The Door to December (20 page)

At 9:15, after talking to the owner of the shop next door to the Sign of the Pentagram and learning nothing of interest, Dan stopped at a McDonald's for dinner. He bought two cheeseburgers, a large order of fries, and a diet cola, and he ate in the car while he used the unmarked sedan's datalink to try to locate Regine Savannah.
     The video display terminal was in the dashboard, mounted at a slant, facing up, so he didn't have to bend over to read it. The programmer's keyboard nearly filled the console between the seats. All LAPD patrol cars and half the unmarked sedans had been fitted with new computer terminals over the past two years. The mobile VDT was linked by microwave transmissions to the underground, high-security, bombproof police communications command center, which in turn had access, via modem, to a variety of government and private-industry data banks.
     Taking a bite of a cheeseburger, Dan started the sedan's engine, switched on the VDT, punched in his personal code, and accessed the telephone-company records. He requested a number for Regine Savannah at any address in the Greater Los Angeles area.
     In a few seconds, glowing green letters appeared on the screen:

NO LISTING: SAVANNAH, REGINE NO LISTING: SAVANNAH, R.

     He typed in a request for any unlisted numbers being billed to an R. or Regine Savannah, but that was a dead end too. He ate a few french fries.
     The screen glowed softly, patiently.
     He accessed the Department of Motor Vehicles' license files and requested a search for Regine Savannah. That, too, was negative.
     As he mulled over another approach, he finished his first cheeseburger and watched the traffic passing on the windswept street. Then he tapped into the DMV files again and requested a search for a driver's license issued to anyone whose first name was Regine and whose middle name was Savannah. Perhaps she had been married and had not abandoned her maiden name altogether.
     Pay dirt. The screen flashed up the answer.

     Dan stared in disbelief. Hoffritz?
     Marge Gelkenshettle hadn't said anything about this. Had the girl actually married the man who had beaten her senseless and put her in the hospital?
     No. As far as he knew, Wilhelm Hoffritz had been unmarried. Dan hadn't been to Hoffritz's house yet, but he had read over the available background information, which contained no reference to a wife or family. Others had tracked down the next of kin: a sister who was flying in from somewhere — Detroit or Chicago, someplace like that — to handle the funeral arrangements.
     Marge Gelkenshettle would have told him if Regine and Hoffritz had married. Unless she didn't know about it. According to the DMV files, Regine Savannah Hoffritz was female, with black hair and brown eyes. She was five-six, one hundred and twenty-five pounds. She had been born on July 3, 1971. That was about the right age for the woman about whom Marge had spoken. The address on her driver's license was in Hollywood, in the hills, and Dan jotted it down in his notebook.
     Wilhelm Hoffritz had lived in Westwood. If he had been married to Regine Savannah, why would they have kept two houses?
     Divorce. That was a possibility.
     However, even if it had ended in divorce, the very fact of the marriage was nonetheless bizarre. What kind of life could it have been for her, married to a vicious sadist who had brainwashed her, who could completely control her, and who had once beaten her so severely that she had wound up in the hospital? If Hoffritz had savagely abused Regine when she was a student of his — at a time when he had his entire career to lose by indulging in such perverse urges — then, how much worse might he have treated her when she was his wife, when they were alone in the privacy and sanctity of their own home?
     Thinking about that gave Dan the creeps.

Earl Benton had his gun in his hand, but what came into the kitchen from the darkness outside wasn't something that he could blow away with a few well-placed rounds from his .38. With a resounding crash, the door was thrown against the wall, and a cold whirlwind surged into the kitchen, a wind like a living beast, hissing and growling, sniffing and capering. And if the substance of the beast was wind, then its coat was made of flowers, for the air was suddenly filled with flowers, yellow and red and white roses, stalky impatiens of every hue, scores of blossoms from the garden behind the house, some with stems attached and some without, some that had been snapped off and some that had been torn out by the roots. The wind-beast shook itself; its coat of flowers flapped and, as if shedding loose hairs, threw off torn leaves, bright petals, crushed stems, clumps of moist earth that had been adhering to the roots. The calendar leaped off the wall and darted halfway around the room on wings of paper before settling to the floor. With a soft rustle not unlike the flutter of feathers, the curtains flew up from the windows and fought to free themselves from the anchoring rods, eager to join this demonic dance of the inanimate. Dirt spattered over Earl, and a rose struck his face; he was aware of a thorn lightly nicking his throat as the flower rebounded from him, and he raised one arm to protect himself. He saw Laura McCaffrey shielding her daughter, and he felt helpless and stupid in the face of this amorphous threat.
     The door slammed shut as abruptly as it had been forced open. But the churning column of flowers continued to spin, as if this wind was not part of that greater wind which scoured the night outside but was, instead, a self-sustaining offspring. That was impossible, of course. Crazy. But real. The whirling turbulence whined, hissed, spat out more leaves and blossoms and broken stems, shook off more dirt and buds and bright petals. In its many-windowed, ragtag coat of roiling vegetation, the wind-creature stopped just inside the door (though its breath could be felt in every corner) and remained there, as if watching them, as if deciding what it would do next — and then it simply expired. The wind didn't die slowly; it stopped all at once. The remaining flowers, which it hadn't yet cast off, dropped to the kitchen tiles in a heap, with a soft thump and rustle and whoosh. Then silence, stillness.

