The Dark Door (5 page)

Chapter 5

Charlie paused outside
the partly open door to Constance’s study.

She was talking: “… and the
children who remained in the environment until adolescence never did develop a recognizable form of xenophobia. Instead, what they manifested throughout their adult lives was an attitude of acceptance, empathy, and curiosity about other people. God damn it to hell!” Something slammed onto a table. He glanced inside. She had banged her notebook down. She glared at him.

“Sorry,” he said. “Lunch. If you want some.” She got up, carefully pushed her chair under her desk, her motions exaggerated, the way she moved when she was mad, then left her room.

“That idiot! That damn thickheaded idiot!”

“Waldman?”

“You know what he told me on the phone? Ten minutes! Because Isaacson wants on the panel, they’re cutting our presentation time to ten minutes each!”

They went to the dining area in the kitchen and he ladled soup for her, then himself. “You have to condense your presentation?”

She tasted her soup, nodded, then nodded more vigorously. “Good soup. Let me try it on you. First I’ll start with definitions. Derivations. Xeno from
xenos
, an old Greek word that was derived from an even older word,
xenwos
, of unknown origin. The word means
strange
,
stranger
,
foreign
,
alien
. That sort of thing. As far
back as language has existed and been recorded there has always been a word for the
others. Okay. Phobia from
phobos
, Greek again,
meaning
fear
,
flight
,
panic
. That derives from
bhegw
, and
phebesthai
, and means again,
panic
,
to flee in terror
. So that gives us xenophobia—a panic reaction to flee from the stranger. Now Isaacson and his gang are claiming that xenophobia is innate, and they use animal studies to prove it. You know, the chicken is born with an innate reaction to a chicken hawk, or any outline that vaguely resembles the real thing. I say we’re not chickens and the world isn’t made
up of chicken hawks. And there is this study of a
group of children who were collected as infants in England during World War II. A real mixed bag of kids. The study that was done on them was looking for neuroses. You know, kids taken from parents, that sort of thing, but it works beautifully to prove that no one taught them to fear each other, or strangers in general, and they didn’t, then or later. Non-xenophobic. They don’t see the same world that other people do, where every skin variation means a threat. That’s the point I want to make in my initial presentation, and I simply can’t do it and make the other points I need to make in ten minutes.”

He listened to her, served himself more soup, and watched the changing expression of her face, the way the light from the late afternoon sun caught her hair. Even he could not tell where it had started to turn white and where it was simply the very pale blond hair that he had loved for more man twenty-five years. When she paused, he said, “Honey, what would happen if you ran over your allotted time? What if you talked for thirteen minutes instead of ten? Would they turn off the lights? Pull the plug on your microphone? Stage a walkout?”

She looked at him in speculation and suddenly grinned. Presently she chuckled.

When they were finished with lunch she went with him to his study and looked at the map he had taped to the wall. It was the United States, and there were pushpins here and there.

“Red for the hotels that were stripped first, then burned,” he said. “Blue for those intact. White for the two without collectible insurance.”

“Stripped?”

“Yeah. Sometimes, before an unexpected and unfortunate fire breaks out, it happens that the owners sell off paneling, or fixtures, or flooring, stained glass, that sort of thing.” His voice was dry, noncommittal. “The builders included features that were the ordinary affluence then and are nearly priceless now. Sometimes they get sold before the fire.”

“Did they start in the Northeast, move west?” she asked, studying the map.

“Nope. The first one, in this series, anyway, was in Ohio, then North Carolina, Vermont, on over to California, Idaho, then Washington.”

“This series,” she murmured. “If Phil was right and there were twice this many, there may well be others that no one suspects, so many that you probably won’t be able to find a pattern, even if there is one.”

He conceded the point; the phone rang and she drifted back to her work while he went to answer it. It was Stan Kraskey, one of the investigators who had inspected the ruins of the hotel near Longview, Washington. Stan had been a rookie under Charlie’s tutelage fifteen years ago in New York City.

