Dean Koontz - The Door To December

Mondale said, 'If anyone was responsible for the death of that girl, it was her own mother.'

Dan didn't want to continue the battle. He was as weary as a centenarian who had danced away his birthday night.

Mondale said, 'Crucify her goddamned mother, not me.'

Dan said nothing.

Mondale said, 'Her mother was the one who dated Felix Dunbar in the first place.'

Staring at the captain as if he were a pile of some noxious and not-quite-identifiable substance found on a city sidewalk, Dan said, 'Are you actually telling me Fran Lakey should have known Dunbar was unstable?'

'Hell, yes.'

'He was a nice guy, by all accounts.'

'Blew her fuckin' head off, didn't he?' Mondale said.

'Owned his own business. Well dressed. No criminal record. A steady churchgoer. By all appearances, he was a regular upstanding citizen.'

'Upstanding citizens don't blow people's heads off. Fran Lakey was dating a loser, a creep, a real screwball. From what I heard later, she dated a lot of guys, and most of them were losers. She put her daughter's life in danger, not me.'

Dan watched Mondale the way he might have watched a particularly ugly insect crawl across a dinner table. 'Are you saying she should have been able to see the future? Was she supposed to know that her boyfriend would go off his rocker when she finally broke up with him? Was she supposed to know he would come to her house with a gun and try to kill her and her daughter just because she wouldn't go to a movie with him? If she could see the future that well, Ross, she'd have put every psychic and palm reader and crystal-ball gazer out of business. She'd have been famous.'

'She put her daughter's life in danger,' Mondale insisted.

Dan leaned forward, hunching over the desk, lowering his voice further. 'If she could've seen into the future, she would have known it wouldn't help to call the cops that night. She'd have known you'd be one of the officers answering the call, and she'd have known you'd choke up, and—'

'I didn't choke up,' Mondale said. He took a step toward the desk, but as a threatening gesture it was ineffective.

* * *

'Something's… coming…'

Fascinated, Earl watched the radio.

Laura looked at the door that opened onto the patio and the rear lawn. It was locked. So were the windows. The blinds were drawn. If something did come, where would it come from? And what would it be, for God's sake, what would it be?

The radio said: 'Watch…' Then: 'Out…'

Laura fixated on the open door to the dining room. Whatever was coming might already be in the house. Maybe it would come from the living room, through the dining room…

The frequency selector stopped again, and a deejay's voice boomed through the speaker. It was swift patter with no purpose but to fill a few seconds of dead air between tunes, yet for Laura it had an unintended ominous quality: 'Better beware out there, my rock-'n'-roll munchkins, better beware, 'cause it's a strange world, a mean and cold world, with things that go bump in the night, and all you got to protect you is your Cousin Frankie, that's me, so if you don't keep that dial where it is, if you change stations now, you better beware, better be on the lookout for the gnarly old goblins who live under the bed, the ones who fear nothing but the voice of Uncle Frankie. Better look out!'

Earl put one hand on top of the radio, and Laura half expected a mouth to open in the plastic and bite off his fingers.

'Cold,' he said as the tuning knob moved toward another station.

Laura shook Melanie. 'Honey, come on, get up.'

The girl didn't stir.

One clear word burst from the radio as the tuning knob stopped again in the middle of a news report: '… murder…'

* * *

Dan wished that he could magically transport himself out of the dreary spook-shop office and into Saul's Delicatessen, where he could order a huge Reuben sandwich and drink a few bottles of Beck's Dark. If he couldn't have Saul's, he'd settle for Jack-in-the-Box. If he couldn't have Jack-in-the-Box, then he'd rather be at home, washing the dirty dishes that he had left in the kitchen. Anywhere but in a confrontation with Ross Mondale. Dredging up the past was pointless and depressing.

But it was too late to stop now. They had to go through the whole Lakey killing again, pick at it as if it were a scab, peel and pick and pluck at it to see if the wound was healed underneath. And of course that was a waste of time and emotional resources, for both of them knew already that it wasn't healed and never would be.

Dan said, 'After Dunbar shot me there on the front lawn of the Lakey house—'

'I suppose that was my fault too,' Mondale said.

'No,' Dan said. 'I shouldn't have tried to rush him. I didn't think he'd use the gun, and I was wrong. But after he shot me, Ross, he was stunned for a moment, stupefied by what he'd done, and he was vulnerable.'

'Bullshit. He was as vulnerable as a runaway Sherman tank. He was a maniac, a flat-out lunatic, and he had the biggest goddamned pistol—'

'A thirty-two,' Dan corrected. 'There're bigger guns. Every cop comes up against bigger guns than that, all the time. And he was vulnerable for a moment, plenty long enough for you to take the son of a bitch.'

'You know one thing I always hated about you, Haldane?'

Ignoring him, Dan said, 'But you ran.'

'I always hated that wide, wide streak of self-righteousness.'

'If he'd wanted to, Dunbar could have put another slug in me. No one to stop him after you ran off behind the house.'

'As if you never made a mistake in your goddamned life.'

They were both almost whispering now.

'But instead he walked away from me—'

'As if you were never afraid.'

'—and he shot the lock off the front door—'

'You want to play the hero, go ahead. You and Audie Murphy. You and Jesus Christ.'

'—and he went inside and pistol-whipped Fran Lakey—'

'I hate your guts.'

'—and then made her watch—'

'You make me sick.'

'—while he killed the one person in the world she really loved,' Dan said.

He was being relentless now because there was no way to stop until it had all been said. He wished he had never begun, wished he'd left it buried, but now that he had started, he had to finish. Because he was like the Ancient Mariner in that old poem. Because he had to purge himself of an unrelenting nightmare. Because he was driven to follow it to the end. Because if he stopped in the middle, the unsaid part would be as bitter as a big wad of vomit in his throat, unheaved, wedged there, and he'd choke on it. Because — and here it was, here was the truth of it, no easy euphemisms this time — after all these years, his own soul was still shackled to a ball of guilt that had been weighing him down since the death of the Lakey child, and maybe if he finally talked about it with Ross Mondale, he might find a key that would release him from that iron ball, those chains.

* * *

The radio was at full volume again, and each word exploded like one round of a cannonade.

'… blood…'

'… coming…'

'… run…'

More urgently than she had spoken before, afraid of what might be coming, wanting Melanie to be on her feet and ready to flee, Laura said, 'Honey, get up, come on.'

From the radio: '… hide…'

And: '… it…'

And: '… coming…'

The volume grew louder.

'… it…'

Jarring, ear-splitting: '… loose…'

Earl put his hand on the volume knob.

'… it…'

At once, Earl jerked his hand off the knob as if he had taken an electric shock. He looked at Laura, horrified. He vigorously wiped his hand on his shirt. It hadn't been an electric shock that had sizzled through him; instead, he had felt something weird when he touched the knob, something disgusting, repulsive.