The Door To December

'There are those who did know him who don't speak so highly of him. I'm sure you're aware of that.'

She lowered her gaze to her hands again. 'They're all just envious, jealous, lying bastards,' she said, but in the same soft, sweet, breathlessly feminine manner, as if she had been forbidden to mar her perfect femininity with a shrill tone of voice or any other display of anger.

'He was thrown out of UCLA.'

She said nothing.

'Because of what he did to you.'

Regine still said nothing, continued to avert her eyes, but she shifted uneasily again. Her robe fell open to reveal one perfectly formed calf. A bruise the size of a half dollar marred the creamy flesh. Two smaller bruises were visible at the ankle.

'I want you to talk about Willy.'

'I won't.

'I'm afraid you must.'

She shook her head.

'What was he doing with Dylan McCaffrey in Studio City?'

'I'll never say a word against Willy. I don't care what you do to me. Throw me in jail if you want. I don't care. I don't care.' This was said quietly but with fierce emotion. 'Too many hard things have been said about poor Willy by people not good enough to lick his shoes.'

Dan said, 'Regine, look at me.'

She raised one hand to her mouth, put a knuckle to her teeth, and gently chewed on it.

'Regine? Look at me, Regine.'

Nervously sucking-chewing at that knuckle, she raised her head, but she didn't meet his eyes. She stared over his shoulder, past him.

'Regine, he beat you up.'

She said nothing.

'He put you in hospital.'

'I loved him,' she said, speaking around the knuckle upon which her attention was becoming increasingly fixated.

'He used sophisticated brainwashing techniques on you, Regine. He somehow got in your mind, and he changed you, twisted you, and that is not the work of a sweet and wonderful man.'

Tears sprang from her and streamed down her cheeks, and her face contorted in grief. 'I loved him so much.'

The sleeve of Regine's robe slid up her arm when she brought her hand to her mouth. Dan saw a small bruise on the meaty part of her forearm — and what appeared to be rope abrasions on her wrist.

She had told him that she hadn't seen Willy Hoffritz for a year, but someone had been playing bondage games with her, and recently.

Dan studied the ornately framed photographs on the coffee table, the thin smile on the dead psychologist's face. The air suddenly seemed thick, oily, unclean. A desire for fresh air almost propelled him from the chair, almost sent him stumbling toward the door.

He stayed where he was. 'But how could you love a man who hurt you so?'

'He freed me.'

'No, he enslaved you.'

'He freed me to be…'

'To be what?'

'What I was meant to be.'

'And what were you meant to be?'

'What I am.'

And what is that?'

'Whatever is wanted of me.'

Her tears had stopped.

A smile flickered at the corners of her mouth as she considered what she had said. 'Whatever is wanted of me.' And she shivered, as though the very thought of slavery and degradation sent a current of physical pleasure through her.

With growing frustration and anger, he said, 'Are you telling me that you were born to be only what Willy Hoffritz wanted you to be, born to do anything he wanted you to do?'

'Whatever is wanted,' Regine repeated, looking directly into his eyes now.

He wished that she had continued staring into space beyond him, for he saw — or imagined that he saw — grave torment, self-loathing, and desperation of an intensity that made his heart clutch up. He glimpsed a soul in rags: a tattered, wrinkled, frayed, and soiled spirit. Within this woman's ripe, full, exquisitely sensuous body, and within the outwardly visible persona of the submissive child-woman, there was another Regine, a better Regine, trapped, buried alive, existing beyond whatever psychological blocks Hoffritz had implanted but unable to escape or even to imagine any hope of escape. In that brief moment of contact between them, Dan saw that the real woman, the woman who had existed before Hoffritz had come along, was like a withered straw doll, dried out by all these years of ceaseless abuse, now a juiceless, miserable creature who'd been transformed into kindling by a nightmare of humiliation and torture; she longed for the match that would ignite and, mercifully, extinguish her.

Horrified, he could not look away.

She lowered her eyes first.

He was relieved. And sick.

His lips were dry. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. 'Do you know what research Willy was doing after he was booted out of UCLA?'

'No.'

'What project were he and Dylan McCaffrey working on?'

'I don't know.'

'Did you ever see the gray room in Studio City?'

'No.'

'Do you know a man named Ernest Andrew Cooper?'

'No.'

'Joseph Scaldone?'

'I wish you would go away.'

'Ned Rink?'

'No. None of them.'

'What did those men do to Melanie McCaffrey? What did they want from her?'

'I don't know.'

'Who was funding their project?'

'I don't know.'

Dan was sure she was lying. Along with her self-assurance and self-respect and independence, she had also lost the ability to prevaricate with confidence or conviction.

Now that he'd seen Regine and knew the amazing, monstrous thing that had been done to her, Dan had no respect for Hoffritz as a man, but more than ever he feared Hoffritz's manipulative abilities, his vicious cruelty, and his dark genius, and more than ever he realized the need to arrive at a timely solution in this case. If Hoffritz had transformed Regine this completely, what might he have achieved in his research with Dylan McCaffrey, for which he'd had more time and resources? Dan had a new sense that time was swiftly running out, a growing urgency. Hoffritz had set some terrible engine in motion, and it would crush many more people, soon, unless it was understood, located, and stopped. Regine was lying to him, and he couldn't allow that. He had to find some answers quickly, before he was too late to help Melanie.

24

They retreated from the flower- and dirt-strewn kitchen, but Laura felt no safer. One weirdness had followed another since they had come home that afternoon. First, Melanie had awakened from her nap, screaming in terror, clawing and punching herself as if she were a penitent religious fanatic scourging the devil from her flesh. Then the radio had come to life, followed by the whirlwind that had burst through the back door. If someone had told her that the house was haunted, she would not have scoffed.

Apparently, the move from kitchen to living room didn't make Earl feel any safer. He shushed Laura when she tried to talk. He led her and Melanie into the study, found a pad of paper and a pen in the desk drawer, and quickly scribbled a message.

Baffled by his mysterious behaviour, Laura stood beside him and read what he wrote: We're leaving the house.

Laura wasn't reluctant to comply. She vividly remembered the warning that had been delivered to them through the radio: It was coming. The flower-filled whirlwind had seemed to be another warning with the same message. It was coming. It wanted Melanie. And it knew where they were.

Earl wrote more: Pack a suitcase for yourself and one for Melanie.

Evidently, he was prepared to believe that someone had planted listening devices in the house.

Apparently, he also believed he might not be able to spirit Laura and Melanie away if the listeners knew that they planned to leave. That made sense. Whoever had financed Dylan and Hoffritz would want to know where Melanie was at all times, so they would eventually have a chance to either kill her or snatch her away. And the FBI would want to know where she was at all times, so they would be able to nab the people who tried to nab Melanie. Unless it was the FBI that wanted her in the first place.