The Door to December (16 page)

As Dan was turning away from Michael Seames, the FBI agent said, 'By the way, what happened to your forehead?'
     'I was trying on hats,' Dan said.
     'Hats?'
     'Tried on one that was too small for me. Had a hell of a time getting it off. Pulled skin right along with it.'
     Before Seames could respond, Ross Mondale stepped through a door at the back of the store, behind the sales counter. He spotted Dan, and he said, 'Haldane, come here.'
     'What is it, Chief?'
     'I want to talk to you.'
     'What about, Chief?'
     'Alone,' Mondale said fiercely.
     'Be right there, Chief.'
     He left Seames blinking and puzzled. He picked his way through the wreckage, past the corpse, around the counter. Mondale motioned him through the door back there, then followed him.
     The rear room was as wide as the store but only ten feet deep, with concrete-block walls. It doubled as an office and storage area. On the left were piles of boxes, apparently filled with merchandise. On the right were a desk, an IBM PC, a few file cabinets, a small refrigerator, and a worktable on which stood a Mr. Coffee machine. No violence had been done there; everything was neat and orderly.
     Mondale had been going through the desk drawers. Several items, including a slim little address book, were piled on the blotter.
     As the captain closed the door, Dan went around behind the desk and sat down.
     'What do you think you're doing?' Mondale asked.
     'Taking a load off my feet. It's been a long day.'
     'You know that's not what I mean.'
     'Oh?'
     As usual, Mondale was wearing a brown suit, light-beige shirt, brown tie, brown socks and shoes. His brown eyes seemed to flicker with a murderous light similar to that refracted within his ruby ring. 'I wanted to see you in my office by two-thirty.'
     'I never got your message.'
     'I know you damn well did.'
     'No. Really. I'd have come running.'
     'Don't screw with me.'
     Dan just stared at him.
     The captain stood several steps from the desk, his neck stiff, his shoulders tense, arms straight down at his sides, hands flexing and twitching as if he had to struggle to keep from forming them into fists and coming for Haldane. 'What have you been doing all day?'
     'Contemplating the meaning of life.'
     'You were at Rink's place.'
     'You don't need to be in a church. It's possible to contemplate the meaning of life almost anywhere.'
     'I didn't send you to Rink's place.'
     'I'm a full-fledged detective-lieutenant. I usually follow my own instincts in an investigation.'
     'Not in this one. This one's big. In this one, you're just part of the team. You do what I tell you, go where I tell you. You don't even shit unless I tell you it's okay.'
     'Careful, Ross. You're beginning to sound power crazy.'
     'What happened to your head?'
     'I've been taking karate lessons.'
     'What?'
     'Tried to break a board with my head.'
     'Like hell.'
     'Okay, then what happened was George Padrakis told me you wanted to see me here, and at the mention of your name, I dropped to my knees and bowed down so fast I scraped my head on the sidewalk.'
     For a moment Ross couldn't speak. His brown face had flushed. He was breathing hard.
     Dan more closely examined the items that Mondale had taken from the drawers and piled on the blotter: the address book, a ledger-size checkbook for an account in the name of the Sign of the Pentagram, an appointments calendar, and a thick sheaf of invoices. He picked up the address book.
     'Put that down and listen to me,' Mondale said sharply, finally recovering his voice.
     Dan favored him with a sweet smile of innocence and said, 'But it might contain a clue, Captain. I'm investigating this case, and I wouldn't be doing my job well if I didn't pursue every possible clue.'
     Mondale came toward the desk, furious. His hands had finally tightened into twin hammers of flesh and bone.
     Ah, at last, Dan thought, the showdown we've both been wanting for years.

Laura stood in front of the Sony, staring at it, afraid to touch it, shivering in the chilly air. The cold seemed to be radiating from the radio, carried on the pale-green light that shone forth from the AM-FM dial.
     That was a crazy thought.
     It was a radio, not an air conditioner. Not a ... Not anything. Just a radio. An ordinary radio.
     An ordinary radio that had turned itself on without help from anyone.
     Bonnie Tyler's song had faded into a new tune. It was a golden oldie: Procul Harum singing 'A Whiter Shade of Pale.' That was at top volume too. The radio vibrated against the tile counter on which it stood. The thunderous song reverberated in the windows, hurting Laura's ears.
     Earl had moved up behind her.
     If Pepper was still squealing in another part of the house, the cat's voice was lost in the explosively loud music. Hesitantly, Laura put her fingers on the volume knob. Freezing. Shuddering, she nearly snatched her hand away, not simply because the plastic was impossibly cold but because it was a different kind of coldness from any she'd felt before, a strangeness that chilled not only the flesh but the mind and soul as well. Nevertheless, she held on to it and tried to reduce the volume, but the knob wouldn't budge. She couldn't turn Procul Harum down, and since the volume control was also the ON-OFF switch, she couldn't shut the music off either. She strained hard, felt the muscles bunching in her arm, but still the knob would not respond.
     She was shaking.
     She let go of the knob.
     Although 'Whiter Shade of Pale' was a melodic and appealing song, it sounded harsh and even curiously ominous at that volume. Each thump of the drums was like the approaching footsteps of some threatening creature, and the wailing of the horns was the same beast's hostile cries. She grabbed the cord of the radio, jerked on it. The plug popped out of the wall socket.
     The music died instantly.
     She had been half afraid that it would go on playing, even without power.

