The Door To December

PART ONE THE GRAY ROOM

WEDNESDAY

2:50 A.M. — 8:00 A.M.

As soon as she finished dressing, Laura went to the front door and was just in time to see the Los Angeles Police Department squad car pull to the curb in front of the house. She stepped outside, slammed the door behind her, and hurried down the walk.

Hard spikes of cold rain nailed the night to the city.

She hadn't bothered with an umbrella. She couldn't remember which closet she'd stuck it in, and she didn't want to waste time searching for it.

Thunder rolled across the dark sky, but she hardly noticed those ominous peals. To her, the pounding of her own heart was the loudest noise in the night.

The driver's door of the black-and-white opened, and a uniformed officer got out. He saw her coming, got back in, reached across the seat, and opened the front door on the passenger side.

She sat next to him, pulled the door shut. With one cold and tremulous hand, she pushed a damp strand of hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ear.

The patrol car smelled strongly of pine-scented disinfectant and vaguely of vomit.

The young patrolman said, 'Mrs. McCaffrey?'

'Yes.'

'I'm Carl Quade. I'll take you to Lieutenant Haldane.'

'And to my husband,' she said anxiously.

'I don't know about that.'

'I was told they found Dylan, my husband.'

'Most likely, Lieutenant Haldane will tell you about that.'

She gagged, choked, shook her head in disgust.

Quade said, 'Sorry about the stink in here. Arrested a guy for drunken driving earlier tonight, and he had the manners of a pig.'

The odor was not what made her stomach twist and roll. She felt sick because, on the phone a few minutes ago, they had told her that her husband had been found, but they hadn't mentioned Melanie. And if Melanie was not with Dylan, where was she? Still missing? Dead? No. Unthinkable. Laura put a hand to her mouth, gritted her teeth, held her breath, waited for the nausea to subside.

She said, 'Where… where are we going?'

'A house in Studio City. Not far.'

'Is that where they found Dylan?'

'If they told you they found him, I guess that's the place.'

'How'd they locate him? I didn't even know you people were looking for him. The police told me there was no cause for their involvement… it wasn't their jurisdiction. I thought there was no chance I'd ever see him… or Melanie again.'

'You'll have to talk with Lieutenant Haldane.'

'Dylan must've robbed a bank or something.' She could not conceal her bitterness. 'Stealing a child from her mother isn't enough to interest the police.'

'Buckle your seat belt, please.'

Laura fumbled nervously with the belt as they drove away from the curb, and Quade hung a U-turn in the middle of the deserted, rain-swept street.

She said, 'What about my Melanie?'

'How's that?'

'My daughter. Is she all right?'

'Sorry. I don't know anything about that, either.'

'Wasn't she with my husband?'

'Don't think so.'

'I haven't seen her in… in almost six years.'

'Custody dispute?' he asked.

'No. He kidnapped her.'

'Really?'

'Well, the law called it a custody dispute, but as far as I'm concerned, it's kidnapping pure and simple.'

Anger and resentment took possession of her when she thought of Dylan. She tried to overcome those emotions, tried not to hate him, because she suddenly had the crazy notion that God was watching her, that He was judging her, and that if she became consumed by hatred or dwelt on negative thoughts, He would decide that she wasn't worthy of being reunited with her little girl. Crazy. She couldn't help it. Fear made her crazy. And it made her so weak that for a moment she did not even have sufficient strength to draw a breath.

Dylan. Laura wondered what it would be like to come face-to-face with him again. What could he possibly say to her that would explain his treachery — and what could she say to him that would be adequate to express her outrage and pain?

She had been trembling, but now she began to shake violently.

'You okay?' Quade asked.

'Yes,' she lied.

Quade said nothing. With the emergency beacons flashing but without using the siren, they raced across the storm-lashed west side of the city. As they sped through deep puddles, water plumed on both sides, eerily phosphorescent, like frothy white curtains drawing back to let them pass.

'She'd be nine years old now,' Laura said. 'My daughter, I mean. I can't give you much more of a description, I mean, the last time I saw her, she was only three.'

'Sorry. I didn't see any little girl.'

'Blond hair. Green eyes.'

The cop said nothing.

'Melanie must be with Dylan,' Laura said desperately, torn between joy and terror. She was jubilant at the prospect of seeing Melanie again, but afraid that the girl was dead. Laura had dreamed so often about finding Melanie's corpse in one hideous condition or another. Now she suspected the recurring nightmare would prove to have been an omen. 'She must be with Dylan. That's where she's been all these years, six long years, so why wouldn't she be with him now?'

'We'll be there in a few minutes,' Quade said. 'Lieutenant Haldane can answer all your questions.'

'They wouldn't wake me at two-thirty in the morning, drag me out in the middle of a storm, if they hadn't found Melanie too. Surely they wouldn't.'

Quade concentrated on his driving, and his silence was worse than anything he could have told her.

The thumping windshield wipers could not quite clean the glass. A persistent greasy film distorted the world beyond, so Laura felt as though she was riding through a dream.

Her palms were sweating. She blotted them on her jeans. She felt sweat trickle out of her armpits, down her sides. The rope of nausea in her stomach knotted tighter.

'Is she hurt?' Laura asked. 'Is that it? Is that why you don't want to tell me anything about her?'

Quade glanced at her. 'Really, Mrs. McCaffrey, I didn't see any little girl at the house. I'm not hiding anything from you.'

Laura slumped back against the seat.

She was on the verge of tears but was determined not to cry. Tears would be an admission that she had lost all hope of finding Melanie alive, and if she lost hope (another crazy thought), then she might actually be responsible for the child's death because (crazier) maybe Melanie's continued existence was like that of Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, sustained only by constant and ardent belief. She was aware that a quiet hysteria had seized her. The idea that Melanie's continued existence depended upon her mother's belief and restraint of tears was solipsistic and irrational. Nevertheless, she clung to the idea, fighting back tears, summoning all the conviction that she could muster.

The windshield wipers thumped monotonously, and the rain drummed hollowly on the roof, and the tires hissed on the wet pavement, and Studio City seemed as far away as Hong Kong.

* * *

They turned off Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, a community of mismatched architecture: Spanish, Cape Cod, Tudor, colonial, and postmodern homes jammed side by side. It had been named for the old Republic Studios, where many low-budget Westerns had been shot before the advent of television. Most of Studio City's newest residents were screenwriters, painters, artists, artisans, musicians, and craftspeople of all kinds, refugees from gradually but inevitably decaying neighborhoods such as Hollywood, who were now engaged in a battle of life-styles with the older home owners.

Officer Quade pulled to a stop in front of a modest ranch house on a quiet cul-de-sac lined with winter-bare coral trees and Indian laurels with heavy foliage. Several vehicles were clustered in the street, including two mustard-green Ford sedans, two other black-and-whites, and a gray van with the city's seal on the door. But it was another van that caught and held Laura's attention, for CORONER was emblazoned across the two rear doors.

Oh, God, please no. No.

Laura closed her eyes, trying to believe that this was still part of the dream from which the telephone had ostensibly awakened her. The call from the police actually might have been part of the nightmare. In which case, Quade was part of it too. And this house. She would wake up, and none of this would be real.

But when she opened her eyes, the coroner's van was still there. The windows of the house were heavily curtained, but the entire front was bathed in the harsh glow of portable floodlights. Silvery rain slanted through the bright light, and the shivering shadows of the wind-stirred shrubbery crawled across the walls.

A uniformed policeman in a rain slicker was stationed at the curb. Another officer stood under the roof that overhung the area around the front door. They were prepared to discourage curious neighbors and other onlookers, although the bad weather and late hour seemed to be doing their job for them.

Quade got out of the car, but Laura couldn't move.

He leaned back in and said, 'This is the place.'

Laura nodded but still didn't move. She didn't want to go inside. She knew what she would find. Melanie. Dead.

Quade waited a moment, then came around the car and opened her door. He held out one hand to her.

The wind sprayed fat droplets of cold rain past Quade, into the car.

He frowned. 'Mrs. McCaffrey? Are you crying?'

She couldn't shift her gaze from the coroner's van. When it drove off with Melanie's small body, it would carry Laura's hope away, as well, and would leave her with a future as dead as her daughter.

In a voice no less tremulous than the wind-shaken leaves on the Indian laurels, she said, 'You lied to me.'

'Huh? Hey, no, not at all, really.'

She wouldn't look at him.

Blowing air between his lips, making an odd horse like sound that was hardly appropriate to the circumstances, he said, 'Well, yeah, this is a homicide case. We've got a couple of bodies.'

A scream swelled in her, and when she held it back, the pent-up pressure was a painful burning in her chest.

Quade quickly continued. 'But your little girl isn't in there. She's not one of the bodies. Honestly, she isn't.

Laura finally met his eyes. He seemed sincere. There would be no point in lying to her now, because she would soon learn the truth, anyway, when she went inside.

She got out of the car.

Taking her by the arm, Officer Quade led her up the walk to the front door.

The rain pounded as solemnly as drums in a funeral cortege.

The guard went inside to get Lieutenant Haldane. Laura and Quade waited under the overhang, sheltering from the worst of the wind and rain.

The night smelled of ozone and roses. Rosebushes twined around support stakes along the front of the house, and in California, most varieties bloomed even in the winter. The flowers drooped, soggy and heavy in the rain.

Haldane arrived without delay. He was tall, broad-shouldered, roughly hewn, with short sandy hair and a square, appealing, Irish face. His blue eyes looked flat, like twin ovals of painted glass, and Laura wondered if they always looked that way or whether they were flat and lifeless tonight because of what he had seen in the house.

