The Door To December Part 16

'But you were teaching here then, doing your own research. You were on the faculty with him.'

'Yes. I didn't know him well, but I knew him well enough to know I didn't want to know him any better.'

'I understand he was very dedicated to his work. His wife - she's a psychiatrist - called him a severe obsessive-compulsive.'

'He was a nut,' Marge said.

The two new Paladin agents walked away from the suspicious telephone-company van and came directly to Laura's front door. Earl Benton let them in.

One was tall, the other short. The tall one was thin and gray-faced. The short man was slightly pudgy with freckles across the bridge of his nose and on both cheeks. They didn't want to sit down or have coffee. Earl called the short one Flash, and Laura didn't know if that was his surname or a nickname.

Flash did all the talking while the tall one stood beside him, his long face expressionless. 'They're steamed that we blew their cover,' Flash said.

'If they don't want to be made, they should be more subtle,' Earl said.

'That's what I told them,' Flash said.

'Who are they?'

'They showed us FBI credentials.'

'You wrote their names down?'

'Names and ID numbers.'

'Did the ID took real?'

'Yeah,' Flash said.

'What about the men? They seem like Bureau types to you?'

'Yeah,' Flash said. 'Sharply dressed. Very cool, soft-spoken, polite even when they were angry, but that underlying arrogance. You know how they are.'

'I know,' Earl said.

Flash said, 'We're heading back to the office, check this out, see if the Bureau employs agents with those names.'

'You'll find the names, even if these guys aren't legit,' Earl said. 'What you've got to do is get photos of the real agents and see if they look like these guys.'

'That's what we figure to do,' Flash said.

'Get back to me as soon as you can,' Earl said, and the other two turned toward the door.

Laura said, 'Wait.'

Everyone looked at her.

She said, 'What did they tell you? What reason did they give for watching my house?'

'Bureau doesn't talk about its operations unless it wants to,' Earl told Laura.

'And these guys didn't want to,' Flash said. 'They'd no sooner tell us their reasons for watching you than they'd kiss us and ask us to dance.'

The tall man nodded agreement.

Laura said, 'If they were here to protect Melanie and me, they'd tell us, wouldn't they? So that means they must be here to s.n.a.t.c.h her back.'

'Not necessarily,' Flash said.

Earl put his revolver back in his shoulder holster. 'Laura, see, the situation may be just as unclear and confusing to the Bureau as it is to us. For instance, suppose your husband was working on an important Pentagon project when he disappeared with Melanie. Suppose the FBI's been looking for him ever since. Now he turns up, dead, in peculiar circ.u.mstances. Maybe it hasn't been our government funding him these last six years, in which case they're bound to wonder where he's been getting his money.'

Again, Laura felt as if the floor were tilting under her, as if the real world that she'd always taken for granted were an illusion. It almost seemed as though true reality might be the paranoid's nightmare world of unseen enemies and complex conspiracies.

She said, 'Then you're telling me they're out in that telephone-company van, watching my house, because they think someone else elsemay come for Melanie, and they want to nab them in the act? But I still don't understand why they didn't come to me and tell me they were going to be watching.'

'They don't trust you,' Flash said.

'They were angry with us for revealing their presence not just to anyone who might've been watching out there,' Earl said, 'but to you as well.'

Puzzled, she said, 'Why?'

Earl looked uncomfortable. 'Because, as far as they know, maybe you've always been in this thing with your husband.'

'He stole Melanie from me.'

Earl cleared his throat and looked unhappy at having to explain this to her. 'From the Bureau's point of view, could be that you let your husband take your daughter, so he'd be able to experiment on her with no notice or interference from family or friends.'

Shocked, Laura said, 'That's insane insane! You see what's been done to Melanie. How could I be a party to that?'

'People do strange things.'

'I love her. She's my little girl. Dylan was disturbed, maybe crazy, okay, so he was too unbalanced to see or even care how he was hurting her, destroying her. But I'm not unbalanced too too! I'm not like Dylan.'

'I know,' Earl said soothingly. 'I know you're not.'

She saw belief in Earl Benton's eyes, trust and compa.s.sion, but when she looked at the other two men, she saw an element of doubt and suspicion.

They were working for her, but they didn't entirely believe that she had told them the truth.

Madness.

She was caught in a whirlpool that was carrying her down into a nightmare world of suspicion, deception, and violence, into an alien landscape where nothing was what it appeared to be.

Surprised, Dan said, 'Nut? I didn't know psychologists used words like that.' I didn't know psychologists used words like that.'

Marge smiled ruefully. 'Oh, not in the cla.s.sroom, and not in published papers, and certainly not in a courtroom if we're ever asked for testimony in a sanity hearing. But this is in the privacy of my office, just between almost-strangers, and I tell you, Dan, he was a nut. Not certifiable, mind you. Not close. But not merely eccentric, either. His primary area of research was supposed to be the development and application of behavior-modification techniques that would reform the criminal personality. But he was always off on a tangent, riding one odd hobbyhorse or another. He regularly announced a deep commitment - "obsessed" is is the right word - to some new line of research, but after six months or so, he would completely lose interest in it. the right word - to some new line of research, but after six months or so, he would completely lose interest in it.