In the unmarked police sedan in the McDonald's parking lot, Dan terminated the link with the DMV computer and accessed the telephone-company data banks once more. He got a number and address for Regine Hoffritz. It was the same address the DMV had provided.
     He glanced at his watch: 9:32. He had been working with the VDT for about ten minutes. In the bad old days, before the advent of the mobile computer, he would have wasted at least two hours gathering this information. He switched off the screen, and a deeper darkness crept into the car.
     As he finished his second cheeseburger and sipped his cola, he thought about the rapidly changing world in which he lived. A new world, a science-fictional society, was growing up around him with disconcerting speed and vigor. It was both exhilarating and frightening to be alive in these times. Mankind had acquired the ability to reach the stars, to take a giant leap off this world and spread out through the universe, but the species had also acquired the ability to destroy itself before the inevitable emigration could begin. New technology — like the computer — freed men and women from all kinds of drudgery, saved them vast amounts of time. And yet ... And yet the time saved did not seem to mean additional leisure or greater opportunities for meditation and reflection. Instead, with each new wave of technology, the pace of life increased; there was more to do, more choices to make, more things to experience, and people eagerly seized upon those experiences and filled the hours that had only moments ago become empty. Each year life seemed to be flitting past with far greater speed than the year before, as if God had cranked up the control knob on the flow of time. But that wasn't right, either, because to many people, even the concept of God seemed dated in an age in which the universe was being forced to let go of its mysteries on a daily basis. Science, technology, and change were the only gods now, the new Trinity; and while they were not consciously cruel and judgmental, as some of the old gods had been, they were too coldly indifferent to offer any comfort to the sick, the lonely, and the lost.
     How could a shop like the Sign of the Pentagram flourish in a world of computers, miracle drugs, and spaceships? Who could turn to the occult, seeking answers, when physicists and biochemists and geneticists were providing more answers, day by day, than all the Ouija boards and seances and spiritualists since the dawn of history? Why would men of science, like Dylan McCaffrey and Wilhelm Hoffritz, associate with a purveyor of bat shit and bunkum?
     Well, clearly, they hadn't believed it was all bunkum. Some aspect of the occult, some paranormal phenomena, must have been of interest to McCaffrey and Hoffritz and must have seemed, to them, to have a bearing or an application in their own research. Somehow, they had wanted to join science and magic. But how? And why?
     As he finished his diet cola, Dan remembered a fragment of rhyme:

     He couldn't recall where he had heard it, but he thought it was part of a song, an old rock-'n'-roll number perhaps, from the days when he had regularly listened to rock. He tried hard to remember, almost had it, thought maybe it was from a protest song about nuclear war and destruction, but he couldn't quite seize the memory.
     Science and the Devil, walking arm in arm
.
     It was a naive image, even simpleminded. The song had probably been nothing but propaganda for the New Luddites who yearned to dismantle civilization and go back to living in tents or caves. Dan had no sympathy for that point of view. He knew that tents were drafty and damp. But for some reason the image of 'Science and the Devil, walking arm in arm, had a powerful effect on him, and a chill spread through his bones.
     Suddenly he was no longer in the mood to visit Regine Savannah Hoffritz. He'd put in a long day. Time to go home. His forehead hurt where he'd been hit, and a score of bruises throbbed all over his body. His joints felt as if they were on fire. His eyes were burning, watering, itching. He needed a beer or two — and ten hours of sleep.
     But he still had work to do.

