Dean Koontz - The Door to December
The Door to December
Dean Koontz
Previously published as THE DOOR TO DECEMBER by Leigh Nichols
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
Copyright © 1985, 1994 Dean Koontz
Previously published as THE DOOR TO DECEMBER under the pseudonym Leigh Nichols The right of Dean Koontz to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 1987 by Fontana Paperbacks, a division of William Collins Sons & Co Reprinted in hardback in 1991 by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING Reprinted in paperback in 1992 by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING First published in this revised edition in 1995 by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING A HEADLINE FEATURE paperback 16 18 20 19 17 All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. ISBN 0 7472 3705 0 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham PLC. Chatham, Kent HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING A division of Hodder Headline PLC 338 Euston Road London NW 13BH
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
To Gerda, with whom I'll always be opening doors to the future.
PART ONE
THE GRAY ROOM WEDNESDAY 2:50 A.M. - 8:00 A.M.
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
1 As soon as she finished dressing, Laura went to the front door and was just in time to see the Los Angeles Police Department squad car pull to the curb in front of the house. She stepped outside, slammed the door behind her, and hurried down the walk. Hard spikes of cold rain nailed the night to the city. She hadn't bothered with an umbrella. She couldn't remember which closet she'd stuck it in, and she didn't want to waste time searching for it. Thunder rolled across the dark sky, but she hardly noticed those ominous peals. To her, the pounding of her own heart was the loudest noise in the night. The driver's door of the black-and-white opened, and a uniformed officer got out. He saw her coming, got back in, reached across the seat, and opened the front door on the passenger side. She sat next to him, pulled the door shut. With one cold and tremulous hand, she pushed a damp strand of hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ear. The patrol car smelled strongly of pine-scented disinfectant and vaguely of vomit. The young patrolman said, 'Mrs. McCaffrey?' 'Yes.' 'I'm Carl Quade. I'll take you to Lieutenant Haldane.' 'And to my husband,' she said anxiously. 'I don't know about that.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (4 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
'I was told they found Dylan, my husband.' 'Most likely, Lieutenant Haldane will tell you about that.' She gagged, choked, shook her head in disgust. Quade said, 'Sorry about the stink in here. Arrested a guy for drunken driving earlier tonight, and he had the manners of a pig.' The odor was not what made her stomach twist and roll. She felt sick because, on the phone a few minutes ago, they had told her that her husband had been found, but they hadn't mentioned Melanie. And if Melanie was not with Dylan, where was she? Still missing? Dead? No. Unthinkable. Laura put a hand to her mouth, gritted her teeth, held her breath, waited for the nausea to subside. She said, 'Where ... where are we going?' 'A house in Studio City. Not far.' 'Is that where they found Dylan?' 'If they told you they found him, I guess that's the place.' 'How'd they locate him? I didn't even know you people were looking for him. The police told me there was no cause for their involvement ... it wasn't their jurisdiction. I thought there was no chance I'd ever see him ... or Melanie again.' 'You'll have to talk with Lieutenant Haldane.' 'Dylan must've robbed a bank or something.' She could not conceal her bitterness. 'Stealing a child from her mother isn't enough to interest the police.' 'Buckle your seat belt, please.' Laura fumbled nervously with the belt as they drove away from the curb, and Quade hung a U-turn in the middle of the deserted, rain-swept street. She said, 'What about my Melanie?' 'How's that?' 'My daughter. Is she all right?' 'Sorry. I don't know anything about that, either.' 'Wasn't she with my husband?' 'Don't think so.' 'I haven't seen her in ... in almost six years.' 'Custody dispute?' he asked. 'No. He kidnapped her.' 'Really?' 'Well, the law called it a custody dispute, but as far as I'm concerned, it's kidnapping pure and simple.' Anger and resentment took possession of her when she thought of Dylan. She tried to overcome those emotions, tried not to hate him, because she suddenly had the crazy notion that God was watching her, that He was judging her, and that if she became consumed by hatred or file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (5 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
dwelt on negative thoughts, He would decide that she wasn't worthy of being reunited with her little girl. Crazy. She couldn't help it. Fear made her crazy. And it made her so weak that for a moment she did not even have sufficient strength to draw a breath. Dylan. Laura wondered what it would be like to come face-to-face with him again. What could he possibly say to her that would explain his treachery — and what could she say to him that would be adequate to express her outrage and pain? She had been trembling, but now she began to shake violently. 'You okay?' Quade asked. 'Yes,' she lied. Quade said nothing. With the emergency beacons flashing but without using the siren, they raced across the storm-lashed west side of the city. As they sped through deep puddles, water plumed on both sides, eerily phosphorescent, like frothy white curtains drawing back to let them pass. 'She'd be nine years old now,' Laura said. 'My daughter, I mean. I can't give you much more of a description, I mean, the last time I saw her, she was only three.' 'Sorry. I didn't see any little girl.' 'Blond hair. Green eyes.' The cop said nothing. 'Melanie must be with Dylan,' Laura said desperately, torn between joy and terror. She was jubilant at the prospect of seeing Melanie again, but afraid that the girl was dead. Laura had dreamed so often about finding Melanie's corpse in one hideous condition or another. Now she suspected the recurring nightmare would prove to have been an omen. 'She must be with Dylan. That's where she's been all these years, six long years, so why wouldn't she be with him now?' 'We'll be there in a few minutes,' Quade said. 'Lieutenant Haldane can answer all your questions.' 'They wouldn't wake me at two-thirty in the morning, drag me out in the middle of a storm, if they hadn't found Melanie too. Surely they wouldn't.' Quade concentrated on his driving, and his silence was worse than anything he could have told her. The thumping windshield wipers could not quite clean the glass. A persistent greasy film distorted the world beyond, so Laura felt as though she was riding through a dream. Her palms were sweating. She blotted them on her jeans. She felt sweat trickle out of her armpits, down her sides. The rope of nausea in her stomach knotted tighter. 'Is she hurt?' Laura asked. 'Is that it? Is that why you don't want to tell file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (6 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
me anything about her?' Quade glanced at her. 'Really, Mrs. McCaffrey, I didn't see any little girl at the house. I'm not hiding anything from you.' Laura slumped back against the seat. She was on the verge of tears but was determined not to cry. Tears would be an admission that she had lost all hope of finding Melanie alive, and if she lost hope (another crazy thought), then she might actually be responsible for the child's death because (crazier) maybe Melanie's continued existence was like that of Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, sustained only by constant and ardent belief. She was aware that a quiet hysteria had seized her. The idea that Melanie's continued existence depended upon her mother's belief and restraint of tears was solipsistic and irrational. Nevertheless, she clung to the idea, fighting back tears, summoning all the conviction that she could muster. The windshield wipers thumped monotonously, and the rain drummed hollowly on the roof, and the tires hissed on the wet pavement, and Studio City seemed as far away as Hong Kong. *** They turned off Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, a community of mismatched architecture: Spanish, Cape Cod, Tudor, colonial, and postmodern homes jammed side by side. It had been named for the old Republic Studios, where many low-budget Westerns had been shot before the advent of television. Most of Studio City's newest residents were screenwriters, painters, artists, artisans, musicians, and craftspeople of all kinds, refugees from gradually but inevitably decaying neighborhoods such as Hollywood, who were now engaged in a battle of life-styles with the older home owners. Officer Quade pulled to a stop in front of a modest ranch house on a quiet cul-de-sac lined with winter-bare coral trees and Indian laurels with heavy foliage. Several vehicles were clustered in the street, including two mustard-green Ford sedans, two other black-and-whites, and a gray van with the city's seal on the door. But it was another van that caught and held Laura's attention, for CORONER was emblazoned across the two rear doors. Oh, God, please no. No. Laura closed her eyes, trying to believe that this was still part of the dream from which the telephone had ostensibly awakened her. The call from the police actually might have been part of the nightmare. In which case, Quade was part of it too. And this house. She would wake up, and none of this would be real. But when she opened her eyes, the coroner's van was still there. The
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
windows of the house were heavily curtained, but the entire front was bathed in the harsh glow of portable floodlights. Silvery rain slanted through the bright light, and the shivering shadows of the wind-stirred shrubbery crawled across the walls. A uniformed policeman in a rain slicker was stationed at the curb. Another officer stood under the roof that overhung the area around the front door. They were prepared to discourage curious neighbors and other onlookers, although the bad weather and late hour seemed to be doing their job for them. Quade got out of the car, but Laura couldn't move. He leaned back in and said, 'This is the place.' Laura nodded but still didn't move. She didn't want to go inside. She knew what she would find. Melanie. Dead. Quade waited a moment, then came around the car and opened her door. He held out one hand to her. The wind sprayed fat droplets of cold rain past Quade, into the car. He frowned. 'Mrs. McCaffrey? Are you crying?' She couldn't shift her gaze from the coroner's van. When it drove off with Melanie's small body, it would carry Laura's hope away, as well, and would leave her with a future as dead as her daughter. In a voice no less tremulous than the wind-shaken leaves on the Indian laurels, she said, 'You lied to me.' 'Huh? Hey, no, not at all, really.' She wouldn't look at him. Blowing air between his lips, making an odd horse like sound that was hardly appropriate to the circ*mstances, he said, 'Well, yeah, this is a homicide case. We've got a couple of bodies.' A scream swelled in her, and when she held it back, the pent-up pressure was a painful burning in her chest. Quade quickly continued. 'But your little girl isn't in there. She's not one of the bodies. Honestly, she isn't. Laura finally met his eyes. He seemed sincere. There would be no point in lying to her now, because she would soon learn the truth, anyway, when she went inside. She got out of the car. Taking her by the arm, Officer Quade led her up the walk to the front door. The rain pounded as solemnly as drums in a funeral cortege.
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
2 The guard went inside to get Lieutenant Haldane. Laura and Quade waited under the overhang, sheltering from the worst of the wind and rain. The night smelled of ozone and roses. Rosebushes twined around support stakes along the front of the house, and in California, most varieties bloomed even in the winter. The flowers drooped, soggy and heavy in the rain. Haldane arrived without delay. He was tall, broad-shouldered, roughly hewn, with short sandy hair and a square, appealing, Irish face. His blue eyes looked flat, like twin ovals of painted glass, and Laura wondered if they always looked that way or whether they were flat and lifeless tonight because of what he had seen in the house. He was wearing a tweed sport coat, a white shirt, a tie with the knot loosened, gray slacks, and black loafers. Except for his eyes, he looked like a comfortable, easygoing, laid-back sort of guy, and there was genuine warmth in his brief smile. 'Doctor McCaffrey? I'm Dan Haldane.' 'My daughter—' 'We haven't found Melanie yet. 'She isn't...?' 'What?' 'Dead?' 'No, no. Good heavens, no. Not your girl. I wouldn't have brought you here if that had been the case.' She felt no relief, because she wasn't sure that she believed him. He was tense, edgy. Something horrible had happened in this house. She was sure of it. And if they hadn't found Melanie, why had they brought her out at this hour? What was wrong? Haldane dismissed Carl Quade, who headed back through the rain to the patrol car. 'Dylan? My husband?' Laura asked. Haldane's stare slid away from hers. 'Yes, we think we've located him.' 'He's... dead?' 'Well... yeah. Apparently it's him. We've got a body carrying his ID, but we haven't positively tagged him yet. We'll need a dental-records check or a fingerprint match to make it positive.' The news of Dylan's death had surprisingly little effect on her. She felt no loss, because she'd spent six years hating him. But she wasn't happy about it, either: no glee, no triumph or satisfaction, no sense that file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (9 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
Dylan had gotten what he deserved. He had been an object of love, then hatred, now indifference. She felt absolutely nothing, and perhaps that was the saddest thing of all. The wind changed direction. Icy rain blew under the overhang. Haldane drew Laura back into the corner, as far as they could go. She wondered why he didn't take her inside. There must be something that he didn't want her to see. Something too horrible for her to see? What in the name of God had happened in there? 'How did he die?' she asked. 'Murdered.' 'Who did it?' 'We don't know.' 'Shot?' 'No. He was... beaten to death.' 'My God.' She felt sick. She leaned against the wall because her legs were suddenly weak. 'Doctor McCaffrey?' Concerned, he took her by the arm, ready to provide support if she needed it. 'I'm okay,' she said. 'But I expected Dylan and Melanie to be together. Dylan took her away from me.' 'I know.' 'Six years ago. He closed out our bank accounts, quit his job, and ran off. Because I wanted a divorce. And he wasn't willing to share custody of Melanie.' 'When we put his name in the computer, it gave us you, the whole file,' Haldane said. 'I haven't had time to learn the particulars, but I read the highlights on the mobile VDT in the car, so I'm sort of familiar with the case.' 'He ruined his life, threw away his career and everything to be able to keep Melanie. Surely she must still be with him,' Laura said exasperatedly. 'She was. She was living here with him—' 'Living here? Here? Only ten or fifteen minutes from me?' 'That's right.' 'But I hired private detectives, several of them, and nobody could get a lead—' 'Sometimes,' Haldane said, 'the purloined-letter trick is the best trick of all.' 'I thought maybe they'd even left the country, gone to Mexico or somewhere — and all the time they were right here.' The wind subsided, and the rain came straight down, even heavier than before. The lawn would soon be a lake. 'There are some clothes here for a little girl,' Haldane said, 'several file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (10 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
books suitable for a kid her age. There's a box of Count Chocula cereal in the cupboard, and I'm sure none of the adults were eating that.' 'None of them? There were more people here than just Dylan and Melanie?' 'We're not sure. We've got... other bodies. We think one of them was living here, because there were men's clothes in two sizes, some of which would fit your husband, but some that might fit one of the other men.' 'How many bodies?' 'Two others. Three altogether.' 'Beaten to death?' He nodded. 'And you don't know where Melanie is?' 'Not yet.' 'So maybe... whoever killed Dylan and the others took her away with him.' 'It's a possibility,' he said. Even if Melanie wasn't already dead, she was the hostage of a killer. Maybe not just a killer but a rapist. No. She was only nine years old. What would a rapist want with her? She was hardly more than a baby. Of course, these days, that didn't make any difference. There were strange animals out there, monsters who preyed on children, who had a special appetite for little girls. She was far colder than the incessant winter rain. 'We've got to find her,' Laura said, and her voice was a thin croak that she didn't even recognize. 'We're trying,' Haldane said. She saw sympathy and compassion in his blue eyes now, but she could take no comfort from him. 'I'd like you to come inside with me,' he said, 'but I have to warn you it's not a pretty scene.' 'I'm a doctor, Lieutenant.' 'Yeah, but a psychiatrist.' 'And a medical doctor. All psychiatrists are medical doctors.' 'Oh, that's right. I didn't think.' 'I assume you want me to identify Dylan's body.' 'No. I'm not going to ask you to look at it. Wouldn't do any good. The condition... no visual identification is really possible. There's something else I want you to see, something I hope you might be able to explain to me. 'What's that?' 'Something weird,' he said. 'Something damned weird.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (11 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
3 Every lamp and ceiling light in the house was blazing. Laura blinked against the glare as she looked around. The living room was furnished neatly but without style. The sectional sofa, covered in a bold geometric pattern, clashed with the floral drapes. The carpet was one shade of green, the walls another. Only the bookcases and the few hundred volumes in them appeared to have been collected with genuine interest and to a particular taste. The rest of the room might have been a stage set hastily assembled by a theater company with a small budget. At the cold fireplace, a cheap black tin container had tipped over, spilling wrought-iron tools across the white-brick hearth. Two lab technicians were dusting powder over exposed surfaces and lifting tape impressions where they found fingerprints. 'Please don't touch anything,' Haldane told Laura. 'If you don't need me to identify Dylan—' 'Like I said, it wouldn't do much good.' 'Why?' 'Nothing to identify.' 'Surely the body can't be that badly...' 'Battered,' he said. 'No face left. 'My God.' They stood in the foyer, by the living-room arch. Haldane seemed as reluctant to take her deeper into the house as he had been to bring her inside in the first place. 'Did he have any identifying marks?' Haldane asked. 'A discolored patch of skin—' 'Birthmark?' 'Yes.' 'Where?' 'The middle of his chest.' Haldane shook his head. 'Probably won't help.' 'Why not?' He stared at her, then looked away, at the floor. 'I'm a doctor,' she reminded him. 'His chest was caved in.' 'Beaten in?' 'Yeah. Every rib broken and rebroken. Breastbone smashed like a file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (12 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
china plate.' 'Smashed?' 'Yeah. The word's carefully chosen, Doctor McCaffrey. Not just broken. Not just fractured or splintered. Smashed. Like he was made of glass.' 'That's impossible.' 'Saw it with my own eyes. Wish I hadn't. 'But the breastbone is solid. That and the skull are the closest things the human body has to armor plating.' 'The killer was one big, strong son of a bitch. She shook her head. 'No. You might smash the breastbone in an auto accident, where there are tremendous forces, sudden impacts at fifty and sixty miles an hour, crushing forces and weights... But it couldn't happen in a beating.' 'We figure a lead pipe or—' 'Not even that, she said. 'Smashed? Surely not.' Melanie, my little Melanie, my God, what's happened to you, where have they taken you, will I ever see you again? She shuddered. 'Listen, if you don't need me to identify Dylan, then I'm not sure what help I can—' 'Like I said, there's something I want you to see.' 'Something weird?' 'Yeah.' Yet he kept her in the foyer and even seemed to be using his body to prevent her from seeing farther into the house. Clearly, he was torn between his need for the information that she might be able to give him and his dismay at having to drag her through the scene of such bloody murders. 'I don't understand,' she said. 'Weird? What?' Haldane didn't answer the question. He said, 'You and he were in the same line of work.' 'Not exactly.' 'He was a psychiatrist too, wasn't he?' 'No. A behavioral psychologist. With a special interest in behavior modification.' 'And you're a psychiatrist, a medical doctor.' 'I specialize in the treatment of children.' 'Yes, I see. Different fields.' 'Very.' He frowned. 'Well, if you have a look at his lab, you still might be able to tell me what your husband was doing there.' 'Lab? He was working here too?' 'He was primarily working here. I don't think that he or your daughter file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (13 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
led much of a real life in this place.' 'Working? Doing what?' 'Experiments of some sort. We can't figure it.' 'Let's have a look.' 'It's... messy,' he said, studying her closely. 'I told you — I'm a doctor.' 'Yeah, and I'm a cop, and a cop sees more blood than a doctor does, and this was so messy it made me sick.' 'Lieutenant, you brought me here, and now you're not getting rid of me until I know what my husband and my little girl were doing in this house.' He nodded. 'This way.' She followed him past the living room, away from the kitchen, into a short hallway, where a slender, good-looking Latino in a dark suit was overseeing two men whose uniform jackets were stenciled with the word CORONER. They were stowing a corpse in an opaque plastic body bag. One of the men from the coroner's office pulled up the zipper. Through the milky plastic, Laura saw only a lumpish man-shaped form, no details but a few thick smears of blood. Dylan? 'Not your husband,' Haldane said, as if reading her mind. 'This one wasn't carrying any ID at all. We'll have to rely entirely on a fingerprint check.' More blood was spattered and streaked over the walls, pooled on the floor, lots of it, so much that it didn't seem real, like a scene in a cheap horror film. A plastic runner had been put down along the center of the hall, so the investigating officers and technicians wouldn't have to step in the blood and get their shoes sticky. Haldane glanced at her, and she tried not to let him see how scared she was. Had Melanie been here when the murders had taken place? If she had been, and if she was now with the man — or men — who had done this, she was marked for death too, because she had been a witness. Even if she had seen nothing, the murderer would kill her when he was ... through with her. No doubt about that. He would kill her because he would enjoy killing her. From the look of this place, he was a psychopath; a sane person would not have slaughtered with such savage, blood-spraying glee. The coroner's two men went outside to get a wheeled stretcher on which the body could be removed. The slender Latino in the dark suit turned to Haldane. His voice was surprisingly deep: 'We've vacuumed the place, Lieutenant, finished with file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (14 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
photographs, lifted what prints we could, all the rest of it. We're moving this victim out.' 'See anything special in the preliminary exam, Joey?' Haldane asked. Laura supposed Joey was a police pathologist, although he was badly shaken for someone who should have been accustomed to scenes of violent death. Joey said, 'Looks like nearly every bone in the body was broken at least once. One contusion atop another, hundreds, no way to tell how many. I'm positive an autopsy is going to show ruptured organs, damaged kidneys.' He glanced uneasily at Laura, as if not certain he should go on. She maintained a bland expression of professional interest that she hoped didn't look as phony and sick as it felt. Joey continued: 'Crushed skull. Teeth broken loose. One eye was jarred out of its socket.' Laura saw a fireplace poker on the floor, against the baseboard. 'Is that the murder weapon?' 'We don't think so,' Haldane said. And Joey said, 'It was in this guy's hand. Had to pry it out of his fingers. He was trying to defend himself.' Staring at the opaque body bag, they fell into a mutual silence. The ceaseless percussion of the rain on the roof was simultaneously a mundane and strange sound — like the rumble of enormous doors sliding open in a dream to reveal a mysterious and unearthly vista. The other men returned with the wheeled stretcher. One of the wheels wobbled erratically like a malfunctioning supermarket cart: a cold, clattering noise. Three doors led off the short hall, one on each side and one at the end. All three were ajar. Haldane led Laura around the corpse and into the room at the end of the passageway. In spite of her warm sweater and lined raincoat, she was cold. Freezing. Her hands were so white they looked dead. She knew the heat was on, because she felt the warm air blowing out of the vents when she passed them, so she knew the chill came from within her. The room had once been an office-study, but now it was a monument to destruction and chaos. Steel file drawers were ripped from their cabinets, scraped and dented, handles twisted off; the contents were scattered across the floor. A heavy chrome-and-walnut desk was on its side; two of its metal legs were bent, and the wood was cracked and splintered as if it had taken a few blows from an axe. A typewriter had been thrown against one wall with such force that several keys had snapped off and were embedded in the drywall board. Papers were everywhere — typewritten sheets, graphs, pages covered with figures and notations in a small precise handwriting — many of them shredded file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (15 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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or crumpled or wadded into tight balls. And there was blood everywhere: on the floor, the furniture, the rubble, the walls, even on the ceiling. The place had a raw, coppery smell. 'Jesus,' she said. 'What I want you to see is in the next room,' he said, leading her toward a door at the rear of the demolished study. She noticed two opaque plastic body bags on the floor. Looking back at her, Haldane said again, 'Next room.' Laura didn't want to stop, but she stopped. She didn't want to look down at the two shrouded bodies, but she looked. She said, 'Is one of these... Dylan?' Haldane had moved ahead of her. Now he returned to her side. 'This one had Dylan McCaffrey's ID,' he said, pointing. 'But you don't want to see him.' 'No,' she agreed, 'I don't. She glanced at the other bag. 'Who was this one?' 'According to the driver's license and other cards in his wallet, his name was Wilhelm Hoffritz.' She was astonished. Her surprise must have been evident, for Haldane said, 'Do you know him?' 'He was at the university. One of my husband's ... colleagues.' 'UCLA?' 'Yes. Dylan and Hoffritz conducted a number of joint studies. They shared some of the same ... obsessions.' 'Do I detect disapproval?' She said nothing. 'You didn't like Hoffritz?' Haldane pressed. 'I despised him.' 'Why?' 'He was a smug, self-important, condescending, pompous, arrogant little man.' 'What else?' 'Isn't that enough?' 'You're not the kind of woman who would use the word "despise" lightly,' Haldane said. When she met his stare, she saw a sharp and probing intelligence that she hadn't noticed before. She closed her eyes. Haldane's direct gaze was discomfiting, but she didn't want to look anywhere else because anywhere else was sure to be smeared with blood. She said, 'Hoffritz believed in centralized social planning. He was interested in the use of psychology, drugs, and various forms of subliminal conditioning to reform and direct the masses.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (16 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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Haldane was silent. Then: 'Mind control?' 'That's right. Her eyes were still closed, her head bowed. 'He was an elitist. No. That's too kind. He was a totalitarian. He would have made an equally good Nazi or Communist. Either one. He had no politics except the politics of raw power. He wanted to control.' 'They do that kind of research at UCLA?' She opened her eyes and saw that he wasn't kidding. 'Of course. It's a great university, a free university. There aren't any overt restrictions on the directions a scientist's research can take — if he can round up the funding for it.' 'But the consequence of that kind of research...' Smiling sourly, she said, 'Empirical results. Breakthroughs. The advancement of knowledge. That's what a researcher is concerned about, Lieutenant. Not consequences.' 'You said your husband shared Hoffritz's obsession. You mean he was deep into research with mind-control applications?' 'Yes. But he wasn't a fascist like Willy Hoffritz. He was more interested in modifying the behavior of criminal personalities as a means of reducing the crime rate. At least I think that's what he was interested in. That's what he talked most about. But the more involved Dylan got with any project, the more obsessed with it, the less he talked about it, as if talking used up energy that could be better spent in thought and work.' 'He received government grants?' 'Dylan? Yes. Both him and Hoffritz.' 'Pentagon?' 'Maybe. But he wasn't primarily defense-oriented. Why? What does that have to do with this?' He didn't answer. 'You told me your husband quit his position at the university when he ran off with your daughter.' 'Yes' 'But now we find he was still working with Hoffritz.' 'Hoffritz is no longer at UCLA, hasn't been for ... three or four years, maybe longer.' 'What happened?' 'I don't know,' she said. 'I just heard through the grapevine that he'd gone on to other things. And I had the feeling that he'd been asked to leave.' 'Why?' 'The rumor was ... some violation of professional ethics.' 'What?' 'I don't know. Ask someone at UCLA.' 'You're not associated with the university?' 'No. I'm not in research. I work at Saint Mark's Children's Hospital, file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (17 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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and I have a small private practice besides. Maybe if you talked to someone at UCLA, you'd be able to find out just what it was Hoffritz did to make himself unwelcome.' She no longer felt ill, no longer minded the blood. In fact, she hardly noticed it. There was too much horror to absorb; it numbed the mind. A single corpse and a single drop of blood would have had a more lasting effect on her than this reeking slaughterhouse. She realized why cops could so quickly become inured to scenes of bloody violence; you either adapted or went mad, and the second option was really no option at all. Haldane said, 'I think your husband and Hoffritz were working together again. Here. In this house.' 'Doing what?' 'I'm not sure. That's why I wanted you to come here. That's why I want you to see the lab in the next room. Maybe you can tell me what the hell was going on.' 'Let's have a look.' He hesitated. 'There's just one thing.' 'What?' 'Well, I think your daughter was an integral part of their experiments.' Laura stared at him. He said, 'I think they were ... using her.' 'How?' she whispered. 'That's something you'll have to tell me,' the detective said. 'I'm no scientist. All I know is what I read in the newspapers. But before we go in there, you should know ... it looks to me as if some parts of these experiments were ... painful.' Melanie, what did they want from you, what have they done to you, where have they taken you? She drew a deep breath. She blotted her sweat-damp hands on her coat. She followed Haldane into the lab.
4 Dan Haldane was surprised at how well the woman was coping with the situation. Okay, she was a doctor, but most physicians weren't accustomed to wading through blood; at the scene of multiple, violent homicides, doctors could clutch up and lose control as easily as any ordinary citizen. It wasn't just Laura McCaffrey's medical training that file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (18 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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was carrying her through this; she also had an unusual inner strength, a toughness and resilience that Dan admired — that he found intriguing and appealing. Her daughter was missing and might be hurt, might even be dead, but until she got the answers to important questions about Melanie, she wasn't, by God, going to break down or be weak in any way. He liked her. She was lovely too, even though she wasn't wearing any makeup and though her auburn hair was damp and frizzy from the rain. She was thirty-six, but she looked younger. Her green eyes were clear, direct, penetrating, and beautiful. And haunted. The woman would be even more disturbed by what she would see in the makeshift lab, and Dan disliked having to take her in there. But that was the main reason he had called her out in the middle of the night. Although she hadn't seen her husband in six years, no one knew the man better than she knew him. Since she was a psychiatrist as well, perhaps she would recognize the nature of the experiments and research that Dylan McCaffrey had been conducting. And Dan had a hunch that he wasn't going to solve these homicides — or locate Melanie — until he could figure out what Dylan McCaffrey had been doing. Laura followed him through the doorway. In the gray room, he watched her face. She registered surprise, puzzlement, and uneasiness. The two-car garage had been closed off and remodeled into a single large, windowless, relentlessly drab room. Gray ceiling. Gray walls. Gray carpet. Fluorescent ceiling lights glowed softly behind grayish plastic panels. Even the handles on the sliding gray closet doors were painted gray. Though the heating vents must have been bare gray metal in the first place, they also had been painted, apparently because, unpainted, they had been shiny. No spot of color or brightwork had been allowed. The effect was not merely cold and institutional, but funereal. The most impressive piece of equipment in the room was a metal tank that resembled an old-fashioned iron lung, although it was considerably larger than that. It was painted the same drab gray as the room. Pipes led from it, into the floor, and an electrical cable went straight up to a junction box on the ceiling. Three movable wooden steps provided access to the tank's elevated entrance hatch, which stood open. Laura went up the steps and peered inside. Dan knew what she would find: a featureless black interior that was barely illuminated by the meager light that found its way through the hatch; the sound of water stirred by the vibrations transmitted through the steps and into the tank frame; a dampish odor with a hint of salt to it. 'Know what it is?' he asked. She descended the three steps. 'Sure. A sensory-deprivation chamber.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (19 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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'What was he doing with it?' 'You mean, what are its scientific applications?' Dan nodded. 'Well, you fill it with a few feet of water.... Actually, you use a solution of ten percent magnesium sulfate in water for maximum buoyancy. Heat it to ninety-three degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature at which a floating body is least affected by gravity. Or depending on the nature of the experiment, maybe you heat it to ninety-eight degrees to reduce the differential between body temperature and water temperature. Then the subject—' 'Which is a person — not an animal?' She looked surprised by the question. Dan Haldane felt woefully undereducated, but Laura didn't disparage him or let any impatience creep into her tone, and he felt at ease again almost immediately. She said, 'Yes. A person. Not an animal. Anyway, when the water's ready, the subject undresses, enters the chamber, closes the door after himself, and floats in total darkness, in total silence. 'Why?' 'To deprive himself of all sensory stimulation. No sight. No sound. Little or no taste. Minimal olfactory stimulation. No sense of weight or place or time.' 'But why would anyone want to do that?' 'Well, initially, when the first tanks were used, they did it because they wanted to find out what would happen when someone was deprived of nearly all external stimuli.' 'Yeah? And what happened?' 'Not what they expected. No claustrophobia. No paranoia. A brief moment of fear, yes, but then ... a not unpleasant temporal and spatial disorientation. The sense of confinement disappeared in a minute or so. Some subjects reported being certain they were not in a small chamber but a huge one, with endless space around them. With no external stimuli to occupy it, the mind turns inward to explore a whole new world of internal stimuli.' 'Hallucinations?' For a moment, her anxiety faded. Her professional interest in the functioning of the human mind became evident, and Dan could see that, if she had chosen a career in the classroom, she would have proven a natural-born teacher. She clearly took pleasure in explaining, illuminating. She said, 'Yes, hallucinations, sometimes. But not frightening or threatening hallucinations, nothing like what you'd expect from a drug experience. Intense and extraordinarily vivid sexual fantasies in many cases. And virtually every subject reports a sharpening and clearing of file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (20 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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thought processes. Some subjects have solved complex problems in algebra and calculus without even the benefit of paper and pencil, problems that would ordinarily be beyond their abilities. There's even a cult system of psychotherapy that uses deprivation chambers to encourage the patient to concentrate on guided self-exploration.' He said, 'From your tone, I think maybe you don't approve of that.' 'Well, I don't exactly disapprove,' she said. 'But if you've got a psychologically disturbed individual who already feels adrift, only half in control of himself ... the disorientation of a deprivation chamber is almost certain to have negative effects. Some patients need every grip on the physical world, every external stimulus, they can get.' She shrugged. 'But then again, maybe I'm too cautious, old-fashioned. After all, they've been selling these things for use in private homes, must've sold a few thousand over the past few years, and surely a few of those were used by unstable people, yet I haven't heard of anyone going all the way 'round the bend because of it.' 'Must be expensive.' 'A tank? Sure is. Most units in private homes are ... new toys for the rich, I guess.' 'Why would anyone buy one for his home?' 'Aside from the hallucinatory period and the eventual clarity of the mental processes, everyone reports being tremendously relaxed and revitalized by a session in a tank. After you spend an hour floating, your brain waves match those of a Zen monk in deep meditation. Call it a lazy man's way to meditate: no studying required, no religious principles to be learned or obeyed, an easy way of packing a week's relaxation into a couple of hours.' 'But your husband wasn't using this just to relax.' 'I doubt it,' she agreed. 'Then what was he after, specifically?' 'I really have no way of knowing.' Anguish returned to her face, her eyes. Dan said, 'I think this wasn't just his lab, I think it was your daughter's room too. I think she was a virtual prisoner in here. And I think she slept in this tank every night and maybe spent days at a time in it.' 'Days? No. That's not ... possible.' 'Why isn't it?' 'The potential for psychological damage, the risks—' 'Maybe your husband didn't care about the risks.' 'But she was his daughter. He loved Melanie. I'll give him that much. He genuinely loved her.' 'We've found a journal in which your husband seems to account for file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (21 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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every minute of your daughter's time during the past five and a half years.' Her eyes narrowed. 'I want to see it.' 'In a minute. I haven't studied it closely yet, but I don't think your daughter was ever out of this house in five and a half years. Not to school. Not to a doctor. Not to a movie or the zoo or anywhere. And even if you say it's not possible, I think, from what I've seen, that she sometimes spent as much as three or four days in the tank without coming out.' 'But food—' 'I don't think she was fed in that time.' 'Water—' 'Maybe she drank a little of what she was floating in.' 'She'd have to relieve herself—' 'From what I've seen, there were times when she might have been taken out for only ten or fifteen minutes, long enough to use the bathroom. But in other cases, I think he catheterized her, so she could urinate into a sealed specimen jar without being taken out of the tank and without contaminating the water she was floating in.' The woman looked stricken. Wanting to get this over with for her sake and also because he was sick of this place, Dan led her away from the tank, to another piece of equipment. 'A biofeedback machine,' she told him. 'It includes an EEG, an electroencephalograph to monitor brain waves. It supposedly helps you learn to control the patterns of your brain waves and, therefore, your state of mind.' 'I know about biofeedback.' He pointed past that machine. 'And this?' It was a chair, from which dangled leather straps and wires that ended in electrodes. Laura McCaffrey examined it, and Dan could sense her growing disgust — and terror. At last she said,'An aversion-therapy device.' 'Looks like an electric chair to me.' 'It is. Not one that kills. The current comes from those batteries, not from a wall socket. And this' — she touched a lever on the side of the chair — 'regulates the voltage. You can deliver anything from a tingle to a painful shock.' 'This is a standard psychological research device?' 'Good heavens, no!' 'You ever see one of these in a lab before?' 'Once. Well ... twice.' 'Where?' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (22 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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'A rather unscrupulous animal psychologist I once knew. He used electric-shock aversion training with monkeys.' 'Tortured them?' 'I'm sure he didn't see it that way.' 'All animal psychologists don't do that?' 'I said he was unscrupulous. Listen, I hope you're not one of those new Luddites who think all scientists are fools or monsters.' 'Not me. When I was a kid, I never missed Mr. Wizard on TV.' She managed a faint smile. 'Didn't mean to snap at you.' 'It's understandable. Now, you said you've seen one of these devices twice before. What about the second time?' The meager glow of her weak smile was suddenly extinguished. 'I saw the second one in a photograph.' 'Oh?' 'In a book about ... scientific experimentation in Nazi Germany.' 'I see.' 'They used it on people.' He hesitated. But it had to be said. 'So did your husband.' Laura McCaffrey regarded him not with disbelief as much as with an ardent desire to disbelieve. Her face was the color of cold ashes, burnt out. Dan said, 'I think he put your daughter in this chair—' 'No.' '—and I think he and Hoffritz and God knows who else—' 'No.' '—tortured her,' Dan finished. 'No.' 'It's in the journal I told you about.' 'But—' 'I think they were using ... what you called "aversion" therapy to teach her to control her brain-wave patterns.' The thought of Melanie strapped in that chair was so disturbing that Laura McCaffrey was profoundly transformed by it. She no longer looked simply burnt out, no longer just ashen; she was now paler than pale, cadaverously pallid. Her eyes appeared to sink deeper into her skull and lose much of their luster. Her face sagged like softening wax. She said, 'But ... but that doesn't make sense. Aversion therapy is the least likely way to learn biofeedback techniques.' Dan had the urge to put his arms around her, hold her close, smooth her hair, comfort her. Kiss her. He had found her appealing from the moment he had seen her, but until now he'd felt no romantic stirrings for her. And that was par for the course, wasn't it? He always fell for the helpless kittens, the broken dolls, the ones who were lost or weak or in file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (23 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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trouble. And he always wound up wishing that he had never gotten involved. Laura McCaffrey hadn't initially held any attraction for him because she had been self-confident, self-possessed, totally in control. As soon as she'd begun to flounder, as soon as she could no longer conceal her fear and confusion, he was drawn to her. Nick Hammond, another homicide detective and smartass, had accused Dan of having a mother-hen instinct, and there was truth in that. What is it with me? he wondered. Why do I insist on being a knighterrant, always searching for a damsel in distress? I hardly even know this woman, and I want her to rely entirely on me, put her hopes and fears on my shoulders. Oh, yes, ma'am, you just rely on Big Dan Haldane, nobody else; Big Dan will catch these evil villains and put your broken world back together for you. Big Dan can do it, ma'am, even though he's still an adolescent idiot at heart. No. Not this time. He had a job to do, and he would do it, but he would be entirely professional about it. Personal feelings would not intrude. Anyway, this woman wouldn't welcome a relationship with him. She was better educated than he was. A lot more stylish. She was a brandy type, while he was strictly beer. Besides, for God's sake, this wasn't a time for romance. She was too vulnerable: she was worried sick about her daughter; her husband had been killed, and that must have its effect on her, even if she had stopped loving the guy a long time ago. What kind of man could think of her as a romantic prospect at a time like this? He was ashamed of himself. But still ... He sighed. 'Well, once you've studied your husband's journal maybe you'll be able to prove he never put the girl in that chair. But I don't think so.' She just stood there, looking lost. He went to the closet and opened the doors, revealing several pairs of jeans, T-shirts, sweaters, and shoes that would fit a nine-year-old girl. All were gray. 'Why?' Dan asked. 'What did he hope to prove? What effect was he after with the girl?' The woman shook her head, too distraught to speak. 'And something else I wonder,' Dan said. 'All of this, six years of it, took more money than he had when he cleaned out your joint bank accounts and left you. A lot more. Yet he wasn't working anywhere. He never went out. Maybe Wilhelm Hoffritz gave him money. But there must have been others who contributed as well. Who? Who was financing this work?' 'I've no idea.' 'And why?' he wondered. 'And where have they taken Melanie?' she asked. 'And what are they file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (24 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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doing to her now?'