'What were were some of those hobbyhorses?' some of those hobbyhorses?'

She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. 'For a while, he was determined to find a drug therapy that would combat nicotine addiction. Does that sound sensible to you? Help smokers get off cigarettes - by getting them onto drugs? h.e.l.l's bells. Then for a while, he claimed to be convinced that subliminal suggestion, subconscious programming, could enable us to set aside our prejudices against a belief in the supernatural and help us open our minds to psychic experiences, so we'd be able to see spirits as easily as we see one another.'

'Spirits? Are you talking about ghosts?'

'I am. Or, rather, he was.'

'I wouldn't think psychologists would believe in ghosts.'

'You're looking at one who doesn't. McCaffrey was one who did.'

'I'm remembering the books we found in his house. Some of them were about the occult.'

'Probably half his hobbyhorses dealt with that,' she said. 'One occult phenomenon or another.'

'Who would pay for this kind of research?'

'I'd have to look at the files. I imagine the occult stuff was done on his own, without funds, or by cleverly misusing funds meant for other work.'

'It's possible to misuse funds that blatantly? Isn't there some accounting required?'

'The government's relatively easy to dupe if you're dishonest. Sometimes thieves make the easiest target for another thief, because they never see themselves as being the victims, only perpetrators.'

'Who financed his primary research?'

'He got some of his money from trust funds set up by alumni for research purposes. And corporate grants, of course. And as I said, the government.'

'Mostly the government?'

'I'd say mostly.'

He frowned. 'Well, if Dylan McCaffrey was a nut, why would the government want to deal with him?'

'Oh, well, he was a nut, and his interest in the occult was as peculiar as it was exasperating, but he was brilliant. I'll give him that. With a more stable personality, his intellect would've taken him all the way. He'd have been famous in his field and maybe even to the general public.'

'Did he get Pentagon funding?'

'Yes.'

'What would he have been working on for the Pentagon?'

'Can't say. For one thing, I don't know. I could check the files, but even if I knew, I couldn't say. You don't have security clearance.'

'Fair enough. What can you tell me about Wilhelm Hoffritz?'

'He was slime.'

Dan laughed. 'Doctor... Marge, Marge, you certainly don't mince words.' you certainly don't mince words.'

'It's only the truth. Hoffritz was an elitist son of a b.i.t.c.h. He wanted in the worst way to be chairman of this department. Never had a chance. Everyone knew what he'd be like if he had power over us. Vicious. Abusive. He'd have run the entire department right into the ground.'

'He was doing Defense research too?'

'Almost exclusively. Can't tell you about that, either.'

'Rumor has it that he was forced out of the university.'

'That was a banner day for UCLA.'

'Why was he gotten rid of?'

'There was this young girl, a student-'

'Ah.'

'Much worse than you think,' Marge said. 'It wasn't just moral turpitude. He wasn't the first professor to sleep with a student. Half the men on the faculty would be dismissed, and maybe as much as a fifth of the women, if that rule was well enforced. He was having s.e.x with her, yes, but he also beat her up and put her in hospital. Their relationship was ... Kinky, is a kind word for it. One night, it got out of hand.'

'Are you talking about bondage games or something?' Dan asked.

'Yes. Hoffritz was a s.a.d.i.s.t.'

'And the girl cooperated? She was a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t?'

'Yes. But she got more than she bargained for. One night Hoffritz lost control, broke her nose, three fingers, her left arm. I went to hospital, saw her. Both eyes blackened, split lip, badly bruised.'

Laura and Earl stood at the window, watching Flash and the tall man move down the walk in the deepening twilight. The telephone-company van was only a lumpish shape, all details obscured, as the oncoming night knitted together with the shadows under the curbside jacarandas.

She said, 'FBI, huh? They won't go away?'

'No.'

'Even though I'm aware of them now.'

'Well, they're not convinced convinced you were conspiring with your husband. In fact, that would be one of the less likely possibilities in their eyes. They still figure someone - whoever was financing Dylan's research - will come after Melanie, and they want to be here when it happens.' you were conspiring with your husband. In fact, that would be one of the less likely possibilities in their eyes. They still figure someone - whoever was financing Dylan's research - will come after Melanie, and they want to be here when it happens.'

'But I still need you,' she said. 'In case the FBI itself takes my daughter.'

'Yes. If that's what comes down, you'll need a witness in order to go after them in the courts.'

She went to the couch and sat on the edge, shoulders hunched, head bowed, arms propped on her thighs. 'I feel as if I'm losing my mind.'

'Everything'll work out if-'

He was interrupted by Melanie's scream.