Laura looked around in shock and disbelief.
     Dirt, flowers, leaves, and other debris were scattered across the kitchen table and through the uneaten portions of their dinners. Battered roses littered the floor and the counters. Gnarled, broken bunches of red and purple impatiens bristled out of the sink. One white rose hung through the handle of the refrigerator door, and bits of greenery and hundreds of detached petals were stuck to the curtains, the walls, and the doors of the cabinets. On the floor, a mound of limp, ragged greenery and wind-burned blossoms marked the spot where the whirlwind had died.
     'Let's get out of here,' Earl said, the gun still in his hand.
     'But this mess,' Laura began.
     'Later,' he said, going to Melanie, pulling the somnolent child up from her chair.
     Dazed, Laura said, 'But I've got to clean up—'
     'Come on, come on,' Earl said impatiently. His ruddy, country-boy complexion had vanished. He was now pallid and waxy. 'Into the living room.'
     She hesitated, surveying the tangled debris.
     'Come on,' Earl said, 'before something worse comes through that door!'

Regine Savannah Hoffritz lived on one of the less expensive streets in the Hollywood hills. Her house was a prime example of the eclectic-anachronistic-madcap architecture which was actually rare in California but which chauvinistic New Yorkers pointed to as an example of typical West Coast tastelessness. Judging by its use of brick and exposed exterior wall beams, Dan supposed that the house was intended to be English Tudor, though there were elaborate carved Victorian eaves, American colonial shutters — and big brass carriage lamps, of no discernible period or style, flanking the front door and the garage. The two pilasters framing the entrance to the walk were stucco with Mexican-tile trim, bearing heavy wrought-iron lamps utterly different from — yet no nearer the Tudor ideal than — the brass fixtures employed elsewhere.
     A black Porsche was parked in the driveway. In the ghostly white radiance of the various and clashing lamps, the curvature and sheen of the car's long hood was reminiscent of a beetle's carapace.
     Dan rang the doorbell, withdrew his police ID, waited with his shoulders hunched in the chilly wind, and then rang the bell again.
     When the door finally opened, it was on a security chain. Half of a lovely face peered out at him: lustrous black hair, porcelain skin, one large and clear brown eye, half a precisely sculpted nose in which the one visible nostril was as delicately formed as if it had been made from blown glass, and one-half of a ripe and alluring mouth.
     She said, 'Yes?'
     Her voice was soft, breathy. Although it might have been her God-given voice, completely unaffected, it nevertheless sounded phony, calculated.
     Dan said, 'Regine Hoffritz?'
     'Yes.'
     'Lieutenant Haldane. Police. I'd like to talk with you. About your husband.'
     She squinted at his identification. 'What husband?'
     He heard another quality in her voice: a pliancy, a meekness, a tremulous and yielding weakness. She seemed to be waiting only for a command that would reduce her to unquestioning obedience.
     He didn't think her tone had anything to do with his being a cop. He suspected that she was always like this, with everyone. Or, rather, she had always been like this since Willy Hoffritz had changed her.
     'Your husband,' he said. 'Wilhelm Hoffritz.'
     'Oh. Just a minute.'
     She closed the door, and it stayed closed for ten seconds, twenty, half a minute, longer. Dan was just about to ring the bell again when he heard the security chain being disengaged.
     The door opened. She stepped back, and Dan entered past three pieces of luggage that stood to one side. In the living room, he sat in an armchair, and she chose the rust-brown sofa. Her posture and manner were demure, yet her primary effect was powerfully seductive.
     Although she was a striking woman, something about her was not quite right. Her considerable femininity seemed studied, exaggerated. Her hair was so perfectly coiffed and her makeup was so exactingly and faultlessly applied that she looked as if she were about to step before the cameras to film a Revlon commercial. She wore a floor-length, cream-colored silk robe cinched tightly at the waist to emphasize her full breasts, flat belly, and flaring hips. The robe was excessively frilly as well, with silk ruffles up the lapels, at the collar and cuffs and hem. At her tender throat she wore a gold mesh dog collar; it was one of those close-fitting necklaces that had been popular years ago. These days, among the general population, where such jewelry had no significance beyond mere decoration, dog collars could be seen only occasionally, though among sadomasochistic couples, such items remained in demand, because they were seen as a symbol of sexual subservience. And though Dan had met Regine only a minute ago, he knew that she wore her collar with that submissive and masochistic intent, for a crushed and obedient spirit was evident in the way she averted her face, in the graceful and yet humbled way she moved (as if anticipating and perversely welcoming a blow, a slap, a cruel pinch), and in her avoidance of eye contact.
