The Door to December

fully enclosed glass booth. It stood at the corner of a property occupied by an Arco service station.
     By the time that he saw the booth and parked beside it, he was shaking badly, not in a panic yet but certainly within sight of one, which wasn't like him. Ordinarily he was calm, collected. The worse that things got, the faster a situation deteriorated, the cooler he became. But not this time. Perhaps it was because he couldn't get Cindy Lakey out of his mind, couldn't forget that tragic failure, or perhaps it was because the murders of his own brother and sister had been much on his mind in the past twenty-four hours, or perhaps the attraction Laura McCaffrey had for him was even far greater than he was yet willing to admit and perhaps the loss of her would be far more devastating than he could imagine. But whatever the cause of his crumbling self-control, he was becoming undeniably more frantic by the moment.
     Wexlersh.
     Manuello.
     Why was he suddenly so frightened of them? He had never liked either of them, of course. They were originally vice officers, and word was that they had been among the most corrupt in that division, which was probably why Ross Mondale had arranged for them to transfer under his command in the East Valley; he wanted his right-hand men to be the type who would do what they were told, who wouldn't question any questionable orders, whose allegiance to him would be unshakable as long as he provided for them. Dan knew that they were Mondale's flunkies, opportunists with little or no respect for their work or for concepts like duty and public trust. But they were still cops, lousy cops, lazy cops, but not hit men like Ned Rink. Surely they posed no threat to Laura or Melanie.
     And yet ...
     Something was wrong. Just a hunch. He couldn't explain the intensity of his sudden dread, couldn't give concrete reasons for it, but over the years he had learned to trust his hunches, and now he was scared.
     In the booth, he hastily and anxiously fumbled in his pockets for coins, found them. He punched the number for California Paladin into the keypad.
     His breath steamed the inner surface of the glass walls, while rain streamed down the exterior. The service station's silvery lights shimmered in the rippling film of water and were diffused through the opalescent condensation.
     That curious lambent luminescence, combined with the unsettling harmonics of the storm, gave him the extraordinary sensation of being encapsulated and set adrift outside the flow of time and space. As he punched in the last digit of Paladin's number, he had the weird feeling that the booth door had closed permanently behind him, that he would not be able to force his way out of it, that he would never see or hear or touch another human being again, but would forever remain adrift in that rectangular prison in the Twilight Zone, unable to warn or to help Laura and Melanie, unable to alert Earl to the danger, unable to save even himself. Sometimes he had nightmares of being utterly helpless, powerless, paralyzed, while right before his eyes a vaguely defined but monstrous creature tortured and murdered people whom he loved; however, this was the first time that such a nightmare had attempted to seize him while he was awake.
     He finished entering the number. After a few electronic beeps and clicks, a ringing came across the line.
     At first even the ringing did not dispel the miasma of fear so thick it inhibited breathing. He half expected it to go on and on, without response, for everyone knew that there were no telephone lines between reality and the Twilight Zone. But after the third ring, Lonnie Beamer said, 'California Paladin.'
     Dan almost gasped with relief. 'Lonnie, it's Dan Haldane again.'
     'Have you regained your senses?'
     'All that stuff I said ... that was just for the benefit of a guy who was listening over my shoulder.'
     'After you hung up, I figured it out.'
     'Listen, as soon as I hang up this time, I want you to call Earl and tell him there's something fishy about all this police-protection crap.'
     'What're you talking about?'
     'Tell him the guys who come to his door might not really be cops and he shouldn't open up to them.'
     'You aren't making sense. Of course they'll be cops.'
     'Lonnie, something bad is about to go down. I don't know exactly