'Mrs. Elkins?'
'Yes?' Wary, never knowing, when Frank was away, whether a phone call was good or bad.
'It's Parker.' He'd never met the woman, but he'd left messages with her before.
'Yes?' Still wary; it could still be good or bad.
'Frank's on his way home,' Parker told her.
'Good.'
'Would you tell him my friends might drop in.'
'Friends of yours?'
'He'll know,' Parker said, and hung up, and went back to the Honda, where Lloyd was a pale disembodied face in the distant gas station lights. This was the same station where he'd talked with Elkins first, after getting rid of Charov, just a few miles from Claire's house, and it was three in the morning, the station closed.
Getting behind the wheel, he said, 'We'll park at the lake, by one of the empty houses.'
'A strange place to live,' Lloyd said. 'Where all the houses are empty.'
There was nothing to say to that. Parker drove away from the gas station and up to the turn where the sign pointed to Colliver's Pond. He drove halfway from the turn toward Claire's house, then chose a driveway on the right leading up to one of the less desirable, less expensive houses without lake frontage.
Blank tan rectangles of plywood covering the windows stared down on them before Parker switched off the headlights. Most of the householders around here merely locked their places and went away at the end of each summer, but a few acted as though winter was the return of the Ice Age.
Parker and Lloyd walked along the road that circled the lake. There were no streetlights out here, so when the houses were empty the nights were very dark. A smallish moon low in the sky over their left shoulders helped them pick out the pavement of the roadway, and showed Parker the mailbox marked willis. Keeping his voice low, he said, 'It's in there. I'll wait. Just don't go in the house.'
'I don't have to. What electricity do you have on?'
'None. We shut it off at the box.'
'Phone on?'
'Yes.'
'Do you know where the service comes in?'
'Left corner, over the garage.'
In his element now, playing with his machines, Lloyd was calm and confident. Taking a small device like a photographer's light meter from his pocket, he pressed the button on its side that made the dim light shine on the dial. Shielding that with one hand, he looked at the dial, turned the meter left and right, and said, 'Something. Faint. Could be coming from in there. I won't be long.'
Lloyd faded into the darkness of the driveway, under the trees, and Parker stood near the mailbox, watching the empty road. He remembered how smoothly and briskly Lloyd had done his work at Paxton Marino's lodge. If they could keep this other stress away from him, he'd be fine, but when he got emotional he was like a dog that needed to be shot.
Lloyd was back in less than ten minutes. 'I guess there's something in there,' he said, 'but not sending, receiving. There's a signal coming in from down that way.' Farther along the road.
'That's the base,' Parker said. 'Anybody opens that door, the camera will start to send. Can you find the base?'
'I should be able to,' Lloyd said. 'When we get nearer, the signal's going to be stronger. If we pass it, the signal will change, then get weaker.'
'Good,' Parker said.
Lloyd now carried a mini earphone, like ones used with cell phones, attached to that dial. Fixing it to his right ear, he started walking, slowly, listening to electricity in the night, while Parker walked beside him, watching, looking at the darkness, then seeing light ahead, amber light from the windows of a house on the lake.
Lloyd had seen it, too. 'Not every house is empty,' he said.
'There are some year-rounders,' Parker agreed. 'They're asleep now.'
'This could be insomnia,' Lloyd suggested. 'But the signal is getting stronger.'
Either the road was closer to the lake here or the house was set back farther from the shore, because it was more visible than Claire's house, nearer, through fewer trees. What looked like living room windows gleamed through the tree trunks on the left front of the low house, with darkness on the right. The driveway was farther left.
Lloyd said, 'Should we go in?'
'No. Walk by, see if the signal changes.'
'It's changing right now,' Lloyd said. 'This is where it's coming from.'
The time for machinery was finished. 'Wait here,' Parker said. He backtracked to the next driveway, for the next house over, dark and silent. He walked down the driveway, then through the scrub and trees to the house with the lights.
This place didn't have a garage. The gravel driveway ended beside the house, with an older Volvo station wagon parked there. A side door with small windows in it led into a kitchen that he could see in lightspill from the doorway beyond.
