The Door To December Part 18

'Sorry.' He wrote 'Regine Savannah' in his small notebook. 'You know where she lives?'

'Well, at that time it all happened, Regine was a junior in the undergraduate program. She shared a large off-campus apartment in Westwood with three other girls. But I'm sure she's long gone from that address.'

'What happened after she got out of hospital? Did she drop out of school?'

'No. She finished her studies, took her degree, although there were those who wished she would have transferred. Some felt it was a continuing embarra.s.sment to have her here.'

That sentiment baffled him. 'Embarra.s.sment? I'd think everyone would've been happy that she recovered sufficiently - physically and and psychologically - to go on with her life.' psychologically - to go on with her life.'

'Except that she continued seeing Hoffritz.'

'What?'

'Amazing, huh?'

'She went on seeing him after after he put her in hospital?' he put her in hospital?'

'That's right. Worse, Regine wrote a letter to me, in my capacity as department head, defending Hoffritz.'

'Good G.o.d.'

'She wrote letters to the university president and to a few other faculty members on the review board. She did everything in her power to keep w.i.l.l.y Hoffritz from losing his job.'

A creepy feeling settled over Dan again. He was not, by nature, given to melodramatic action or thought, but somehow just talking about Hoffritz was beginning to make his blood run cold. If Hoffritz was able to acquire such control of Regine, what breakthroughs might he and Dylan McCaffrey have achieved once they had combined their demonic talents? For what purpose had they turned Melanie into a near vegetable?

Dan could no longer sit still. He got up. But it was a small office, and he was a big man, and there wasn't much of anywhere to pace. He just stood there by his chair, hands in his pockets, and said, 'You would think, after he beat Regine, she would have been able to break his hold on her.'

Marge shook her head. 'After w.i.l.l.y Hoffritz was booted off the faculty, Regine actually brought him to a number of campus functions as her escort.'

Dan gaped at her.

Marge said, 'And he was her only guest at graduation.'

'Good Lord.'

'Both of them enjoyed rubbing our faces in it.'

'The girl needed psychiatric help.'

'Yes.'

'Deprogramming.'

A sadness had taken possession of the psychologist's kind face. She took off her gla.s.ses as if they were suddenly much heavier than they had been heretofore, an unbearable weight. She rubbed her weary eyes.

Dan had a good idea how the woman felt. She was dedicated to her profession, and she was good at what she did, and she maintained high personal standards. She had scruples and ideals. With her well-developed conscience, she must believe that a man like Hoffritz was a discredit not only to the profession but to all of those who were his a.s.sociates.

She said, 'We tried to see that Regine got the help she needed. But she refused it.'

Outside, sodium-vapor lights had come on, but they could not hold back the night.

Dan said, 'Evidently, then, the reason Regine didn't turn against Hoffritz was because she liked liked the beating he'd given her.' the beating he'd given her.'

'Evidently.'

'He had programmed her to like it.'

'Evidently.'

'He'd learned from those first four girls.'

'Yes.'

'He'd lost control of them, but he'd learned from his mistakes. By the time he'd gotten to Regine, he'd learned how to keep an iron grip.' Dan had to move, work off some energy. He took five steps to the bookshelves, returned to his chair and put his hands on the back of it. 'I'll never be able to hear the words "behavior modification" without getting sick to my stomach.'

Defensively, Marge said, 'It's a justifiable area of research, a reputable branch of psychology. Behavior modification can help us find ways to teach children more easily and make them retain what they learn far longer than they do now. It can help us reduce the crime rate, heal the sick, and perhaps even create a more peaceful world.'

As Dan grew increasingly eager for action, Marge seemed, by contrast, to seek relief in lethargy. She slumped down even farther in her chair. She was a take-charge kind of person, the st.u.r.dy type who was confident of dealing with anything, but she could not deal with inexplicably monstrous men like Hoffritz. And when she was confronted with something that she could not grasp and control, she looked less like a career WAC and more like a grandmother in need of a rocking chair and a cup of tea and honey. Dan liked her even more because of that vulnerability.

