Dean Koontz - The Door To December

'So?'

'So only the victim was inside,' Seames said. 'Both doors were locked when the first cops arrived, but the killer wasn't here with Scaldone.'

'What's so amazing about that? It just means the killer must have had a key.'

'And paused to lock up after himself when he left?'

'It's possible.'

Seames shook his head. 'Not if you know how the doors were locked. In addition to a pair of deadbolts on each, there was a bolt latch, a manually operated bolt latch that could be engaged only from inside the shop.'

'Bolt latches on both doors?' Dan asked.

'Yes. And there're only two windows in the shop. The big show window there, which is fixed in place. Nobody could leave that way without first throwing a brick through it. The other window is in the back room, the office. It's a jalousie window for ventilation.'

'Big enough for a man?'

'Yes,' Seames said. 'Except there're bars on the inside of it.'

'Bars?'

'Bars.'

'Then there must be another way out.'

'You find it,' Seames said in a tone of voice that meant that it couldn't be found.

Dan surveyed the wreckage again, put a hand to his face as if he might be able to wipe off his weariness, and winced as his fingertips brushed the still-sticky wound on his forehead. 'You're telling me Scaldone was beaten to death in a locked room.'

'Killed in a locked room, yes. I'm still not sure about the "beaten" part.'

'And there's no way the killer could have gotten out of here before the first squad car arrived?'

'No way.'

'Yet he isn't here now.'

'Right. Seames's too-young face seemed to be straining toward a more harmonious relationship with his graying hair and his stooped shoulders: It appeared to have aged a few years in just the past ten minutes. 'You see why I'm frantic, Lieutenant Haldane? I'm frantic because two top-notch former defense researchers have been killed by persons or forces unknown, by a weapon that can reach through locked doors or solid walls and against which there seems to be absolutely no defense.'

* * *

Something about it had been different from an earthquake, but Laura couldn't precisely define the difference. Well, for one thing, she couldn't remember the windows rattling, although in an earthquake strong enough to fling open the cupboard doors, the windows would have been thrumming, clattering. She'd had no sense of motion either, no rolling; of course, if they had been far enough from the epicenter, ground movement wouldn't have been easy to detect. The air had felt strange, oppressive, not stuffy or humid, but… charged. She'd been through a number of quakes before, and she didn't remember the air feeling like that. But something else still argued against the earthquake explanation, something important on which she couldn't quite put her finger.

Earl returned to the table and newspaper, and Melanie continued to stare down at her hands. Laura finished making the salad. She put it in the refrigerator to chill while the spaghetti was cooking.

The water had begun to boil. Steam plumed from it. Laura was just taking the vermicelli out of the Ronzoni box when Earl glanced up from the newspaper and said, 'Hey, that explains the cat!'

Laura didn't understand. 'Huh?'

'They say animals usually know when an earthquake is coming. They get nervous and act strange. Maybe that's why Pepper got hysterical and chased ghosts all over the kitchen.

Before Laura even had time to consider what Earl had said, the radio clicked on as if an unseen hand had twisted the knob. Living by herself, as she had for the past six years, Laura sometimes found the silence and emptiness of the house to be more than she could bear, and she kept radios in several rooms. The one in the kitchen, by the bread box, only a few feet away from where Laura was standing, was a Sony AM-FM with a clock, and when it snapped on all by itself, it was tuned to KRLA, where she had set the dial the last time that she'd used it. Bonnie Tyler was singing 'Total Eclipse of the Heart.'

Earl had put down his paper. He was standing again.

Laura stared at the radio in disbelief.

Of its own accord, the volume knob began to rotate to the right. She could see it moving.

Bonnie Tyler's throaty voice grew louder, louder.

Earl said, 'What the hell?'

Melanie drifted unaware in her private darkness.

The voice of Bonnie Tyler and the music enfolding her words now bounced back and forth off the kitchen walls and made the windows rattle in a way that the 'earthquake' hadn't done.

Aware that a chill had settled over the room once more, Laura took a step toward the radio.

In another part of the house, Pepper was screeching again.

* * *

As Dan was turning away from Michael Seames, the FBI agent said, 'By the way, what happened to your forehead?'

'I was trying on hats,' Dan said.

'Hats?'

'Tried on one that was too small for me. Had a hell of a time getting it off. Pulled skin right along with it.'

Before Seames could respond, Ross Mondale stepped through a door at the back of the store, behind the sales counter. He spotted Dan, and he said, 'Haldane, come here.'

'What is it, Chief?'

'I want to talk to you.'

'What about, Chief?'

'Alone,' Mondale said fiercely.

'Be right there, Chief.'

He left Seames blinking and puzzled. He picked his way through the wreckage, past the corpse, around the counter. Mondale motioned him through the door back there, then followed him.

The rear room was as wide as the store but only ten feet deep, with concrete-block walls. It doubled as an office and storage area. On the left were piles of boxes, apparently filled with merchandise. On the right were a desk, an IBM PC, a few file cabinets, a small refrigerator, and a worktable on which stood a Mr. Coffee machine. No violence had been done there; everything was neat and orderly.

Mondale had been going through the desk drawers. Several items, including a slim little address book, were piled on the blotter.

As the captain closed the door, Dan went around behind the desk and sat down.

'What do you think you're doing?' Mondale asked.

'Taking a load off my feet. It's been a long day.'

'You know that's not what I mean.'

'Oh?'

As usual, Mondale was wearing a brown suit, light-beige shirt, brown tie, brown socks and shoes. His brown eyes seemed to flicker with a murderous light similar to that refracted within his ruby ring. 'I wanted to see you in my office by two-thirty.'

'I never got your message.'

'I know you damn well did.'

'No. Really. I'd have come running.'

'Don't screw with me.'

Dan just stared at him.

The captain stood several steps from the desk, his neck stiff, his shoulders tense, arms straight down at his sides, hands flexing and twitching as if he had to struggle to keep from forming them into fists and coming for Haldane. 'What have you been doing all day?'

'Contemplating the meaning of life.'

'You were at Rink's place.'

'You don't need to be in a church. It's possible to contemplate the meaning of life almost anywhere.'

'I didn't send you to Rink's place.'

'I'm a full-fledged detective-lieutenant. I usually follow my own instincts in an investigation.'

'Not in this one. This one's big. In this one, you're just part of the team. You do what I tell you, go where I tell you. You don't even shit unless I tell you it's okay.'

'Careful, Ross. You're beginning to sound power crazy.'

'What happened to your head?'

'I've been taking karate lessons.'

'What?'

'Tried to break a board with my head.'

'Like hell.'

'Okay, then what happened was George Padrakis told me you wanted to see me here, and at the mention of your name, I dropped to my knees and bowed down so fast I scraped my head on the sidewalk.'