The Door to December

The dial lit up.

The air was arctic again.

Laura stepped away from the counter, backed toward the table, afraid that the radio would fling itself at her. She stopped beside Melanie and put one hand on the girl's shoulder, to reassure her, but Melanie appeared to be as oblivious of these strange events as she was of everything else.

The volume dial moved. This time, the dial didn't peg out at the top, but stopped halfway. The latest piece of gangsta-rap crap thumped from the radio. The beat-heavy music was loud, although not unbearable.

Another knob spun as if an invisible hand were adjusting it. This one was the frequency selector. The red indicator dot glided fast across the luminous green dial, leaving the rap song behind, flitting rapidly to the right end of the scale, bringing them only flashes of songs, commercials, news reports, and deejay voices on a score of other stations. It reached the end of the radio band and moved back to the left, all the way, then swept to the right again, faster, so that the snatches of various broadcasts blended together in an eerie electronic ululation.

Earl moved closer to the Sony.

'Careful,' Laura said.

She realized it was ridiculous to be warning him about a mere radio. It was an inanimate object, for God's sake, not a living creature. She'd owned it for three or four years. It had brought her music and kept her company. It was only a radio.

*  *  *

When Mondale got his hand back, he didn't rub it or even try to flex the pain out of it. Like a simpleminded highschool jock with wounded pride, he went right on pretending that he was the toughest. He casually put his hand in his pocket, as if checking for change or keys, and he kept it there.

He poked his other hand toward Dan, pointed a finger at him. 'Don't you screw this up for me, Haldane. This is an important case. It's going to mean heat, lots of heat. We're gonna feel like we're working in a damned furnace. I've got the press nipping at my heels and the FBI on my back, and I've already had calls from the mayor and from Chief Kelsey, wanting results. I don't intend to screw this one up. My career might ride on this one. I'm keeping control, Haldane, tight control. I'm not letting some hotshot Lone Ranger type put my ass in a sling for me. If my ass ends up in a sling, it'll be because I put it there. This is a team effort, see, and I'm the captain and coach and quarterback, all rolled into one, and anybody who can't play it as a team effort just isn't even going to get on the field. You got me?'

So this wasn't going to be the final showdown, after all. Ross was just going to bluster and fume. He felt tough and important when he could point his finger at a subordinate, glower, and chew ass for a while.

Dan sighed with some disappointment, and leaned back in the office chair, folding his hands behind his head. 'Furnaces, football fields ... Ross, you're getting your metaphors mixed up. Face it, old buddy, you'll never be an inspiring speaker ... or a disciplinarian. General Patton, you ain't.'

Glaring at him, Mondale said, 'At Chief Kelsey's request, I'm putting together a special task force to handle this case, just like they did for the Hillside Strangler business several years back. All assignments come straight from me, and I'm assigning you to a desk at HQ for the duration. You'll coordinate the files on some aspects of the investigation.'

'I'm not a desk man.'

'Now you are.'

'I'm a deskophobic. You force me to work at a desk, I'll have a complete nervous breakdown. It's going to mean a major worker's compensation claim.'

'Don't screw with me,' Mondale warned again.

'I'm scared of desk blotters too—and those can-type holders for pencils just spook the bejesus out of me. So I thought, first thing tomorrow, I'd start looking into this Freedom Now group and maybe—'

'Wexlersh and Manuello are going to handle that,' Mondale said. 'They'll also be talking to the head of the psychology department at UCLA. But you will be at your desk, Haldane—at your desk, doing what you're told.'

Dan didn't reveal that he had already been to UCLA and that he'd spoken with Irmatrude Heidi Gelkenshettle. He wasn't giving Mondale anything right now.

Instead, he said, 'Wexlersh is no detective. Hell, he has to paint his pecker bright yellow so he can find it when he has to pee. And Manuello drinks.'

'The hell he does,' Mondale said sharply.

'He drinks on duty more often than not.'

'He's an excellent detective,' Mondale insisted.

'Your definition of "excellent" is the same as your definition of "obedient." You like Manuello because he sucks up to you. You're a tremendous self-promoter, Ross, but you're a lousy cop and a worse leader. For your sake as much as anyone's, I'm going to have to ignore the desk assignment you've given me and play the investigation my own way.'