He was wearing a tweed sport coat, a white shirt, a tie with the knot loosened, gray slacks, and black loafers. Except for his eyes, he looked like a comfortable, easygoing, laid-back sort of guy, and there was genuine warmth in his brief smile.

'Doctor McCaffrey? I'm Dan Haldane.'

'My daughter—'

'We haven't found Melanie yet.

'She isn't…?'

'What?'

'Dead?'

'No, no. Good heavens, no. Not your girl. I wouldn't have brought you here if that had been the case.'

She felt no relief, because she wasn't sure that she believed him. He was tense, edgy. Something horrible had happened in this house. She was sure of it. And if they hadn't found Melanie, why had they brought her out at this hour? What was wrong?

Haldane dismissed Carl Quade, who headed back through the rain to the patrol car.

'Dylan? My husband?' Laura asked.

Haldane's stare slid away from hers. 'Yes, we think we've located him.'

'He's… dead?'

'Well… yeah. Apparently it's him. We've got a body carrying his ID, but we haven't positively tagged him yet. We'll need a dental-records check or a fingerprint match to make it positive.'

The news of Dylan's death had surprisingly little effect on her. She felt no loss, because she'd spent six years hating him. But she wasn't happy about it, either: no glee, no triumph or satisfaction, no sense that Dylan had gotten what he deserved. He had been an object of love, then hatred, now indifference. She felt absolutely nothing, and perhaps that was the saddest thing of all.

The wind changed direction. Icy rain blew under the overhang. Haldane drew Laura back into the corner, as far as they could go.

She wondered why he didn't take her inside. There must be something that he didn't want her to see. Something too horrible for her to see? What in the name of God had happened in there?

'How did he die?' she asked.

'Murdered.'

'Who did it?'

'We don't know.'

'Shot?'

'No. He was… beaten to death.'

'My God.' She felt sick. She leaned against the wall because her legs were suddenly weak.

'Doctor McCaffrey?' Concerned, he took her by the arm, ready to provide support if she needed it.

'I'm okay,' she said. 'But I expected Dylan and Melanie to be together. Dylan took her away from me.'

'I know.'

'Six years ago. He closed out our bank accounts, quit his job, and ran off. Because I wanted a divorce. And he wasn't willing to share custody of Melanie.'

'When we put his name in the computer, it gave us you, the whole file,' Haldane said. 'I haven't had time to learn the particulars, but I read the highlights on the mobile VDT in the car, so I'm sort of familiar with the case.'

'He ruined his life, threw away his career and everything to be able to keep Melanie. Surely she must still be with him,' Laura said exasperatedly.

'She was. She was living here with him—'

'Living here? Here? Only ten or fifteen minutes from me?'

'That's right.'

'But I hired private detectives, several of them, and nobody could get a lead—'

'Sometimes,' Haldane said, 'the purloined-letter trick is the best trick of all.'

'I thought maybe they'd even left the country, gone to Mexico or somewhere — and all the time they were right here.'

The wind subsided, and the rain came straight down, even heavier than before. The lawn would soon be a lake.

'There are some clothes here for a little girl,' Haldane said, 'several books suitable for a kid her age. There's a box of Count Chocula cereal in the cupboard, and I'm sure none of the adults were eating that.'

'None of them? There were more people here than just Dylan and Melanie?'

'We're not sure. We've got… other bodies. We think one of them was living here, because there were men's clothes in two sizes, some of which would fit your husband, but some that might fit one of the other men.'

'How many bodies?'

'Two others. Three altogether.'

'Beaten to death?'

He nodded.

'And you don't know where Melanie is?'

'Not yet.'

'So maybe… whoever killed Dylan and the others took her away with him.'

'It's a possibility,' he said.

Even if Melanie wasn't already dead, she was the hostage of a killer. Maybe not just a killer but a rapist.

No. She was only nine years old. What would a rapist want with her? She was hardly more than a baby.

Of course, these days, that didn't make any difference. There were strange animals out there, monsters who preyed on children, who had a special appetite for little girls.

She was far colder than the incessant winter rain.

'We've got to find her,' Laura said, and her voice was a thin croak that she didn't even recognize.

'We're trying,' Haldane said.

She saw sympathy and compassion in his blue eyes now, but she could take no comfort from him.

'I'd like you to come inside with me,' he said, 'but I have to warn you it's not a pretty scene.'

'I'm a doctor, Lieutenant.'

'Yeah, but a psychiatrist.'

'And a medical doctor. All psychiatrists are medical doctors.'

'Oh, that's right. I didn't think.'

'I assume you want me to identify Dylan's body.'

'No. I'm not going to ask you to look at it. Wouldn't do any good. The condition… no visual identification is really possible. There's something else I want you to see, something I hope you might be able to explain to me.

'What's that?'

'Something weird,' he said. 'Something damned weird.'

Every lamp and ceiling light in the house was blazing. Laura blinked against the glare as she looked around. The living room was furnished neatly but without style. The sectional sofa, covered in a bold geometric pattern, clashed with the floral drapes. The carpet was one shade of green, the walls another. Only the bookcases and the few hundred volumes in them appeared to have been collected with genuine interest and to a particular taste. The rest of the room might have been a stage set hastily assembled by a theater company with a small budget.

At the cold fireplace, a cheap black tin container had tipped over, spilling wrought-iron tools across the white-brick hearth. Two lab technicians were dusting powder over exposed surfaces and lifting tape impressions where they found fingerprints.

'Please don't touch anything,' Haldane told Laura.

'If you don't need me to identify Dylan—'

'Like I said, it wouldn't do much good.'

'Why?'

'Nothing to identify.'

'Surely the body can't be that badly…'

'Battered,' he said. 'No face left.

'My God.'

They stood in the foyer, by the living-room arch. Haldane seemed as reluctant to take her deeper into the house as he had been to bring her inside in the first place.

'Did he have any identifying marks?' Haldane asked.

'A discolored patch of skin—'

'Birthmark?'

'Yes.'

'Where?'

'The middle of his chest.'

Haldane shook his head. 'Probably won't help.'

'Why not?'

He stared at her, then looked away, at the floor.

'I'm a doctor,' she reminded him.

'His chest was caved in.'

'Beaten in?'

'Yeah. Every rib broken and rebroken. Breastbone smashed like a china plate.'

'Smashed?'

'Yeah. The word's carefully chosen, Doctor McCaffrey. Not just broken. Not just fractured or splintered. Smashed. Like he was made of glass.'

'That's impossible.'

'Saw it with my own eyes. Wish I hadn't.

'But the breastbone is solid. That and the skull are the closest things the human body has to armor plating.'

'The killer was one big, strong son of a bitch.

She shook her head. 'No. You might smash the breastbone in an auto accident, where there are tremendous forces, sudden impacts at fifty and sixty miles an hour, crushing forces and weights… But it couldn't happen in a beating.'

'We figure a lead pipe or—'

'Not even that, she said. 'Smashed? Surely not.'

Melanie, my little Melanie, my God, what's happened to you, where have they taken you, will I ever see you again?

She shuddered. 'Listen, if you don't need me to identify Dylan, then I'm not sure what help I can—'

'Like I said, there's something I want you to see.'

'Something weird?'

'Yeah.'

Yet he kept her in the foyer and even seemed to be using his body to prevent her from seeing farther into the house. Clearly, he was torn between his need for the information that she might be able to give him and his dismay at having to drag her through the scene of such bloody murders.

'I don't understand,' she said. 'Weird? What?'

Haldane didn't answer the question. He said, 'You and he were in the same line of work.'

'Not exactly.'

'He was a psychiatrist too, wasn't he?'

'No. A behavioral psychologist. With a special interest in behavior modification.'

'And you're a psychiatrist, a medical doctor.'

'I specialize in the treatment of children.'

'Yes, I see. Different fields.'

'Very.'

He frowned. 'Well, if you have a look at his lab, you still might be able to tell me what your husband was doing there.'

'Lab? He was working here too?'

'He was primarily working here. I don't think that he or your daughter led much of a real life in this place.'

'Working? Doing what?'

'Experiments of some sort. We can't figure it.'

'Let's have a look.'

'It's… messy,' he said, studying her closely.

'I told you — I'm a doctor.'

'Yeah, and I'm a cop, and a cop sees more blood than a doctor does, and this was so messy it made me sick.'

'Lieutenant, you brought me here, and now you're not getting rid of me until I know what my husband and my little girl were doing in this house.'

He nodded. 'This way.'

She followed him past the living room, away from the kitchen, into a short hallway, where a slender, good-looking Latino in a dark suit was overseeing two men whose uniform jackets were stenciled with the word CORONER. They were stowing a corpse in an opaque plastic body bag. One of the men from the coroner's office pulled up the zipper. Through the milky plastic, Laura saw only a lumpish man-shaped form, no details but a few thick smears of blood.

Dylan?

'Not your husband,' Haldane said, as if reading her mind. 'This one wasn't carrying any ID at all. We'll have to rely entirely on a fingerprint check.'

More blood was spattered and streaked over the walls, pooled on the floor, lots of it, so much that it didn't seem real, like a scene in a cheap horror film.

A plastic runner had been put down along the center of the hall, so the investigating officers and technicians wouldn't have to step in the blood and get their shoes sticky.

Haldane glanced at her, and she tried not to let him see how scared she was.

