Chapter 3
Two men sat in a white van bearing a cable company logo. The van was parked just off the road, yet had a clear view of the driveway that led up into the trees to Dr. Nambu's villa. The men were dressed in coveralls, but their burly forms did not appear to be comfortable in such attire.
"I hate this thing." one man said, yanking at his collar. "It itches!" His squat, rotund body was stuffed into the white coverall, the sleeves rolled up to accommodate his short arms.
"Quiet, Samson!" the other hissed, a pair of binoculars glued to his face. "This could mess everything up, and you're complaining about your collar?" The man grimaced, his tall, lean body squished into the driver's seat. His head bumped up against the roof of the van as Samson nudged him while he scratched.
"Sorry Dorn." Samson replied. "It's just this cotton stuff, you know? Gives me a rash! I prefer our polyester uniforms any day…"
"Just shut up!" Dorn snapped, and Samson grew quiet for a moment.
"What do you see, Dorn?"
Dorn rolled his eyes to the van's ceiling for an instant as if praying for strength, then lowered the binoculars form his eyes and turned to glare at Samson.
"I see our promotions going down the tubes; that's what I see!" he growled. "Nambu was supposed to be gone! But now there's a pizza delivery guy who just came and went! Someone's up there!"
"Maybe it was pizza for someone else?" Samson suggested.
"There's no one else up that driveway, idiot! Private property!" Dorn gestured to the signs posted along the fence that outlined the villa grounds. "He had to be delivering pizza to someone up there! Nambu's still home!"
"But we saw him get on that plane yesterday morning." Samson protested.
"Maybe it was a shorter trip than we thought." Dorn moaned. "Lord Katse will have our hides if we don't succeed at this mission!"
"Maybe it's not Nambu." Samson thought hard. "It's a big house, right? Maybe he has someone watching it for him while he's gone?"
"Maybe." Dorn frowned. "I want to check some things out. Let's come back tonight and see if that 'caretaker' is still here."
"Okay." Samson agreed. He liked it when Dorn had a plan. Dorn's plans were always good ones.
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"Did you hear something?" Ken sat straight up on the couch, where he had dozed off an hour or so before. Joe was still battling space marines on the television screen, and waved a hand at him.
"Probably just one of my electron bombs going off." he said.
"No, there was something else." Ken insisted. He had never been a light sleeper, and the volume on the television was low. It had to have been another sound. Something inside of him was insisting that things weren't right.
Carefully, Ken went over to the window, pulling aside the curtain and peering outside into the darkness. It was dark amongst the trees, but Ken thought perhaps he could see something… was that an animal in the forest?
Before he could focus on it, the movement was gone.
Ken shrugged, brushing off his suspicions as silly dreams, walking out of the family room and down the hallway to the kitchen, turning lights on as he went. He opened the fridge, burying his head inside as he reached for another container of Jello.
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"There's someone in there!" Samson whispered loudly. Dorn felt like throttling the imbecile, but unfortunately he needed him. He settled instead for briefly swatting at the back of Samson's head, but the idiot barely noticed.
Unfortunately, Samson's conclusion was all too correct. Samson had stepped on a twig, the resulting snap echoing through the otherwise quiet night. The two men had dashed into the cover of the nearby trees and bushes, but there had definitely been a fluttering at the curtains. For a brief moment, Dorn had been able to see soft flickering light, such as that from a television, filtering out into the darkness.
Then the curtain had dropped back and lights had come on in the hallway, moving through the house until they reached the room Dorn knew was the kitchen. There was someone present all right. No doubt about it. This definitely wasn't an automatic timer.
"Stay here!" Dorn hissed at Samson, knowing full well the man wouldn't listen or obey. He crept through the night to the kitchen window, staying low to the ground to avoid detection. When he reached the edge of the house he pushed up slowly, until he could just see a partial image through the slats of the shutters.
"The fridge is open!" Samson gasped, for which Dorn gave the man another smack. Not wanting to risk discovery, Dorn backed away quickly. Fortunately Samson followed his lead. The two men hiked through the forest, going back to their van, which was now parked three kilometers away.
"Someone's living there!" Samson once again stated the obvious. "Is it Nambu?"
