The Door to December

by Dean Koontz

  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 loose again.

  Frowning at Marge, Dan said, “Programmed them to be promiscuous and masochistic? 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 masochistic role. Then she gradually grew to fear and despise the whole sadomasochistic 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 of 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 masochistic 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 behavior-modification 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 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, hugging 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 the 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 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 the 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 the 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 the 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 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 well-developed 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 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.”

  “Is 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 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 green-tiled 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 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.

  chapter twenty

  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 lan
tana 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 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 Hancock 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?”