The Door To December

'Why isn't it?'

'The potential for psychological damage, the risks—'

'Maybe your husband didn't care about the risks.'

'But she was his daughter. He loved Melanie. I'll give him that much. He genuinely loved her.'

'We've found a journal in which your husband seems to account for every minute of your daughter's time during the past five and a half years.'

Her eyes narrowed. 'I want to see it.'

'In a minute. I haven't studied it closely yet, but I don't think your daughter was ever out of this house in five and a half years. Not to school. Not to a doctor. Not to a movie or the zoo or anywhere. And even if you say it's not possible, I think, from what I've seen, that she sometimes spent as much as three or four days in the tank without coming out.'

'But food—'

'I don't think she was fed in that time.'

'Water—'

'Maybe she drank a little of what she was floating in.'

'She'd have to relieve herself—'

'From what I've seen, there were times when she might have been taken out for only ten or fifteen minutes, long enough to use the bathroom. But in other cases, I think he catheterized her, so she could urinate into a sealed specimen jar without being taken out of the tank and without contaminating the water she was floating in.'

The woman looked stricken.

Wanting to get this over with for her sake and also because he was sick of this place, Dan led her away from the tank, to another piece of equipment.

'A biofeedback machine,' she told him. 'It includes an EEG, an electroencephalograph to monitor brain waves. It supposedly helps you learn to control the patterns of your brain waves and, therefore, your state of mind.'

'I know about biofeedback.' He pointed past that machine. 'And this?'

It was a chair, from which dangled leather straps and wires that ended in electrodes.

Laura McCaffrey examined it, and Dan could sense her growing disgust — and terror.

At last she said,'An aversion-therapy device.'

'Looks like an electric chair to me.'

'It is. Not one that kills. The current comes from those batteries, not from a wall socket. And this'—she touched a lever on the side of the chair—'regulates the voltage. You can deliver anything from a tingle to a painful shock.'

'This is a standard psychological research device?'

'Good heavens, no!'

'You ever see one of these in a lab before?'

'Once. Well… twice.'

'Where?'

'A rather unscrupulous animal psychologist I once knew. He used electric-shock aversion training with monkeys.'

'Tortured them?'

'I'm sure he didn't see it that way.'

'All animal psychologists don't do that?'

'I said he was unscrupulous. Listen, I hope you're not one of those new Luddites who think all scientists are fools or monsters.'

'Not me. When I was a kid, I never missed Mr. Wizard on TV.'

She managed a faint smile. 'Didn't mean to snap at you.'

'It's understandable. Now, you said you've seen one of these devices twice before. What about the second time?'

The meager glow of her weak smile was suddenly extinguished. 'I saw the second one in a photograph.'

'Oh?'

'In a book about… scientific experimentation in Nazi Germany.'

'I see.'

'They used it on people.'

He hesitated. But it had to be said. 'So did your husband.'

Laura McCaffrey regarded him not with disbelief as much as with an ardent desire to disbelieve. Her face was the color of cold ashes, burnt out.

Dan said, 'I think he put your daughter in this chair—'

'No.'

'—and I think he and Hoffritz and God knows who else—'

'No.'

'—tortured her,' Dan finished.

'No.'

'It's in the journal I told you about.'

'But—'

'I think they were using… what you called "aversion" therapy to teach her to control her brain-wave patterns.'

The thought of Melanie strapped in that chair was so disturbing that Laura McCaffrey was profoundly transformed by it. She no longer looked simply burnt out, no longer just ashen; she was now paler than pale, cadaverously pallid. Her eyes appeared to sink deeper into her skull and lose much of their luster. Her face sagged like softening wax. She said, 'But… but that doesn't make sense. Aversion therapy is the least likely way to learn biofeedback techniques.'

Dan had the urge to put his arms around her, hold her close, smooth her hair, comfort her. Kiss her. He had found her appealing from the moment he had seen her, but until now he'd felt no romantic stirrings for her. And that was par for the course, wasn't it? He always fell for the helpless kittens, the broken dolls, the ones who were lost or weak or in trouble. And he always wound up wishing that he had never gotten involved. Laura McCaffrey hadn't initially held any attraction for him because she had been self-confident, self-possessed, totally in control. As soon as she'd begun to flounder, as soon as she could no longer conceal her fear and confusion, he was drawn to her. Nick Hammond, another homicide detective and smartass, had accused Dan of having a mother-hen instinct, and there was truth in that.

What is it with me? he wondered. Why do I insist on being a knight-errant, always searching for a damsel in distress? I hardly even know this woman, and I want her to rely entirely on me, put her hopes and fears on my shoulders. Oh, yes, ma'am, you just rely on Big Dan Haldane, nobody else; Big Dan will catch these evil villains and put your broken world back together for you. Big Dan can do it, ma'am, even though he's still an adolescent idiot at heart.

No. Not this time. He had a job to do, and he would do it, but he would be entirely professional about it. Personal feelings would not intrude. Anyway, this woman wouldn't welcome a relationship with him. She was better educated than he was. A lot more stylish. She was a brandy type, while he was strictly beer. Besides, for God's sake, this wasn't a time for romance. She was too vulnerable: she was worried sick about her daughter; her husband had been killed, and that must have its effect on her, even if she had stopped loving the guy a long time ago. What kind of man could think of her as a romantic prospect at a time like this? He was ashamed of himself. But still…

He sighed. 'Well, once you've studied your husband's journal maybe you'll be able to prove he never put the girl in that chair. But I don't think so.'

She just stood there, looking lost.

He went to the closet and opened the doors, revealing several pairs of jeans, T-shirts, sweaters, and shoes that would fit a nine-year-old girl. All were gray.

'Why?' Dan asked. 'What did he hope to prove? What effect was he after with the girl?'

The woman shook her head, too distraught to speak.

'And something else I wonder,' Dan said. 'All of this, six years of it, took more money than he had when he cleaned out your joint bank accounts and left you. A lot more. Yet he wasn't working anywhere. He never went out. Maybe Wilhelm Hoffritz gave him money. But there must have been others who contributed as well. Who? Who was financing this work?'

'I've no idea.'

'And why?' he wondered.

'And where have they taken Melanie?' she asked. 'And what are they doing to her now?'

5

The kitchen wasn't exactly filthy, but it wasn't clean, either. Stacks of dirty dishes filled the sink. Crumbs littered the table that stood by the room's only window.

Laura sat at the table and brushed some of the crumbs aside. She was eager to look at the log of Dylan's experiments with Melanie. Haldane wasn't ready to give it to her. He held it — a ledger-size book bound in imitation brown leather — and paced around the kitchen as he talked.

Rain struck the window and streamed down the glass. When an occasional flicker of lightning brightened the night and passed through the window, it briefly projected the random rippling patterns of water from the glass onto the walls, which made the room seem as amorphous and semitransparent as a mirage.