     She waited for him to begin.
     For a moment he said nothing, listened to the house. Her delay in removing the security chain from the door led him to suspect that she was not alone. She had hurriedly consulted with someone and had obtained permission before letting Dan in. But the rest of the house was quiet and apparently deserted.
     Half a dozen photographs were arranged on the coffee table, and all were of Willy Hoffritz. Or at least the three facing Dan were of Hoffritz, and he imagined that the others were too. It was the same unremarkable face, the same wideset eyes, the same slightly plump cheeks and piggish nose that Dan had seen in the driver's license photo in the wallet of one of the dead men in Studio City, the previous night.
     He finally said, 'I'm sure you know that your husband is dead.'
     'Willy, you mean?'
     'Yes, Willy.'
     'I know.'
     I'd like to ask you some questions.'
     'I'm sure I can't help you,' she said softly, meekly, looking at her hands.
     'When was the last time you saw Willy?'
     'More than a year ago.'
     'Divorced?'
     'Well...'
     'Separated?'
     'Yes, but not ... in the way you mean.'
     He wished that she would look at him. 'Then in what way do
you
mean it?'
     She nervously shifted positions on the sofa. 'We were never ... legally married.'
     'No? But you have his name now.'
     Still considering her hands, she nodded. 'Yes, he let me change mine.'
     'You went to court, had your name changed to Hoffritz? When, why?'
     'Two years ago. Because ... because ... you won't understand.'
     'Try me.'
     Regine didn't answer at once, and as Dan waited for her to form her explanation, he looked around the room. On the mantel above the white brick fireplace was another gallery of photographs of Willy Hoffritz: eight more.
     Although the house was warm, Dan felt as though he were in a Rocky Mountain January night as he stared at those silver-framed, carefully arranged images of the dead psychologist.
     Regine said, 'I wanted to show Willy that I was his, completely and forever his.'
     'He didn't object to your taking his name? He didn't think you might be setting him up for a palimony case?'
     'No, no. I'd never have done something like that to Willy. He knew I'd never do something like that. Oh, no. Impossible.'
     'If he wanted you to have his name, why didn't he marry you?'
     'He didn't want to be married,' she said with unmistakable disappointment and regret.
     Although Regine's face was bowed, Dan saw sadness, like a sudden gravitational force, pull at her features.
     Amazed, he said, 'He didn't want to marry you, but he wanted you to carry his name. To indicate that you ... belonged to him?'
     'Yes.'
     'Taking his name was like ... being branded?'
     'Oh, yes,' she said in a hoarse whisper, and upon her face blossomed a smile of genuine pleasure at the memory of this strange act of submission. 'Yes. Like being branded.'
     'He sounds like a sweetheart,' Dan said. But she was unaware of his ironic tone, so he decided to needle her, hoping to break through her whipped-dog demeanor. 'Jesus, he must've been a real egomaniac!'
     Her head jerked up, and she met his eyes at last. 'Oh, no,' she said, frowning. She did not speak with anger or impatience but with a warmth, eager to correct what she saw as his misapprehension of the dead man's character. 'Oh, no. Not Willy. There was no one like Willy. He was wonderful. There wasn't anything I wouldn't have done for Willy. Not anything. He was so special. You didn't know him, or you wouldn't say a word against him. Not against Willy. You couldn't. Not if you'd known him.'
     'There are those who did know him who don't speak so highly of him. I'm sure you're aware of that.'
     She lowered her gaze to her hands again. 'They're all just envious, jealous, lying bastards,' she said, but in the same soft, sweet, breathlessly feminine manner, as if she had been forbidden to mar her perfect femininity with a shrill tone of voice or any other display of anger.
     'He was thrown out of UCLA.'
     She said nothing.
     'Because of what he did to you.'
     Regine still said nothing, continued to avert her eyes, but she shifted uneasily again. Her robe fell open to reveal one perfectly formed calf. A bruise the size of a half dollar marred the creamy flesh. Two smaller bruises were visible at the ankle.
     'I want you to talk about Willy.'
     'I won't.
     'I'm afraid you must.'
     She shook her head.
     'What was he doing with Dylan McCaffrey in Studio City?'
     'I'll never say a word against Willy. I don't care what you do to me. Throw me in jail if you want. I don't care. I don't care.' This was said quietly but with fierce emotion. 'Too many hard things have been said about poor Willy by people not good enough to lick his shoes.'
