The Door to December

by Dean Koontz

  considerably more distraught than she was now. “I’ve got to get moving, find out if Boothe is still in the city. You just keep Melanie as awake and as alert as you can.”

  “When she’s asleep or deeply catatonic,” Laura said, “she’s more vulnerable, isn’t she? Somehow, she’s more vulnerable. Maybe . . . maybe It even senses when she’s asleep and comes for her then. I mean, last night, in the motel, when she slept, the room got cold and something came, didn’t it? And yesterday evening, at the house, when the radio became . . . possessed . . . and when that whirlwind full of flowers burst through the door, she had her eyes closed and she was . . . not asleep but more catatonic than she is most of the time. You remember, Earl? She had her eyes closed, and she seemed unaware of the uproar around her. And somehow It knew when she was the least alert, and It came then because she was vulnerable. Is that it? Is that why I have to keep her awake?”

  “Yes,” Dan lied. “That’s part of it. And now I’ve really got to go, Laura.” He wanted to put his hand to her face. He wanted to kiss the corners of her mouth and say good-bye with more feeling than he had any right to express. Instead, he looked at Earl. “You take good care of them.”

  “Like they were my own,” Earl said.

  Dan got out of the car, slammed the door, and sprinted across the storm-lashed parking lot to the unmarked sedan that he had left on the other side of the restaurant. By the time Dan started the engine and switched on the windshield wipers, Earl had already pulled out of the lot and was moving off through the hesitant traffic on the rainy street.

  Dan wondered if he would ever see them again.

  Delmar, Carrie, Cindy Lakey . . .

  The hated, long-remembered, dream-haunting string of failures cycled through his mind for at least the ten thousandth time.

  Delmar, Carrie, Cindy Lakey . . . Laura, Melanie. No.

  He wouldn’t fail this time.

  In fact, he might be the only cop in the city—the only person within a thousand miles—who was sufficiently fascinated with murder and murderers, sufficiently well versed in their aberrant behavior and psychology, to be able to find his way into the heart of this bizarre case; he was, perhaps, the only one who had any chance of successfully resolving it. He knew more about murder than most men ever would, because he had thought more about it than anyone else he knew and because it had played such an important role in both his personal and his professional life. His contemplation of the subject had long ago brought him to the dismal realization that the capacity for murder existed in everyone, and he was not surprised when he found it in even the least likely suspects. Therefore, he was not now surprised by the suspicions that had grown even more concrete during the past several hours, although Laura and Earl would have been not only surprised but probably devastated by them.

  Delmar, Carrie, Cindy Lakey.

  The chain of failure ended there.

  He drove away from the restaurant, and although he worked hard at keeping his confidence high, he felt almost as bleak as the gray, rain-filled day through which he moved.

  The Spielberg film had come out a few weeks before Christmas, but almost three months later, it was still popular enough to fill half the large theater for a weekday matinee. Now, five minutes before the feature was scheduled to start, the audience was murmuring and laughing and shifting in their seats in happy anticipation.

  Laura, Melanie, and Earl took three seats on the right side of the auditorium, halfway down the aisle. Sitting between Laura and Earl, Melanie stared at the giant blank screen, expressionless, unmoving, unspeaking, hands limp in her lap, but at least she seemed awake.

  Although it would be more difficult to monitor the girl in the dark, Laura wished that the lights would go down and that the movie would start, for she felt vulnerable in the light, naked and observed among all those strangers. She knew it was silly to worry that the wrong people would see them there and make trouble for them. The FBI, crooked police officers, Palmer Boothe and his associates might all be eager to find her, but that meant they would be out searching, not taking in a movie. They were safe. If any place in the world was a haven from harm, it was that ordinary theater on a rainy afternoon.

  But then, of course, she had decided some time ago that nowhere in the world was safe anymore.

