Hit List

weren’t very good at it.
    But as long as they were there, he could forget about getting into the garage. He didn’t know if the Jeep was there or if Betsy Hirschhorn was out stocking up at the Safeway, but for now it hardly mattered. And he couldn’t stay where he was, not for very long, or somebody would call 911 to report a suspicious man lurking on a block full of children.
    He got out of there. The development had been laid out by someone with a profound disdain for straight lines and right angles, balanced by a special fondness for dead-end streets. It was hard to keep one’s bearings, but he found his way out, and had a cup of coffee at the suburb’s equivalent of Starbucks. The other customers were mostly women, and they looked restless. If you wanted to pick up a caffeinated housewife with attitude to spare, this was the place to do it.
    He found his way back to Winding Acres Drive, where the two boys were still playing basketball. They had switched games and were now doing a White Guys Can’t Jump version of driving layups. He parked in a different spot and decided he could stay there for ten minutes.
    When the ten minutes were up, he decided to give it five minutes more, and just before they ran out Betsy Hirschhorn came home, honking the Cherokee’s horn to clear the boys from the driveway. The garage door ascended even as they dribbled out of her path, and she drove in. Before the door closed, Keller drove by the driveway himself. Her Jeep was the only vehicle in the garage, unless you wanted to count the power lawn mower. Walter Hirschhorn’s Subaru squareback hadn’t come home yet.
    Keller drove away and came back, drove away and came back, passing the Hirschhorn house at five- to ten-minute intervals. The idea was to be waiting inside the garage when Hirschhorn came home, but first the boys had to finish their game. For Christ’s sake, how long could two unathletic kids keep this up? Why weren’t they inside playing video games or visiting Internet porn sites? Why didn’t Jason take the family dog for a walk? Why didn’t his friend go home?
    Then the door opened, and Jason’s sister emerged with Powhatan on his leash. (Tiffany? No, something else. Tamara!) How had she gotten home? On the bus with her brother? Or had she been in the Jeep just now with her mother? And what possible difference could it make to Keller?
    None that he could make out, but off she went, walking the dog, and the boys went on with their interminable game. Weren’t kids these days supposed to be turning into couch potatoes? Somebody ought to tell these two they were bucking a trend.
    They were still at it the next time he passed, and now time was starting to work against him. It was past five. Hirschhorn might well have left his office by now, and might get home any minute. Suppose he arrived before the boys ended their game? Maybe that’s how they knew to quit for the day. When Daddy comes home, Jason goes in for dinner and his friend Zachary goes home.
    He drove out of the development—no wrong turns this time, he was getting the hang of it, and beginning to feel as though he lived there himself. He left the car at a strip mall, parked in front of a discount shoe outlet, and returned on foot, with the .22 in a pocket.
    On his way out he’d counted houses, and now he circled halfway around the block, trying to estimate which house backed up on the Hirschhorn property. He narrowed it down to two and settled on the one with no lights burning, walked the length of its driveway, skirted the garage, and stood in the backyard, looking around, trying to get his bearings. The house directly opposite him was one story tall with an attached garage, so it wasn’t Hirschhorn’s, but he knew he wasn’t off by much. He walked through the yards—they didn’t have fences here, thank God for small favors—and he knew when he was in the right place because he could hear the sound of the basketball being dribbled.
    In addition to the big garage door that rose when you triggered the remote, there was a door on the side to let humans in and out. You couldn’t see it from the street, but Keller had watched the boy come out of it with a basketball, so he knew it was there. It was, he now saw, about a third of the way back on the left wall of the garage, facing the house, at the end of an overhang that let you get from the house to the garage without getting rained on.
    Which wasn’t a problem today, because it wasn’t