The Key to Midnight

by Dean Koontz

  “Between my legs.”

  “And then?”

  “He’s grinning.”

  “And then?”

  “Click, click, click.”

  “Go on.”

  She was silent.

  “Joanna?”

  She said, “I need ...”

  “Yes?”

  “... a minute.”

  “Take your time,” Inamura said. He glanced at Alex, and his eyes revealed an infinite sadness.

  Alex looked down at his hands. They were fisted on his knees. He wanted to beat Herr Doktor until his knuckles were scraped and raw, until every bone in his hands was broken, until his arms were so weary that he could no longer lift them from his sides.

  On its perch in the cage, the myna erupted in a brief rage, flapping its wings frenziedly before abruptly going as still as though it had spotted a predator.

  In that drab voice borrowed from someone dead, as though she were channeling a despairing spirit that was trapped in Hell, she said, “Touching me between the legs. Cold steel. Clicking so loud. Like explosions.”

  “And then?”

  “He opens me.”

  “And then?”

  “Puts one.”

  “Does what?”

  “Puts one of his steel fingers.”

  “Puts it where?”

  “Inside me.”

  “Be more specific.”

  “Isn’t that enough—what I said?”

  “No. You mustn’t be afraid to say it clearly.”

  “Into ... my vagina.”

  “You’re doing well. You were used terribly. But in order to forget, you must first remember. Go on.”

  Her hands were still clasped protectively over her breasts. “The clicking noise fills me, fills me inside, so loud, echoing through me.”

  “And then?”

  “I’m afraid he’ll hurt me.”

  “Does he hurt you?”

  “He threatens me.”

  “What does he threaten to do?”

  “He says he’ll... tear me apart.”

  “And then?”

  “He grins.”

  “And then?”

  And then? And then? And then? Go on. Go on. And then? And then? Go on.

  Alex wanted to press his hands over his ears. He forced himself to listen, because if he hoped to share the best of life with her, he must be prepared to share the worst as well.

  Inamura probed at Joanna’s psyche in the manner of a dentist meticulously drilling away every trace of rotten matter and bacteria in an infected tooth.

  The brutal revelations of repeated rape and perverse sex—in addition to the even more chilling story of the “treatment” that she had endured—left Alex weak. He nurtured the blackest imaginable hatred for the people who had stolen her past and who had dealt with her as they might have dealt with any animal. He was determined to find the man with the mechanical hand and every one of that bastard’s associates. But revenge would have to come later. At the moment, shell-shocked by the hideous events that Joanna was recalling for Dr. Omi Inamura, Alex didn’t have even enough strength to speak.

  The remainder of the interrogation lasted only five or six minutes. When Joanna answered the last question, she turned on her side and drew her knees up, assuming the fetal position once more.

  Unconcerned about what the doctor might say, Alex got out of his chair and knelt beside her. With one hand, he smoothed her hair away from her face.

  “Enough,” he told Inamura. “That’s enough for today. Bring her back to me.”

  37

  At six o’clock Sunday morning, Joanna was awakened by thirst. Her lips were chapped, and her throat was dry. She felt dehydrated. The previous night, after the exhausting session in Inamura’s office, they had eaten a large dinner: thick steaks, Kobe beef, the finest meat in the world, from cattle that had been hand-massaged daily and fed nothing but rice, beans, and plenty of beer. With the steaks, they had finished two bottles of fine French wine, a rare and expensive luxury in Japan. Now the alcohol had leached moisture from her and had left a sour taste.

  She went into the bathroom and greedily drank two glasses of water. It tasted almost as good as wine.

  Returning to bed, she realized that for the first time in twelve years, her sleep had not been interrupted by the familiar nightmare. She had not dreamed about the man with the mechanical hand.

  She was free at last, and she stood very still for a moment, stunned. Then she laughed aloud.

  Free!

  In bed, wrapped in a newfound sense of security as well as in blankets and sheets, she sought sleep again and found it quickly after her head touched the pillow.

  She woke naturally, three hours later, at nine o’clock.

  Though her sleep had been dreamless, she was less enthusiastic about her new freedom than she had been in the middle of the night. She wasn’t certain why her attitude had changed; but whatever the reason, the mood of innocent optimism was gone. She was wary, cautious, tempered by an intuition that told her more—and worse—trouble was coming.

  Curious about the weather, she went to the nearest window and drew back the drapes. A storm had passed through during the night. The sky was clear, but Kyoto lay under six or seven inches of fresh, dry snow. The streets held little traffic.

  In addition to the snow, something else had arrived in the night. Across the street, on the second floor of a popular geisha house, a man stood at a window. He was watching her apartment through a pair of binoculars.

  He saw her at the same moment that she saw him. He lowered the glasses and stepped back, out of sight.

  That was why her mood had changed. Subconsciously she had been expecting something like the man with the binoculars. They were out there. Waiting. Watching. Biding their time. Platoons of them, for all she knew. Until she and Alex could discover who they were and why they had stolen her past, she was neither safe nor free. In spite of the fact that the bad dream no longer had the power to disrupt her sleep, the sense of security that she enjoyed during the night was false. Although she’d lived through several kinds of hell, the worst of them all might be ahead of her.

