, on some level, she thought a three-inch-thick front door would make them safer. Buying this insanely big house in the Fenwicke Estates: that was her idea too. She wanted the safety of the gated community. It took only a couple of anonymous threatening phone calls, as soon as the layoffs were announced.
“If you’re a target, we’re all targets,” she said. There was a lot of anger out there, directed at him. He wasn’t going to argue with her. He had a family to protect.
Now, with her gone, it felt as if he’d absorbed her neurosis, as if it had penetrated his bones. He felt, sometimes, that his family, what remained of it, was as fragile as an egg.
He also knew that the security of their gated community was little more than an illusion. It was a show, an elaborate charade, the fancy gatehouse and the guards, the private security, the high black iron fence with the spearhead finials.
The Suburban screeched to a stop before the ornately scrolled cast-iron gate beside the brick gatehouse built to resemble a miniature castle. A brass plaque on one of the piers said FENWICKE ESTATES.
That little “e” at the end of Fenwick-he’d always found it pretentious to the point of being irritating. Plus, he was so over the irony here, this posh enclosed neighborhood equipped with the priciest security you could get-the tall wrought-iron perimeter fence with the fiber-optic sensing cable concealed inside the top rail, the pan-tilt-zoom CCTV surveillance cameras, the motion-sensor intruder alarms-where you couldn’t stop the loonies from scrambling in through the dense surrounding woods and climbing over the fence.
“Another break-in, Mr. Conover,” said Jorge, the day guard. Nice guy, couldn’t be nicer. The security guards were all professional in demeanor, all wore sharp uniforms.
Nick nodded grimly, waited for the motor-driven gate to open, ridiculously slow. The high-pitched electronic warning beep was annoying. Everything beeped these days: trucks backing up, dishwashers and clothes dryers, microwaves. It really could drive you crazy.
“Police are there now, you know,” said Jorge. “Three cruisers, sir.”
“Any idea what it is?”
“No, sir, I don’t, I’m sorry.”
The damned gate took forever to open. It was ridiculous. In the evening sometimes there was a line of cars waiting to get in. Something had to be done about it. For Christ’s sake, what if his house caught fire-would the fire department trucks have to sit here while his house turned to toast?
He raced the engine in annoyance. Jorge shrugged a sheepish apology.
The second the gate was open far enough for the car to get through, he gunned it-the Suburban’s pickup never ceased to amaze him-and barreled over the tiger-teeth tire-shredders that enforced one-way traffic, across the wide circular court paved in antique brick in a geometric pattern by old-world Italian stonemasons shipped over from Sicily, past the SPEED LIMIT 20 sign at twice that at least.
The brick pavement turned into glass-smooth macadam road, no street sign. He raced past the old-growth elms and firs, the mailboxes the size of doghouses, none of the houses visible. You had to be invited over to see what your neighbor’s house looked like. And there sure as hell weren’t any block parties here in Fenwicke Estates.
When he saw police squad cars parked on the street and at the entrance to his driveway, he felt something small and cold and hard forming at the base of his stomach, a little icicle of fear.
A uniformed policeman halted him a few hundred feet from the house, halfway up the drive. Nick jumped out and slammed the car door in one smooth, swift motion.
The cop was short and squat, powerful-looking, seemed to be perspiring heavily despite the cool weather. His badge said MANZI. A walkie-talkie hitched to his belt squawked unceasingly.
“You Mr. Conover?” He stood directly in front of Nick’s path, blocking his way. Nick felt a flash of annoyance. My house, my driveway, my burglar alarm: get the fuck out of my way.
“Yeah, that’s me, what’s going on?” Nick tried to keep the irritation, and the anxiety, out of his voice.
“Ask you some questions?” Dappled sunlight filtered through the tall birches that lined the asphalt lane, played on the cop’s inscrutable face.
Nick shrugged. “Sure-what is it, the graffiti again?”
“What time did you leave the house this morning, sir?”
“Around seven-thirty, but the kids are normally out of there by eight, eight-fifteen at the latest.”
“What about your wife?”
Nick gazed at the cop steadily. Most of the cops had to know who he was at least. He wondered if this guy was just trying to yank his chain. “I’m a single parent.”
A pause. “Nice house.”
“Thank you.” Nick could sense the resentment, the envy rising off the man like swamp gas. “What happened?”
“House is okay, sir. It’s brand-new, looks like. Not even finished yet, huh?”
“We’re just having some work done,” Nick said impatiently.
“I see. The workers, they’re here every day?”