The Door to December

comes for her then. I mean, last night, in the motel, when she slept, the room got cold and something came, didn't it? And yesterday evening, at the house, when the radio became ... possessed ... and when that whirlwind full of flowers burst through the door, she had her eyes closed and she was ... not asleep but more catatonic than she is most of the time. You remember, Earl? She had her eyes closed, and she seemed unaware of the uproar around her. And somehow It knew she was the least alert, and It came then because she was vulnerable. Is that it? Is that why I have to keep her awake?'
     'Yes,' Dan lied. 'That's part of it. And now I've really got to go, Laura.' He wanted to put his hand to her face. He wanted to kiss the corners of her mouth and say good-bye with more feeling than he had any right to express. Instead, he looked at Earl. 'You take good care of them.'
     'Like they were my own,' Earl said.
     Dan got out of the car, slammed the door, and sprinted across the storm-lashed parking lot to the unmarked sedan that he had left on the other side of the restaurant. By the time Dan started the engine and switched on the windshield wipers, Earl had already pulled out of the lot and was moving off through the hesitant traffic on the rainy street.
     Dan wondered if he would ever see them again.
     Delmar, Carrie, Cindy Lakey ...
     The hated, long-remembered, dream-haunting string of failures cycled through his mind for at least the ten thousandth time.
     Delmar, Carrie, Cindy Lakey ... Laura, Melanie.
     No.
     He wouldn't fail this time.
     In fact, he might be the only cop in the city — the only person within a thousand miles — who was sufficiently fascinated with murder and murderers, sufficiently well versed in their aberrant behavior and psychology, to be able to find his way into the heart of this bizarre case; he was, perhaps, the only one who had any chance of successfully resolving it. He knew more about murder than most men ever would, because he had thought more about it than anyone else he knew and because it had played such an important role in both his personal and his professional life. His contemplation of the subject had long ago brought him to the dismal realization that the capacity for murder existed in everyone, and he was not surprised when he found it in even the least likely suspects. Therefore, he was not now surprised by the suspicions that had grown even more concrete during the past several hours, although Laura and Earl would have been not only surprised but probably devastated by them.
     Delmar, Carrie, Cindy Lakey.
     The chain of failure ended there.
     He drove away from the restaurant, and although he worked hard at keeping his confidence high, he felt almost as bleak as the gray, rain-filled day through which he moved.
    * * *
    The Spielberg film had come out a few weeks before Christmas, but almost three months later, it was still popular enough to fill half the large theater for a weekday matinee. Now, five minutes before the feature was scheduled to start, the audience was murmuring and laughing and shifting in their seats in happy anticipation.
     Laura, Melanie, and Earl took three seats on the right side of the auditorium, halfway down the aisle. Sitting between Laura and Earl, Melanie stared at the giant black screen, expressionless, unmoving, unspeaking, hands limp in her lap, but at least she seemed awake.
     Although it would be more difficult to monitor the girl in the dark, Laura wished that the lights would go down and that the movie would start, for she felt vulnerable in the light, naked and observed among all those strangers. She knew it was silly to worry that the wrong people would see them there and make trouble for them. The FBI, crooked police officers, Palmer Boothe and his associates might all be eager to find her, but that meant they would be out searching, not taking in a movie. They were safe. If any place in the world was a haven from harm, it was that ordinary theater on a rainy afternoon.
     But then, of course, she had decided some time ago that nowhere in the world was safe anymore.
    * * *
    Having decided that a forceful, blunt, and surprise approach would be most effective with Palmer Boothe, Dan drove directly from the coffee shop to the Journal building on Wilshire Boulevard, just a couple of blocks east of the point at which