Sounds a lot like Louis Lamour

"Lanyard, whose traning had taught him how to listen, hadlearned that the nocturnal hush of each and every house has its singular cadence, its own gentle movement of muted but harmonious sound in which the introduction of an aalien sound produces immediate discord, and to which, while at his work, he need attend only subconsciously since the least variation from the norm would give him warning." (from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance)

This is very interesting, because it is almost exactly an urban transcription of what Louis Lamour said more than once in his western novels about frontiersmen becoming familiar with the night sounds before they went to sleep, so that anything out of the pattern would awaken them.