Laney's protracted survey of Alison Shires had already involved any number of criminal violations, one of which had provided him with the codes required to open the door into her building's foyer, activate the elevator, unlock the door of her fifth-floor apartment, and cancel the private security alarm that would automatically warrant an armed response if she did these things without keying in two extra digits. This last was intended as insurance against endemic home invasion, a crime in which residents were accosted in parking garages and induced to surrender their codes. Alison Shires' code consisted of her month, date, and year of birth, something any security service strongly advised against. Her back-up code was 23, her age the year before, when she'd moved in and become a subscriber.