THE DARK DOOR
Hate Wilhelm


ST. MARTIN'S PRESS II
NEW YORK
THE DARK DOOR. Copyright 1988 by Kate Wilhelm. All rights reserved, Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Design by Judith Stagnitto Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wilhelm, Kate, The dark door / Kate Wilhelm. p. cm. ISBN 0-312-02182-8 I, Title. PS3573.I434D37 1988 813'.54dc19
88-14777 CIP
1098765432

Prologue
The pursuit of knowledge was the only endeavor worthy of intelligence, the master had taught, and the student Kri believed without question. As time passed, the student Kri achieved high status, not yet a master, but already an associate, and together he and the master developed and launched the first probe for life among the stars.
The tiny cylinder passed through interspace and back as programmed, but in the messages it now sent were streaks of clashing colors, wavery mud-gray splotches, even a black spray that swelled and shrank, appeared and vanished. With regret the master shadowed the self-destruct panel. The fountain of multihued lights that recorded the probe existence dimmed and faded. The messages ceased.
The second probe, much altered, did not send any messages after its passage through interspace, but now a column of blackness marred the fountain of lights. This black column did not waver, nor did it grow; however, it shifted, first here, then there. It persisted despite all their efforts to remove it. Again the master shadowed the self-destruct panel; the column of darkness continued to lash within the fountain of lights. No messages were forthcoming.
Reviewers were appointed to examine the work, test the equations, study the methods; they could find no flaw, yet the fountain of many colors remained disfigured and hideous, marred by darkness that had become the darkness of ignorance, and then the shadow of fear.
"We cannot find the probe," the master said at the review hearing. "Once it passed through interspace, it was lost to us. We know it still exists somewhere. We know it is seriously flawed, perhaps fatally flawed. It will pass out of the galaxy eventually, and until it does, it poses a problem, perhaps even a threat to any life form it locates. It is beyond our ability to stop it or to correct it. We have tried to no avail."
The reviewers gazed at the marred fountain of light, a pale, sad flicker here and there the only visible reaction among them. After the adjournment, the master own lights dimmed and faded; before the associate could follow his example, the reviewers intervened.
"Associate Kri," the master of reviewers said, "the pursuit of knowledge is to the academy the highest order of intelligence, second only to love and respect for intelligence itself. You and your master have brought dishonor to the academy, and a threat to life. However, in doing so, you have also alerted us to the dangers of unknown hazards that lie in interspace. We thought ourselves ready to travel among the stars, and we find instead that we must be resigned to roam no further than the reaches of our own star system until we have solved the problems your probe has revealed. Because the good you have brought to your own race is overshadowed by the evil that you may have brought to other life forms, it is the decision of this review panel that you must complete the project you have begun. Until the lights of the probe fade, you will monitor them, for however long the probe continues to exist."
Kri's own lights dimmed and flickered. "May I," he asked in a low voice, "continue to work on the probe in order to try to solve this mystery?"
"Yes, Associate Kri. That is the only task you will have for as long as it exists."
The cylinder emerged from interspace in the star system of a primary with five satellites. One by one it orbited the satellites until it found life. When it completed its examination of the planet, it left behind a trail of destruction-death and madness. Associate Kri prayed to the intelligence that ruled all life to destroy it, but the fountain of many lights remained undiminished; the blackness at its heart continued. It did not respond to shadowing of the destruct panel; it did not send any messages.
On the planet Earth fur-clad hunters pursued shaggy mastodons across the ice sheets to the steppes beyond, and some kept going south, always south. They came in waves, seeking better hunting, more hospitable territory, and then the ice crashed into the sea, and the retreat vanished.
In time, Kri people launched an interspace starship, then another, and another. Some of them even searched for the tiny cylinder, but they could not find it in the immensity of space. Kri continued to monitor the fountain of lights with the blackness of evil at its core. He knew exactly when it emerged from interspace, when it reentered. He could not know what it did in the intervals. He no longer saw the multihued lights; all he could see was the blackness, the dark door of evil.

Chapter 1
June 1979. Carson Danvers knew he was being overly cautious, getting insurance quotes for all four places he was considering, but he had time, and it was better to be cautious before the fact than have cause for regrets afterward. Although River House was fourth on his list, he and Elinor had already decided this was the one they really wanted. Half an hour out of Washington, D.C., through lush countryside with gentle hills and woods, a tiny village a few miles past the inn, it was perfect. He would keep the name, he had already decided. River House, a fine gourmet restaurant for the discriminating. He glanced at Elinor's profile, caught the suggestion of a smile on her lips, and felt his own grin broaden. In the back seat his son Gary chatted easily with John Loesser. Gary was seventeen, ready for Yale in the fall; it was time to make the change if they were ever to do it. He suppressed the urge to laugh and sing; John Loesser would never understand.