When Dan didn't put down Joseph Scaldone's address book — a pocket-size booklet, actually — Mondale reached across the desk, clamped his right hand over Dan's right hand, and squeezed hard, trying to make him drop the thing.
     Mondale was not a tall man, but he was thick in the shoulders and chest. He had powerful arms out of proportion to the rest of him, thick wrists, big hands. He was strong.
     Dan was stronger. He didn't let go of the address book. His eyes fixed unwaveringly on Mondale's eyes, and he put his left hand on Mondale's hand and tried to pry the bastard's fingers loose.
     The situation was ludicrous. They were like a couple of idiot teenagers determined to prove that they were macho: Mondale trying to crush Dan's right hand, and Dan refusing to flinch or in any way reveal his pain while he struggled to free himself.
     He got a grip on one of Mondale's fingers and began to bend it backward.
     Mondale's jaw clenched. The muscles popped up, quivering.
     The finger bent back and back. Mondale resisted that effort even as he attempted to apply a stronger grip to Dan's right hand, but Dan wouldn't relent, and the finger bent back farther, farther.
     Sweat had appeared on Mondale's brow.
     My dog's better than your dog, my mom's prettier than your mom, Dan thought. Jesus! How old are we, anyway? Fourteen? Twelve?
     But he kept his eyes on Mondale's eyes, and he refused to let the captain see that he was hurting. He bent that goddamned finger back farther, until he was sure that it would snap, then farther, and abruptly Mondale gasped and let go. Dan remained in possession of the address book.
     He kept a grip on Mondale's finger for a second or two, long enough so there could be no mistake about who had relented first. The contest had been silly and juvenile, but that was no reason to believe Ross Mondale didn't take it seriously. He was dead serious. And if the captain thought he could teach Dan a lesson with physical force, then perhaps — just perhaps — he could
learn
a lesson himself by the same method of instruction.

They stood in the silent kitchen, staring at the radio. Then Earl said, 'How could it—'
     'I don't know,' Laura said.
     'Has it ever—'
     'Never.'
     The radio had ceased to be a harmless appliance. Now it was a brooding, menacing presence.
     Earl said, 'Plug it in again.'
     Laura was irrationally afraid that if they brought the radio back to life, it would sprout crablike legs of plastic and begin to crawl across the counter. That was an uncharacteristically bizarre thought, and she was surprised at herself, startled by the sudden rush of superstitious dread, for she thought of herself as a woman of science, always logical and reasonable. Yet she couldn't shake the feeling that some malignant force was still within the radio, and that it waited eagerly for the plug to be reinserted in the wall socket.
     Nonsense.
     Nevertheless, stalling, she said, 'Plug it in? Why?'
     'Well,' Earl said, 'I want to see what it does. We can't just leave it like this. It's too damned weird. We've got to figure it out.'
     Laura knew he was right. Hesitantly, she reached for the cord. She half expected it to wriggle in her hand and feel slimy-cold like an eel. But it was only a power cord: lifeless, nothing unusual about it.
     She touched the volume control on the radio, and she found that it could be moved now. She twisted it all the way down, clicked it to the OFF position.
     With considerable apprehension, she put the plug in the socket again.
     Nothing.
     Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.
     Earl said, 'Well, whatever it was—'
     The radio snapped on.
     The dial lit up.
     The air was arctic again.
     Laura stepped away from the counter, backed toward the table, afraid that the radio would fling itself at her. She stopped beside Melanie and put one hand on the girl's shoulder, to reassure her, but Melanie appeared to be as oblivious of these strange events as she was of everything else.
     The volume dial moved. This time, the dial didn't peg out at the top, but stopped halfway. The latest piece of gangsta-rap crap thumped from the radio. The beat-heavy music was loud, although not unbearable.
     Another knob spun as if an invisible hand were adjusting it. This one was the frequency selector. The red indicator dot glided fast across the luminous green dial, leaving the rap song behind, flitting rapidly to the right end of the scale, bringing them only flashes of songs, commercials, news reports, and deejay voices on a score of other stations. It reached the end of the radio band and moved back to the left, all the way, then swept to the right again, faster, so that the snatches of various broadcasts blended together in an eerie electronic ululation.
     Earl moved closer to the Sony.
     'Careful,' Laura said.
     She realized it was ridiculous to be warning him about a mere radio. It was an inanimate object, for God's sake, not a living creature. She'd owned it for three or four years. It had brought her music and kept her company. It was only a radio.