5 The kitchen wasn't exactly filthy, but it wasn't clean, either. Stacks of dirty dishes filled the sink. Crumbs littered the table that stood by the room's only window. Laura sat at the table and brushed some of the crumbs aside. She was eager to look at the log of Dylan's experiments with Melanie. Haldane wasn't ready to give it to her. He held it — a ledger-size book bound in imitation brown leather — and paced around the kitchen as he talked. Rain struck the window and streamed down the glass. When an occasional flicker of lightning brightened the night and passed through the window, it briefly projected the random rippling patterns of water from the glass onto the walls, which made the room seem as amorphous and semitransparent as a mirage. 'I want to know a lot more about your husband,' Haldane said, pacing. 'Like what?' 'Like why you decided to divorce him.' 'Is that relevant?' 'Could be.' 'How?' 'For one thing, if there was another woman involved, then maybe she can tell us more about what he was doing here. Maybe she can even tell us who killed him.' 'There was no other woman.' 'Then why did you decide to divorce him?' 'It was just that ... I no longer loved him.' 'But you had loved him once.' 'Yes. But he wasn't the man I married.' 'How had he changed?' She sighed. 'He didn't. He was never the man I married. I only thought he was. Later, as time went by, I realized how thoroughly I'd misunderstood him, right from the start.' Haldane stopped pacing, leaned against a counter, crossing his arms on his chest, still holding the log book. 'Just how had you misunderstood him?' 'Well ... first, you have to understand something about me. In high school and college, I was never a particularly popular girl. Never had file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (25 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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any dates.' 'I find that difficult to believe.' She blushed. She wished she could control it, but couldn't. 'It's true. I was crushingly shy. Avoided boys. Avoided everyone. Never had any close girlfriends, either.' 'Didn't anyone tell you about the right mouthwash and dandruff shampoo?' She smiled at his attempt to put her at ease, but she was never comfortable talking about herself. 'I didn't want anyone to get to know me because I figured they'd dislike me, and I couldn't stand rejection.' 'Why should they dislike you?' 'Oh ... because I wouldn't be witty enough or bright enough or pretty enough to suit them.' 'Well, I can't say whether or not you're witty, but then David Letterman would have trouble coming up with one-liners in this place. But you're clearly intelligent. After all, you earned a doctorate. And I don't see how you could look in a mirror and think you were anything less than beautiful.' She glanced up from the crumb-carpeted table. The lieutenant's gaze was direct, engaging, warm, though neither bold nor suggestive. His attitude was merely that of a policeman, making an observation, stating a fact. Yet, under that surface professionalism, deep down, she sensed that he was attracted to her. His interest made her uneasy. Self-conscious, studying the vague silvery tracks of rain on the black window, she said' 'I had a terrible inferiority complex back then.' 'Why?' 'My parents.' 'Isn't it always?' 'No. Not always. But in my case ... mainly my mother.' 'What were your folks like?' 'They have nothing to do with this case,' she said. 'They're both gone now, anyway.' 'Passed away?' 'Yes.' 'I'm sorry.' 'No need to be. I'm not.' 'I see.' That was a harsh thing for her to have said. She was surprised to realize that she didn't want him to think badly of her. On the other hand, she was not prepared to tell him about her parents and the loveless childhood she had endured. 'But about Dylan ...,' she began, and then wasn't sure where she had left off. file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (26 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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Haldane said, 'You were telling me why you misjudged him right from the start. 'See, I was so good at fending people off, so good at alienating everyone and keeping myself snug in my shell, that no one ever got close to me. Especially not boys ... or men. I knew how to turn them off fast. Until Dylan. He wouldn't give up. He kept asking me for dates. No matter how often I rejected him, he came back. My shyness didn't deter him. Rudeness, indifference, cold rejection — nothing would stop him. He pursued me. No one had ever pursued me before. Not like Dylan. He was relentless. Obsessed. But not frightening in any way, not that kind of obsession. It was corny, the way he tried to impress me, the things he did. I knew it was corny at the time, but it was effective just the same. He sent flowers, more flowers, candy, more flowers, even a huge teddy bear.' 'A teddy bear for a young woman working on her doctorate?' Haldane said. 'I told you it was corny. He wrote poetry and signed it "A Secret Admirer." Trite, maybe, but for a woman who was twenty-six, hardly been kissed, and expected to be an old maid, it was heady stuff. He was the first person who ever made me feel ... special.' 'He broke down your defenses.' 'Hell, I was swept away.' As she spoke of it, that special time and feeling came back to her with unnerving vividness and power. With the memories came a sadness at what might have been, a sense of lost innocence that was almost overwhelming. 'Later, after we were married, I learned that Dylan's passion and fervor weren't reserved solely for me. Oh, not that there were other women. There weren't. But he pursued every interest as ardently as he'd pursued me. His research into behavior modification, his fascination with the occult, his love of fast cars — he put as much passion and energy into all those pursuits as he had put into our courtship.' She remembered how she had worried about Dylan — and about the effect that his demanding personality might have on Melanie. In part, she had asked for a divorce because she had been concerned that Dylan would infect Melanie with his obsessive-compulsive behavior. 'For instance, he built an elaborate Japanese garden behind our house, and it consumed his every spare moment for months and months. He was fanatically determined to make it perfect. Every plant and flower, every stone in every walkway had to be an ideal specimen. Every bonsai tree had to be as exquisitely proportioned and as imaginatively and harmoniously shaped as those in the books about classic Oriental landscaping. He expected me to be as caught up in that project — in file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (27 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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every project — as he was. But I couldn't be. Didn't want to be. Besides, he was so fanatical about perfection in all things that just about anything you did with him sooner or later became sheer hard labor instead of fun. He was an obsessive-compulsive unlike any other I've ever encountered, a driven man, and though he was wildly enthusiastic about everything, he actually took no pleasure in any of it, no joy, because there simply wasn't time for joy.' 'Sounds like it would've been exhausting to be married to him,' Haldane said. 'God, yes! Within a couple of years his excitement about things was no longer contagious because it was continuous and universal, and no sane person can live at a fever pitch all the time. He ceased to be intriguing and invigorating. He was ... tiring. Maddening. Never a moment's relaxation or peace. By then, I was getting my degree in psychiatry, going through analysis, which is a requirement for anyone considering psychiatric practice, and finally I realized Dylan was a disturbed man, not just enthusiastic, not just an overachiever, but a severe obsessive-compulsive. I tried to convince him to undergo analysis, but for that he had no enthusiasm at all. At last, I told him I wanted a divorce. He never gave me time to file the papers. The next day he cleaned out our joint bank accounts and left with Melanie. I should have seen it coming.' 'Why?' 'He was as obsessive about Melanie as he was about everything else. In his eyes, she was the most beautiful, wonderful, intelligent child who ever walked the earth, and he was always concerned that she be perfectly dressed, perfectly groomed, perfectly behaved. She was only three years old, but he was already teaching her to read, trying to teach her French. Only three. He said all learning comes easiest to the youngest. Which is true. But he wasn't doing it for Melanie. Oh, no. Not in the least for her. He was concerned about himself, about having a perfect child, because he couldn't bear the thought that his little girl would be anything but the very prettiest and brightest and most dazzling child anyone had ever seen.' They were silent. Rain tapped the window, drummed on the roof, gurgled through the gutters and downspouts. At last, softly, Haldane said, 'A man like that might ...' 'Might experiment on his own daughter, might put her through tortures of one kind and another, if he thought he was improving her. Or if he became obsessed with a series of experiments that required a child as the subject.' 'Jesus,' Haldane said in a tone that was part disgust, part shock, part file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (28 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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pity. To her surprise, Laura began to cry. The detective came to the table. He pulled out a chair and sat beside her. She blotted her eyes with a Kleenex. He put a hand on her shoulder. 'It'll be all right.' She nodded, blew her nose. 'We'll find her,' he said. 'I'm afraid we won't.' 'We will.' 'I'm afraid she's dead.' 'She's not.' 'I'm afraid.' 'Don't be.' 'Can't help it.' 'I know.' *** For half an hour, while Lieutenant Haldane attended to business elsewhere in the house, Laura studied Dylan's handwritten journal, which was actually just a log detailing how Melanie's days had been spent. By the time the detective returned to the kitchen, Laura was numb with horror. 'It's true,' she said. 'They've been here at least five and a half years, as long as he's been keeping this journal, and Melanie hasn't been out of the house once that I can see.' 'And she slept every night in the sensory-deprivation chamber, like I thought?' 'Yes. In the beginning, eight hours a night. Then eight and a half. Then nine. By the end of the first year, she was spending ten hours a night in the chamber and two hours every afternoon.' She closed the book. The sight of Dylan's neat handwriting suddenly made her furious. 'What else?' Haldane asked. 'First thing in the morning, she spent an hour meditating.' 'Meditating? A little girl like that? She wouldn't even know the meaning of the word.' 'Essentially, meditation is nothing but redirecting the mind inward, blocking out the material world, seeking peace through inner solitude. I doubt if he was teaching Melanie Zen meditation or any other brand with solid philosophical or religious overtones. He was probably just teaching her how to sit still and turn inward and think of nothing.'
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'Self-hypnosis.' 'That's another name for it.' 'Why did he want her to do that?' 'I don't know.' She got up from the chair, nervous and agitated. She wanted to move, walk, work off the frantic energy that crackled through her. But the kitchen was too small. She was at the end of it in five steps. She started toward the hall door but stopped when she realized that she couldn't walk through the rest of the house, past the bodies, through the blood, getting in the way of the coroner's people and the police. She leaned against a counter, flattening her palms on the edge of it, pressing fiercely hard, as if somehow she could get rid of her nervous energy by radiating it into that ceramic surface. 'Each day,' she said, 'after meditation, Melanie spent several hours learning biofeedback techniques.' 'While sitting in the electrified chair?' 'I think so. But ...' 'But?' he persisted. 'But I think the chair was used for more than that. I think it was also used to condition her against pain.' 'Say that again?' 'I think Dylan was using electric shock to teach Melanie how to blank out pain, how to endure it, ignore it the way that Eastern mystics do, the way Yogin do.' 'Why?' 'Maybe because, later, being able to tune out pain would help her get through the longer session in the sensory-deprivation tank.' 'So I was right about that?' 'Yes. He gradually increased her time in the tank until, by the third year, she would sometimes remain afloat for three days. By the fourth year, four and five days at a time. Most recently ... just last week, he put her in the tank for a seven-day session. 'Catheterized?' 'Yes. And on an IV. Intravenous needle. He was feeding her by glucose drip, so she wouldn't lose too much weight and wouldn't dehydrate.' 'God in Heaven.' Laura said nothing. She felt as though she might cry again. She was nauseated. Her eyes were grainy, and her face felt greasy. She went to the sink and turned on the cold water, which spilled over the stacks of dirty dishes. She filled her cupped hands, splashed her face. She pulled several paper towels from the wall-mounted dispenser and dried off. She felt no better. file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (30 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
Haldane said ruminatively, 'He wanted to condition her against pain so she could more easily get through the long sessions in the tank.' 'Maybe. Can't be sure.' 'But what's painful about being in the tank? I thought there was no sensation at all. That's what you told me.' 'There's nothing painful about a session of normal length. But if you're going to be kept in a tank several days, your skin's going to wrinkle, crack. Sores are going to form.' 'Ah.' 'Then there's the damn catheter. At your age, you've probably never been so seriously ill that you've been incontinent, needed a catheter.' 'No. Never.' 'Well, see, after a couple of days, the urethra usually becomes irritated. It hurts.' 'I would guess it does.' She wanted a drink very badly. She was not much of a drinker, ordinarily. A glass of wine now and then. A rare martini. But now, she wanted to get drunk. He said, 'So what was he up to? What was he trying to prove? Why did he put her through all this?' Laura shrugged. 'You must have some idea.' 'None at all. The journal doesn't describe the experiments or mention a single word about his intentions. It's just a record of her sessions with each piece of equipment, an hour-by-hour summary of each of her days here.' 'You saw the papers in his office, scattered all over the floor. They must be more detailed than the journal. There'll be more to be learned from them.' 'Maybe.' 'I've glanced at a few, but I couldn't make much sense of them. Lots of technical language, psychological jargon. Greek to me. If I have them photocopied, have the copies boxed up and sent to you in a couple of days, would you mind going through them, seeing if you can put them in order and if you can learn anything from them?' She hesitated. 'I ... I don't know. I got more than half sick just going through the journal.' 'Don't you want to know what he did to Melanie? If we find her, you'll have to know. Otherwise you won't have much chance of dealing with whatever psychological trauma she's suffering from.' It was true. To provide the proper treatment, she would have to descend into her daughter's nightmare and make it her own. 'Besides,' Haldane said, 'there might be clues in those papers, things file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (31 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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that'll help us determine who he was working with, who might have killed him. If we can figure that out, we might also figure out who has Melanie now. If you go through your husband's papers, you might discover the one bit of information that'll help us find your little girl.' 'All right,' she said wearily. 'When you've got it boxed, have the stuff sent to my house.' 'I know it won't be easy.' 'Damned right.' 'I want to know who financed the torture of a little girl in the name of research,' he said in a tone of voice that seemed, to Laura, to be exceptionally hard and vengeful for an impartial office,r of the law. 'I want to know real bad.' He was about to say something else, but he was interrupted by a uniformed officer who entered from the hall. 'Lieutenant?' 'What is it, Phil?' 'You're looking for a little girl in all this, aren't you?' 'Yeah.' Phil said' 'Well, they found one.' Laura's heart seemed to clench as tightly as a fist: a knot of pain in her breast. An urgent question formed in her mind, but she was unable to give voice to it because her throat seemed to have swollen shut. 'How old?' Haldane asked. That wasn't the question Laura wanted him to ask. 'Eight or nine, they figure,' Phil said. 'Get a description?' Haldane asked. That wasn't the right question, either. 'Auburn hair. Green eyes,' the patrolman said. Both men turned to Laura. She knew they were staring at her own auburn hair and green eyes. She tried to speak. Still mute. 'Alive?' Haldane asked. That was the question that Laura could not bring herself to ask. 'Yeah,' the uniformed man said. 'A black-and-white team found her seven blocks from here.' Laura's throat opened, and her tongue stopped cleaving to the roof of her mouth. 'Alive?' she said, afraid to believe it. The uniformed officer nodded. 'Yeah. I already said. Alive.' 'When?' Haldane asked. 'About ninety minutes ago.' His face coloring with anger, Haldane said, 'Nobody told me, damn it.' 'They were just on a routine patrol when they spotted her,' Phil said. 'They didn't know she might have a connection to this case. Not till just file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (32 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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a few minutes ago.' 'Where is she?' Laura demanded. 'Valley Medical.' 'The hospital?' Her clenched heart began to pound like a fist against her rib cage. 'What's wrong with her? Is she hurt? How badly?' 'Not hurt,' the officer said. 'Way I get it, they found her wandering in the street, uh, naked, in a daze.' 'Naked,' Laura said weakly. The fear of child molesters came back to hit her as hard as a hammer blow. She leaned against the counter and gripped the edge of it with both hands, striving not to crumple to the floor. Holding herself up, trying to draw a deep breath, able to get nothing but shallow draughts of air, she said, 'Naked?' 'And all confused, unable to talk,' Phil said. 'They thought she was in shock or maybe drugged, so they rushed her to Valley Medical.' Haldane took Laura's arm. 'Come on. Let's go.' 'But ...' 'What's wrong?' She licked her lips. 'What if it's not Melanie? I don't want to get my hopes up and then—' 'It's her,' he said. 'We lost a nine-year-old girl here, and they found a nine-year-old girl seven blocks away. It's not likely to be a coincidence.' 'But what if ...' 'Doctor McCaffrey, what's wrong?' 'What if this isn't the end of the nightmare?' 'Huh?' 'What if it's only the beginning?' 'Are you asking me if I think that ... after six years of this torture ...' 'Do you think she could possibly be a normal little girl anymore,' Laura said thickly. 'Don't expect the worst. There's always reason to hope. You won't know for sure until you see her, talk to her.' She shook her head adamantly. 'No. Can't be normal. Not after what her father did to her. Not after years of forced isolation. She's got to be a very sick little girl, deeply disturbed. There's not a chance in a million she'll be normal.' 'No,' he said gently, apparently sensing that empty reassurances would only anger her. 'No, she won't be a well-balanced, healthy little girl. She'll be lost, sick, frightened, maybe withdrawn into her own world, maybe beyond reach, maybe forever. But there's one thing you mustn't forget.' Laura met his eyes. 'What's that?' 'She needs you.' Laura nodded. file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (33 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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They left the blood-spattered house. Rain lashed the night, and like the crack of a whip, thunder broke across the sky. Haldane put her in an unmarked sedan. He clipped a detachable emergency beacon to the edge of the car roof. They drove to Valley Medical with the light flashing and the siren wailing and the tires kicking up water with a hissing sound that made it seem as if the world itself was deflating.
6 The emergency-room doctor was Richard Pantangello. He was young, with thick brown hair and a neatly trimmed redbrown beard. He met Laura and Haldane at the admitting desk and led them to the girl's room. The corridors were deserted, except for a few nurses gliding about like ghosts. The hospital was preternaturally silent at 4:10 in the morning. As they walked, Dr. Pantangello spoke in a soft voice, almost a whisper. 'She had no fractures, no lacerations or abrasions. One contusion, a bruise on the right arm, directly over the vein. From the look of it, I'd say it was an IV drip needle that wasn't inserted skillfully enough.' 'She was in a daze?' Haldane asked. 'Not exactly a daze,' Pantangello said. 'No confusion, really. She was more like someone in a trance. No sign of any head injury, though she was either unable or unwilling to speak from the moment they brought her in.' Matching the physician's quiet tone but unable to keep the anxiety out of her voice, Laura said, 'What about ... rape?' 'I couldn't find any indication that she'd been abused.' They rounded a corner and stopped in front of Room 256. The door was closed. 'She's in there,' Dr. Pantangello said, jamming his hands in the pockets of his white lab coat. Laura was still considering the way in which Pantangello had phrased his answer to her question about rape. 'You found no indications of abuse, but that isn't the same as saying she wasn't raped.' 'No traces of sem*n in the vagin*l tract,' Pantangello said. 'No bruising or bleeding of the labia or the vagin*l walls.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (34 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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'Which there would've had to've been in a child this young, if she were molested,' Haldane said. 'Yes. And her hymen's intact,' Pantangello said. 'Then she wasn't raped,' Haldane said. A bleakness settled over Laura as she saw the sorrow and pity in the physician's gentle brown eyes. With a voice as sad as it was quiet, Pantangello said, 'She wasn't subjected to ordinary intercourse, no. We can rule that out. But ... well, I can't say for certain.' He cleared his throat. Laura could see that this conversation was almost as much of an ordeal for the young doctor as it was for her. She wanted to tell him to stop, but she had to hear it all, had to know, and it was his job to tell her. He finished clearing his throat and picked up where he had left off. 'I can't say for certain there wasn't oral copulation.' A wordless sound of grief escaped Laura's lips. Haldane took her arm, and she leaned against him slightly. He said, 'Easy. Easy now. We don't even know if this is Melanie.' 'It is,' she said grimly. 'I'm sure it is.' She wanted to see her daughter, ached to see her. But she was afraid to open the door and step into the room. Her future waited beyond that threshold, and she was afraid that it was a future filled with only emotional pain, despair. A nurse went by without glancing at them, pointedly avoiding their eyes, tuning out the tragedy. 'I'm sorry,' Pantangello said. He took his hands out of the pockets of his lab coat. He wanted to comfort her, but he seemed afraid to touch her. Instead, he raised one hand to the stethoscope that hung around his neck and toyed with it absentmindedly. 'Look, if it's any help ... well, in my opinion, she wasn't molested. I can't prove it. I just feel it. Besides, it's highly unusual for a child to be molested without being bruised, cut, or visibly hurt in some way. The fact that she's unmarked would tend to indicate she wasn't touched. Really, I'd bet on it. He smiled at her. At least she thought it was a smile, although it looked more like a wince. 'I'd bet a year of my life on it.' Fighting back tears, Laura said, 'But if she wasn't molested, why was she wandering around naked in the street?' The answer to that question occurred to her even as she spoke. It occurred to Dan Haldane too. He said, 'She must've been in the sensory-deprivation chamber when the killer — or killers — walked into that house. She would have been naked in the tank. 'Sensory deprivation?' Pantangello asked, raising his eyebrows. To Haldane, Laura said, 'Maybe that's why she wasn't killed along with everyone else. Maybe the killer didn't know she was there, in the file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (35 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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tank.' 'Maybe,' Haldane said. With swiftly growing hope, Laura said, 'And she must've gotten out of the tank after the killer left. If she, saw the bodies ... all the blood ... that would have been so traumatic. It would sure explain her dazed condition.' Pantangello looked curiously at Lieutenant Haldane. 'This must be a strange case.' 'Very,' the detective said. Suddenly, Laura was no longer afraid of opening the door to Melanie's room. She started to push it inward. Halting her with a hand on her shoulder, Dr. Pantangello said, 'One more thing.' Laura waited apprehensively while the young doctor searched for the least painful words with which to convey some last bit of bad news. She knew it would be bad. She could see it in his face, for he was too inexperienced to maintain a suitably bland expression of professional detachment. He said, 'This state she's in ... I called it a "trance" before. But that's not exactly right. It's almost catatonic. It's a state very similar to what you sometimes see in autistic children, when they're going through their most passive moods.' Laura's mouth was exceedingly dry, as if she'd spent the last half hour eating sand. There was a metallic taste of fear as well. 'Say it, Doctor Pantangello. Don't mince words. I'm a doctor myself. A psychiatrist. Whatever you've got to tell me, I can handle it.' Speaking rapidly now, words running together, anxious to deliver the bad news and be done with it, he said, 'Autism, mental disorders in general, they really aren't my field. Evidently, they're more yours. So I probably shouldn't say anything at all about this. But I want you to be prepared when you go in there. Her withdrawal, her silence, her detachment — well, I don't think this condition is going to go away quickly or easily. I think she's been through something damned traumatic, and she's turned inward to escape from the memory. Bringing her back is going to take ... tremendous patience.' 'And maybe she'll never come back?' Laura asked. Pantangello shook his head, fingered his red-brown beard, tugged on his stethoscope. 'No, no, I didn't say that.' 'But it's what you were thinking.' His silence was a wounding confirmation. Laura finally pushed open the door and went into the room, with the doctor and the detective close behind her. Rain beat on the only window. The sound seemed like the wings of nocturnal birds beating in a frenzy file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (36 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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against the glass. Far off in the night, out toward the unseen ocean, lightning pulsed twice, three times, then died in the darkness. Of the two beds, the one nearer the window was empty, and that half of the room was dark. A light was on above the first bed, and a child lay under the sheets, in a standard-issue hospital gown, her head resting on a single pillow. The upper end of the bed was tilted, raising and angling the girl's body, so her face was entirely visible when Laura entered the room. It was Melanie. Laura had no doubt about that. The girl had inherited her mother's hair, nose, delicate jaw line. She had her father's brow and cheekbones. Her eyes were the same shade of green as Laura's but deeply set like Dylan's. During the past six years, she had become a different child from the one Laura remembered, but her identity was confirmed by more than her appearance, by something undefinable, a familiar aura perhaps, an emotional or even psychic link that snapped into place between mother and daughter the instant that Laura walked into the room. She knew this was her little girl, though she would have had some difficulty explaining exactly how she knew. Melanie resembled one of those children in advertisem*nts for international hunger-relief organizations or a poster child for some rare and debilitating disease. Her face was gaunt. Her skin was pale, with an unhealthy, grainy texture. More gray than pink, her lips were cracked and peeling. The flesh around her sunken eyes was dark, as if it had been smudged when she had wiped away tears with an inky thumb. The eyes themselves were the most unnerving evidence of her ordeal. She stared at the empty air above her, blinking but seeing nothing — nothing in this world. Neither fear nor pain were evident in those eyes. Just desolation. Laura said, 'Honey?' The girl didn't move. Her eyes didn't flicker. 'Melanie?' No response. Hesitantly, Laura moved toward the bed. The girl seemed oblivious of her. Laura put down the safety rail, leaned close to the child, spoke her name again, but again elicited no reaction. With one trembling hand, she touched Melanie's face, which felt slightly fevered, and that contact shattered all her reservations. A dam of emotion broke within her, and she seized the girl, lifted her away from the bed, held her close, and hugged her. 'Melanie, baby, my Melanie, it's all right now, it'll be okay, really it will, you're safe now, safe with me now, safe with Mommy, thank God, safe, thank God.' As she spoke, tears burst from her, and she wept with a lack of selfconsciousness and control that she had not file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (37 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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experienced since she had been a child herself. If only Melanie had wept too. But the girl was beyond tears. She didn't return Laura's embrace, either. She hung limply in her mother's arms: a pliant body, an empty shell, unaware of the love that was hers to receive, unable to accept the succour and shelter that her mother offered, distant, in her own reality, lost. *** Ten minutes later, in the corridor, Laura dried her eyes with a couple of Kleenexes and blew her nose. Dan Haldane paced back and forth. His shoes squeaked on the highly polished tiles. From the expression on the detective's face, Laura guessed that he was trying to work off some of his anger over what had happened to Melanie. Maybe some cops cared more than she thought. This one, anyway. Dr. Pantangello said, 'I want to keep Melanie here at least until tomorrow afternoon. For observation.' 'Of course,' Laura said. 'When she's released from the hospital, she'll need psychiatric care.' Laura nodded. 'What I was wondering ... well, you don't intend to treat her yourself, do you?' Laura tucked the sodden tissues in one coat pocket. 'You think it would be better for a third party, an uninvolved therapist, to work with her.' 'Yes.' 'Well, Doctor, I can understand why you feel that way, and in most cases I would agree with you. But not this time.' 'Usually, it's a bad idea for a therapist to treat one of his own children. As her mother, you're almost certainly going to be more demanding of your own daughter than you would be of an ordinary patient. And, excuse me, but it may even be possible that the parent is part of the problem in the first place.' 'Yes. You're right. Usually. But not this time. I didn't do this to my little girl. I had no part in it. I am virtually as much a stranger to her as any other therapist would be, but I can give her more time, more care, more attention than anyone else. With another doctor, she'd be just another patient. But with me, she'll be my only patient. I'll take leave of absence from Saint Mark's. I'll shift my private patients to some colleagues for a few weeks or even months. I won't expect fast progress from her because I'll have all the time in the world. Melanie is going to get all of me, everything I have to offer as a doctor, as a psychiatrist, and
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all the love I have to offer as a mother.' Pantangello seemed on the verge of issuing another warning or offering more advice, but he decided against it. 'Well ... good luck.' 'Thank you.' When the physician had gone, leaving Laura and Haldane alone in the silent, antiseptic-scented corridor, the detective said, 'It's a big job.' 'I can handle it.' 'I'm sure you can.' 'She'll get well.' 'I hope she does.' At the nurses' station, at the end of the hall, a muffled phone rang twice. Haldane said, 'I've sent for a uniformed officer. Just in case Melanie witnessed the murders, in case someone might be looking for her, I thought it was a good idea to post a guard. Until tomorrow afternoon, anyway.' 'Thank you, Lieutenant.' 'You aren't staying here, are you?' 'Yes. Of course. Where else?' 'Not long, I hope.' 'A few hours.' 'You need your rest, Doctor McCaffrey.' 'Melanie needs me more. I couldn't sleep anyway.' He said, 'But if she's coming home tomorrow, won't you have to get things ready for her?' Laura blinked. 'Oh. I hadn't thought about that. I'll have to prepare a bedroom. She can't sleep in a crib any longer.' 'Better go home,' he said gently. 'In a little while,' she agreed. 'But not to sleep. I can't sleep. I'll leave her alone here just long enough to get the house ready for her homecoming.' 'I hate to bring it up, but I'd like to get blood samples from you and Melanie.' The request puzzled her. 'Why?' He hesitated. 'Well, with samples of your blood, your husband's, and the girl's, we can pretty much pin down for sure whether she's your daughter.' 'No need for that.' 'It's the easiest way—' 'I said, there's no need for that,' she told him irritably. 'She's Melanie. She's my little girl. I know it.' 'I know how you feel,' he said sympathetically. 'I understand. I'm sure she is your daughter. But since you haven't seen her in six years, six file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (39 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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years in which she's changed a great deal, and since she can't speak for herself, we're going to need some proof, not just your instincts, or the juvenile court is going to put her in the state's custody. You don't want that, do you?' 'My God, no.' 'Doctor Pantangello tells me they've already got a sample of the girl's blood. It'll take only a minute to draw a few cc's of yours.' 'All right. But ... where?' 'There's an examination room next to the nurses' station.' Laura looked apprehensively at the closed door to Melanie's room. 'Can we wait until the guard comes?' 'Of course.' He leaned against the wall. Laura just stood there, staring at the door. The glass-smooth silence became unbearable. To break it, she said' 'I was right, wasn't I?' 'About what?' 'Earlier, I said maybe the nightmare wouldn't be over when we found Melanie, that maybe it would be just beginning.' 'Yeah. You were right. But at least it is a beginning.' She knew what he meant: They might have found Melanie's body with the other three — battered, dead. This was better. Frightening, perplexing, depressing, but definitely better.
7 Dan Haldane sat at the desk that he was using while on temporary assignment to the East Valley Division. The ancient wooden surface was scalloped by cigarette bums around the edge, scarred and gouged and marked by scores of overlapping dark rings from dripping mugs of coffee. The accommodation didn't bother him. He liked his job, and he could do it in a tent if he had to. In the hour before dawn, the East Valley Division was as quiet as a police station ever got. Most potential victims were not yet awake, and even the criminals had to sleep sometime. A skeleton crew manned the station until the day crew arrived. In these last musty minutes of the graveyard shift, the place still possessed the haunted feeling common to all offices at night. The only sounds were the lonely clatter of a typewriter in a room down the hall from the bull pen, and the knock of the janitor's broom as it banged against the legs of the empty desks. Somewhere a telephone rang; even in the hour before dawn, someone file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (40 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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was in trouble. Dan zipped open his worn briefcase and spread the contents on the desk. Polaroid photographs of the three bodies that had been found in the Studio City house. A random sampling of the papers that had littered the floor in Dylan McCaffrey's office. Statements from the neighbors. Preliminary handwritten reports from the coroner's men and the Scientific Investigation Division (SID). And lists. Dan believed in lists. He had lists for the contents of drawers, cupboards, and closets in the murder house, a list of the titles of the books on the living-room shelves, and a list of telephone numbers taken from a notepad by the phone in McCaffrey's office. He also had names — every name that appeared on any scrap of paper anywhere in that Studio City residence. Until the case was wrapped up, he would carry the lists with him, take them out and reread them whenever he had a spare moment — over lunch, when he was on the john, in bed just before switching off the light — prodding his subconscious, with the hope of attaining an important insight or turning up a vital crossreference. Stanley Holbein, an old friend and former partner from RobberyHomicide, had once embarrassed Dan at an R&H Christmas party by telling a long and highly amusing (and apocryphal) story about having seen some of Dan's most private lists, including the ones on which he had kept track of every meal eaten and every bowel movement since the age of nine. Dan, who stood listening, amused but red-faced, with his hands deep in his jacket pockets, had finally pretended to want to strangle Stanley. But when he had withdrawn his hands from his pockets to lunge at his friend, he'd accidentally pulled out half a dozen lists that fluttered to the floor, eliciting gales of laughter from everyone present and necessitating a hasty retreat into another room. Now he gave his latest set of lists a quick scan, with the vague hope that something would jump out at him, like a pop-up figure in a children's book. Nothing popped. He began again, reading through the lists more slowly. The book titles were unfamiliar. The collection was a peculiar mix of psychology, medicine, physical science, and the occult. Why would a doctor, a man of science, be interested in clairvoyance, psychic powers, and other paranormal phenomena? He looked over the list of names. He didn't recognize any. As his stomach grew increasingly acidic, he kept returning to the photos of the bodies. In fourteen years with the LAPD and four years in the army before that, he had seen more than a few dead men. But these were unlike any in his experience. He had seen men who had stepped on land mines yet had been in better shape than these. file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (41 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:47 PM]
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The killers — surely there had been more than one — had possessed incredible strength or inhuman rage, or both. The victims had been struck repeatedly after they were already dead, hammered into jelly. What sort of man could kill with such unrestrained viciousness and cruelty? What maniacal hatred could have driven them to this? Before he could really concentrate on those questions, he was interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps. Ross Mondale stopped at Dan's desk. The division captain was a stocky man, fiveeight, with a powerful upper body. As usual, everything about him was brown: brown hair; thick brown eyebrows; brown, watchful, narrow eyes; a chocolate-brown suit, beige shirt, dark-brown tie, brown shoes. He was wearing a heavy ring with a bright ruby, which was the only spark of color that he allowed. The janitor had gone. They were the only two in the big room. 'You still here?' Mondale asked. 'No. This is a clever, cardboard facade. The real me is in the john, shooting heroin.' Mondale didn't smile. 'I thought you'd be gone back to Central by now.' 'I've become attached to the East Valley. The smog's got a special savory scent to it out here.' Mondale glowered. 'This cutback in funds is a pain in the ass. Used to be, I had a man out sick or on vacation, there were plenty of others to cover for him. Now we got to bring subs in from other divisions, loan out our own men when we can spare them, which we never really can. It's a crock.' Dan knew that Mondale would not have been so displeased about loaned manpower if the loanee had been anyone else. He didn't like Dan. The animosity was mutual. They had been at the police academy together and later had been assigned to the same patrol car. Dan had requested a new partner, to no avail. Eventually, an encounter with a lunatic, a bullet in the chest, and a stay in the hospital had done for Dan what formal requests had not been able to achieve: By the time he got back to work, he had a new and more reliable partner. Dan was a field cop by nature; he enjoyed being on the streets, where the action was. Mondale, on the other hand, stayed close to the office; he was a born public-relations man as surely as Itzhak Perlman was born to play the violin. A master of deception, ass-kicking, and flattery, he had an uncanny ability to sense pending changes in the currents of power in the department's hierarchy, aligning himself with those superiors who could do the most for him, abandoning former allies who were about to lose power. He knew how to smooth-talk politicians and reporters. Those talents had helped him obtain more promotions file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (42 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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than Dan. Rumor ranked Ross Mondale high on the mayor's list of candidates for police chief. However, as ingratiating as he was with everyone else, Mondale could find no words of praise or flattery for Dan. 'You got a food stain on your shirt, Haldane.' Dan looked down and saw a rust-colored spot the size of a dime. 'Chili dog,' he said. 'You know, Haldane, each of us represents the entire department. We have an obligation — a duty — to present a respectable image to the public.' 'Right. I'll never eat another chili dog until I die and go to Heaven. Only croissants and caviar from now on. A higher quality of shirt stain henceforth, I swear.' 'You make a habit of wisecracking at every superior officer?' 'Nope. Only you.' 'I don't much care for it.' 'Didn't think you would,' Dan said. 'You know, I'm not going to put up with your sh*t forever, just because we went to the academy together.' Nostalgia wasn't the reason that Mondale tolerated Dan's abuse, and neither of them had any illusions otherwise. The truth was, Dan knew something about Mondale that, if revealed, would destroy the captain's career, something that had happened when they had been second-year patrolmen, a vital bit of information that would have made any blackmailer swoon with joy. He would never use it against Mondale, of course; as much as he despised the man, he couldn't bring himself to engage in blackmail. If their roles had been reversed, however, Mondale would have had no compunctions about blackmail or vindictive revelation. Dan's continued silence baffled the captain, made him uneasy, encouraged him to tread carefully each time they met. 'Let's get specific,' Dan said. 'Exactly how much longer will you put up with my sh*t?' 'I don't have to. Not for long, thank God. You'll be back in Central after this shift,' Mondale said. He smiled. Dan leaned his weight against the unoiled spring-action back of the office chair, which squealed in protest, and put his hands behind his head. 'Sorry to disappoint. I'll be sticking around for a while. I caught a murder last night. It's my case now. I figure I'll stay with it for the duration.' The captain's smile melted like ice cream on a hot plate. 'You mean the triple one-eighty-seven in Studio City?' 'Ah, now I see why you're in the office so early. You heard about file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (43 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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that. Two relatively well-known psychologists get wasted under mysterious circ*mstances, so you figure there's going to be a lot of media attention. How do you tumble to these things so quickly, Ross? You sleep with a police-band radio beside your bed?' Ignoring the question, sitting on the edge of the desk, Mondale said, 'Any leads?' 'Nope. Got pictures of the victims, though.' He noted, with satisfaction, that all the blood drained out of Mondale's face when he saw the ravaged bodies in the photographs. The captain didn't even finish shuffling through the whole series. 'Looks like a burglary got out of hand,' Mondale said. 'Looks like no such a thing. All three victims had money on them. Other loose cash around the house. Nothing stolen.' 'Well,' Mondale said defensively, 'I didn't know that.' 'You still should've known burglars usually kill only when they're cornered, and then they're quick and clean about it. Not like this.' 'There are always exceptions,' Mondale said pompously. 'Even grandmothers rob banks now and then.' Dan laughed. 'Well, it's true,' Mondale said. 'That's just marvelous, Ross.' 'Well it is true.' 'Not my grandmother.' 'I didn't say your grandmother.' 'You mean your grandmother robs banks, Ross?' 'Somebody's goddamned grandmother does, and you can bet your ass on it.' 'You know a bookie who takes bets on whether or not somebody's grandmother will rob a bank? If the odds are right, I'll take a hundred bucks of his action.' Mondale stood up. He put one hand to his tie, straightening the knot. 'I don't want you working here any longer, you son of a bitch.' 'Well, remember that old Rolling Stones song, Ross. "You can't always get what you want."' 'I can have your ass shipped back to Central.' 'Not unless the rest of me gets shipped with it, and the rest of me intends to stay right here for a while.' Mondale's face darkened. His lips pulled tight and went pale. He looked as if he had been pushed as far as he could be pushed for the present. Before the captain could do anything rash, Dan said, 'Listen, you can't take me off a case that's mine from the start, not without some screwup on my part. You know the rules. But I don't want to fight you file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (44 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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on this. That'll just distract me. So let's just call a truce, huh? I'll stay out of your hair, I'll be a good boy, and you stay out of my way.' Mondale said nothing. He was breathing hard, and apparently he still didn't trust himself to speak. 'We don't like each other much, but there's no reason we can't still work together,' Dan said, getting as conciliatory as he would ever get with Mondale. 'Why don't you want to let go of this one?' 'Looks interesting. Most homicides are boring. Husband kills his wife's boyfriend. Some psycho kills a bunch of women because they remind him of his mother. One crack dealer offs another crack dealer. I've seen it all a hundred times. It gets tedious. This is different, I think. That's why I don't want to let go. We all need variety in our lives, Ross. That's why it's a mistake for you to wear brown suits all the time.' Mondale ignored the jibe. 'You think we got an important case on our hands this time?' 'Three murders ... that doesn't strike you as important?' 'I mean something really big,' Mondale said impatiently. 'Like the Manson Family or the Hillside Strangler or something?' 'Could be. Depends on how it develops. But, yeah, I suspect this is going to be the kind of story that sells newspapers and pumps up the ratings on TV news.' Mondale thought about that, and his eyes swam out of focus. 'One thing I insist on,' Dan said, leaning forward on his chair, folding his hands on the desk, and assuming an earnest expression. 'If I'm going to be in charge of this case, I don't want to have to waste time talking to reporters, giving interviews. You've got to keep those bastards off my back. Let them film all the bloodstains they want, so they'll have lots of great footage for the dinner-hour broadcast, but keep them away. I'm no good at dealing with them.' Mondale's eyes swam back into focus. 'Uh ... yeah, of course, no problem. The press can be a royal pain in the ass.' To Mondale, the cameras and publicity were as nourishing as the food of the gods, and he was delighted by the prospect of being the center of media attention. 'You let them to me.' 'Fine,' Dan said. 'And you report to me, nobody but me.' 'Sure.' 'Daily, up-to-the-minute reports.' 'Whatever you say.' Mondale stared at him, disbelieving but unwilling to challenge him. Every man liked to dream. Even Ross Mondale. 'With this manpower shortage and everything,' Dan said, 'don't you file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (45 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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have work to do?' The captain walked off toward his own office, stopped after a few steps, glanced back, and said, 'So far we've got two moderately prominent psychologists dead, and prominent people tend to know other prominent people. So you might be moving in different circles from those you muck around in when a dope dealer gets wasted. Besides, if this does get to be a hot case with lots of press attention, you and I will probably have meetings with the chief, with members of the commission, maybe even with the mayor.' 'So?' 'So don't step on any toes.' 'Oh, don't worry, Ross, I wouldn't ever dance with any of those guys.' Mondale shook his head. 'Christ.' Dan watched the captain walk away. When he was alone again, he returned to his lists.
