Watcher was in the kitchen of his rented house drinking coffee when the GPS showed McCarty's BMW two miles away, getting farther. A minute later, Watcher left the house and moved rapidly through the woods, down the hill behind the McCartys’ house and up the slope, carrying his rucksack. He passed beside the swimming pool and, first using a device to fool the house alarm system, he opened the far left garage with a multifrequency transmitter. He closed the door behind him. The McCartys had good reason to believe their alarm system was impenetrable, and it would have been for any but the best professional burglars. Watcher wasn't interested in taking anything but their lives.
Using the spare key he'd predictably found hidden under the doormat months before and copied, he entered the McCartys’ kitchen and strode down the utility hallway. Passing the laundry room, he went straight into the large storage room.
Metal shelves loaded with cardboard and plastic boxes wrapped the room. Watcher went to the box marked “Christmas Decorations” that he had selected and took it down. It was unlikely to be opened. He took the digital recorder from the box and downloaded the audio and video into his laptop computer. He had audio-only bugs that transmitted to a recorder in the home he rented nearby, but he didn't depend on those. He needed to visit the house anyway. He walked through the rooms, read the mail, and used his senses to gather intelligence that even the expensive cameras and sound microphones couldn't pick up. And most important, he had to come inside to fuck with things.
In the doctor's bedroom he paused only long enough to pilfer the stuffed bear. Perhaps he would take more than life.
In the kitchen he looked at the calendar and used a red pen to circle the anniversary of their child's death. After capping the pen, he noted the glasses in the sink and sniffed the highball glass, detecting the odor of Scotch. He smiled, imagining the gloomy void Ward had been trying to fill the night before. He checked to see if the doctor had purchased any new bottles of the juice she drank, and saw that she had purchased two since the last time he'd visited. Watcher used a syringe to penetrate the cartons and add a thin stream of liquid.
Watcher lifted the Scotch glass and set it carefully upside down in the sink beside the wineglass. He left the house the way he'd come, the small stuffed bear tucked under his arm.