  In the morning sun, the snow was bright. The Gion looked pure. In the distance, a temple bell rang.

  38

  That morning, at eleven o’clock Kyoto time, Ted Blankenship called from Chicago. He had received detailed reports from the company’s associates in London, in answer to the questions that Alex had asked two days ago.

  According to the investigators in England, the solicitor who had acted as the executor of the Rand estate, J. Compton Woolrich, was a phantom. There was no record that he had ever existed. No birth certificate. No passport in that name. No driver’s license. No file under that name with the tax authorities at Inland Revenue. No work or identity card of any sort. Nothing. No one named J. Compton Woolrich had been licensed to practice law at any time in this century. Nor had anyone with that name possessed a telephone number in greater London since 1946. As Joanna had discovered on Friday, Woolrich’s telephone was actually that of an antique shop on Jermyn Street. Likewise, the return address on Compton’s stationery was neither a home nor a law office; it was actually that of a library that had been established prior to the Second World War.

  “What about British-Continental Insurance?” Alex asked.

  “Another phony,” Blankenship said. “There’s no such firm registered or paying taxes in England.”

  “And though by some fluke they might have escaped registration, no one there escapes taxes.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But we talked to Phillips at British-Continental.”

  “Not his real name. A deception.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. What about the address on their stationery?”

  “Oh, that’s real enough,” Blankenship said. “But it sure as hell isn’t the headquarters for a major corporation. Our British friends say it’s just a grimy, three-story office building in Soho.”

  �
��And there’s not even a branch office of an insurance company in the place?”

  “No. About a dozen other businesses operate there, all more or less cubbyhole outfits, nothing particularly successful—at least not on the surface of it. Importers. Exporters. A mail-forwarding service. A couple of talent bookers who service the cheapest clubs in the city. But no British-Continental.”

  “What about the telephone number?”

  “It’s listed to one of the importers at that address. Fielding Athison, Limited. They deal in furniture, clothes, dinnerware, crafts, jewelry, and a lot of other stuff that’s made in South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Thailand.”

  “And they don’t have a Mr. Phillips at that number?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “They’re playing games.”

  “I wish you’d tell me what kind of games,” Blankenship said. “And how does this tie in with Tom Chelgrin and his missing daughter? I have to tell you, curiosity’s got me in nearly as bad shape as the proverbial cat.”

  “It’s not a good idea for me to talk too much about my plans,” Alex said. “At least not on this phone.”

  “Tapped?”

  “I suspect it’s been transformed into a regular party line.”

  “In that case, should we be talking at all?” Blankenship asked worriedly.

  “It doesn’t matter if they hear what you’re going to tell me,” Alex said. “None of it’s news to them. What else have you got on this Fielding Athison company?”

  “Well, it’s a profitable business, but only by a hair. In fact, they’re so overstaffed it’s a miracle they manage to stay afloat.”

  “What does that suggest to you?”

  “Other important companies of similar size make do with ten or twelve employees. Fielding Athison has twenty-seven, the majority of them in sales. There just doesn’t appear to be enough work to keep them all busy.”

  “So the importing business is a front,” Alex said.

  “In the diplomatic phrasing of our English friends, ‘The distinct possibility exists that the employees of Fielding Athison engage in some sort of unpublicized work in addition to the importation of Asian goods.”

  “A front for what? For whom?”

  “If you want to find out,” Blankenship said, “it’s going to cost us dearly. And it’s not the sort of thing that can be dug up quickly—if at all. I’d bet a thousand to one that the people using Fielding Athison are breaking a serious law or two. But they’ve been in business for fourteen years, and no one’s tumbled to them yet, so they’re good at keeping secrets. Do you want me to tell London to try to dig deeper?”

  “No,” Alex said. “Not right now. I’ll see what develops here in the next couple of days. If it’s necessary to put the Englishmen on the job again, I’ll call you back.”

  “How’s Wayne?” Blankenship asked.

  “Better. He’ll keep the leg.”

  “Thank God. Look, Alex, do you want me to send help?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “I’ve got a few good men free at the moment.”

  “If they came, they’d only be targets. Like Wayne.”

  “Aren’t you a target?”

  “Yeah. But the fewer the better.”

  “A little protection—”

  “I don’t need protection.”

  “Wayne needed protection. But I guess you know best.”

  “What I need,” Alex said, “is divine guidance.”

  “If a voice comes to me from a burning bush anytime soon, I’ll let you know right away what it says.”

  “Seriously, Ted, I want you to keep a lid on this. I don’t want to attack the problem with an army. I’d like to find the answers I’m after without, in the process, filling up Japanese hospitals with my employees.”

  “It’s still an odd way to handle it—alone.”

  “I realize that,” Alex said. “But I’ve thought about it... and it seems to me that these people, whoever they might be, have given me quite a lot of slack already. There’s something odd about the fact that they haven’t just blown my head off by now.”

  “You think they’re playing two sides of some game? Using you?”