8 The sky was brightening from black to gray-black. Dawn hadn't crawled out of its hole yet, but it was creeping close, and it would crest the hilly horizon in ten or fifteen minutes. The public parking lot of Valley Medical was nearly deserted, a patchwork of shadows and evenly spaced pools of jaundiced light from the sodium-vapor lamps. Sitting behind the wheel of his Volvo, Ned Rink hated to see the night end. He was a night person, an owl rather than a lark. He was not able to function well or think clearly until midafternoon, and he didn't begin to hit his stride until after midnight. That preference was no doubt programmed into his genes, for his mother had been the same way; his personal biological clock was out of sync with those of most people. Nevertheless, living at night was also a matter of choice: He felt more at home in the darkness. He was an ugly man, and he knew it. He felt conspicuous in broad daylight, but he believed that the night softened his ugliness and made it less noticeable. His forehead was too narrow and sloped, suggesting limited intelligence, although he was actually far from stupid. His small eyes were set too close, and his nose was a beak, and his other features were crudely formed. He was five-seven, with big shoulders and long arms and a barrel chest that was disproportionate to his height. As a child, he'd had to endure the cruel taunting of other kids file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (46 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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who had nicknamed him Ape. Their ridicule and harassment had made him so tense that he'd developed an ulcer by the time he was thirteen years old. These days, Ned Rink didn't take that sort of crap from anyone. These days, if somebody gave him a hard time, he just killed his tormentor, blew his brains out with no hesitation and no remorse. That was a great way to deal with stress; his ulcers had healed long ago. He picked up the black attaché case from the seat beside him. It contained a white lab coat, a white hospital towel, a stethoscope, and a silencer-equipped Walther .45 semi-automatic loaded with hollow-point cartridges that were coated with Teflon to ensure penetration of even bulletproof vests. He didn't have to open the attaché case to make sure that everything was there; he had packed it himself less than an hour ago. He intended to walk into the hospital, go directly to the public rest rooms off the lobby, slip out of his raincoat, put on the white lab coat, fold the towel around the pistol, and head straight to Room 256, where they had taken the girl. Rink had been told to expect a police guard on duty. All right. He could handle that. He would pretend that he was a doctor, make up some excuse to get the cop out of the hallway and into the girl's room, where the nurses couldn't see, then shoot the jerk, shoot the girl. Then the coup de grâce: a bullet in the ear for each of them, just to make sure they were stone dead. The job done, Rink would leave immediately, return to the public rest room, pick up his raincoat and attaché case, and get the hell out of the hospital. The plan was clean and uncomplicated. There was almost nothing about it that could go wrong. Before opening the door and getting out of the Volvo, he looked carefully around the parking lot to be sure that he wasn't observed. Although the storm had passed and the rain had stopped falling half an hour ago, light fog marked the direction of a gentle breeze and eddied in lazy patterns off from the main current, shrouding some objects, distorting others. Every depression in the macadam was filled with a pool of rainwater, and the many wind-stirred puddles shimmered with yellow reflections of the light from the tall sodium-vapor lamps. Except for the drifting fog, the night was perfectly still. Rink decided he was alone, unseen. To the east, the gray-black sky had a pale, opalescent, pinkish-blue tint. The first faint flow of dawn's radiant face. In another hour, the quiet night routine of the hospital would begin to give way to the business and busyness of the day. It was time to go. He was looking forward to the work ahead. He had never killed a child before. It ought to be interesting.
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9 Alone, the girl woke. She sat straight up in bed, trying to scream. Her mouth was open wide, the muscles in her neck were taut, the blood vessels in her throat and temples throbbed with the effort that she was making, but she couldn't produce a sound. She sat like that for half a minute, her small fists full of sweat-soaked sheets. Eyes wide. She wasn't looking at or reacting to anything in the room. The terror lay beyond those walls. Briefly, her eyes cleared. She was no longer oblivious of the hospital room. She realized for the first time that she was alone. Remembered who she was. She desperately desired company, someone to hold, human contact, comfort. 'Hello?' she whispered. 'S-s-somebody? Somebody? Somebody? Mommy?' If people had been with her, perhaps her attention would have been altogether captured by them and drawn permanently away from the things that so frightened her. Alone, however, she could not shake the nightmare that had its talon in her, and her eyes glazed over again. Her gaze fixed once more on a scene elsewhere. Finally, with a desperate, wordless whimper, she clambered over the safety railing and got out of bed. She tottered a few steps. Went down on her knees. Breathing hard, wheezing with panic, she crawled into the darker half of the room, past the untenanted bed, into the corner where friendly shadows offered consolation. She put her back to the wall and faced into the room, knees drawn up. The hospital gown bunched at her hips. She wrapped her arms around her thin legs and pulled herself into a tight ball. She remained in the corner only a minute before she began to whimper and mewl like a frightened animal. She raised her hands and covered her face, striving to block out a hideous sight. 'Don't, please, please, please.' Breathing rapidly and shallowly, with ever-increasing panic, she lowered her hands and squeezed them into fists. She pounded her own breast, hard, harder. 'Don't, don't, don't,' she said. She was pounding hard enough to hurt herself, yet she couldn't feel the blows. file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (48 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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'The door,' she said softly. 'The door ... the door ...' It wasn't the hospital-room door or the door to the adjoining bath that frightened her. She was looking at neither. She was dimly aware of the world around her, but she was focused instead on things no one else could have seen from any vantage point in that room. She raised both hands, held them out in front of her, as though pressing on the unseen door, frantically attempting to hold it shut. 'Stop.' The meager muscles in her frail arms popped up, and then her elbows bent, as if the invisible door actually had substantial weight and was swinging open against all her protests. As if something big pushed relentlessly against the other side of it. Something inhuman and unimaginably strong. Abruptly, with a gasp, she scrambled out of the shadow-shrouded corner and across the floor. She went under the unused bed. Safe. Or maybe not. Nowhere was safe. She stopped and curled into the fetal position, murmuring, hopelessly trying to hide from the thing beyond the door. 'The door,' she said. 'The door ... the door to December...' With her arms crossed on her breast, her fingertips pressing hard into her own bony shoulders, she began to weep quietly. 'Help me, help me,' she said, but she spoke in a whisper that did not carry to the hall, where nurses might have heard it. If someone had responded to her cry, Melanie might have clung to him in terror, unable to cast off the cloak of autism that protected her from a world too cruel to bear. Nevertheless, even that much contact with another human being, when she wanted it, would have been a small first step toward recovery. But with the best of intentions, they had left her alone, to rest, and her plea for solace and for a reassuring voice went unanswered. She shuddered. 'Help me. It's coming open. It's ... open.' The last word faded into a low moan of pure black despair. Her anguish was terrible, bleak. Eventually her breathing grew less agitated, less ragged, and finally normal. The weeping subsided. She lay in silence, perfectly still, as if in a deep sleep. But in the darkness under the bed, her eyes were still open wide, staring in shock and terror.
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10 When she got home, shortly before dawn, Laura made a pot of strong coffee. She carried a mug into the guest bedroom and sipped at the steaming brew while she dusted the furniture, put sheets on the bed, and prepared for Melanie's homecoming. Her four-year-old calico cat, Pepper, kept getting in the way, rubbing against her legs, insisting upon being petted and scratched behind the ears. The cat seemed to sense that it was soon to be deposed from its favored position in the household. For four years, Pepper had been something of a surrogate child. In a way, the house also had been a surrogate child, an outlet for the childrearing energies that Laura could not direct toward her own little girl. Six years ago, after Dylan had run off, cleaning out their bank accounts and leaving her with no ready cash, Laura had been forced to scramble, scrape, and scheme to keep the house. It wasn't a mansion, but a spacious four-bedroom, Spanish two-story in Sherman Oaks, on the 'right' side of Ventura Boulevard, on a curving street where some homes had swimming pools and even more had hot tubs, where children were frequently sent to private schools, and where the family dogs were not mongrels but full-bred German shepherds, spaniels, golden retrievers, Airedales, dalmatians, and poodles registered with the American Kennel Club. It stood on a large lot, half hidden by coral trees, benjaminas, bushy red and purple hibiscus, red azaleas, and a fence shrouded in bougainvillea, with thick borders of impatiens in every hue along the serpentine, mission-tile walk that led to the front door. Laura was proud of her home. Three years ago, when she had finally stopped paying private investigators to search for Dylan and Melanie, she had begun to put her spare money into small renovation projects: darkly stained oak base molding, crown molding, and door frames; new, rich dark-blue tile in the master bathroom, with white Sherle Wagner shell sinks and gold fixtures. She'd torn out Dylan's Oriental garden in the back lawn because it was a reminder of him, and had replaced it with twenty different species of roses. In a sense, the house took the place of the daughter who had been stolen from her: she worried and fussed about it, pampered it, guided it toward maturity. Her concern for keeping the house in good repair was akin to a mother's concern for the health of her child. Now she could stop sublimating all those maternal urges. Her daughter was finally coming home. Pepper meowed. Snatching the cat off the floor and holding it with its legs dangling, file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (50 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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face-to-face, Laura said, 'There'll still be plenty of love for one pitiful cat. Don't worry about that, you old mouse-chaser.' The phone rang. She put the cat down, crossed the hall to the master bedroom, and plucked the handset off the cradle. 'Hello?' No answer. The caller hesitated a moment, then hung up. She stared at the phone, uneasy. Maybe it had been a wrong number. But in the dead hour before dawn, on this extraordinary night, a ringing phone and an uncommunicative caller had sinister implications. She double-checked the locks on the doors. That seemed to be an inadequate response, but she could think of nothing more to do. Still uneasy, she tried to shrug off the call, and at last she went into the empty room that had once been the nursery. Two years ago, she had disposed of Melanie's baby furniture when she had finally admitted to herself that her missing daughter would have by that time outgrown everything. Laura had not refurnished, ostensibly because when Melanie returned, the girl would be old enough to have a say in the choice of decor. Actually, Laura had left the room empty because — though she couldn't face her own fears — deep in her heart she'd felt that Melanie would never be coming back, that the child had vanished forever. She had saved a few of her daughter's toys, however. Now she took the box of old playthings out of the closet and rummaged through it. Three-year-olds and nine-year-olds didn't have much in common, but Laura found two items that might still be appealing to Melanie: a big Raggedy Ann doll, slightly soiled, and a smaller teddy bear with floppy ears. She took the bear and the doll into the guest bedroom and set them on the pillows, with their backs against the headboard. Melanie would see them the moment she came into the room. Pepper jumped onto the bed, approached the doll and the bear with curiosity and trepidation. She sniffed the doll, nuzzled the bear, then curled up beside them, apparently having decided that they were friendly. The first beams of daylight were streaming through the French windows. By the manner in which the early light fluctuated from gray to gold to gray again, Laura could tell, without looking at the sky, that the rain had stopped and that the clouds were breaking up. Although she'd had only three hours of sleep the previous night, and though her daughter wouldn't be leaving the hospital for six or eight hours, Laura didn't feel like returning to bed. She was awake, energetic. From the stoop outside the front door, she retrieved the plastic-wrapped morning newspaper. In the kitchen, she squeezed two large oranges to make a glass of fresh juice, put a pan of water on the stove to boil, took file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (51 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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a box of raisin oatmeal from a cupboard, and popped two slices of bread in the toaster. She was actually humming a tune — Elton John's 'Daniel' — when she sat at the table. Her daughter was coming home. The front-page stories in the paper — the turmoil in the Middle East, the fighting in Central America, the scheming of politicians, the muggings and robberies and senseless killings — did not discourage or concern her as they usually did. The murders of Dylan, Hoffritz, and the unknown man were not reported: That story had broken too late to make the early edition. If she had seen that slaughter recounted in the Times, maybe she wouldn't have felt so lighthearted. But she saw not a word about those murders, and Melanie would be released from the hospital this afternoon, and all things considered, she had known worse mornings. Her daughter was coming home. When she finished her breakfast, she pushed aside the newspaper and sat looking out the window at the damp rose garden. The sodden blooms seemed impossibly bright in the slanting sun, as unnaturally colorful as flowers in a vivid dream. She lost track of time, might have been sitting there two minutes or ten, when she was snapped out of her reverie by a thump and clatter somewhere in the house. She sat straight up, rigid, tense, scared, her mind filled with images of blood-spattered walls and cold dead forms in opaque plastic bags. Then Pepper broke the ominous spell by dashing out of the dining room, into the kitchen, claws clicking on the tile. She scampered into a corner, stood there, the hair raised along her back, ears flattened, staring at the doorway through which she had come. Then with a sudden selfconsciousness that was comical, the cat pretended nonchalance, curled up in a furry puddle on the floor, yawned, and turned sleepy eyes on Laura, as if to say, 'Who, me? Lose my feline dignity? Even for a moment? Never! Scared? Ridiculous!' 'What'd you do, puss? Knock something over, spook yourself?' The calico yawned again. 'It better not have been anything breakable,' Laura said, 'or I might finally get those cat-skin earmuffs I've been wanting.' She went through the house, looking for the damage that Pepper had done, and she found it in the guest bedroom. The teddy bear and the Raggedy Ann doll were lying on the floor. Fortunately, the cat had not clawed the stuffing out of them. The alarm clock had been knocked off the nightstand. Laura picked it up and saw that it was still ticking; the glass face wasn't cracked, either. She put the clock back where it belonged, returned the doll and the bear to the bed. file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (52 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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Strange. Pepper had gotten over the reckless-kitten stage three years ago. She was now slightly plump, content, and thoroughly self-satisfied. This rambunctiousness was out of character, yet another indication that she knew her place in the McCaffrey household was no longer second to Laura. In the kitchen, the cat was still in the corner. Laura put food in the calico's dish. 'Lucky for you nothing broke. You wouldn't like being made into earmuffs.' Pepper rose to a crouch, and her ears perked up. Tapping the dish with the empty can of 9 Lives, Laura said, 'Chowtime, you ferocious mouse-mauler.' Pepper didn't move. 'You'll eat it when you want it,' Laura said, taking the empty can to the sink to rinse it before tossing it in the garbage. Abruptly, Pepper exploded from the corner, streaked across the kitchen, through the doorway, into the living room, gone. 'Crazy cat,' Laura said, frowning at the untouched 9 Lives. Usually, Pepper was pushing in at the yellow dish, trying to eat even as Laura was scraping the food from the can.
PART TWO
ENEMIES WITHOUT FACES WEDNESDAY 1:00 P.M. - 7:45 P.M. file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (53 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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11 At one o'clock, when Laura drove her blue Honda to Valley Medical, a uniformed policeman at the entrance to the main parking lot barred the way. He directed her to the staff lot, which had been opened to the public 'until we straighten out the mess here.' Eighty to a hundred feet behind him was a cluster of LAPD cruisers and other official vehicles, some with emergency beacons rotating and flashing. As she followed the patrolman's directions and headed toward the staff lot, Laura glanced to the right, through the fence, and saw Lieutenant Haldane. He was the tallest and biggest man among those at the scene. She suddenly realized that the commotion might have a connection with Melanie and with the murders in Studio City the previous night. By the time she slotted the Honda between two cars with MD plates and ran back the hospital driveway to the fence that encircled the public parking lot, Laura had half convinced herself that Melanie was hurt or missing or dead. The patrolman at the gate would not let her through, not even when she told him who she was, so she shouted to Dan Haldane. He hurried across the macadam, favoring his left leg. Not much, only file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (54 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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slightly. She might not have noticed if her senses hadn't been sharply honed by fear. He took her by the arm and led her away from the gate, along the fence, to a spot where they could talk privately. As they walked, she said, 'What's happened to Melanie?' 'Nothing.' 'Tell me the truth!' 'That is the truth. She's in her room. Safe. Just the way you left her.' They stopped, and she stood with her back to the fence, staring past Haldane toward the pulsing emergency beacons. She saw a morgue wagon with the patrol cars. No. It wasn't fair. To find Melanie after all these years and then to lose her again so soon — it was unthinkable. A tightness in her chest. A throbbing in her temples. She said, 'Who's dead?' 'I've been calling your house—' 'I want—' '—trying to get hold of you—' '—to know—' '—for the past hour and a half.' '-who's dead!' she demanded. 'Listen, it's not Melanie. Okay?' His voice was unusually soft and gentle and reassuring for a man his size. She always expected a roar, but he purred. 'Melanie's fine. Really.' Laura studied his face, his eyes. She believed that he was telling her the truth. Melanie was all right. But Laura was still scared. Haldane said, 'I didn't get home until seven this morning, fell into bed. Eleven o'clock, my phone rings, and they want me at Valley Medical. They think maybe there's some link between this homicide and Melanie because—' 'Because what?' 'Well, after all, she's a patient here. So I've been trying to get hold of you—' 'I was out shopping, buying new clothes for her,' Laura said. 'What happened? Who's dead? Are you going to tell me, for God's sake?' 'A guy in his car. That Volvo over there. Dead in the front seat of his Volvo.' 'According to his ID, his name's Ned Rink.' She leaned back against the chain-link fence, her pulse rate gradually slowing from the frantic beat it had attained. 'You ever heard of him?' Haldane asked. 'Ned Rink?' 'No.' 'I wondered if maybe he was an associate of your husband's. Like Hoffritz.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (55 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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'Not that I'm aware. The name's not familiar. Why would you think he knew Dylan? Because of the way he died? Is that it? Was he beaten to death like the others?' 'No. But it was odd.' 'Tell me.' He hesitated, and from the look in his blue eyes she could see that it was another particularly brutal homicide. 'Tell me,' she said again. 'His throat was crushed, as if someone gave him one hell of a whack with a lead pipe, caught him right across the Adam's apple. More than one whack. Lots of damage. Literally pulverized the guy's windpipe, crushed the Adam's apple, the vocal cords. Broke his neck. Cracked his spine.' 'Okay,' she said, dry-mouthed. 'I get the picture.' 'Sorry. Anyway, it's not like the bodies in Studio City, but it's unusual. You can see why we might figure they're connected. In both cases, the murders involved an unusual degree of violence. This one wasn't as bad as those, not nearly, but nevertheless ...' She pushed away from the fence. 'I want to see Melanie.' Suddenly she had to see Melanie. It was a strong physical need. She had to touch the girl, hold her, be reassured that her child was all right. She headed away from the parking lot, toward the front entrance of the hospital. Haldane walked beside her, limping slightly but apparently not in pain. 'You have an accident?' she asked. 'Huh?' 'Your leg.' 'Oh. No. Just an old football injury from college. Banged the knee up pretty bad my senior year. Sometimes it acts up in humid weather. Listen, there's more about the guy in the Volvo, Rink.' 'What?' 'He had an attaché case with him. Inside, there was a white lab coat, a stethoscope, and a pistol fitted with a silencer.' 'He shoot his assailant? Are you looking for someone with a bullet wound?' 'Nope. The piece wasn't fired. But do you see what I'm driving at? The lab coat? The stethoscope?' 'He wasn't a doctor, was he?' 'No. What it looks like to us is that maybe he was going to go into the hospital, put on the lab coat, hang the stethoscope around his neck, and pretend to be a doctor.' She glanced at him as they reached the curb and stepped up onto the file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (56 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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sidewalk. 'Why would he do that?' 'From a preliminary look, the assistant medical examiner thinks Rink was killed between four and six o'clock this morning, though he wasn't found until nine-forty-five. Now, if he was figuring to visit someone in the hospital at, say five o'clock in the morning, he'd almost have to try to pass himself off as a doctor, because visiting hours don't start until one in the afternoon. If he tried to get on one of the medical floors in civilian clothes at that hour, there's a good chance a nurse or maybe a security guard would stop him. But in a lab coat, with a stethoscope, he could probably breeze right through. They had reached the front entrance of the hospital. Laura stopped on the sidewalk. 'When you say "visit" you don't mean "visit".' 'No.' 'So you believe he intended to go into the hospital and kill someone.' 'A man doesn't carry a pistol with a silencer unless he means to use it. A silencer's illegal. Law comes down on you hard for that. You get caught with one, you're in deep sh ... deep soup. Besides, I haven't learned any details yet, but I'm told Rink has a criminal record. He's suspected of being a freelance hitman for the past few years.' 'A hired killer?' 'I'd almost bet on it.' 'But that doesn't mean he came here to kill Melanie. Could be someone else in the hospital ...' 'We already considered that. We've been checking the patient list to see if there's anyone here with a criminal record, or maybe someone who's a material witness in a case that's going to trial soon. Or any known dope dealers or members of any organized-crime family. We haven't found anything so far. Nobody who might've been Rink's target ... except Melanie.' 'Are you saying maybe this Rink killed Dylan and Hoffritz and the other man in Studio City — then came here to kill Melanie because she saw him do the others?' 'Could be.' 'But then who killed Rink?' He sighed. 'That's where the logic falls apart.' 'Whoever killed him didn't want him to kill Melanie,' Laura said. Haldane shrugged. She said, 'If that's the case, I'm glad.' 'What's to be glad about?' 'Well, if someone killed Rink to stop him from killing Melanie, it must mean she doesn't only have enemies out there. It means she has friends too.' With unconcealed pity, Haldane said, 'No. That isn't necessarily what file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (57 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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it means. The people who killed Rink probably want Melanie just as much as he did — except they want her alive.' 'Why?' 'Because she knows too much about the experiments conducted in that house.' 'Then they'd want her dead too, just like Rink.' 'Unless they need her to continue those experiments.' Laura knew it was true as soon as he said it, and her shoulders slumped under the weight of this new fear. Why had Dylan been working with a discredited fanatic like Hoffritz? And who was financing them? No legitimate foundation, university, or research institute would give a grant to Hoffritz, not since he had been forced out of UCLA. Nor would any reputable institute fund Dylan, a man who had stolen his own child and was hiding from his wife's attorneys, a man who was using his daughter as a guinea pig in experiments that had left her on the verge of autism. Whoever provided the money to support Dylan and to conduct that kind of research was insane, every bit as insane as Dylan and Hoffritz. She wanted it to be over and done with. She wanted to take Melanie out of the hospital, go home, and live happily ever after, because if anyone on earth deserved peace and happiness it was her little girl. But now 'they' weren't going to allow it. 'They' were going to try to snatch Melanie away again. 'They' wanted the child for reasons and purposes that only 'they' understood. And who in the hell were they' anyway? Faceless. Nameless. Laura couldn't fight an enemy she couldn't see or, seeing, recognize. 'They're well informed,' she said. 'And they don't waste time, either.' Haldane blinked. 'What do you mean?' 'Melanie was here at the hospital only a couple of hours before Rink came after her. Didn't take him long to find out where she'd gotten to.' 'Not long at all,' he agreed. 'Makes you think he had sources.' 'Sources? In the police department, you mean?' 'Could be. And it didn't take Rink's enemies long to learn he was after her,' Laura said. 'They all move damn fast, both groups, whoever they are.' She stood at the front doors to the hospital and studied the traffic moving on the street, as well as the shops and offices on the other side of the avenue. Sun shining in big plate-glass windows. Sun glinting off the windshields and chrome of the passing cars and trucks. In all that revealing sunlight, she hoped to spot someone suspicious, someone Haldane could chase and catch, but there were only ordinary people doing ordinary things. She was angered by their ordinariness, by the file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (58 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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enemy's failure to step up and identify himself. Irrationally, even the sunshine and the warm air angered her. Haldane had just told her that someone out there wanted her daughter dead and that someone else wanted to snatch Melanie and shove her back into a sensory-deprivation chamber or maybe into another jerry-built electric chair where they could continue to torture her for God knew what purpose. For that kind of news, the atmosphere was all wrong. The storm shouldn't have passed already. The sky should still be low, gray, full of churning clouds; rain should be falling, and the wind should be cold and blustery. It just didn't seem right that the world around her was balmy, that other people were whistling and smiling and strolling in sunshine and having fun, while she was plunging deeper into a bleak, dark, living nightmare. She looked at Dan Haldane. A breeze stirred his sandy hair, and sunlight sharpened his pleasant features, rendering him more handsome than he really was. Even disregarding the flattery of the sun and shadow, however, he was good-looking. In other circ*mstances, she might have been interested in him. The contrast between his brutish size and gentleness lent him a certain mystique. The lost potential of this relationship was one more thing she held against the unknown 'them'. 'Why were you so eager to reach me?' she asked. 'Why were you calling my place for an hour and a half? It wasn't just to tell me about Rink. You knew I'd be showing up here. You could've waited till then to give me the bad news.' He glanced toward the parking lot, where the morgue wagon was pulling away from the crime scene. When he focused on Laura again, his face was lined, his mouth grim, his eyes direct and dark with worry. 'I wanted to tell you to call a private security firm and arrange for an around-the-clock guard at your house, for after you take Melanie home.' 'A bodyguard?' 'More or less, yeah.' 'But if her life's in danger, won't the police department provide protection?' He shook his head. 'Not in this case. There's not been any direct threat against her. No phone calls. No notes.' 'Rink—' 'We don't know he was here to get Melanie. We only suspect.' 'Just the same—' 'If the state and city weren't always going through a budget crisis, if police funding hadn't been cut, if we weren't chronically short of manpower, maybe we could stretch a point and have your house put under surveillance. But given the current situation, I couldn't justify it. And if I arrange the surveillance without my captain's approval, he'll sell file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (59 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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my butt to the Alpo people, and I'll wind up in cans of dog food. He and I don't get along so well to begin with. But a security service, professional bodyguards ... that's as good as any protection we could supply you even if we had the men to do it. Can you afford to hire them, just for a few days?' 'I suppose so. I don't know how much something like that costs, but I'm not poor. If you think it'll be for only a few days—' 'I have a hunch this one's going to unravel fast. All this killing, all the chances someone's been taking — it indicates they're under a lot of pressure, that there's a time limit of some kind. I haven't the faintest goddamned idea what they've been doing to your kid or why they're so desperate to get their hands on her again, but I sense this situation's like a giant snowball, rolling fast down a mountain, fast as an express train, getting bigger and bigger as it goes. Right now, already, it's real big, gigantic, and it's not far from the bottom of the mountain. When it finally hits, it's going to bust into hundreds of pieces.' As a pediatric psychiatrist, Laura was self-confident, never uncertain as to how she should proceed with a new patient. Of course she deliberated before choosing a course of therapy, but once she had decided on her approach, she implemented it without hesitation. She was a successful healer, a mender, a repairman of the psyche, and her success had given her the confidence and authority that generated more success. But now she was lost. She felt small, vulnerable, powerless. That was a feeling that she hadn't known for a few years, not since she had learned to accept Melanie's disappearance. She said, 'I ... I don't even know how you ... how a person goes about finding bodyguards.' Haldane pulled out his wallet, fished in it, withdrew a card. 'Most of the private investigators you sent after Dylan, years ago, probably also offer bodyguard service. We're not supposed to make recommendations. But I know these guys are good, and their rates are competitive.' She took the card, looked at it: CALIFORNIA PALADIN, INC. PRIVATE INVESTIGATION Personal Security A phone number was provided at the bottom. Laura tucked the card in her purse. 'Thanks.' 'Call them before you leave the hospital.' 'I will.' 'Have them send a man here. He can follow you home.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (60 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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She felt numb. 'All right.' She turned toward the hospital doors. 'Wait.' He handed her another card, his own. 'The printed number on the front is my line at Central, but you won't be able to get me there. I'm on assignment to the East Valley Division right now, so I've written that number on the back. I want you to call me if anything occurs to you, anything about Dylan's past or old research that might have a bearing on this.' She turned the card over. 'There's two numbers here.' 'Bottom one's my home number, in case I'm not in the office.' 'Won't your office forward messages?' 'Yeah, but they might be slow about it. If you want to get me in a hurry, I want to be sure you can.' 'You usually give out your home phone like this?' 'No.' 'Then, why?' 'The thing I hate most of all...' 'What's that?' 'A crime like this. Child abuse of any kind is so infuriating and frustrating. Makes me sick. Makes my blood boil.' 'I know what you mean,' she said. 'Yeah, I guess you do.'
12 Dr. Rafael Ybarra, chief of pediatrics at Valley Medical, met with Laura in a small room near the nurses' station, where the staff took their coffee breaks. Two vending machines stood against one wall. An icemaker chugged, clinked, and clattered. Behind Laura a refrigerator hummed softly. She sat across from Ybarra at a long table on which were dogeared magazines and two ashtrays full of cold cigarette butts. The pediatrician — dark, slim, with aquiline features — was prim, even prissy. His perfectly combed hair seemed like a laquered wig. His shirt collar was crisp and stiff, tie perfectly knotted, lab coat tailored. He walked as though afraid of getting his shoes dirty, and he sat with his shoulders back and his head up, stiff and formal. He surveyed the crumbs and the cigarette ashes on the table, wrinkled his nose, and kept his hands in his lap. Laura decided she didn't like the man. Dr. Ybarra spoke with brisk authority, biting the words off: file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (61 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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'Physically, your daughter's in good condition, surprisingly good considering the circ*mstances. She is somewhat underweight, but not seriously so. Her right arm is bruised from repeated insertion of an IV needle by someone who wasn't very skilled at it. Her urethra is mildly inflamed, perhaps from catheterization. I have prescribed medication for that condition. And that's the extent of her physical problems.' Laura nodded. 'I know. I've come to take her home.' 'No, no. I wouldn't advise that,' Ybarra said. 'For one thing, she'll be too difficult to care for at home.' 'She's not actually ill?' 'No, but—' 'She's not incontinent?' 'No. She uses the bathroom.' 'She can feed herself?' 'In a fashion. You have to start feeding her, then she'll take over. And you've got to keep watching her as she eats because after a few bites she seems to forget what she's doing, loses interest. You have to continue urging her to eat. She needs help to dress herself too.' 'I can handle all that.' 'I'm still reluctant to discharge her,' Ybarra said. 'But last night Doctor Pantangello said—' At the mention of Pantangello, Ybarra wrinkled his nose. His distaste was evident in his voice. 'Doctor Pantangello only finished his residency last autumn and was accredited to this hospital last month. I am the head of pediatrics, and it is my opinion that your daughter should stay here.' 'How long?' 'Her behaviour is symptomatic of severe inhibited catatonia — not unusual in cases of prolonged confinement and mistreatment. She should remain here for a complete psychiatric evaluation. A week ... ten days.' 'No.' 'It's the best thing for the child.' His voice was so cold and measured that it was hard to believe he ever gave a thought to what was best for anyone other than Rafael Ybarra. She wondered how kids could possibly relate to a stuffy doctor like this. 'I'm a psychiatrist,' Laura said. 'I can evaluate her condition and give her the proper care at home.' 'Be your own daughter's therapist?' He raised his eyebrows. 'I don't think that's wise.' 'I disagree.' She wasn't going to explain herself to this man. 'Here, once an evaluation is completed and a course of treatment recommended, we have the proper facilities to provide that treatment. You simply don't have the right equipment at home.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (62 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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Laura frowned. 'Equipment? What equipment? Exactly what kind of treatment are you talking about?' 'That would be a decision for Doctor Gehagen in psychiatry. But if Melanie should continue in this severe catatonic state or if she should sink deeper into it, well... barbiturates and electroconvulsive therapy—' 'Like hell,' Laura said sharply, pushing her chair away from the table and getting to her feet. Ybarra blinked, surprised by her hostility. She said, 'Drugs and electric shock — that's part of what her goddamned father was doing to her the past six years.' 'Well, of course, we wouldn't be using the same drugs or the same kind of electric shock, and our intentions would be different from—' 'Yeah, sure, but how the hell is Melanie supposed to know what your intentions are? I know there are cases where barbiturates and even electroconvulsive therapy achieve desirable results, but they're not right for my daughter. She needs to regain her confidence, her feeling of selfworth. She needs freedom from fear and pain. She needs stability. She needs ... to be loved.' Ybarra shrugged. 'Well, you won't be endangering her health by taking her home today, so there's no way I can prevent you from walking out of here with her.' 'Exactly,' Laura said. *** After the morgue wagon had gone, while the SID technicians were sweeping the parking lot around the Volvo, Kerry Bums, a uniformed patrolman, approached Dan Haldane. 'A call came through from East Valley, message from Captain Mondale.' 'Ah, the esteemed and glorious captain.' 'He wants to see you right away.' 'Does he miss me?' Dan asked. 'Didn't say why.' 'I'll bet he misses me.' 'You and Mondale got a thing for each other?' 'Definitely not. Maybe Ross is gay, but I'm straight.' 'You know what I mean. You got a grudge or something?' 'It's that obvious, huh?' Dan asked facetiously. 'Is it obvious that dogs don't like cats?' 'Let's just say, if I was burning to death and Ross Mondale had the only bucket of water in ten miles, I'd prefer to extinguish the fire with my own spit.' 'That's clear enough. You gonna go over to East Valley?'
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
'He ordered me to, didn't he?' 'But are you gonna go? I gotta call back and confirm.' 'Sure.' 'He wants you right away.' 'Sure.' 'I'll call back and confirm you're on your way.' 'Absolutely,' Dan said. Kerry headed back to his patrol car, and Dan got into his unmarked department sedan. He drove out of the hospital parking lot, turned into the busy street, and headed downtown, in the opposite direction from East Valley and Ross Mondale. *** Before talking to Dr. Ybarra, Laura had called the security service that Dan Haldane had recommended. By the time she had spoken to Ybarra, had dressed Melanie in jeans and a blue-checkered blouse and sneakers, and had signed the necessary release forms, the agent from California Paladin had arrived. His name was Earl Benton, and he looked like a big old farm boy who had somehow awakened in the wrong house and had been forced to clothe himself in the contents of a banker's closet. His blond-brown hair was combed straight back from his temples, fashionably razor-cut — by a stylist, not a barber — but it didn't look quite right on him; his blocky face and plain features would probably have been better served by a shaggy, windblown, natural look. His seventeen-inch neck seemed about to pop the collar button on his Yves St. Laurent shirt, and he looked awkward and slightly uncomfortable in his three-piece gray suit. His huge, thick-fingered hands would never be graceful, but the fingernails were professionally manicured. Laura could tell at a glance that Earl was one of those tens of thousands who came to Los Angeles every year with the hope of moving up in life, which he'd probably already done. He would most likely climb higher too, once he wore off some rough edges and learned to feel at home in his designer clothes. She liked him. He had a nice, wide smile and easy manner, yet he was watchful, alert, intelligent. She met him in the corridor, outside Melanie's room, and after she explained the situation in more detail than she had given his office on the telephone, she said, 'I assume you're armed.' 'Oh, yes, ma'am.' 'Good.' 'I'll be with you till midnight,' Earl said, 'and then a new man'll come on duty.'
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'Fine.' A moment later, Laura brought Melanie into the hall, and Earl hunkered down to her level. 'What a pretty girl you are.' Melanie said nothing. 'Fact is,' he said, 'you remind me a lot of my sister, Emma.' Melanie stared through him. Taking the girl's slack hand, engulfing it in his two enormous hands, Earl continued to speak directly to her, as though she were holding up her end of the conversation. 'Emma, she's nine years younger than me, in her junior year of high school. She's raised up two prize calves, Emma has. She's got a collection of prize ribbons, probably twenty of them, from all sorts of competitions, including livestock shows at three different county fairs. You know anything about calves? You like animals? Well, calves are just the cutest things. Real gentle faces. I'll bet you'd be good with them, just like Emma.' Watching him with Melanie, Laura liked Earl Benton even more than she had on first meeting him. He said, 'Now, Melanie, don't you worry about anything, okay? I'm your friend, and as long as old Earl's your friend, nobody's going to so much as look crosswise at you.' The girl seemed utterly unaware of his presence. He released her hand, and her thin arm dropped back to her side, limp. Earl stood and rolled his shoulders to settle his jacket in place, and he looked at Laura. 'You say her daddy was responsible for making her like this?' 'He's one of the people responsible,' Laura said. 'And he's ... dead?' 'Yes.' Some of the others are still alive, though?' 'Yes.' 'Sure would like to meet one of them. Like to talk to one of them. Just me and him alone for a while. Sure would like that,' Earl said. There was a hard edge in his voice, a chilling light in his eyes that hadn't been there before: an anger that, for the first time, made him look dangerous. Laura liked that too. 'Now, ma'am — Doctor McCaffrey, I guess I should call you — when we leave here, I'll go out the door first. I know that's not gentlemanly behavior, but from now on, most times, I'll be just a couple feet ahead of you wherever we go, sort of scouting the way ahead, you might say.' 'I'm sure no one's going to start shooting at us in broad daylight or file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (65 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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anything like that,' Laura said. 'Maybe not. But I still go first.' 'All right.' 'When I tell you to do something, you right away do it, and no questions asked. Understand?' She nodded. He said, 'I might not yell at you. I might tell you to get down or to run like hell, and I might say it in a soft voice the same way I might say what a nice day it is, so you have to be alert.' 'I understand.' 'Good. I'm sure everything'll work out just fine. Now, are you two ladies ready to go home?' They headed toward the elevator that would take them down to the lobby. At least a thousand times over the past six years, Laura had dreamed about the wonderful day when she would bring Melanie home. She had imagined that it would be the happiest day of her life. She'd never thought it would be like this.