     Dan said, 'Regine, look at me.'
     She raised one hand to her mouth, put a knuckle to her teeth, and gently chewed on it.
     'Regine? Look at me, Regine.'
     Nervously sucking-chewing at that knuckle, she raised her head, but she didn't meet his eyes. She stared over his shoulder, past him.
     'Regine, he beat you up.'
     She said nothing.
     'He put you in hospital.'
     'I loved him,' she said, speaking around the knuckle upon which her attention was becoming increasingly fixated.
     'He used sophisticated brainwashing techniques on you, Regine. He somehow got in your mind, and he changed you, twisted you, and that is not the work of a sweet and wonderful man.'
     Tears sprang from her and streamed down her cheeks, and her face contorted in grief. 'I loved him so much.'
     The sleeve of Regine's robe slid up her arm when she brought her hand to her mouth. Dan saw a small bruise on the meaty part of her forearm — and what appeared to be rope abrasions on her wrist.
     She had told him that she hadn't seen Willy Hoffritz for a year, but someone had been playing bondage games with her, and recently.
     Dan studied the ornately framed photographs on the coffee table, the thin smile on the dead psychologist's face. The air suddenly seemed thick, oily, unclean. A desire for fresh air almost propelled him from the chair, almost sent him stumbling toward the door.
     He stayed where he was. 'But how could you love a man who hurt you so?'
     'He freed me.'
     'No, he enslaved you.'
     'He freed me to be ...'
     'To be what?'
     'What I was meant to be.'
     'And what were you meant to be?'
     'What I am.'
     And what is that?'
     'Whatever is wanted of me.'
     Her tears had stopped.
     A smile flickered at the corners of her mouth as she considered what she had said. 'Whatever is wanted of me.' And she shivered, as though the very thought of slavery and degradation sent a current of physical pleasure through her.
     With growing frustration and anger, he said, 'Are you telling me that you were born to be only what Willy Hoffritz wanted you to be, born to do anything he wanted you to do?'
     'Whatever is wanted,' Regine repeated, looking directly into his eyes now.
     He wished that she had continued staring into space beyond him, for he saw — or imagined that he saw — grave torment, self-loathing, and desperation of an intensity that made his heart clutch up. He glimpsed a soul in rags: a tattered, wrinkled, frayed, and soiled spirit. Within this woman's ripe, full, exquisitely sensuous body, and within the outwardly visible persona of the submissive child-woman, there was another Regine, a better Regine, trapped, buried alive, existing beyond whatever psychological blocks Hoffritz had implanted but unable to escape or even to imagine any hope of escape. In that brief moment of contact between them, Dan saw that the real woman, the woman who had existed before Hoffritz had come along, was like a withered straw doll, dried out by all these years of ceaseless abuse, now a juiceless, miserable creature who'd been transformed into kindling by a nightmare of humiliation and torture; she longed for the match that would ignite and, mercifully, extinguish her.
     Horrified, he could not look away.
     She lowered her eyes first.
     He was relieved. And sick.
     His lips were dry. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. 'Do you know what research Willy was doing after he was booted out of UCLA?'
     'No.'
     'What project were he and Dylan McCaffrey working on?'
     'I don't know.'
     'Did you ever see the gray room in Studio City?'
     'No.'
     'Do you know a man named Ernest Andrew Cooper?'
     'No.'
     'Joseph Scaldone?'
     'I wish you would go away.'
     'Ned Rink?'
     'No. None of them.'
     'What did those men do to Melanie McCaffrey? What did they want from her?'
     'I don't know.'
     'Who was funding their project?'
     'I don't know.'
     Dan was sure she was lying. Along with her self-assurance and self-respect and independence, she had also lost the ability to prevaricate with confidence or conviction.
     Now that he'd seen Regine and knew the amazing, monstrous thing that had been done to her, Dan had no respect for Hoffritz as a man, but more than ever he feared Hoffritz's manipulative abilities, his vicious cruelty, and his dark genius, and more than ever he realized the need to arrive at a timely solution in this case. If Hoffritz had transformed Regine this completely, what might he have achieved in his research with Dylan McCaffrey, for which he'd had more time and resources? Dan had a new sense that time was swiftly running out, a growing urgency. Hoffritz had set some terrible engine in motion, and it would crush many more people, soon, unless it was understood, located, and stopped. Regine was lying to him, and he couldn't allow that. He had to find some answers quickly, before he was too late to help Melanie.