The Door to December

by Dean Koontz

  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.”

  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’re 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.”

  chapter twelve

  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 lacquered 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: “Physically, your daughter’s in good condition, surprisingly good considering the circumstances. 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 behavior 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.”

  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 self-worth. 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 Burns, 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?”

  “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 with Dr. Ybarra, Laura had called the security service that Dan Haldane had recommended. By the time she had
spoken with 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 of 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.”

  “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 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 that it would be like this.

  chapter thirteen

  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 Hancock 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 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 terrorist organizati
ons, 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 scroll to see more data.

  Freedom Now—current officers

  President: Ernest Andrew Cooper, Hancock Park

  Treasurer: Wilhelm Stephan Hoffritz, Westwood

  Secretary: Mary Katherine O’Hara, Burbank

  ➧