  Having decided that a forceful, blunt, and surprise approach would be most effective with Palmer Boothe, Dan drove directly from the coffee shop to the Journal building on Wilshire Boulevard, just a couple of blocks east of the point at which Beverly Hills gave way to the enfolding, octopodal city of Los Angeles. He didn’t know if Boothe was even in the city any longer, let alone in his office, but it was the best place to start.

  He parked in the underground garage beneath the building and rode the elevator to the eighteenth floor, where all the executives of the Journal communications empire—which included nineteen other papers, two magazines, three radio stations, and two television stations—had their offices. The elevator opened on a plushly furnished lounge with ankle-deep carpet and two original Rothko oils on the walls.

  Unavoidably impressed and overwhelmed by the knowledge that there was probably four or five million dollars’ worth of artwork represented in those two simply framed pieces, Dan wasn’t able to slip into his Intimidating Homicide Detective role as smoothly and completely as he had planned. Nevertheless, he used his ID and authority to get by the armed security guard and past the coldly polite and supremely efficient receptionist.

  A polite young man who might have been an executive secretary or an executive trainee or a bodyguard—or all three—arrived at the receptionist’s summons. He led Dan back down a long hall so silent that it could have been in deep space between distant stars instead of in the middle of a large city. The hallway terminated in another reception area, an exquisitely appointed decompression chamber outside the sanctum sanctorum of the starship commander himself, Palmer Boothe.

  The young man introduced Dan to Mrs. Hudspeth, who was Boothe’s secretary, then departed. Mrs. Hudspeth was a handsome, elegant, gray-haired woman in a plum-colored knit suit and a pastel blouse with a plum-colored bow at the throat. Though she was tall and thin and refined and obviously proud of her refinement, she was also brisk and efficient; that no-nonsense aspect of her personality reminded Dan of Irmatrude Gelkenshettle.

  “Oh, Lieutenant,” she said, “I’m so sorry, but Mr. Boothe isn’t in the building right now. You’ve missed him by only a few minutes. He had a meeting to attend. It’s been a terribly busy day for him, but then most days are, you know.”

  Dan was unsettled to hear that Boothe was carrying on with work as usual. If his theory was correct, if he had correctly identified It, then Palmer Boothe should be in desperate fear for his life, on the run, perhaps barricaded in the basement of some heavily fortified castle, preferably in Tibet or the Swiss Alps, or in some other far and difficult-to-reach corner of the world. If Boothe was attending meetings and making business decisions as usual, that must mean that he was not afraid, and if he was not afraid, that meant Dan’s theory about the gray room was incorrect.

  He told Mrs. Hudspeth: “I absolutely must talk with Mr. Boothe. It’s an urgent matter. You might say it’s even a matter of life or death.”

  “Well, of course, he’s most anxious to speak with you as well,” she said. “I’m sure that must have been clear from his message.”

  Dan blinked. “What message?”

  “But isn’t that why you’re here? Didn’t you receive the message he left for you at your precinct headquarters?”

  “The East Valley Division?”

  “Yes, he called first thing this morning, anxious to arrange a meeting with you. But you weren’t in yet. We tried your home and got no answer there.”

  “I haven’t been back to East Valley today,” he said. “I didn’t get any message. I came here because I must talk to Mr. Boothe as soon as possible.”

  “Oh, I know he shares your desire for a conference,” she said. “
Indeed, I’ve got a copy of his schedule for the day—every place he’ll be and the time he’ll be there—and he asked me to share it with you if you showed up. He requested that you attempt to connect with him at some point that would be convenient for you.”

  All right. This was more like it. Boothe was desperate, after all, so desperate that he hoped Dan would either be corruptible or would agree to act as intermediary between Boothe and the particular devil that was stalking the people from the gray room. He wasn’t on the run or hiding in some foreign port because he knew perfectly well that it would do no good to run or hide. He was conducting business as usual because the alternative—staring at the walls and waiting for It to come—was simply unthinkable.

  Mrs. Hudspeth went to her enormous Henredon desk, opened a leather folder, and pulled out the top sheet of paper—her boss’s schedule for the day. She studied it and said, “I’m afraid you won’t be able to catch him where he is now, and then he’ll be in transit for a while—the limousine, of course—so I think the earliest you can hope to connect with him is at four o’clock.”