Had Melanie been here when the murders had taken place? If she had been, and if she was now with the man — or men — who had done this, she was marked for death too, because she had been a witness. Even if she had seen nothing, the murderer would kill her when he was… through with her. No doubt about that. He would kill her because he would enjoy killing her. From the look of this place, he was a psychopath; a sane person would not have slaughtered with such savage, blood-spraying glee.

The coroner's two men went outside to get a wheeled stretcher on which the body could be removed.

The slender Latino in the dark suit turned to Haldane. His voice was surprisingly deep: 'We've vacuumed the place, Lieutenant, finished with photographs, lifted what prints we could, all the rest of it. We're moving this victim out.'

'See anything special in the preliminary exam, Joey?' Haldane asked.

Laura supposed Joey was a police pathologist, although he was badly shaken for someone who should have been accustomed to scenes of violent death.

Joey said, 'Looks like nearly every bone in the body was broken at least once. One contusion atop another, hundreds, no way to tell how many. I'm positive an autopsy is going to show ruptured organs, damaged kidneys.' He glanced uneasily at Laura, as if not certain he should go on.

She maintained a bland expression of professional interest that she hoped didn't look as phony and sick as it felt. Joey continued: 'Crushed skull. Teeth broken loose. One eye was jarred out of its socket.'

Laura saw a fireplace poker on the floor, against the baseboard. 'Is that the murder weapon?'

'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.

She was lovely too, even though she wasn't wearing any makeup and though her auburn hair was damp and frizzy from the rain. She was thirty-six, but she looked younger. Her green eyes were clear, direct, penetrating, and beautiful. And haunted.

The woman would be even more disturbed by what she would see in the makeshift lab, and Dan disliked having to take her in there. But that was the main reason he had called her out in the middle of the night. Although she hadn't seen her husband in six years, no one knew the man better than she knew him. Since she was a psychiatrist as well, perhaps she would recognize the nature of the experiments and research that Dylan McCaffrey had been conducting. And Dan had a hunch that he wasn't going to solve these homicides — or locate Melanie — until he could figure out what Dylan McCaffrey had been doing.

Laura followed him through the doorway.

In the gray room, he watched her face. She registered surprise, puzzlement, and uneasiness.

The two-car garage had been closed off and remodeled into a single large, windowless, relentlessly drab room. Gray ceiling. Gray walls. Gray carpet. Fluorescent ceiling lights glowed softly behind grayish plastic panels. Even the handles on the sliding gray closet doors were painted gray. Though the heating vents must have been bare gray metal in the first place, they also had been painted, apparently because, unpainted, they had been shiny. No spot of color or brightwork had been allowed. The effect was not merely cold and institutional, but funereal.

The most impressive piece of equipment in the room was a metal tank that resembled an old-fashioned iron lung, although it was considerably larger than that. It was painted the same drab gray as the room. Pipes led from it, into the floor, and an electrical cable went straight up to a junction box on the ceiling. Three movable wooden steps provided access to the tank's elevated entrance hatch, which stood open.

Laura went up the steps and peered inside.

Dan knew what she would find: a featureless black interior that was barely illuminated by the meager light that found its way through the hatch; the sound of water stirred by the vibrations transmitted through the steps and into the tank frame; a dampish odor with a hint of salt to it.

'Know what it is?' he asked.

She descended the three steps. 'Sure. A sensory-deprivation chamber.'

'What was he doing with it?'

'You mean, what are its scientific applications?'

Dan nodded.

'Well, you fill it with a few feet of water…. Actually, you use a solution of ten percent magnesium sulfate in water for maximum buoyancy. Heat it to ninety-three degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature at which a floating body is least affected by gravity. Or depending on the nature of the experiment, maybe you heat it to ninety-eight degrees to reduce the differential between body temperature and water temperature. Then the subject—'

'Which is a person — not an animal?'

She looked surprised by the question. Dan Haldane felt woefully undereducated, but Laura didn't disparage him or let any impatience creep into her tone, and he felt at ease again almost immediately.

She said, 'Yes. A person. Not an animal. Anyway, when the water's ready, the subject undresses, enters the chamber, closes the door after himself, and floats in total darkness, in total silence.

'Why?'

'To deprive himself of all sensory stimulation. No sight. No sound. Little or no taste. Minimal olfactory stimulation. No sense of weight or place or time.'

'But why would anyone want to do that?'

'Well, initially, when the first tanks were used, they did it because they wanted to find out what would happen when someone was deprived of nearly all external stimuli.'

'Yeah? And what happened?'

'Not what they expected. No claustrophobia. No paranoia. A brief moment of fear, yes, but then… a not unpleasant temporal and spatial disorientation. The sense of confinement disappeared in a minute or so. Some subjects reported being certain they were not in a small chamber but a huge one, with endless space around them. With no external stimuli to occupy it, the mind turns inward to explore a whole new world of internal stimuli.'

'Hallucinations?'

For a moment, her anxiety faded. Her professional interest in the functioning of the human mind became evident, and Dan could see that, if she had chosen a career in the classroom, she would have proven a natural-born teacher. She clearly took pleasure in explaining, illuminating.

She said, 'Yes, hallucinations, sometimes. But not frightening or threatening hallucinations, nothing like what you'd expect from a drug experience. Intense and extraordinarily vivid sexual fantasies in many cases. And virtually every subject reports a sharpening and clearing of thought processes. Some subjects have solved complex problems in algebra and calculus without even the benefit of paper and pencil, problems that would ordinarily be beyond their abilities. There's even a cult system of psychotherapy that uses deprivation chambers to encourage the patient to concentrate on guided self-exploration.'

He said, 'From your tone, I think maybe you don't approve of that.'

'Well, I don't exactly disapprove,' she said. 'But if you've got a psychologically disturbed individual who already feels adrift, only half in control of himself… the disorientation of a deprivation chamber is almost certain to have negative effects. Some patients need every grip on the physical world, every external stimulus, they can get.' She shrugged. 'But then again, maybe I'm too cautious, old-fashioned. After all, they've been selling these things for use in private homes, must've sold a few thousand over the past few years, and surely a few of those were used by unstable people, yet I haven't heard of anyone going all the way 'round the bend because of it.'

'Must be expensive.'

'A tank? Sure is. Most units in private homes are… new toys for the rich, I guess.'

'Why would anyone buy one for his home?'

'Aside from the hallucinatory period and the eventual clarity of the mental processes, everyone reports being tremendously relaxed and revitalized by a session in a tank. After you spend an hour floating, your brain waves match those of a Zen monk in deep meditation. Call it a lazy man's way to meditate: no studying required, no religious principles to be learned or obeyed, an easy way of packing a week's relaxation into a couple of hours.'

'But your husband wasn't using this just to relax.'

'I doubt it,' she agreed.

'Then what was he after, specifically?'

'I really have no way of knowing.' Anguish returned to her face, her eyes.

Dan said, 'I think this wasn't just his lab, I think it was your daughter's room too. I think she was a virtual prisoner in here. And I think she slept in this tank every night and maybe spent days at a time in it.'

'Days? No. That's not… possible.'

'Why isn't it?'

'The potential for psychological damage, the risks—'

'Maybe your husband didn't care about the risks.'

'But she was his daughter. He loved Melanie. I'll give him that much. He genuinely loved her.'

'We've found a journal in which your husband seems to account for every minute of your daughter's time during the past five and a half years.'

Her eyes narrowed. 'I want to see it.'

'In a minute. I haven't studied it closely yet, but I don't think your daughter was ever out of this house in five and a half years. Not to school. Not to a doctor. Not to a movie or the zoo or anywhere. And even if you say it's not possible, I think, from what I've seen, that she sometimes spent as much as three or four days in the tank without coming out.'

'But food—'

'I don't think she was fed in that time.'

'Water—'

'Maybe she drank a little of what she was floating in.'

'She'd have to relieve herself—'

'From what I've seen, there were times when she might have been taken out for only ten or fifteen minutes, long enough to use the bathroom. But in other cases, I think he catheterized her, so she could urinate into a sealed specimen jar without being taken out of the tank and without contaminating the water she was floating in.'

The woman looked stricken.

Wanting to get this over with for her sake and also because he was sick of this place, Dan led her away from the tank, to another piece of equipment.

'A biofeedback machine,' she told him. 'It includes an EEG, an electroencephalograph to monitor brain waves. It supposedly helps you learn to control the patterns of your brain waves and, therefore, your state of mind.'

'I know about biofeedback.' He pointed past that machine. 'And this?'

It was a chair, from which dangled leather straps and wires that ended in electrodes.

Laura McCaffrey examined it, and Dan could sense her growing disgust — and terror.

At last she said,'An aversion-therapy device.'

'Looks like an electric chair to me.'

'It is. Not one that kills. The current comes from those batteries, not from a wall socket. And this'—she touched a lever on the side of the chair—'regulates the voltage. You can deliver anything from a tingle to a painful shock.'

'This is a standard psychological research device?'

'Good heavens, no!'

'You ever see one of these in a lab before?'

'Once. Well… twice.'

'Where?'

'A rather unscrupulous animal psychologist I once knew. He used electric-shock aversion training with monkeys.'

'Tortured them?'

'I'm sure he didn't see it that way.'

'All animal psychologists don't do that?'

'I said he was unscrupulous. Listen, I hope you're not one of those new Luddites who think all scientists are fools or monsters.'

'Not me. When I was a kid, I never missed Mr. Wizard on TV.'

She managed a faint smile. 'Didn't mean to snap at you.'