When Mondale got his hand back, he didn't rub it or even try to flex the pain out of it. Like a simpleminded highschool jock with wounded pride, he went right on pretending that he was the toughest. He casually put his hand in his pocket, as if checking for change or keys, and he kept it there.
     He poked his other hand toward Dan, pointed a finger at him. 'Don't you screw this up for me, Haldane. This is an important case. It's going to mean heat, lots of heat. We're gonna feel like we're working in a damned furnace. I've got the press nipping at my heels and the FBI on my back, and I've already had calls from the mayor and from Chief Kelsey, wanting results. I don't intend to screw this one up. My career might ride on this one. I'm keeping
control
, Haldane, tight control. I'm not letting some hotshot Lone Ranger type put my ass in a sling
for
me. If my ass ends up in a sling, it'll be because I put it there. This is a team effort, see, and I'm the captain and coach and quarterback, all rolled into one, and anybody who
can't
play it as a team effort just isn't even going to get on the field. You got me?'
     So this wasn't going to be the final showdown, after all. Ross was just going to bluster and fume. He felt tough and important when he could point his finger at a subordinate, glower, and chew ass for a while.
     Dan sighed with some disappointment, and leaned back in the office chair, folding his hands behind his head. 'Furnaces, football fields ... Ross, you're getting your metaphors mixed up. Face it, old buddy, you'll never be an inspiring speaker ... or a disciplinarian. General Patton, you ain't.'
     Glaring at him, Mondale said, 'At Chief Kelsey's request, I'm putting together a special task force to handle this case, just like they did for the Hillside Strangler business several years back. All assignments come straight from me, and I'm assigning you to a desk at HQ for the duration. You'll coordinate the files on some aspects of the investigation.'
     'I'm not a desk man.'
     'Now you are.'
     'I'm a deskophobic. You force me to work at a desk, I'll have a complete nervous breakdown. It's going to mean a major worker's compensation claim.'
     'Don't screw with me,' Mondale warned again.
     'I'm scared of desk blotters too — and those can-type holders for pencils just spook the bejesus out of me. So I thought, first thing tomorrow, I'd start looking into this Freedom Now group and maybe—'
     'Wexlersh and Manuello are going to handle that,' Mondale said. 'They'll also be talking to the head of the psychology department at UCLA. But
you
will be at your desk, Haldane — at your desk, doing what you're told.'
     Dan didn't reveal that he had already been to UCLA and that he'd spoken with Irmatrude Heidi Gelkenshettle. He wasn't giving Mondale anything right now.
     Instead, he said, 'Wexlersh is no detective. Hell, he has to paint his pecker bright yellow so he can find it when he has to pee. And Manuello drinks.'
     'The hell he does,' Mondale said sharply.
     'He drinks on duty more often than not.'
     'He's an excellent detective,' Mondale insisted.
     'Your definition of "excellent" is the same as your definition of "obedient." You like Manuello because he sucks up to you. You're a tremendous self-promoter, Ross, but you're a lousy cop and a worse leader. For your sake as much as anyone's, I'm going to have to ignore the desk assignment you've given me and play the investigation my own way.'
     'That's it, you insolent bastard. That's
it
! You're through. You're finished here. I'll call your boss, I'll call Templeton, and have him yank your insubordinate ass back to Central, where you belong!'
     The captain swung away from Dan and started toward the door. Dan said, 'If you make Templeton pull me off this assignment, I'll have to tell him — and everyone else — about Cindy Lakey.'
     Mondale stopped with his hand on the doorknob, breathing hard, but he didn't face Dan.
     To Mondale's back, Dan said, 'I'll have to tell them how little Cindy Lakey, that poor little eight-year-old girl, would still be alive today, a young woman now, maybe married with a girl of her own, if it wasn't for you.'