The electronic gear operated off banks of solar batteries wired to flat solar cells on the roof. When surveillance was conducted at night, the batteries could be charged in the conventional fashion, if necessary, by starting the van’s engine for short periods. Even on overcast days, however, the cells collected enough sunlight to keep the system operative.
Without the engine running, the interior temperature of the van was nonetheless comfortable, if slightly cool. The vehicle was unusually well insulated, and the solar cells also operated a small heater.
Stepping over the corpse on the floor, looking through one of the view windows, Oslett said, “If Alfie was drawn to that house, it had to be because Martin Stillwater was already there.”
“I guess.”
“Yet this team never saw him go in or out.”
“Evidently not,” Spicer agreed.
“Wouldn’t they have let us know if they’d seen Stillwater, his wife, or kids?”
“Absolutely.”
“So . . . is he over there now? Maybe they’re all over there, the whole family and Alfie.”
Peering through the other window, Spicer added, “And maybe not. Somebody left there not long ago. See the tracks in the driveway?”
A vehicle with wide tires had backed out of the garage that was attached to the white clapboard house. It had reversed to the left as it entered the street, then had shifted into forward and had driven away to the right. The snow had barely begun to fill in the multiple arcs of the tracks.
Clocker opened the rear door, startling them. He climbed inside and pulled the door shut after him, with no comment about the bloody ice axe on the floor or the two murdered operatives. “Looks like Alfie must’ve stolen the florist’s van for cover. The deliveryman’s in the back with the flowers, dead as the moon.”
In spite of the extended wheelbase that added extra room to the interior of the van, the space unoccupied by surveillance equipment and corpses was not large enough to accommodate the three of them comfortably. Oslett felt claustrophobic.
Spicer pulled the seated dead man out of the swivel chair in which he’d died. The corpse tumbled to the floor. Spicer checked the chair for blood before sitting down and turning to the array of monitors and switches, with which he appeared to be familiar.
Uncomfortably aware of Clocker looming over him, Oslett said, “Is it possible there was a phone call to the house that these guys never got a chance to report to us before Alfie wasted them?”
Spicer said, “That’s what I’m going to find out.”
As Spicer’s fingers flew over the programming keyboard, brightly colored graphs and other displays popped onto the half dozen video monitors.
Contriving, in those tight quarters, to ram his elbow into Clocker’s gut, Oslett turned again to the first of the side-by-side view windows. He watched the house across the street.
Clocker stooped to look out the other window. Oslett figured the Trekker was pretending to be at a starship portal, squinting through foot-thick glass at an alien world.
A couple of cars passed. A pickup truck. A black dog ran along the sidewalk; with snow on his paws, he looked as if he was wearing four white socks. The Stillwater house stood silent, serene.
“Got it,” Spicer said, taking off a set of headphones he had put on when Oslett had been staring out the window.
What he had, as it turned out, was a telephone call monitored, traced, and recorded by the automated equipment perhaps as long as thirty minutes after Alfie killed the surveillance team. In fact, Alfie had been in the Stillwater house when the call came through and had answered it after seven rings. Spicer played it back on a speaker instead of through headphones, so the three of them could listen at the same time.
“The first voice you hear is the caller,” Spicer said, “because the man who picks up the receiver in the Stillwater house doesn’t initially say anything.”
“Hello? Mom? Dad?”
“How did you win them over?”
Stopping the tape, Spicer said, “That second voice is the receiving phone—and it’s Alfie.”
“They both sound like Alfie.”
“The other one’s Stillwater. Alfie also speaks next.”
“Why would they love you more than me?”
“Don’t touch them, you son of a bitch. Don’t you lay one finger on them.”
“They betrayed me.”
“I want to talk to my mother and father.”
“MY mother and father.”
“Put them on the phone.”
“So you can tell them more lies?”
They listened to the entire conversation. It was over-the -top creepy because it sounded as if one man was talking to himself, a radically split personality. Worse, their bad boy was obviously not just a renegade but flat-out psychotic.
When the tape ended, Oslett said, “So Stillwater never stopped at his parents’ house.”
“Evidently not.”
“Then how did Alfie find it? And why did he go there? Why was he interested in Stillwater’s parents, not just Stillwater himself?”
Spicer shrugged. “Maybe you’ll get a chance to ask the boy if you manage to recover him.”
Oslett didn’t like having so many unanswered questions. It made him feel as if he wasn’t in control.
He glanced out the window at the house and at the tire tracks in the snow-covered driveway. “Alfie’s probably not over there any more.”
“Went after Stillwater,” Spicer agreed.
“Where was that call placed?”
“Cellular phone.”
Oslett said, “We can still trace that, can’t we?”
Pointing to three lines of numbers on a display terminal, Spicer said, “We’ve got a satellite triangulation.”
“That’s meaningless to me, just numbers.”
“This computer can plot it on a map. To within a hundred feet of the signal source.”
“How long will that take?”
“Five minutes tops,” Spicer said.
“Good. You work on it. We’ll check the house.”
Oslett stepped out of the red van with Clocker close behind.
As they crossed the street through the snow, Oslett didn’t care if a dozen nosy neighbors were at their windows. The situation was already blown wide open and couldn’t be salvaged. He, Clocker, and Spicer would clear out, with their dead, in less than ten minutes, and after that no one would ever be able to prove they’d been there.
They walked boldly onto the elder Stillwaters’ porch. Oslett rang the bell. No one answered. He rang it again and tried the door, which proved to be unlocked. From across the street it would appear as if Jim or Alice Stillwater had opened up and invited them inside.
In the foyer, Clocker closed the front door behind them and drew his Colt .357 Magnum from his shoulder holster. They stood for a few seconds, listening to the silent house.
“Be at peace, Alfie,” Oslett said, even though he doubted that their bad boy was still hanging around the premises. When there was no ritual response to that command, he repeated the four words louder than before.
Silence prevailed.
Cautiously they moved deeper into the house—and found the dead couple in the first room they checked. Stillwater’s parents. Each of them somewhat resembled the writer—and Alfie, too, of course.
During a swift search of the house, repeating the command phrase before they went through each new doorway, the only thing of interest they found was in the laundry. The small room reeked of gasoline. What Alfie had been up to was made apparent by the scraps of cloth, funnel, and partly empty box of detergent that littered the counter beside the sink.