'It's understandable. Now, you said you've seen one of these devices twice before. What about the second time?'

The meager glow of her weak smile was suddenly extinguished. 'I saw the second one in a photograph.'

'Oh?'

'In a book about… scientific experimentation in Nazi Germany.'

'I see.'

'They used it on people.'

He hesitated. But it had to be said. 'So did your husband.'

Laura McCaffrey regarded him not with disbelief as much as with an ardent desire to disbelieve. Her face was the color of cold ashes, burnt out.

Dan said, 'I think he put your daughter in this chair—'

'No.'

'—and I think he and Hoffritz and God knows who else—'

'No.'

'—tortured her,' Dan finished.

'No.'

'It's in the journal I told you about.'

'But—'

'I think they were using… what you called "aversion" therapy to teach her to control her brain-wave patterns.'

The thought of Melanie strapped in that chair was so disturbing that Laura McCaffrey was profoundly transformed by it. She no longer looked simply burnt out, no longer just ashen; she was now paler than pale, cadaverously pallid. Her eyes appeared to sink deeper into her skull and lose much of their luster. Her face sagged like softening wax. She said, 'But… but that doesn't make sense. Aversion therapy is the least likely way to learn biofeedback techniques.'

Dan had the urge to put his arms around her, hold her close, smooth her hair, comfort her. Kiss her. He had found her appealing from the moment he had seen her, but until now he'd felt no romantic stirrings for her. And that was par for the course, wasn't it? He always fell for the helpless kittens, the broken dolls, the ones who were lost or weak or in trouble. And he always wound up wishing that he had never gotten involved. Laura McCaffrey hadn't initially held any attraction for him because she had been self-confident, self-possessed, totally in control. As soon as she'd begun to flounder, as soon as she could no longer conceal her fear and confusion, he was drawn to her. Nick Hammond, another homicide detective and smartass, had accused Dan of having a mother-hen instinct, and there was truth in that.

What is it with me? he wondered. Why do I insist on being a knight-errant, always searching for a damsel in distress? I hardly even know this woman, and I want her to rely entirely on me, put her hopes and fears on my shoulders. Oh, yes, ma'am, you just rely on Big Dan Haldane, nobody else; Big Dan will catch these evil villains and put your broken world back together for you. Big Dan can do it, ma'am, even though he's still an adolescent idiot at heart.

No. Not this time. He had a job to do, and he would do it, but he would be entirely professional about it. Personal feelings would not intrude. Anyway, this woman wouldn't welcome a relationship with him. She was better educated than he was. A lot more stylish. She was a brandy type, while he was strictly beer. Besides, for God's sake, this wasn't a time for romance. She was too vulnerable: she was worried sick about her daughter; her husband had been killed, and that must have its effect on her, even if she had stopped loving the guy a long time ago. What kind of man could think of her as a romantic prospect at a time like this? He was ashamed of himself. But still…

He sighed. 'Well, once you've studied your husband's journal maybe you'll be able to prove he never put the girl in that chair. But I don't think so.'

She just stood there, looking lost.

He went to the closet and opened the doors, revealing several pairs of jeans, T-shirts, sweaters, and shoes that would fit a nine-year-old girl. All were gray.

'Why?' Dan asked. 'What did he hope to prove? What effect was he after with the girl?'

The woman shook her head, too distraught to speak.

'And something else I wonder,' Dan said. 'All of this, six years of it, took more money than he had when he cleaned out your joint bank accounts and left you. A lot more. Yet he wasn't working anywhere. He never went out. Maybe Wilhelm Hoffritz gave him money. But there must have been others who contributed as well. Who? Who was financing this work?'

'I've no idea.'

'And why?' he wondered.

'And where have they taken Melanie?' she asked. 'And what are they doing to her now?'

The kitchen wasn't exactly filthy, but it wasn't clean, either. Stacks of dirty dishes filled the sink. Crumbs littered the table that stood by the room's only window.

Laura sat at the table and brushed some of the crumbs aside. She was eager to look at the log of Dylan's experiments with Melanie. Haldane wasn't ready to give it to her. He held it — a ledger-size book bound in imitation brown leather — and paced around the kitchen as he talked.

Rain struck the window and streamed down the glass. When an occasional flicker of lightning brightened the night and passed through the window, it briefly projected the random rippling patterns of water from the glass onto the walls, which made the room seem as amorphous and semitransparent as a mirage.

'I want to know a lot more about your husband,' Haldane said, pacing.

'Like what?'

'Like why you decided to divorce him.'

'Is that relevant?'

'Could be.'

'How?'

'For one thing, if there was another woman involved, then maybe she can tell us more about what he was doing here. Maybe she can even tell us who killed him.'

'There was no other woman.'

'Then why did you decide to divorce him?'

'It was just that… I no longer loved him.'

'But you had loved him once.'

'Yes. But he wasn't the man I married.'

'How had he changed?'

She sighed. 'He didn't. He was never the man I married. I only thought he was. Later, as time went by, I realized how thoroughly I'd misunderstood him, right from the start.'

Haldane stopped pacing, leaned against a counter, crossing his arms on his chest, still holding the log book. 'Just how had you misunderstood him?'

'Well… first, you have to understand something about me. In high school and college, I was never a particularly popular girl. Never had any dates.'

'I find that difficult to believe.'

She blushed. She wished she could control it, but couldn't. 'It's true. I was crushingly shy. Avoided boys. Avoided everyone. Never had any close girlfriends, either.'

'Didn't anyone tell you about the right mouthwash and dandruff shampoo?'

She smiled at his attempt to put her at ease, but she was never comfortable talking about herself. 'I didn't want anyone to get to know me because I figured they'd dislike me, and I couldn't stand rejection.'

'Why should they dislike you?'

'Oh… because I wouldn't be witty enough or bright enough or pretty enough to suit them.'

'Well, I can't say whether or not you're witty, but then David Letterman would have trouble coming up with one-liners in this place. But you're clearly intelligent. After all, you earned a doctorate. And I don't see how you could look in a mirror and think you were anything less than beautiful.'

She glanced up from the crumb-carpeted table. The lieutenant's gaze was direct, engaging, warm, though neither bold nor suggestive. His attitude was merely that of a policeman, making an observation, stating a fact. Yet, under that surface professionalism, deep down, she sensed that he was attracted to her. His interest made her uneasy.

Self-conscious, studying the vague silvery tracks of rain on the black window, she said' 'I had a terrible inferiority complex back then.'

'Why?'

'My parents.'

'Isn't it always?'

'No. Not always. But in my case… mainly my mother.'

'What were your folks like?'

'They have nothing to do with this case,' she said. 'They're both gone now, anyway.'

'Passed away?'

'Yes.'

'I'm sorry.'

'No need to be. I'm not.'

'I see.'

That was a harsh thing for her to have said. She was surprised to realize that she didn't want him to think badly of her. On the other hand, she was not prepared to tell him about her parents and the loveless childhood she had endured.

'But about Dylan…,' she began, and then wasn't sure where she had left off.

Haldane said, 'You were telling me why you misjudged him right from the start.

'See, I was so good at fending people off, so good at alienating everyone and keeping myself snug in my shell, that no one ever got close to me. Especially not boys… or men. I knew how to turn them off fast. Until Dylan. He wouldn't give up. He kept asking me for dates. No matter how often I rejected him, he came back. My shyness didn't deter him. Rudeness, indifference, cold rejection — nothing would stop him. He pursued me. No one had ever pursued me before. Not like Dylan. He was relentless. Obsessed. But not frightening in any way, not that kind of obsession. It was corny, the way he tried to impress me, the things he did. I knew it was corny at the time, but it was effective just the same. He sent flowers, more flowers, candy, more flowers, even a huge teddy bear.'

'A teddy bear for a young woman working on her doctorate?' Haldane said.

'I told you it was corny. He wrote poetry and signed it "A Secret Admirer." Trite, maybe, but for a woman who was twenty-six, hardly been kissed, and expected to be an old maid, it was heady stuff. He was the first person who ever made me feel… special.'

'He broke down your defenses.'

'Hell, I was swept away.'

As she spoke of it, that special time and feeling came back to her with unnerving vividness and power. With the memories came a sadness at what might have been, a sense of lost innocence that was almost overwhelming.

'Later, after we were married, I learned that Dylan's passion and fervor weren't reserved solely for me. Oh, not that there were other women. There weren't. But he pursued every interest as ardently as he'd pursued me. His research into behavior modification, his fascination with the occult, his love of fast cars — he put as much passion and energy into all those pursuits as he had put into our courtship.'

She remembered how she had worried about Dylan — and about the effect that his demanding personality might have on Melanie. In part, she had asked for a divorce because she had been concerned that Dylan would infect Melanie with his obsessive-compulsive behavior.

'For instance, he built an elaborate Japanese garden behind our house, and it consumed his every spare moment for months and months. He was fanatically determined to make it perfect. Every plant and flower, every stone in every walkway had to be an ideal specimen. Every bonsai tree had to be as exquisitely proportioned and as imaginatively and harmoniously shaped as those in the books about classic Oriental landscaping. He expected me to be as caught up in that project — in every project — as he was. But I couldn't be. Didn't want to be. Besides, he was so fanatical about perfection in all things that just about anything you did with him sooner or later became sheer hard labor instead of fun. He was an obsessive-compulsive unlike any other I've ever encountered, a driven man, and though he was wildly enthusiastic about everything, he actually took no pleasure in any of it, no joy, because there simply wasn't time for joy.'

