He put the torsion tool into the key slot on the doorknob, used a
triple triangle pick to rake the pins. Might as well try it the easy
way first, before picking each tumbler separately... The torsion tool
rotated the barrel mechanism on the second rake. Maybe six seconds
From start to finish Ventura grinned. He still had the touch.
He slipped the key into the dead bolt, turned it, and came up from his
crouch as he opened the door and stepped into the hallway that led to
the basement and the kitchen. He closed the door silently behind him.
The alarm keypad was on the wall just past the light switch. He could
see the red On diode gleaming. The only other light was from
instrument glows in the kitchen, no help this far away, so he nicked on
the flashlight and covered most of the lens with one hand, allowing
only enough illumination to see the keypad. He punched in the
four-digit number--1-9-8-6--the year Shannon had been born. Morrison
had said she wasn't very good at remembering numbers, so he'd wanted to
keep it simple.
1986. Ventura had shoes older than that.
The hard part was done. The master bedroom was upstairs, and the
living room/ study was just on the other side of the kitchen/ dining
room. That was as far as he needed to go. If he didn't bump into the
furniture or sneeze, the young widow would likely continue her beauty
rest. He'd reset the alarm and relock the door when he left. Shannon
would never know he'd been here.
He moved through the kitchen. There was enough ambient light from the
digital LCD clocks on the stove, microwave oven, and coffeemaker for
him to keep the flashlight lens covered completely. He didn't like to
use a flashlight on a hot prowl; it was a dead giveaway to anybody who
might be passing by or watching a place.
Unless there was a power outage, residents normally didn't move around
their own houses using flashlights.
But he didn't want to use the overheads or a lamp in here, either.
Watchers would at the very least be alerted that somebody was up and
about. And some people had a hypersensitivity to light, even when they
slept. It was as if they could somehow feel the pressure of the
photons on their bodies, although they couldn't see them. It wouldn't
do for young Shannon to come yawning and padding down the stairs in her
birthday suit, wondering who'd left the light on. If she saw him, it
would have to be the last thing she saw, and while killing her didn't
bother him per se, finding her corpse would give the authorities pause
to wonder why it had happened. Whoever had done it must have wanted
something, they'd figure, and Ventura reasoned they would figure out
what pretty quick. Right now, they didn't know that Morrison had
passed on anything to anybody. Best to keep it that way until he was
in a safe harbor.
He let a thin ray of the flashlight peek from between his closed
fingers as he stepped into the dining room, just enough to avoid the
furniture. He crouched low and duck walked toward the study. There
was what he wanted, just ahead and to the right.
Michaels was prone in a clump of bushes, across the street to the east
