Dean Koontz - The Door To December

Laura's heart literally ached as she watched her pale and slender daughter struggle unsuccessfully to cast off the shackles of autism.

Ned Rink, the ex-cop and former agent for the FBI, who had been found dead in his car in the hospital parking lot earlier in the day, owned a small, tidy, desert-style ranch house on the edge of Van Nuys. Dan drove there straight from his meeting with Marge Gelkenshettle. It was a low house with a flat roof that was covered with white stones, set in the middle of a particularly flat part of the San Fernando Valley, on a flat street of other low, flat houses. The shrubbery — with typical southern California, chlorophyllic exuberance — was the only thing that relieved the harsh geometry of the house and the monotonous tract around it, both of which clearly dated from the late 1950s.

The house was dark. The streetlight in front of the place had a dirty globe and didn't illuminate much. Blank black windows and patches of pale-yellow stucco walls could be glimpsed between the shadowy forms of neatly shaped plum-thorn bushes, five-foot-high hibiscus, miniature orange trees, full-size date palms, and sections of a lantana hedge.

Cars were parked along one side of the narrow street. Even though the unmarked police sedan was nestled in darkness, midway between two streetlights, under an immense overhanging laurel, Dan spotted it at once. One man sat in the nondescript Ford, behind the wheel, slumped down, watching the Rink house, barely visible.

Dan drove past the house, circled the block, returned, and parked half a block behind the department sedan. He got out of his car and walked to the Ford. The driver's window was half open. Dan peered inside.

The plainclothes cop on the surveillance detail was an East Valley Division detective, and Dan knew him. His name was George Padrakis, and he looked like that singer from the '50s and '60s, Perry Como.

Padrakis rolled the half-open window all the way down and said, 'Are you here to relieve me, or what?' He sounded like Perry Como too: His voice was soft, mellow, and sleepy. He consulted his wristwatch. 'Nope, I still have a couple hours to go. It's too early to relieve me.'

'I'm just here to have a look inside,' Dan said.

Head twisted sideways to stare up at Dan, Padrakis said, 'This your case, huh?'

'It's my case.'

'Wexlersh and Manuello already tossed the place earlier.'

Wexlersh and Manuello were Ross Mondale's right-hand men in the East Valley Division, two career-conscious detectives who had hitched their wagons to his train and were willing to do anything for him, including bend the law now and then. They were toadies, and Dan couldn't stand them.

'They on this case too?' Dan asked.

'Didn't think you had it all to yourself, did you? Too big for that. Four dead altogether. One of them a Hancock Park millionaire. Too big for the Lone Ranger approach.'

'What've they got you out here for?' Dan asked, squatting so he was face-to-face with Padrakis.

'Beats me. I guess they figure there might be something in Rink's house that'll tell them who he was working for, and maybe whoever hired him will know it's in there and will come here to get rid of the evidence.'

'At which time you nab them.'

'Ridiculous, ain't it?' Padrakis said sleepily.

'Whose idea was this?'

'Whose do you think?'

'Mondale,' Dan said.

'You win your choice of the stuffed animals.'

The chilly breeze suddenly became a chillier wind, rustling the leaves of the laurel overhead.

'You must've been working around the clock if you were at that house in Studio City last night,' Padrakis said.

'Pretty nearly around the clock.

'So what're you doing here?'

'Heard there was free popcorn.'

'You should be home, having a beer, your feet up. That's where I'd be.'

'I'm out of beer. Besides, I'm dedicated,' Dan said. 'They leave you with a key, George?'

'You're a workaholic, from what I hear.'

'You going to psychoanalyze me first, or can you tell me did they leave you with a key?'

'Yeah. But I don't know I should let you have it.'

'It's my case.'

'But the place has already been tossed.'

'Not by me.'

'Wexlersh and Manuello.'

'Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Come on, George, why're you being such a pain in the ass?'

Reluctantly, Padrakis fumbled in a coat pocket for the key to Ned Rink's house. 'From what I hear, Mondale wants to talk to you real bad.'

Dan nodded. 'That's because I'm a brilliant conversationalist. You should hear me discuss ballet.'

Padrakis found the key but didn't hand it over right away. 'He's been trying to track you down all day.'

'And he calls himself a detective?' Dan said, holding his hand out for the key.

'He's been looking for you all day, and then you waltz in here instead of going back to the station like you promised him, and I just give you the key… he won't be happy about that.'

Dan sighed. 'You think he'll be any happier if you refuse to give me the key and then I have to go smash a window to get in that house?'

'You wouldn't.'

'Pick a window.'

'This is stupid.'

'Any window.'

Finally, Padrakis gave him the key. Dan went down the sidewalk, through the gate, to the front door, favoring his weak knee. They must be in for more rain; the knee knew. He unlocked the door and stepped inside.

He was in a tiny foyer. The living room on his right was dark except for the pale-grayish glow that came through the windows from the distant streetlights. To his left, back through a narrow hall, a lamp was on in a bedroom or study. It hadn't been visible from the street. Wexlersh and Manuello had apparently forgotten to switch it off when they'd finished, which was just like them: They were sloppy.

He snapped on the hall light, stepped into the darkness on his right, found a lamp, and had a look at the living room first. It was startling. This was a modest house in a modest neighborhood, but it was furnished as though it served as a secret retreat for one of the Rockefellers. The centerpiece of the living room was a gorgeous, twelve-foot-by-twelve foot, three-inch-deep Chinese carpet with a pattern of dragons and cherry blossoms. There were midnineteenthcentury French chairs with hand-carved legs and feet, a matching sofa upholstered in a lush off-white fabric that exactly matched the color of the unpatterned sections of the carpet. Two bronze lamps with intricately worked bases had shades of crystal beads. The large coffee table was unlike anything Dan had seen before: It seemed to be entirely bronze and pewter, with a superbly etched Oriental scene on the top; the upper surface curved around to form the sides, and the sides curved under to form the legs, so that the entire piece seemed fashioned from a single flowing slab. On the walls, the landscape paintings, each ornately framed, looked like the work of a master. In the farthest corner, a period French йtagиre held a collection of crystal — figures, vases, bowls — and each piece was more beautiful than the one before it.

The living-room furnishings alone had cost more than the entire modest house. Clearly, Ned Rink had been making a good living as a hired murderer. And he knew just where to put his money. If he had bought a big house in the best neighborhood, the IRS might eventually have noticed and asked how he could afford it, but here he could appear to be in modest circumstances while living in splendor.

Dan tried to picture Rink in this room. The man had been squat and decidedly ugly. Rink's desire to surround himself with beautiful things was understandable, but sitting here, he would have looked like a roach on a birthday cake.

Dan noticed there were no mirrors in the living room, remembered there had been none in the foyer, and suspected there would be none anywhere in the house except, of necessity, in the bathroom. He almost felt sorry for Rink, the lover of beauty who couldn't stand to look at himself.