13 At Central, Dan Haldane took two folders from the clerk in Records and carried them to one of the small writing tables along the wall. The name on the first file was Ernest Andrew Cooper. By his fingerprints, he had been identified as the John Doe victim found the previous night with Dylan McCaffrey and Wilhelm Hoffritz in the Studio City house. Cooper was thirty-seven years old, stood five-eleven, and weighed one hundred and sixty pounds. There were mug shots, related to a particularly serious DUI arrest, but they were of no use to Dan, because the victim's face had been battered into featureless, bloody pulp. He would have to rely on the fingerprint match. Cooper lived in Hanco*ck Park, on a street of million-dollar and multimillion-dollar homes. He was chairman of the board and majority stockholder of Cooper Softech, a successful computer software firm. He'd been arrested three times within the city limits of Los Angeles, always for drunken driving, and on all three occasions, he had also been driving without a license. He had protested the arrests, had gone to trial in each case, had been convicted of each offense, had been fined, but file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (66 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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had served no jail time. In every case, the arresting officers noted that Cooper insisted it was immoral — and a violation of his constitutional rights — for the government to require a man to carry any form of identification whatsoever, even a driver's license. The second patrolman had also written: '...Mr. Cooper informed this officer that he (Mr. Cooper) was a member of an organization, Freedom Now, that would bring all governments to their knees, and that said organization would use his arrest as a test case to challenge certain laws, and that this officer was an unwitting tool of totalitarian forces. He then threw up and passed out.' Smiling at that last line, Dan closed the folder. He looked at the name on the second file — Edward Philip Rink — and he was anxious to see what they had on this one. First he carried both files to the nearest of three VDTs and sat down in front of the computer terminal. He switched it on, typed in his access code, and asked for a profile of Freedom Now. After a brief pause, information began to appear on the screen: Freedom Now
A political action committee registered with the Federal Elections Commission and the IRS.
Please note: Freedom Now is a legitimate organization of private citizens exercising their constitutional rights. This organization is not the subject of any police intelligence division investigation, nor should it be the subject of any such investigation while it is engaged upon the activities for which it was formed and for which it has been cleared by the Federal Elections Commission. All information in this file was accumulated from public records. This file was created for the sole purpose of identifying legitimate political organizations and distinguishing them from subversive groups. The existence of this file in no way suggests special police interest in Freedom Now.
The LAPD had taken considerable heat from the American Civil Liberties Union and others for its secret surveillance of political groups that were suspected of involvement in dangerous subversive activities. The department was still fully empowered to conduct investigations of file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (67 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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terrorist organizations, but it was enjoined from infiltrating properly registered political groups unless it obtained evidence sufficient to convince a judge that the organization in question had ties to other groups of individuals that were intent upon terrorist activities. The disclaimer at the head of the file was familiar, and Dan didn't bother to read it. He pressed the cursor key to roll up more data. Freedom Now — current officers President: Ernest Andrew Cooper, Hanco*ck Park Treasurer: Wilhelm Stephan Hoffritz, Westwood Secretary: Mary Katherine O'Hara, Burbank
Freedom Now was chartered in 1990 for the purpose of supporting those libertarian-oriented candidates with a publicly expressed intention of working for the eventual abolition of all but minimalist government and for the eventual dissolution of all political parties.
Cooper and Hoffritz, president and treasurer, were both dead. And Freedom Now had been chartered the same year as Dylan McCaffrey had vanished with his young daughter, which might or might not be a coincidence. Interesting, anyway. Dan needed twenty minutes to read the computer file and make notes. Then he switched off the VDT and picked up the paper file on Ned Rink. The documents were numerous, but he didn't find them boring. Rink, the man found dead in the Volvo that same morning, was thirty-nine. He had graduated from Los Angeles Police Academy when he was twentyone, had served four years with the force while taking criminal-law courses at USC in the evenings. He'd twice been the subject of LAPD internal investigations subsequent to charges of brutality, but for lack of evidence, no action had been taken as a result of the accusations against him. He had applied to the FBI, had been accepted, after being granted a variance on minimum height requirements to comply with antidiscrimination laws, and had worked for the Bureau for five years. Nine years ago, he had been discharged from the FBI for reasons unknown, though there were indications that he had exceeded his authority and, on more than one occasion, had shown too much zeal during the interrogation of a suspect. Dan thought he knew the type. Some men chose policework because they wanted to perform a socially useful function, some because their file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (68 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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childhood heroes had been policemen, some because their fathers had been cops, some because the job was reasonably secure and offered a good pension. There were a hundred reasons. For men like Rink, the attraction was power; they found a special thrill in issuing orders, exercising authority, not because they took pleasure in leading well, but because they enjoyed telling other people what to do and being treated with deference. According to the file, eight years ago, following his dismissal from the FBI, Rink had been arrested for assault with intent to kill. The charge had been reduced to simple assault to ensure a conviction, which had been obtained, and Rink had served ten months with time off for good behavior. Six years ago he was arrested again, for suspicion of murder. The evidence didn't hold up, and charges were eventually dropped. After that, Rink was a lot more careful. Local, state, and federal authorities believed he was a freelance killer, serving the underworld and anyone else who would pay for his services, and there was circ*mstantial evidence linking him to nine murders in the past five years — which was probably just the tip of the iceberg — but no police agency had acquired enough evidence to bring Rink to justice. Justice had been dealt to him anyway. By something other than a police agency or a court. Haldane closed the folder, put it on top of the Cooper file, and withdrew his current batch of lists from his pocket. He spent a few minutes looking through them, and something did pop up this time. A name: Mary O'Hara. One of the officers of Freedom Now. Her name and number had been on the notepad beside the phone in Dylan McCaffrey's office. He put the lists away and sat for a while, thinking. God, what a mess. Two doctors of psychology, both formerly at UCLA — dead. One millionaire businessman and political activist — dead. One ex-cop, exFBI agent, and suspected hit man — dead. A weird gray room hidden in an ordinary suburban house where one little girl had been, among other things, tortured with electric shocks. By her own father. The Great God of Sleazy Journalism was generous to his people: The press was going to love this one. Dan returned the two files to the Records clerk and rode the elevator up to the Scientific Investigation Division.
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As soon as they got in the house, Earl Benton went through every room to be sure that the windows and doors were locked. He closed the drapes and blinds and advised Laura and Melanie to stay away from the windows. After choosing a few magazines from the stack of publications in the brass magazine tray in Laura's study, Earl moved a chair close to one of the front windows in the living room, from which he could see the walk and street beyond. 'Might look like I'm just lazing away, but don't worry. Nothing in these magazines will distract me.' 'I'm not worried.' 'Most of this job is just sitting and waiting. A guy would go nuts if he didn't have a magazine or a newspaper.' 'I understand,' she assured him. Pepper, the calico, was more interested in Earl than in Melanie. She circled him warily for some time, studying him, sniffing at his feet. Finally she clambered onto him and demanded to be petted. 'Nice kitty,' he said, scratching Pepper behind the ears. She settled on his lap with a blissful look of contentment. 'She doesn't take to many people that fast,' Laura told him. Earl grinned. 'Always have had a way with animals.' It was silly, but Pepper's acceptance of Earl Benton reassured Laura and made her feel even better about him. She trusted him completely now. And what does that mean? she asked herself. Didn't I trust him completely already? Subconsciously, did I have doubts about him? He had been hired to protect her and Melanie, and that's what he would do. She had no reason to suspect that he was connected with either the people who wanted Melanie dead — or the ones who seemed to want her alive and back in another gray room. Yet that was exactly what Laura had suspected, just a little, deep down, on a purely subconscious level. She would have to guard against paranoia. She didn't know who her enemies were: They remained faceless. There was a tendency, therefore, to suspect everyone, to spin grandiose conspiracy theories that could wind up encompassing everyone in the world but she herself and Melanie. After brewing coffee for Earl and for herself, she made hot chocolate for Melanie and carried it into the den, where the girl waited. Laura had made arrangements to take an indefinite leave of absence from St. Mark's and to have her private patients covered by an associate for at least the upcoming week. She intended to begin therapy with Melanie right away, this afternoon, but she didn't want to conduct the session in file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (70 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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the same room with Earl, for he would be a distraction. The study was small but comfortable. Two walls were covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that were filled with an eclectic collection of hardcover titles ranging from exotic volumes on highly specialized areas of psychology to popular fiction. The other walls were covered with beige grasscloth. There were two Delacroix prints, a dark pine desk with an upholstered chair, a rocking chair, and an emerald-green sofa with lots of pillows. Soft amber light came from a pair of brass Stiffel lamps on matching end tables; Earl had closed the emerald-green drapes at both windows. Melanie was sitting on the sofa, her upturned hands in her lap, staring at her palms. 'Melanie.' The girl gave no indication that she was aware of her mother's presence. 'Honey, I brought you some hot chocolate.' When the girl still did not respond, Laura sat beside her. Holding the mug of cocoa in one hand, she put her other hand under Melanie's chin, tilted the girl's head up, and looked into her eyes. They were still disturbingly empty eyes, and Laura could make no connection with them, elicit no awareness. She said, 'I want you to drink this, Melanie. It's good, tasty. You'll like it. I know you'll like it.' She put the rim of the mug to the girl's lips, and with a lot of coaxing, she managed to get her daughter to sip the cocoa. Some of it dribbled down Melanie's chin, and Laura wiped it away with a paper napkin before it could drip onto the sofa. With more encouragement, the girl began to drink less sloppily. At last her small frail hands came up, and she held the mug firmly enough that Laura was able to let go. Once she had hold of the mug, Melanie drank the remainder of the hot chocolate quickly, greedily. When it was all gone, she licked her lips. In her eyes there was for the briefest moment a flicker of life, an indication of consciousness; and for a second, but no longer than a second, her eyes met her mother's eyes, didn't stare through Laura as before, but at her. That precious instant of contact was electrifying. Unhappily, Melanie at once sank back into her secret inner world, and her eyes glazed over again. But now Laura knew the child was capable of returning from her self-imposed exile; therefore, there was a chance, however small, that she could be brought back not just for a second but permanently. She took the empty mug out of Melanie's hands, put it on one of the end tables, then sat sideways on the couch, facing the girl. She took both of Melanie's hands and said, 'Honey, it's been so long, and you were so little when we saw each other last ... maybe you aren't exactly sure who I file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (71 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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am. I'm your mother, Melanie.' The girl didn't react. She spoke softly, reassuringly, taking the child through it step by step, because she was sure that, at least on a subconscious level, the girl could understand her. 'I brought you into this world because I wanted you more than anything. You were such a beautiful baby, so sweet, never any trouble. You learned to walk and talk sooner than I expected, and I was so proud of you. So very proud. Then you were stolen from me, and while you were gone, all I wanted was to get you back. To hold you again and love you again. And now, baby, the most important thing is to make you well, to bring you out of that hole you're hiding in. I'm going to do that, honey. I'm going to make you well. Help you get well.' The girl said nothing. Her green eyes indicated that her attention was far away. Laura pulled the girl onto her lap, put her arms around her, held her. For a while, they just sat like that, being close, giving it time, because they had to establish bonds of affection in order for the therapy to have a chance. After a few minutes, Laura found herself humming a lullaby, then crooning the lyrics almost in a whisper. She smoothed her daughter's forehead, used fingers to comb the girl's hair back from her face. Melanie's eyes remained distant, glazed, but she raised one hand to her face and put a thumb in her mouth. As if she were a baby. As she had done when she had been three years old. Tears welled in Laura's eyes. Her voice quivered, but she kept crooning softly and running her hand through her daughter's silken hair. Then she remembered how hard she had tried to break Melanie of the thumb-sucking habit six years ago, and it seemed funny that she should be so pleased and moved by it now. Suddenly she was half crying and half laughing, and she must have looked ridiculous, but she felt wonderful. In fact, she felt so good and was so encouraged by the girl's thumbsucking, by the instant of real eye contact that had followed the drinking of the hot chocolate, that she decided to try hypnosis today, rather than waiting until tomorrow, as planned. In Melanie's conscious but semicatatonic state, the child was withdrawn into deep fantasy and was resistant to being brought up from those sheltering depths of her psyche. Hypnotized, she would be more malleable, more open to suggestion, and might be drawn back at least part of the way toward the real world. Hypnotizing someone in Melanie's condition could be either much easier than hypnotizing an alert person — or nearly impossible. Laura continued softly singing the lullaby and began to massage the girl's temples, moving her fingertips around and around in small circles, file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (72 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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pressing lightly. When the child's eyes began to flutter, Laura stopped singing and said, in a whisper, 'Let go, baby. Sleep now, baby, sleep, that's it, I want you to sleep, just relax ... you are settling into a deep natural sleep ... settling down like a feather floating down and down through very still warm air ... settling down and down ... sleep ... but you will continue to listen to my voice ... down and down like a lazily turning, like a drifting feather ... down into sleep ... but my voice will follow you down into sleep ... down ... down ... and you will listen to me and answer all questions I ask ... sleep but listen and obey. Listen and respond. And she massaged even more lightly than before, moving her fingertips more slowly, until at last the girl's eyes closed and her breathing indicated that she was sound asleep. Pepper slunk through the doorway and regarded them with evident curiosity. Then she crossed the room, jumped onto the rocker, and curled in a ball. Still holding her daughter in her lap, Laura said, 'You are all the way down now, deep asleep. But you hear me and you will answer me when I ask you questions.' The girl's mouth was slack, lips parted slightly. 'Can you hear me, Melanie?' The girl said nothing. 'Melanie, can you hear me?' The girl sighed, a sound as soft as the light from the amber-shaded brass lamps. 'Uh ...' It was the first sound that she had made since Laura had seen her in the hospital last night. 'What is your name?' The child's brow furrowed. 'Muh ...' The calico cat raised its head. 'Melanie? Is that your name? Melanie?' 'Muh ... muh.' Pepper's ears pricked up. Laura decided to move to another question. 'Do you know who I am, Melanie?' Still sleeping, the child licked her lips. 'Muh ... muh ... it ... ah ... it ...' She twitched and began to raise one hand as if fending something off. 'Easy,' Laura said. 'Relax. Be calm. Relax and be calm and sleep. You're safe. You're safe with me.' The girl lowered her hand. She sighed. When the lines in the girl's face smoothed out somewhat, Laura repeated the question. 'Do you know who I am?' Melanie made a wordless murmuring-whimpering sound. 'Do you know who I am, file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (73 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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Melanie?' Lines of worry or fear returned to the child's face, and she said, 'Umm ... uh ... uh-uh-uh ... it ... it...' Taking a different tack, Laura said, 'What are you afraid of, Melanie?' 'It ... it ... there...' Fear was in her voice now as well as carved into the pale flesh of her face. 'What do you see?' Laura asked. 'What are you afraid of, honey? What do you see?' "The ... there ... the...' Pepper co*cked her head and arched her back. The cat had become tense, watching the girl intently. The air was unnaturally still and heavy. Although it wasn't possible, the shadows in the corners of the room seemed darker and larger now than they had been a moment ago. 'It ... there ... no, no, no, no.' Laura put one hand on her daughter's creased brow, reassuring her, and waited expectantly as the girl strove to speak. A strange, disconcerting feeling came over her, and she felt a chill creeping like a living thing up the length of her spine. 'Where are you, Melanie?' 'No ...' 'Are you in the gray room?' The girl was audibly grinding her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut, fisting her hands, as though resisting something very strong. Laura had been planning to regress her, take her back in time to the gray room in that Studio City house, but it seemed as though the girl had drifted back there without encouragement, as soon as she'd been hypnotized. But that didn't make sense: Laura had never heard of spontaneous hypnotic regression. The patient had to be guided, encouraged backward to the scene of the trauma. 'Where are you, Melanie?' 'N-n-no ... the ... no!' 'Easy. Be still. What are you afraid of?' 'Please ... no ...' 'Be calm, honey. What do you see? Tell me, baby. Tell Mommy what you see. The tank, the deprivation chamber? No one's going to make you go back in there, honey.' But that wasn't what frightened the girl. Laura's reassurances didn't calm her. 'The ... the ...' 'The aversion-therapy chair? The electric chair? You'll never be put in that again, either.' Something else terrified the child. She shuddered and began to strain against Laura, as if she wanted to get away, run. file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (74 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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'Honey, you're safe with me,' Laura said, holding her tighter than before. 'It can't hurt you.' 'Opening ... it's opening ... no ... it ... coming open...' 'Easy,' Laura said. As the chill climbed all the way up her back and reached the nape of her neck, she sensed that something of terrible importance was about to happen.
15 Behind his back, Lieutenant Felix Porteau of the Scientific Investigation Division was called 'Poirot,' after Agatha Christie's pompous Belgian detective. It was clear to Dan that Porteau preferred to think of himself as Sherlock Holmes, in spite of his stocky legs, potbelly, slumped shoulders, Santa Claus face, and high-domed bald head. To bolster his desired image, Porteau was seldom without a curved-stem pipe in which he smoked an aromatic blend of shag tobacco. The pipe was not lit when Dan entered Porteau's office, but the SID man snatched it up from an ashtray and used it to point toward a chair. 'Sit down, Daniel, sit down. I've been expecting you, of course. I imagine you're here to inquire after my findings in the Studio City affair.' 'Amazingly perceptive, Felix.' Porteau rocked back in his chair. 'A singular case, this one. Naturally, it will be several days before the full results are in from my laboratory.' It was always my laboratory with Felix, as if he wasn't in charge of a bigcity police department's forensics unit but was, instead, conducting experiments in one room of his private quarters above Baker Street. 'However, I could, if you wish, share some of the preliminary findings.' 'That would be gracious of you.' Porteau bit on the mouthpiece of the pipe, gave Dan a sly look, and smiled. 'You mock me, Daniel.' 'Never.' 'Yes. You mock everyone.' 'You make me sound like a wiseass.' 'You are.' 'Thanks so much.' 'But a nice, witty, intelligent, charming wiseass — and that makes all the difference.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (75 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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'Now you make me sound like Cary Grant.' 'Isn't that how you see yourself?' Dan thought about it. 'Well, maybe half Cary Grant and, right now, half Wile E. Coyote.' 'Who?' 'The coyote in the road-runner cartoons.' 'Ah. And how so?' 'I get the feeling a giant boulder just rolled off the edge of a cliff above me, and it's falling toward me right now, going to smash me flat at any second.' 'The rock is this case?' 'Yeah. Any latent prints that're going to help us?' Porteau opened a desk drawer and withdrew a pouch of tobacco. He began to prepare his pipe. 'Lots of prints belonging to the three victims. All over the house. Others belonging to the little girl — although those were in the converted garage.' 'The lab.' 'The gray room, as one of my men called it.' 'Then she was always kept in that room?' 'That's certainly the most logical deduction, yes. We do have a few partials from the hall bathroom that conceivably could be hers, but none anywhere else in the house.' 'And nothing else? No prints at all that might've belonged to the killers?' 'Oh, certainly, we found numerous other prints, mostly partials. We're putting them through the new high-speed computerized comparison program, trying to match them with prints of known criminals on file, but we've had no luck so far. Not likely to have any, either.' He paused, having tamped the tobacco into the generous bowl of his pipe, and searched his pockets for a match. 'In your experience, Daniel, how many times has a murderer left clear, unsmudged, and easily identifiable fingerprints at the scene of his crime?' 'Twice,' Dan said. 'In fourteen years. So we'll get no help from prints. What have we got?' Porteau got his pipe fired up, exhaled sweetish smoke, and shook out the match. 'No weapon was found—' 'One of the victims had a fireplace poker.' Porteau nodded. 'Mr. Cooper intended to defend himself with it, apparently. But it was never used to strike anyone. The only blood on it was Cooper's own, and only a few drops of that, all part of the natural spray pattern that spotted the walls and the floor around the body.' 'So Cooper didn't manage to land any blows on his assailant, and he wasn't hit with the poker himself.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (76 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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'Precisely.' 'Did the vacuum crew come up with anything besides dirt?' 'The results are being analyzed. Frankly, I'm not optimistic.' Porteau usually was optimistic, another Holmesian trait, so his pessimism in the current case was especially disturbing. Dan said, 'What about the scrapings from under the victims' fingernails?' 'Nothing of interest. No skin, no hair, no blood but their own under their nails, which probably means they didn't get a chance to claw at their assailants.' 'But the killers had to move in close. I mean, Felix, they beat these people to death.' 'Yes. But although they had to get close, none of them seems to have been wounded. We took scores of blood samples from every surface in those rooms, only to discover that all of it belonged to the victims.' They sat in silence. Porteau puffed clouds of fragrant smoke into the air above his head. A distant look came into his eyes as he pondered the evidence in the case, and if he, like Sherlock, had played a violin, he would have reached for it now. At last Dan said, 'I assume that you saw the photographs of the bodies.' 'Yes. Horrible. Incredible. Such fury.' 'Do you get the feeling that this one is going to be really weird?' 'Daniel, I find all murder to be weird,' Porteau said. 'But this one seems weirder than usual.' 'Weirder than usual,' Porteau agreed, and smiled, as if pleased by the challenge. 'I'm beginning to get the creeps.' 'Look out for that falling boulder, Mr. Coyote.' Dan left the SID lieutenant in his aromatic haze and rode the elevator back down, this time to the basem*nt, where Pathology was located.
16 Still in a hypnotic state, the girl said, 'No!' 'Melanie, honey, take it easy, take it easy now. Nobody's going to hurt you. The girl tossed her head, drawing the quick shallow inhalations indicative of panic. A half-born wail of fear and dread was trapped in file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (77 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
her throat and issued only as a thin, high-pitched eeeeeeee. She squirmed and tried to push herself off her mother's lap. Laura held her. 'Stop struggling, Melanie. Relax. Be still. Be calm.' Suddenly the girl struck out at an imaginary assailant, flailing with both hands. Unintentionally she struck her mother on the breast, then on the face, two hard and painful blows. For an instant Laura was stunned. The blow to the face was hard enough to bring involuntary tears of pain to her eyes. Melanie rolled off her mother's lap, onto the floor, and began to crawl away from the couch. 'Melanie, stop!' In spite of the posthypnotic suggestion that required the girl to respond to and obey Laura's commands, she ignored her mother. She crawled past the rocking chair, making pitiful animal sounds of pure, blind terror. The calico cat stood on the rocking chair, ears flattened, hissing fearfully. As Melanie scrambled past the chair, Pepper leaped over the girl, hit the floor running, and streaked out of the study. 'Melanie, listen to me.' The girl disappeared beyond the desk. Her left cheek still stinging where the child had struck her, Laura also went behind the desk. Melanie had crawled into the kneehole and was hiding there. Laura stooped down and peered in at her. The girl sat with her knees drawn up, arms locked around her legs, hunched, chin against her knees, peering out with wide eyes that, as before, saw neither Laura nor anything else in that room. 'Honey?' Gasping for breath as if she had run a long way, the girl said, 'Don't let it ... open. Keep it ... shut ... tight shut. Earl Benton stepped into the doorway. 'You okay?' Laura looked at him over the top of the desk. 'Yes. Just ... my daughter, but she'll be okay.' 'You're sure? You don't need me?' No, no. I need to be alone with her. I can handle it.' Reluctantly, Earl retreated to the living room. Laura looked under the desk again. Melanie was still breathing hard, and now she was shaking violently too. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. 'Come out of there, honey.' The girl didn't move. 'Melanie, you will listen to me, and you will do what I tell you. Come out of there right now.' Instead, the girl tried to draw farther back into the kneehole, though file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (78 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
she had nowhere to go. Laura had never known a patient to rebel so completely during hypnotic therapy. She studied the girl and at last decided to allow her to remain under the desk for the time being, since she seemed to feel at least marginally safer there. 'Honey, what are you hiding from?' No answer. 'Melanie, you must tell me — what did you see that you wanted to keep shut?' 'Don't let it open,' the girl said miserably, as if responding to Laura for the first time, although her eyes still remained focused on some horror in another time and place. 'Don't let what open? Tell me, Melanie.' 'Keep it closed!' the girl cried, and she squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip so hard that she drew a small spot of blood. Laura reached into the kneehole and consolingly put one hand on her daughter's arm. 'Honey, what are you talking about? I'll help you keep it closed if you'll only tell me what you're talking about.' 'The d-d-door,' the girl said. 'What door?' 'The door!' 'The door to the tank?' 'It's coming open, it's coming open!' 'No,' Laura said sharply. 'Listen to me. You have to listen to me and accept what I tell you. The door isn't coming open. It's shut. Tightly shut. Look at it. See? It's not even ajar, not even open a little crack.' 'Not even a crack,' the girl said, and now there was no doubt that some part of her could hear Laura and respond, even though she continued to gaze through Laura and even though she remained, for the most part, in some other reality of her own making. 'Not even a crack,' Laura repeated, greatly relieved to be exerting some control at last. The girl calmed a little. She was trembling, and her face was still lined with fear, but she was not biting her lip anymore. A crimson thread of blood sewed a curved seam down her chin. Laura said, 'Now, honey, the door is closed, and it's going to stay closed, and nothing on the other side will be able to open it, because I've put a new lock on it, a heavy dead-bolt lock. Do you understand?' 'Yes,' the girl said weakly, doubtfully. 'Look at the door. There's a big shiny new lock on it. Do you see the new lock?' 'Yes,' Melanie said, more confident this time. 'A big brass lock. Enormous.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (79 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
'Yes.' 'Enormous and strong. Absolutely nothing in the world could break through that lock.' 'Nothing,' the girl agreed. 'Good. Very good. Now ... even though the door can't be opened, I'd like to know what's on the other side of it.' The girl said nothing. 'Honey? Remember the strong lock. You're safe now. So tell me what's on the other side of the door.' Melanie's small white hands pulled and patted the empty air under the desk, as though she were attempting to draw a picture of something. 'What's on the other side of the door?' Laura asked again. The hands moved ceaselessly. The girl made wordless, frustrated sounds. 'Tell me, honey.' 'The door...' 'Where does the door lead?' 'The door...' 'What kind of room is on the other side?' 'The door to...' 'To where?' 'The door ... to ... December,' Melanie said. Her fear broke under the crushing weight of many other emotions — misery, despair, grief, loneliness, frustration — all of which were audible in the wordless sounds that she made and in her uncontrollable sobbing. Then: 'Mommy? Mommy?' 'I'm right here, baby,' Laura said, startled to hear her daughter calling for her. 'Mommy?' 'Right here. Come to me, baby. Come out from under there.' Weeping, the girl did not come but cried, again, 'Mommy?' She seemed to think she was alone, far from Laura's consoling embrace, though in fact they were only inches apart. 'Oh, Mommy! Mommy!' Staring into the shadowy recess beneath the desk, watching her little girl weep and gibber, reaching back in there, touching the child, Laura shared some of Melanie's feelings, especially grief and frustration, but she was also filled with a powerful curiosity. The door to December? 'Mama?' 'Here. Right here.' They were so close yet they remained separated by an immense and mysterious gulf.
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
17 Luther Williams was a young black pathologist working for the LAPD. He dressed as though he were the ghost of Sammy Davis, Jr. — leisure suits and too much jewelry — but was as articulate and amusing as Thomas Sowell, the black sociologist. Luther was an admirer of Sowell and of other sociologists and economists in the burgeoning conservative movement within the black intellectual community, and could quote from their books at length. Too great a length. Several times, he had lectured Dan on pragmatic politics and had expounded upon the virtues of free-market economics as a mechanism for lifting the poor out of poverty. He was such a fine pathologist, with such a sensitive eye for the anomalous details that were important in forensic medicine, that it was almost worth tolerating his tedious political dissections in order to obtain the information he collected from his dissections of the flesh. Almost. Luther was sitting at a microscope, examining a tissue sample, when Dan entered the green-tiled lab. He looked up and grinned when he saw who was visiting him. 'Danny boy! Did you use those tickets I gave you?' For a moment, Dan didn't know what the pathologist was talking about, but then he remembered. Luther had bought two tickets to a debate between G. Gordon Liddy and Timothy Leary, and then something had come up to prevent him from going. He had run into Dan in the hall a week ago and had insisted that Dan take the tickets. 'It'll raise your consciousness,' he had said. Now, Dan fidgeted. 'Well, I told you last week that I probably couldn't make it. I asked you to give the tickets to someone else.' 'You didn't go?' Luther asked, disappointed. 'No time.' 'Danny, Danny, you've got to make time for these things. There's a battle raging that'll shape our lives, a battle between those who love freedom and those who don't, a quiet war between freedom-loving libertarians and freedom-hating fascists and leftists.' Dan hadn't voted — or even registered to vote — in twelve years. He didn't much care which party or ideological faction was in power. It wasn't that he thought Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, were all screwups; they probably were, but he didn't really care, and that wasn't the reason for his stubborn political indifference. He figured society would muddle through regardless of who was in charge, and he had no time to listen to boring political arguments. file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (81 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
His main interest, his consuming interest, was murder, which was why he had no time for politics. Murder and murderers. Some people were capable of the most unthinkable brutality, and he was fascinated with them. Not those killers who were obviously lunatics. Not those who killed in mindless fits of rage or passion after being subjected to understandable provocation. But the others. Some husbands could kill their wives without remorse, merely because they had grown tired of them. Some mothers could kill their children, just because they no longer wanted the responsibility of raising them, and they were without grief or even a sense of guilt. Hell, some people out there could kill anybody at all for any reason, even for trivial reasons like being cut off in traffic; they were amoral sociopaths, and Dan was never bored with them or with their aberrant psychology. He wanted to understand them. Were they mentally ill — or throwbacks? Were only certain people capable of cold-blooded murder when there was no element of selfdefense involved, or were these killers a special breed? If they were special, wolves in a society of sheep, he wanted to know what made them different. What was missing in them? Why were compassion and empathy unknown to them? He didn't entirely understand his intellectual fascination with murder. He did not have a particularly ruminative or philosophical bent — or at least he didn't think of himself in those terms. Perhaps, working day after day in a world of violence and blood and death, it was impossible not to grow philosophical with the passage of years. Maybe most other homicide cops spent a lot of time contemplating the dark side of human potential; maybe he wasn't the only one; he had no way of knowing; it wasn't the kind of thing most cops talked about. In his case, of course, perhaps his need to understand murder and the murderer's mind was related to the fact that both his brother and sister had been murdered. Maybe. Now, smelling strongly of alcohol and vaguely of other chemicals used in the pathology lab, smiling up at Dan, Luther Williams said, 'Listen, Danny, next week there's a really terrific debate between—' Dan interrupted him. 'Luther, I'm sorry, but I don't have time to chat. I need some information, and I need it right away.' 'What's the big hurry?' 'I gotta pee.' 'Look, Danny, I know politics bores you—' 'No, really, it isn't that,' Dan said with a straight face. 'I actually gotta pee.' Luther sighed. 'Someday the totalitarians will take over, and they'll pass laws so you can't pee unless you have permission from the Official Federal Urinary Gatekeeper.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (82 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
'Ouch.' 'Then you'll come to me with your bladder bursting, and you'll say, "Luther, my God, why didn't you warn me about these people?"' 'No, no. I promise to crawl away somewhere, all by myself, and let my bladder burst in silence. I promise — swear — not to bother you. 'Yeah, because you'd rather let your bladder burst than have to hear me say I told you so.' Luther was sitting at the lab table on a wheeled stool. Dan pulled up another stool and sat down in front of him. 'Okay. Hit me with the dazzling scientific insights, Doctor Williams. You have three special customers from last night. McCaffrey, Hoffritz, and Cooper.' 'They're scheduled for autopsy this evening.' 'They haven't been done already?' 'We have a backlog here, Danny. They kill 'em faster than we can cut 'em open.' 'Sounds like a violation of free-market principles,' Dan said. 'Huh?' 'You've got a lot more supply than you have demand.' 'Isn't that the truth? Would you like to go into the cooler, see the tables where we have all the stiffs stacked on top of one another?' 'No thanks, but it sounds like a charming excursion.' 'Pretty soon, we'll have to start piling them in the closets with bags of ice.' 'You at least seen the three I'm interested in?' 'Oh, yeah.' 'Can you tell me anything about them?' 'They're dead.' 'As soon as the totalitarians take over, they're going to do away with all smartass black pathologists, first thing.' 'Hey, that's what I'm telling you,' Luther said. 'You've examined the wounds on those three?' His dark face darkening even further, the pathologist said, 'Never seen anything like it. Each corpse is a mass of overlapping contusions, scores of them, maybe hundreds. Such a mess. Jesus. Yet no two of those blows have the same configuration. Dozens of points of fracture too, but there's no pattern to the bone injuries. The autopsy will tell us for sure, but based on just a preliminary examination, I'd say the bones sometimes look snapped, sometimes splintered, sometimes ... crushed. Now, there's no damn way a blunt instrument, used as a club, can pulverize bone. A blow will crack or splinter bone, but that's strictly impact. Impact doesn't crush — unless it's tremendous impact, like you get when a car rams a pedestrian and pins him against a brick wall. Generally, you can only crush bone by applying pressure, by squeezing, file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (83 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
and I'm talking a lot of pressure. 'So, what were they hit with?' 'You don't get me. See, when somebody's bashed as hard and as many times as these guys were, you'll find a pattern of the striking face — rough, smooth, sharp, rounded, whatever. And you'll be able to say, "This fella was wasted with a hammer that had a round striking surface, one inch in diameter, with a gently beveled edge." Or maybe it's a crowbar, the dull end of a hatchet, a bookend, or a salami. But once you've examined the wounds, you'll usually be able to put a name to the instrument. But not this time. Every contusion has a different shape. Every injury appears to've been made by a different instrument.' Pulling on his left earlobe, Dan said, 'I suppose we can rule out the possibility that the killer walked into that house with a suitcase full of blunt instruments just because he likes variety. I don't see the victims standing still while he traded the hammer for a shovel and the shovel for a lug wrench.' 'I'd think that was a safe assumption. The thing is.. . I didn't notice one wound that looked exactly like a hammer blow or like the mark from a crowbar or a lug wrench. Each contusion was not only different from other contusions, but each was unique, oddly shaped. 'Any ideas at all?' 'Well, if this were an old Fu Manchu novel, I'd say we have a villain who's invented a fiendish new weapon, a compressed-air machine that has more force than Arnold Schwarzenegger wielding a sledgehammer.' 'Colorful theory. But not too damned likely.' 'You ever read Sax Rohmer, those old Fu Manchu books?' Hell, they were full of exotic weapons, far-out methods of murder.' 'This is real life.' 'That's what they say.' 'Real life isn't a Fu Manchu novel.' Luther shrugged. 'I'm not so sure. You been watching the news lately?' 'I need something better than that, Luther. I need a whole lot of help with this one.' They stared at each other. Then, without a trace of humor this time, Luther said, 'But that is what it looks like, Danny. Like they were beaten to death with a hammer of air.'