"Galactor Intelligence reports that the plane on which Nambu departed yesterday morning has not returned." Dorn replied stiffly. "It is highly unlikely that the good Doctor chose another mode of transportation to return home after less than forty-eight hours away. It's more likely that this is some kind of caretaker. Damn it!"
"Hey, I guess those ISO stiffs are smarter than we thought, huh?" Samson snickered.
"I wouldn't laugh if I were you." Dorn lectured. "Lord Katse won't be too pleased if he finds out that we have failed."
"Oh…" Samson was taken aback, then quickly became afraid. "We can't fail!"
"If it's just one man, he shouldn't prove to be too much trouble for us." Dorn decided. "Sure, Nambu will find the body when he gets back, but by then it will be too late."
"So let's go right now!" Samson declared.
"We can't go into the house right now, you moron! The security system is still intact!" Dorn took a deep breath, doing his best not to let his frustration get to him. "We'll do it as we planned. Tomorrow night we'll interrupt the system for thirty minutes. That should be enough time to get in and get out, even if we have to get rid of the caretaker."
"We can do it, Dorn!" Samson assured him. Somehow, his optimism only made Dorn feel less confident.
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"So was there anything?" Joe asked vaguely when Ken returned, two containers of Jello in hand and a spoon in his mouth.
"Nope." Ken replied, putting down his snack. "I think it was an animal in the forest."
"Maybe it was Santa." Joe snickered.
"That's not for two more nights, stupid!" Ken berated the other boy. "Besides, Santa lands on the roof and comes down the chimney."
"Do you really think a fat guy in a red suit slides down the chimney and leaves presents?" Joe asked derisively.
"Why?" Ken's eyes narrowed. "Don't you?"
"Course not." Joe scoffed. "Santa is for babies. He doesn't bring anything. It's the parents who bring stuff."
"If you don't believe in Santa, he won't bring you anything." Ken reasoned. "So your parents have to leave you stuff, or you won't get anything. Anyhow, my parents don't leave me stuff."
"I'll bet Hakase does."
"Hakase's not here."
"Yeah." A sly grin crossed Joe's face. "I guess we'll see, then. If there are no presents this year, that means Santa didn't come. But if presents show up and Hakase's not here, then Santa's real."
"Yeah…" Ken agreed, but something didn't feel right about the entire matter.
"What did you ask for?" Ken wanted to know.
"I didn't ask for anything," Joe shrugged, "because there's no one to bring it."
"Guess you'll lose out then," Ken needled him, "because he won't know what to bring you. I asked for some new model airplane kits and two video games and some candy and a space rocket."
"I don't want any of that stuff." Joe said suddenly, a grim look on his face. "All I want is a gun."
"A… what?" Ken nearly choked on his spoonful of Jello.
"A gun. What, you think I've never used a gun before?" Joe turned to glare at Ken, a hard look in his eyes. "My Dad taught me. But I need a gun so I can shoot the people who killed my parents."
"Oh…" Ken rooted around for an appropriate response before blurting, "Hakase has a gun."
"How do you know?"
"He showed me once." Ken answered. "He said when I was older he'd teach me to use it. But until then, he wanted me to stay away from it."
"When was that?"
"I don't know… last spring?"
"So you're older now." Joe reasoned.
"Well yeah, I was eight then."
"So show me where it is."
"You're not going to use it, are you?"
"Did you kill my parents?"
"No!"
"Well there's no one else here, so I'm not going to use it."
With logic like that, Ken couldn't think of an appropriate response. Something didn't seem right about showing Joe Dr. Nambu's gun, but he had been the one who had brought it up in the first place. He supposed it would be all right to show Joe where it was, just like the Doctor had shown him.
Solemnly, Ken led Joe down the hall to a storage room: a chamber that had in the past been used as an extension of Dr. Nambu's office. The room was filled with locked cabinets, resembling a government installation more than a room in a sprawling villa. Both boys were silent as they entered, instinctively in awe of the importance of these things hidden away behind lock and key.
"Where is it?" Joe whispered, his nervousness betrayed by his quavering voice.
"Over there." Ken whispered back, his hushed tone revealing his own discomfort. He pointed to one of the cabinets along the wall. "That's it."
Joe walked gingerly over to the cabinet, pulling slightly at the door handle.
"It's locked." he noted.
"Yeah," Ken nodded, "the key is in Hakase's office."
