WATCHERS by Dean R. Koontz

maybe we’d find some way to communicate with him.”

The retriever leaped to his feet and padded directly to Nora. From the

expression on his face and from the intent look in his eyes, Nora knew that her

proposal was a good one. Tomorrow, she would collect dozens of books and

magazines, and put the scheme into operation.

“It’s going to take a lot of patience,” Travis warned her.

“I’ve got oceans of patience.”

“You may think you have, but sometimes dealing with Einstein gives a whole new

meaning to the word.”

Turning to Travis, the dog blew air out of his nostrils.

The 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

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