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
18 After Laura encouraged Melanie to come out from beneath the desk, she brought the girl up from the hypnotic state. Well, not up exactly: The child didn't rise to full consciousness. Rather, she moved out of the hypnotic trance and more or less sideways, returning to the semicatatonic state in which she'd been since the police had found her. Laura had nurtured a small hope that termination of the hypnotic trance would snap the girl out of her catatonia as well. Briefly the child's eyes did fix on Laura's, and she put one hand against Laura's cheek as if disbelieving her mother's presence. 'Stay with me, baby. Don't slip away. Stay with me.' But the girl slipped away nevertheless. The moment of contact was poignant but brief, achingly brief. The therapy session had taken its toll from Melanie. Her face was slack with exhaustion, and her eyes were bloodshot. Laura put Melanie to bed for a nap, and the girl was asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. When Laura went out to the living room, she discovered that Earl Benton had left his chair and had taken off his suit jacket. He had also drawn the revolver from his shoulder holster and was holding it in his right hand, down at his side, not as if he would use it that very minute, but as if he thought he might have a need for it soon. He was standing at a French window, staring outside, a worried look on his broad face. 'Earl?' she said uncertainly. He glanced at her. 'Where's Melanie?' 'Napping.' He returned his attention to the street in front of the house. 'Better go sit with her.' Her breath caught in her throat. She swallowed hard. 'What's wrong?' 'Maybe nothing. Half an hour ago, a telephone-company van pulled up across the street, parked there. Nobody got out.' She stepped beside him at the window. A gray-and-blue van with white-and-blue lettering was across from the house, slightly uphill, parked half in sunlight and half in the shade of a jacaranda. It looked like all the other phone-company vans she had ever seen: nothing special about it, nothing sinister. 'Why's it look suspicious to you?' she asked. 'Like I said, so far as I could see, nobody got out. 'Maybe the repairman's just taking a nap on company time.' 'Not likely. Phone company's too well managed to let that sort of thing go on a lot. Besides, it just ... smells. I get a feeling about it. I've file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (85 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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seen this sort of thing before, and what it means to me is that we're under surveillance.' 'Surveillance? Who?' 'Hard to say. But phone-company vans ... well, the feds often work that way.' 'Federal agents?' 'Yeah.' Astonished, she shifted her attention from the van to Earl's profile. He didn't seem to share her surprise. 'You mean, like FBI?' 'Maybe. Or the Treasury Department — Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Maybe even a security arm of the Defense Department. There're all different kinds of feds.' 'But why would federal agents have us under surveillance? We're the victims — the potential victims, anyway — not criminals.' 'I didn't say it was for sure the feds. I just said they often work this way.' Staring at Earl while he stared at the van, Laura realized that he had changed. He was no longer the aw-shucks guy with a veneer of West L.A. polish. He looked harder, older than his twenty-six years, and his manner was more brisk and professional than before. Confused, Laura said, 'Well, if it's government men, we don't have anything to worry about.' 'Don't we?' 'They aren't the ones trying to kill Melanie.' 'Aren't they?' Startled, she said, 'Well, of course they aren't. It wasn't the government that killed my husband and the other two.' 'How do you know that?' he asked, his eyes still riveted on the telephone-company van. 'Oh, for heaven's sake—' 'Your husband and one of the men killed with him ... they used to work at UCLA.' 'So?' 'They received grants. For research.' 'Yes, of course, but—' 'Some of those grants, maybe even most of them, came from the government, didn't they?' Laura didn't bother to reply, because Earl obviously knew the answer already. 'Defense Department grants,' he said. She nodded. 'And others.' He said, 'The Defense Department would be interested in behavior modification. Mind control. The best way to deal with an enemy is to file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (86 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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control his mind, make him your friend, without him ever realizing that he's been manipulated. A real breakthrough in that field could put an end to war as we know it. But, hell, as far as that goes, pretty much any damn government agency would be interested in mind control. 'How do you know all this about Dylan's work? I didn't tell you all this.' Instead of answering her, Earl said, 'Maybe your husband and Hoffritz were still working for the government.' 'Hoffritz was a discredited—' 'But if his research was important, if it was producing results, they wouldn't care if he was discredited in the academic community. They'd still use him.' He glanced at her again, and there was a cynicism in his eyes, a weary-of-the-world expression on his face that made him appear utterly different from the way he'd looked earlier. She could no longer see the farm boy at all, and she wondered if that image of a simple man seeking polish and sophistication from a new life in L.A. had been an act. She was suddenly sure that Earl Benton, even as young as he was, had never been simple. And she was no longer sure that she should trust him. The situation had abruptly become so complex, the possibilities so multifarious, that she felt a bit dizzy. 'A government conspiracy? But then why would they have killed Dylan and Hoffritz if Dylan was working for them?' Earl didn't even hesitate. 'Maybe they didn't do the killing. In fact, it's highly unlikely. But maybe your husband's research was leading toward a major breakthrough with military applications, and maybe because of that, the other side had him wasted.' 'Other side?' He was watching the street once more. 'Foreign agents.' 'The Soviet Union went kaput. Maybe you heard. It was in all the newspapers.' 'The Russians are still there, and we're a long way from being best buddies with them. Then there's China. Iran and Iraq and Libya. There's never a shortage of enemies in the world. Power-mad men are always with us.' 'This is crazy,' she protested. 'Why?' 'Secret agents, spy stuff, international intrigue ... Ordinary people don't get mixed up in that stuff except in the movies.' 'That's just it. Your husband wasn't ordinary people,' Earl said. 'Neither was Hoffritz.' She couldn't look away from this man who was undergoing such a file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (87 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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profound metamorphosis — aging, hardening — before her eyes. She repeated the question that he had not answered before. 'All this speculation ... you couldn't have thought about any of it unless you knew my husband's field, his personality, the kind of work he might be doing. How do you know all this about Dylan? I didn't tell you any of it. 'Dan Haldane told me.' 'The detective? When?' 'When he called me. Just before noon.' 'But I didn't even hire your firm until after one o'clock.' 'Dan said he'd give you our card, make sure you called us. He wanted us to understand all the possible ramifications of the case right from the start.' 'But he never told me there might be FBI agents and, for God's sake, Russians involved.' 'He doesn't know they're involved, Doctor McCaffrey. He just realized there was the possibility that these murders had more than local significance. He didn't go into it much with you, because he didn't want to worry you unnecessarily.' 'Christ.' The mad, seductive murmur of paranoia swelled in her mind again. She felt trapped in an elaborate web of conspiracies. 'Better go look after Melanie,' Earl said. Outside, a Chevy sedan drove slowly along the street. The car stopped beside the phone-company van, then pulled forward and parked in front of it. Two men got out. 'Ours,' Earl said. 'Paladin agents?' 'Yeah. I called the office a while ago, after I decided the van was a surveillance operation, asked them to send some guys to check it out 'cause I didn't want to go over there myself and leave you two alone.' The two men who got out of the Chevy went to opposite sides of the van. 'Better go see about Melanie,' Earl repeated. 'She's okay.' 'Then at least step back from the window.' 'Why?' 'Because I'm paid to take risks, and you aren't. And I warned you at the start you'd have to do what I told you to do.' She retreated from the window, but she didn't move completely away from it. She wanted to see what was happening at the phone-company van. One of the Paladin agents was still at the driver's door. The other man had gone around to the rear of the van. file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (88 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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'If they're federal agents, there won't be any shooting,' she said. 'Not even if they want Melanie.' 'That's right,' Earl agreed. 'We'd have to give her up.' 'No,' she said, alarmed. 'Yes, I'm afraid we wouldn't have a choice. They're the law. But then at least we'd know who had her, and we could fight to get her back through the courts. But like I said, these guys might not be feds.' 'And if they're ... someone else?' she asked, unable to bring herself to say 'Russians.' 'Then it might get nasty.' His large, strong hand curled tightly around the revolver. Laura looked past him, out the window, which was streaked and spotted from the previous night's rain. The late-afternoon sunlight painted the street in shades of brass and copper. Squinting, she saw one of the rear doors swing open on the phonecompany van.
19 Dan left the pathology department but took only a few steps along the hall before a thought stopped him. He went back, opened the door, and leaned into the office as Luther looked up from the microscope again. 'Thought you had to pee,' the pathologist said. 'You've only been gone ten seconds.' 'Peed right here in the hall,' Dan said. 'Typical homicide detective.' 'Listen, Luther, you're a libertarian?' 'Well, yeah, but there's all kinds of libertarians. You've got your libertarian conservatives, your libertarian anarchists, and your basic orthodox libertarians. You've got libertarians who believe that we should—' 'Luther, look at me, and you'll see the definition of "boredom."' 'Then why'd you ask—' 'I just wanted to know if you'd ever heard of a libertarian group called Freedom Now.' 'Not that I remember.' 'It's a political-action committee.' 'Means nothing to me.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (89 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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'You're pretty active in libertarian circles, aren't you? You would have heard of Freedom Now if they were really a bunch of movers and shakers, wouldn't you?' 'Probably.' 'Ernest Andrew Cooper.' 'One of the three stiffs from Studio City,' Luther said. 'Yeah. Ever hear of him before this?' 'No.' 'You sure?' 'Yeah.' 'He's supposed to be a big wheel in libertarian circles.' 'Where?' 'Here in L.A. 'Well, he's not. Never heard of him before this.' 'You sure?' 'Of course I'm sure. Why're you acting like a homicide dick with me?' 'I am a homicide dick.' 'You're a dick, that's for sure,' Luther said, grinning. 'All the people you work with say so. Some of 'em use different words, but they all mean "dick."' 'Dick, dick, dick ... are you fixated on that word or something? What's wrong with you, Luther? Are you lonely, maybe need a new boyfriend?' The pathologist laughed. He had a hearty laugh and a smile that made you want to smile back at him. Dan couldn't figure why such a goodnatured, vital, optimistic, energetic man as Luther Williams had chosen to spend his working life with corpses. *** Dr. Irmatrude Gelkenshettle, chairperson of the Department of Psychology at UCLA, had a corner office with lots of windows and a view of the campus. Now, at 4:45 in the afternoon, the short winter day was already fading, casting a muddy orange light like that of a fire settling into embers. Outside, the shadows were growing longer by the minute, and students were hurrying in deference to the evening chill, which was creeping in ahead of the darkness. Dan sat in a Danish-modern chair, while Dr. Gelkenshettle went around the desk to a spring-backed chair behind it. She was a short, stocky woman in her fifties. Her iron-gray hair was chopped without any sense of style, and although she had never been beautiful, her face was appealing and kind. She wore blue slacks and a man's white shirt, with pocket flaps and epaulets; the sleeves were rolled up, and she even wore
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
a man's watch, a plain but dependable Timex on an expansion band. She radiated competence, efficiency, and intelligence. Though Dan had just met her, he felt that he knew her well, for his own Aunt Kay — his adoptive mother's sister, a career military officer in the WACs — was just like this woman. Dr. Gelkenshettle obviously chose her clothes for comfort, durability, and value. She didn't scorn those who were concerned about being in fashion; it had simply never occurred to her that fashion might be a consideration when it was time to replenish her wardrobe. Just like Aunt Kay. He even knew why she wore a man's watch. Aunt Kay had one too, because the face was larger than that on a woman's watch, and the numerals were easier to read. At first he had been taken aback by her. She hadn't been his idea of the head of a major university psychology department. But then he had noticed that on one full shelf of the bookcase behind her desk were more than twenty volumes that bore her name on their spines. 'Doctor Gelkenshettle—' She held up a hand, interrupting him. 'The name's impossible. The only people who call me Doctor Gelkenshettle are students, those colleagues whom I loathe, my auto mechanic — because you've got to keep those guys at a distance or they'll charge you a year's salary for a tune-up — and strangers. We're strangers, or the next thing to it, but we're also professionals, so let's drop the formalities. Call me Marge.' 'Is that your middle name?' 'Unfortunately, no. But Irmatrude's as bad as Gelkenshettle, and my middle name's Heidi. Do I look like a Heidi to you?' He smiled. 'I guess not.' 'You're damned right I don't. My parents were sweet, and they loved me, but they had a blind spot about names.' 'My name's Dan.' 'Much better. Simple. Sensible. Anyone can say Dan. Now, you wanted to talk about Dylan McCaffrey and Willy Hoffritz. It's hard to believe they're dead.' 'Wouldn't be so hard if you'd seen the bodies. Tell me about Dylan first. What did you think of him?' 'I wasn't head of the department when Dylan McCaffrey was here. I only moved into the top job a little more than four years ago.' 'But you were teaching here then, doing your own research. You were on the faculty with him.' 'Yes. I didn't know him well, but I knew him well enough to know I didn't want to know him any better.' 'I understand he was very dedicated to his work. His wife — she's a psychiatrist — called him a severe obsessive-compulsive.' 'He was a nut,' Marge said. file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (91 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
*** The two new Paladin agents walked away from the suspicious telephonecompany van and came directly to Laura's front door. Earl Benton let them in. One was tall, the other short. The tall one was thin and gray-faced. The short man was slightly pudgy with freckles across the bridge of his nose and on both cheeks. They didn't want to sit down or have coffee. Earl called the short one Flash, and Laura didn't know if that was his surname or a nickname. Flash did all the talking while the tall one stood beside him, his long face expressionless. 'They're steamed that we blew their cover,' Flash said. 'If they don't want to be made, they should be more subtle,' Earl said. 'That's what I told them,' Flash said. 'Who are they?' 'They showed us FBI credentials.' 'You wrote their names down?' 'Names and ID numbers.' 'Did the ID took real?' 'Yeah,' Flash said. 'What about the men? They seem like Bureau types to you?' 'Yeah,' Flash said. 'Sharply dressed. Very cool, soft-spoken, polite even when they were angry, but that underlying arrogance. You know how they are.' 'I know,' Earl said. Flash said, 'We're heading back to the office, check this out, see if the Bureau employs agents with those names.' 'You'll find the names, even if these guys aren't legit,' Earl said. 'What you've got to do is get photos of the real agents and see if they look like these guys.' 'That's what we figure to do,' Flash said. 'Get back to me as soon as you can,' Earl said, and the other two turned toward the door. Laura said, 'Wait.' Everyone looked at her. She said, 'What did they tell you? What reason did they give for watching my house?' 'Bureau doesn't talk about its operations unless it wants to,' Earl told Laura. 'And these guys didn't want to,' Flash said. 'They'd no sooner tell us their reasons for watching you than they'd kiss us and ask us to dance.'
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
The tall man nodded agreement. Laura said, 'If they were here to protect Melanie and me, they'd tell us, wouldn't they? So that means they must be here to snatch her back.' 'Not necessarily,' Flash said. Earl put his revolver back in his shoulder holster. 'Laura, see, the situation may be just as unclear and confusing to the Bureau as it is to us. For instance, suppose your husband was working on an important Pentagon project when he disappeared with Melanie. Suppose the FBI's been looking for him ever since. Now he turns up, dead, in peculiar circ*mstances. Maybe it hasn't been our government funding him these last six years, in which case they're bound to wonder where he's been getting his money.' Again, Laura felt as if the floor were tilting under her, as if the real world that she'd always taken for granted were an illusion. It almost seemed as though true reality might be the paranoid's nightmare world of unseen enemies and complex conspiracies. She said, 'Then you're telling me they're out in that telephonecompany van, watching my house, because they think someone else may come for Melanie, and they want to nab them in the act? But I still don't understand why they didn't come to me and tell me they were going to be watching.' 'They don't trust you,' Flash said. 'They were angry with us for revealing their presence not just to anyone who might've been watching out there,' Earl said, 'but to you as well.' Puzzled, she said, 'Why?' Earl looked uncomfortable. 'Because, as far as they know, maybe you've always been in this thing with your husband.' 'He stole Melanie from me.' Earl cleared his throat and looked unhappy at having to explain this to her. 'From the Bureau's point of view, could be that you let your husband take your daughter, so he'd be able to experiment on her with no notice or interference from family or friends.' Shocked, Laura said, 'That's insane! You see what's been done to Melanie. How could I be a party to that?' 'People do strange things.' 'I love her. She's my little girl. Dylan was disturbed, maybe crazy, okay, so he was too unbalanced to see or even care how he was hurting her, destroying her. But I'm not unbalanced too! I'm not like Dylan.' 'I know,' Earl said soothingly. 'I know you're not.' She saw belief in Earl Benton's eyes, trust and compassion, but when she looked at the other two men, she saw an element of doubt and suspicion. file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (93 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
They were working for her, but they didn't entirely believe that she had told them the truth. Madness. She was caught in a whirlpool that was carrying her down into a nightmare world of suspicion, deception, and violence, into an alien landscape where nothing was what it appeared to be. *** Surprised, Dan said, 'Nut? I didn't know psychologists used words like that.' Marge smiled ruefully. 'Oh, not in the classroom, and not in published papers, and certainly not in a courtroom if we're ever asked for testimony in a sanity hearing. But this is in the privacy of my office, just between almost-strangers, and I tell you, Dan, he was a nut. Not certifiable, mind you. Not close. But not merely eccentric, either. His primary area of research was supposed to be the development and application of behavior-modification techniques that would reform the criminal personality. But he was always off on a tangent, riding one odd hobbyhorse or another. He regularly announced a deep commitment — "obsessed" is the right word — to some new line of research, but after six months or so, he would completely lose interest in it. 'What were some of those hobbyhorses?' She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her breasts. 'For a while, he was determined to find a drug therapy that would combat nicotine addiction. Does that sound sensible to you? Help smokers get off cigarettes — by getting them onto drugs? Hell's bells. Then for a while, he claimed to be convinced that subliminal suggestion, subconscious programming, could enable us to set aside our prejudices against a belief in the supernatural and help us open our minds to psychic experiences, so we'd be able to see spirits as easily as we see one another.' 'Spirits? Are you talking about ghosts?' 'I am. Or, rather, he was.' 'I wouldn't think psychologists would believe in ghosts.' 'You're looking at one who doesn't. McCaffrey was one who did.' 'I'm remembering the books we found in his house. Some of them were about the occult.' 'Probably half his hobbyhorses dealt with that,' she said. 'One occult phenomenon or another.' 'Who would pay for this kind of research?' 'I'd have to look at the files. I imagine the occult stuff was done on his own, without funds, or by cleverly misusing funds meant for other
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
work.' 'It's possible to misuse funds that blatantly? Isn't there some accounting required?' 'The government's relatively easy to dupe if you're dishonest. Sometimes thieves make the easiest target for another thief, because they never see themselves as being the victims, only perpetrators.' 'Who financed his primary research?' 'He got some of his money from trust funds set up by alumni for research purposes. And corporate grants, of course. And as I said, the government.' 'Mostly the government?' 'I'd say mostly.' He frowned. 'Well, if Dylan McCaffrey was a nut, why would the government want to deal with him?' 'Oh, well, he was a nut, and his interest in the occult was as peculiar as it was exasperating, but he was brilliant. I'll give him that. With a more stable personality, his intellect would've taken him all the way. He'd have been famous in his field and maybe even to the general public.' 'Did he get Pentagon funding?' 'Yes.' 'What would he have been working on for the Pentagon?' 'Can't say. For one thing, I don't know. I could check the files, but even if I knew, I couldn't say. You don't have security clearance.' 'Fair enough. What can you tell me about Wilhelm Hoffritz?' 'He was slime.' Dan laughed. 'Doctor... Marge, you certainly don't mince words.' 'It's only the truth. Hoffritz was an elitist son of a bitch. He wanted in the worst way to be chairman of this department. Never had a chance. Everyone knew what he'd be like if he had power over us. Vicious. Abusive. He'd have run the entire department right into the ground.' 'He was doing Defense research too?' 'Almost exclusively. Can't tell you about that, either.' 'Rumor has it that he was forced out of the university.' 'That was a banner day for UCLA.' 'Why was he gotten rid of?' 'There was this young girl, a student—' 'Ah.' 'Much worse than you think,' Marge said. 'It wasn't just moral turpitude. He wasn't the first professor to sleep with a student. Half the men on the faculty would be dismissed, and maybe as much as a fifth of the women, if that rule was well enforced. He was having sex with her, yes, but he also beat her up and put her in hospital. Their relationship file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (95 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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was ... Kinky, is a kind word for it. One night, it got out of hand.' 'Are you talking about bondage games or something?' Dan asked. 'Yes. Hoffritz was a sad*st.' 'And the girl cooperated? She was a masoch*st?' 'Yes. But she got more than she bargained for. One night Hoffritz lost control, broke her nose, three fingers, her left arm. I went to hospital, saw her. Both eyes blackened, split lip, badly bruised.' *** Laura and Earl stood at the window, watching Flash and the tall man move down the walk in the deepening twilight. The telephone-company van was only a lumpish shape, all details obscured, as the oncoming night knitted together with the shadows under the curbside jacarandas. She said, 'FBI, huh? They won't go away?' 'No.' 'Even though I'm aware of them now.' 'Well, they're not convinced you were conspiring with your husband. In fact, that would be one of the less likely possibilities in their eyes. They still figure someone — whoever was financing Dylan's research — will come after Melanie, and they want to be here when it happens.' 'But I still need you,' she said. 'In case the FBI itself takes my daughter.' 'Yes. If that's what comes down, you'll need a witness in order to go after them in the courts.' She went to the couch and sat on the edge, shoulders hunched, head bowed, arms propped on her thighs. 'I feel as if I'm losing my mind.' 'Everything'll work out if—' He was interrupted by Melanie's scream. *** Dan winced at Marge's description of the battered student. 'But Hoffritz has no arrest record.' 'The girl wouldn't press charges.' 'He did that to her, and she let him get away with it? Why?' Marge got up, went to the window, and stared down at the campus. The orange light of sunset had given way to the grays and blues of twilight. A few clouds had sailed in from the sea. At last, the psychologist said, 'When we put Willy Hoffritz on suspension and started looking into his previous relationships with students, we found this girl wasn't the first. There were at least four others over the years, four that we know of all undergraduates, sexually involved with Hoffritz, all playing masoch*st to his sad*st, although none of them had file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (96 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
been seriously injured. Until this girl, it was always more of a nasty game than anything. Those first four were willing to talk about it when we insisted, and because of our interviews with them, we uncovered some interesting, appalling ... and frightening information.' Dan didn't press her to continue. He suspected that it was painful and humiliating for her to admit that a colleague — even one she didn't like — was capable of these things and that the academic community was no more noble than the human race at large. But she was a realist who could face up to unpleasant truths, a rare creature both in and out of academia, and she would tell him everything. She just needed to do it at her own pace. Still facing the twilight, she said, 'None of those first four girls was promiscuous, Dan. Good kids from good families, here to obtain an education, not to escape parental authority and get some kicks. In fact, two of the four were virgins before they fell under Hoffritz's spell. And none was ever involved in sado-masoch*stic relationships before Hoffritz, and certainly not after. They were repulsed by the memories of what they had let him do to them.' She fell silent again. He decided that she wanted him to ask a question now, and he said, 'Well, if they didn't like it, why did they do it?' 'The answer to that is a bit complex.' 'I can handle it. I'm a bit complex myself.' She turned from the window and smiled, but only briefly. What she had to tell him obviated amusem*nt. 'We discovered that each of those four girls had been voluntarily involved in undisclosed behaviormodification experiments with Hoffritz. Those experiments included posthypnotic suggestion and a variety of ego-suppressing drugs.' 'Why would they want to get involved with something like that?' 'To please a professor, to get a good grade. Or maybe because it actually interested them. Students are sometimes interested in the things they study, even these days, even the low-caliber students we've been getting lately. And Hoffritz did have a certain charm, which was more effective with some people than others.' 'Not with you.' 'When he turned on the charm, I found him even more slimy than usual. Anyway, he was teaching these girls, and he charmed them, and you mustn't forget that he was well published and well known in his field. He had earned a certain respect.' 'And it was after these experiments started that each girl found herself sexually involved with him.' 'Yes.' 'So you think he used hypnosis, drugs, subconscious programming, to file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (97 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
... well, to convert them?' 'To program their psychological matrices to include promiscuity and masochism. Yes. That's exactly what I think.' *** Melanie's shrill scream filled the house. Shouting her daughter's name, Laura hurried behind Earl Benton, down the hall. Revolver in hand, the bodyguard entered the child's room ahead of Laura and snapped on the light. Melanie was alone. The menace that had elicited her screams was one that only she could see. Dressed in white socks and the pair of white cotton underpants that she had been wearing during her nap, the child was crouched in a corner, hands held in front of her to ward off an invisible enemy, shrieking so fiercely that she must have been hurting her throat. She looked so fragile, so pitifully vulnerable. Laura was briefly overwhelmed with loathing for Dylan. She almost sagged, almost went limp, almost crumpled under the weight of her anger. Earl holstered his gun. He reached out to Melanie, but she struck his hands and scrambled away from him, along the baseboard. 'Melanie, honey, stop! It's all right,' Laura said. The girl didn't heed her mother. She reached the next corner, sat down, drew her legs up, fisted her small hands, and held them up defensively. She was no longer screaming, but she made a strange, rhythmic, panicky sound: 'Uh ... uh ... uh ... uh ... uh ...' Crouching in front of her, Earl said, 'It's okay, kid.' 'Uh ... uh ... uh ... uh ...' 'It's okay now. It really is. It's okay, Melanie. I'll take care of you.' 'The d-d-door,' Melanie said. 'The door. Don't let it open!' 'It's shut,' Laura said, hurrying to her, kneeling by her. 'The door is shut and locked, honey.' 'Keep it shut!' 'Don't you remember, baby? There's a big, new, heavy lock on the door,' Laura said. 'Don't you remember?' Earl glanced at Laura, obviously puzzled. 'The door is shut,' Laura continued. 'Locked. Sealed. Nailed shut. Nobody can open it, honey. Nobody.' Fat tears welled in the child's eyes, spilled down her cheeks. 'I'll take care of you,' Earl said soothingly. 'Baby, you're safe here. No one can hurt you.' Melanie sighed, and the fear ebbed out of her face.
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'You're safe. Perfectly safe now.' The girl put one pale hand to her head and began to twist a strand of hair in that absentminded way that any ordinary girl might twist her hair when preoccupied with thoughts of boys or horses or pajama parties or any of the other things that preoccupied kids her age. Indeed, after the bizarre behavior that she had displayed thus far, after alternating between extremes of hysteria and motionless catatonia, it was both moving and encouraging to see her playing with her hair, because that was such a normal act — a small thing, simple, hardly a breakthrough, not a crack in her hard autistic shield, but normal. Seizing the moment, Laura said, 'Would you like to go to a beauty shop with me, baby? Hmmmm? You've never been to a real beauty shop. We'll go and get our hair done together. How would you like that?' Although her eyes remained somewhat glassy, Melanie's brow furrowed, and she seemed to be considering the proposition. 'Lord knows, you need something done with your hair,' Laura said, anxiously trying to preserve the moment, expand upon it, deepen and broaden this unexpected contact with the girl inside the autistic shell. 'We'll get it cut and styled. Maybe curled. How would you like your hair curled, honey? Oh, you'd look just great with lots of curls.' The girl's face softened, and a smile threatened to take possession of her mouth. 'And after the beauty shop, we could go shopping for clothes. How about that, honey? Lots of new dresses. Dresses and sweaters. Even one of the glitzy new jackets the kids are wearing. You'd like that, I bet.' Melanie's unfinished smile stopped forming. Although Laura kept talking, the mood was gone as suddenly as it had come. The girl's placid expression gave way to a look of disgust, as if she had seen something in her private world that horrified and repulsed her. Then she did a startling and disturbing thing: She struck herself with her small fists, struck hard at her knees and thighs, with a loud smacking sound, then pounded her chest— 'Melanie!' —and swung both fists at the same time, pounding her withered biceps and her shoulders, pummeling herself fiercely, with unexpected strength and fury, trying to hurt herself. 'Stop it! Melanie!' Laura was shocked and frightened by her daughter's sudden self-destructive frenzy. Melanie punched herself in the face. 'I got her!' Earl shouted. The girl bit him as he tried to restrain her. She freed one hand and clawed her own chest with sufficient ferocity to draw blood. 'Jesus!' Earl said as the girl kicked him with her bare feet and twisted file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R...oontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (99 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
loose again. *** Frowning at Marge, Dan said, 'Programmed them to be promiscuous and masoch*stic? Is that sort of thing possible?' She nodded. 'If the psychologist has a deep and broad knowledge of modern brainwashing techniques, and if he's unscrupulous, and if he has either a willing subject or one he can physically detain and control for lengthy periods — then it's possible. But it usually takes a long time, a lot of patience and perseverance. The astonishing and frightening thing in this case is that Hoffritz seems to have been able to program these girls in a matter of weeks, after working with them only an hour or two a day, just three or four times a week. Apparently, he developed some new and damned effective methods of psychological conditioning. But with the first four, it wasn't long-lasting, never longer than a few weeks or months. Eventually, each girl's original personality resurfaced. First she felt guilty about her sexual acrobatics with Hoffritz but continued to take perverse pleasure in the humiliation and pain of her masoch*stic role. Then she gradually grew to fear and despise the whole sadomasoch*stic aspect of the relationship. Each of these kids said it was like waking from a dream when they finally began to want to be free to Hoffritz. All four girls eventually found the will to break it off.' 'Good God,' Dan said. 'I believe there is a good one, but sometimes I wonder why He lets men like Hoffritz walk the earth.' 'Why didn't these girls report him to the police ... or at least to university officials?' 'They were deeply ashamed. And until we found and questioned them, they never suspected that their masoch*stic aberrations were Hoffritz's work. They all thought those twisted desires had been in them all along.' 'But that's amazing. They knew they were involved in behaviormodification experiments. So when they started behaving in ways they'd never behaved before—' She held up one hand, stopping him. 'Willy Hoffritz probably implanted posthypnotic directives that inhibited each girl from considering the possibility that he was responsible for her new behavior.' It scared Dan to think the brain was just so much Silly Putty that could be so easily manipulated. *** Melanie scuttled past Earl and sprang to her feet and took two awkward file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (100 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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steps into the middle of the bedroom, where she stopped and swayed and almost fell. She began once more to scourge herself, hammering herself as if she felt that she deserved to be punished or as if she were trying to drive some dark spirit from her traitorous flesh. Stepping close, grunting as the small fists glanced off her, Laura threw her arms around her daughter, hugged her, trying to pin the child's arms at her sides. When her hands were restrained, Melanie still didn't settle down. She kicked and screamed. Earl Benton stepped in behind her, sandwiching her between him and Laura, so she couldn't move at all. She could only shout and weep and strain to break free. The three of them remained like that for a minute or two, while Laura spoke continuously and reassuringly to the girl, and finally Melanie stopped struggling. She sagged between them. 'She done?' Earl asked. 'I think so,' Laura said. 'Poor kid.' Melanie looked exhausted. Earl stepped back. Docile now, Melanie allowed Laura to lead her to the bed. She sat on the edge of it. She was still weeping. Laura said, 'Baby? Are you all right?' Eyes glazed, the girl said, 'It came open. It came open again, all the way open.' She shuddered in revulsion. *** 'The fifth girl,' Dan said. 'The one he beat up and put in hospital. What was her name?' The stocky psychologist moved away from the twilight-darkened window, returned to her desk, and slumped in her chair as if these unpleasant memories had drained her in a way that a hard day's work never could. 'Not sure I should tell you.' 'I believe you have to.' 'Invasion of privacy and all that.' 'Police investigation and all that.' 'Doctor-patient privilege and all that,' she said. 'Oh? This fifth girl was your patient?' 'I visited her several times in the hospital.' 'Not good enough, Marge. Carefully worded, but not quite good enough. I visited my dad every day when he was in the hospital for a triple heart-bypass operation, but I don't figure a daily visit gives me the
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right to call myself his doctor.' Marge sighed. 'It's just that the poor girl suffered so much, and now to dredge it all up again four years after the fact—' 'I'm not going to find her and dredge up the past in front of a new husband or her parents or anything like that,' Dan assured her. 'I may look big and dumb and crude, but actually I can be sensitive and discreet.' 'You don't look dumb or crude.' 'Thank you.' 'You do look dangerous.' 'I cultivate that image. It helps in my line of work.' She hesitated a moment longer, then shrugged. 'Her name was Regine Savannah.' 'You're kidding.' 'Would Irmatrude Gelkenshettle kid about anyone's name?' 'Sorry.' He wrote 'Regine Savannah' in his small notebook. 'You know where she lives?' 'Well, at that time it all happened, Regine was a junior in the undergraduate program. She shared a large off-campus apartment in Westwood with three other girls. But I'm sure she's long gone from that address.' 'What happened after she got out of hospital? Did she drop out of school?' 'No. She finished her studies, took her degree, although there were those who wished she would have transferred. Some felt it was a continuing embarrassment to have her here.' That sentiment baffled him. 'Embarrassment? I'd think everyone would've been happy that she recovered sufficiently — physically and psychologically — to go on with her life.' 'Except that she continued seeing Hoffritz.' 'What?' 'Amazing, huh?' 'She went on seeing him after he put her in hospital?' 'That's right. Worse, Regine wrote a letter to me, in my capacity as department head, defending Hoffritz.' 'Good God.' 'She wrote letters to the university president and to a few other faculty members on the review board. She did everything in her power to keep Willy Hoffritz from losing his job.' A creepy feeling settled over Dan again. He was not, by nature, given to melodramatic action or thought, but somehow just talking about Hoffritz was beginning to make his blood run cold. If Hoffritz was able to acquire such control of Regine, what breakthroughs might he and file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (102 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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Dylan McCaffrey have achieved once they had combined their demonic talents? For what purpose had they turned Melanie into a near vegetable? Dan could no longer sit still. He got up. But it was a small office, and he was a big man, and there wasn't much of anywhere to pace. He just stood there by his chair, hands in his pockets, and said, 'You would think, after he beat Regine, she would have been able to break his hold on her.' Marge shook her head. 'After Willy Hoffritz was booted off the faculty, Regine actually brought him to a number of campus functions as her escort.' Dan gaped at her. Marge said, 'And he was her only guest at graduation.' 'Good Lord.' 'Both of them enjoyed rubbing our faces in it.' 'The girl needed psychiatric help.' 'Yes.' 'Deprogramming.' A sadness had taken possession of the psychologist's kind face. She took off her glasses as if they were suddenly much heavier than they had been heretofore, an unbearable weight. She rubbed her weary eyes. Dan had a good idea how the woman felt. She was dedicated to her profession, and she was good at what she did, and she maintained high personal standards. She had scruples and ideals. With her welldeveloped conscience, she must believe that a man like Hoffritz was a discredit not only to the profession but to all of those who were his associates. She said, 'We tried to see that Regine got the help she needed. But she refused it.' Outside, sodium-vapor lights had come on, but they could not hold back the night. Dan said, 'Evidently, then, the reason Regine didn't turn against Hoffritz was because she liked the beating he'd given her.' 'Evidently.' 'He had programmed her to like it.' 'Evidently.' 'He'd learned from those first four girls.' 'Yes.' 'He'd lost control of them, but he'd learned from his mistakes. By the time he'd gotten to Regine, he'd learned how to keep an iron grip.' Dan had to move, work off some energy. He took five steps to the bookshelves, returned to his chair and put his hands on the back of it. 'I'll never be able to hear the words "behavior modification" without getting file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (103 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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sick to my stomach.' Defensively, Marge said, 'It's a justifiable area of research, a reputable branch of psychology. Behavior modification can help us find ways to teach children more easily and make them retain what they learn far longer than they do now. It can help us reduce the crime rate, heal the sick, and perhaps even create a more peaceful world.' As Dan grew increasingly eager for action, Marge seemed, by contrast, to seek relief in lethargy. She slumped down even farther in her chair. She was a take-charge kind of person, the sturdy type who was confident of dealing with anything, but she could not deal with inexplicably monstrous men like Hoffritz. And when she was confronted with something that she could not grasp and control, she looked less like a career WAC and more like a grandmother in need of a rocking chair and a cup of tea and honey. Dan liked her even more because of that vulnerability. Her voice was tired: 'Behavior modification and brainwashing aren't the same thing at all. Brainwashing is a bastard offshoot of behavior modification, a twisted perversion of it, just as Hoffritz was not an ordinary man or an ordinary scientist but a perversion of both.' 'Was Regine still with him?' 'I don't know. The last I saw of her was more than two years ago, and she was with him then.' 'If she wouldn't drop him after the beating, then I suppose nothing he did would cause her to leave. So she's probably still been seeing him.' 'Unless he got tired of her,' Marge said. 'From what I've heard of him, he'd never get tired of someone he could dominate and terrify.' Marge nodded grimly. Checking his watch, anxious to get away now, Dan said, 'You told me Dylan McCaffrey was brilliant, a genius. Would you say the same of Hoffritz?' 'Probably. In fact, yes. But his genius was a darker variety, twisted, bent.' 'So was McCaffrey's.' 'Not half as twisted as Hoffritz,' she said. 'But if they started working together, with substantial — maybe even unlimited — funding, with a human subject, with absolutely no legal or moral restrictions, they would be a dangerous combination, wouldn't they?' 'Yes,' she said. A pause. 'Unholy.' The word — 'unholy' — seemed like uncharacteristic hyperbole, coming from Marge, but Dan was sure that she had chosen it carefully. 'Unholy,' she repeated, leaving him without a doubt as to the depth of file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (104 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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her concern. *** In the hall bathroom, with some iodine and a Big Patch Band-Aid, Laura was able to take care of the small wound on Earl Benton's hand, where Melanie had bitten him during their struggle. 'It's nothing,' he assured Laura. 'Don't worry about it.' Melanie was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, staring at the greentiled wall. She couldn't have been more unlike the hellion who had lashed out at them in the bedroom a few minutes ago. 'A human bite is more likely to become infected than that from a dog or cat or virtually any other animal,' Laura said. 'You soaked it good with the iodine, and there's hardly any bleeding. Just a shallow bite. Doesn't even hurt,' he said, though she knew it must sting at least slightly. 'Had a tetanus shot lately?' Laura asked. 'Yeah. I was doing skip-tracing work last month. One of the guys I tracked down took exception to being found, pulled a knife on me. He didn't do much damage. Took about seven stitches to close it. That's when I had the tetanus booster. Real recent.' 'I'm so sorry about this.' 'You already said.' 'Well, I am.' 'Listen, I know the girl didn't mean it. Besides, it's part of the job.' Laura crouched in front of Melanie and examined the redness on the child's left cheek. It marked the spot where she had punched herself in the midst of her frenzy. It would develop into a bruise, given time. At the open neck of her blouse, scratches showed on her throat and chest, where she had clawed herself. Her lip was still puffy and sore-looking, where she'd bitten it this afternoon at the end of their hypnotic-therapy session. Dry-mouthed with fear and worry Laura said to Earl, 'How can we possibly protect her? It's not just some faceless enemy out there that wants to get at her. It's not just government agents or Russian spies. She wants to hurt herself too. How can we protect her from herself?' 'Somebody's got to stay with her, watch her every minute.' Laura put a hand under her daughter's chin, turned her head so their eyes met. 'This is too much, baby. Mommy can try to deal with the bad men out there who want to get their hands on you. And Mommy can try to deal with your condition, help you come out of this. But now ... this is just too much. Why do you want to hurt yourself, baby? Why?' Melanie stirred, as if she desperately wanted to answer but as if
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someone were restraining her. Her stricken mouth twisted, worked, but soundlessly. She shuddered, shook her head, groaned softly. Laura's heart literally ached as she watched her pale and slender daughter struggle unsuccessfully to cast off the shackles of autism.