"Do you know where?" Joe asked.
"Sort of." Ken admitted, his face flushing. "I wasn't supposed to be watching, but once I saw Hakase put it away in his desk."
"Let's…" It appeared as if Joe was about to suggest retrieving the key, but then suddenly thought better of it. "Let's go back to the kitchen. I'm hungry." Ken stared sharply at Joe, but the other boy simply glared back at him.
"Do you have a problem with that?" Joe demanded, an edge to his voice.
"Nope." Ken shrugged. "No problem."
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That night the boys turned off the video games in time to retire to the bunker before falling asleep. When they turned the lights out it was completely black, thanks to the lack of windows, but they played with the flashlights, shining them at themselves, each other, and around the room, until they dropped into an exhausted slumber. However it was a strange feeling for Ken to wake up to the same darkness, broken only by his flashlight, still shining underneath his bedclothes. Fortunately the device used low-power LED bulbs, and hadn't burned out during the night.
After the misadventure with the car the previous day, neither boy wanted to involve himself in anything too dangerous, yet they were inclined to stretch their legs. With this in mind they braved the cold, dressing in warm gloves and jackets and heading outdoors to play. Taking care to be mindful of the ice, which had proven so treacherous the day before, they passed through the villa's 'backyard' and into the woods that lay beyond. It was slow going, making their way through the tangle of bushes and trees behind the villa.
"Hey, Ken, what kind of animal was that you saw out here last night?" Joe asked suddenly. Ken was instantly suspicious.
"I don't know." Ken replied. "I didn't really see much. Why?"
"That's the family room window over there, right?" Joe pointed out. "There are a lot of broken branches and stuff from these bushes, so the animal would have been here. It must have been pretty big to do all of that."
"Let me see." Ken said, moving over to where Joe was standing. As the other boy had said, there were a lot of crushed and broken branches in the bushes near the trees, as if something had pushed into them. Ken remembered seeing similar damage at the site of the car's crash the previous morning. And there was something else strange about this area… Ken just couldn't put his finger on it.
He stared at the bushes, looking for any other sign of disturbance. When he found none, he carefully pushed the branches apart, peering inside. What he saw there caused him to cry out loud.
"What is it?" Joe asked, moving closer so that he could see as well. Ken pointed at the ground underneath the bushes, which unlike the rest of the area was free of ice. There, in the cold muddy ground, was unmistakably a set of bootprints.
"They… they could have been made by Mr. Epps." Joe offered, but he didn't sound so certain.
"Why would Mr. Epps be standing inside of a bush and breaking it like this?" Ken asked. "He's the gardener! He wouldn't mess up a bush like this! Besides, you already said that this was where the… thing… was last night!"
The two boys stood in silence for a moment, digesting this frightening discovery.
"Someone was here." Ken stated out loud what was running through both of their minds. "Someone was watching us. Someone who wasn't supposed to be here."
"How do you know he wasn't supposed to be here?" Joe demanded.
"If he was supposed to be here, say, if Hakase had sent him to check up on us, he would have rung the doorbell." Ken pointed out. "If it was Mr. Epps, or another garden worker, he would have been out in the middle of the yard, not standing in the middle of a bush. Whoever he was, he wasn't supposed to be here."
"Do you think it was the pizza guy?" Joe asked hopefully. Yet both boys knew the answer to his question.
"No." Ken shook his head.
"So who would be standing in the bushes and watching the house in the middle of the night?" Joe questioned.
"Maybe…" Ken's face screwed up in thought for a moment. "Maybe it was a burglar."
"A burglar?" Joe was surprised.
"Sure. Hakase has a big house, and lots of stuff. I'll bet lots of people might want to rob him!"
"But a guy like that couldn't get into the house, right?" Joe asked.
"No, Hakase's got a big security system." Ken agreed, but then an expression of chagrin crossed his face. "Except… I turned it off."
"You turned it off?" Joe was aghast. "How could you do that?"
"Yesterday, when we went to the garage," Ken explained, "I turned it off so we wouldn't set off the alarms."
"Oh." Joe had no further response.
"I guess I forgot to turn it on again afterward." Ken admitted.
"Let's go turn it on again now."
"Yeah."
The two boys went back inside the house, neither of them feeling as safe or as comfortable as they had a few moments before.