The Door to December

is a mass of overlapping contusions, scores of them, maybe hundreds. Such a mess. Jesus. Yet no two of those blows have the same configuration. Dozens of points of fracture too, but there's no pattern to the bone injuries. The autopsy will tell us for sure, but based on just a preliminary examination, I'd say the bones sometimes look snapped, sometimes splintered, sometimes ... crushed. Now, there's no damn way a blunt instrument, used as a club, can pulverize bone. A blow will crack or splinter bone, but that's strictly impact. Impact doesn't crush — unless it's tremendous impact, like you get when a car rams a pedestrian and pins him against a brick wall. Generally, you can only crush bone by applying pressure, by squeezing , and I'm talking a lot of pressure.
     'So, what were they hit with?'
     'You don't get me. See, when somebody's bashed as hard and as many times as these guys were, you'll find a pattern of the striking face — rough, smooth, sharp, rounded, whatever. And you'll be able to say, "This fella was wasted with a hammer that had a round striking surface, one inch in diameter, with a gently beveled edge." Or maybe it's a crowbar, the dull end of a hatchet, a bookend, or a salami. But once you've examined the wounds, you'll usually be able to put a name to the instrument. But not this time. Every contusion has a different shape. Every injury appears to've been made by a different instrument.'
     Pulling on his left earlobe, Dan said, 'I suppose we can rule out the possibility that the killer walked into that house with a suitcase full of blunt instruments just because he likes variety. I don't see the victims standing still while he traded the hammer for a shovel and the shovel for a lug wrench.'
     'I'd think that was a safe assumption. The thing is.. . I didn't notice one wound that looked exactly like a hammer blow or like the mark from a crowbar or a lug wrench. Each contusion was not only different from other contusions, but each was unique, oddly shaped.
     'Any ideas at all?'
     'Well, if this were an old Fu Manchu novel, I'd say we have a villain who's invented a fiendish new weapon, a compressed-air machine that has more force than Arnold Schwarzenegger wielding a sledgehammer.'
     'Colorful theory. But not too damned likely.'
     'You ever read Sax Rohmer, those old Fu Manchu books?' Hell, they were full of exotic weapons, far-out methods of murder.'
     'This is real life.'
     'That's what they say.'
     'Real life isn't a Fu Manchu novel.'
     Luther shrugged. 'I'm not so sure. You been watching the news lately?'
     'I need something better than that, Luther. I need a whole lot of help with this one.'
     They stared at each other.
     Then, without a trace of humor this time, Luther said, 'But that is what it looks like, Danny. Like they were beaten to death with a hammer of air.'
    18
    After Laura encouraged Melanie to come out from beneath the desk, she brought the girl up from the hypnotic state. Well, not up exactly: The child didn't rise to full consciousness. Rather, she moved out of the hypnotic trance and more or less sideways, returning to the semicatatonic state in which she'd been since the police had found her.
     Laura had nurtured a small hope that termination of the hypnotic trance would snap the girl out of her catatonia as well. Briefly the child's eyes did fix on Laura's, and she put one hand against Laura's cheek as if disbelieving her mother's presence.
     'Stay with me, baby. Don't slip away. Stay with me.'
     But the girl slipped away nevertheless. The moment of contact was poignant but brief, achingly brief.
     The therapy session had taken its toll from Melanie. Her face was slack with exhaustion, and her eyes were bloodshot. Laura put Melanie to bed for a nap, and the girl was asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.
     When Laura went out to the living room, she discovered that Earl Benton had left his chair and had taken off his suit jacket. He had also drawn the revolver from his shoulder holster and was holding it in his right hand, down at his side, not as if he would use it that very minute, but as if he thought he might have a need for it soon. He was standing at a French window, staring outside, a worried look on his broad face.
     'Earl?' she said uncertainly.
     He glanced at her. 'Where's