Carson pulled off the Virginia state road onto a winding blacktop driveway and slowed down to navigate the curves, several of them before the old inn came into sight. The grounds were neglected, of course-rhododendrons thirty feet high, blackberry brambles, sumac-and the building had the windows boarded up. But even so its air of regal affluence was unmistakable. Three stories high, with a wide antebellum porch and beautifully carved pillars that reached to the third level, it bespoke the graciousness of the century past.
"We'd keep the upper levels for our own living quarters," he said over his shoulder to John Loesser. "A main dining room downstairs, several smaller rooms for private dinners, a lounge, that sort of thing. I'll have to do a lot of remodeling of course, but cheaper than trying to build at today's prices."
"If it's structurally sound," John Loesser said in his precise way.
He did not have stars in his eyes, and that was all to the good, Carson thought. One of them should stay practical, add up the pennies, add in insurance costs. That was John Loesser's department, assessing the insurability of the place. He stopped his Buick at the front entrance. As soon as they left the airconditioned car, the heat of late June in Virginia assailed them. Carson pulled off his coat, and after a moment John Loesser did also. Elinor was sensibly dressed in a cotton shift and sandals, her legs bare, and Gary had on shorts and a tank top. Only the businessmen, Carson thought with some amusement, went through the motions of suits and ties. And after he bought River House, made it the restaurant he had long dreamed of owning, he promised himself never to wear a necktie again in his life, or a coat in the summer.
"I have flashlights," he said, opening the trunk of the Buick. "I loosened some of the boards on the windows last week, but the basement's like a cave." He handed John Loesser a large flashlight, took another for himself, and saw that the other man was staring at two rifles also in the trunk.
"Gary's going to get in some practice while we're going over the building." He closed the trunk and tossed the keys to his son.
Elinor watched the three men remove some of the window boards, then go on to the next bunch and take them down. How alike they were, she thought, surprised, all three over six feet, all blond. Of course, Gary was still somewhat frail-looking, having shot upward over twelve inches in the past year; it might take him three or four years to fill in the frame he was constructing for himself. Seventeen, she found herself marveling. A sharp image superimposed itself before her eyes, eclipsing for a second the three men: an image of herself walking with Carson, with Gary in the middle swinging from their hands, laughing. Yesterday. Ten years, twelve years ago. She shook her head and turned to the front door of the inn, put the key in the padlock, and opened it. When she entered, she left the door wide open to admit air and more light.
On one side was a wide sculpted staircase sweeping up in a graceful curve. They would have a women's lounge up there; permit the customers to fantasize briefly of being the lady of the house, making a grand entrance to a crowded, suddenly hushed ballroom, glittering with the wealth of the Virginia aristocracy. Elinor smiled to herself. That was her fantasy. The area to the right had held the registration desk; nothing was there's now. A closed door led to a narrow hallway and small offices. To the left of the entrance stretched a very large room with a centered fireplace built with meticulously matched river stones. She could visualize the palm trees, the velvet-covered lounges and chairs, low, ornately carved tables, brass lamps .... Only faded, rose-colored flocked wallpaper remained. She moved through the large open space toward the back of the building. Suddenly she stopped, blinded by a stabbing headache; she groped for the doorway to steady herself.
An overwhelming feeling of disorientation, of dizziness, swept her, made her catch her breath and hold onto the door frame; her eyes closed hard. The moment passed and she could feel a vein throbbing in her temple, a knife blade of pain behind her right eye. Not now, she moaned to herself, not a migraine now. She opened her eyes cautiously; when the pain did not increase, she began to move again, through a corridor to the rear of the inn. She unlocked another door and threw it wide open, went out to another porch to lean against a railing. She took one very deep breath after another, forcing relaxation on her neck muscles, which had become like iron. Gradually the headache eased, and by the time Carson and John Loesser moved into sight, it was a steady throb, no longer all-demanding.
Carson saw her leaning on the rail and felt a familiar twinge of pleasure. Standing like that, in profile, as trim and as slender as she had been twenty years ago, she looked posed. She looked lovely. "Are you married?" he asked John Loesser.
"My wife died five years ago," Loesser said without expression.
"Oh, sorry." Loesser was already moving on. Carson caught up again. "Here's the back entrance. We'll have a terrace down there, and tables on the porch overlooking the river. The property extends to the bank of the river. I want it to be like a garden, invite strolling, relaxing."
They went through the open back door, on to the kitchen, which would need a complete remodeling, walls to come out, a dumb waiter to go in. Carson was indicating his plans when John Loesser suddenly grunted and seemed about to fall. He reached out and caught a cabinet, steadied himself, stood swaying with his eyes shut. By the time Carson got to him, he was pushing himself away from the cabinet. A film of perspiration covered his face; he looked waxy and pale. Carson's first thought was heart attack, and with that thought came the fear men his age, mid-forties, always suffered. Loesser was that age, too, he knew. He took Loesser's arm.
"Let's go outside, get some air. Are you okay?"
