The Door to December Read online

  Freedom Now was chartered in 1989 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 that 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 twenty-one, 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 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 circumstantial 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 of UCLA—dead. One millionaire businessman and political activist—dead. One ex-cop, ex-FBI 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.

  chapter fourteen

  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 of 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 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 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 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 o
f 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 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 thumb-sucking, 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, 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, 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, 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 cocked 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, fist-ing 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 reassurance didn’t calm her. “The . . . t
he . . .”

  “The aversion-therapy chair? The electric chair? You’ll never be put in that again, either.”

  Something else terrified the girl. She shuddered and began to strain against Laura, as if she wanted to get away, run.

  “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.

  chapter fifteen

  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 big-city 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.”

  “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 roadrunner 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