'Sounds like it would've been exhausting to be married to him,' Haldane said.

'God, yes! Within a couple of years his excitement about things was no longer contagious because it was continuous and universal, and no sane person can live at a fever pitch all the time. He ceased to be intriguing and invigorating. He was… tiring. Maddening. Never a moment's relaxation or peace. By then, I was getting my degree in psychiatry, going through analysis, which is a requirement for anyone considering psychiatric practice, and finally I realized Dylan was a disturbed man, not just enthusiastic, not just an overachiever, but a severe obsessive-compulsive. I tried to convince him to undergo analysis, but for that he had no enthusiasm at all. At last, I told him I wanted a divorce. He never gave me time to file the papers. The next day he cleaned out our joint bank accounts and left with Melanie. I should have seen it coming.'

'Why?'

'He was as obsessive about Melanie as he was about everything else. In his eyes, she was the most beautiful, wonderful, intelligent child who ever walked the earth, and he was always concerned that she be perfectly dressed, perfectly groomed, perfectly behaved. She was only three years old, but he was already teaching her to read, trying to teach her French. Only three. He said all learning comes easiest to the youngest. Which is true. But he wasn't doing it for Melanie. Oh, no. Not in the least for her. He was concerned about himself, about having a perfect child, because he couldn't bear the thought that his little girl would be anything but the very prettiest and brightest and most dazzling child anyone had ever seen.'

They were silent.

Rain tapped the window, drummed on the roof, gurgled through the gutters and downspouts.

At last, softly, Haldane said, 'A man like that might…'

'Might experiment on his own daughter, might put her through tortures of one kind and another, if he thought he was improving her. Or if he became obsessed with a series of experiments that required a child as the subject.'

'Jesus,' Haldane said in a tone that was part disgust, part shock, part pity.

To her surprise, Laura began to cry.

The detective came to the table. He pulled out a chair and sat beside her.

She blotted her eyes with a Kleenex.

He put a hand on her shoulder. 'It'll be all right.'

She nodded, blew her nose.

'We'll find her,' he said.

'I'm afraid we won't.'

'We will.'

'I'm afraid she's dead.'

'She's not.'

'I'm afraid.'

'Don't be.'

'Can't help it.'

'I know.'

* * *

For half an hour, while Lieutenant Haldane attended to business elsewhere in the house, Laura studied Dylan's handwritten journal, which was actually just a log detailing how Melanie's days had been spent. By the time the detective returned to the kitchen, Laura was numb with horror.

'It's true,' she said. 'They've been here at least five and a half years, as long as he's been keeping this journal, and Melanie hasn't been out of the house once that I can see.'

'And she slept every night in the sensory-deprivation chamber, like I thought?'

'Yes. In the beginning, eight hours a night. Then eight and a half. Then nine. By the end of the first year, she was spending ten hours a night in the chamber and two hours every afternoon.'

She closed the book. The sight of Dylan's neat handwriting suddenly made her furious.

'What else?' Haldane asked.

'First thing in the morning, she spent an hour meditating.'

'Meditating? A little girl like that? She wouldn't even know the meaning of the word.'

'Essentially, meditation is nothing but redirecting the mind inward, blocking out the material world, seeking peace through inner solitude. I doubt if he was teaching Melanie Zen meditation or any other brand with solid philosophical or religious overtones. He was probably just teaching her how to sit still and turn inward and think of nothing.'

'Self-hypnosis.'

'That's another name for it.'

'Why did he want her to do that?'

'I don't know.'

She got up from the chair, nervous and agitated. She wanted to move, walk, work off the frantic energy that crackled through her. But the kitchen was too small. She was at the end of it in five steps. She started toward the hall door but stopped when she realized that she couldn't walk through the rest of the house, past the bodies, through the blood, getting in the way of the coroner's people and the police. She leaned against a counter, flattening her palms on the edge of it, pressing fiercely hard, as if somehow she could get rid of her nervous energy by radiating it into that ceramic surface.

'Each day,' she said, 'after meditation, Melanie spent several hours learning biofeedback techniques.'

'While sitting in the electrified chair?'

'I think so. But…'

'But?' he persisted.

'But I think the chair was used for more than that. I think it was also used to condition her against pain.'

'Say that again?'

'I think Dylan was using electric shock to teach Melanie how to blank out pain, how to endure it, ignore it the way that Eastern mystics do, the way Yogin do.'

'Why?'

'Maybe because, later, being able to tune out pain would help her get through the longer session in the sensory-deprivation tank.'

'So I was right about that?'

'Yes. He gradually increased her time in the tank until, by the third year, she would sometimes remain afloat for three days. By the fourth year, four and five days at a time. Most recently… just last week, he put her in the tank for a seven-day session.

'Catheterized?'

'Yes. And on an IV. Intravenous needle. He was feeding her by glucose drip, so she wouldn't lose too much weight and wouldn't dehydrate.'

'God in Heaven.'

Laura said nothing. She felt as though she might cry again. She was nauseated. Her eyes were grainy, and her face felt greasy. She went to the sink and turned on the cold water, which spilled over the stacks of dirty dishes. She filled her cupped hands, splashed her face. She pulled several paper towels from the wall-mounted dispenser and dried off.

She felt no better.

Haldane said ruminatively, 'He wanted to condition her against pain so she could more easily get through the long sessions in the tank.'

'Maybe. Can't be sure.'

'But what's painful about being in the tank? I thought there was no sensation at all. That's what you told me.'

'There's nothing painful about a session of normal length. But if you're going to be kept in a tank several days, your skin's going to wrinkle, crack. Sores are going to form.'

'Ah.'

'Then there's the damn catheter. At your age, you've probably never been so seriously ill that you've been incontinent, needed a catheter.'

'No. Never.'

'Well, see, after a couple of days, the urethra usually becomes irritated. It hurts.'

'I would guess it does.'

She wanted a drink very badly. She was not much of a drinker, ordinarily. A glass of wine now and then. A rare martini. But now, she wanted to get drunk.

He said, 'So what was he up to? What was he trying to prove? Why did he put her through all this?'

Laura shrugged.

'You must have some idea.'

'None at all. The journal doesn't describe the experiments or mention a single word about his intentions. It's just a record of her sessions with each piece of equipment, an hour-by-hour summary of each of her days here.'

'You saw the papers in his office, scattered all over the floor. They must be more detailed than the journal. There'll be more to be learned from them.'

'Maybe.'

'I've glanced at a few, but I couldn't make much sense of them. Lots of technical language, psychological jargon. Greek to me. If I have them photocopied, have the copies boxed up and sent to you in a couple of days, would you mind going through them, seeing if you can put them in order and if you can learn anything from them?'

She hesitated. 'I… I don't know. I got more than half sick just going through the journal.'

'Don't you want to know what he did to Melanie? If we find her, you'll have to know. Otherwise you won't have much chance of dealing with whatever psychological trauma she's suffering from.'

It was true. To provide the proper treatment, she would have to descend into her daughter's nightmare and make it her own.

'Besides,' Haldane said, 'there might be clues in those papers, things that'll help us determine who he was working with, who might have killed him. If we can figure that out, we might also figure out who has Melanie now. If you go through your husband's papers, you might discover the one bit of information that'll help us find your little girl.'

'All right,' she said wearily. 'When you've got it boxed, have the stuff sent to my house.'

'I know it won't be easy.'

'Damned right.'

'I want to know who financed the torture of a little girl in the name of research,' he said in a tone of voice that seemed, to Laura, to be exceptionally hard and vengeful for an impartial office,r of the law. 'I want to know real bad.'

He was about to say something else, but he was interrupted by a uniformed officer who entered from the hall. 'Lieutenant?'

'What is it, Phil?'

'You're looking for a little girl in all this, aren't you?'

'Yeah.'

Phil said' 'Well, they found one.'

Laura's heart seemed to clench as tightly as a fist: a knot of pain in her breast. An urgent question formed in her mind, but she was unable to give voice to it because her throat seemed to have swollen shut.

'How old?' Haldane asked.

That wasn't the question Laura wanted him to ask.

'Eight or nine, they figure,' Phil said.

'Get a description?' Haldane asked.

That wasn't the right question, either.

'Auburn hair. Green eyes,' the patrolman said.

Both men turned to Laura. She knew they were staring at her own auburn hair and green eyes.

She tried to speak. Still mute.

'Alive?' Haldane asked.

That was the question that Laura could not bring herself to ask.

'Yeah,' the uniformed man said. 'A black-and-white team found her seven blocks from here.'

Laura's throat opened, and her tongue stopped cleaving to the roof of her mouth. 'Alive?' she said, afraid to believe it.

The uniformed officer nodded. 'Yeah. I already said. Alive.'

'When?' Haldane asked.

'About ninety minutes ago.'

His face coloring with anger, Haldane said, 'Nobody told me, damn it.'

'They were just on a routine patrol when they spotted her,' Phil said. 'They didn't know she might have a connection to this case. Not till just a few minutes ago.'

'Where is she?' Laura demanded.

'Valley Medical.'

'The hospital?' Her clenched heart began to pound like a fist against her rib cage. 'What's wrong with her? Is she hurt? How badly?'

'Not hurt,' the officer said. 'Way I get it, they found her wandering in the street, uh, naked, in a daze.'

'Naked,' Laura said weakly. The fear of child molesters came back to hit her as hard as a hammer blow. She leaned against the counter and gripped the edge of it with both hands, striving not to crumple to the floor. Holding herself up, trying to draw a deep breath, able to get nothing but shallow draughts of air, she said, 'Naked?'

