a keypad on the second floor that he could use to take off the motion detectors before he came downstairs in the morning. "Now, if you want it on while you,re still moving around, then you punch in the code and press HOME, and your windows and doors are covered without the motion detectors.
"Oh, and you have to have my e-mail. I check my e-mail all day. You e-mail me about anything you find wrong up here. I,m on it." He held up his iPhone proudly. "Oh you just call me. This phone,s right by my bed all night."
Not to worry about the furnaces either. The old gas furnaces were relatively new, considering the age of the place, and there was absolutely no asbestos in the place. They were keeping the house at about sixty-nine degrees, which was how Marchent had liked it. Of course a lot of the vents were closed off. But wasn,t it warm enough in here now?
And by the way, there,s a cellar under this house, a small cellar, with a stairs under the main stairs. Forgot about that. Nothing down there, however, because all the furnaces were moved out back into the service wing years ago.
"Yes, fine," said Reuben.
The Internet service was connected too, just as Miss Marchent had had it before. The service covered the whole house. There was a router in her office and in the second-floor electrical room at the end of the hall up there.
Reuben was happy about all that.
Reuben walked Galton to the back door.
For the first time under the high floodlights in the trees he saw a broad parking area and the back two-story servants, wing to the far left where, apparently, Felice had been murdered. It was obviously a later addition to the house.
He could see almost nothing of the forest beyond the lights, just here and there a bit of green and the streak of light on the bark of a tree.
Are you out there? Are you watching? Do you remember the man you spared when you killed the others?
Galton had a brand-new Ford truck and discoursed on its virtues for several minutes. Few things made a man feel better than a brand-new truck. Reuben might want to keep a truck on the property, would come in handy. But then Galton,s truck was at Reuben,s disposal. Then he was off with the promise that he could be here in ten minutes if Reuben rang his cell or house phone.
"One last question," Reuben said. "I have the surveyor,s maps and all, but is there any kind of fencing around this property?"
"No," said the man. "The redwoods run on for miles, with some of the oldest trees on the coast out there. But you don,t get many hikers. This is too off the beaten path. They,re all headed for the state parks. The Hamiltons live north and the Drexel family used to live east but I don,t think there,s anybody out there anymore. That place has been for sale for years. I did see a light out there a couple of weeks ago. Probably just a real estate agent. They,ve got trees on that property as old as your trees."
"I can,t wait to walk the woods," Reuben murmured but what he was registering was that he was really alone here. Alone.
Come to think of it, what could be better when the change came - than to walk these woods as the Man Wolf, seeing and hearing - and perhaps tasting things - as never before?
And what about the mountain lion and her brood? Were they really close? Something in him stirred at the thought of it - a beast as powerful as a mountain lion. Could he outrun such an animal? Could he kill it?
He stood for a moment in the kitchen door listening as the sound of Galton,s truck died away, and then he turned around and faced the empty house and everything that had happened there.
Chapter Nine
HE HADN,T BEEN the least bit afraid of anything when he,d come here the first time. And now he was far more removed from fear than he,d been then. He felt quietly powerful, resilient, and self-confident in a way he,d never felt before the transformation.
Nevertheless he did not entirely like being this alone, this utterly alone, and he really never had much liked it.
He,d grown up in the crowds of San Francisco, squeezed into the high narrow house on Russian Hill with its small elegant rooms, and the constant vitality