20 Ned Rink, the ex-cop and former agent for the FBI, who had been found dead in his car in the hospital parking lot earlier in the day, owned a small, tidy, desert-style ranch house on the edge of Van Nuys. Dan drove there straight from his meeting with Marge Gelkenshettle. It was a low house with a flat roof that was covered with white stones, set in the middle of a particularly flat part of the San Fernando Valley, on a flat street of other low, flat houses. The shrubbery — with typical southern California, chlorophyllic exuberance — was the only thing that relieved the harsh geometry of the house and the monotonous tract around it, both of which clearly dated from the late 1950s. The house was dark. The streetlight in front of the place had a dirty globe and didn't illuminate much. Blank black windows and patches of pale-yellow stucco walls could be glimpsed between the shadowy forms of neatly shaped plum-thorn bushes, five-foot-high hibiscus, miniature orange trees, full-size date palms, and sections of a lantana hedge. Cars were parked along one side of the narrow street. Even though the unmarked police sedan was nestled in darkness, midway between two streetlights, under an immense overhanging laurel, Dan spotted it at once. One man sat in the nondescript Ford, behind the wheel, slumped down, watching the Rink house, barely visible. Dan drove past the house, circled the block, returned, and parked half a block behind the department sedan. He got out of his car and walked to the Ford. The driver's window was half open. Dan peered inside. The plainclothes cop on the surveillance detail was an East Valley Division detective, and Dan knew him. His name was George Padrakis, and he looked like that singer from the '50s and '60s, Perry Como. Padrakis rolled the half-open window all the way down and said, 'Are you here to relieve me, or what?' He sounded like Perry Como too: His voice was soft, mellow, and sleepy. He consulted his wristwatch. 'Nope, I still have a couple hours to go. It's too early to relieve me.' 'I'm just here to have a look inside,' Dan said. Head twisted sideways to stare up at Dan, Padrakis said, 'This your file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (106 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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case, huh?' 'It's my case.' 'Wexlersh and Manuello already tossed the place earlier.' Wexlersh and Manuello were Ross Mondale's right-hand men in the East Valley Division, two career-conscious detectives who had hitched their wagons to his train and were willing to do anything for him, including bend the law now and then. They were toadies, and Dan couldn't stand them. 'They on this case too?' Dan asked. 'Didn't think you had it all to yourself, did you? Too big for that. Four dead altogether. One of them a Hanco*ck Park millionaire. Too big for the Lone Ranger approach.' 'What've they got you out here for?' Dan asked, squatting so he was face-to-face with Padrakis. 'Beats me. I guess they figure there might be something in Rink's house that'll tell them who he was working for, and maybe whoever hired him will know it's in there and will come here to get rid of the evidence.' 'At which time you nab them.' 'Ridiculous, ain't it?' Padrakis said sleepily. 'Whose idea was this?' 'Whose do you think?' 'Mondale,' Dan said. 'You win your choice of the stuffed animals.' The chilly breeze suddenly became a chillier wind, rustling the leaves of the laurel overhead. 'You must've been working around the clock if you were at that house in Studio City last night,' Padrakis said. 'Pretty nearly around the clock. 'So what're you doing here?' 'Heard there was free popcorn.' 'You should be home, having a beer, your feet up. That's where I'd be.' 'I'm out of beer. Besides, I'm dedicated,' Dan said. 'They leave you with a key, George?' 'You're a workaholic, from what I hear.' 'You going to psychoanalyze me first, or can you tell me did they leave you with a key?' 'Yeah. But I don't know I should let you have it.' 'It's my case.' 'But the place has already been tossed.' 'Not by me.' 'Wexlersh and Manuello.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (107 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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'Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Come on, George, why're you being such a pain in the ass?' Reluctantly, Padrakis fumbled in a coat pocket for the key to Ned Rink's house. 'From what I hear, Mondale wants to talk to you real bad.' Dan nodded. 'That's because I'm a brilliant conversationalist. You should hear me discuss ballet.' Padrakis found the key but didn't hand it over right away. 'He's been trying to track you down all day.' 'And he calls himself a detective?' Dan said, holding his hand out for the key. 'He's been looking for you all day, and then you waltz in here instead of going back to the station like you promised him, and I just give you the key ... he won't be happy about that.' Dan sighed. 'You think he'll be any happier if you refuse to give me the key and then I have to go smash a window to get in that house?' 'You wouldn't.' 'Pick a window.' 'This is stupid.' 'Any window.' Finally, Padrakis gave him the key. Dan went down the sidewalk, through the gate, to the front door, favoring his weak knee. They must be in for more rain; the knee knew. He unlocked the door and stepped inside. He was in a tiny foyer. The living room on his right was dark except for the pale-grayish glow that came through the windows from the distant streetlights. To his left, back through a narrow hall, a lamp was on in a bedroom or study. It hadn't been visible from the street. Wexlersh and Manuello had apparently forgotten to switch it off when they'd finished, which was just like them: They were sloppy. He snapped on the hall light, stepped into the darkness on his right, found a lamp, and had a look at the living room first. It was startling. This was a modest house in a modest neighborhood, but it was furnished as though it served as a secret retreat for one of the Rockefellers. The centerpiece of the living room was a gorgeous, twelve-foot-by-twelve foot, three-inch-deep Chinese carpet with a pattern of dragons and cherry blossoms. There were midnineteenthcentury French chairs with hand-carved legs and feet, a matching sofa upholstered in a lush offwhite fabric that exactly matched the color of the unpatterned sections of the carpet. Two bronze lamps with intricately worked bases had shades of crystal beads. The large coffee table was unlike anything Dan had seen before: It seemed to be entirely bronze and pewter, with a superbly etched Oriental scene on the top; the upper surface curved around to form the sides, and the sides curved under to form the legs, so that the file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (108 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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entire piece seemed fashioned from a single flowing slab. On the walls, the landscape paintings, each ornately framed, looked like the work of a master. In the farthest corner, a period French étagère held a collection of crystal — figures, vases, bowls — and each piece was more beautiful than the one before it. The living-room furnishings alone had cost more than the entire modest house. Clearly, Ned Rink had been making a good living as a hired murderer. And he knew just where to put his money. If he had bought a big house in the best neighborhood, the IRS might eventually have noticed and asked how he could afford it, but here he could appear to be in modest circ*mstances while living in splendor. Dan tried to picture Rink in this room. The man had been squat and decidedly ugly. Rink's desire to surround himself with beautiful things was understandable, but sitting here, he would have looked like a roach on a birthday cake. Dan noticed there were no mirrors in the living room, remembered there had been none in the foyer, and suspected there would be none anywhere in the house except, of necessity, in the bathroom. He almost felt sorry for Rink, the lover of beauty who couldn't stand to look at himself. Fascinated, he went back down the hall to have a look at the rest of the place, heading first for the room where Wexlersh and Manuello had left a light burning. As he stepped through the door, it suddenly occurred to him that maybe the light couldn't be blamed on Wexlersh and Manuello, that maybe someone else was in the house right now, that maybe someone was there illegally in spite of the fact that George Padrakis was watching the front entrance, and at the same time he glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye as he went through the doorway, but it was too late. He turned and saw the butt of a pistol swinging at him. Because he turned into the blow, he took it square on the forehead instead of alongside his skull. He went down. Hard. The overhead light went out. He felt as if his skull had been half crushed, but he wasn't unconscious. Hearing movement, he realized his assailant was stepping past him toward the door. There was light in the hall, but Dan's vision was blurred, and all he could see was a shapeless form silhouetted by the glow. That silhouette seemed to be gliding up and down and going around in circles at the same time, like a figure on a carousel, and Dan knew his grip on consciousness was tenuous. Nevertheless, he heaved forward on the floor, gasping as the pain in file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (109 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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his head lanced all the way down into his shoulders and back, and he grabbed tenaciously at the fleeing phantom. He caught a fistful of material, a leg of the man's trousers, and jerked as hard as he could. The stranger staggered, collided with the door frame, and said, 'sh*t!' Dan held on. Cursing, the intruder kicked him in the shoulder. Then again. Dan had both hands on the guy's leg now and was trying to pull him down on the floor, where they would be more evenly matched, but the guy was holding on to the door frame and trying to shake him loose. He felt as though he were a dog attacking a mailman. The intruder kicked him again, in the right arm this time, and his right hand went numb. He lost half his grip on the perp's leg. His vision blurred further, and the light seemed to dim. His eyes stung. He gritted his teeth as if to bite into consciousness and hold on to it with his jaws. The stranger, still a black shape against the vague hall light, bent toward him and clubbed him again with the butt of the gun. On the shoulder this time. Then in the middle of his back. Then in the shoulder again. Blinking, fighting to clear his burning eyes, Dan let go of the guy's leg but whipped his good left hand up and tried to grab the bastard's throat or face. He got hold of an ear and tore at it. The stranger squealed. Dan's hand slipped off the blood-slick ear, but he hooked his fingers in the perp's shirt collar. The intruder hammered Dan's arm, trying to make him let go. Dan held fast. Some of the numbness seeped out of his right arm, and he was able to push himself up with that hand while he pulled himself up with the hand that was hooked in his adversary's shirt. Onto his knees. Then one foot on the floor. Thrusting up, shoving the guy backward. Into the hall. They staggered two or three steps, turning as they moved, like a pair of clumsy dancers. They crashed to the floor, both of them this time. He was right on top of the guy now, but he still couldn't see what his adversary looked like. His vision wouldn't clear, and the hall light was still dimmer than it should have been. His eyes burned as if acid had gotten into them, and he figured it must be sweat and blood pouring down from the gash in his forehead. He reached inside his coat and pulled his .38 Police Special out of his shoulder holster, but he couldn't see the other guy swinging at his hand and couldn't duck the blow that came. Something hard whacked his knuckles, and the gun flew out of his grasp. Grappling, they rolled against the wall, and Dan tried to drive his file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (110 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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good knee into the stranger's crotch, but the bastard blocked him. Worse, the guy either kicked or struck Dan's other knee, the bum knee, which was his weak spot. A reptile-quick flash of pain slithered up his thigh and chased its tail around and around in his stomach. Being hit on that knee could sometimes be like taking a kick in the balls; it knocked all the wind out of him, and he almost let go. Almost. The guy clambered over him and tried to scramble away, toward the kitchen, but Dan held on to the scumbag's jacket. The perp crawled, and Dan half crawled and was half dragged along behind him. It might have been funny if they hadn't both been hurting and breathing like well-run horses. And if they hadn't been deadly serious. Vision swimming and dimming, Dan launched himself forward in one last desperate effort, trying to lever himself on top of the intruder and pin him. But the perp apparently decided that the best defense was a good offense, so he stopped trying to get away and turned back on Dan, cursing so hard he sprayed spittle, pounding and flailing with what felt like four or five arms. They rolled back down the hall a few feet before finally coming to a stop with the intruder on top. Something cold and hard poked against Dan's teeth. He knew what it was. The barrel of a gun. 'Stop this crap now!' the stranger said. With the muzzle vibrating against his teeth, Dan said, 'If you were gonna kill me, you'd have done it already.' 'Push your luck,' the intruder said, and he sounded just angry enough to pull the trigger whether he wanted to or not. Blinking furiously, Dan cleared his vision slightly, not much, just enough so he could see the weapon, blurry, huge as a cannon, jammed into his face. He saw the man beyond the piece too, although not distinctly. The ceiling light in the hall was above and behind the son of a bitch, so his face was still pretty much in shadows. His left ear hung in an odd way, dripping blood. Dan realized that his own eyelashes were gummed with blood. Blood was still seeping into his eyes along with copious streams of salty sweat, which was half the reason he couldn't clear them. He stopped struggling. 'Let go ... you ... bulldog ... bastard!' the intruder said, kneeling on top of him, heaving each word out with a new breath, as if the words were lead ingots that had to be cast off with great effort. 'Okay,' Dan said, letting go of him. 'You crazy, man?' 'All right,' Dan said. 'You half tore my f*ckin' ear off!' 'All right, okay,' Dan said. file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (111 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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'Don't you know when you're supposed to stay down, you stupid son of a bitch?' 'Now?' 'Yeah, now!' 'Okay.' 'Stay down!' 'All right.' The intruder eased back, still pointing the gun at him but no longer holding it against his teeth. He studied Dan warily for a moment, then stood up. Shakily. Now Dan could see him better, but it didn't much matter, because it was no one he remembered seeing before. The guy backed off, toward the kitchen. He held the gun with one hand and his bleeding ear with the other. Defenseless, not daring to move lest he be shot, Dan lay on his back on the hall floor, head raised, blood trickling into his eyes, smelling blood, tasting blood, heart hammering, wanting to go for it, wanting to rush the bastard in spite of the gun, having to control himself, able to do nothing but just watch the guy escape. It made him mad as hell. The perp reached the kitchen. The back of the house was open, and he reversed through it, hesitated, then ran. Dan scrambled after his own piece, which was on the floor by the doorway of the room where he'd been ambushed. He snatched up the revolver, heaved and stumbled to his feet, cried out as a grenade of pain went off in his bum knee, somehow shoved the pain down into a little box in his mind and clamped a lid on it, and plunged toward the kitchen. By the time he reached the back door and stepped out into the cool night air, the intruder was gone. He had no way of knowing which side of the redwood fence the perp had jumped. *** Dan washed his face in Rink's bathroom. His forehead was bruised and abraded, His vision had drifted back into focus and had locked there. Although his head felt as though it had been used as a blacksmith's forge, he knew he wasn't suffering from concussion. His head was not the only thing that ached. His neck, his shoulders, his back, and his left knee throbbed. In the medicine cabinet above the bathroom sink, he found a package of gauze, made a compress out of it, and set it aside. He discovered some Bactine too, and he sprayed the scraped flesh of his forehead, blotted it gingerly, sprayed it again. He picked up the gauze compress
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and held it firmly against his forehead with his right hand, hoping to stop the bleeding altogether, while he prowled around the house. He went to the room where he had been ambushed, and he switched on the light. It was a study, less elegantly but just as expensively furnished as the living room. One entire wall of bookshelves was built around a television and VCR. Half the shelves were used for books; the other half were filled with videotapes. He looked at the tapes first and saw some familiar motion-picture titles: Silver Streak, Arthur, all the Abbott-and-Costello pictures, Tootsie, The Goodbye Girl, Groundhog Day, Foul Play, Mrs. Doubtfire, several Charlie Chaplin films, two Marx Brothers pictures. All the legit movies were comedies, and it figured a professional hit man might need to laugh a little when he came home from a hard day of blowing people's brains out. But most of the movies weren't legit. Most of them were p*rnographic, with titles like Debbie Does Dallas and The Sperminator. There must have been two to three hundred p*rno titles. The books were of more interest because that was what the intruder apparently had been after. A cardboard carton stood on the floor in front of the bookcases; several volumes had been plucked off the shelves and piled in the box. First, Dan examined the collection and saw that every one of the books was a nonfiction study of one branch of the occult or another. Then, still holding the gauze to his forehead with one hand, he pawed through the seven volumes in the carton and saw they were all by the same author, Albert Uhlander. Uhlander? He reached into an inner jacket pocket and pulled out the small address book that he had taken from the Studio City house last night, from Dylan McCaffrey's wrecked office. He paged to the U listings and found only one. Uhlander. McCaffrey, who was interested in the occult, had known Uhlander. Rink, who was interested in the occult, had at least read Uhlander; maybe he had known Uhlander too. This was a link between McCaffrey and Ned Rink. But were they on the same side, or were they enemies? And what did the occult have to do with this? His thoughts were spinning, and not merely because he had been clubbed on the forehead. Anyway, Uhlander was evidently a key to understanding what was going on. Apparently, the intruder had broken in there only to remove those books from the house, to conceal the Uhlander connection. Pressing the gauze to his forehead, Dan left the study. Like an electric current, the pain seemed to pass through the gauze, into his hand, up his arm, into his right shoulder, down to the middle of his back, file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (113 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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up to his left shoulder, into his neck, along the side of his face, completing the circuit by returning to his forehead, starting all over again. Favoring his left knee, sorting through things with one hand, feeling like a big crippled bug, he searched the place perfunctorily and found nothing more of interest. Rink was a hit man, and hit men didn't assist police investigations by keeping handy little address books and paper records of their affairs. In the bathroom again, he removed the compress and saw that the superficial bleeding had, indeed, finally stopped. He looked like hell. But that was fitting, because he felt like hell too.
21 When Dan limped out to the curb, carrying the small box of books, George Padrakis was still behind the wheel of the unmarked sedan, sitting in darkness, his window half open. He cranked it all the way down when he saw Dan. 'I was just on the squawk-box. Mondale wants ... Hey, what happened to your forehead?' Dan told him about the intruder. Padrakis opened the door and got out of the car. He looked and sounded like Perry Como, and he moved like him too: lazily, casually, with unconscious grace. He was even casual as he reached inside his coat and drew his revolver. 'The guy's gone,' Dan said as Padrakis took a step toward Rink's house. 'Long gone.' 'But how'd he get in there?' 'Through the back.' 'This street's been quiet, and I had my window down,' Padrakis protested. 'I'd have heard breaking glass, anything like that.' 'I didn't find a broken window,' Dan said. 'I think he came in by the kitchen door, probably with a key.' 'Well, hell, then they can't blame it on me,' Padrakis said, holstering his revolver. 'I can't be two places at once. They want to watch the back of the house too, they should have put two men on the place. You get a good look at the joker who jumped you?' 'Not real good.' Dan returned the key Padrakis had given him. 'But if you see a guy with a badly mangled ear, that's him.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (114 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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'Ear?' 'I nearly tore his ear off.' 'Why'd you do that?' 'For one thing, because he was trying to bash my brains in,' Dan said impatiently. 'Besides, I'm sort of like a matador. I always try to take a trophy home with me, and this guy didn't have a tail.' Padrakis looked baffled. A gigantic motor home turned the corner, engine roaring, and lumbered down the block, like a dinosaur. Frowning at the box in Dan's hands, Padrakis raised his voice above the shrieking engine of the nature lovers' vehicle. 'What's that you've got there?' 'Books.' 'Books?' 'Assembled sheets of paper with words on them, for the purpose of conveying information or providing entertainment. Now what about the squawk-box? What's Mondale,want?' 'You taking those books with you?' 'That's right.' 'Don't know if you can do that.' 'Don't worry. I can manage. They aren't that heavy.' 'That's not what I mean.' 'What's Mondale want?' Staring unhappily at the box in Dan's arms, Padrakis waited until the motor home had passed like a brontosaurus making its way through a primeval swamp. Its wake of cold air and exhaust fumes washed over them. 'I called in to let Mondale know you were here.' 'How thoughtful of you, George.' 'He was about to head over to the Sign of the Pentagram on Ventura.' 'Good for him.' 'He really wants you to meet him there.' 'What the hell's the Sign of the Pentagram? Sounds like a bar where werewolves hang out.' 'I think it's a bookstore or something,' Padrakis said, still frowning at the box of books. 'Guy's been killed over there.' 'What guy?' 'The owner, I think. Name's Scaldone. Mondale says it's like the bodies in Studio City.' 'There goes dinner,' Dan said. He headed along the sidewalk, through alternating pools of purple-black shadows and wan amber light, toward his own car. Padrakis followed him. 'Hey, about those books—' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (115 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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'Do you read, George?' 'They're the property of the deceased—' 'Nothing like curling up with a good book, though they're not nearly so entertaining when you're deceased.' 'And this isn't like a crime scene where we can just cart away anything that might be evidence.' Dan balanced the box on the bumper of his car, unlocked the trunk, put the box inside, and said, '"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." Mark Twain said that, George.' 'Listen, until a member of his family has been located and gives approval, I really don't think you should—' Slamming the lid of the trunk, Dan said, '"There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island." Walt Disney. He was right, George. You should read more.' 'But—' '"Books are not merely lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves." Gilbert Highet.' He clapped George Padrakis on the shoulder. 'Expand your narrow existence, George. Bring color to this drab life as a detective. Read, George, read!' 'But—' Dan got in the car, closed the door, and started the engine. Padrakis frowned at him through the window. Dan waved as he drove away. After he turned the corner and went a couple of blocks, he pulled the car to the curb. He got out Dylan McCaffrey's address book. Under the S listings, he found a Joseph Scaldone, followed by the word 'Pentagram,' a phone number, and an address on Ventura. Almost certainly, the murders in Studio City, the death of Ned Rink, and now the Scaldone killing were linked. It was looking more and more as if someone out there was desperately trying to cover up a bizarre conspiracy by eliminating everybody involved in it. Sooner or later, they would either eliminate Melanie McCaffrey as well — or snatch her away from her mother. And if those faceless enemies got hold of the girl again, she would vanish forever; she would not be fortunate enough to be saved a second time. *** At 7:05, Laura was in the kitchen, preparing dinner for herself, Melanie, and Earl. A big pot of water was working up to a boil on the stove, and a smaller pot of spaghetti sauce and meatballs was also heating. The room was filled with mouthwatering fragrances: garlic, onions, tomatoes,
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basil, and cheese. Laura rinsed off some black olives and added them to a big bowl of salad. Melanie sat at the table, silent, unmoving, staring down at her hands, which were folded in her lap. Her eyes were closed. She might have been asleep. Or perhaps she was just withdrawn farther than usual into her secret, private world. That was the first meal Laura had made for her daughter in six years, and even Melanie's depressing condition could not entirely spoil the moment. Laura felt maternal and domestic. It had been a long time since she had experienced either of those feelings, and she had forgotten that being a mother could be as satisfying as anything that she accomplished in her profession. Earl Benton had prepared the table with plates, glasses, silverware, and napkins. Now he sat across the table from Melanie, in his shirtsleeves — and shoulder holster — reading the newspaper. When he came across something surprising or shocking or funny in a gossip column, Dear Abby, or Miss Manners, he would read it aloud to Laura. Pepper, the calico cat, was curled comfortably in the corner by the refrigerator, lulled by the humming and the vibrations of the motor. She knew that she wasn't allowed on kitchen counters or tables, and she usually kept a low profile while in the room, to avoid being chased out altogether. Abruptly, however, the cat shrieked and popped onto her feet. Her back arched. Her fur bristled. She was wild-eyed, and she spat angrily. Putting down the newspaper, Earl said, 'What's wrong, puss?' Laura turned from the cutting board where she was making the salad. Pepper was alarmingly agitated. The calico's ears were flat against her skull, and her lips were drawn back in a snarl, fangs revealed. 'Pepper, what's wrong with you?' The cat's eyes seemed to bulge in terror from its head and fixed for an instant on Laura. There was nothing of the domestic pet in those eyes, nothing but sheer wildness. 'Pepper ... ?' The calico bolted out of the corner, squealing in fear or rage or both. She dashed toward a row of cabinets but suddenly wheeled away from them as though she'd seen something monstrous. She streaked toward the sink instead, then shrieked and abruptly changed direction again, claws ticking and scraping on the tile. She chased her own tail for half a dozen revolutions, spitting, and snapping her jaws, then leaped straight into the air as if she'd been stung or swatted. Slashing at the air with her claws, she pranced and twisted on her hind paws in a weird Saint Vitus's dance, came down on all fours, and was moving even as her forepaws touched the tile. She flashed under the table as if running for her life, file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (117 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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between the chairs, out the kitchen door, into the dining room. Gone. It had been an incredible display. Laura had never seen anything quite like it. Melanie had been unaffected by the cat's performance. She still sat with her hands in her lap, head bowed, eyes closed. Earl had dropped the newspaper and had risen from his chair. In another part of the house, Pepper let out one last miserable cry. Then silence. *** The Sign of the Pentagram was a little shop in a bustling block that was the very essence of Southern California hopes and dreams. Photographs of this portion of Ventura Boulevard could have been used in a dictionary as the sole definition of 'bootstrap capitalism.' One small store or restaurant shouldered up against another, block after block of enterprises owned and managed by entrepreneurs of all ages and ethnic backgrounds, and there was something for every interest and taste, both the exotic and the mundane: a Korean restaurant with maybe fifteen tables; a feminist bookshop; a purveyor of handmade knives; something called the Gay Resource Center; a dry cleaner and a party-supply store and a frame shop and a couple of delis and an appliance store; a bookstore that sold only fantasy and science fiction; Ching Brothers Finance, 'Loans to the Reliable'; a tiny restaurant offering 'Americanized Nigerian cuisine' and another specializing in 'chinois, French-Chinese cooking'; a merchant who sold military paraphernalia of all kinds, although not weapons. Some of these entrepreneurs were getting rich, and some never would, but all of them had dreams, and it seemed to Dan that, in the early evening darkness, Ventura Boulevard was nearly as well lighted by hope as it was by streetlamps. He parked almost a block from the Sign of the Pentagram and walked past the Eyewitness News van, similar vehicles from the news departments of KNBC and KTLA, marked and unmarked police cars, and a coroner's wagon. A crowd had gathered on the sidewalk, including curious locals, punk and gangsta-rap kids who wanted to look like street people but probably lived with their parents in three-hundred-thousanddollar Valley homes, and sensation-hungry media people with the quickeyed look that always made them seem (to Dan) like jackals. He pushed through the crowd, saw the beat man from the Los Angeles Times, and tried to stay out of the range of the active minicam in front of which a reporter and his crew were filming a segment for the eleven o'clock news on Channel Four. Dan edged past a teenage girl with blue-andgreen-striped hair twisted into punk spikes; she was wearing knee-high black boots, a minuscule red skirt, and a white sweater with a bizarre
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pattern of dead babies. The entire front of the shop was covered with amateurishly painted but colorful occult and astrological symbols, and a uniformed LAPD officer was standing directly under a faded red pentagram, guarding the entrance. Dan flashed his badge and went inside. The extent of the wreckage was familiar. The berserk giant who had smashed his way through that house in Studio City last night had come down his beanstalk again and had stomped through this shop as well. The electronic cash register looked as if someone had slammed a sledgehammer into it; somehow, a current of life remained in its battered circuitry, and one red number flickered in its cracked digital readout window, an inconstant 6, which seemed analogous to a dying victim's last word, as if the cash register were trying to tell the cops something about its killer. Some of the bookshelves were splintered, and all the volumes were on the floor in mangled heaps of rumpled dust jackets and bent covers and torn pages. But books hadn't been the only merchandise offered by the Sign of the Pentagram, and the floor was also littered with candles of all shapes and sizes and colors, Tarot decks, broken Ouija boards, a couple of stuffed owls, totems, tikis, and hundreds of exotic powders and oils. The place smelled of attar of roses, strawberry incense, and death. Detectives Wexlersh and Manuello were among the cops and SID technicians in the shop, and they spotted Dan as soon as he entered. They headed toward him, wading through the debris. Their icy smiles were identical, with no humor in either of them. They were a couple of land sharks, as cold-blooded and predatory as any real sharks in any sea. Wexlersh was short with pale-gray eyes and a waxy white face that seemed out of place in California even in winter. He said, 'What happened to your head?' 'Walked into a low tree branch,' Dan said. 'Looks more like you were beating up some poor innocent suspect, violating his civil rights, and the poor innocent suspect was foolish enough to resist.' 'Is that how you handle suspects in the East Valley Division?' 'Or maybe it was a hooker who wouldn't come across with a free sample just 'cause you flashed your badge at her,' Wexlersh said, grinning broadly. 'You shouldn't try to be amusing, Dan told him. 'You have about as much wit as a toilet seat.' Wexlersh continued to smile, but his gray eyes were mean. 'Haldane, what kind of maniac you think we have on our hands here?' Manuello, in spite of his name, was not Hispanic in appearance, but tall and blond and square-featured, with a Kirk Douglas dimple in the file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (119 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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center of his chin. He said, 'Yeah, Haldane, share with us the wisdom of your experience. And Wexlersh said, 'Yeah. You're the lieutenant. We're just lowly detectives, first-grade.' 'Yes, please, we await your observations and your profound insights into this most heinous crime,' Manuello said mockingly. 'We are breathless with anticipation.' Although Dan was a superior officer, they could get away with this sort of petty insubordination because they were from the East Valley Division, not Central, where Dan usually worked, and most of all because they were Ross Mondale's pets and knew the captain would protect them. Dan said, 'You know, you two made the wrong career decision. I'm sure you'd be much happier breaking the law than enforcing it.' 'But really, now, Lieutenant,' said Wexlersh, 'you must have some theories by this time. What sort of maniac would go around beating people into piles of strawberry preserves?' 'For that matter,' Manuello said, 'what sort of maniac was this particular victim?' 'Joseph Scaldone?' Dan said. 'He ran this place, right? What do you mean he was a maniac?' 'Well,' Wexlersh said, 'he sure to God wasn't your ordinary businessman.' 'Don't think they'd have wanted him in the Chamber of Commerce,' Manuello said. 'Or the Better Business Bureau,' Wexlersh said. 'A definite lunatic,' Manuello said. 'What are you two babbling about?' Dan asked. Manuello said, 'Don't you think it'd take a lunatic to run a shop' — and he reached into a coat pocket, withdrew a small bottle the same size and shape as those that olives often came in — 'a shop selling stuff like this.' At first the bottle did, indeed, appear to contain small olives, but then Dan realized they were eyeballs. Not human eyes. Smaller than that. And strange. Some had yellow irises, some green, some orange, some red, but although they differed in color, they all had approximately the same shape: They were not round irises, as in human and most animal eyes, but oblong, elliptical, supremely wicked. 'Snake eyes,' Manuello said, showing him the label. 'And how about this?' Wexlersh said, taking a bottle from his jacket pocket. This one was filled with a grayish powder. The neatly typed label read BAT GUANO. file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (120 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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'Bat sh*t,' Wexlersh said. 'Powdered bat sh*t,' Manuello said, 'snake eyes, tongues of salamanders, necklaces of garlic, vials of bull blood, magic charms, hexes, and all sorts of other weird crap. What kind of people come in here and buy this stuff, Lieutenant?' 'Witches,' Wexlersh said before Dan could speak. 'People who think they're witches,' Manuello said. 'Warlocks,' Wexlersh said. 'People who think they're warlocks.' 'Weird people,' Wexlersh said. 'Maniacs,' Manuello said. 'But this place, it accepts Visa and MasterCard,' said Wexlersh. 'With, of course, acceptable ID.' Manuello said, 'Yeah, these days, warlocks and maniacs have MasterCard. Isn't that amazing?' 'They pay off their bat-sh*t and snake-eye bills in twelve easy installments,' Wexlersh said. 'Where's the victim?' Dan asked. Wexlersh jerked a thumb toward the rear of the shop. 'He's back there, auditioning for a major role in a sequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.' 'Hope you guys at Central have strong stomachs,' Manuello said as Dan headed toward the back of the store. 'Don't barf in here,' Wexlersh said. 'Yeah, no judge is going to allow evidence into court if some cop barfed on it,' Manuello said. Dan ignored them. If he felt like barfing, he'd be sure to do it on Wexlersh and Manuello. He stepped over a heap of mangled books that were saturated with spilled jasmine oil, and he moved toward the assistant medical examiner who was crouched over a shapeless crimson thing that was the last of Joseph Scaldone. *** Working on the theory that the calico cat might have detected a stealthy sound too soft to be detected by human hearing and might have been frightened by the presence of an intruder in another part of the house, Earl Benton went from room to room, checking windows and doors. He searched in closets and behind the larger pieces of furniture. But the house was secure. He found Pepper in the living room, no longer frightened but wary. The cat was lying on top of the television. She allowed herself to be
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petted, and she began to purr. 'What got into you, puss?' he asked. After being petted awhile, she stretched one leg over the side of the TV and pointed at the controls with one paw. She gave him a look that seemed to inquire if he would be so kind as to switch on the heater-withpictures-and-voices, so her chosen perch would warm up a bit. Leaving the TV off, he returned to the kitchen. Melanie was still sitting at the table, as animated as a carrot. Laura was at the counter where Earl had left her, still holding a knife. She didn't seem to have been working on dinner while he'd been gone. She'd just been waiting, knife in hand, in case someone else returned in Earl's place. She was obviously relieved when she saw him, and she put the knife down. 'Well?' 'Nothing.' The refrigerator door suddenly came open of its own volition. The jars, bottles, and other items on the glass shelves began to wobble and rattle. As though touched by invisible hands, several cupboard doors flew open. Laura gasped. Instinctively, Earl reached for the gun in his holster, but he had no one to shoot at. He stopped with his hand on the butt of the weapon, feeling slightly foolish and more than a little perplexed. Dishes jiggled and clattered on the shelves. A calendar, hanging on the wall by the back door, fell to the floor with a sound like frantic wings. After ten or fifteen seconds, which seemed like an hour, the dishes stopped rattling, and the cupboard doors stopped swinging on their hinges, and the contents of the refrigerator grew still. 'Earthquake,' Earl said. 'Was it?' Laura McCaffrey said doubtfully. He knew what she meant. It had been similar to the effects of a moderate earthquake yet ... somehow different. An odd pressure change had seemed to condense the air, and the sudden chill had been too harsh to be attributed entirely to the open refrigerator door. In fact, when the trembling stopped, the air warmed up in an instant, even though the refrigerator door was still open. But if not a quake, what had it been? Not a sonic boom. That wouldn't explain the chill or the pressure in the air. Not a ghost. He didn't believe in ghosts. And where the hell had such a thought come from, anyway? He'd run Poltergeist on his VCR a couple nights ago. Maybe that was it. But he was not so impressionable that one good scary movie would make him reach for a supernatural explanation here, now, file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (122 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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when a considerably less exotic answer was so evident. 'Just an earthquake,' he assured her, although he was far from convinced of that. *** They figured he was Joseph Scaldone, the owner, because all the paper in his wallet was for Scaldone. But until they got a dental-records confirmation or a fingerprint match, the wallet was the only way they could peg him. No one who knew Scaldone would be able to make a visual identification because the poor bastard didn't have a face left. There wasn't even much hope of getting an ID based on scars or on other identifying marks, because the body was smashed and torn and flayed and gouged so badly that old scars or birthmarks were lost in the bloody ruins. Splintered ribs poked up through holes in his shirt, and a jagged lance of bone had pierced both his leg and trousers. He looked ... squashed. Turning from the body, Dan encountered a man whose biological clock seemed to be suffering from chronological confusion. The guy had the smooth, unlined, wide-open face of a thirty-year-old, the graying hair of a fifty-year-old, and the age-rounded shoulders of a retiree. He wore a well-cut dark-blue suit, a white shirt, a dark-blue tie, and a gold tie chain instead of a clip or tack. He said, 'You're Haldane?' 'That's right.' 'Michael Seames, FBI.' They shook hands. Seames's hand was cold and clammy. They moved away from the corpse, into a corner that was clear of debris. 'Are you guys on this one now?' Dan asked. 'Don't worry. We aren't pushing you out of it,' Seames assured him diplomatically. 'We just want to be part of it. Just observers ... for the time being.' 'Good,' Dan said bluntly. 'I've talked to everyone else working on the case, so I just wanted to tell you what I've told them. Please keep me informed. Any development at all, no matter how unimportant it seems, I want to be informed.' 'But what justification does the FBI have for stepping into this at all?' 'Justification?' Seames's face creased with a pained smile. 'Whose side are you on, Lieutenant?' 'I mean, what federal statutes have been broken?' 'Let's just say it's a national-security matter.' In the middle of his young face, Seames's eyes were old, ancient, and watchful. They were like the eyes of a reptilian hunter that had been around since the Mesozoic Era and knew all the tricks.