'And all confused, unable to talk,' Phil said. 'They thought she was in shock or maybe drugged, so they rushed her to Valley Medical.'

Haldane took Laura's arm. 'Come on. Let's go.'

'But…'

'What's wrong?'

She licked her lips. 'What if it's not Melanie? I don't want to get my hopes up and then—'

'It's her,' he said. 'We lost a nine-year-old girl here, and they found a nine-year-old girl seven blocks away. It's not likely to be a coincidence.'

'But what if…'

'Doctor McCaffrey, what's wrong?'

'What if this isn't the end of the nightmare?'

'Huh?'

'What if it's only the beginning?'

'Are you asking me if I think that… after six years of this torture…'

'Do you think she could possibly be a normal little girl anymore,' Laura said thickly.

'Don't expect the worst. There's always reason to hope. You won't know for sure until you see her, talk to her.'

She shook her head adamantly. 'No. Can't be normal. Not after what her father did to her. Not after years of forced isolation. She's got to be a very sick little girl, deeply disturbed. There's not a chance in a million she'll be normal.'

'No,' he said gently, apparently sensing that empty reassurances would only anger her. 'No, she won't be a well-balanced, healthy little girl. She'll be lost, sick, frightened, maybe withdrawn into her own world, maybe beyond reach, maybe forever. But there's one thing you mustn't forget.'

Laura met his eyes. 'What's that?'

'She needs you.'

Laura nodded.

They left the blood-spattered house.

Rain lashed the night, and like the crack of a whip, thunder broke across the sky.

Haldane put her in an unmarked sedan. He clipped a detachable emergency beacon to the edge of the car roof. They drove to Valley Medical with the light flashing and the siren wailing and the tires kicking up water with a hissing sound that made it seem as if the world itself was deflating.

The emergency-room doctor was Richard Pantangello. He was young, with thick brown hair and a neatly trimmed redbrown beard. He met Laura and Haldane at the admitting desk and led them to the girl's room.

The corridors were deserted, except for a few nurses gliding about like ghosts. The hospital was preternaturally silent at 4:10 in the morning.

As they walked, Dr. Pantangello spoke in a soft voice, almost a whisper. 'She had no fractures, no lacerations or abrasions. One contusion, a bruise on the right arm, directly over the vein. From the look of it, I'd say it was an IV drip needle that wasn't inserted skillfully enough.'

'She was in a daze?' Haldane asked.

'Not exactly a daze,' Pantangello said. 'No confusion, really. She was more like someone in a trance. No sign of any head injury, though she was either unable or unwilling to speak from the moment they brought her in.'

Matching the physician's quiet tone but unable to keep the anxiety out of her voice, Laura said, 'What about… rape?'

'I couldn't find any indication that she'd been abused.'

They rounded a corner and stopped in front of Room 256. The door was closed.

'She's in there,' Dr. Pantangello said, jamming his hands in the pockets of his white lab coat.

Laura was still considering the way in which Pantangello had phrased his answer to her question about rape. 'You found no indications of abuse, but that isn't the same as saying she wasn't raped.'

'No traces of semen in the vaginal tract,' Pantangello said. 'No bruising or bleeding of the labia or the vaginal walls.'

'Which there would've had to've been in a child this young, if she were molested,' Haldane said.

'Yes. And her hymen's intact,' Pantangello said.

'Then she wasn't raped,' Haldane said.

A bleakness settled over Laura as she saw the sorrow and pity in the physician's gentle brown eyes.

With a voice as sad as it was quiet, Pantangello said, 'She wasn't subjected to ordinary intercourse, no. We can rule that out. But… well, I can't say for certain.' He cleared his throat.

Laura could see that this conversation was almost as much of an ordeal for the young doctor as it was for her. She wanted to tell him to stop, but she had to hear it all, had to know, and it was his job to tell her.

He finished clearing his throat and picked up where he had left off. 'I can't say for certain there wasn't oral copulation.'

A wordless sound of grief escaped Laura's lips.

Haldane took her arm, and she leaned against him slightly. He said, 'Easy. Easy now. We don't even know if this is Melanie.'

'It is,' she said grimly. 'I'm sure it is.'

She wanted to see her daughter, ached to see her. But she was afraid to open the door and step into the room. Her future waited beyond that threshold, and she was afraid that it was a future filled with only emotional pain, despair.

A nurse went by without glancing at them, pointedly avoiding their eyes, tuning out the tragedy.

'I'm sorry,' Pantangello said. He took his hands out of the pockets of his lab coat. He wanted to comfort her, but he seemed afraid to touch her. Instead, he raised one hand to the stethoscope that hung around his neck and toyed with it absentmindedly. 'Look, if it's any help… well, in my opinion, she wasn't molested. I can't prove it. I just feel it. Besides, it's highly unusual for a child to be molested without being bruised, cut, or visibly hurt in some way. The fact that she's unmarked would tend to indicate she wasn't touched. Really, I'd bet on it. He smiled at her. At least she thought it was a smile, although it looked more like a wince. 'I'd bet a year of my life on it.'

Fighting back tears, Laura said, 'But if she wasn't molested, why was she wandering around naked in the street?' The answer to that question occurred to her even as she spoke.

It occurred to Dan Haldane too. He said, 'She must've been in the sensory-deprivation chamber when the killer — or killers — walked into that house. She would have been naked in the tank.

'Sensory deprivation?' Pantangello asked, raising his eyebrows.

To Haldane, Laura said, 'Maybe that's why she wasn't killed along with everyone else. Maybe the killer didn't know she was there, in the tank.'

'Maybe,' Haldane said.

With swiftly growing hope, Laura said, 'And she must've gotten out of the tank after the killer left. If she, saw the bodies… all the blood… that would have been so traumatic. It would sure explain her dazed condition.'

Pantangello looked curiously at Lieutenant Haldane. 'This must be a strange case.'

'Very,' the detective said.

Suddenly, Laura was no longer afraid of opening the door to Melanie's room. She started to push it inward.

Halting her with a hand on her shoulder, Dr. Pantangello said, 'One more thing.'

Laura waited apprehensively while the young doctor searched for the least painful words with which to convey some last bit of bad news. She knew it would be bad. She could see it in his face, for he was too inexperienced to maintain a suitably bland expression of professional detachment.

He said, 'This state she's in… I called it a "trance" before. But that's not exactly right. It's almost catatonic. It's a state very similar to what you sometimes see in autistic children, when they're going through their most passive moods.'

Laura's mouth was exceedingly dry, as if she'd spent the last half hour eating sand. There was a metallic taste of fear as well. 'Say it, Doctor Pantangello. Don't mince words. I'm a doctor myself. A psychiatrist. Whatever you've got to tell me, I can handle it.'

Speaking rapidly now, words running together, anxious to deliver the bad news and be done with it, he said, 'Autism, mental disorders in general, they really aren't my field. Evidently, they're more yours. So I probably shouldn't say anything at all about this. But I want you to be prepared when you go in there. Her withdrawal, her silence, her detachment — well, I don't think this condition is going to go away quickly or easily. I think she's been through something damned traumatic, and she's turned inward to escape from the memory. Bringing her back is going to take… tremendous patience.'

'And maybe she'll never come back?' Laura asked.

Pantangello shook his head, fingered his red-brown beard, tugged on his stethoscope. 'No, no, I didn't say that.'

'But it's what you were thinking.'

His silence was a wounding confirmation.

Laura finally pushed open the door and went into the room, with the doctor and the detective close behind her. Rain beat on the only window. The sound seemed like the wings of nocturnal birds beating in a frenzy against the glass. Far off in the night, out toward the unseen ocean, lightning pulsed twice, three times, then died in the darkness.

Of the two beds, the one nearer the window was empty, and that half of the room was dark. A light was on above the first bed, and a child lay under the sheets, in a standard-issue hospital gown, her head resting on a single pillow. The upper end of the bed was tilted, raising and angling the girl's body, so her face was entirely visible when Laura entered the room.

It was Melanie. Laura had no doubt about that. The girl had inherited her mother's hair, nose, delicate jaw line. She had her father's brow and cheekbones. Her eyes were the same shade of green as Laura's but deeply set like Dylan's. During the past six years, she had become a different child from the one Laura remembered, but her identity was confirmed by more than her appearance, by something undefinable, a familiar aura perhaps, an emotional or even psychic link that snapped into place between mother and daughter the instant that Laura walked into the room. She knew this was her little girl, though she would have had some difficulty explaining exactly how she knew.

Melanie resembled one of those children in advertisements for international hunger-relief organizations or a poster child for some rare and debilitating disease. Her face was gaunt. Her skin was pale, with an unhealthy, grainy texture. More gray than pink, her lips were cracked and peeling. The flesh around her sunken eyes was dark, as if it had been smudged when she had wiped away tears with an inky thumb.

The eyes themselves were the most unnerving evidence of her ordeal. She stared at the empty air above her, blinking but seeing nothing — nothing in this world. Neither fear nor pain were evident in those eyes. Just desolation.

Laura said, 'Honey?'

The girl didn't move. Her eyes didn't flicker.

'Melanie?'

No response.

Hesitantly, Laura moved toward the bed.

The girl seemed oblivious of her.

