Dean Koontz - The Door To December

'We don't think so,' Haldane said.

And Joey said, 'It was in this guy's hand. Had to pry it out of his fingers. He was trying to defend himself.'

Staring at the opaque body bag, they fell into a mutual silence. The ceaseless percussion of the rain on the roof was simultaneously a mundane and strange sound — like the rumble of enormous doors sliding open in a dream to reveal a mysterious and unearthly vista.

The other men returned with the wheeled stretcher. One of the wheels wobbled erratically like a malfunctioning supermarket cart: a cold, clattering noise.

Three doors led off the short hall, one on each side and one at the end. All three were ajar. Haldane led Laura around the corpse and into the room at the end of the passageway.

In spite of her warm sweater and lined raincoat, she was cold. Freezing. Her hands were so white they looked dead. She knew the heat was on, because she felt the warm air blowing out of the vents when she passed them, so she knew the chill came from within her.

The room had once been an office-study, but now it was a monument to destruction and chaos. Steel file drawers were ripped from their cabinets, scraped and dented, handles twisted off; the contents were scattered across the floor. A heavy chrome-and-walnut desk was on its side; two of its metal legs were bent, and the wood was cracked and splintered as if it had taken a few blows from an axe. A typewriter had been thrown against one wall with such force that several keys had snapped off and were embedded in the drywall board. Papers were everywhere — typewritten sheets, graphs, pages covered with figures and notations in a small precise handwriting — many of them shredded or crumpled or wadded into tight balls. And there was blood everywhere: on the floor, the furniture, the rubble, the walls, even on the ceiling. The place had a raw, coppery smell.

'Jesus,' she said.

'What I want you to see is in the next room,' he said, leading her toward a door at the rear of the demolished study. She noticed two opaque plastic body bags on the floor. Looking back at her, Haldane said again, 'Next room.'

Laura didn't want to stop, but she stopped. She didn't want to look down at the two shrouded bodies, but she looked. She said, 'Is one of these… Dylan?'

Haldane had moved ahead of her. Now he returned to her side. 'This one had Dylan McCaffrey's ID,' he said, pointing. 'But you don't want to see him.'

'No,' she agreed, 'I don't. She glanced at the other bag. 'Who was this one?'

'According to the driver's license and other cards in his wallet, his name was Wilhelm Hoffritz.'

She was astonished.

Her surprise must have been evident, for Haldane said, 'Do you know him?'

'He was at the university. One of my husband's… colleagues.'

'UCLA?'

'Yes. Dylan and Hoffritz conducted a number of joint studies. They shared some of the same… obsessions.'

'Do I detect disapproval?'

She said nothing.

'You didn't like Hoffritz?' Haldane pressed.

'I despised him.'

'Why?'

'He was a smug, self-important, condescending, pompous, arrogant little man.'

'What else?'

'Isn't that enough?'

'You're not the kind of woman who would use the word "despise" lightly,' Haldane said.

When she met his stare, she saw a sharp and probing intelligence that she hadn't noticed before. She closed her eyes. Haldane's direct gaze was discomfiting, but she didn't want to look anywhere else because anywhere else was sure to be smeared with blood.

She said, 'Hoffritz believed in centralized social planning. He was interested in the use of psychology, drugs, and various forms of subliminal conditioning to reform and direct the masses.'

Haldane was silent. Then: 'Mind control?'

'That's right. Her eyes were still closed, her head bowed. 'He was an elitist. No. That's too kind. He was a totalitarian. He would have made an equally good Nazi or Communist. Either one. He had no politics except the politics of raw power. He wanted to control.'

'They do that kind of research at UCLA?'

She opened her eyes and saw that he wasn't kidding. 'Of course. It's a great university, a free university. There aren't any overt restrictions on the directions a scientist's research can take — if he can round up the funding for it.'

'But the consequence of that kind of research…'

Smiling sourly, she said, 'Empirical results. Breakthroughs. The advancement of knowledge. That's what a researcher is concerned about, Lieutenant. Not consequences.'

'You said your husband shared Hoffritz's obsession. You mean he was deep into research with mind-control applications?'

'Yes. But he wasn't a fascist like Willy Hoffritz. He was more interested in modifying the behavior of criminal personalities as a means of reducing the crime rate. At least I think that's what he was interested in. That's what he talked most about. But the more involved Dylan got with any project, the more obsessed with it, the less he talked about it, as if talking used up energy that could be better spent in thought and work.'

'He received government grants?'

'Dylan? Yes. Both him and Hoffritz.'

'Pentagon?'

'Maybe. But he wasn't primarily defense-oriented. Why? What does that have to do with this?'

He didn't answer. 'You told me your husband quit his position at the university when he ran off with your daughter.'

'Yes'

'But now we find he was still working with Hoffritz.'

'Hoffritz is no longer at UCLA, hasn't been for… three or four years, maybe longer.'

'What happened?'

'I don't know,' she said. 'I just heard through the grapevine that he'd gone on to other things. And I had the feeling that he'd been asked to leave.'

'Why?'

'The rumor was… some violation of professional ethics.'

'What?'

'I don't know. Ask someone at UCLA.'

'You're not associated with the university?'

'No. I'm not in research. I work at Saint Mark's Children's Hospital, and I have a small private practice besides. Maybe if you talked to someone at UCLA, you'd be able to find out just what it was Hoffritz did to make himself unwelcome.'

She no longer felt ill, no longer minded the blood. In fact, she hardly noticed it. There was too much horror to absorb; it numbed the mind. A single corpse and a single drop of blood would have had a more lasting effect on her than this reeking slaughterhouse. She realized why cops could so quickly become inured to scenes of bloody violence; you either adapted or went mad, and the second option was really no option at all.

Haldane said, 'I think your husband and Hoffritz were working together again. Here. In this house.'

'Doing what?'

'I'm not sure. That's why I wanted you to come here. That's why I want you to see the lab in the next room. Maybe you can tell me what the hell was going on.'

'Let's have a look.'

He hesitated. 'There's just one thing.'

'What?'

'Well, I think your daughter was an integral part of their experiments.'

Laura stared at him.

He said, 'I think they were… using her.'

'How?' she whispered.

'That's something you'll have to tell me,' the detective said. 'I'm no scientist. All I know is what I read in the newspapers. But before we go in there, you should know… it looks to me as if some parts of these experiments were… painful.'

Melanie, what did they want from you, what have they done to you, where have they taken you?

She drew a deep breath.

She blotted her sweat-damp hands on her coat.

She followed Haldane into the lab.

Dan Haldane was surprised at how well the woman was coping with the situation. Okay, she was a doctor, but most physicians weren't accustomed to wading through blood; at the scene of multiple, violent homicides, doctors could clutch up and lose control as easily as any ordinary citizen. It wasn't just Laura McCaffrey's medical training that was carrying her through this; she also had an unusual inner strength, a toughness and resilience that Dan admired — that he found intriguing and appealing. Her daughter was missing and might be hurt, might even be dead, but until she got the answers to important questions about Melanie, she wasn't, by God, going to break down or be weak in any way. He liked her.