Her voice was tired: 'Behavior modification and brainwashing aren't the same thing at all. Brainwashing is a b.a.s.t.a.r.d offshoot of behavior modification, a twisted perversion of it, just as Hoffritz was not an ordinary man or an ordinary scientist but a perversion of both.'

'Was Regine still with him?'

'I don't know. The last I saw of her was more than two years ago, and she was with him then.'

'If she wouldn't drop him after the beating, then I suppose nothing he did would cause her to leave. So she's probably still been seeing him.'

'Unless he got tired of her,' Marge said.

'From what I've heard of him, he'd never get tired of someone he could dominate and terrify.'

Marge nodded grimly.

Checking his watch, anxious to get away now, Dan said, 'You told me Dylan McCaffrey was brilliant, a genius. Would you say the same of Hoffritz?'

'Probably. In fact, yes. But his genius was a darker variety, twisted, bent.'

'So was McCaffrey's.'

'Not half as twisted as Hoffritz,' she said.

'But if they started working together, with substantial - maybe even unlimited - funding, with a human subject, with absolutely no legal or moral restrictions, they would be a dangerous combination, wouldn't they?'

'Yes,' she said. A pause. 'Unholy.'

The word - 'unholy' - seemed like uncharacteristic hyperbole, coming from Marge, but Dan was sure that she had chosen it carefully.

'Unholy,' she repeated, leaving him without a doubt as to the depth of her concern.

In the hall bathroom, with some iodine and a Big Patch Band-Aid, Laura was able to take care of the small wound on Earl Benton's hand, where Melanie had bitten him during their struggle.

'It's nothing,' he a.s.sured Laura. 'Don't worry about it.'

Melanie was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, staring at the green-tiled wall. She couldn't have been more unlike the h.e.l.lion who had lashed out at them in the bedroom a few minutes ago.

'A human bite is more likely to become infected than that from a dog or cat or virtually any other animal,' Laura said.

'You soaked it good with the iodine, and there's hardly any bleeding. Just a shallow bite. Doesn't even hurt,' he said, though she knew it must sting at least slightly.

'Had a teta.n.u.s shot lately?' Laura asked.

'Yeah. I was doing skip-tracing work last month. One of the guys I tracked down took exception to being found, pulled a knife on me. He didn't do much damage. Took about seven st.i.tches to close it. That's when I had the teta.n.u.s booster. Real recent.'

'I'm so sorry about this.'

'You already said.'

'Well, I am.'

'Listen, I know the girl didn't mean it. Besides, it's part of the job.'

Laura crouched in front of Melanie and examined the redness on the child's left cheek. It marked the spot where she had punched herself in the midst of her frenzy. It would develop into a bruise, given time. At the open neck of her blouse, scratches showed on her throat and chest, where she had clawed herself. Her lip was still puffy and sore-looking, where she'd bitten it this afternoon at the end of their hypnotic-therapy session.

Dry-mouthed with fear and worry Laura said to Earl, 'How can we possibly protect her? It's not just some faceless enemy out there that wants to get at her. It's not just government agents or Russian spies. She wants to hurt herself too. How can we protect her from herself?'

'Somebody's got to stay with her, watch her every minute.'

Laura put a hand under her daughter's chin, turned her head so their eyes met. 'This is too much, baby. Mommy can try to deal with the bad men out there who want to get their hands on you. And Mommy can try to deal with your condition, help you come out of this. But now ... this is just too much. Why do you want to hurt yourself, baby? Why Why?'

Melanie stirred, as if she desperately wanted to answer but as if someone were restraining her. Her stricken mouth twisted, worked, but soundlessly. She shuddered, shook her head, groaned softly.

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

20.

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 wrist.w.a.tch. '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 Hanc.o.c.k 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.'