Laura put down the safety rail, leaned close to the child, spoke her name again, but again elicited no reaction. With one trembling hand, she touched Melanie's face, which felt slightly fevered, and that contact shattered all her reservations. A dam of emotion broke within her, and she seized the girl, lifted her away from the bed, held her close, and hugged her. 'Melanie, baby, my Melanie, it's all right now, it'll be okay, really it will, you're safe now, safe with me now, safe with Mommy, thank God, safe, thank God.' As she spoke, tears burst from her, and she wept with a lack of selfconsciousness and control that she had not experienced since she had been a child herself.

If only Melanie had wept too. But the girl was beyond tears. She didn't return Laura's embrace, either. She hung limply in her mother's arms: a pliant body, an empty shell, unaware of the love that was hers to receive, unable to accept the succour and shelter that her mother offered, distant, in her own reality, lost.

* * *

Ten minutes later, in the corridor, Laura dried her eyes with a couple of Kleenexes and blew her nose.

Dan Haldane paced back and forth. His shoes squeaked on the highly polished tiles. From the expression on the detective's face, Laura guessed that he was trying to work off some of his anger over what had happened to Melanie.

Maybe some cops cared more than she thought. This one, anyway.

Dr. Pantangello said, 'I want to keep Melanie here at least until tomorrow afternoon. For observation.'

'Of course,' Laura said.

'When she's released from the hospital, she'll need psychiatric care.'

Laura nodded.

'What I was wondering… well, you don't intend to treat her yourself, do you?'

Laura tucked the sodden tissues in one coat pocket. 'You think it would be better for a third party, an uninvolved therapist, to work with her.'

'Yes.'

'Well, Doctor, I can understand why you feel that way, and in most cases I would agree with you. But not this time.'

'Usually, it's a bad idea for a therapist to treat one of his own children. As her mother, you're almost certainly going to be more demanding of your own daughter than you would be of an ordinary patient. And, excuse me, but it may even be possible that the parent is part of the problem in the first place.'

'Yes. You're right. Usually. But not this time. I didn't do this to my little girl. I had no part in it. I am virtually as much a stranger to her as any other therapist would be, but I can give her more time, more care, more attention than anyone else. With another doctor, she'd be just another patient. But with me, she'll be my only patient. I'll take leave of absence from Saint Mark's. I'll shift my private patients to some colleagues for a few weeks or even months. I won't expect fast progress from her because I'll have all the time in the world. Melanie is going to get all of me, everything I have to offer as a doctor, as a psychiatrist, and all the love I have to offer as a mother.'

Pantangello seemed on the verge of issuing another warning or offering more advice, but he decided against it. 'Well… good luck.'

'Thank you.'

When the physician had gone, leaving Laura and Haldane alone in the silent, antiseptic-scented corridor, the detective said, 'It's a big job.'

'I can handle it.'

'I'm sure you can.'

'She'll get well.'

'I hope she does.'

At the nurses' station, at the end of the hall, a muffled phone rang twice.

Haldane said, 'I've sent for a uniformed officer. Just in case Melanie witnessed the murders, in case someone might be looking for her, I thought it was a good idea to post a guard. Until tomorrow afternoon, anyway.'

'Thank you, Lieutenant.'

'You aren't staying here, are you?'

'Yes. Of course. Where else?'

'Not long, I hope.'

'A few hours.'

'You need your rest, Doctor McCaffrey.'

'Melanie needs me more. I couldn't sleep anyway.'

He said, 'But if she's coming home tomorrow, won't you have to get things ready for her?'

Laura blinked. 'Oh. I hadn't thought about that. I'll have to prepare a bedroom. She can't sleep in a crib any longer.'

'Better go home,' he said gently.

'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 God, 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 glass-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 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.

Dan Haldane sat at the desk that he was using while on temporary assignment to the East Valley Division. The ancient wooden surface was scalloped by cigarette bums 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 titles 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 scrap 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 embarrassed 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 titles 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 ass. 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 assigned 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, ass-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 — 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 shit 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 you put up with my shit?'

'I don't have to. Not for long, thank God. 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 circumstances, 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 true.'

'Not my grandmother.'

'I didn't say your grandmother.'

'You mean your grandmother robs banks, Ross?'

'Somebody's goddamned grandmother does, and you can bet your ass 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 bitch.'

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

'I can have your ass 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 assuming 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 bastards 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 ass.'

To Mondale, the cameras and publicity were as nourishing as the food of the gods, 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, nobody 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?'

'So don't step on any toes.'

'Oh, don't worry, Ross, I wouldn't ever dance with any of those guys.'

Mondale shook his head. 'Christ.'

Dan watched the captain walk away. When he was alone again, he returned to his lists.

The sky was brightening from black to gray-black. Dawn hadn't crawled out of its hole yet, but it was creeping close, and it would crest the hilly horizon in ten or fifteen minutes.

The public parking lot of Valley Medical was nearly deserted, a patchwork of shadows and evenly spaced pools of jaundiced light from the sodium-vapor lamps.

Sitting behind the wheel of his Volvo, Ned Rink hated to see the night end. He was a night person, an owl rather than a lark. He was not able to function well or think clearly until midafternoon, and he didn't begin to hit his stride until after midnight. That preference was no doubt programmed into his genes, for his mother had been the same way; his personal biological clock was out of sync with those of most people.

Nevertheless, living at night was also a matter of choice: He felt more at home in the darkness. He was an ugly man, and he knew it. He felt conspicuous in broad daylight, but he believed that the night softened his ugliness and made it less noticeable. His forehead was too narrow and sloped, suggesting limited intelligence, although he was actually far from stupid. His small eyes were set too close, and his nose was a beak, and his other features were crudely formed. He was five-seven, with big shoulders and long arms and a barrel chest that was disproportionate to his height. As a child, he'd had to endure the cruel taunting of other kids who had nicknamed him Ape. Their ridicule and harassment had made him so tense that he'd developed an ulcer by the time he was thirteen years old. These days, Ned Rink didn't take that sort of crap from anyone. These days, if somebody gave him a hard time, he just killed his tormentor, blew his brains out with no hesitation and no remorse. That was a great way to deal with stress; his ulcers had healed long ago.

He picked up the black attachй case from the seat beside him. It contained a white lab coat, a white hospital towel, a stethoscope, and a silencer-equipped Walther.45 semi-automatic loaded with hollow-point cartridges that were coated with Teflon to ensure penetration of even bulletproof vests. He didn't have to open the attachй case to make sure that everything was there; he had packed it himself less than an hour ago.

He intended to walk into the hospital, go directly to the public rest rooms off the lobby, slip out of his raincoat, put on the white lab coat, fold the towel around the pistol, and head straight to Room 256, where they had taken the girl. Rink had been told to expect a police guard on duty. All right. He could handle that. He would pretend that he was a doctor, make up some excuse to get the cop out of the hallway and into the girl's room, where the nurses couldn't see, then shoot the jerk, shoot the girl. Then the coup de grвce: a bullet in the ear for each of them, just to make sure they were stone dead. The job done, Rink would leave immediately, return to the public rest room, pick up his raincoat and attachй case, and get the hell out of the hospital.

The plan was clean and uncomplicated. There was almost nothing about it that could go wrong.

Before opening the door and getting out of the Volvo, he looked carefully around the parking lot to be sure that he wasn't observed. Although the storm had passed and the rain had stopped falling half an hour ago, light fog marked the direction of a gentle breeze and eddied in lazy patterns off from the main current, shrouding some objects, distorting others. Every depression in the macadam was filled with a pool of rainwater, and the many wind-stirred puddles shimmered with yellow reflections of the light from the tall sodium-vapor lamps.

Except for the drifting fog, the night was perfectly still. Rink decided he was alone, unseen.

To the east, the gray-black sky had a pale, opalescent, pinkish-blue tint. The first faint flow of dawn's radiant face. In another hour, the quiet night routine of the hospital would begin to give way to the business and busyness of the day. It was time to go.

He was looking forward to the work ahead. He had never killed a child before. It ought to be interesting.

Alone, the girl woke. She sat straight up in bed, trying to scream. Her mouth was open wide, the muscles in her neck were taut, the blood vessels in her throat and temples throbbed with the effort that she was making, but she couldn't produce a sound.

She sat like that for half a minute, her small fists full of sweat-soaked sheets. Eyes wide. She wasn't looking at or reacting to anything in the room. The terror lay beyond those walls.

Briefly, her eyes cleared. She was no longer oblivious of the hospital room.

She realized for the first time that she was alone. Remembered who she was. She desperately desired company, someone to hold, human contact, comfort.

'Hello?' she whispered. 'S-s-somebody? Somebody? Somebody? Mommy?'

If people had been with her, perhaps her attention would have been altogether captured by them and drawn permanently away from the things that so frightened her. Alone, however, she could not shake the nightmare that had its talon in her, and her eyes glazed over again. Her gaze fixed once more on a scene elsewhere.

Finally, with a desperate, wordless whimper, she clambered over the safety railing and got out of bed. She tottered a few steps. Went down on her knees. Breathing hard, wheezing with panic, she crawled into the darker half of the room, past the untenanted bed, into the corner where friendly shadows offered consolation. She put her back to the wall and faced into the room, knees drawn up. The hospital gown bunched at her hips. She wrapped her arms around her thin legs and pulled herself into a tight ball.

She remained in the corner only a minute before she began to whimper and mewl like a frightened animal. She raised her hands and covered her face, striving to block out a hideous sight.

'Don't, please, please, please.'

Breathing rapidly and shallowly, with ever-increasing panic, she lowered her hands and squeezed them into fists. She pounded her own breast, hard, harder.

'Don't, don't, don't,' she said.

