The Door to December

Page 22

Dan said, 'After Dunbar shot me there on the front lawn of the Lakey house—'
'I suppose that was my fault too,' Mondale said.
'No,' Dan said. 'I shouldn't have tried to rush him. I didn't think he'd use the gun, and I was wrong. But after he shot me, Ross, he was stunned for a moment, stupefied by what he'd done, and he was vulnerable.'
'Bullshit. He was as vulnerable as a runaway Sherman tank. He was a maniac, a flat-out lunatic, and he had the biggest goddamned pistol—'
'A thirty-two,' Dan corrected. 'There're bigger guns. Every cop comes up against bigger guns than that, all the time. And he was vulnerable for a moment, plenty long enough for you to take the son of a bitch.'
'You know one thing I always hated about you, Haldane?'
Ignoring him, Dan said, 'But you ran.'
'I always hated that wide, wide streak of self-righteousness.'
'If he'd wanted to, Dunbar could have put another slug in me. No one to stop him after you ran off behind the house.'
'As if you never made a mistake in your goddamned life.'
They were both almost whispering now.
'But instead he walked away from me—'
'As if you were never afraid.'
'—and he shot the lock off the front door—'
'You want to play the hero, go ahead. You and Audie Murphy. You and Jesus Christ.'
'—and he went inside and pistol-whipped Fran Lakey—'
'I hate your guts.'
'—and then made her watch—'
'You make me sick.'
'—while he killed the one person in the world she really loved,' Dan said.
He was being relentless now because there was no way to stop until it had all been said. He wished he had never begun, wished he'd left it buried, but now that he had started, he had to finish. Because he was like the Ancient Mariner in that old poem. Because he had to purge himself of an unrelenting nightmare. Because he was driven to follow it to the end. Because if he stopped in the middle, the unsaid part would be as bitter as a big wad of vomit in his throat, unheaved, wedged there, and he'd choke on it. Because—and here it was, here was the truth of it, no easy euphemisms this time—after all these years, his own soul was still shackled to a ball of guilt that had been weighing him down since the death of the Lakey child, and maybe if he finally talked about it with Ross Mondale, he might find a key that would release him from that iron ball, those chains.
*  *  *
The radio was at full volume again, and each word exploded like one round of a cannonade.
'... blood ...'
'... coming ...'
'... run ...'
More urgently than she had spoken before, afraid of what might be coming, wanting Melanie to be on her feet and ready to flee, Laura said, 'Honey, get up, come on.'
From the radio: '... hide ...'
And: '... it ...'
And: '... coming ...'
The volume grew louder.
'... it ...'
Jarring, ear-splitting: '... loose ...'
Earl put his hand on the volume knob.
'... it ...'
At once, Earl jerked his hand off the knob as if he had taken an electric shock. He looked at Laura, horrified. He vigorously wiped his hand on his shirt. It hadn't been an electric shock that had sizzled through him; instead, he had felt something weird when he touched the knob, something disgusting, repulsive.
The radio said: '... death ...'
*  *  *
Mondale's hatred was a dark and vast swamp into which he could retreat when the uncomfortable truth about Cindy Lakey rose to haunt him. As the truth drew nearer and pressed upon him more insistently, he withdrew farther into his all-encompassing black hatred and hid there amid the snakes and bugs and muck of his psyche.
He continued to glare at Dan, to loom threateningly over the desk, but there was no danger that his hatred would propel him to action. He would not throw a single punch. He didn't need or want to relieve his hatred by striking out at Dan. Instead, he needed to nurture that hatred, for it helped him to hide from responsibility. It was a veil between him and the truth, and the heavier the veil, the better for him.
That was how Mondale's mind worked. Dan knew him well, knew how he thought.
But, though Ross might try to hide from it, the truth was that Felix Dunbar had shot Dan—and Mondale had been too scared to return the fire. The truth was that Dunbar then went inside the Lakey house, pistol-whipped Fran Lakey, and shot eight-year-old Cindy Lakey three times while Ross Mondale was God-knew-where, doing God-knew-what. And the truth was that wounded and bleeding badly, Dan had retrieved his own gun, crawled into the Lakey house, and killed Felix Dunbar before Dunbar could blow off Fran Lakey's head too. All the while, Ross Mondale was maybe puking in the shrubbery or losing control of his bladder or sprawled flat on the rear lawn and striving hard to look like a natural feature of the landscape. He had come back when it was all over, sweat-damp and slug-white, shaky, reeking of the sour smell of cowardice.
