The Door To December Part 7

'In a little while,' she agreed. 'But not to sleep. I can't sleep. I'll leave her alone here just long enough to get the house ready for her homecoming.'

'I hate to bring it up, but I'd like to get blood samples from you and Melanie.'

The request puzzled her. 'Why?'

He hesitated. 'Well, with samples of your blood, your husband's, and the girl's, we can pretty much pin down for sure whether she's your daughter.'

'No need for that.'

'It's the easiest way-'

'I said, there's no need for that,' she told him irritably. 'She's Melanie. She's my little girl. I know it.'

'I know how you feel,' he said sympathetically. 'I understand. I'm sure she is your daughter. But since you haven't seen her in six years, six years in which she's changed a great deal, and since she can't speak for herself, we're going to need some proof, not just your instincts, or the juvenile court is going to put her in the state's custody. You don't want that, do you?'

'My G.o.d, no.'

'Doctor Pantangello tells me they've already got a sample of the girl's blood. It'll take only a minute to draw a few cc's of yours.'

'All right. But ... where?'

'There's an examination room next to the nurses' station.' Laura looked apprehensively at the closed door to Melanie's room. 'Can we wait until the guard comes?'

'Of course.' He leaned against the wall. Laura just stood there, staring at the door. The gla.s.s-smooth silence became unbearable. To break it, she said' 'I was right, wasn't I?'

'About what?'

'Earlier, I said maybe the nightmare wouldn't be over when we found Melanie, that maybe it would be just beginning.'

'Yeah. You were right. But at least it is is a beginning.' a beginning.'

She knew what he meant: They might have found Melanie's body with the other three - battered, dead. This was better. Frightening, perplexing, depressing, but definitely better.

7.

Dan Haldane sat at the desk that he was using while on temporary a.s.signment to the East Valley Division. The ancient wooden surface was scalloped by cigarette b.u.ms around the edge, scarred and gouged and marked by scores of overlapping dark rings from dripping mugs of coffee. The accommodation didn't bother him. He liked his job, and he could do it in a tent if he had to.

In the hour before dawn, the East Valley Division was as quiet as a police station ever got. Most potential victims were not yet awake, and even the criminals had to sleep sometime. A skeleton crew manned the station until the day crew arrived. In these last musty minutes of the graveyard shift, the place still possessed the haunted feeling common to all offices at night. The only sounds were the lonely clatter of a typewriter in a room down the hall from the bull pen, and the knock of the janitor's broom as it banged against the legs of the empty desks. Somewhere a telephone rang; even in the hour before dawn, someone was in trouble.

Dan zipped open his worn briefcase and spread the contents on the desk. Polaroid photographs of the three bodies that had been found in the Studio City house. A random sampling of the papers that had littered the floor in Dylan McCaffrey's office. Statements from the neighbors. Preliminary handwritten reports from the coroner's men and the Scientific Investigation Division (SID). And lists.

Dan believed in lists. He had lists for the contents of drawers, cupboards, and closets in the murder house, a list of the t.i.tles of the books on the living-room shelves, and a list of telephone numbers taken from a notepad by the phone in McCaffrey's office. He also had names - every name that appeared on any sc.r.a.p of paper anywhere in that Studio City residence. Until the case was wrapped up, he would carry the lists with him, take them out and reread them whenever he had a spare moment - over lunch, when he was on the john, in bed just before switching off the light - prodding his subconscious, with the hope of attaining an important insight or turning up a vital cross-reference.

Stanley Holbein, an old friend and former partner from Robbery-Homicide, had once embarra.s.sed Dan at an R&H Christmas party by telling a long and highly amusing (and apocryphal) story about having seen some of Dan's most private lists, including the ones on which he had kept track of every meal eaten and every bowel movement since the age of nine. Dan, who stood listening, amused but red-faced, with his hands deep in his jacket pockets, had finally pretended to want to strangle Stanley. But when he had withdrawn his hands from his pockets to lunge at his friend, he'd accidentally pulled out half a dozen lists that fluttered to the floor, eliciting gales of laughter from everyone present and necessitating a hasty retreat into another room.

Now he gave his latest set of lists a quick scan, with the vague hope that something would jump out at him, like a pop-up figure in a children's book. Nothing popped. He began again, reading through the lists more slowly.

The book t.i.tles were unfamiliar. The collection was a peculiar mix of psychology, medicine, physical science, and the occult. Why would a doctor, a man of science, be interested in clairvoyance, psychic powers, and other paranormal phenomena?