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Dan said, 'Hoffritz used to work for the Pentagon. Did research for them.' 'That's right.' 'Was he doing defense research when he was killed?' 'No.' The agent's voice was flat, without emotion or inflection, and Dan couldn't be sure if he was lying or telling the truth. 'McCaffrey?' Dan asked. 'Was he doing defense-type research?' 'Not for us,' Seames said. 'At least not lately.' 'For someone else?' 'Maybe.' 'Russians?' 'More likely to be Iraq or Libya or Iran these days.' 'You're saying it was one of them who financed him?' 'I'm saying no such thing. We don't know,' Seames claimed in that same bland voice that might easily conceal deception. 'That's why we want in on this. McCaffrey was on a Pentagon-funded project when he disappeared six years ago with his daughter. We investigated him back then, at the request of the Defense Department, and decided he hadn't run off with any new, valuable information related to his research. We figured it was nothing more than what it seemed to be — entirely a personal matter having to do with a nasty childcustody dispute.' 'Maybe it was.' 'Yes, maybe it was,' Seames said. 'At first, anyway. But after a while McCaffrey apparently got involved in something important ... maybe something dangerous. At least that's certainly how it seems when you get a look at that gray room in Studio City. As for Willy Hoffritz ... eighteen months after McCaffrey disappeared, Hoffritz finished a longrunning Pentagon project and declined to accept any additional defenserelated work. He said that kind of research had begun to bother his conscience. At the time, the military tried to persuade him to change his mind, but eventually they accepted his refusal.' 'From what I know of him,' Dan said, 'I don't believe Hoffritz had a conscience.' Seames's penetrating, hawkish eyes never left Dan's. He said, 'You're right about that, I think. At the time Hoffritz did his mea culpa routine, the Defense Department didn't ask us to verify his sudden turn toward pacifism. They accepted it at face value. But today I've been looking more closely at Willy Hoffritz. I'm convinced he stopped taking Pentagon grants only because he no longer wanted to be subject to random, periodic security investigations. He didn't want to worry that anyone might be watching him. He needed anonymity for some project of his own.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (124 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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'Like torturing a nine-year-old girl,' Dan said. 'Yes. I was in Studio City a few hours ago, had a look in that house. Nasty.' Neither the expression on his face nor that in his eyes matched the distaste and disapproval in his voice. Judging from his eyes, in fact, one might suspect that Michael Seames found the gray room more interesting than repulsive. Dan said, 'Why do you think they were doing those things to Melanie McCaffrey?' 'I don't know. Bizarre stuff,' Seames said, wide-eyed, shaking his head with amazement. But his sudden expression of innocence seemed calculated. 'What effect were they trying to obtain?' 'I don't know.' 'They weren't just involved in behavior-modification studies at that house.' Seames shrugged. Dan said, 'They were into brainwashing, total mind control ... and something else ... something worse.' Seames appeared to be bored. His gaze drifted away from Dan, and he watched the SID technicians as they sifted through the bloodspattered rubble. Dan said, 'But why?' 'I really don't know,' Seames said again, impatiently this time. 'I only—' 'But you're desperate to find out who was funding this whole hellish project,' Dan said. 'I wouldn't say desperate. I'd say frantic. Quietly frantic.' 'Then you must have some idea of what they were up to. You know something that's making you frantic.' 'For Christ's sake, Haldane,' Seames said angrily, but even his anger seemed calculated, a ruse, calculated misdirection. 'You've seen the condition of the bodies. Prominent scientists, formerly funded by the Pentagon, wind up murdered in an inexplicable fashion ... hell, of course, we're interested!' 'Inexplicable?' Dan said. 'It's not inexplicable. They were beaten to death. 'Come on, Haldane. It's more complicated than that. If you've talked to your own coroner's office, you've learned they can't figure what the hell kind of weapon it was. And you've learned the victims never had a chance to fight back — no blood, skin, or hair under their fingernails. And many of the blows couldn't have been struck by a man wielding a club, because no man would have the strength to crush another man's file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (125 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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bones like that. It would take tremendous force, mechanical force ... inhuman force. They weren't just beaten to death, they were smashed like bugs! And what about the doors here?' Dan frowned. 'What doors?' 'Here, this shop, the front and back doors.' 'What about them?' 'You don't know?' 'I just got here. I've hardly talked with anyone.' Seames nervously adjusted his tie, and Dan was unsettled by the sight of a nervous FBI agent. He had never seen one before. And Michael Seames's nervousness was one thing that he didn't appear to be faking. 'The doors were locked when your people arrived,' the agent said. 'Scaldone had closed up for the day just before he was killed. The back door had probably been locked all along, but just before he was killed, he'd closed the front door, locked it as well, and pulled down the shade. He would most likely have left the place by the rear door — his car's out back — once he'd finished totaling the day's receipts. But he didn't finish. He was hit while the doors were still locked. First officer on the scene had to kick out the lock on the front door.' 'So?' 'So only the victim was inside,' Seames said. 'Both doors were locked when the first cops arrived, but the killer wasn't here with Scaldone.' 'What's so amazing about that? It just means the killer must have had a key.' 'And paused to lock up after himself when he left?' 'It's possible.' Seames shook his head. 'Not if you know how the doors were locked. In addition to a pair of deadbolts on each, there was a bolt latch, a manually operated bolt latch that could be engaged only from inside the shop.' 'Bolt latches on both doors?' Dan asked. 'Yes. And there're only two windows in the shop. The big show window there, which is fixed in place. Nobody could leave that way without first throwing a brick through it. The other window is in the back room, the office. It's a jalousie window for ventilation.' 'Big enough for a man?' 'Yes,' Seames said. 'Except there're bars on the inside of it.' 'Bars?' 'Bars.' 'Then there must be another way out.' 'You find it,' Seames said in a tone of voice that meant that it couldn't be found. Dan surveyed the wreckage again, put a hand to his face as if he file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (126 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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might be able to wipe off his weariness, and winced as his fingertips brushed the still-sticky wound on his forehead. 'You're telling me Scaldone was beaten to death in a locked room.' 'Killed in a locked room, yes. I'm still not sure about the "beaten" part.' 'And there's no way the killer could have gotten out of here before the first squad car arrived?' 'No way.' 'Yet he isn't here now.' 'Right. Seames's too-young face seemed to be straining toward a more harmonious relationship with his graying hair and his stooped shoulders: It appeared to have aged a few years in just the past ten minutes. 'You see why I'm frantic, Lieutenant Haldane? I'm frantic because two top-notch former defense researchers have been killed by persons or forces unknown, by a weapon that can reach through locked doors or solid walls and against which there seems to be absolutely no defense.' *** Something about it had been different from an earthquake, but Laura couldn't precisely define the difference. Well, for one thing, she couldn't remember the windows rattling, although in an earthquake strong enough to fling open the cupboard doors, the windows would have been thrumming, clattering. She'd had no sense of motion either, no rolling; of course, if they had been far enough from the epicenter, ground movement wouldn't have been easy to detect. The air had felt strange, oppressive, not stuffy or humid, but ... charged. She'd been through a number of quakes before, and she didn't remember the air feeling like that. But something else still argued against the earthquake explanation, something important on which she couldn't quite put her finger. Earl returned to the table and newspaper, and Melanie continued to stare down at her hands. Laura finished making the salad. She put it in the refrigerator to chill while the spaghetti was cooking. The water had begun to boil. Steam plumed from it. Laura was just taking the vermicelli out of the Ronzoni box when Earl glanced up from the newspaper and said, 'Hey, that explains the cat!' Laura didn't understand. 'Huh?' 'They say animals usually know when an earthquake is coming. They get nervous and act strange. Maybe that's why Pepper got hysterical and chased ghosts all over the kitchen. Before Laura even had time to consider what Earl had said, the radio clicked on as if an unseen hand had twisted the knob. Living by herself,
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as she had for the past six years, Laura sometimes found the silence and emptiness of the house to be more than she could bear, and she kept radios in several rooms. The one in the kitchen, by the bread box, only a few feet away from where Laura was standing, was a Sony AM-FM with a clock, and when it snapped on all by itself, it was tuned to KRLA, where she had set the dial the last time that she'd used it. Bonnie Tyler was singing 'Total Eclipse of the Heart.' Earl had put down his paper. He was standing again. Laura stared at the radio in disbelief. Of its own accord, the volume knob began to rotate to the right. She could see it moving. Bonnie Tyler's throaty voice grew louder, louder. Earl said, 'What the hell?' Melanie drifted unaware in her private darkness. The voice of Bonnie Tyler and the music enfolding her words now bounced back and forth off the kitchen walls and made the windows rattle in a way that the 'earthquake' hadn't done. Aware that a chill had settled over the room once more, Laura took a step toward the radio. In another part of the house, Pepper was screeching again. *** As Dan was turning away from Michael Seames, the FBI agent said, 'By the way, what happened to your forehead?' 'I was trying on hats,' Dan said. 'Hats?' 'Tried on one that was too small for me. Had a hell of a time getting it off. Pulled skin right along with it.' Before Seames could respond, Ross Mondale stepped through a door at the back of the store, behind the sales counter. He spotted Dan, and he said, 'Haldane, come here.' 'What is it, Chief?' 'I want to talk to you.' 'What about, Chief?' 'Alone,' Mondale said fiercely. 'Be right there, Chief.' He left Seames blinking and puzzled. He picked his way through the wreckage, past the corpse, around the counter. Mondale motioned him through the door back there, then followed him. The rear room was as wide as the store but only ten feet deep, with concrete-block walls. It doubled as an office and storage area. On the left were piles of boxes, apparently filled with merchandise. On the right
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
were a desk, an IBM PC, a few file cabinets, a small refrigerator, and a worktable on which stood a Mr. Coffee machine. No violence had been done there; everything was neat and orderly. Mondale had been going through the desk drawers. Several items, including a slim little address book, were piled on the blotter. As the captain closed the door, Dan went around behind the desk and sat down. 'What do you think you're doing?' Mondale asked. 'Taking a load off my feet. It's been a long day.' 'You know that's not what I mean.' 'Oh?' As usual, Mondale was wearing a brown suit, light-beige shirt, brown tie, brown socks and shoes. His brown eyes seemed to flicker with a murderous light similar to that refracted within his ruby ring. 'I wanted to see you in my office by two-thirty.' 'I never got your message.' 'I know you damn well did.' 'No. Really. I'd have come running.' 'Don't screw with me.' Dan just stared at him. The captain stood several steps from the desk, his neck stiff, his shoulders tense, arms straight down at his sides, hands flexing and twitching as if he had to struggle to keep from forming them into fists and coming for Haldane. 'What have you been doing all day?' 'Contemplating the meaning of life.' 'You were at Rink's place.' 'You don't need to be in a church. It's possible to contemplate the meaning of life almost anywhere.' 'I didn't send you to Rink's place.' 'I'm a full-fledged detective-lieutenant. I usually follow my own instincts in an investigation.' 'Not in this one. This one's big. In this one, you're just part of the team. You do what I tell you, go where I tell you. You don't even sh*t unless I tell you it's okay.' 'Careful, Ross. You're beginning to sound power crazy.' 'What happened to your head?' 'I've been taking karate lessons.' 'What?' 'Tried to break a board with my head.' 'Like hell.' 'Okay, then what happened was George Padrakis told me you wanted to see me here, and at the mention of your name, I dropped to my knees and bowed down so fast I scraped my head on the sidewalk.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (129 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
For a moment Ross couldn't speak. His brown face had flushed. He was breathing hard. Dan more closely examined the items that Mondale had taken from the drawers and piled on the blotter: the address book, a ledger-size checkbook for an account in the name of the Sign of the Pentagram, an appointments calendar, and a thick sheaf of invoices. He picked up the address book. 'Put that down and listen to me,' Mondale said sharply, finally recovering his voice. Dan favored him with a sweet smile of innocence and said, 'But it might contain a clue, Captain. I'm investigating this case, and I wouldn't be doing my job well if I didn't pursue every possible clue.' Mondale came toward the desk, furious. His hands had finally tightened into twin hammers of flesh and bone. Ah, at last, Dan thought, the showdown we've both been wanting for years. *** Laura stood in front of the Sony, staring at it, afraid to touch it, shivering in the chilly air. The cold seemed to be radiating from the radio, carried on the pale-green light that shone forth from the AM-FM dial. That was a crazy thought. It was a radio, not an air conditioner. Not a ... Not anything. Just a radio. An ordinary radio. An ordinary radio that had turned itself on without help from anyone. Bonnie Tyler's song had faded into a new tune. It was a golden oldie: Procul Harum singing 'A Whiter Shade of Pale.' That was at top volume too. The radio vibrated against the tile counter on which it stood. The thunderous song reverberated in the windows, hurting Laura's ears. Earl had moved up behind her. If Pepper was still squealing in another part of the house, the cat's voice was lost in the explosively loud music. Hesitantly, Laura put her fingers on the volume knob. Freezing. Shuddering, she nearly snatched her hand away, not simply because the plastic was impossibly cold but because it was a different kind of coldness from any she'd felt before, a strangeness that chilled not only the flesh but the mind and soul as well. Nevertheless, she held on to it and tried to reduce the volume, but the knob wouldn't budge. She couldn't turn Procul Harum down, and since the volume control was also the ON-OFF switch, she couldn't shut the music off either. She strained hard, felt the muscles bunching in her arm, but still the knob would not respond. She was shaking.
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
She let go of the knob. Although 'Whiter Shade of Pale' was a melodic and appealing song, it sounded harsh and even curiously ominous at that volume. Each thump of the drums was like the approaching footsteps of some threatening creature, and the wailing of the horns was the same beast's hostile cries. She grabbed the cord of the radio, jerked on it. The plug popped out of the wall socket. The music died instantly. She had been half afraid that it would go on playing, even without power. *** When Dan didn't put down Joseph Scaldone's address book — a pocketsize booklet, actually — Mondale reached across the desk, clamped his right hand over Dan's right hand, and squeezed hard, trying to make him drop the thing. Mondale was not a tall man, but he was thick in the shoulders and chest. He had powerful arms out of proportion to the rest of him, thick wrists, big hands. He was strong. Dan was stronger. He didn't let go of the address book. His eyes fixed unwaveringly on Mondale's eyes, and he put his left hand on Mondale's hand and tried to pry the bastard's fingers loose. The situation was ludicrous. They were like a couple of idiot teenagers determined to prove that they were macho: Mondale trying to crush Dan's right hand, and Dan refusing to flinch or in any way reveal his pain while he struggled to free himself. He got a grip on one of Mondale's fingers and began to bend it backward. Mondale's jaw clenched. The muscles popped up, quivering. The finger bent back and back. Mondale resisted that effort even as he attempted to apply a stronger grip to Dan's right hand, but Dan wouldn't relent, and the finger bent back farther, farther. Sweat had appeared on Mondale's brow. My dog's better than your dog, my mom's prettier than your mom, Dan thought. Jesus! How old are we, anyway? Fourteen? Twelve? But he kept his eyes on Mondale's eyes, and he refused to let the captain see that he was hurting. He bent that goddamned finger back farther, until he was sure that it would snap, then farther, and abruptly Mondale gasped and let go. Dan remained in possession of the address book. He kept a grip on Mondale's finger for a second or two, long enough so there could be no mistake about who had relented first. The contest
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
had been silly and juvenile, but that was no reason to believe Ross Mondale didn't take it seriously. He was dead serious. And if the captain thought he could teach Dan a lesson with physical force, then perhaps — just perhaps — he could learn a lesson himself by the same method of instruction. *** They stood in the silent kitchen, staring at the radio. Then Earl said, 'How could it—' 'I don't know,' Laura said. 'Has it ever—' 'Never.' The radio had ceased to be a harmless appliance. Now it was a brooding, menacing presence. Earl said, 'Plug it in again.' Laura was irrationally afraid that if they brought the radio back to life, it would sprout crablike legs of plastic and begin to crawl across the counter. That was an uncharacteristically bizarre thought, and she was surprised at herself, startled by the sudden rush of superstitious dread, for she thought of herself as a woman of science, always logical and reasonable. Yet she couldn't shake the feeling that some malignant force was still within the radio, and that it waited eagerly for the plug to be reinserted in the wall socket. Nonsense. Nevertheless, stalling, she said, 'Plug it in? Why?' 'Well,' Earl said, 'I want to see what it does. We can't just leave it like this. It's too damned weird. We've got to figure it out.' Laura knew he was right. Hesitantly, she reached for the cord. She half expected it to wriggle in her hand and feel slimy-cold like an eel. But it was only a power cord: lifeless, nothing unusual about it. She touched the volume control on the radio, and she found that it could be moved now. She twisted it all the way down, clicked it to the OFF position. With considerable apprehension, she put the plug in the socket again. Nothing. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. Earl said, 'Well, whatever it was—' The radio snapped on. The dial lit up. The air was arctic again. Laura stepped away from the counter, backed toward the table, afraid that the radio would fling itself at her. She stopped beside Melanie and
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
put one hand on the girl's shoulder, to reassure her, but Melanie appeared to be as oblivious of these strange events as she was of everything else. The volume dial moved. This time, the dial didn't peg out at the top, but stopped halfway. The latest piece of gangsta-rap crap thumped from the radio. The beat-heavy music was loud, although not unbearable. Another knob spun as if an invisible hand were adjusting it. This one was the frequency selector. The red indicator dot glided fast across the luminous green dial, leaving the rap song behind, flitting rapidly to the right end of the scale, bringing them only flashes of songs, commercials, news reports, and deejay voices on a score of other stations. It reached the end of the radio band and moved back to the left, all the way, then swept to the right again, faster, so that the snatches of various broadcasts blended together in an eerie electronic ululation. Earl moved closer to the Sony. 'Careful,' Laura said. She realized it was ridiculous to be warning him about a mere radio. It was an inanimate object, for God's sake, not a living creature. She'd owned it for three or four years. It had brought her music and kept her company. It was only a radio. *** When Mondale got his hand back, he didn't rub it or even try to flex the pain out of it. Like a simpleminded highschool jock with wounded pride, he went right on pretending that he was the toughest. He casually put his hand in his pocket, as if checking for change or keys, and he kept it there. He poked his other hand toward Dan, pointed a finger at him. 'Don't you screw this up for me, Haldane. This is an important case. It's going to mean heat, lots of heat. We're gonna feel like we're working in a damned furnace. I've got the press nipping at my heels and the FBI on my back, and I've already had calls from the mayor and from Chief Kelsey, wanting results. I don't intend to screw this one up. My career might ride on this one. I'm keeping control, Haldane, tight control. I'm not letting some hotshot Lone Ranger type put my ass in a sling for me. If my ass ends up in a sling, it'll be because I put it there. This is a team effort, see, and I'm the captain and coach and quarterback, all rolled into one, and anybody who can't play it as a team effort just isn't even going to get on the field. You got me?' So this wasn't going to be the final showdown, after all. Ross was just going to bluster and fume. He felt tough and important when he could point his finger at a subordinate, glower, and chew ass for a while.
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
Dan sighed with some disappointment, and leaned back in the office chair, folding his hands behind his head. 'Furnaces, football fields ... Ross, you're getting your metaphors mixed up. Face it, old buddy, you'll never be an inspiring speaker ... or a disciplinarian. General Patton, you ain't.' Glaring at him, Mondale said, 'At Chief Kelsey's request, I'm putting together a special task force to handle this case, just like they did for the Hillside Strangler business several years back. All assignments come straight from me, and I'm assigning you to a desk at HQ for the duration. You'll coordinate the files on some aspects of the investigation.' 'I'm not a desk man.' 'Now you are.' 'I'm a deskophobic. You force me to work at a desk, I'll have a complete nervous breakdown. It's going to mean a major worker's compensation claim.' 'Don't screw with me,' Mondale warned again. 'I'm scared of desk blotters too — and those can-type holders for pencils just spook the bejesus out of me. So I thought, first thing tomorrow, I'd start looking into this Freedom Now group and maybe—' 'Wexlersh and Manuello are going to handle that,' Mondale said. 'They'll also be talking to the head of the psychology department at UCLA. But you will be at your desk, Haldane — at your desk, doing what you're told.' Dan didn't reveal that he had already been to UCLA and that he'd spoken with Irmatrude Heidi Gelkenshettle. He wasn't giving Mondale anything right now. Instead, he said, 'Wexlersh is no detective. Hell, he has to paint his pecker bright yellow so he can find it when he has to pee. And Manuello drinks.' 'The hell he does,' Mondale said sharply. 'He drinks on duty more often than not.' 'He's an excellent detective,' Mondale insisted. 'Your definition of "excellent" is the same as your definition of "obedient." You like Manuello because he sucks up to you. You're a tremendous self-promoter, Ross, but you're a lousy cop and a worse leader. For your sake as much as anyone's, I'm going to have to ignore the desk assignment you've given me and play the investigation my own way.' 'That's it, you insolent bastard. That's it! You're through. You're finished here. I'll call your boss, I'll call Templeton, and have him yank your insubordinate ass back to Central, where you belong!' The captain swung away from Dan and started toward the door. Dan said, 'If you make Templeton pull me off this assignment, I'll have to tell file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (134 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
him — and everyone else — about Cindy Lakey.' Mondale stopped with his hand on the doorknob, breathing hard, but he didn't face Dan. To Mondale's back, Dan said, 'I'll have to tell them how little Cindy Lakey, that poor little eight-year-old girl, would still be alive today, a young woman now, maybe married with a girl of her own, if it wasn't for you.' *** Laura stayed at Melanie's side, one hand on the girl's shoulder, ready to grab her and run if it came to that. Earl Benton leaned close to the radio and seemed mesmerized by the magically spinning knob and the floating red station selector that whipped back and forth across the lighted dial. Abruptly the red dot stopped, but only for a moment, only long enough to let a deejay speak one word— '... something's ...' —and then spun across the dial and stopped again at another frequency. Again it only dipped into the announcer's patter for a single word— '... coming ...' —then zipped farther along the glowing green band, paused once more, this time plucking one word out of the middle of a song— '... something's ...' —then spun away to a new station, popped into the middle of an advertisem*nt— '... coming ...' —and swept on down the band again. Laura suddenly realized there was an intelligent purpose to the pauses of the frequency selector. We're being sent a message, she thought. Something's coming. But a message from whom? From where? Earl looked at her, and the astonishment on his face made it clear that the same questions were in his mind. She wanted to move, run, get out of here. She could not lift her feet. Her bones had locked at every joint. Her muscles had petrified. The red dot stopped moving for no more than a second, perhaps only a fraction of a second. This time Laura recognized the tune from which the word was plucked. The Beatles were singing. Before the red dot continued on its way, the single word that came from the radio's speaker was also the title of the song: 'Something ...'
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
The selector glided farther along the green-lit band, paused for an instant: '... is ...' It slipped off that station, sped to another: '... coming ...' The air was frigid, but that wasn't the only reason Laura was shivering. Something ... is ... coming ... Those three words were not merely a message. They were a warning. *** Without opening it, Mondale had turned away from the door that connected the late Joseph Scaldone's office to the sales room at the Sign of the Pentagram. He faced Dan again, and both his anger and indignation had given way to a more fundamental emotion. Now his face was carved and his eyes were colored by pure hatred. Dan had mentioned Cindy Lakey for the first time in more than thirteen years. This was the dirty secret that they shared, the everspreading malignancy at the core of their relationship. Now, having brought it into the open, Dan was exhilarated by the prospect of forcing Mondale to face up to the consequences of his actions at long last. In a low, intense voice, the captain said, 'I didn't kill Cindy Lakey, damn it!' 'You allowed it to happen when you could have prevented it.' 'I'm not God,' Mondale said bitterly. 'You're a cop. You have responsibilities.' 'You smug bastard.' 'You're sworn to protect the public.' 'Yeah? Really? Well, the f*ckin' public never cries over a dead cop,' Mondale said, still speaking softly in spite of his ferocity, guarding this conversation from the ears of those in the nearby shop. 'You've also got a duty to stand up for a buddy, to protect your partner's backside.' 'You sound like some half-baked little Boy Scout,' Mondale said scornfully. 'Esprit de corps. One for all and all for one. Crap! When it gets down to the nitty-gritty, it's always every man for himself, and you know it.' Already, Dan wished he had never mentioned Cindy Lakey's name. The exhilaration that had lifted him a moment ago was gone. In fact, his spirits sank lower than they had been. He felt bone weary. He had intended to make Mondale face up to his responsibilities after all these years, but it was too late. It had always been too late, because Mondale had never been the kind of man who could admit weakness or error. He always slipped out from under his mistakes or found a way to make
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Dean Koontz - The Door to December
others pay his penance for him. His record was clean, spotless, and probably would always remain spotless, not just in the eyes of most others but in his own eyes as well. He couldn't even admit his weaknesses and errors to himself. Ross Mondale was incapable of guilt or self-reproach. Right now, standing before Dan, he clearly felt no responsibility or remorse for what had happened to Cindy Lakey; the only emotion boiling through him now was irrational hatred directed at his ex-partner. Mondale said, 'If anyone was responsible for the death of that girl, it was her own mother.' Dan didn't want to continue the battle. He was as weary as a centenarian who had danced away his birthday night. Mondale said, 'Crucify her goddamned mother, not me.' Dan said nothing. Mondale said, 'Her mother was the one who dated Felix Dunbar in the first place.' Staring at the captain as if he were a pile of some noxious and notquite-identifiable substance found on a city sidewalk, Dan said, 'Are you actually telling me Fran Lakey should have known Dunbar was unstable?' 'Hell, yes.' 'He was a nice guy, by all accounts.' 'Blew her f*ckin' head off, didn't he?' Mondale said. 'Owned his own business. Well dressed. No criminal record. A steady churchgoer. By all appearances, he was a regular upstanding citizen.' 'Upstanding citizens don't blow people's heads off. Fran Lakey was dating a loser, a creep, a real screwball. From what I heard later, she dated a lot of guys, and most of them were losers. She put her daughter's life in danger, not me.' Dan watched Mondale the way he might have watched a particularly ugly insect crawl across a dinner table. 'Are you saying she should have been able to see the future? Was she supposed to know that her boyfriend would go off his rocker when she finally broke up with him? Was she supposed to know he would come to her house with a gun and try to kill her and her daughter just because she wouldn't go to a movie with him? If she could see the future that well, Ross, she'd have put every psychic and palm reader and crystal-ball gazer out of business. She'd have been famous.' 'She put her daughter's life in danger,' Mondale insisted. Dan leaned forward, hunching over the desk, lowering his voice further. 'If she could've seen into the future, she would have known it wouldn't help to call the cops that night. She'd have known you'd be one of the officers answering the call, and she'd have known you'd choke up, file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (137 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
and—' 'I didn't choke up,' Mondale said. He took a step toward the desk, but as a threatening gesture it was ineffective. *** 'Something's ... coming ...' Fascinated, Earl watched the radio. Laura looked at the door that opened onto the patio and the rear lawn. It was locked. So were the windows. The blinds were drawn. If something did come, where would it come from? And what would it be, for God's sake, what would it be? The radio said: 'Watch ...' Then: 'Out ...' Laura fixated on the open door to the dining room. Whatever was coming might already be in the house. Maybe it would come from the living room, through the dining room ... The frequency selector stopped again, and a deejay's voice boomed through the speaker. It was swift patter with no purpose but to fill a few seconds of dead air between tunes, yet for Laura it had an unintended ominous quality: 'Better beware out there, my rock-'n'-roll munchkins, better beware, 'cause it's a strange world, a mean and cold world, with things that go bump in the night, and all you got to protect you is your Cousin Frankie, that's me, so if you don't keep that dial where it is, if you change stations now, you better beware, better be on the lookout for the gnarly old goblins who live under the bed, the ones who fear nothing but the voice of Uncle Frankie. Better look out!' Earl put one hand on top of the radio, and Laura half expected a mouth to open in the plastic and bite off his fingers. 'Cold,' he said as the tuning knob moved toward another station. Laura shook Melanie. 'Honey, come on, get up.' The girl didn't stir. One clear word burst from the radio as the tuning knob stopped again in the middle of a news report: '... murder ...' *** Dan wished that he could magically transport himself out of the dreary spook-shop office and into Saul's Delicatessen, where he could order a huge Reuben sandwich and drink a few bottles of Beck's Dark. If he couldn't have Saul's, he'd settle for Jack-in-the-Box. If he couldn't have Jack-in-the-Box, then he'd rather be at home, washing the dirty dishes that he had left in the kitchen. Anywhere but in a confrontation with Ross Mondale. Dredging up the past was pointless and depressing. But it was too late to stop now. They had to go through the whole file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (138 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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Lakey killing again, pick at it as if it were a scab, peel and pick and pluck at it to see if the wound was healed underneath. And of course that was a waste of time and emotional resources, for both of them knew already that it wasn't healed and never would be. Dan said, 'After Dunbar shot me there on the front lawn of the Lakey house—' 'I suppose that was my fault too,' Mondale said. 'No,' Dan said. 'I shouldn't have tried to rush him. I didn't think he'd use the gun, and I was wrong. But after he shot me, Ross, he was stunned for a moment, stupefied by what he'd done, and he was vulnerable.' 'Bullsh*t. He was as vulnerable as a runaway Sherman tank. He was a maniac, a flat-out lunatic, and he had the biggest goddamned pistol—' 'A thirty-two,' Dan corrected. 'There're bigger guns. Every cop comes up against bigger guns than that, all the time. And he was vulnerable for a moment, plenty long enough for you to take the son of a bitch.' 'You know one thing I always hated about you, Haldane?' Ignoring him, Dan said, 'But you ran.' 'I always hated that wide, wide streak of self-righteousness.' 'If he'd wanted to, Dunbar could have put another slug in me. No one to stop him after you ran off behind the house.' 'As if you never made a mistake in your goddamned life.' They were both almost whispering now. 'But instead he walked away from me—' 'As if you were never afraid.' '—and he shot the lock off the front door—' 'You want to play the hero, go ahead. You and Audie Murphy. You and Jesus Christ.' '—and he went inside and pistol-whipped Fran Lakey—' 'I hate your guts.' '—and then made her watch—' 'You make me sick.' '—while he killed the one person in the world she really loved,' Dan said. He was being relentless now because there was no way to stop until it had all been said. He wished he had never begun, wished he'd left it buried, but now that he had started, he had to finish. Because he was like the Ancient Mariner in that old poem. Because he had to purge himself of an unrelenting nightmare. Because he was driven to follow it to the end. Because if he stopped in the middle, the unsaid part would be as bitter as a big wad of vomit in his throat, unheaved, wedged there, and he'd choke on it. Because — and here it was, here was the truth of it, no easy euphemisms this time — after all these years, his own soul was still file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (139 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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shackled to a ball of guilt that had been weighing him down since the death of the Lakey child, and maybe if he finally talked about it with Ross Mondale, he might find a key that would release him from that iron ball, those chains. *** The radio was at full volume again, and each word exploded like one round of a cannonade. '... blood ...' '... coming ...' '... run ...' More urgently than she had spoken before, afraid of what might be coming, wanting Melanie to be on her feet and ready to flee, Laura said, 'Honey, get up, come on.' From the radio: '... hide ...' And: '... it ...' And: '... coming ...' The volume grew louder. '... it ...' Jarring, ear-splitting: '... loose ...' Earl put his hand on the volume knob. '... it ...' At once, Earl jerked his hand off the knob as if he had taken an electric shock. He looked at Laura, horrified. He vigorously wiped his hand on his shirt. It hadn't been an electric shock that had sizzled through him; instead, he had felt something weird when he touched the knob, something disgusting, repulsive. The radio said: '... death ...' *** Mondale's hatred was a dark and vast swamp into which he could retreat when the uncomfortable truth about Cindy Lakey rose to haunt him. As the truth drew nearer and pressed upon him more insistently, he withdrew farther into his all-encompassing black hatred and hid there amid the snakes and bugs and muck of his psyche. He continued to glare at Dan, to loom threateningly over the desk, but there was no danger that his hatred would propel him to action. He would not throw a single punch. He didn't need or want to relieve his hatred by striking out at Dan. Instead, he needed to nurture that hatred, for it helped him to hide from responsibility. It was a veil between him and the truth, and the heavier the veil, the better for him. That was how Mondale's mind worked. Dan knew him well, knew file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (140 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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how he thought. But, though Ross might try to hide from it, the truth was that Felix Dunbar had shot Dan — and Mondale had been too scared to return the fire. The truth was that Dunbar then went inside the Lakey house, pistolwhipped Fran Lakey, and shot eight-year-old Cindy Lakey three times while Ross Mondale was God-knew-where, doing God-knew-what. And the truth was that wounded and bleeding badly, Dan had retrieved his own gun, crawled into the Lakey house, and killed Felix Dunbar before Dunbar could blow off Fran Lakey's head too. All the while, Ross Mondale was maybe puking in the shrubbery or losing control of his bladder or sprawled flat on the rear lawn and striving hard to look like a natural feature of the landscape. He had come back when it was all over, sweat-damp and slug-white, shaky, reeking of the sour smell of cowardice. Now, still behind Joseph Scaldone's desk, Dan said, 'You try forcing me off this case or you try keeping me out of the action, and I'll tell the whole rotten story about the Lakey shootings, the truth, to anyone who'll listen, and that'll be the end of your dazzling career.' With a smugness that would have been infuriating if it hadn't been so boringly predictable, Mondale said, 'If you were going to tell anyone, you'd have told them years ago.' 'That must be a comforting thought,' Dan said, 'but it's wrong. I covered for you then because you were my partner, and I figured everyone has a right to screw up once. But I've lived to regret the way I handled it, and if you give me a good excuse, I'd enjoy setting the record straight.' 'It all happened a long time ago,' Mondale said. 'You think no one cares about dereliction of duty just because it happened thirteen years ago?' 'No one'll believe you. They'll think it's sour grapes. I've moved up, made friends.' 'Yeah. And they're the kind of friends who'd sell their mothers for lunch money.' 'You've always been a loner. A wiseass. No matter what you think of them, I have people who'll rally around me.' 'With a lynching rope.' 'Power makes people loyal, Haldane, even if they'd rather not be. Nobody'll believe any crap you care to throw at me. Not a rotten wiseass like you. Not a chance.' 'Ted Gearvy will believe me,' Dan said, and if he had spoken any more quietly, he would have been inaudible. Yet, in spite of his quiet delivery, he might as well have swung a hammer at Mondale instead of those five words. The captain looked stricken. file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (141 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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Gearvy, ten years their senior, was a veteran patrolman and had been Mondale's partner during his probationary rookie year. He had seen Mondale make a few mistakes — although nothing as serious as what happened at the Lakey house later, when Dan had replaced Gearvy as Mondale's partner. Just disquieting errors of judgment. A too-meager sense of responsibility. Gearvy had thought he detected cowardice in Ross too, but had covered up for him, just as Dan would do in times to come. Gearvy was a big, gruff, easygoing guy, three-quarters Irish, with too much sympathy for rookies. He had not given Mondale high ratings in his rookie year; the Irishman was good-natured and sympathetic but not irresponsible. But he didn't give Mondale really bad ratings, either, because he was too softhearted for that. A few months after the Lakey incident, when Dan was back at work with a new partner, Ted Gearvy had come around, quietly feeling Dan out, dropping hints, worried that he had made a serious mistake in covering up for Ross. Eventually, they had swapped information and discovered they had both been misguidedly shielding Mondale. They realized his misconduct was not just a rare or even a some-time thing. But by then it had seemed too late to come forth with the truth. In the eyes of the department brass, Gearvy's and Dan's failure — even temporary failure — to report Mondale's dereliction of duty would be nearly as bad as that dereliction itself. Gearvy and Dan would have found themselves standing in the dock beside Mondale. They weren't prepared to damage or perhaps even destroy their own careers. Besides, by then Mondale had wheedled an assignment to the Community Relations Division; he was no longer working on the street. Gearvy and Dan figured Ross would do well in community relations and would never return to a regular beat, in which case he would never again be in a position to hold someone else's life in his hands. It seemed best — and safest — to leave well enough alone. Neither of them imagined that Mondale would one day be a serious contender for the chief's office. Maybe they would have taken action if they could have foreseen the future. Their failure to act was the thing that both of them most regretted in all their years of service. Clearly, Mondale had not known that Gearvy and Dan had compared notes. Their consultation was a nasty shock to him. *** The radio boomed: 'IT!' 'COMING!' 'HIDE!'
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'COMING!' The disconnected words exploding from the Sony were impossibly loud, delivered with considerably more volume than the speakers were capable of providing. Thunderous, volcanic. Wall-shaking. The speakers should have disintegrated or burned out as those tremendous bursts of sound smashed through them, but they continued to function. The radio vibrated against the counter. 'LOOSE!' 'COMING!' Each word crashed through Laura and seemed to pulverize more of her self-control. Panic and fear surged through her. The kitchen lights pulsed, dimmed. At the same time, the green glow that illuminated the radio dial became brighter, unnaturally bright, as if the Sony had acquired both a consciousness and a greedy thirst for electricity, as if it were drawing off all available power for itself. But that didn't make sense, because regardless of how much power the radio received, the dial was still equipped with a low-wattage bulb that couldn't produce this brilliant glow. Yet it did. As the ceiling lights grew dimmer still, dazzling emerald beams sprayed out through the Plexiglas panel on the front of the radio, painting Earl Benton's face, glinting off the chrome on the stove and refrigerator, imparting to the air a rippling murkiness: The room seemed to be underwater. '... RIPPING ...' '... APART ...' The air was freezing. '... TEARING ...' '... APART ...' Laura didn't understand that portion of the message — unless it was a threat of physical violence. The Sony was vibrating faster than the stones in a rattlesnake's rattle. Soon it would be bouncing across the counter. '... SPLITTING ... IN ... TWO ...' *** Dan said, 'If I go public, Ted Gearvy probably will too. And maybe there's even someone else out there who's seen you at your worst, Ross. Maybe they'll come forward when we do. Maybe they'll have a conscience too.' Judging by the expression on Mondale's face, there evidently was someone else who could blow his career out of the water. He was no longer smug when he said, 'One cop never rats on another, damn it!' 'Nonsense. If one of us is a killer, we don't protect him.'