After the pleasantries, Stan said, “Jesus, Charlie, you know you can’t prove anything like that, but twice in a row? No way. It was the same down in California, the Orick fire. Look, the Longview fire was twelve miles from the station house. Those guys are pretty good up there, lots of practice during the dry season running to forest fires, and for them twelve miles should have been a snap. It had been raining a couple of months steady, the way it does up there in the winter. Supersaturated everything. And the joint burned to the ground. They knew it was set, and I knew it was set, but that’s not the point. The point is they could have put it out, everything in their favor, and they didn’t. They were late in getting there, trouble with a hose, trouble with a pump, low pressure, not enough water in the tank. Jesus! The guy I talked to looked me straight in the eye and lied in his teeth and knew, by God, that I knew he was lying.”

“Why?” Charlie muttered. “What was in it for them?”

“Not a damn thing I could figure out. If I’d had a clue about why, I’d’ve nabbed them for it. Not a clue.”

“Local stories about the place? Bad reputation?”

“Charlie,” Stan said aggrievedly. “Come on.”

“Yeah.” There were always stories about an abandoned building, especially a big one that had been famous to any degree at all. “But was it more than usual there, or down at Orick?”

“If it was, I couldn’t dig it out of anyone. I had to give up on both of them.”

“Any sign of usage on either of them? You know, drugs, transients, anything of that sort?”

“Nope. One of the reasons the fire crews gave for their delay was the state of the access roads
in both cases. And they had a little bit of a point,
not enough, but a little. They weren’t in use.”

Charlie asked a few more questions and finally hung up, more dissatisfied than ever. “Fire fighters don’t just let buildings burn to the ground, damn it,” he muttered.

The next day they flew to San Francisco. On Sunday they had a dim sum brunch, and Indian
tandoori
chicken for dinner and Charlie began looking forward to the week ahead with more enthusiasm than he had been feeling. He planned to attend only the two panels that Constance would participate in, eat very good food at frequent intervals, go out on a fishing expedition, visit a couple of his old friends, and in general relax. Instead, on Monday he decided to drive up the coast and visit the scene of the Orick fire.

He decided at the Embarcadero, where the symposium was to open in a few minutes; he was watching Constance mingle with people he did not know and had no desire to meet. There was a long spread of coffee and pastries, fruits, juices, even a champagne orange juice
punch. A man standing at his elbow was saying:
“Of course, considering the many ramifications of the overt behavioral systems manifested by the inner city inhabitants, it is necessary to concede that without proper psychological evaluations starting at birth and continuing throughout childhood, those children are simply enacting the predetermined roles that have been designated—”

“Excuse me,” Charlie said and put his glass of punch down carefully on a railing and walked away. The man seemed oblivious; he continued to talk.

Charlie started to wend his way to Constance and overheard snatches of different conversations. “First we have to provide an environment which will permit the actualization of the potential—”

“You see, there was this parcel of land, seven acres, for heaven’s sake! and I got this idea. Most of the patients really need physical activity in addition to psychological counseling. Don’t you agree?”

Charlie looked at that woman with awe. Farm
labor bringing in a hundred plus an hour? He moved on. Another couple was talking about the impossibility of landing a teaching job anywhere. “The old fogies just hang on and on,” a handsome young man said mournfully.

“Hi,” Constance said close to his ear. “You look lost.”

He turned to greet her. “I thought I was tougher,” he said, “tough enough to stand it for a few days. Wrong. I want a gun and a high spot already and the meetings haven’t even started yet. It’s still get acquainted and share a sweetroll time and I’m going berserk.”

Laughing, Constance took his arm. “I know. You’d rather talk about water pressure per square inch and hose material and if the new chemicals released in today’s fires are really worse, or do you just know more about them.”

“Damn right,” he said fervently. A man standing at her other side was watching with amusement. He had a light brown beard neatly trimmed and short, and brown eyes and hair; he was dressed casually in a sweater and slacks.

