Chapter LXXXVIII

Lars Ungar crossed the creek, that disputed border between the Hickman and Michaud lands. He was armed with a suppressed M4 carbine, which he had temporarily liberated from the latest, and final, shipment of weapons at the camp. An army surplus helmet, complete with netting, protected his head, and a night vision monocular, permanently claimed for his own use, was fixed over his right eye, because Ungar didn't want to go stumbling into holes.

The main Michaud residence was some way distant, but Ellar Michaud and his weird sisters seemed to have a highly developed sensitivity to intrusion on their land, which was one of the reasons for another piece of kit attached to Ungar's chest: a small video screen, linked to a camera mounted on his helmet. Ungar didn't ascribe the Michauds' extraordinary perception to any kind of sixth sense, no matter how odd the sisters might be, but instead continued to believe that there might be a more quotidian explanation.

Minutes after leaving the creek behind, Ungar came in sight of the old house. He sheltered behind a tree, lifted the night vision lens, and gave his eye time to accustom itself once again to natural light. When he was able to pick out branches against the sky, he activated the video screen. Instantly, the infrared beams of the security system were made visible as parallel bars of light set two and four feet above the ground. They surrounded the building, so that anything taller than a small deer would break both beams if it approached the property, probably activating an alarm at the Michaud residence. But a bird or bat flying through the higher of the two beams, or a fox passing through the lower one, wouldn't set any warning bells ringing.

Ungar ran an eye over the exterior. If he were in the Michauds' position, he would have placed at least two cameras on the house itself, at or near the front and back entrances. That way, if the beams were broken, someone would quickly be able to establish the cause without having to hightail it over just because a doe decided to take the scenic route home.

But the presence of the beams raised an interesting question, namely what the system was designed to protect. Den Hickman had told Antoine Pinette that locals knew better than to go wandering on Michaud or Hickman land without permission—knew better than to go wandering on anyone's property without permission, because good fences made good neighbors. Gretton wasn't any kind of hunter's or snowmobiler's paradise, which meant landowners weren't much troubled by strangers either. This sense of isolation was one of the reasons that Pinette and Bobby Ocean had decided upon Gretton as a base.

Yet even had the Michaud land been more open to visitors, a complicated infrared security system looked like overkill for a dilapidated dwelling in the woods. Ungar supposed that there was always the risk of a fire spreading should kids have found a way inside to smoke weed and drink a few Coors Lights, although that possibility had already been dealt with by boarding up the windows on the first floor. The old wooden doors had also been replaced, or reinforced, with heavy steel plates, leaving the windows on the upper floor as the only weak points. There the glass remained unobscured, almost as though someone living inside didn't wish to be left utterly in darkness.

If someone were living in the old house, thought Ungar, it would explain a lot, including why it had been permitted to remain standing. The doors were clearly secured from the outside, which meant that whoever was inside, assuming anyone was, would be closer to a prisoner than a resident. The more Ungar considered this, the more improbable it appeared that the house might be occupied. Nevertheless, he found that he, like Pinette, could not quite shake off a sense of habitation, and he had to remind himself not to jump at shadows.

Ungar made a single circuit of the house, staying low and keeping to the tree line. Even with the aid of the monocular, he struggled to find any obvious cameras at the doors, but that didn't mean they weren't there. Whoever was responsible for installing that infrared system obviously had enough technical aptitude to be able to hide cameras where they wouldn't be spotted. Ungar wondered where the juice was coming from. He thought solar power would be the most efficient way of powering a photoelectric beam set-up, though he was no electrician. He left that to the camp expert, one of Pinette's cousins, who already had their entire circle hooked up for free to every premium cable channel known to man.

Ungar had come this far, and wasn't about to return to the camp without finding out what the Michauds were hiding. There was a certain amount of calculated risk involved, but the odds remained roughly in his favor. The Michauds weren't going to operate round-the-clock shifts to stare at a monitor relaying images of the house from hidden cameras, so the beams were the main alarm system. If they were broken, the Michauds would check the feed, but otherwise it might only be glanced at in passing. As long as Ungar didn't mess up, he believed he could make it to the house without being noticed. The doors were padlocked, but he had a crowbar in his pack as well as back-up in the form of a 60/40 solution of nitric acid and water stored in a small corrosion-resistant container, even as he hoped it wouldn't come down to using the latter. Depending on the thickness of the steel, he might have to wait a couple of hours for the solution to dissolve the lock. He didn't want to hang around for that long, just in case he suddenly found truckloads of previously unsuspected Michauds descending on his hiding place to teach him a lesson about respecting privacy.

