The Door to December

stopped swinging on their hinges, and the contents of the refrigerator grew still.
     'Earthquake,' Earl said.
     'Was it?' Laura McCaffrey said doubtfully.
     He knew what she meant. It had been similar to the effects of a moderate earthquake yet ... somehow different. An odd pressure change had seemed to condense the air, and the sudden chill had been too harsh to be attributed entirely to the open refrigerator door. In fact, when the trembling stopped, the air warmed up in an instant, even though the refrigerator door was still open.
     But if not a quake, what had it been? Not a sonic boom. That wouldn't explain the chill or the pressure in the air. Not a ghost. He didn't believe in ghosts. And where the hell had such a thought come from, anyway? He'd run Poltergeist on his VCR a couple nights ago. Maybe that was it. But he was not so impressionable that one good scary movie would make him reach for a supernatural explanation here, now, when a considerably less exotic answer was so evident.
     'Just an earthquake,' he assured her, although he was far from convinced of that.
    * * *
    They figured he was Joseph Scaldone, the owner, because all the paper in his wallet was for Scaldone. But until they got a dental-records confirmation or a fingerprint match, the wallet was the only way they could peg him. No one who knew Scaldone would be able to make a visual identification because the poor bastard didn't have a face left. There wasn't even much hope of getting an ID based on scars or on other identifying marks, because the body was smashed and torn and flayed and gouged so badly that old scars or birthmarks were lost in the bloody ruins. Splintered ribs poked up through holes in his shirt, and a jagged lance of bone had pierced both his leg and trousers.
     He looked ... squashed.
     Turning from the body, Dan encountered a man whose biological clock seemed to be suffering from chronological confusion. The guy had the smooth, unlined, wide-open face of a thirty-year-old, the graying hair of a fifty-year-old, and the age-rounded shoulders of a retiree. He wore a well-cut dark-blue suit, a white shirt, a dark-blue tie, and a gold tie chain instead of a clip or tack. He said, 'You're Haldane?'
     'That's right.'
     'Michael Seames, FBI.'
     They shook hands. Seames's hand was cold and clammy. They moved away from the corpse, into a corner that was clear of debris.
     'Are you guys on this one now?' Dan asked.
     'Don't worry. We aren't pushing you out of it,' Seames assured him diplomatically. 'We just want to be part of it. Just observers ... for the time being.'
     'Good,' Dan said bluntly.
     'I've talked to everyone else working on the case, so I just wanted to tell you what I've told them. Please keep me informed. Any development at all, no matter how unimportant it seems, I want to be informed.'
     'But what justification does the FBI have for stepping into this at all?'
     'Justification?' Seames's face creased with a pained smile. 'Whose side are you on, Lieutenant?'
     'I mean, what federal statutes have been broken?'
     'Let's just say it's a national-security matter.'
     In the middle of his young face, Seames's eyes were old, ancient, and watchful. They were like the eyes of a reptilian hunter that had been around since the Mesozoic Era and knew all the tricks.
     Dan said, 'Hoffritz used to work for the Pentagon. Did research for them.'
     'That's right.'
     'Was he doing defense research when he was killed?'
     'No.'
     The agent's voice was flat, without emotion or inflection, and Dan couldn't be sure if he was lying or telling the truth.
     'McCaffrey?' Dan asked. 'Was he doing defense-type research?'
     'Not for us,' Seames said. 'At least not lately.'
     'For someone else?'
     'Maybe.'
     'Russians?'
     'More likely to be Iraq or Libya or Iran these days.'
     'You're saying it was one of them who financed him?'
     'I'm saying no such thing. We don't know,' Seames claimed in that same bland voice that might easily conceal deception. 'That's why we want in on this. McCaffrey was on a Pentagon-funded project when he disappeared six years ago with his daughter. We investigated him back then, at the request of the Defense Department, and decided he hadn't run off with any new, valuable