  “That’s more than an hour and a quarter. Are you sure I can’t get hold of him sooner?”

  “See for yourself,” she said, handing him the schedule.

  She was right. If he tried driving around the city after Boothe, he’d just keep missing him; the publisher was a busy man. But according to the schedule, at 4:00 he expected to be home.

  “Where does he live?”

  Mrs. Hudspeth told Dan the address, and he wrote it down. It was in Bel Air.

  When he finished writing, closed his small notebook, and looked up, she was watching him intently. There was an avaricious curiosity in her eyes. Clearly, she was aware that something extraordinary was happening, but Boothe had for once not taken her into his confidence, and she required all of her refinement and self-control to keep from pumping Dan for information. She was obviously eaten alive by worry too, an emotion which she had thus far been able to conceal from him, but which now surfaced like a drowned and bloated corpse soaring up through dark waters. She would be this worried only if she knew that Boothe himself was worried, and he would have permitted her to see his own concern only if it was too overwhelming to conceal. For a hard-nosed and crafty businessman like him, it would have been impossible to conceal only if it was the next thing to panic.

  The young executive—or the human equivalent of an attack dog, whichever he was—returned and escorted Dan back to the reception area. The armed guard was still standing alertly by the elevators.

  The beautiful but cool receptionist typed at high speed on her computer keyboard. In the muffling acoustics of the room, the nearly silent keys made soft clicking sounds that reminded Dan of ice cubes rattling against one another.

  The movie had started ten minutes ago, much to Laura’s relief, and they were now as anonymous as all the other shadowy theatergoers slumped in the high-backed seats.

  Melanie stared toward the front of the theater with the same expression that had been on her face when the screen had been blank. The backsplash of light illuminated her face. Distorted reflections of the images in the film moved across her features, bringing moments of artificial color to her, but for the most part the strange light made her look even paler than she was.

  At least she’s awake, Laura thought.

  And then she wondered what Dan Haldane knew. More than he had told her. That was for sure.

  On the other side of Melanie, Earl Benton reached a hand inside his suit jacket, quietly reassuring himself that his revolver was in his shoulder holster and that he could draw it unobstructed. Laura had seen him check the weapon twice even before the film had started; she was sure he would check it again in a few minutes. It was a nervous habit, and for a man who was not the type for nervous habits, it was a disconcerting indication of how profoundly worried he was.

  Of course, if It came to them here in the theater, and if It was finally ready to take Melanie, the revolver would provide no defense, regardless of how quickly Earl could draw and fire it.

  With an hour and a quarter to kill before he could meet Palmer Boothe in Bel Air, Dan Haldane decided to drop around to the precinct house in Westwood where, the previous night, charges had been filed against Wexlersh and Manuello. The two detectives were being held solely on Earl Benton’s sworn statement, and Dan wanted to add his testimony as another weight against their cell door. He had left Ross Mondale under the impression that he would not accuse Wexlersh and Manuello of assault with intent to kill, and he had told Mondale that Earl would withdraw his accusations in a couple of days, when the McCaffreys were safe, but he had been lying. If he achieved nothing else in this case, if he failed to save Melanie and Laura, he would at least see Wexlersh and Manuello behind bars and Ross Mondale ruined.

  At the precinct house, the officer in charge of the case, one Herman Dorft, was glad to see Dan. The only thing that Dorft wanted more than Dan’s statement was one from Laura McCaffrey. He was not happy to learn that Dr. McCaffrey was unavailable for the foreseeable future. He took Dan to a small interrogation room with a battered desk, VDT, table, and five chairs, and he offered to provide either a stenographer or a tape recorder.

  “I’m so familiar with this routine,” Dan said, “I’d rather just compose the statement myself. I can use the computer if that’s all right with you.”