Now, still behind Joseph Scaldone's desk, Dan said, 'You try forcing me off this case or you try keeping me out of the action, and I'll tell the whole rotten story about the Lakey shootings, the truth, to anyone who'll listen, and that'll be the end of your dazzling career.'
With a smugness that would have been infuriating if it hadn't been so boringly predictable, Mondale said, 'If you were going to tell anyone, you'd have told them years ago.'
'That must be a comforting thought,' Dan said, 'but it's wrong. I covered for you then because you were my partner, and I figured everyone has a right to screw up once. But I've lived to regret the way I handled it, and if you give me a good excuse, I'd enjoy setting the record straight.'
'It all happened a long time ago,' Mondale said.
'You think no one cares about dereliction of duty just because it happened thirteen years ago?'
'No one'll believe you. They'll think it's sour grapes. I've moved up, made friends.'
'Yeah. And they're the kind of friends who'd sell their mothers for lunch money.'
'You've always been a loner. A wiseass. No matter what you think of them, I have people who'll rally around me.'
'With a lynching rope.'
'Power makes people loyal, Haldane, even if they'd rather not be. Nobody'll believe any crap you care to throw at me. Not a rotten wiseass like you. Not a chance.'
'Ted Gearvy will believe me,' Dan said, and if he had spoken any more quietly, he would have been inaudible. Yet, in spite of his quiet delivery, he might as well have swung a hammer at Mondale instead of those five words. The captain looked stricken.
Gearvy, ten years their senior, was a veteran patrolman and had been Mondale's partner during his probationary rookie year. He had seen Mondale make a few mistakes—although nothing as serious as what happened at the Lakey house later, when Dan had replaced Gearvy as Mondale's partner. Just disquieting errors of judgment. A too-meager sense of responsibility. Gearvy had thought he detected cowardice in Ross too, but had covered up for him, just as Dan would do in times to come. Gearvy was a big, gruff, easygoing guy, three-quarters Irish, with too much sympathy for rookies. He had not given Mondale high ratings in his rookie year; the Irishman was good-natured and sympathetic but not irresponsible. But he didn't give Mondale really bad ratings, either, because he was too softhearted for that.
A few months after the Lakey incident, when Dan was back at work with a new partner, Ted Gearvy had come around, quietly feeling Dan out, dropping hints, worried that he had made a serious mistake in covering up for Ross. Eventually, they had swapped information and discovered they had both been misguidedly shielding Mondale. They realized his misconduct was not just a rare or even a some-time thing. But by then it had seemed too late to come forth with the truth. In the eyes of the department brass, Gearvy's and Dan's failure—even temporary failure—to report Mondale's dereliction of duty would be nearly as bad as that dereliction itself. Gearvy and Dan would have found themselves standing in the dock beside Mondale. They weren't prepared to damage or perhaps even destroy their own careers.
Besides, by then Mondale had wheedled an assignment to the Community Relations Division; he was no longer working on the street. Gearvy and Dan figured Ross would do well in community relations and would never return to a regular beat, in which case he would never again be in a position to hold someone else's life in his hands. It seemed best—and safest—to leave well enough alone.
Neither of them imagined that Mondale would one day be a serious contender for the chief's office. Maybe they would have taken action if they could have foreseen the future. Their failure to act was the thing that both of them most regretted in all their years of service.
Clearly, Mondale had not known that Gearvy and Dan had compared notes. Their consultation was a nasty shock to him.
*  *  *
The radio boomed:
'IT!'
'COMING!'
'HIDE!'
'COMING!'
The disconnected words exploding from the Sony were impossibly loud, delivered with considerably more volume than the speakers were capable of providing. Thunderous, volcanic. Wall-shaking. The speakers should have disintegrated or burned out as those tremendous bursts of sound smashed through them, but they continued to function. The radio vibrated against the counter.
'LOOSE!'
'COMING!'
