fished his buck knife from the waders' pocket, and opened it. He held the blade upward, like a saber in his left hand, dropped the fence, and snatched up the pipe wrench in his right. The dogs stood, waiting. He studied them a moment, then stepped through the fence onto the lawn.
The male wheeled to Vaggan's left, whining eagerly, and the female took two or three steps directly backward. Then she lunged, fangs bared—a black shape catapulting at his chest. Had there been a single dog, Vaggan would have met the charge directly, to give the blow of the pipe wrench its full, killing force. But the male dog would also be coming. Vaggan wheeled to the right as he struck, taking some of the force out of the swing but putting the female's body between him and the charging male. The wrench slammed into the Doberman's skull in front of the ear, breaking jawbone, skull, and vertebrae. But the force of her lunge knocked Vaggan against the fence just as the male struck. It fastened, snarling, on the rubber leg of his waders, its weight pulling and tearing at him, jerking him off balance. Vaggan hit it across the lower back with the wrench, heard something break, and hit it again across the chest. The dog fell away from him and lay on its side on the lawn, struggled to get to its front feet, tried to crawl away from him. Vaggan walked after it and killed it with the wrench. The female, he saw, was already dead. Vaggan knelt beside the male dog's body, eyes on Leonard's house, listening. No lights came on. The Santa Ana had faded a little for the moment, as if it were listening with him. Then it howled again, bending the eucalyptus trees that shaded the swimming pool and battering the shrubbery behind him. Vaggan walked back to the hole in the fence and looked through it, up and down the moonlit street. The wind moved everything, but he could see no sign of human life.
He dragged the male dog back to the shrubbery and hung it, head dangling, in the thick limbs. He extracted a rubber ice pack from his airline bag, unscrewed its oversized cap, and cut the Doberman's throat with the buck knife. He'd bought the ice bag at a medical supply store, choosing it because of its mouth, wide enough for ice cubes or to catch a flow of blood in the dark. He collected a pint or so from the dog's severed artery and then replaced the cap. Next he took out two plastic garbage bags and unfolded them on the grass. He decapitated both dogs and amputated the left foreleg of the male. He stuffed the bodies in one bag and the heads and foreleg in the other. That done, he stripped off his heavy gauntlets, blood-soaked now, replacing them with a pair of thin rubber surgical gloves.
He stepped out of the waders. The male dog's teeth had torn through the heavy rubber at the knee, leaving multiple rips. He checked the leg of his coveralls. It, too, was torn but his skin hadn't been punctured. He put the gauntlets, wrench, and buck knife back in the airline bag. He took out his shoes, and slipped them on, and extracted a roll of adhesive tape, a small .32 caliber pistol, four pairs of nylon restraint handcuffs, a pressure spray can of foam insulation, and, finally, a pair of plier clamps and two cattle ear tags he'd purchased at a veterinarian supply store in Encino. He arranged this assortment in his pockets and stacked the waders and the bag containing the bodies under the shrubbery. If the situation allowed he would retrieve them. If not, it wouldn't matter because he'd left no fingerprints or any way of tracing anything. But having the dogs' bodies missing would add another touch of the macabre, and Vaggan was going to make it macabre to the maximum—macabre enough to make page one of the LA
He walked quietly across the lawn, carrying his burden. Dogs out of the way, the next step was the burglar alarm.
Vaggan knew a lot about the alarm. The second time he'd scouted the house, he'd noticed a burglars beware sticker the alarm company had pasted on the side-entrance window. He'd examined the sticker through his binoculars, looked up the company's name in the phone book, and spent an afternoon as a potential customer, learning how the system worked. Jay Leonard was big in Los Angeles, a television talk show host people were proud to have as a customer. As he had with the dog trainer, Vaggan implied that Leonard was a friend. He mentioned that Leonard was well pleased with his alarm system and had suggested he get one like it. The salesman had shown him the model and explained how it worked, and Vaggan had bought one, saying he'd install it himself.
He found the control box about where the salesman had said it should be put, mounted on an inside wall of the open carport near both a power source and a telephone line. It was equipped with an anti-tamper device that set off the alarm inside the house and flashed a signal to the Beverly Hills police if the power was cut off. Vaggan fished the aerosol can from his jacket pocket, shook it vigorously, and inserted the nozzle into the heat/moisture vent on the side of the metal box. He depressed the button and listened to the hiss of the foam insulation gushing in. The label specified a drying time of thirty minutes but, when Vaggan had checked it, it had been solid in eighteen minutes—solid and expanded to congeal all the alarm's relay switches and circuits into useless immobility. But he waited the full thirty minutes to be safe, leaning against the carport wall, coming down from the high he'd experienced in dealing with the dogs.
There was no reason to think about what he'd do next. That was carefully planned. Instead he thought about the Navajo Project. The message from his answering service had said simply, Call Mac. That meant call McNair, which in turn meant that something must have come unglued again. Not surprising. In Vaggan's experience, jobs that started sloppily tended to continue to screw up. But it was no skin off his ass. He didn't even know what the operation involved. Something, he guessed, to do with getting rid of witnesses. McNair was under indictment, with some of his people. McNair was fairly big, and certainly very senior, in the West Coast car-stealing business, and fairly big in cocaine too, from what Vaggan had heard. And he had Koreans, and Indians, and Filipinos, and Mexicans, and such people doing his stealing. In Vaggan's estimation, that was asking for trouble, since such people were poor stock. Some of them would surely screw up and get caught and talk. Had talked, already, to the grand jury, from what he'd heard, and would be ready to nail McNair in court. Which is what you should expect when you deal with such people. Losers. All of them, except maybe the Navajos.
Something about the Navajos appealed to Vaggan. Since he'd gotten into this business, he'd been reading about them. They, too, were survivors. It was because, he was sure, of their philosophy of staying in harmony with conditions, being in tune with whatever was coming down. That made sense. He did it himself. The people who refused to believe the missiles were coming and tried to turn it off by denying it, they would die. He'd gotten in harmony with that inevitable truth, accepted it, prepared for it. He would survive. And he'd gotten in harmony with this Santa Ana wind. It didn't bother him. In fact, he'd made it a part of his cover, like the quills on a porcupine. He listened to the wind, battering and shaking things, and smiled slightly. He glanced at his watch and pushed the tip of his little finger against the foam insulation in the vent. It was stiff. Time for the final phase. Time for the rent-a- cop.
Vaggan used his glass cutter on the window, removing a pane and reaching inside to unfasten the lock and then closing it behind him quickly, as soon as he had himself and his supplies inside, to shut out the wind sound. He stood listening, giving his eyes time to adjust to this deeper darkness. He'd made no sound himself. Vaggan could be quiet as the cats he admired. But opening the window would have changed the sound level of the storm for anyone awake inside. If that had alerted anyone it was better to know it now. So he waited, stock still, using up a full five minutes.
To his right a click, a low hum. The thermostat turning on the refrigerator motor. Vaggan smelled something astringent—a cleanser, perhaps—and coffee, and dust. Behind the purr of the refrigerator, the sound of distant music. Perhaps a radio playing, or a tape. In a bedroom somewhere. Then the sound of the Santa Ana rose again, pounding against the windows, rattling limbs across the roof, screeching at the corners. It subsided. The music was replaced by a male voice, inaudibly low, and then became music again. Vaggan strained to hear. It was 'Daniel,' the Elton John tune. Vaggan folded his handkerchief over the lens of his penlight, pointed it at the floor, and turned it on. His eyes had adjusted now, and the glow was adequate—illuminating a modern kitchen and reflecting into an expansive living area beyond.