  Herman Dorft obligingly left Dan alone with the computer, with the harsh fluorescent light and the sound of rain on the roof, and with the stale, bitter smell of cigarette smoke that had precipitated a thin yellowish film on the walls since the last time the room had been painted.

  Twenty minutes later, he had just finished typing the statement and was about to go looking for a police notary, in whose presence he would sign what he had written, when the door opened and Michael Seames, the FBI agent, took one step inside. He said, “Hello there.” He still seemed, to Dan, to be suffering chronological confusion: His face was that of a thirty-year-old, but his slumped shoulders and stiff movements made him seem like a seasoned Social Security recipient. “I’ve been looking for you, Haldane.”

  “Good day for ducks, huh?” Dan said, getting to his feet.

  “Where are Mrs. McCaffrey and Melanie?” Seames asked.

  “Hard to believe that everyone was worried about the drought just a few years ago. Now the winters get rainier every year.”

  “Two detectives charged with attempted murder, police violations of civil rights, several potential breaches of national security—the Bureau now has plenty of reasons to step into this case, Haldane.”

  “Myself, I’m building an ark,” Dan said, picking up his typed statement and moving toward the door.

  Seames didn’t get out of his way. “And we have moved in. We’re no longer just observers here. We’ve exercised the right of federal jurisdiction in these homicides.”

  “Good for you,” Dan said.

  “You are, of course, obliged to cooperate with us.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Dan said, wishing Seames would get the hell out of his way.

  “Where are Mrs. McCaffrey and Melanie?”

  “Probably at the movies,” Dan said.

  “Damn it, Haldane—”

  “On a dreary day like this, they aren’t going to be at the beach or at Disneyland or having a picnic in Griffith Park, so why not the movies?”

  “I’m beginning to think you’re an asshole, Haldane.”

  “Well, at least it’s comforting to hear that you’re beginning to think.”

  “Captain Mondale warned me about you.”

  “Oh, don’t take that seriously, Agent Seames. Ross is such a kidder.”

  “You’re obstructing—”

  “No, it’s you who’s obstructing,” Dan said. “You’re in my way.” And as he spoke, he shouldered past Seames, through the door.

  The FBI agent followed him down the hall to the busy uniformed-operations room, where Dan located a notary. “Haldane, you can’t protect t
hem all by yourself. If you insist on handling it this way, they’re going to get snatched or killed, and you’re going to be to blame.”

  Signing his statement in front of the notary, Dan said, “Maybe. Maybe they’ll get killed. But if I turn them over to you, they’ll positively be killed.”

  Seames gaped at him. “Are you implying that I . . . that the FBI . . . that the government would murder that little girl? Because maybe she’s a Russian or Chinese research project? Or maybe because she’s one of our projects and she knows too much and now we want to shut her up before this mess becomes too public? Is that what you think?”

  “Crossed my mind.”

  Spluttering and fuming, filled with either genuine outrage or a good imitation of it, Seames followed Dan from the notary to another desk where Herman Dorft was drinking black coffee and looking through a file of mug shots.

  “Are you crazy, Haldane, or what?” Seames demanded.

  “Or what.”

  “We’re the government, for Christ’s sake. The United States government.”

  “I’m happy for you.”

  “This isn’t China, where the government knocks on a couple of hundred doors every night and a couple of hundred people disappear.”

  “How many disappear here? Ten a night? Makes me feel so much better.”

  “This isn’t Iran or Nicaragua or Libya. We aren’t killers. We’re here to protect the public.”

  “Does this stirring speech come with background music? It ought to, but I don’t hear any.”

  “We don’t murder people,” Seames said flatly.

  Handing his notarized statement to Dorft, Dan said to Seames, “All right, so the government itself, the institution of government in this country, doesn’t make a policy of killing people—except maybe with taxes and paperwork. But the government is composed of people, individuals, and your agency is composed of individuals, and don’t tell me that some of those individuals aren’t capable of murdering the McCaffreys in return for money or for political concerns, misguided idealism, or any of a thousand other reasons. Don’t try to tell me that everyone in your agency is so saintly and so God-fearing that a homicidal thought has never entered any of their minds, because I remember Waco, Texas, and the Weaver family in Idaho and more than a few other Bureau abuses of power, Agent Seames.”