'That's it, you insolent bastard. That's it! You're through. You're finished here. I'll call your boss, I'll call Templeton, and have him yank your insubordinate ass back to Central, where you belong!'

The captain swung away from Dan and started toward the door. Dan said, 'If you make Templeton pull me off this assignment, I'll have to tell him—and everyone else—about Cindy Lakey.'

Mondale stopped with his hand on the doorknob, breathing hard, but he didn't face Dan.

To Mondale's back, Dan said, 'I'll have to tell them how little Cindy Lakey, that poor little eight-year-old girl, would still be alive today, a young woman now, maybe married with a girl of her own, if it wasn't for you.'

*  *  *

Laura stayed at Melanie's side, one hand on the girl's shoulder, ready to grab her and run if it came to that.

Earl Benton leaned close to the radio and seemed mesmerized by the magically spinning knob and the floating red station selector that whipped back and forth across the lighted dial.

Abruptly the red dot stopped, but only for a moment, only long enough to let a deejay speak one word—

'... something's ...'

—and then spun across the dial and stopped again at another frequency. Again it only dipped into the announcer's patter for a single word—

'... coming ...'

—then zipped farther along the glowing green band, paused once more, this time plucking one word out of the middle of a song—

'... something's ...'

—then spun away to a new station, popped into the middle of an advertisement—

'... coming ...'

—and swept on down the band again.

Laura suddenly realized there was an intelligent purpose to the pauses of the frequency selector.

We're being sent a message, she thought.

Something's coming.

But a message from whom? From where?

Earl looked at her, and the astonishment on his face made it clear that the same questions were in his mind.

She wanted to move, run, get out of here. She could not lift her feet. Her bones had locked at every joint. Her muscles had petrified.

The red dot stopped moving for no more than a second, perhaps only a fraction of a second. This time Laura recognized the tune from which the word was plucked. The Beatles were singing. Before the red dot continued on its way, the single word that came from the radio's speaker was also the title of the song: 'Something ...'

The selector glided farther along the green-lit band, paused for an instant: '... is ...'

It slipped off that station, sped to another: '... coming ...'

The air was frigid, but that wasn't the only reason Laura was shivering.

Something ... is ... coming ...

Those three words were not merely a message. They were a warning.

*  *  *

Without opening it, Mondale had turned away from the door that connected the late Joseph Scaldone's office to the sales room at the Sign of the Pentagram. He faced Dan again, and both his anger and indignation had given way to a more fundamental emotion. Now his face was carved and his eyes were colored by pure hatred.

Dan had mentioned Cindy Lakey for the first time in more than thirteen years. This was the dirty secret that they shared, the ever-spreading malignancy at the core of their relationship. Now, having brought it into the open, Dan was exhilarated by the prospect of forcing Mondale to face up to the consequences of his actions at long last.

In a low, intense voice, the captain said, 'I didn't kill Cindy Lakey, damn it!'

'You allowed it to happen when you could have prevented it.'

'I'm not God,' Mondale said bitterly.

'You're a cop. You have responsibilities.'

'You smug bastard.'

'You're sworn to protect the public.'

'Yeah? Really? Well, the fuckin' public never cries over a dead cop,' Mondale said, still speaking softly in spite of his ferocity, guarding this conversation from the ears of those in the nearby shop.

'You've also got a duty to stand up for a buddy, to protect your partner's backside.'

'You sound like some half-baked little Boy Scout,' Mondale said scornfully. 'Esprit de corps. One for all and all for one. Crap! When it gets down to the nitty-gritty, it's always every man for himself, and you know it.'

Already, Dan wished he had never mentioned Cindy Lakey's name. The exhilaration that had lifted him a moment ago was gone. In fact, his spirits sank lower than they had been. He felt bone weary. He had intended to make Mondale face up to his responsibilities after all these years, but it was too late. It had always been too late, because Mondale had never been the kind of man who could admit weakness or error. He always slipped out from under his mistakes or found a way to make others pay his penance for him. His record was clean, spotless, and probably would always remain spotless, not just in the eyes of most others but in his own eyes as well. He couldn't even admit his weaknesses and errors to himself. Ross Mondale was incapable of guilt or self-reproach. Right now, standing before Dan, he clearly felt no responsibility or remorse for what had happened to Cindy Lakey; the only emotion boiling through him now was irrational hatred directed at his ex-partner.

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.