Each word crashed through Laura and seemed to pulverize more of her self-control. Panic and fear surged through her. The kitchen lights pulsed, dimmed. At the same time, the green glow that illuminated the radio dial became brighter, unnaturally bright, as if the Sony had acquired both a consciousness and a greedy thirst for electricity, as if it were drawing off all available power for itself. But that didn't make sense, because regardless of how much power the radio received, the dial was still equipped with a low-wattage bulb that couldn't produce this brilliant glow. Yet it did. As the ceiling lights grew dimmer still, dazzling emerald beams sprayed out through the Plexiglas panel on the front of the radio, painting Earl Benton's face, glinting off the chrome on the stove and refrigerator, imparting to the air a rippling murkiness: The room seemed to be underwater.
'... RIPPING ...'
'... APART ...'
The air was freezing.
'... TEARING ...'
'... APART ...'
Laura didn't understand that portion of the message—unless it was a threat of physical violence.
The Sony was vibrating faster than the stones in a rattlesnake's rattle. Soon it would be bouncing across the counter.
'... SPLITTING ... IN ... TWO ...'
*  *  *
Dan said, 'If I go public, Ted Gearvy probably will too. And maybe there's even someone else out there who's seen you at your worst, Ross. Maybe they'll come forward when we do. Maybe they'll have a conscience too.'
Judging by the expression on Mondale's face, there evidently was someone else who could blow his career out of the water. He was no longer smug when he said, 'One cop never rats on another, damn it!'
'Nonsense. If one of us is a killer, we don't protect him.'
'I'm no killer,' Mondale said.
'If one of us is a thief, we don't protect him.'
'I've never stolen a goddamned dime.'
'And if one of us is a coward who wants to be chief, we have to stop protecting him too, before he gets into the front office and plays fast and loose with other men's lives, the way some cowards do when they get enough power to be above the fight themselves.'
'You take the goddamned cake! You're the snottiest, most self-satisfied son of a bitch I've ever seen.'
'Coming from you, I'll take that as a compliment.'
'You know the code. It's us against them.'
'Why, for heaven's sake, Ross, just a minute ago, you told me it was always every man for himself.'
Irrationally trying to separate his own conduct at the Lakey house from the code of honor that he now so strenuously professed to embrace, Mondale could do no more than repeat himself: 'It's us against them, damn it!'
Dan nodded. 'Yes, but when I say "us," I don't include you. You and I can't possibly belong to the same species.'
'You'll destroy your own career,' Mondale said.
'Maybe.'
'Definitely. The Internal Affairs Division is gonna want to know why the hell you covered up this so-called dereliction of duty.'
'Misguided allegiance to another man in uniform.'
'That won't be good enough.'
'We'll see.'
'They'll have your ass for breakfast.'
Dan said, 'You're the one who actively screwed up. My moral irresponsibility was a passive act, passive sin. They might suspend me for that, reprimand me. But they're not going to throw me off the force because of it.'
'Maybe not. But you'll never get another promotion.'
Dan shrugged. 'Doesn't matter. I've gone as far as I really care to. Ambition doesn't rule me, Ross, the way it does you.'
'But ... no one'll trust you after you've done a thing like this.'
'Sure they will.'
'No, no. Not after you've ratted on another cop.'
'If the cop was anyone but you, that might be true.'
Mondale bristled. 'I have friends!'
'You're well liked by the high brass,' Dan said, 'because you always tell them what they want to hear. You know how to manipulate them. But the average cop on the beat thinks you're a jerk-off.'
'Bullshit. I have friends everywhere. You'll be frozen out, isolated, shunned.'
'Even if that's true—and it isn't—so what? I'm just a loner, anyway. Remember? You said so yourself. You said I'm a loner. What do I care if I'm shunned?'
For the first time, more worry than hatred was evident in Ross Mondale's face.
'You see?' Dan said. He smiled again, more broadly than before. 'You don't have any choice. You have to let me work on this case the way I want to work on it, without any interference, just as long as I want. If you mess with me, I'll destroy you, so help me God, even if it means problems for me too.'
*  *  *
The overhead lights grew even dimmer. But the radio's eerie green radiance was now so bright that it hurt Laura's eyes.
'... STOP ... HELP ... RUN ... HIDE ... HELP...'