  “Maybe. And maybe if I bring in a platoon from Chicago, they won’t cut me any more slack. Maybe they want to keep the game quiet, with a limited number of players.”

  “Why?”

  “If I knew that, then there wouldn’t be any need for the game, would there?”

  39

  Five o’clock Sunday afternoon. Dr. Inamura’s office. Pastel lighting. Lemon incense. The watchful bird in the brass cage.

  The pine shutters were open, and purple twilight pressed at the windows.

  “Dancing butterflies,” said the psychiatrist.

  In the final session with Omi Inamura, Joanna recalled the exact wording of the three posthypnotic suggestions that had been deeply implanted by the man with the mechanical hand. The first involved the memory block—“Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun”—with which they had already dealt. The second concerned the devastating attacks of claustrophobia and paranoia that she suffered when anyone became more than casually interested in her. Inamura finished administering the cure that Alex had begun several days ago, patiently convincing Joanna that the words of Herr Doktor no longer had any power over her and that her fears were not valid. They never had been valid. Not surprisingly, the third of Herr Doktor’s directives was that she would never leave Japan; and if she did attempt to get out of the country, if she did board a ship or an aircraft that was bound for any port beyond Japan’s borders, she would become nauseous and extremely disoriented. Any attempt to escape from the prison to which she was assigned would end in an attack of blind terror and hysteria. Her faceless masters had boxed her up every way that they could: emotionally, intellectually, psychologically, chronologically, and now even geographically. Omi Inamura relieved her of that last restriction.

  Alex was impressed by the cleverness with which Herr Doktor had programmed Joanna. Whoever and whatever else he might be, the man was a genius in his field.

  When Inamura was positive that Joanna could not remember any more about what Herr Doktor had done to her, he took the session in a new direction. He urged her to move further into her past.

  She squirmed in the chair. “But there’s nowhere to go.”

  “Of course there is. You weren’t born in that room, Joanna.”

  “Nowhere to go.”

  “Listen carefully,” Inamura said. “You’re strapped in that bed. There’s one window. Outside there’s a mansard roof against a blue sky. Are you there?”

  “Yes,” she said, more relaxed in this trance than she had been in any of the previous sessions. “Big black birds are sitting on the chimneys. A dozen big black birds.”

  “You’re approximately twenty years old,” Inamura said. “But now you’re growing younger. Minute by minute, you’re growing younger. You have not been in that room for a long time. In fact you’ve just come there, and you haven’t yet even met the man with the mechanical hand. You haven’t yet undergone a treatment. You’re drifting back, back in time. You have just come awake in that room. And now time is running backward even faster... back beyond the moment you were brought into that room... hours slipping away... faster, faster... now days instead of hours... backward in time, flowing like a great river... carrying you back, back, back... Where are you now, Joanna?”

  She didn’t respond.

  Inamura repeated the question.

  “Nowhere,” she said hollowly.

  “Look around you.”

  “Nothing.”

  “What is your name?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Are you Joanna Rand?”

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Are you Lisa Chelgrin?”

  “Who’s she? Do I know her?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “I... I don’t have a name.”


  “Who are you?”

  “Nobody.”

  “You must be somebody.”

  “I’m waiting to become.”

  “To become Joanna Rand?”

  “I’m waiting,” she said simply.

  “Concentrate for me.”

  “I’m so cold. Freezing.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “What do you see?”

  “Nothing,” she insisted.

  “What do you feel?”

  “Dead.”

  Alex said, “Jesus.”

  Inamura stared thoughtfully at her. After a while he said, “I’ll tell you where you are, Joanna.”

  “Okay.”

  “You are standing in front of a door. An iron door. Very imposing. Like the door to a fortress. Do you see it?”

  “No.”

  “Try to visualize it,” Inamura said. “Look closely. You really cannot miss it. The door is huge, absolutely massive. Solid iron. If you could see through to the far side of it, you would find four large hinges, each as thick as your wrist. The iron is pitted and spotted with rust, but the door nevertheless appears impregnable. It’s five feet wide, nine feet high, rounded at the top, set in an arch in the middle of a great stone wall.”

  What the devil’s he doing? Alex wondered.

  “You see the door now, I’m sure,” Inamura said.

  “Yes,” Joanna agreed.

  “Touch it.”

  Lying in her chair but obviously believing herself to be in front of the door, Joanna raised one hand and tested the empty air.

  “What does the door feel like?” Inamura asked.

  “Cold and rough,” she said.

  “Rap your knuckles on it.”

  She rapped silently on nothing.

  “What do you hear, Joanna?”

  “A dull ringing sound. It’s a very thick door.”

  “Yes, it is,” Inamura said. “And it’s locked.”

  Resting in the reclining chair but simultaneously existing in another time and place, Joanna tried the door that only she could see. “Yeah. Locked.”

  “But you’ve got to open it,” Inamura said.

  “Why?”

  “Because beyond it lies twenty years of your life. The first twenty years. That’s why you can’t remember any of it. They’ve put it behind the door. They’ve locked it away from you.”