“Okay,” Constance said. “Before you stage a spectacular break, I want you to meet Byron Weston.” She made the introduction.

“We met before, didn’t we?” Charlie asked as they shook hands, then followed it with a denial. “No, television. I saw you on television.”

Byron Weston nodded, still amused. “Do you mind if I use you to demonstrate something, Mr. Meiklejohn? Would you cooperate?”

Charlie glanced at Constance who looked too innocent. “Sure,” he said.

“What I want you to do is close your eyes, and then answer some questions for us. That’s all.” Charlie closed his eyes. “How high is the ceiling of this room?”

“Thirty feet.”

“How many people are in here?”

“Two hundred forty, including seven hotel service people, three plainclothes detectives, and one hotel detective.”

Constance felt more than a little awe as Charlie answered a few more questions of the same sort, each time without hesitation. When Byron thanked him, she squeezed his arm.

“That was the demonstration?” Charlie asked. “It only proves how effective thorough training is. It becomes second nature to notice the things important to your line of work.”

“That is exactly my point, Mr. Meiklejohn. Your wife and I were talking about the team I’m training to handle post crisis effects. Sometimes people appear fine immediately after a crisis, only to have their own crises months later, even years later. Hostages, victims of gunmen on towers, innocent people threatened by bank robbers, even survivors of natural catastrophes. There is some resistance to prophylactic therapy, but we’re trying to win converts.”

Charlie nodded thoughtfully. “We see it with fire victims,” he said. “At first you think it’s just the immediate shock of nearly dying in a fire, but sometimes I think it’s more like guilt. The guilt of the survivor. If a fire fighter enters a building without being suited up, and sometimes you have to, the guilt increases for some reason. As if the protective gear, the helmet, the equipment reassures them that they really couldn’t have done anything, after all.”

A discreet chime sounded and people began to return to the long table to get rid of cups, napkins. Byron Weston glanced toward the doors with annoyance. “Mr. Meiklejohn, that’s exactly the sort of thing I’ve been looking into. Could we have dinner, tonight maybe?”

“Sorry, don’t think I’m going to be around.”

He turned to Constance. “I thought I’d go up to Orick and get a firsthand account, spend a day or two there.”

Byron laughed. “How about tomorrow night? It just happens that I’ll be in Orick tomorrow night.”

Charlie shrugged. “Why not?”

“I’ll be at the Seaview Motel, a few miles south of town. Leave a message where you are and we’ll get together. Wonderful, Mr.—Charlie. Thanks.” The chimes echoed again and somehow managed to sound a bit impatient. He made a face and said. “Gotta go. See you tomorrow night, Charlie.” He nearly ran as he left.

“Well,” Charlie said, watching him move out of sight. “He must not want to miss opening ceremonies.”

Constance smiled ruefully. “Darling, he
is
the opening ceremony. He’s the keynote speaker. I have to go too.”

He kissed her. “I’ll call tonight.” He watched her walk away quickly, and then wandered through the emptying room that he had described accurately to Byron Weston, although he could not remember making any particular effort to notice any of those details.

That evening Charlie watched sunset from the broad windows of Sam’s Fish House, ten miles south of Orick, California. Sharing his table was J.C. Crandle, thirty-five, ex-FBI, and presently the chief of police of Orick. J.C. was heavyset and very tanned. His hair was thinning, pale brown, sun bleached nearly blond in front. His eyes were dark blue, without warmth.

“You can ask all the questions you want,” J.C. was saying. “It just won’t do you any good. It’s in the report, exactly the way it happened, and there’s nothing more to add. That’s how it is.”

“You weren’t on the police force then, were you? How can you be so sure it’s all in the report?”

J.C. drank his beer and waved his hand for another. A young woman in red slacks who doubled as server and bartender sauntered over, winked at them both, and took away the empty bottles.

“It’s there,” J.C. said, scowling not so much at Charlie as at the rest of the dining room, the other half dozen people in it, the gaudy sunset beyond the windows. “I know it’s all there because no one gave a shit about that goddamn fire.”