The Door to December

Page 44

Dan noticed a movement in a shadowed corner of the wood-dark room and turned to see a tall, thin, hawk-faced man rise from an armchair, a glass of ice and whiskey in one hand. Although he was twenty feet away, the hawkish man's unusually bright and intense eyes conveyed everything essential about his personality: high intelligence, strong curiosity, aggressiveness—and a touch of madness.
As Boothe began to make introductions, Dan interrupted and said, 'Albert Uhlander, the author.'
Uhlander apparently knew that he did not possess Palmer Boothe's uncanny manipulative powers. He didn't smile. He made no attempt to shake hands. That they were of opposing camps and hostile ideologies seemed as apparent to Uhlander as it was to Dan.
'Can I get you a drink?' Boothe asked with a misplaced gentility and excessive civility that was beginning to be maddening. 'Scotch. Bourbon? Perhaps a glass of dry sherry?'
'We don't have time to sit here and drink, for God's sake,' Dan said. 'You're both living on borrowed time, and you know it. The only reason I want to try to save your lives is so I can have the great pleasure of putting both of you bastards in prison for a long, long time.'
There. That was better.
'Very well,' Boothe said coldly, and he returned to his desk. He settled into the brass-studded, dark-green leather club chair behind the desk and was almost entirely in shadow, except for his face, which was part blue and part green and part yellow in the spears of multicolored light from the Tiffany lamp.
Uhlander went to one window that was not concealed by green drapes, and he stood with his back to the French panes. Outside, because the storm-gray afternoon was waning toward an early-winter twilight, not much daylight found its way past the lush vegetation of the formal gardens and to the library window. Nevertheless, sufficient brightness lay behind Uhlander to reduce him to only a silhouette, leaving his face in deep shadows that concealed his expression.
Dan approached the desk, stepped into the circle of jeweled light, and looked down at Boothe, who had lifted a glass of whiskey. 'Why would a man of your position and reputation get involved with someone like Willy Hoffritz?'
'He was brilliant. A genius in his field. I have always sought out and associated with the brightest people,' Boothe said. 'They're the most interesting people, for one thing. And for another, their ideas and enthusiasms are often of great practical use in one of my businesses or another.'
'And besides, Hoffritz could supply you with an utterly passive, totally submissive young woman who would endure any humiliation you wanted to heap on her. Isn't that right, Daddy?'
At last a crack appeared in Boothe's self-possession. For a moment his eyes narrowed hatefully, and his jaw muscles bulged as he clenched his teeth in anger. But his control slipped only one notch, and the crack closed up again in seconds. His face recomposed itself, and he sipped his whiskey.
'All men have ... weaknesses, Lieutenant. In that regard, I'm a man like any other.'
Something in his eyes, in his expression, and in his tone of voice belied any admission of weakness. Rather, it seemed as if he were merely being magnanimous by claiming to share the weaknesses of ordinary men. It was all too clear that he didn't believe there was anything wrong or even slightly morally suspect in his behavior with Regine, and his admission was not an act of contrition or humility but one of smug condescension.
Shifting to another tack, Dan said, 'Hoffritz might have been a genius, but he was bent, twisted. He applied his knowledge and his talents not to legitimate behavior-modification research but to developing new techniques of brainwashing. I'm told by people who knew him that he was a totalitarian, a fascist, an elitist of the worst sort. How does that square with your own widely heralded liberalism?'
Boothe regarded Dan with pity, disdain, and amusement. As if speaking to a child, he said, 'Lieutenant, everyone who believes that the problems of society can be solved through the political process is an elitist. Which means most people. It doesn't matter if you're a right-winger, a conservative, a moderate, a liberal, or an extreme left-winger. If you define yourself by any political label, then you're an elitist because you believe that problems could be solved if only the right group of people held power. So Willy Hoffritz's elitism was of no concern to me. I happen to believe the masses need to be guided, controlled—'
'Brainwashed.'
'Yes, brainwashed, but for their own good. As the world's population grows ever larger and as technology leads to a wider dissemination of information and ideas, the old institutions like family and Church break down. There are new, more dangerous ways for the discontented to express their misery and alienation. So we must find methods of eliminating discontent, of controlling thought and action, if we're to have a stable society, a stable world.'