He looked over the list of names. He didn't recognize any. As his stomach grew increasingly acidic, he kept returning to the photos of the bodies. In fourteen years with the LAPD and four years in the army before that, he had seen more than a few dead men. But these were unlike any in his experience. He had seen men who had stepped on land mines yet had been in better shape than these.

The killers - surely there had been more than one - had possessed incredible strength or inhuman rage, or both. The victims had been struck repeatedly after they were already dead, hammered into jelly. What sort of man could kill with such unrestrained viciousness and cruelty? What maniacal hatred could have driven them to this?

Before he could really concentrate on those questions, he was interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps. Ross Mondale stopped at Dan's desk. The division captain was a stocky man, five-eight, with a powerful upper body. As usual, everything about him was brown: brown hair; thick brown eyebrows; brown, watchful, narrow eyes; a chocolate-brown suit, beige shirt, dark-brown tie, brown shoes. He was wearing a heavy ring with a bright ruby, which was the only spark of color that he allowed.

The janitor had gone. They were the only two in the big room.

'You still here?' Mondale asked.

'No. This is a clever, cardboard facade. The real me is in the john, shooting heroin.'

Mondale didn't smile. 'I thought you'd be gone back to Central by now.'

'I've become attached to the East Valley. The smog's got a special savory scent to it out here.'

Mondale glowered. 'This cutback in funds is a pain in the a.s.s. Used to be, I had a man out sick or on vacation, there were plenty of others to cover for him. Now we got to bring subs in from other divisions, loan out our own men when we can spare them, which we never really can. It's a crock.'

Dan knew that Mondale would not have been so displeased about loaned manpower if the loanee had been anyone else. He didn't like Dan. The animosity was mutual.

They had been at the police academy together and later had been a.s.signed to the same patrol car. Dan had requested a new partner, to no avail. Eventually, an encounter with a lunatic, a bullet in the chest, and a stay in the hospital had done for Dan what formal requests had not been able to achieve: By the time he got back to work, he had a new and more reliable partner. Dan was a field cop by nature; he enjoyed being on the streets, where the action was. Mondale, on the other hand, stayed close to the office; he was a born public-relations man as surely as Itzhak Perlman was born to play the violin. A master of deception, a.s.s-kicking, and flattery, he had an uncanny ability to sense pending changes in the currents of power in the department's hierarchy, aligning himself with those superiors who could do the most for him, abandoning former allies who were about to lose power. He knew how to smooth-talk politicians and reporters. Those talents had helped him obtain more promotions than Dan. Rumor ranked Ross Mondale high on the mayor's list of candidates for police chief.

However, as ingratiating as he was with everyone else, Mondale could find no words of praise or flattery for Dan. 'You got a food stain on your shirt, Haldane.'

Dan looked down and saw a rust-colored spot the size of a dime.

'Chili dog,' he said.

'You know, Haldane, each of us represents the entire department. We have an obligation - a duty duty - to present a respectable image to the public.' - to present a respectable image to the public.'

'Right. I'll never eat another chili dog until I die and go to Heaven. Only croissants and caviar from now on. A higher quality of shirt stain henceforth, I swear.'

'You make a habit of wisecracking at every superior officer?'

'Nope. Only you.'

'I don't much care for it.'

'Didn't think you would,' Dan said.

'You know, I'm not going to put up with your s.h.i.t forever, just because we went to the academy together.'

Nostalgia wasn't the reason that Mondale tolerated Dan's abuse, and neither of them had any illusions otherwise. The truth was, Dan knew something about Mondale that, if revealed, would destroy the captain's career, something that had happened when they had been second-year patrolmen, a vital bit of information that would have made any blackmailer swoon with joy. He would never use it against Mondale, of course; as much as he despised the man, he couldn't bring himself to engage in blackmail.

If their roles had been reversed, however, Mondale would have had no compunctions about blackmail or vindictive revelation. Dan's continued silence baffled the captain, made him uneasy, encouraged him to tread carefully each time they met.

'Let's get specific,' Dan said. 'Exactly how much longer will will you put up with my s.h.i.t?' you put up with my s.h.i.t?'

'I don't have to. Not for long, thank G.o.d. You'll be back in Central after this shift,' Mondale said. He smiled.

Dan leaned his weight against the unoiled spring-action back of the office chair, which squealed in protest, and put his hands behind his head. 'Sorry to disappoint. I'll be sticking around for a while. I caught a murder last night. It's my case now. I figure I'll stay with it for the duration.'

The captain's smile melted like ice cream on a hot plate. 'You mean the triple one-eighty-seven in Studio City?'

'Ah, now I see why you're in the office so early. You heard about that. Two relatively well-known psychologists get wasted under mysterious circ.u.mstances, so you figure there's going to be a lot of media attention. How do you tumble to these things so quickly, Ross? You sleep with a police-band radio beside your bed?'

