The Door To December

Dan nodded. 'I should have shot Dunbar the moment he turned toward me with that gun. I shouldn't have hesitated, shouldn't have given him a chance to drop it. If I'd wasted him right away, he'd never have gotten into that house.'

Amazed, Mondale said, 'But, Christ, you know what it was like back then. Even worse than now. The grand jury was looking into half a dozen charges of police brutality, whether the accusations had substance or not. Every half-assed political activist had it in for the whole department in those days. Even worse than now. Even when a cop shot someone in a clear-cut act of self-defense, they howled for his head. Everyone was supposed to have rights — except cops. Cops were supposed to just stand there and take bullets in the chest. The reporters, politicians, the ACLU — they all talked about us like we were bloodthirsty fascists. Shit, man, you remember!'

'I remember,' Dan said. 'And that's why I didn't shoot Dunbar when I should have. I could see the guy was unbalanced, dangerous. I knew, intuitively, that he was going to kill somebody that night, but in the back of my mind I was thinking about all the heat we were under, all the accusations about being trigger-happy cops, and I knew if I shot him, I'd have to answer for it. In the climate we had back then, I figured nobody would listen to me. I'd be sacrificed. I was worried about losing my job, being booted off the force. I was afraid of destroying my career. And so I waited until he brought the gun around, waited until he pointed it right straight at me. But I gave him just a second too long, and he got me, and because I didn't go with my instincts or with my intellect, he had a chance to get Cindy Lakey too.'

Mondale shook his head adamantly. 'But none of that was your fault. Blame the goddamned social reformers who take sides without any understanding of the goddamned situation we face, without knowing what it's like out there on the streets. They're to blame. Not you. Not me.'

Dan glared at him. 'Don't you dare put yourself in the same boat with me. Don't you dare. You ran, Ross. I screwed up because I was thinking about my own ass — about my pension, for God's sake! — when I should have been thinking about nothing other than doing the job the best way I could. That's why I have guilt to live with. But don't you ever imply the burden lies equally on you and me. It doesn't. That's crap, and you know it.'

Mondale was trying to look earnest and concerned, but he was having increasing difficulty suppressing his hatred.

'Or maybe you don't know it,' Dan said. 'That's even scarier. Maybe you aren't just covering your own backside. Maybe you really think that looking out for number one is the only moral position that makes sense.'

Without replying, Mondale got up and went to the door.

Dan said, 'Is your conscience actually clear, Ross? God help you, I think maybe it is.'

Mondale glanced back at him. 'You do what you want to do on this case, but stay out of my way.'

'You haven't lost a single night's sleep over Cindy Lakey, have you, Ross?'

'I said, stay out of my way.'

'Happily.'

'I don't want to have to listen to any more of your carping and whining.'

'You're incredible.'

Without replying, Mondale opened the door.

'What planet are you from, Ross?'

Mondale walked out.

'I'll bet there's only one color on his home planet,' Dan said to the empty room. 'Brown. Everything must be brown on his world. That's why his clothes are all brown — they remind him of home.'

It was a weak joke. Maybe that was why he couldn't make himself smile. Maybe.

* * *

The kitchen was still.

The silence held.

The air was warm once more.

'It's over,' Earl said.

Paralysis relaxed its grip on Laura. A circuit board from the demolished radio crunched under her foot as she stepped across the kitchen and knelt beside Melanie.

With soothing words, with much patting and stroking, she calmed her daughter. She wiped the tears from the child's face.

Earl began picking through the debris, studying the pieces of the Sony, mumbling to himself, baffled and fascinated. Sitting on the floor with Melanie, pulling the girl onto her lap, holding her, rocking her, immensely relieved that the child was still there to be comforted, Laura would like to have wished away the events of the past few minutes. She would have given anything to be able to deny the reality of what she had seen. But she was too good a psychiatrist to allow herself to indulge in any of the little mind games that would minimize this bizarre development; nor would she permit herself to rationalize it away with the standard jargon of her profession. She hadn't been hallucinating. This paranormal episode — this supernatural phenomenon — couldn't be explained away as just sensory confusion, either; her perceptions had been accurate and reliable in spite of the impossibility of what she had perceived. She had not been overlaying a logical series of events with an illogical and subjective fantasy, in the manner of many schizophrenics. Earl had seen it too. And this wasn't a shared hallucination, a mass delusion. It was crazy, impossible — but real. The radio had been… possessed. Some of the pieces of the Sony were still smoking. The air was thick with an acrid, charredplastic odor.

Melanie moaned softly. Twitched.

'Easy, honey, easy.'

The girl looked up at her mother, and Laura was jolted by the eye contact. Melanie was no longer gazing through her. She had come back from her dark world again, and Laura prayed that this time the girl was back for good, although that was unlikely.

'I… want,' Melanie said.

'What is it, honey? What do you want?'

The girl's eyes searched Laura's. 'I… need.'

'Anything, Melanie. Anything you want. Just tell me. Tell Mommy what you need.'

'It'll get them all,' Melanie said, her voice heavy with dread.

Earl had looked up from the smoldering scraps of the radio and was watching intently.

'What?' Laura asked. 'What will get them, honey?'

'And then it'll… get… me,' the girl said.

'No,' Laura said quickly. 'Nothing's going to get you. I'll take care of you. I'll—'

'It'll… come up from… inside.'

'Inside where?'

'… from inside…'

'What is it, honey? What're you afraid of. What is it?'

'… it'll… come… and eat me…'

'No.'

'… eat me… all up,' the girl said, and she shuddered. 'No, Melanie. Don't worry about…' She let her voice trail away because she saw that the girl's eyes had shifted subtly. They were not entirely out of focus, but neither were they fixed on Laura anymore.

The child sighed and her breathing changed. She had gone back into that private place where she had been hiding ever since they'd found her wandering naked in the street.

Earl said, 'Doc, can you make anything of this?'

'No.'

'Because I can't figure it at all.'

'Me neither.'

Earlier, cooking dinner, she had begun to feel better about Melanie and the future. She'd begun to feel almost normal. But their situation had changed for the worse, and now her nerves were frayed again.

In this city, there were people who wanted to kidnap Melanie in order to continue experimenting with her. Laura didn't know what they hoped to achieve or why they had picked on Melanie, but she was certain they were out there. Even the FBI seemed sure of that. Other people wanted the girl dead. The discovery of Ned Rink's body seemed to prove that Melanie's life was indisputably in danger. But now it appeared that those faceless people were not the only ones who wanted to get their hands on Melanie. Now there was another enemy as well. That was the essence of the warning that had come to them through the radio.

But who or what had been controlling the radio? And how? Who or what had sent the warning? And why? More important, who was this new enemy?