Watchers

a case currently Under investigation.
    “Case?” she said. “What case?”
    “It involves a government-financed research project on which you were Once involved,” Vince told her, for that was the opening line that he had been told to use.
    She examined his photo ID and Bureau credentials carefully.
    He was not concerned. The phony papers had been prepared by the same People who had hired him for this job. The forged documents had been
    provided ten months ago to assist him on a hit in San Francisco, and had served him well on three other occasions.
    Though he knew the ID would meet with her approval, he was not sure that he, himself, would pass inspection. He was wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt, blue tie, and highly polished black shoes—correct attire for an agent. His size and his expressionless face also served him well in the role he was playing. But the murder of Dr. Davis Weatherby and the prospect of two more murders within the next few minutes had wildly excited him, had filled him with a manic glee that was almost uncontainable. Laughter kept building within him, and the struggle to repress it grew more difficult by the minute. In the drab green Ford sedan, which he had stolen forty minutes ago expressly for this one job, he had been seized by a fit of the shakes induced not by nervousness but by intense pleasure of an almost sexual nature. He’d been forced to pull the car to the side of the road and sit for ten minutes, breathing deeply, until he had calmed down a bit.
    Now, Elisabeth Yarbeck looked up from the forged ID, met Vince’s eyes, and frowned.
    He risked a smile, though there was a danger of slipping into uncontrollable laughter that would blow his cover. He had a boyish smile that, by its marked contrast with his size, could be disarming.
    After a moment, Dr. Yarbeck also smiled. Satisfied, she returned his credentials and welcomed him into her house.
    “I’ll need to speak with your husband, too,” Vince reminded her as she closed the front door behind them.
    “He’s in the living room, Mr. Parker. This way, please.”
    The living room was large and airy. Cream-colored walls and carpet. Pale-green sofas. Big plate-glass windows, partly shielded by green awnings, provided views of the meticulously landscaped property and of houses on the hills below.
    Jonathan Yarbeck was stuffing handfuls of wood chips in among the logs that he’d piled in the brick fireplace, getting ready to light a fire. He stood up, dusting his hands together, as his wife introduced Vince. “. . . John Parker of the FBI.”
    “FBI?” Yarbeck said, raising his eyebrows inquiringly.
    “Mr. Yarbeck,” Vince said, “if there are other members of the family at home, I’d also like to speak with them now, so I don’t have to repeat myself.”
    Shaking his head, Yarbeck said, “There’s just Liz and me. Kids are away at college. What’s this all about?”
    Vince drew the silencer-equipped pistol from inside his suit jacket and shot Jonathan Yarbeck in the chest. The attorney was flung backward against the mantel, where he hung for a moment as if nailed in place, then fell atop the brass fireplace tools.
    Sssssnap.
    Elisabeth Yarbeck was briefly frozen by astonishment and horror. Vince quickly moved on her. He grabbed her left arm and twisted it up behind her
    back, hard. When she cried out in pain, he put the pistol against the side of her head and said, “Be quiet, or I’ll blow your fuckin’ brains out.”
    He forced her to accompany him across the room to her husband’s body. Jonathan Yarbeck was face-down on top of a small brass coal shovel and a brass-handled poker. He was dead. But Vince did not want to take chances. He shot Yarbeck twice in the back of the head at close range.
    A strange, thin, catlike sound escaped Liz Yarbeck—then she began to sob.
    Because of the distance and the smoky tint on the glass, Vince did not believe even the neighbors could see through the big windows, but he wanted to deal with the woman in a more private place. He forced her into the hall and headed deeper into the house, looking in doors as they went until he found the master bedroom. There, he gave her a hard shove, and she sprawled on the floor.
    “Stay put,” he said.
    He switched on the bedside lamps. He went to the big sliding-glass doors that opened onto the patio and began to close the drapes.
    The moment his back was turned, the woman scrambled to her feet and ran toward the hall door.
    He