The Door to December Read Free

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.'
    3
    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