Next, he went through all seven volumes, reading the dedications and acknowledgements, in hope of coming across a familiar name that would further tie Uhlander to the McCaffrey-Hoffritz conspiracy or perhaps identify other as-yet-unknown conspirators, but he found nothing that seemed to be of value.
He looked at all the books again and chose one for closer examination. It was the volume that, at a glance, seemed the most likely to offer confirmation of the horrible possibility that had occurred to him while he'd been observing the hypnotic-therapy session with Melanie. He had read thirty pages by the time Laura showered, gave Melanie a bath, and declared herself ready to begin the day; in those pages he had indeed found things that lent substance to his worst fears.
The mists were clearing, the mystery dissolving. He felt that he stood on the edge of an understanding that would make sense of the events of the past two days: the gray room, the hideously battered bodies, the fact that the men in that Studio City house had been able to do nothing to defend themselves, Melanie's miraculous escape from that carnage, Joseph Scaldone's death in a locked room, and all the poltergeist-like phenomena.
It was madness.
Yet… it made sense.
And it scared the hell out of him.
He wanted to share his ideas with Laura, obtain her point of view as a psychiatrist. But what he would be proposing to her was so shocking, so horrible, and so hopeless that he wanted to think it through better than he had thus far. He wanted to be very sure of his chain of reasoning before he broached the subject. If what he suspected was true, Laura would need all the physical, mental, and emotional strength she could muster in order to deal with it.
They left the motel and went to the car. Laura sat in back with Melanie, because she didn't want to stop holding, stroking, and comforting the child, and the computer terminal left room for only two people up front.
Dan had intended to make a brief stop at his place to change clothes. His jacket, shirt, and trousers were limp and rumpled, for he had more or less slept in them. However, now that he believed that he was on the brink of a breakthrough in the case, he no longer cared if he looked seedy. He was eager to find and talk with Howard Renseveer, Sheldon Tolbeck, and others who had been a part of the conspiracy. He wanted to confront them with the ideas that had come to him during the past hour and see how they reacted.
Before driving out of the motel lot, he turned in his seat and studied Melanie.
She was slumped against her mother.
Her eyes were open but vacant.
Am I right, kid? he wondered. Is It what I think It is?
He half expected her to hear the unspoken questions and shift her eyes toward him, but she did not.
I hope I'm wrong, he thought. Because if that's what's been killing all these people, and if it's going to come after you when all the rest are dead, then there's nowhere you can hide, is there, honey? Not from a thing like that. Nowhere in the world you can hope to hide.
He shivered.
He started the car and drove away from the motel.
The previous night's fog continued to linger in the city. Rain began to fall once more. As each cold drop snapped hard against the windshield, the frigid impact seemed to be transmitted through the glass, through Dan's clothes, through his flesh and bones, and into his very soul.
Dan and Laura accomplished nothing of importance that morning, though they didn't fail for lack of trying. The renewed rainfall hampered them because it slowed traffic to a crawl throughout the city. The weather was bad, but the real problem was that the rats who could provide some answers were all deserting the ship: Neither Renseveer nor Tolbeck could be found at work or home. Dan wasted a lot of time tracking them down before he finally had sufficient reason to believe that both men had fled the city for destinations unknown.
At one o'clock, they met Earl Benton at the coffee shop in Van Nuys, as they had arranged the night before. Fortunately, the head wound that he'd suffered at the hands of Wexlersh had not appreciably slowed him down, and his morning had been more productive than Dan's and Laura's. The four of them sat in a booth at the back of the restaurant, as far as possible from the jukebox that was playing country music. They were beside a large plate-glass window, down which a gray film of rain rippled, blurring the world beyond. The place smelled pleasantly of french fries, sizzling hamburgers, bean soup, bacon, and coffee. The waitress was cheerful and efficient, and when she had taken their order and gone, Earl told Dan and Laura everything that he had uncovered. First thing that morning, he had called Mary Katherine O'Hara, the secretary of Freedom Now, and had arranged to see her at ten o'clock. She lived in a neat little bungalow in Burbank, a place half shrouded in bougainvillea, so typical of the architecture of the 1930s and in such good repair that Earl had half expected to see a Packard parked in the driveway.
'Mrs. O'Hara is in her sixties,' Earl said, 'and she's almost as well kept as her house. She's a very handsome woman now, and she must have been a knockout when she was young. She's a retired real-estate saleswoman. Though she isn't rich, I'd say she's definitely comfortable. The house is very nicely furnished, with several superb Art Deco antiques.'
'Was she reluctant to talk about Freedom Now?' Dan asked.
'On the contrary. She was eager to talk about it. You see, your police file on the organization is out of date. She's no longer an officer. She resigned in disgust several months ago.'
'Oh?'
'She's a dedicated libertarian, involved with a dozen different organizations, and when Ernest Cooper invited her to play a major role in a libertarian political-action committee that he had formed, she was happy to volunteer her time. The problem was that Cooper clearly wanted her name in order to lend some legitimacy to his PAC, and he expected her to be manipulable. But manipulating Mary O'Hara would be about as easy as playing football with a live porcupine without getting hurt.'
Dan was surprised and pleased to hear Laura's laughter. She had laughed so little in the past couple of days that he'd forgotten how deeply affected he could be by her delight.
'She sounds tough,' Laura said.
'And smart,' Earl said. 'She reminds me of you.'
'Me? Tough?'
'Tougher than you think you are,' Dan assured her, with the same admiration that Earl evidently felt.
Outside, thunder rolled like great broken wheels of stone across the day. Driven by a gusty wind, rain pummeled the window harder than ever.
Earl said, 'Mrs. O'Hara was there almost a year but, like several legit libertarians before her, she finally walked away from it, because she found out the organization wasn't doing what it was supposedly formed to do. It was taking in a lot of money, but it wasn't supporting a wide array of libertarian candidates or programs. In fact, most of the funds were going to a supposedly libertarian research project headed by Dylan McCaffrey.'
'The gray room,' Dan said.
Earl nodded.
Laura said, 'But what was libertarian about that project?'
'Probably nothing,' Earl said. 'The libertarian label was just a convenient cover. That's what Mary O'Hara finally decided.'
'A cover for what?'
'She didn't know.'
The waitress returned with three cups of coffee and a Pepsi. 'Your lunch will be ready in a couple minutes,' she said. She considered Earl's battered face and the bandage on his head, glanced at the bruise and abrasion on Dan's forehead, and said, 'You guys in a wreck or something?'
'Fell up some stairs,' Dan said.
'Fell up?' she asked.
'Four flights,' Earl said.