She was pounding hard enough to hurt herself, yet she couldn't feel the blows.

'The door,' she said softly. 'The door… the door…'

It wasn't the hospital-room door or the door to the adjoining bath that frightened her. She was looking at neither. She was dimly aware of the world around her, but she was focused instead on things no one else could have seen from any vantage point in that room.

She raised both hands, held them out in front of her, as though pressing on the unseen door, frantically attempting to hold it shut.

'Stop.'

The meager muscles in her frail arms popped up, and then her elbows bent, as if the invisible door actually had substantial weight and was swinging open against all her protests. As if something big pushed relentlessly against the other side of it. Something inhuman and unimaginably strong.

Abruptly, with a gasp, she scrambled out of the shadow-shrouded corner and across the floor. She went under the unused bed. Safe. Or maybe not. Nowhere was safe. She stopped and curled into the fetal position, murmuring, hopelessly trying to hide from the thing beyond the door.

'The door,' she said. 'The door… the door to December…'

With her arms crossed on her breast, her fingertips pressing hard into her own bony shoulders, she began to weep quietly.

'Help me, help me,' she said, but she spoke in a whisper that did not carry to the hall, where nurses might have heard it.

If someone had responded to her cry, Melanie might have clung to him in terror, unable to cast off the cloak of autism that protected her from a world too cruel to bear. Nevertheless, even that much contact with another human being, when she wanted it, would have been a small first step toward recovery. But with the best of intentions, they had left her alone, to rest, and her plea for solace and for a reassuring voice went unanswered.

She shuddered. 'Help me. It's coming open. It's… open.'

The last word faded into a low moan of pure black despair. Her anguish was terrible, bleak.

Eventually her breathing grew less agitated, less ragged, and finally normal. The weeping subsided.

She lay in silence, perfectly still, as if in a deep sleep. But in the darkness under the bed, her eyes were still open wide, staring in shock and terror.

When she got home, shortly before dawn, Laura made a pot of strong coffee. She carried a mug into the guest bedroom and sipped at the steaming brew while she dusted the furniture, put sheets on the bed, and prepared for Melanie's homecoming.

Her four-year-old calico cat, Pepper, kept getting in the way, rubbing against her legs, insisting upon being petted and scratched behind the ears. The cat seemed to sense that it was soon to be deposed from its favored position in the household.

For four years, Pepper had been something of a surrogate child. In a way, the house also had been a surrogate child, an outlet for the child-rearing energies that Laura could not direct toward her own little girl.

Six years ago, after Dylan had run off, cleaning out their bank accounts and leaving her with no ready cash, Laura had been forced to scramble, scrape, and scheme to keep the house. It wasn't a mansion, but a spacious four-bedroom, Spanish two-story in Sherman Oaks, on the 'right' side of Ventura Boulevard, on a curving street where some homes had swimming pools and even more had hot tubs, where children were frequently sent to private schools, and where the family dogs were not mongrels but full-bred German shepherds, spaniels, golden retrievers, Airedales, dalmatians, and poodles registered with the American Kennel Club. It stood on a large lot, half hidden by coral trees, benjaminas, bushy red and purple hibiscus, red azaleas, and a fence shrouded in bougainvillea, with thick borders of impatiens in every hue along the serpentine, mission-tile walk that led to the front door.

Laura was proud of her home. Three years ago, when she had finally stopped paying private investigators to search for Dylan and Melanie, she had begun to put her spare money into small renovation projects: darkly stained oak base molding, crown molding, and door frames; new, rich dark-blue tile in the master bathroom, with white Sherle Wagner shell sinks and gold fixtures. She'd torn out Dylan's Oriental garden in the back lawn because it was a reminder of him, and had replaced it with twenty different species of roses.

In a sense, the house took the place of the daughter who had been stolen from her: she worried and fussed about it, pampered it, guided it toward maturity. Her concern for keeping the house in good repair was akin to a mother's concern for the health of her child.

Now she could stop sublimating all those maternal urges. Her daughter was finally coming home.

Pepper meowed.

Snatching the cat off the floor and holding it with its legs dangling, face-to-face, Laura said, 'There'll still be plenty of love for one pitiful cat. Don't worry about that, you old mouse-chaser.'

The phone rang.

She put the cat down, crossed the hall to the master bedroom, and plucked the handset off the cradle. 'Hello?'

No answer. The caller hesitated a moment, then hung up.

She stared at the phone, uneasy. Maybe it had been a wrong number. But in the dead hour before dawn, on this extraordinary night, a ringing phone and an uncommunicative caller had sinister implications.

She double-checked the locks on the doors. That seemed to be an inadequate response, but she could think of nothing more to do.

Still uneasy, she tried to shrug off the call, and at last she went into the empty room that had once been the nursery. Two years ago, she had disposed of Melanie's baby furniture when she had finally admitted to herself that her missing daughter would have by that time outgrown everything. Laura had not refurnished, ostensibly because when Melanie returned, the girl would be old enough to have a say in the choice of decor. Actually, Laura had left the room empty because — though she couldn't face her own fears — deep in her heart she'd felt that Melanie would never be coming back, that the child had vanished forever.

She had saved a few of her daughter's toys, however. Now she took the box of old playthings out of the closet and rummaged through it. Three-year-olds and nine-year-olds didn't have much in common, but Laura found two items that might still be appealing to Melanie: a big Raggedy Ann doll, slightly soiled, and a smaller teddy bear with floppy ears.

She took the bear and the doll into the guest bedroom and set them on the pillows, with their backs against the headboard. Melanie would see them the moment she came into the room.

Pepper jumped onto the bed, approached the doll and the bear with curiosity and trepidation. She sniffed the doll, nuzzled the bear, then curled up beside them, apparently having decided that they were friendly.

The first beams of daylight were streaming through the French windows. By the manner in which the early light fluctuated from gray to gold to gray again, Laura could tell, without looking at the sky, that the rain had stopped and that the clouds were breaking up.

Although she'd had only three hours of sleep the previous night, and though her daughter wouldn't be leaving the hospital for six or eight hours, Laura didn't feel like returning to bed. She was awake, energetic. From the stoop outside the front door, she retrieved the plastic-wrapped morning newspaper. In the kitchen, she squeezed two large oranges to make a glass of fresh juice, put a pan of water on the stove to boil, took a box of raisin oatmeal from a cupboard, and popped two slices of bread in the toaster. She was actually humming a tune — Elton John's 'Daniel'—when she sat at the table.

Her daughter was coming home.

The front-page stories in the paper — the turmoil in the Middle East, the fighting in Central America, the scheming of politicians, the muggings and robberies and senseless killings — did not discourage or concern her as they usually did. The murders of Dylan, Hoffritz, and the unknown man were not reported: That story had broken too late to make the early edition. If she had seen that slaughter recounted in the Times, maybe she wouldn't have felt so lighthearted. But she saw not a word about those murders, and Melanie would be released from the hospital this afternoon, and all things considered, she had known worse mornings.

Her daughter was coming home.

When she finished her breakfast, she pushed aside the newspaper and sat looking out the window at the damp rose garden. The sodden blooms seemed impossibly bright in the slanting sun, as unnaturally colorful as flowers in a vivid dream.

She lost track of time, might have been sitting there two minutes or ten, when she was snapped out of her reverie by a thump and clatter somewhere in the house. She sat straight up, rigid, tense, scared, her mind filled with images of blood-spattered walls and cold dead forms in opaque plastic bags.

Then Pepper broke the ominous spell by dashing out of the dining room, into the kitchen, claws clicking on the tile. She scampered into a corner, stood there, the hair raised along her back, ears flattened, staring at the doorway through which she had come. Then with a sudden self-consciousness that was comical, the cat pretended nonchalance, curled up in a furry puddle on the floor, yawned, and turned sleepy eyes on Laura, as if to say, 'Who, me? Lose my feline dignity? Even for a moment? Never! Scared? Ridiculous!'

'What'd you do, puss? Knock something over, spook yourself?'

The calico yawned again.

'It better not have been anything breakable,' Laura said, 'or I might finally get those cat-skin earmuffs I've been wanting.'

She went through the house, looking for the damage that Pepper had done, and she found it in the guest bedroom. The teddy bear and the Raggedy Ann doll were lying on the floor. Fortunately, the cat had not clawed the stuffing out of them. The alarm clock had been knocked off the nightstand. Laura picked it up and saw that it was still ticking; the glass face wasn't cracked, either. She put the clock back where it belonged, returned the doll and the bear to the bed.

Strange. Pepper had gotten over the reckless-kitten stage three years ago. She was now slightly plump, content, and thoroughly self-satisfied. This rambunctiousness was out of character, yet another indication that she knew her place in the McCaffrey household was no longer second to Laura.

In the kitchen, the cat was still in the corner.

Laura put food in the calico's dish. 'Lucky for you nothing broke. You wouldn't like being made into earmuffs.'

Pepper rose to a crouch, and her ears perked up. Tapping the dish with the empty can of 9 Lives, Laura said, 'Chowtime, you ferocious mouse-mauler.'

Pepper didn't move.

'You'll eat it when you want it,' Laura said, taking the empty can to the sink to rinse it before tossing it in the garbage.

Abruptly, Pepper exploded from the corner, streaked across the kitchen, through the doorway, into the living room, gone.

'Crazy cat,' Laura said, frowning at the untouched 9 Lives. Usually, Pepper was pushing in at the yellow dish, trying to eat even as Laura was scraping the food from the can.