The Door To December

Ybarra shrugged. 'Well, you won't be endangering her health by taking her home today, so there's no way I can prevent you from walking out of here with her.'

'Exactly,' Laura said.

* * *

After the morgue wagon had gone, while the SID technicians were sweeping the parking lot around the Volvo, Kerry Bums, a uniformed patrolman, approached Dan Haldane. 'A call came through from East Valley, message from Captain Mondale.'

'Ah, the esteemed and glorious captain.'

'He wants to see you right away.'

'Does he miss me?' Dan asked.

'Didn't say why.'

'I'll bet he misses me.'

'You and Mondale got a thing for each other?'

'Definitely not. Maybe Ross is gay, but I'm straight.'

'You know what I mean. You got a grudge or something?'

'It's that obvious, huh?' Dan asked facetiously.

'Is it obvious that dogs don't like cats?'

'Let's just say, if I was burning to death and Ross Mondale had the only bucket of water in ten miles, I'd prefer to extinguish the fire with my own spit.'

'That's clear enough. You gonna go over to East Valley?'

'He ordered me to, didn't he?'

'But are you gonna go? I gotta call back and confirm.'

'Sure.'

'He wants you right away.'

'Sure.'

'I'll call back and confirm you're on your way.'

'Absolutely,' Dan said.

Kerry headed back to his patrol car, and Dan got into his unmarked department sedan. He drove out of the hospital parking lot, turned into the busy street, and headed downtown, in the opposite direction from East Valley and Ross Mondale.

* * *

Before talking to Dr. Ybarra, Laura had called the security service that Dan Haldane had recommended. By the time she had spoken to Ybarra, had dressed Melanie in jeans and a blue-checkered blouse and sneakers, and had signed the necessary release forms, the agent from California Paladin had arrived.

His name was Earl Benton, and he looked like a big old farm boy who had somehow awakened in the wrong house and had been forced to clothe himself in the contents of a banker's closet. His blond-brown hair was combed straight back from his temples, fashionably razor-cut — by a stylist, not a barber — but it didn't look quite right on him; his blocky face and plain features would probably have been better served by a shaggy, windblown, natural look. His seventeen-inch neck seemed about to pop the collar button on his Yves St. Laurent shirt, and he looked awkward and slightly uncomfortable in his three-piece gray suit. His huge, thick-fingered hands would never be graceful, but the fingernails were professionally manicured.

Laura could tell at a glance that Earl was one of those tens of thousands who came to Los Angeles every year with the hope of moving up in life, which he'd probably already done. He would most likely climb higher too, once he wore off some rough edges and learned to feel at home in his designer clothes. She liked him. He had a nice, wide smile and easy manner, yet he was watchful, alert, intelligent. She met him in the corridor, outside Melanie's room, and after she explained the situation in more detail than she had given his office on the telephone, she said, 'I assume you're armed.'

'Oh, yes, ma'am.'

'Good.'

'I'll be with you till midnight,' Earl said, 'and then a new man'll come on duty.'

'Fine.'

A moment later, Laura brought Melanie into the hall, and Earl hunkered down to her level. 'What a pretty girl you are.'

Melanie said nothing.

'Fact is,' he said, 'you remind me a lot of my sister, Emma.' Melanie stared through him.

Taking the girl's slack hand, engulfing it in his two enormous hands, Earl continued to speak directly to her, as though she were holding up her end of the conversation. 'Emma, she's nine years younger than me, in her junior year of high school. She's raised up two prize calves, Emma has. She's got a collection of prize ribbons, probably twenty of them, from all sorts of competitions, including livestock shows at three different county fairs. You know anything about calves? You like animals? Well, calves are just the cutest things. Real gentle faces. I'll bet you'd be good with them, just like Emma.'

Watching him with Melanie, Laura liked Earl Benton even more than she had on first meeting him.

He said, 'Now, Melanie, don't you worry about anything, okay? I'm your friend, and as long as old Earl's your friend, nobody's going to so much as look crosswise at you.'

The girl seemed utterly unaware of his presence.

He released her hand, and her thin arm dropped back to her side, limp.

Earl stood and rolled his shoulders to settle his jacket in place, and he looked at Laura. 'You say her daddy was responsible for making her like this?'

'He's one of the people responsible,' Laura said.

'And he's… dead?'

'Yes.'

Some of the others are still alive, though?'

'Yes.'

'Sure would like to meet one of them. Like to talk to one of them. Just me and him alone for a while. Sure would like that,' Earl said. There was a hard edge in his voice, a chilling light in his eyes that hadn't been there before: an anger that, for the first time, made him look dangerous.

Laura liked that too.

'Now, ma'am — Doctor McCaffrey, I guess I should call you — when we leave here, I'll go out the door first. I know that's not gentlemanly behavior, but from now on, most times, I'll be just a couple feet ahead of you wherever we go, sort of scouting the way ahead, you might say.'

'I'm sure no one's going to start shooting at us in broad daylight or anything like that,' Laura said.

'Maybe not. But I still go first.'

'All right.'

'When I tell you to do something, you right away do it, and no questions asked. Understand?'

She nodded.

He said, 'I might not yell at you. I might tell you to get down or to run like hell, and I might say it in a soft voice the same way I might say what a nice day it is, so you have to be alert.'

'I understand.'

'Good. I'm sure everything'll work out just fine. Now, are you two ladies ready to go home?'

They headed toward the elevator that would take them down to the lobby.

At least a thousand times over the past six years, Laura had dreamed about the wonderful day when she would bring Melanie home. She had imagined that it would be the happiest day of her life. She'd never thought it would be like this.

13

At Central, Dan Haldane took two folders from the clerk in Records and carried them to one of the small writing tables along the wall.

The name on the first file was Ernest Andrew Cooper. By his fingerprints, he had been identified as the John Doe victim found the previous night with Dylan McCaffrey and Wilhelm Hoffritz in the Studio City house.

Cooper was thirty-seven years old, stood five-eleven, and weighed one hundred and sixty pounds. There were mug shots, related to a particularly serious DUI arrest, but they were of no use to Dan, because the victim's face had been battered into featureless, bloody pulp. He would have to rely on the fingerprint match.

Cooper lived in Hancock Park, on a street of million-dollar and multimillion-dollar homes. He was chairman of the board and majority stockholder of Cooper Softech, a successful computer software firm. He'd been arrested three times within the city limits of Los Angeles, always for drunken driving, and on all three occasions, he had also been driving without a license. He had protested the arrests, had gone to trial in each case, had been convicted of each offense, had been fined, but had served no jail time. In every case, the arresting officers noted that Cooper insisted it was immoral — and a violation of his constitutional rights — for the government to require a man to carry any form of identification whatsoever, even a driver's license. The second patrolman had also written: '…Mr. Cooper informed this officer that he (Mr. Cooper) was a member of an organization, Freedom Now, that would bring all governments to their knees, and that said organization would use his arrest as a test case to challenge certain laws, and that this officer was an unwitting tool of totalitarian forces. He then threw up and passed out.'