  Dorft stared up at them, startled, as Seames shook his head violently and said, “FBI agents are—”

  “Dedicated, professional, and generally damned good at what they do,” Dan finished for him. “But even the best of us have the capacity for murder, Mr. Seames. Even those of us who appear to be the most dependable—or the most innocent, the gentlest. Believe me, I know. I know all about murder, about the murderers among us, the murderers within us. More than I want to know. Mothers murder their own children. Husbands get drunk and murder their wives, and sometimes they don’t have to be drunk, just suffering from indigestion, and sometimes it doesn’t even take indigestion. Ordinary secretaries murder their two-timing boyfriends. Last summer, right here in L.A., on the hottest day in July, an ordinary salesman murdered his next-door neighbor over an argument about a borrowed lawn mower. We’re a twisted species, Seames. We mean well, and we want to do good for each other, and we try, God knows we try, but there’s this darkness in us, this taint, and we’ve got to struggle against it every minute, struggle against letting the taint spread and overwhelm us, and we do struggle, but sometimes we lose. We murder for jealousy, greed, envy, pride . . . revenge. Political idealists go on murderous rampages and make life hell on earth for the very people whose lives they profess to want to make better. Even the best government, if it’s big enough, is riddled with idealists who’d open up extermination camps and feel righteous about it, if they were just given a chance. Religious zealots kill each other in the name of God. Housewives, ministers, businessmen, plumbers, pacifists, poets, doctors, lawyers, grandmothers, and teenagers—all have the capacity to murder, given the right moment and mood and motivation. And the ones you’ve got to mistrust the most are the ones who tell you they’re men and women of peace, the ones who tell you they’re absolutely nonviolent and safe, because they’re either lying and waiting for an advantage over you—or they’re dangerously naive and know nothing important about themselves. Now, you see, two people I care about—the two people I care about most in the world, it seems—are in danger of their lives, and I won’t entrust their care to anyone but me. Sorry. No way. Forget it. And anybody who tries to get in my way, tries to stop me from protecting the McCaffreys, is at least going to get his ass kicked up between his shoulder blades. Oh, at least. And anyone who tries to harm them, tries to lay a finger on them . . . well, hell, I’ll waste the son of a bitch, sure as hell. I have no doubts about that, Seames, because I have absolutely no illusions about my own capacity for murder.”

  Shaking, he walked away, heading toward the door that opened onto the parking lot beside the precinct house. As he went, he became aware that the room had fallen silent and that everyone was looking at him. He realized that he had been speaking not only angrily and passionately but at the top of his voice as well. He felt fevered. Sweat sheathed his face. People moved out of his way.

  He had reached the door and put his hand on it by the time Michael Seames had recovered from that emotional outburst and had come after him. “Wait, Haldane, for Christ’s sake, it just can’t work that way. We can’t let you play the Lone Ranger. Think, man! There are eight people dead in two days, which makes this case just too damned big to—”

  Dan stopped before opening the door, turned sharply to Seames, and interrupted him. “Eight? Is that what you said? Eight dead?”

  Dylan McCaffrey, Willy Hoffritz, Cooper, Rink, and Scaldone. That made five. Not eight. Just five.

  “What’s happened since last night?” Dan demanded. “Who else has been hit since Joseph Scaldone?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Who else?” Dan demanded.

  “Edwin Koliknikov.”

  “But he got out. He ran, went to Las Vegas.”

  Seames was furious. “You knew about Koliknikov? You knew he was an associate of Hoffritz’s, in on this gray room business?”

  “Yes.”

  “We didn’t know until he was dead, for God’s sake! You’re withholding information from a police investigation, Haldane, and it doesn’t matter a rat’s ass that you’re a cop!”

  “What happened to Koliknikov?”