The Door to December

child this young, if she were molested,' Haldane said.
     'Yes. And her hymen's intact,' Pantangello said.
     'Then she wasn't raped,' Haldane said.
     A bleakness settled over Laura as she saw the sorrow and pity in the physician's gentle brown eyes.
     With a voice as sad as it was quiet, Pantangello said, 'She wasn't subjected to ordinary intercourse, no. We can rule that out. But ... well, I can't say for certain.' He cleared his throat.
     Laura could see that this conversation was almost as much of an ordeal for the young doctor as it was for her. She wanted to tell him to stop, but she had to hear it all, had to know, and it was his job to tell her.
     He finished clearing his throat and picked up where he had left off. 'I can't say for certain there wasn't oral copulation.'
     A wordless sound of grief escaped Laura's lips.
     Haldane took her arm, and she leaned against him slightly. He said, 'Easy. Easy now. We don't even know if this is Melanie.'
     'It is,' she said grimly. 'I'm sure it is.'
     She wanted to see her daughter, ached to see her. But she was afraid to open the door and step into the room. Her future waited beyond that threshold, and she was afraid that it was a future filled with only emotional pain, despair.
     A nurse went by without glancing at them, pointedly avoiding their eyes, tuning out the tragedy.
     'I'm sorry,' Pantangello said. He took his hands out of the pockets of his lab coat. He wanted to comfort her, but he seemed afraid to touch her. Instead, he raised one hand to the stethoscope that hung around his neck and toyed with it absentmindedly. 'Look, if it's any help ... well, in my opinion, she wasn't molested. I can't prove it. I just feel it. Besides, it's highly unusual for a child to be molested without being bruised, cut, or visibly hurt in some way. The fact that she's unmarked would tend to indicate she wasn't touched. Really, I'd bet on it. He smiled at her. At least she thought it was a smile, although it looked more like a wince. 'I'd bet a year of my life on it.'
     Fighting back tears, Laura said, 'But if she wasn't molested, why was she wandering around naked in the street?' The answer to that question occurred to her even as she spoke.
     It occurred to Dan Haldane too. He said, 'She must've been in the sensory-deprivation chamber when the killer — or killers — walked into that house. She would have been naked in the tank.
     'Sensory deprivation?' Pantangello asked, raising his eyebrows.
     To Haldane, Laura said, 'Maybe that's why she wasn't killed along with everyone else. Maybe the killer didn't know she was there, in the tank.'
     'Maybe,' Haldane said.
     With swiftly growing hope, Laura said, 'And she must've gotten out of the tank after the killer left. If she, saw the bodies ... all the blood ... that would have been so traumatic. It would sure explain her dazed condition.'
     Pantangello looked curiously at Lieutenant Haldane. 'This must be a strange case.'
     'Very,' the detective said.
     Suddenly, Laura was no longer afraid of opening the door to Melanie's room. She started to push it inward.
     Halting her with a hand on her shoulder, Dr. Pantangello said, 'One more thing.'
     Laura waited apprehensively while the young doctor searched for the least painful words with which to convey some last bit of bad news. She knew it would be bad. She could see it in his face, for he was too inexperienced to maintain a suitably bland expression of professional detachment.
     He said, 'This state she's in ... I called it a "trance" before. But that's not exactly right. It's almost catatonic. It's a state very similar to what you sometimes see in autistic children, when they're going through their most passive moods.'
     Laura's mouth was exceedingly dry, as if she'd spent the last half hour eating sand. There was a metallic taste of fear as well. 'Say it, Doctor Pantangello. Don't mince words. I'm a doctor myself. A psychiatrist. Whatever you've got to tell me, I can handle it.'
     Speaking rapidly now, words running together, anxious to deliver the bad news and be done with it, he said, 'Autism, mental disorders in general, they really aren't my field. Evidently, they're more yours. So I probably shouldn't say anything at all about this. But I want you to be prepared when you