Watchers

prospects for more direct communication looked bleak during the first few sessions with the dog on Wednesday and Thursday, but the big breakthrough was not long in coming: Friday evening, June 4, they found the way, and after that their lives could never be the same.
     
     
2
    “...reports of screaming in an unfinished housing tract, Bordeaux Ridge—”
    Friday evening, June 4, less than an hour before nightfall, the sun cast gold and copper light on Orange County. It was the second day of blistering temperatures in the mid-nineties, and the stored heat of the long summer day radiated off the pavement and buildings. Trees seemed to droop wearily. The air was motionless. On the freeways and surface streets, the sound of traffic was muffled, as if the thick air filtered the roar of engines and blaring of horns.
    “—repeat, Bordeaux Ridge, under construction at the east end—”
    In the gently rolling foothills to the northeast, in an unincorporated area of the county adjacent to Yorba Linda, where the suburban sprawl had only recently begun to reach, there was little traffic. The occasional blast of a horn or squeal of brakes was not merely muffled but curiously mournful, melancholy in the humid stillness.
    Sheriff’s Deputies Teel Porter and Ken Dimes were in a patrol car—Teel driving, Ken riding shotgun—with a broken ventilation system: no air-conditioning, not even forced air coming out of the vents. The windows were open, but the sedan was an oven.
    “You stink like a dead hog,” Teel Porter told his partner.
    “Yeah?” Ken Dimes said. “Well, you not only stink like a dead hog, you look like a dead hog.”
    “Yeah? Well, you date dead hogs.”
    Ken smiled in spite of the heat. “That so? Well, I hear from your women that you make love like a dead hog.”
    Their tired humor could not mask the fact that they were weary and uncomfortable. And they were answering a call that didn’t promise much excitement: probably kids playing games; kids loved to play on construction sites. Both deputies were thirty-two, husky former high school football players. They weren’t brothers—but, as partners for six years, they were brothers.
    Teel turned off the county road onto a lightly oiled dirt lane that led into the Bordeaux Ridge development. About forty houses were in various stages of construction. Most were still being framed, but a few had already been stuccoed.
    “Now there,” Ken said, “is the kind of shit I just can’t believe people fall for. I mean, hell, what kind of name is ‘Bordeaux’ for a housing tract in Southern California? Are they trying to make you believe there’s going to be vineyards here one day? And they call it ‘Ridge,’ but the whole tract’s in this stretch of flatland between the hills. Their sign promises serenity. Maybe now. But what about when they pitch up another three thousand houses out here in the next five years?”
    Teel said, “Yeah, but the part gets me is ‘miniestates.’ What the fuck is a miniestate. Nobody in his right mind would think these are estates—except maybe Russians who’ve spent their lives living twelve to an apartment. These are tract homes.”
    The concrete curbs and gutters had been poured along the streets of Bordeaux Ridge, but the pavement had not yet been put down. Teel drove slowly, trying not to raise a lot of dust, raising it anyway. He and Ken looked left and right at the skeletal forms of unfinished houses, searching for kids who were up to no good.
    To the west, at the edge of the city of Yorba Linda and adjacent to Bordeaux Ridge, were finished tracts where people already lived. From those residents, the Yorba Linda Police had received calls about screaming somewhere in this embryonic development. Because the area had not yet been annexed into the city, the complaint fell into the jurisdiction of the Sheriff’s Department.
    At the end of the street, the deputies saw a white pickup that belonged to
    the company that owned Bordeaux: Tulemann Brothers. It was parked in front of three almost-completed display models.
    “Looks like there’s a foreman still here,” Ken said.
    “Or maybe it’s the night watchman on duty a little early,” Tee! said.
    They parked behind the truck, got out of the stiflingly hot patrol car, and stood for a moment, listening. Silence.
    Ken shouted, “Hello! Anybody here?”
    His voice echoed back and forth through the deserted tract.
    Ken said, “You want to look around?”
    “Shit,