'I see why you used libertarian political-action committees as a front for financing McCaffrey and Hoffritz.'
Boothe raised his eyebrows. 'You know about that, do you?'
'I know considerably more than that.'
Boothe sighed. 'Libertarians are such hopeless dreamers. They want to reduce government to a minimum, virtually eliminate politics. I thought it would be amusing to work toward exactly the opposite ends while employing the cover of a libertarian crusade.'
Albert Uhlander still stood with his back to the French window, attentive but unreadable, a silent silhouette that moved only to raise the black outline of a whiskey glass to unseen lips.
'So you supported Hoffritz and McCaffrey and Koliknikov and Tolbeck and God knows how many other twisted "geniuses,"' Dan said. 'And now, while searching so diligently for a way to control the masses, you've lost control. One of these experiments has run wild, and it's rapidly destroying everyone involved in it. Soon it's going to destroy you as well.'
'I'm sure you find this ironic turn of events to be enormously satisfying,' Boothe said. 'But I don't believe you know as much as you think you do, and when you hear the entire story, when you know what's happening, I think you'll be as eager as we are to stop the killing, to put an end to the terror that came out of that gray room. You're sworn to protect and preserve lives, and I am familiar enough with your record to know that you take your oath seriously, even solemnly. Though the lives you'll have to protect are mine and Albert's, and though you despise us, you'll do what's necessary to help us, once you know the whole story.'
Dan shook his head. 'You have nothing but disdain for the honor and integrity of common people like me, yet you're relying on that honor to save your ass.'
'That ... and certain inducements,' Uhlander said from his place at the window.
'What inducements?' Dan asked.
Boothe studied him intently. Bright miniature patterns of Tiffany stained glass reflected in his icy eyes. Finally he said, 'Yes, I suppose it won't hurt to explain the inducements first. Albert, would you bring it here, please?'
Uhlander returned to the chair where he had been sitting, put his whiskey glass on a nearby table, and picked up a suitcase which had been standing beside the chair but which Dan hadn't noticed until now. He brought the piece of luggage to Boothe's desk, put it down, and opened it. The suitcase was filled with fifty- and hundred-dollar bills in neatly banded stacks.
'Half a million dollars, cash,' Boothe said softly. 'But that's only part of what I'm offering you. There's also a position available with the Journal. Head of security. It pays more than twice your current salary.'
Ignoring the cash, Dan said, 'You pretend to be so cool, but this makes it clear just how desperate you are. This is out of panic. You say you know me, so you know an offer like this would almost surely have the opposite effect intended.'
'Yes,' Boothe said, 'if we wanted you to do something that was wrong in order to earn the money. But I hope to show you that what we want you to do is the right thing, the best thing, the only thing that a man of conscience could possibly do under the circumstances. I believe that, once you know what's happening, you'll do the right thing. Which is all that we want. Really. You'll see that the money isn't being offered to alleviate your guilt, but ... well, as a bonus for good deeds well done.' He smiled.
'You want the girl,' Dan said.
'No,' Uhlander said, his eyes glittering, his face more hawklike than ever in the queer mix of shadows and colored light. 'We want her dead.'
'And quickly,' Boothe said.
'Did you offer Ross Mondale this much money? Wexlersh and Manuello?' Dan asked.
'Good heavens, no!' Boothe said. 'But now you're the only one who knows where to find Melanie McCaffrey.'
Uhlander said, 'You're the only game in town.'
From their side of the desk, they watched Dan with carnivorous anticipation.
He said, 'Apparently, you're even more depraved than I thought. You think killing an innocent child could in any way be construed as the right thing, a good deed.'
'The operative word is "innocent,"' Boothe said. 'When you understand what happened in that gray room, when you realize what's been killing all these people—'
'I think maybe I already know what's been killing them,' Dan said. 'It's Melanie, isn't it?'
They stared at him, surprised by his perception.
'I read some of your book, the one about astral projection,' he told Uhlander. 'With that and other things, I've begun to piece it together.'
He had hoped that he was wrong, had dreaded finding out that his worst suspicions were correct. But there was no escaping the truth. A cold despair, as real and almost as tangible as the drizzling rain outside, poured over him.