Ungar took a deep breath and stepped gingerly over the lower of the nearest beams, keeping his head down so as not to break the upper one. He approached the house from the east, where the wall was windowless, and worked his way to the back door. This time, as he peered around the corner, he saw a camera. It was set above the narrow lintel, where a section of the wood siding had been removed so the unit was flush with the rest of the boards. Even in daylight, it would have been as good as invisible from a distance.

From his pack, Ungar removed a 12-ounce can of Rust-Oleum black spray paint and gave the lens a good spritz. If the Michauds noticed the camera was no longer transmitting, they might, with luck, attribute it to a malfunction or a battery that needed recharging, and leave any further investigation until the morning. Should they not, Ungar had his M4 and was wearing a ski mask. If he had to shoot his way out, he would, but he was sure the sight of the M4 would be enough to give even big Ellar second thoughts, and unless he was storing secrets for the government in the old house, he wouldn't go making a complaint to the police about trespassing. If he did take it into his head to enter the camp and kick up a fuss, well, trespassing went two ways, and the camp would be obliged to protect itself against an armed intruder.

Ungar inserted the crowbar into the padlock and yanked. The lock was strong, but it gave the first time because Ungar was practiced at breaking locks: locks, arms, even heads. He slipped the bolt and pulled open the steel door. Behind it was the original wood version, the glass panes dusty, home to spiders and their prey. Ungar saw no alarm sensors on the steel; had he done so, he'd have hightailed it back to camp, since it would have meant the Michauds were already on their way. He tried the front door, which opened easily. This, too, was free of sensors, although he wasn't surprised: there wouldn't be much point in putting them on the inner door and not the outer one.

Now that he was inside, he dispensed with the night vision monocular in favor of a high-powered Maglite. He progressed slowly, careful to test the boards before he leaned his full weight on them. The last thing he wanted was to put a foot through the floor and bust an ankle. Worse, he might fall straight down to the basement, which would leave him to lie in agony until some of his own people came looking for him or the Michauds finally got around to checking on that camera he'd disabled.

The first floor was empty of furniture apart from two plastic chairs in what might once have been the living room. The wallpaper reminded Ungar of childhood visits to his grandmother's home in Rumford, with its tattered red drapes and smell of standing water. He felt as though he'd stepped back in time, but not to any era he might have elected to visit. It was obvious that the building was in some kind of regular use. The dust in the hallway was disturbed and Ungar spotted recent traces of mud. He glanced at the stairs leading to the second floor and saw that they had partially collapsed, leaving a hole like a toothed mouth. He decided not to bother with a search of the upper story. Whatever this house contained, it wasn't up there.

Which left the basement, accessed via a door under the stairs. It was the only inner door that was locked, which Ungar thought odd, but again his crowbar took care of it. When the door cracked open, Ungar was hit by a wave of warm air, when by rights the basement should have been cooler than the rest of the house. It smelled so rank that it was like being breathed on by someone whose innards were in a state of dissolution. For a moment, Ungar was even convinced that he might actually have heard an exhalation, though he put it down to the night breeze finding its way between cracks in the walls below.

Shielding himself as best he could, he shone his flashlight on the steps. They were newer than the rest of the house, and the beam picked up more mud on them.

"Hello?" he said. "Anybody down there?"

He didn't feel foolish for asking. That primitive instinct was kicking in once more: he was not alone here. Why bother to lock a door in a house that was already secured from the outside, unless you were trying to keep someone contained? You locked them in to prevent them from roaming, from testing the steel doors and the boarded-up windows or trying to make their way past the hole in the main staircase to peer through the glass of the upper floors; perhaps even break them and cry out for help, or attempt an escape by jumping down to the porch roof.

But Lars Ungar received no reply from the basement dark.

He fixed the flashlight to his carbine, held the muzzle of the M4 on the stairs, and descended.