One Door From Heaven

after the death of her son, the mother of the six-year-old wheelchair-bound boy filed suit, too, claiming that Maddoc, in conspiracy with her husband, subjected her to "relentless mental and emotional intimidation using techniques of psychological warfare and brainwashing," until in a state of physical and mental exhaustion, she agreed to terminate her son's life, for which she was remorseful. She dropped all legal action prior to trial, maybe because she didn't have the heart for the media circus that began to pitch its tents or because Maddoc reached an undisclosed settlement with her.
        Luck undeniably favored Preston Maddoc, but you couldn't lightly regard the importance of the powerhouse legal-defense team that his fortune provided or the effect of the twenty-thousand-dollar-per-month public-relations firm that for years worked tirelessly to polish his image.
        He kept a lower profile these days. Indeed, since he had become Sinsemilla's devoted husband and deep-pocket pharmacy, he'd steadily moved farther off the public stage, allowing other true believers to man the barricades on behalf of their vision of a brave new world of greater happiness through useful killing.
        Curiously, Micky could find no reference to Maddoc's marriage. According to every thumbnail biography to be found on the Internet, he was single.
        When a figure as controversial as Preston Maddoc took a wife, the wedding should be news. Whether he'd drawn a marriage license in busy Manhattan or in a sleepy backwater in Kansas, the media would have learned of the event and would have reported it widely, even if the ceremony had been conducted and the bride had been kissed before journalists could fly to the scene with cameras. Yet… not a word.
        Leilani had called it an amazing wedding, though it lacked a carved-ice swan. By now, Micky believed that no matter how outrageous the girl's stories seemed, Leilani never lied. Somewhere, a wedding had been held, without either the carved-ice swan or the breathless attention of the media.
        Understandably, when your bride was a woman like Sinsemilla, you might not want your publicist to seek a three-page spread in People or to arrange for the two of you to do a TV interview with Larry King in celebration of your nuptials.
        Most likely, however, the reason for this singular degree of discretion had been the groom's intention to kill his stepson and stepdaughter if his expectation of extraterrestrial healers wasn't fulfilled. Fewer questions will be asked about your missing children if no one knows they existed in the first place.
        Micky remembered Leilani saying that Maddoc didn't use his own name at campgrounds when they traveled in their motor home and that he affected a different appearance these days. Judging by copyright dates, the most recent photos of him were at least four years old.
        Staring at Dr. Doom's blithe face on the computer, she suspected that his murderous intent toward Lukipela and Leilani wasn't the only reason he kept his marriage secret. A mystery awaited revelation.
        She logged off. The resources on the Internet were exhaustive, but Micky could learn nothing more of use from them. The real world always trumped the virtual, and it always would. The next step was to meet Preston Maddoc face-to-face and take his measure.
        Leaving the library, she was no longer self-conscious about her too-short, too-tight skirt. If she hadn’t canceled, she could have gone to the job interview with confidence.
        In the past couple hours, she'd changed in some fundamental way. She felt this difference profoundly, but she couldn't yet define it.
        Brooding about bioethics, Micky arrived at her Camaro without quite realizing that she'd crossed the parking lot, as though she had teleported from the library to the car in an instant.
        Behind the wheel, she didn't switch on the radio. She always drove by radio. Silences made her edgy, and music was a caulking that filled every jagged chink. But not today.
        The real world trumped the virtual…
        Bioethicists were dangerous because they devised their rules and schemes not for the real world but for a virtual reality in which human beings have no heart, no capacity to love, and where everyone is as convinced of the meaninglessness of life as are the ethicists themselves, where everyone believes that humanity is just meat.
        On her way