'She's killed all of them,' Uhlander said. 'Six men so far. And she'll kill the rest of us if she has the chance.'
'Not six,' Dan said. 'Eight.'
*  *  *
The Spielberg film had ended. Earl had bought tickets for the next showing of another PG film in the same multiplex. He and Laura had settled into seats in the new theater, with Melanie ensconced between them once more.
Laura had watched her daughter closely through the first movie, but the child had shown no sign of going to sleep or crawling deeper into her sheltering catatonia. Her eyes had continued to follow the action of the screen through the end of the story, and once a smile had flickered so very briefly at the corners of her mouth. She had not spoken or even made a wordless sound in response to the celluloid fantasy, and she had moved only once or twice, no more than slightly shifting in the theater seat, but even the minimal attention that she had paid to the movie constituted an improvement in her condition. Laura was more hopeful than she had been at any time in the past two days, although she was far from sanguine about the girl's prospects for total recovery.
Besides, It was still out there.
She checked her watch. Two minutes until showtime.
Earl scanned the crowd, which was half the size of that for the previous movie. He appeared to be merely people watching, neither suspicious nor tense. He was less concerned than he had been before the other show had begun; this time, he reached inside his coat to check for his gun only once before the house lights dimmed and the big screen lit up.
Melanie was slumped in her seat more than she had been before, and she looked wearier. But her eyes were open wide, and she seemed to be focused on the screen as previews of coming attractions began.
Laura sighed.
They had gotten through most of the afternoon without incident. Maybe everything would be all right now.
*  *  *
'Eight?' Uhlander was aghast. 'You say she's killed eight?'
'Six,' Boothe insisted. 'Only six so far.'
'You know about Koliknikov in Vegas?' Dan said.
'Yes,' Boothe said. 'He was the sixth.'
'You know about Renseveer and Tolbeck up in Mammoth?'
'When?' Uhlander asked. 'My God, when did she get them?'
'Last night,' Dan said.
The two men looked at each other, and Dan could feel a surge in the current of fear that passed between them.
Uhlander said, 'She's been disposing of people in a certain order, according to how much time they spent in that gray room and according to how much discomfort they caused her. Palmer and I were there far less than any of the others.'
Dan was tempted to crack sarcastic about Uhlander's choice of the word 'discomfort' instead of the more accurate 'pain.'
He saw why they had been so low-key when he had first arrived, so confident that they had time to enjoy a drink and to proceed cautiously; they had expected to be the last of the ten conspirators to be killed, and as long as they had thought Howard Renseveer and Sheldon Tolbeck were still alive, they had been frightened but not yet panicked.
Beyond the huge French windows, even the dim gray light was fading.
Within the library, shadows were growing and shifting as though they were living creatures.
The glow from the Tiffany lamp seemed to grow brighter as the daylight dimmed. The multicolored, luminescent spots, when combined with the encroaching shadows, made the large room seem smaller, and somehow brought to the decreasing space the feeling of a Gypsy wagon or tent or other fantastic carnivalesque setting.
'But if Howard and Sheldon are dead,' Boothe said, 'then we're next and ... she ... she could come at any time.
'Any time,' Dan confirmed. 'So we don't have the leisure for drinks or bribery. I want to know exactly what went on in that gray room—and why.'
Boothe said, 'But there's no time to tell it all. You've got to stop her! You evidently know we were encouraging OOBE—out-of-body-experiences—in the girl, and that she—'
'I know some of it, and I suspect more, but most of it I don't yet understand,' Dan said. 'And I want to know it all, every detail, before I decide what to do.'
A tremor shook Boothe's voice: 'I need another drink.' He got up and went unsteadily to the bar, which was tucked in one corner of the room.
Uhlander collapsed into the chair that Boothe had vacated. He looked up at Dan. 'I'll tell you about it.'
Dan pulled up another chair.
At the bar, Boothe was so nervous that he dropped a couple of ice cubes. When he poured more bourbon for himself, the neck of the Wild Turkey bottle chattered against the rim of his glass before he could steady his shaky hand.
*  *  *
Laura kept leaning over to look in Melanie's face.
The girl had slumped even farther in her chair.