The Shadow Hunter

warned, hot water was scarce. She dressed in old jeans and a faded blouse.
    She passed the time rereading the case file until after nine o’clock, when those tenants who had jobs were likely to have left for work, and the others had settled in for a day of soap operas and talk shows. Tool kit in hand, she stepped into the hall and looked around. Every door on the fourth floor was closed. A neighbor peering through a peephole might catch her in the act of a break-in, but she was willing to chance it.
    Before Hickle’s door she set down the tool kit and took out an electric pick gun and a feather-touch, coil-spring tension bar. The door was secured with a Kwik-set pin-tumbler deadbolt lock. To turn the plug, it was necessary to free the pins, lifting them into the pin wells. She inserted the tension bar into the lower half of the keyway and the pick gun’s blade into the upper half, then switched on the pick. It whirred like a dentist’s drill until the row of pins popped free. The plug rotated under the pressure of the tension bar, and the deadbolt retracted with a metallic snick.
    She stepped inside, shut the door, and looked through the peephole, watching for any activity in the hall. There was none. Evidently the pick gun’s motor noise had aroused no concern.
    Turning, she surveyed Hickle’s apartment. The furniture was different from hers but of no better quality. Although Hickle had lived in the building for years, he had not enlivened the decor with mementos or artworks or small, homey touches. There were no paintings on the walls, no framed photos resting on end tables. The place was as nondescript as a motel room.
    She crossed the living room and closed the Venetian blind, then turned on a light. The first thing she noticed was the VCR under the TV. Hickle must have bought the VCR himself; unlike the TV, it had not been bolted down by the landlord. She found the all-purpose remote and turned on both devices, then reviewed the on-screen programming menu. Hickle had set the VCR to tape Channel Eight every weekday from 6 to 6:30 P.M. and again from ten o’clock to eleven. Kris Barwood’s two daily newscasts.
    She inspected the kitchen. The fridge was stocked with several large plastic containers of rice and beans, Hickle’s dietary staple. She found no snacks, no dessert foods. He seemed to live a curiously ascetic life.
    Before proceeding with the search, she took care of one more item of business in the living room. She installed a surveillance camera.
    The camera was an inch wide by an inch deep, with a 3.6mm pinhole lens that resembled a pen’s ball point. The lens covered a ninety-degree field of view, and its light rating was .03 lux, permitting photography even in semidarkness. Soldered to the camera was an inch-long UHF crystal-controlled color video transmitter that broadcast 420 lines of video resolution without shakiness or drift. The transmitter had a range of three hundred feet and would send its signal through walls and any other obstruction except steel.
    For extended use the unit had to be run off an external power supply. Fortunately there was a smoke detector mounted above Hickle’s sofa, hard-wired into the main current. She took the smoke detector apart and found room inside for the camera-transmitter package, which she wired to the AC. Before replacing the smoke detector on the wall, she aligned the camera lens with one of the prepunched holes in the cover.
    The camera was not equipped with a microphone. She considered installing an infinity transmitter in the base of Hickle’s telephone—the device would pick up room noise along with both ends of his telephone conversations—but decided againstit. Hickle, like many paranoids, might periodically inspect his phone for bugs. Besides, it was unnecessary to monitor his phone calls. The only calls that mattered were the ones he made to Kris Barwood, and TPS was already recording and tracing those.
    Still, she wanted some audio surveillance. Mrs. Finley had reported that Hickle sometimes shouted when alone. No doubt he also talked to himself at times. Most people did. “Even me,” Abby said, proving her point.
    A simple hidden microphone would do the trick. She planted one inside the stove’s ventilation hood. The microphone and its transmitter used less energy than the video camera and did not need to be hooked up to the main current. A single nine-volt battery would allow continuous transmission for more than a week.
    The