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'I'm no killer,' Mondale said. 'If one of us is a thief, we don't protect him.' 'I've never stolen a goddamned dime.' 'And if one of us is a coward who wants to be chief, we have to stop protecting him too, before he gets into the front office and plays fast and loose with other men's lives, the way some cowards do when they get enough power to be above the fight themselves.' 'You take the goddamned cake! You're the snottiest, most selfsatisfied son of a bitch I've ever seen.' 'Coming from you, I'll take that as a compliment.' 'You know the code. It's us against them.' 'Why, for heaven's sake, Ross, just a minute ago, you told me it was always every man for himself.' Irrationally trying to separate his own conduct at the Lakey house from the code of honor that he now so strenuously professed to embrace, Mondale could do no more than repeat himself: 'It's us against them, damn it!' Dan nodded. 'Yes, but when I say "us," I don't include you. You and I can't possibly belong to the same species.' 'You'll destroy your own career,' Mondale said. 'Maybe.' 'Definitely. The Internal Affairs Division is gonna want to know why the hell you covered up this so-called dereliction of duty.' 'Misguided allegiance to another man in uniform.' 'That won't be good enough.' 'We'll see.' 'They'll have your ass for breakfast.' Dan said, 'You're the one who actively screwed up. My moral irresponsibility was a passive act, passive sin. They might suspend me for that, reprimand me. But they're not going to throw me off the force because of it.' 'Maybe not. But you'll never get another promotion.' Dan shrugged. 'Doesn't matter. I've gone as far as I really care to. Ambition doesn't rule me, Ross, the way it does you.' 'But ... no one'll trust you after you've done a thing like this.' 'Sure they will.' 'No, no. Not after you've ratted on another cop.' 'If the cop was anyone but you, that might be true.' Mondale bristled. 'I have friends!' 'You're well liked by the high brass,' Dan said, 'because you always tell them what they want to hear. You know how to manipulate them. But the average cop on the beat thinks you're a jerk-*ff.' 'Bullsh*t. I have friends everywhere. You'll be frozen out, isolated, file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (144 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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shunned.' 'Even if that's true — and it isn't — so what? I'm just a loner, anyway. Remember? You said so yourself. You said I'm a loner. What do I care if I'm shunned?' For the first time, more worry than hatred was evident in Ross Mondale's face. 'You see?' Dan said. He smiled again, more broadly than before. 'You don't have any choice. You have to let me work on this case the way I want to work on it, without any interference, just as long as I want. If you mess with me, I'll destroy you, so help me God, even if it means problems for me too.' *** The overhead lights grew even dimmer. But the radio's eerie green radiance was now so bright that it hurt Laura's eyes. '... STOP ... HELP ... RUN ... HIDE ... HELP...' The Plexiglas that shielded the radio dial suddenly cracked down the middle. The Sony vibrated so violently that it began to move across the counter. Laura remembered the nightmarish image that had come to her a few minutes ago: crablike legs sprouting from the plastic casing ... The refrigerator door flew open again all by itself. With a hiss and squeak of hinges, with scattered thumping sounds, every cupboard door in the room abruptly and simultaneously flung itself wide open. One of them banged against Earl's legs, and he almost fell. The radio had stopped emitting selected words from various stations. Now it was simply spewing out a shrill electronic noise at higher than full volume, as if attempting to shatter their flesh and bones as a perfectly sung and sustained high-C could shatter fine crystal. *** Ross Mondale sat on a shipping crate and buried his face in his hands, as if weeping. Dan Haldane was startled and disconcerted. He had been certain that Mondale was incapable of tears. The captain didn't sob or wheeze or make any other sounds, and when he looked up again, after half a minute or so, his eyes were perfectly dry. He hadn't been weeping after all — merely thinking. Desperately thinking. He had also been putting on a new expression, a conscious act not file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (145 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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unlike exchanging one mask for another. The fear and worry and anger were completely gone. Even the hatred was fairly well hidden, although a dark rime of it was still visible in the captain's eyes, like a film of black ice on a shallow puddle at the edge of winter. Now he was wearing his patented friendly-and-humble face, which was transparently insincere. 'Okay, Dan. Okay. We were friends once, and maybe we can be friends again.' We were never really friends, Dan thought. But he said nothing. He was curious to see how conciliatory Ross Mondale would pretend to be. Mondale said, 'At least we can start by trying to work together, and I can help by acknowledging that you're a damned good detective. You're methodical, but you're also intuitive. I shouldn't try to rein you in, because that's like refusing to let a natural-born hunting dog follow its own nose. Okay. So you're on your own in this case. Go wherever you want, see who you want, when you want. Just try to fill me in once in a while. I'd appreciate it. Maybe if we both give a little, both of us bend a little, then we'll find that we not only can work together but can even be friends again.' Dan decided that he liked Mondale's anger and unconcealed hatred better than his smarmy appeasem*nt. The captain's hatred was the most honest thing about him. Now, the honey in his voice and manner didn't soothe Dan: in fact, it made his skin crawl. 'But can I ask you one thing?' Mondale said, leaning forward from his perch on the packing crate, looking earnest. 'What's that?' 'Why this case? Why're you so passionately committed to it?' 'I just want to do my job.' 'It's more than that.' Dan gave nothing. 'Is it the woman?' 'No.' 'She's very good looking.' 'It's not the woman,' Dan said, though Laura McCaffrey's beauty had not escaped his attention. It did indeed play at least a small role in his determination to stay with the case, though he would never reveal as much to Mondale. 'Is it the kid?' 'Maybe,' Dan said. 'You've always worked hardest on cases where a child was abused or threatened.' 'Not always.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (146 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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'Yes, always,' Mondale said. 'Is that because of what happened to your brother and sister?' *** The radio vibrated harder, faster. It rattled against the counter with sufficient force to chip the tiles — and abruptly floated into the air. Levitated. It hung up there, swaying, bobbing at the end of its cord as a helium-filled balloon might bobble at the end of a string. Laura was beyond surprise. She watched, immobilized by awe, no longer even terribly afraid, simply numb with cold and with incredulity. The electronic whine became more shrill, thin, spiraled up, like the tape-recorded descent of a bomb played in reverse. Laura looked down at Melanie and saw that the girl had at last begun to rise out of her stupor. She hadn't opened her eyes yet — in fact, she was now squeezing them shut — but she had raised her small hands to her ears, and her mouth was open too. Snakes of smoke erupted from the miraculously suspended radio. It exploded. Laura closed her eyes and ducked her head just as the Sony blew up. Bits of broken plastic rained over her, snapped against her arms, head, hands. A few large chunks of the radio, still attached to the cord, fell straight to the floor — the invisible hands no longer providing support — and hit the tiles with a clank and clatter. The plug pulled from the wall, and the cord slithered across the counter; it dropped onto the floor with the rest of the shattered Sony, and was still. When the explosion had come, Melanie had finally responded to the chaos around her. She erupted from her chair, and even before the flying debris had finished falling, she scurried on hands and knees into the corner by the back door. Now she cowered there, head sheltered under her arms, sobbing. In the silence following the cessation of the radio's banshee wail, the child's sobs were especially penetrating. Each, like a soft blow, landed on Laura's heart, not with physical force but with enormous emotional impact, hammering her alternately toward despair and terror. *** When Dan didn't respond, Mondale repeated the question in a tone of innocent curiosity, but his undertone was taunting and mean. 'Do you work harder on those cases involving child abuse because of what happened to your brother and sister?' 'Maybe,' Dan said, wishing he had never told Mondale about those file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (147 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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tragedies. But when two young cops share a squad car, they usually spill their guts to each other during the long night patrols. He had spilled too much before he'd realized that he didn't like Mondale and never would. 'Maybe that's part of why I don't want to let go of this case. But it's not the whole story. It's also because of Cindy Lakey. Don't you see that, Ross? Here's another case where a woman and child are in danger, a mother and her daughter threatened by a maniac, maybe more than one maniac. Just like the Lakeys. So maybe it's a chance for me to redeem myself. A chance to make up for my failure to save Cindy Lakey, to finally get rid of a little of that guilt.' Mondale stared at him, astonished. 'You feel guilt because the Lakey kid was killed?' Dan nodded. 'I should have shot Dunbar the moment he turned toward me with that gun. I shouldn't have hesitated, shouldn't have given him a chance to drop it. If I'd wasted him right away, he'd never have gotten into that house.' Amazed, Mondale said, 'But, Christ, you know what it was like back then. Even worse than now. The grand jury was looking into half a dozen charges of police brutality, whether the accusations had substance or not. Every half-assed political activist had it in for the whole department in those days. Even worse than now. Even when a cop shot someone in a clear-cut act of self-defense, they howled for his head. Everyone was supposed to have rights — except cops. Cops were supposed to just stand there and take bullets in the chest. The reporters, politicians, the ACLU — they all talked about us like we were bloodthirsty fascists. sh*t, man, you remember!' 'I remember,' Dan said. 'And that's why I didn't shoot Dunbar when I should have. I could see the guy was unbalanced, dangerous. I knew, intuitively, that he was going to kill somebody that night, but in the back of my mind I was thinking about all the heat we were under, all the accusations about being trigger-happy cops, and I knew if I shot him, I'd have to answer for it. In the climate we had back then, I figured nobody would listen to me. I'd be sacrificed. I was worried about losing my job, being booted off the force. I was afraid of destroying my career. And so I waited until he brought the gun around, waited until he pointed it right straight at me. But I gave him just a second too long, and he got me, and because I didn't go with my instincts or with my intellect, he had a chance to get Cindy Lakey too.' Mondale shook his head adamantly. 'But none of that was your fault. Blame the goddamned social reformers who take sides without any understanding of the goddamned situation we face, without knowing what it's like out there on the streets. They're to blame. Not you. Not me.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (148 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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Dan glared at him. 'Don't you dare put yourself in the same boat with me. Don't you dare. You ran, Ross. I screwed up because I was thinking about my own ass — about my pension, for God's sake! — when I should have been thinking about nothing other than doing the job the best way I could. That's why I have guilt to live with. But don't you ever imply the burden lies equally on you and me. It doesn't. That's crap, and you know it.' Mondale was trying to look earnest and concerned, but he was having increasing difficulty suppressing his hatred. 'Or maybe you don't know it,' Dan said. 'That's even scarier. Maybe you aren't just covering your own backside. Maybe you really think that looking out for number one is the only moral position that makes sense.' Without replying, Mondale got up and went to the door. Dan said, 'Is your conscience actually clear, Ross? God help you, I think maybe it is.' Mondale glanced back at him. 'You do what you want to do on this case, but stay out of my way.' 'You haven't lost a single night's sleep over Cindy Lakey, have you, Ross?' 'I said, stay out of my way.' 'Happily.' 'I don't want to have to listen to any more of your carping and whining.' 'You're incredible.' Without replying, Mondale opened the door. 'What planet are you from, Ross?' Mondale walked out. 'I'll bet there's only one color on his home planet,' Dan said to the empty room. 'Brown. Everything must be brown on his world. That's why his clothes are all brown — they remind him of home.' It was a weak joke. Maybe that was why he couldn't make himself smile. Maybe. *** The kitchen was still. The silence held. The air was warm once more. 'It's over,' Earl said. Paralysis relaxed its grip on Laura. A circuit board from the demolished radio crunched under her foot as she stepped across the kitchen and knelt beside Melanie. With soothing words, with much patting and stroking, she calmed her
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daughter. She wiped the tears from the child's face. Earl began picking through the debris, studying the pieces of the Sony, mumbling to himself, baffled and fascinated. Sitting on the floor with Melanie, pulling the girl onto her lap, holding her, rocking her, immensely relieved that the child was still there to be comforted, Laura would like to have wished away the events of the past few minutes. She would have given anything to be able to deny the reality of what she had seen. But she was too good a psychiatrist to allow herself to indulge in any of the little mind games that would minimize this bizarre development; nor would she permit herself to rationalize it away with the standard jargon of her profession. She hadn't been hallucinating. This paranormal episode — this supernatural phenomenon — couldn't be explained away as just sensory confusion, either; her perceptions had been accurate and reliable in spite of the impossibility of what she had perceived. She had not been overlaying a logical series of events with an illogical and subjective fantasy, in the manner of many schizophrenics. Earl had seen it too. And this wasn't a shared hallucination, a mass delusion. It was crazy, impossible — but real. The radio had been ... possessed. Some of the pieces of the Sony were still smoking. The air was thick with an acrid, charredplastic odor. Melanie moaned softly. Twitched. 'Easy, honey, easy.' The girl looked up at her mother, and Laura was jolted by the eye contact. Melanie was no longer gazing through her. She had come back from her dark world again, and Laura prayed that this time the girl was back for good, although that was unlikely. 'I ... want,' Melanie said. 'What is it, honey? What do you want?' The girl's eyes searched Laura's. 'I ... need.' 'Anything, Melanie. Anything you want. Just tell me. Tell Mommy what you need.' 'It'll get them all,' Melanie said, her voice heavy with dread. Earl had looked up from the smoldering scraps of the radio and was watching intently. 'What?' Laura asked. 'What will get them, honey?' 'And then it'll ... get ... me,' the girl said. 'No,' Laura said quickly. 'Nothing's going to get you. I'll take care of you. I'll—' 'It'll ... come up from ... inside.' 'Inside where?' '... from inside ...' 'What is it, honey? What're you afraid of. What is it?' '... it'll ... come ... and eat me ...' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (150 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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'No.' '... eat me ... all up,' the girl said, and she shuddered. 'No, Melanie. Don't worry about ...' She let her voice trail away because she saw that the girl's eyes had shifted subtly. They were not entirely out of focus, but neither were they fixed on Laura anymore. The child sighed and her breathing changed. She had gone back into that private place where she had been hiding ever since they'd found her wandering naked in the street. Earl said, 'Doc, can you make anything of this?' 'No.' 'Because I can't figure it at all.' 'Me neither.' Earlier, cooking dinner, she had begun to feel better about Melanie and the future. She'd begun to feel almost normal. But their situation had changed for the worse, and now her nerves were frayed again. In this city, there were people who wanted to kidnap Melanie in order to continue experimenting with her. Laura didn't know what they hoped to achieve or why they had picked on Melanie, but she was certain they were out there. Even the FBI seemed sure of that. Other people wanted the girl dead. The discovery of Ned Rink's body seemed to prove that Melanie's life was indisputably in danger. But now it appeared that those faceless people were not the only ones who wanted to get their hands on Melanie. Now there was another enemy as well. That was the essence of the warning that had come to them through the radio. But who or what had been controlling the radio? And how? Who or what had sent the warning? And why? More important, who was this new enemy? 'It,' the radio had said, and the implication had been that this enemy was more frightening and more dangerous than all the others combined. It was loose, the radio had said. It was coming. They had to run, the radio said. They had to hide. From It. 'Mommy? Mom?' 'Right here, honey.' 'Mommmeeee!' 'Right here. It's okay. I'm right here.' 'I'm ... I'm ... I'm ... scared.' Melanie was not speaking to Laura or Earl. She seemed not to have heard Laura's reassurance. She was talking only to herself, in a tone of voice that was the essence of loneliness, the voice of the lost and abandoned. 'So scared. Scared.
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PART THREE
THE HUNTED WEDNESDAY, 8:00 P.M. - THURSDAY, 6:00 A.M.
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Still sitting at Joseph Scaldone's desk in the office-storeroom behind the shop on Ventura Boulevard, Dan Haldane looked through the diskette storage wheel that stood beside the IBM computer. He read the labels on the floppy disks and saw that most held nothing of interest for him; however, one of them was marked CUSTOMER MAILING LIST, and that one seemed worth examining. He switched on the computer, studied the menu of options, loaded the proper software, and brought up the mailing list. It appeared in white letters on a blue screen, divided into twenty-six documents, one for each letter of the alphabet. He summoned the M document and scrolled slowly through it, searching for Dylan McCaffrey. He found the name and address of the house in Studio City. He called up the H document and located Willy Hoffritz. In the C file, he found Ernest Andrew Cooper, the millionaire businessman whose mangled body had been in that Studio City house last night, with McCaffrey and Hoffritz. Dan called up the R file. Ned Rink was there. He had discovered a cord that tied all four victims together: an interest in the occult and, more specifically, patronage of the late Joseph Scaldone's bizarre little shop. He checked under U. There was an address in Ojai and a telephone number for Albert Uhlander, the author of those quirky volumes about the occult, which someone had attempted to remove from Ned Rink's house and which now were safely stored in the trunk of the department sedan that Dan was using. Who else? He pondered that question, then called up the S file and searched for Regine Savannah. She was the young woman who had been under Hoffritz's total control and whose beating had resulted in the psychologist's removal from the UCLA faculty four years ago. She wasn't one of Scaldone's customers. The G file. Just in case. But he could find no listing for Irmatrude Gelkenshettle. He hadn't actually expected to find her there. He was slightly ashamed of himself for even checking on it. But it was the nature of a homicide detective to trust no one. Calling up the O file, he searched for Mary Katherine O'Hara of Burbank, the secretary of Freedom Now, the organization which Cooper and Hoffritz served as president and treasurer, respectively. Apparently, Mary O'Hara didn't share her fellow officers' enthusiasm for occult literature and paraphernalia. Dan couldn't think of any more names to look for, but there would most likely be others of interest when he read through the entire mailing list. He ordered a printout. file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (153 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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The laser printer produced the first page in seconds. Dan snatched the sheet of paper from the tray and read it while the machine continued to print. There were twenty names and addresses, two columns of ten each. He didn't recognize anybody in that first section of the list. He picked up the second page, and toward the bottom of the second column, he saw a name that was not merely familiar but startling. Palmer Boothe. Owner of the Los Angeles Journal, heir to a huge fortune, but also one of the shrewdest businessmen in the country, Palmer Boothe had vastly increased the wealth that he had inherited. He kept his hands in not only the newspaper and magazine business but also in real estate, banking, motionpicture production, transportation, a variety of hightechnology industries, broadcasting, agriculture, thoroughbred horse breeding, and probably anything else that made money. He was widely and well regarded, a political power broker, a philanthropist who annually earned the gratitude of a score of charities, a man known for his hardheaded pragmatism. Yeah? How did hardheaded pragmatism coexist with a belief in the occult? Why would a canny businessman, with an appreciation for the no-nonsense rules and methods and laws of capitalism, patronize a strange place like the Sign of the Pentagram? Curious. Of course there was virtually no chance whatsoever that Palmer Boothe was involved with men like McCaffrey, Hoffritz, and Rink. The appearance of his name on Scaldone's mailing list did not link him to the McCaffrey case. Not everyone who bought from the Sign of the Pentagram was involved in that conspiracy. Nevertheless, Dan opened Scaldone's personal address book — the item that had precipitated the confrontation with Mondale — and paged to the B listings, to see if Palmer Boothe was more than merely one of Scaldone's customers. The businessman's name wasn't there. Which probably meant that his sole contact with Joseph Scaldone was as an occasional purchaser of occult books and other items. Dan reached to an inside coat pocket and withdrew Dylan McCaffrey's address book. Boothe's name wasn't in that one, either. Dead end. He had known that it would be. As an afterthought, he checked McCaffrey's book for Albert Uhlander. The author was there: the same address and phone number in Ojai. He looked in Scaldone's book again. Uhlander was also listed there. The writer was evidently more than just another customer of the Sign of the Pentagram. He was an integral part of whatever project McCaffrey file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (154 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
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and Hoffritz had been engaged upon. They sure had a jolly little group. Dan wondered what they did when they got together. Compare favorite brands of bat sh*t? Whip up tasty dishes featuring snake eyes? Discuss megalomaniacal schemes to brainwash everyone and rule the world? Torture little girls? The printer spewed out the fifteenth and final page long before Dan finished scanning the first fourteen. He collected them, stapled them together, folded the sheets, and put them in his pocket. Nearly three hundred names appeared on the mailing list, and he wanted to go over them later, when he was alone at home, with a beer, and could concentrate better. He located an empty stationery box and filled it with Dylan McCaffrey's address book, Scaldone's smaller address book, and several other items. He carried the box out of the office, through the store, where the coroner's men were bagging Joseph Scaldone's hideously battered corpse, and he went outside. The crowd of curiosity seekers had grown smaller, maybe because the night was colder. A few reporters still lingered in the vicinity of the occult shop, standing with shoulders drawn up, hands in their pockets, shivering. A heat-leeching wind alternately hissed and howled along Ventura Boulevard, sucking the warmth out of the city and everyone in it. The air was heavy, moist. The rains would return before morning. Nolan Swayze, the youngest of the uniformed officers on duty in front of the Sign of the Pentagram, accepted the box when Dan handed it to him. 'Nolan, I want you to take this back to East Valley and give it to clerical. There're two address books among this stuff. I want the contents of both books transcribed, and all the detectives on the special task force should have a copy of the transcriptions in their information packets by tomorrow morning.' 'Can do,' Swayze said. 'There's also a diskette. I want the contents printed out with copies to everyone. There's an appointments calendar in there too.' 'Copies to everyone?' 'You catch on fast.' Swayze nodded. 'I intend to be chief someday.' 'Good for you.' 'Make my mother proud.' 'If that's your goal, it's probably wiser to stay a patrolman. There's also a sheaf of invoices here—' 'You want the information transcribed into a less cumbersome format.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (155 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:48 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
'Right,' Dan said. 'With copies to everyone.' 'Maybe you could even be mayor.' 'I've already got my campaign slogan. "Let's Rebuild L.A."' 'Why not? It's worked for every other candidate for thirty years.' 'This ledger—?' 'It's a checkbook,' Dan said. 'You want the information transcribed from the stubs, with copies to everyone. Maybe I could even be governor.' 'No, you wouldn't like the job.' 'Why not?' 'You'd have to live in Sacramento.' 'Hey, that's right. I prefer civilization.' *** Dinner was late because they had to clean up the kitchen. The water for the spaghetti had to be poured out; bits of the demolished radio were floating in it. Laura scrubbed the pot, refilled it, and put it back on the stove to boil. By the time they sat down to eat, she wasn't hungry anymore. She kept thinking of the radio, which had been infused with a strange and demonic life of its own, and that memory spoiled her appetite. The air was rich with the mouthwatering aromas of garlic and tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese, but there was also an underlying hint of scorched plastic and hot metal that seemed (this was crazy, but true, God help her) like the olfactory trace of an evil spiritual presence. Earl Benton ate more than she did, but not much. He didn't talk much either. He stared at his plate even when he took a long pause between bites, and the only time he looked up was when he glanced, occasionally, toward that end of the kitchen counter where the Sony had been. His usual efficient, no-nonsense manner wasn't in evidence now; his eyes had a faraway look. Melanie's eyes were still focused on a far place too, but the girl ate more than either Laura or Earl Benton. Sometimes she chewed slowly and absentmindedly, and sometimes she gobbled up four or five bites in rapid succession, with wolflike hunger. Now and then she altogether forgot that she was eating, and she had to be reminded. Feeding her daughter, repeatedly wiping spaghetti sauce off the child's chin, Laura could not avoid thinking about her own blighted childhood. Her mother, Beatrice, had been a religious zealot who had permitted no singing or dancing or reading of books other than the Bible and certain religious tracts. A recluse with a persecution complex,
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Beatrice had labored hard to ensure that Laura would remain shy, withdrawn, and frightened of the world; if Laura had turned out like Melanie was now, Beatrice no doubt would have been delighted. She would have interpreted schizophrenic catatonia as a rejection of the evil world of the flesh, would have seen it as a deep communion with God. Beatrice would not only have been unable but unwilling to help Laura back into the real world. But I can help you, honey, Laura thought as she wiped a smear of sauce off her daughter's chin. I am able and willing to help you find your way back, Melanie, if only you'll reach out to me, if only you'll let me help. Melanie's head dropped. Her eyes closed. Laura twisted more spaghetti onto the fork and put it to the girl's lips, but the child seemed to have slipped from apathy into some deeper level, perhaps even sleep. 'Come on, Melanie, have another bite. You've got to gain some weight, honey.' Something clicked loudly. Earl Benton looked up from his plate. 'What was that?' Before Laura could respond, the back door blew open with shocking force. The security chain ripped out of the doorjamb, and wood cracked with a hard splintering sound. The first click had been the dead-bolt lock snapping open. All by itself. Earl had jumped to his feet, knocking over his chair. From the patio behind the house, out of the darkness and wind, something came through the door. *** At 9:15, after talking to the owner of the shop next door to the Sign of the Pentagram and learning nothing of interest, Dan stopped at a McDonald's for dinner. He bought two cheeseburgers, a large order of fries, and a diet cola, and he ate in the car while he used the unmarked sedan's datalink to try to locate Regine Savannah. The video display terminal was in the dashboard, mounted at a slant, facing up, so he didn't have to bend over to read it. The programmer's keyboard nearly filled the console between the seats. All LAPD patrol cars and half the unmarked sedans had been fitted with new computer terminals over the past two years. The mobile VDT was linked by microwave transmissions to the underground, high-security, bombproof police communications command center, which in turn had access, via modem, to a variety of government and private-industry data banks.
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Taking a bite of a cheeseburger, Dan started the sedan's engine, switched on the VDT, punched in his personal code, and accessed the telephone-company records. He requested a number for Regine Savannah at any address in the Greater Los Angeles area. In a few seconds, glowing green letters appeared on the screen: NO LISTING: SAVANNAH, REGINE
NO LISTING: SAVANNAH, R.
He typed in a request for any unlisted numbers being billed to an R. or Regine Savannah, but that was a dead end too. He ate a few french fries. The screen glowed softly, patiently. He accessed the Department of Motor Vehicles' license files and requested a search for Regine Savannah. That, too, was negative. As he mulled over another approach, he finished his first cheeseburger and watched the traffic passing on the windswept street. Then he tapped into the DMV files again and requested a search for a driver's license issued to anyone whose first name was Regine and whose middle name was Savannah. Perhaps she had been married and had not abandoned her maiden name altogether. Pay dirt. The screen flashed up the answer. REGINE SAVANNAH HOFFRITZ
Dan stared in disbelief. Hoffritz? Marge Gelkenshettle hadn't said anything about this. Had the girl actually married the man who had beaten her senseless and put her in the hospital? No. As far as he knew, Wilhelm Hoffritz had been unmarried. Dan hadn't been to Hoffritz's house yet, but he had read over the available background information, which contained no reference to a wife or family. Others had tracked down the next of kin: a sister who was flying in from somewhere — Detroit or Chicago, someplace like that — to handle the funeral arrangements. Marge Gelkenshettle would have told him if Regine and Hoffritz had married. Unless she didn't know about it. According to the DMV files, Regine Savannah Hoffritz was female, with black hair and brown eyes. She was five-six, one hundred and twenty-five pounds. She had been
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born on July 3, 1971. That was about the right age for the woman about whom Marge had spoken. The address on her driver's license was in Hollywood, in the hills, and Dan jotted it down in his notebook. Wilhelm Hoffritz had lived in Westwood. If he had been married to Regine Savannah, why would they have kept two houses? Divorce. That was a possibility. However, even if it had ended in divorce, the very fact of the marriage was nonetheless bizarre. What kind of life could it have been for her, married to a vicious sad*st who had brainwashed her, who could completely control her, and who had once beaten her so severely that she had wound up in the hospital? If Hoffritz had savagely abused Regine when she was a student of his — at a time when he had his entire career to lose by indulging in such perverse urges — then, how much worse might he have treated her when she was his wife, when they were alone in the privacy and sanctity of their own home? Thinking about that gave Dan the creeps. *** Earl Benton had his gun in his hand, but what came into the kitchen from the darkness outside wasn't something that he could blow away with a few well-placed rounds from his .38. With a resounding crash, the door was thrown against the wall, and a cold whirlwind surged into the kitchen, a wind like a living beast, hissing and growling, sniffing and capering. And if the substance of the beast was wind, then its coat was made of flowers, for the air was suddenly filled with flowers, yellow and red and white roses, stalky impatiens of every hue, scores of blossoms from the garden behind the house, some with stems attached and some without, some that had been snapped off and some that had been torn out by the roots. The wind-beast shook itself; its coat of flowers flapped and, as if shedding loose hairs, threw off torn leaves, bright petals, crushed stems, clumps of moist earth that had been adhering to the roots. The calendar leaped off the wall and darted halfway around the room on wings of paper before settling to the floor. With a soft rustle not unlike the flutter of feathers, the curtains flew up from the windows and fought to free themselves from the anchoring rods, eager to join this demonic dance of the inanimate. Dirt spattered over Earl, and a rose struck his face; he was aware of a thorn lightly nicking his throat as the flower rebounded from him, and he raised one arm to protect himself. He saw Laura McCaffrey shielding her daughter, and he felt helpless and stupid in the face of this amorphous threat. The door slammed shut as abruptly as it had been forced open. But the churning column of flowers continued to spin, as if this wind was not
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part of that greater wind which scoured the night outside but was, instead, a self-sustaining offspring. That was impossible, of course. Crazy. But real. The whirling turbulence whined, hissed, spat out more leaves and blossoms and broken stems, shook off more dirt and buds and bright petals. In its many-windowed, ragtag coat of roiling vegetation, the wind-creature stopped just inside the door (though its breath could be felt in every corner) and remained there, as if watching them, as if deciding what it would do next — and then it simply expired. The wind didn't die slowly; it stopped all at once. The remaining flowers, which it hadn't yet cast off, dropped to the kitchen tiles in a heap, with a soft thump and rustle and whoosh. Then silence, stillness. *** In the unmarked police sedan in the McDonald's parking lot, Dan terminated the link with the DMV computer and accessed the telephonecompany data banks once more. He got a number and address for Regine Hoffritz. It was the same address the DMV had provided. He glanced at his watch: 9:32. He had been working with the VDT for about ten minutes. In the bad old days, before the advent of the mobile computer, he would have wasted at least two hours gathering this information. He switched off the screen, and a deeper darkness crept into the car. As he finished his second cheeseburger and sipped his cola, he thought about the rapidly changing world in which he lived. A new world, a science-fictional society, was growing up around him with disconcerting speed and vigor. It was both exhilarating and frightening to be alive in these times. Mankind had acquired the ability to reach the stars, to take a giant leap off this world and spread out through the universe, but the species had also acquired the ability to destroy itself before the inevitable emigration could begin. New technology — like the computer — freed men and women from all kinds of drudgery, saved them vast amounts of time. And yet ... And yet the time saved did not seem to mean additional leisure or greater opportunities for meditation and reflection. Instead, with each new wave of technology, the pace of life increased; there was more to do, more choices to make, more things to experience, and people eagerly seized upon those experiences and filled the hours that had only moments ago become empty. Each year life seemed to be flitting past with far greater speed than the year before, as if God had cranked up the control knob on the flow of time. But that wasn't right, either, because to many people, even the concept of God seemed dated in an age in which the universe was being forced to let go of its mysteries on a daily basis. Science,
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technology, and change were the only gods now, the new Trinity; and while they were not consciously cruel and judgmental, as some of the old gods had been, they were too coldly indifferent to offer any comfort to the sick, the lonely, and the lost. How could a shop like the Sign of the Pentagram flourish in a world of computers, miracle drugs, and spaceships? Who could turn to the occult, seeking answers, when physicists and biochemists and geneticists were providing more answers, day by day, than all the Ouija boards and seances and spiritualists since the dawn of history? Why would men of science, like Dylan McCaffrey and Wilhelm Hoffritz, associate with a purveyor of bat sh*t and bunkum? Well, clearly, they hadn't believed it was all bunkum. Some aspect of the occult, some paranormal phenomena, must have been of interest to McCaffrey and Hoffritz and must have seemed, to them, to have a bearing or an application in their own research. Somehow, they had wanted to join science and magic. But how? And why? As he finished his diet cola, Dan remembered a fragment of rhyme: We'll plunge into darkness, into the hands of harm, when Science and the Devil go walking arm in arm. He couldn't recall where he had heard it, but he thought it was part of a song, an old rock-'n'-roll number perhaps, from the days when he had regularly listened to rock. He tried hard to remember, almost had it, thought maybe it was from a protest song about nuclear war and destruction, but he couldn't quite seize the memory. Science and the Devil, walking arm in arm. It was a naive image, even simpleminded. The song had probably been nothing but propaganda for the New Luddites who yearned to dismantle civilization and go back to living in tents or caves. Dan had no sympathy for that point of view. He knew that tents were drafty and damp. But for some reason the image of 'Science and the Devil, walking arm in arm, had a powerful effect on him, and a chill spread through his bones. Suddenly he was no longer in the mood to visit Regine Savannah Hoffritz. He'd put in a long day. Time to go home. His forehead hurt where he'd been hit, and a score of bruises throbbed all over his body. His joints felt as if they were on fire. His eyes were burning, watering, itching. He needed a beer or two — and ten hours of sleep. But he still had work to do.
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*** Laura looked around in shock and disbelief. Dirt, flowers, leaves, and other debris were scattered across the kitchen table and through the uneaten portions of their dinners. Battered roses littered the floor and the counters. Gnarled, broken bunches of red and purple impatiens bristled out of the sink. One white rose hung through the handle of the refrigerator door, and bits of greenery and hundreds of detached petals were stuck to the curtains, the walls, and the doors of the cabinets. On the floor, a mound of limp, ragged greenery and wind-burned blossoms marked the spot where the whirlwind had died. 'Let's get out of here,' Earl said, the gun still in his hand. 'But this mess,' Laura began. 'Later,' he said, going to Melanie, pulling the somnolent child up from her chair. Dazed, Laura said, 'But I've got to clean up—' 'Come on, come on,' Earl said impatiently. His ruddy, country-boy complexion had vanished. He was now pallid and waxy. 'Into the living room.' She hesitated, surveying the tangled debris. 'Come on,' Earl said, 'before something worse comes through that door!'
23 Regine Savannah Hoffritz lived on one of the less expensive streets in the Hollywood hills. Her house was a prime example of the eclecticanachronistic-madcap architecture which was actually rare in California but which chauvinistic New Yorkers pointed to as an example of typical West Coast tastelessness. Judging by its use of brick and exposed exterior wall beams, Dan supposed that the house was intended to be English Tudor, though there were elaborate carved Victorian eaves, American colonial shutters — and big brass carriage lamps, of no discernible period or style, flanking the front door and the garage. The two pilasters framing the entrance to the walk were stucco with Mexicantile trim, bearing heavy wrought-iron lamps utterly different from — yet no nearer the Tudor ideal than — the brass fixtures employed elsewhere. A black Porsche was parked in the driveway. In the ghostly white file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (162 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:49 PM]
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radiance of the various and clashing lamps, the curvature and sheen of the car's long hood was reminiscent of a beetle's carapace. Dan rang the doorbell, withdrew his police ID, waited with his shoulders hunched in the chilly wind, and then rang the bell again. When the door finally opened, it was on a security chain. Half of a lovely face peered out at him: lustrous black hair, porcelain skin, one large and clear brown eye, half a precisely sculpted nose in which the one visible nostril was as delicately formed as if it had been made from blown glass, and one-half of a ripe and alluring mouth. She said, 'Yes?' Her voice was soft, breathy. Although it might have been her Godgiven voice, completely unaffected, it nevertheless sounded phony, calculated. Dan said, 'Regine Hoffritz?' 'Yes.' 'Lieutenant Haldane. Police. I'd like to talk with you. About your husband.' She squinted at his identification. 'What husband?' He heard another quality in her voice: a pliancy, a meekness, a tremulous and yielding weakness. She seemed to be waiting only for a command that would reduce her to unquestioning obedience. He didn't think her tone had anything to do with his being a cop. He suspected that she was always like this, with everyone. Or, rather, she had always been like this since Willy Hoffritz had changed her. 'Your husband,' he said. 'Wilhelm Hoffritz.' 'Oh. Just a minute.' She closed the door, and it stayed closed for ten seconds, twenty, half a minute, longer. Dan was just about to ring the bell again when he heard the security chain being disengaged. The door opened. She stepped back, and Dan entered past three pieces of luggage that stood to one side. In the living room, he sat in an armchair, and she chose the rust-brown sofa. Her posture and manner were demure, yet her primary effect was powerfully seductive. Although she was a striking woman, something about her was not quite right. Her considerable femininity seemed studied, exaggerated. Her hair was so perfectly coiffed and her makeup was so exactingly and faultlessly applied that she looked as if she were about to step before the cameras to film a Revlon commercial. She wore a floor-length, creamcolored silk robe cinched tightly at the waist to emphasize her full breasts, flat belly, and flaring hips. The robe was excessively frilly as well, with silk ruffles up the lapels, at the collar and cuffs and hem. At her tender throat she wore a gold mesh dog collar; it was one of those close-fitting necklaces that had been popular years ago. These days, file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (163 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:49 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
among the general population, where such jewelry had no significance beyond mere decoration, dog collars could be seen only occasionally, though among sadomasoch*stic couples, such items remained in demand, because they were seen as a symbol of sexual subservience. And though Dan had met Regine only a minute ago, he knew that she wore her collar with that submissive and masoch*stic intent, for a crushed and obedient spirit was evident in the way she averted her face, in the graceful and yet humbled way she moved (as if anticipating and perversely welcoming a blow, a slap, a cruel pinch), and in her avoidance of eye contact. She waited for him to begin. For a moment he said nothing, listened to the house. Her delay in removing the security chain from the door led him to suspect that she was not alone. She had hurriedly consulted with someone and had obtained permission before letting Dan in. But the rest of the house was quiet and apparently deserted. Half a dozen photographs were arranged on the coffee table, and all were of Willy Hoffritz. Or at least the three facing Dan were of Hoffritz, and he imagined that the others were too. It was the same unremarkable face, the same wideset eyes, the same slightly plump cheeks and piggish nose that Dan had seen in the driver's license photo in the wallet of one of the dead men in Studio City, the previous night. He finally said, 'I'm sure you know that your husband is dead.' 'Willy, you mean?' 'Yes, Willy.' 'I know.' I'd like to ask you some questions.' 'I'm sure I can't help you,' she said softly, meekly, looking at her hands. 'When was the last time you saw Willy?' 'More than a year ago.' 'Divorced?' 'Well...' 'Separated?' 'Yes, but not ... in the way you mean.' He wished that she would look at him. 'Then in what way do you mean it?' She nervously shifted positions on the sofa. 'We were never ... legally married.' 'No? But you have his name now.' Still considering her hands, she nodded. 'Yes, he let me change mine.' 'You went to court, had your name changed to Hoffritz? When, why?' 'Two years ago. Because ... because ... you won't understand.' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (164 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:49 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
'Try me.' Regine didn't answer at once, and as Dan waited for her to form her explanation, he looked around the room. On the mantel above the white brick fireplace was another gallery of photographs of Willy Hoffritz: eight more. Although the house was warm, Dan felt as though he were in a Rocky Mountain January night as he stared at those silver-framed, carefully arranged images of the dead psychologist. Regine said, 'I wanted to show Willy that I was his, completely and forever his.' 'He didn't object to your taking his name? He didn't think you might be setting him up for a palimony case?' 'No, no. I'd never have done something like that to Willy. He knew I'd never do something like that. Oh, no. Impossible.' 'If he wanted you to have his name, why didn't he marry you?' 'He didn't want to be married,' she said with unmistakable disappointment and regret. Although Regine's face was bowed, Dan saw sadness, like a sudden gravitational force, pull at her features. Amazed, he said, 'He didn't want to marry you, but he wanted you to carry his name. To indicate that you ... belonged to him?' 'Yes.' 'Taking his name was like ... being branded?' 'Oh, yes,' she said in a hoarse whisper, and upon her face blossomed a smile of genuine pleasure at the memory of this strange act of submission. 'Yes. Like being branded.' 'He sounds like a sweetheart,' Dan said. But she was unaware of his ironic tone, so he decided to needle her, hoping to break through her whipped-dog demeanor. 'Jesus, he must've been a real egomaniac!' Her head jerked up, and she met his eyes at last. 'Oh, no,' she said, frowning. She did not speak with anger or impatience but with a warmth, eager to correct what she saw as his misapprehension of the dead man's character. 'Oh, no. Not Willy. There was no one like Willy. He was wonderful. There wasn't anything I wouldn't have done for Willy. Not anything. He was so special. You didn't know him, or you wouldn't say a word against him. Not against Willy. You couldn't. Not if you'd known him.' 'There are those who did know him who don't speak so highly of him. I'm sure you're aware of that.' She lowered her gaze to her hands again. 'They're all just envious, jealous, lying bastards,' she said, but in the same soft, sweet, breathlessly feminine manner, as if she had been forbidden to mar her perfect femininity with a shrill tone of voice or any other display of anger. file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (165 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:49 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
'He was thrown out of UCLA.' She said nothing. 'Because of what he did to you.' Regine still said nothing, continued to avert her eyes, but she shifted uneasily again. Her robe fell open to reveal one perfectly formed calf. A bruise the size of a half dollar marred the creamy flesh. Two smaller bruises were visible at the ankle. 'I want you to talk about Willy.' 'I won't. 'I'm afraid you must.' She shook her head. 'What was he doing with Dylan McCaffrey in Studio City?' 'I'll never say a word against Willy. I don't care what you do to me. Throw me in jail if you want. I don't care. I don't care.' This was said quietly but with fierce emotion. 'Too many hard things have been said about poor Willy by people not good enough to lick his shoes.' Dan said, 'Regine, look at me.' She raised one hand to her mouth, put a knuckle to her teeth, and gently chewed on it. 'Regine? Look at me, Regine.' Nervously sucking-chewing at that knuckle, she raised her head, but she didn't meet his eyes. She stared over his shoulder, past him. 'Regine, he beat you up.' She said nothing. 'He put you in hospital.' 'I loved him,' she said, speaking around the knuckle upon which her attention was becoming increasingly fixated. 'He used sophisticated brainwashing techniques on you, Regine. He somehow got in your mind, and he changed you, twisted you, and that is not the work of a sweet and wonderful man.' Tears sprang from her and streamed down her cheeks, and her face contorted in grief. 'I loved him so much.' The sleeve of Regine's robe slid up her arm when she brought her hand to her mouth. Dan saw a small bruise on the meaty part of her forearm — and what appeared to be rope abrasions on her wrist. She had told him that she hadn't seen Willy Hoffritz for a year, but someone had been playing bondage games with her, and recently. Dan studied the ornately framed photographs on the coffee table, the thin smile on the dead psychologist's face. The air suddenly seemed thick, oily, unclean. A desire for fresh air almost propelled him from the chair, almost sent him stumbling toward the door. He stayed where he was. 'But how could you love a man who hurt you so?' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (166 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:49 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
'He freed me.' 'No, he enslaved you.' 'He freed me to be ...' 'To be what?' 'What I was meant to be.' 'And what were you meant to be?' 'What I am.' And what is that?' 'Whatever is wanted of me.' Her tears had stopped. A smile flickered at the corners of her mouth as she considered what she had said. 'Whatever is wanted of me.' And she shivered, as though the very thought of slavery and degradation sent a current of physical pleasure through her. With growing frustration and anger, he said, 'Are you telling me that you were born to be only what Willy Hoffritz wanted you to be, born to do anything he wanted you to do?' 'Whatever is wanted,' Regine repeated, looking directly into his eyes now. He wished that she had continued staring into space beyond him, for he saw — or imagined that he saw — grave torment, self-loathing, and desperation of an intensity that made his heart clutch up. He glimpsed a soul in rags: a tattered, wrinkled, frayed, and soiled spirit. Within this woman's ripe, full, exquisitely sensuous body, and within the outwardly visible persona of the submissive child-woman, there was another Regine, a better Regine, trapped, buried alive, existing beyond whatever psychological blocks Hoffritz had implanted but unable to escape or even to imagine any hope of escape. In that brief moment of contact between them, Dan saw that the real woman, the woman who had existed before Hoffritz had come along, was like a withered straw doll, dried out by all these years of ceaseless abuse, now a juiceless, miserable creature who'd been transformed into kindling by a nightmare of humiliation and torture; she longed for the match that would ignite and, mercifully, extinguish her. Horrified, he could not look away. She lowered her eyes first. He was relieved. And sick. His lips were dry. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. 'Do you know what research Willy was doing after he was booted out of UCLA?' 'No.' 'What project were he and Dylan McCaffrey working on?' 'I don't know.' 'Did you ever see the gray room in Studio City?' file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (167 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:49 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
'No.' 'Do you know a man named Ernest Andrew Cooper?' 'No.' 'Joseph Scaldone?' 'I wish you would go away.' 'Ned Rink?' 'No. None of them.' 'What did those men do to Melanie McCaffrey? What did they want from her?' 'I don't know.' 'Who was funding their project?' 'I don't know.' Dan was sure she was lying. Along with her self-assurance and selfrespect and independence, she had also lost the ability to prevaricate with confidence or conviction. Now that he'd seen Regine and knew the amazing, monstrous thing that had been done to her, Dan had no respect for Hoffritz as a man, but more than ever he feared Hoffritz's manipulative abilities, his vicious cruelty, and his dark genius, and more than ever he realized the need to arrive at a timely solution in this case. If Hoffritz had transformed Regine this completely, what might he have achieved in his research with Dylan McCaffrey, for which he'd had more time and resources? Dan had a new sense that time was swiftly running out, a growing urgency. Hoffritz had set some terrible engine in motion, and it would crush many more people, soon, unless it was understood, located, and stopped. Regine was lying to him, and he couldn't allow that. He had to find some answers quickly, before he was too late to help Melanie.
24 They retreated from the flower- and dirt-strewn kitchen, but Laura felt no safer. One weirdness had followed another since they had come home that afternoon. First, Melanie had awakened from her nap, screaming in terror, clawing and punching herself as if she were a penitent religious fanatic scourging the devil from her flesh. Then the radio had come to life, followed by the whirlwind that had burst through the back door. If someone had told her that the house was haunted, she would not have scoffed. Apparently, the move from kitchen to living room didn't make Earl file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20...ontz%20-%20The%20Door%20To%20December.htm (168 of 305) [2/9/2004 10:19:49 PM]
Dean Koontz - The Door to December