Ignoring the question, sitting on the edge of the desk, Mondale said, 'Any leads?'

'Nope. Got pictures of the victims, though.'

He noted, with satisfaction, that all the blood drained out of Mondale's face when he saw the ravaged bodies in the photographs. The captain didn't even finish shuffling through the whole series. 'Looks like a burglary got out of hand,' Mondale said.

'Looks like no such a thing. All three victims had money on them. Other loose cash around the house. Nothing stolen.'

'Well,' Mondale said defensively, 'I didn't know that.'

'You still should've known burglars usually kill only when they're cornered, and then they're quick and clean about it. Not like this.'

'There are always exceptions,' Mondale said pompously. 'Even grandmothers rob banks now and then.'

Dan laughed.

'Well, it's true,' Mondale said.

'That's just marvelous, Ross.'

'Well it is is true.' true.'

'Not my my grandmother.' grandmother.'

'I didn't say your your grandmother.' grandmother.'

'You mean your your grandmother robs banks, Ross?' grandmother robs banks, Ross?'

'Somebody's G.o.dd.a.m.ned grandmother does, and you can bet your a.s.s on it.'

'You know a bookie who takes bets on whether or not somebody's grandmother will rob a bank? If the odds are right, I'll take a hundred bucks of his action.'

Mondale stood up. He put one hand to his tie, straightening the knot. 'I don't want you working here any longer, you son of a b.i.t.c.h.'

'Well, remember that old Rolling Stones song, Ross. "You can't always get what you want."'

'I can have your a.s.s shipped back to Central.'

'Not unless the rest of me gets shipped with it, and the rest of me intends to stay right here for a while.'

Mondale's face darkened. His lips pulled tight and went pale. He looked as if he had been pushed as far as he could be pushed for the present.

Before the captain could do anything rash, Dan said, 'Listen, you can't take me off a case that's mine from the start, not without some screwup on my part. You know the rules. But I don't want to fight you on this. That'll just distract me. So let's just call a truce, huh? I'll stay out of your hair, I'll be a good boy, and you stay out of my way.'

Mondale said nothing. He was breathing hard, and apparently he still didn't trust himself to speak.

'We don't like each other much, but there's no reason we can't still work together,' Dan said, getting as conciliatory as he would ever get with Mondale.

'Why don't you want to let go of this one?'

'Looks interesting. Most homicides are boring. Husband kills his wife's boyfriend. Some psycho kills a bunch of women because they remind him of his mother. One crack dealer offs another crack dealer. I've seen it all a hundred times. It gets tedious. This is different, I think. That's why I don't want to let go. We all need variety in our lives, Ross. That's why it's a mistake for you to wear brown suits all the time.'

Mondale ignored the jibe. 'You think we got an important case on our hands this time?'

'Three murders ... that doesn't strike you as important?'

'I mean something really big,' Mondale said impatiently. 'Like the Manson Family or the Hillside Strangler or something?'

'Could be. Depends on how it develops. But, yeah, I suspect this is going to be the kind of story that sells newspapers and pumps up the ratings on TV news.'

Mondale thought about that, and his eyes swam out of focus.

'One thing I insist on,' Dan said, leaning forward on his chair, folding his hands on the desk, and a.s.suming an earnest expression. 'If I'm going to be in charge of this case, I don't want to have to waste time talking to reporters, giving interviews. You've got to keep those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds off my back. Let them film all the bloodstains they want, so they'll have lots of great footage for the dinner-hour broadcast, but keep them away. I'm no good at dealing with them.'

Mondale's eyes swam back into focus. 'Uh ... yeah, of course, no problem. The press can be a royal pain in the a.s.s.'

To Mondale, the cameras and publicity were as nourishing as the food of the G.o.ds, and he was delighted by the prospect of being the center of media attention. 'You let them to me.'

'Fine,' Dan said.

'And you report to me, n.o.body but me.'

'Sure.'

'Daily, up-to-the-minute reports.'

'Whatever you say.'

Mondale stared at him, disbelieving but unwilling to challenge him. Every man liked to dream. Even Ross Mondale.

'With this manpower shortage and everything,' Dan said, 'don't you have work to do?'

The captain walked off toward his own office, stopped after a few steps, glanced back, and said, 'So far we've got two moderately prominent psychologists dead, and prominent people tend to know other prominent people. So you might be moving in different circles from those you muck around in when a dope dealer gets wasted. Besides, if this does get to be a hot case with lots of press attention, you and I will probably have meetings with the chief, with members of the commission, maybe even with the mayor.'

'So?'