The Door To December

Her daughter was coming home.

When she finished her breakfast, she pushed aside the newspaper and sat looking out the window at the damp rose garden. The sodden blooms seemed impossibly bright in the slanting sun, as unnaturally colorful as flowers in a vivid dream.

She lost track of time, might have been sitting there two minutes or ten, when she was snapped out of her reverie by a thump and clatter somewhere in the house. She sat straight up, rigid, tense, scared, her mind filled with images of blood-spattered walls and cold dead forms in opaque plastic bags.

Then Pepper broke the ominous spell by dashing out of the dining room, into the kitchen, claws clicking on the tile. She scampered into a corner, stood there, the hair raised along her back, ears flattened, staring at the doorway through which she had come. Then with a sudden self-consciousness that was comical, the cat pretended nonchalance, curled up in a furry puddle on the floor, yawned, and turned sleepy eyes on Laura, as if to say, 'Who, me? Lose my feline dignity? Even for a moment? Never! Scared? Ridiculous!'

'What'd you do, puss? Knock something over, spook yourself?'

The calico yawned again.

'It better not have been anything breakable,' Laura said, 'or I might finally get those cat-skin earmuffs I've been wanting.'

She went through the house, looking for the damage that Pepper had done, and she found it in the guest bedroom. The teddy bear and the Raggedy Ann doll were lying on the floor. Fortunately, the cat had not clawed the stuffing out of them. The alarm clock had been knocked off the nightstand. Laura picked it up and saw that it was still ticking; the glass face wasn't cracked, either. She put the clock back where it belonged, returned the doll and the bear to the bed.

Strange. Pepper had gotten over the reckless-kitten stage three years ago. She was now slightly plump, content, and thoroughly self-satisfied. This rambunctiousness was out of character, yet another indication that she knew her place in the McCaffrey household was no longer second to Laura.

In the kitchen, the cat was still in the corner.

Laura put food in the calico's dish. 'Lucky for you nothing broke. You wouldn't like being made into earmuffs.'

Pepper rose to a crouch, and her ears perked up. Tapping the dish with the empty can of 9 Lives, Laura said, 'Chowtime, you ferocious mouse-mauler.'

Pepper didn't move.

'You'll eat it when you want it,' Laura said, taking the empty can to the sink to rinse it before tossing it in the garbage.

Abruptly, Pepper exploded from the corner, streaked across the kitchen, through the doorway, into the living room, gone.

'Crazy cat,' Laura said, frowning at the untouched 9 Lives. Usually, Pepper was pushing in at the yellow dish, trying to eat even as Laura was scraping the food from the can.

PART TWO ENEMIES WITHOUT FACES

WEDNESDAY

1:00 P.M. — 7:45 P.M.

11

At one o'clock, when Laura drove her blue Honda to Valley Medical, a uniformed policeman at the entrance to the main parking lot barred the way. He directed her to the staff lot, which had been opened to the public 'until we straighten out the mess here.' Eighty to a hundred feet behind him was a cluster of LAPD cruisers and other official vehicles, some with emergency beacons rotating and flashing.

As she followed the patrolman's directions and headed toward the staff lot, Laura glanced to the right, through the fence, and saw Lieutenant Haldane. He was the tallest and biggest man among those at the scene. She suddenly realized that the commotion might have a connection with Melanie and with the murders in Studio City the previous night.

By the time she slotted the Honda between two cars with MD plates and ran back the hospital driveway to the fence that encircled the public parking lot, Laura had half convinced herself that Melanie was hurt or missing or dead. The patrolman at the gate would not let her through, not even when she told him who she was, so she shouted to Dan Haldane.

He hurried across the macadam, favoring his left leg. Not much, only slightly. She might not have noticed if her senses hadn't been sharply honed by fear. He took her by the arm and led her away from the gate, along the fence, to a spot where they could talk privately.

As they walked, she said, 'What's happened to Melanie?'

'Nothing.'

'Tell me the truth!'

'That is the truth. She's in her room. Safe. Just the way you left her.'

They stopped, and she stood with her back to the fence, staring past Haldane toward the pulsing emergency beacons. She saw a morgue wagon with the patrol cars.

No. It wasn't fair. To find Melanie after all these years and then to lose her again so soon — it was unthinkable.

A tightness in her chest. A throbbing in her temples.

She said, 'Who's dead?'

'I've been calling your house—'

'I want—'

'—trying to get hold of you—'

'—to know—'

'—for the past hour and a half.'

'-who's dead!' she demanded.

'Listen, it's not Melanie. Okay?' His voice was unusually soft and gentle and reassuring for a man his size. She always expected a roar, but he purred. 'Melanie's fine. Really.'

Laura studied his face, his eyes. She believed that he was telling her the truth. Melanie was all right. But Laura was still scared.

Haldane said, 'I didn't get home until seven this morning, fell into bed. Eleven o'clock, my phone rings, and they want me at Valley Medical. They think maybe there's some link between this homicide and Melanie because—'

'Because what?'

'Well, after all, she's a patient here. So I've been trying to get hold of you—'

'I was out shopping, buying new clothes for her,' Laura said. 'What happened? Who's dead? Are you going to tell me, for God's sake?'

'A guy in his car. That Volvo over there. Dead in the front seat of his Volvo.'

'According to his ID, his name's Ned Rink.'

She leaned back against the chain-link fence, her pulse rate gradually slowing from the frantic beat it had attained.

'You ever heard of him?' Haldane asked. 'Ned Rink?'

'No.'

'I wondered if maybe he was an associate of your husband's. Like Hoffritz.'

'Not that I'm aware. The name's not familiar. Why would you think he knew Dylan? Because of the way he died? Is that it? Was he beaten to death like the others?'

'No. But it was odd.'

'Tell me.'

He hesitated, and from the look in his blue eyes she could see that it was another particularly brutal homicide.

'Tell me,' she said again.

'His throat was crushed, as if someone gave him one hell of a whack with a lead pipe, caught him right across the Adam's apple. More than one whack. Lots of damage. Literally pulverized the guy's windpipe, crushed the Adam's apple, the vocal cords. Broke his neck. Cracked his spine.'

'Okay,' she said, dry-mouthed. 'I get the picture.'

'Sorry. Anyway, it's not like the bodies in Studio City, but it's unusual. You can see why we might figure they're connected. In both cases, the murders involved an unusual degree of violence. This one wasn't as bad as those, not nearly, but nevertheless…'

She pushed away from the fence. 'I want to see Melanie.'

Suddenly she had to see Melanie. It was a strong physical need. She had to touch the girl, hold her, be reassured that her child was all right.

She headed away from the parking lot, toward the front entrance of the hospital.

Haldane walked beside her, limping slightly but apparently not in pain.

'You have an accident?' she asked.

'Huh?'

'Your leg.'

'Oh. No. Just an old football injury from college. Banged the knee up pretty bad my senior year. Sometimes it acts up in humid weather. Listen, there's more about the guy in the Volvo, Rink.'