The Door To December

'Yes, maybe it was,' Seames said. 'At first, anyway. But after a while McCaffrey apparently got involved in something important… maybe something dangerous. At least that's certainly how it seems when you get a look at that gray room in Studio City. As for Willy Hoffritz… eighteen months after McCaffrey disappeared, Hoffritz finished a long-running Pentagon project and declined to accept any additional defense-related work. He said that kind of research had begun to bother his conscience. At the time, the military tried to persuade him to change his mind, but eventually they accepted his refusal.'

'From what I know of him,' Dan said, 'I don't believe Hoffritz had a conscience.'

Seames's penetrating, hawkish eyes never left Dan's. He said, 'You're right about that, I think. At the time Hoffritz did his mea culpa routine, the Defense Department didn't ask us to verify his sudden turn toward pacifism. They accepted it at face value. But today I've been looking more closely at Willy Hoffritz. I'm convinced he stopped taking Pentagon grants only because he no longer wanted to be subject to random, periodic security investigations. He didn't want to worry that anyone might be watching him. He needed anonymity for some project of his own.'

'Like torturing a nine-year-old girl,' Dan said.

'Yes. I was in Studio City a few hours ago, had a look in that house. Nasty.'

Neither the expression on his face nor that in his eyes matched the distaste and disapproval in his voice. Judging from his eyes, in fact, one might suspect that Michael Seames found the gray room more interesting than repulsive.

Dan said, 'Why do you think they were doing those things to Melanie McCaffrey?'

'I don't know. Bizarre stuff,' Seames said, wide-eyed, shaking his head with amazement. But his sudden expression of innocence seemed calculated.

'What effect were they trying to obtain?'

'I don't know.'

'They weren't just involved in behavior-modification studies at that house.'

Seames shrugged.

Dan said, 'They were into brainwashing, total mind control… and something else… something worse.'

Seames appeared to be bored. His gaze drifted away from Dan, and he watched the SID technicians as they sifted through the blood-spattered rubble.

Dan said, 'But why?'

'I really don't know,' Seames said again, impatiently this time. 'I only—'

'But you're desperate to find out who was funding this whole hellish project,' Dan said.

'I wouldn't say desperate. I'd say frantic. Quietly frantic.'

'Then you must have some idea of what they were up to. You know something that's making you frantic.'

'For Christ's sake, Haldane,' Seames said angrily, but even his anger seemed calculated, a ruse, calculated misdirection. 'You've seen the condition of the bodies. Prominent scientists, formerly funded by the Pentagon, wind up murdered in an inexplicable fashion… hell, of course, we're interested!'

'Inexplicable?' Dan said. 'It's not inexplicable. They were beaten to death.

'Come on, Haldane. It's more complicated than that. If you've talked to your own coroner's office, you've learned they can't figure what the hell kind of weapon it was. And you've learned the victims never had a chance to fight back — no blood, skin, or hair under their fingernails. And many of the blows couldn't have been struck by a man wielding a club, because no man would have the strength to crush another man's bones like that. It would take tremendous force, mechanical force… inhuman force. They weren't just beaten to death, they were smashed like bugs! And what about the doors here?'

Dan frowned. 'What doors?'

'Here, this shop, the front and back doors.'

'What about them?'

'You don't know?'

'I just got here. I've hardly talked with anyone.'

Seames nervously adjusted his tie, and Dan was unsettled by the sight of a nervous FBI agent. He had never seen one before. And Michael Seames's nervousness was one thing that he didn't appear to be faking.

'The doors were locked when your people arrived,' the agent said. 'Scaldone had closed up for the day just before he was killed. The back door had probably been locked all along, but just before he was killed, he'd closed the front door, locked it as well, and pulled down the shade. He would most likely have left the place by the rear door — his car's out back — once he'd finished totaling the day's receipts. But he didn't finish. He was hit while the doors were still locked. First officer on the scene had to kick out the lock on the front door.'

'So?'

'So only the victim was inside,' Seames said. 'Both doors were locked when the first cops arrived, but the killer wasn't here with Scaldone.'

'What's so amazing about that? It just means the killer must have had a key.'

'And paused to lock up after himself when he left?'

'It's possible.'

Seames shook his head. 'Not if you know how the doors were locked. In addition to a pair of deadbolts on each, there was a bolt latch, a manually operated bolt latch that could be engaged only from inside the shop.'

'Bolt latches on both doors?' Dan asked.

'Yes. And there're only two windows in the shop. The big show window there, which is fixed in place. Nobody could leave that way without first throwing a brick through it. The other window is in the back room, the office. It's a jalousie window for ventilation.'

'Big enough for a man?'

'Yes,' Seames said. 'Except there're bars on the inside of it.'

'Bars?'

'Bars.'

'Then there must be another way out.'

'You find it,' Seames said in a tone of voice that meant that it couldn't be found.

Dan surveyed the wreckage again, put a hand to his face as if he might be able to wipe off his weariness, and winced as his fingertips brushed the still-sticky wound on his forehead. 'You're telling me Scaldone was beaten to death in a locked room.'

'Killed in a locked room, yes. I'm still not sure about the "beaten" part.'

'And there's no way the killer could have gotten out of here before the first squad car arrived?'

'No way.'

'Yet he isn't here now.'

'Right. Seames's too-young face seemed to be straining toward a more harmonious relationship with his graying hair and his stooped shoulders: It appeared to have aged a few years in just the past ten minutes. 'You see why I'm frantic, Lieutenant Haldane? I'm frantic because two top-notch former defense researchers have been killed by persons or forces unknown, by a weapon that can reach through locked doors or solid walls and against which there seems to be absolutely no defense.'

* * *

Something about it had been different from an earthquake, but Laura couldn't precisely define the difference. Well, for one thing, she couldn't remember the windows rattling, although in an earthquake strong enough to fling open the cupboard doors, the windows would have been thrumming, clattering. She'd had no sense of motion either, no rolling; of course, if they had been far enough from the epicenter, ground movement wouldn't have been easy to detect. The air had felt strange, oppressive, not stuffy or humid, but… charged. She'd been through a number of quakes before, and she didn't remember the air feeling like that. But something else still argued against the earthquake explanation, something important on which she couldn't quite put her finger.

Earl returned to the table and newspaper, and Melanie continued to stare down at her hands. Laura finished making the salad. She put it in the refrigerator to chill while the spaghetti was cooking.

The water had begun to boil. Steam plumed from it. Laura was just taking the vermicelli out of the Ronzoni box when Earl glanced up from the newspaper and said, 'Hey, that explains the cat!'

Laura didn't understand. 'Huh?'

'They say animals usually know when an earthquake is coming. They get nervous and act strange. Maybe that's why Pepper got hysterical and chased ghosts all over the kitchen.