"I'm all right," John Loesser said, pulling free. His voice was faint; he sounded puzzled, not afraid. "A dizzy spell. Could there be some gas in here? Bad air?"
Carson looked at him doubtfully. "How? I've been all over this building three times already Elinor, Gary, we've been in every room, and that was with the boards on the windows, before we were allowed to open it up at all."
Loesser drew in a deep breath, his color back to normal, a look of irritation the only expression Carson could read. "Whatever it was, it gone now. I have a bit of a headache, maybe that's to blame. You understand any figure I come up with is a ball park figure, contingent on many other reports. A termite inspection, for example."
Carson nodded and they wandered slowly throughout the other rooms on the main floor. Something was different, he thought suddenly, It was true that he and Elinor and Gary had prowled through the building three times, but now something was changed. He felt almost as if something or someone lurked just out of sight, that if he could swivel his head fast enough, without warning, he might catch a glimpse of an intruder. He had had a violent headache ever since their arrival. Pain throbbed behind his eyes. It was the damn heat, he decided; maybe a storm was building, the air pressure was low. Or high; it felt as if the air was compacted, pressing against his head. He and Loesser went up the wide, curving staircase to the second floor, where he began to outline the plans for a women's lounge.
Suddenly he heard Elinor scream, a piercing shriek of terror, cut off by a gunshot. He turned and raced through the upstairs hallway to the rear stairs, John Loesser ran toward the stairs they had just ascended. Before Carson reached the first floor there was another gunshot that sounded even louder than the first. He tore out to the porch, pounded to the far end of it, and saw Elinor crumpled on the floor.
One of her sandals was gone, he thought distantly. How could that have happened? He touched her face. One eye was open, as blue as the dress twisted about her thighs. The other side of her face was gone. He touched her cheek, whispering her name. He started to gather her up, to lift her, carry her inside, straighten out her dress. From a long way away he heard a man's anguished wail. Angered by the noise, he jerked up, snapped around, and saw his son Gary leveling the rifle at him. He was still moving when the gun fired, and fired again. He was flung backward by the momentum, stopped briefly by the porch rail. Then he toppled over it to fall to the thick underbrush below.
He came awake slowly and did not know where he was, why he was sleeping in the shrubbery. He tried to rise and fell back to the ground. Someone sobbed; he listened to hear if the other person would say something. An insect chorus crescendoed. He tried to roll to one side and prop himself up, but found that one of his arms had turned to lead. There was no pain. Something was wrong with his vision; he wiped his eyes with the hand that worked. Sticky. Suddenly he really looked at his hand and saw blood; memory returned, and pain swamped him. He heard the distant sob again and knew this · time that he was making the noise. Elinor! Gary! He began to work at pulling himself up, rising first to his knees. Then, fighting dizziness and nausea, he got to his feet. He staggered, fell, and rested before starting again.
Falling, crawling, staggering, pulling himself along with his good hand grasping the brambles and scrub trees, he hauled himself to the building, then up the stairs to the porch, where he collapsed again. After many minutes he started to inch his way to Elinor. The entire end of the porch was awash in blood. Elinor was not there.
A wave of pain took his breath away; he pitched forward and lay still. When he could open his eyes again, he saw her footprints, one shod, one bare. She must have gone for help, he thought clearly, and in his mind the vision of her destroyed face and head swelled, dwindled, and swelled again like a pulse. He forced himself to his feet.
For the next hour he followed the bloody footprints, sometimes on his knees, sometimes staggering on his feet. At the bottom of the curved stairs there was a bigger pool of blood, more prints. He picked up a wallet. Loesser must have dropped it, he thought distantly, the way Elinor lost her sandal. He put the wallet in his pocket and pulled himself up the stairs, resting more and more often now; sometimes he slept a little, woke to hear his own groans. Slowly, he moved on upwards.
They were all around him, he realized during one of his rests. The intruders he had sensed before were still here, everywhere, watching him, surrounding him, pressing against his head, waiting. He came to the rifle and rested by it, moved on. Then the prints stopped. He lay with his cheek on the floor and knew one of the bloody trails was his own. Straight ahead was a closet with an open door; the bloody path ended there. He sighed tiredly and lifted his head, tried to see past a blackness that filled the doorway from top to bottom. Inky blackness, nothing else.
He rested. They were here, everywhere, he thought again, from a great distance. Waiting. Suddenly he jerked awake. Waiting for him to bleed to death. Waiting for him to die! Slowly he began to retrace his trail. He rolled most of the way down the stairs. He found himself at the Buick and fell onto the front seat and rested a long time. It was getting dark. Key, he thought. He had tossed his keys to Gary. Without any thought or plan, he found Elinor keys in her purse on the passenger seat. He got the car started, and aimed at the state road. When he reached it, he slumped forward and slept.
He heard a soothing voice, felt hands on him, tried to return to the drifting state that was not sleep, but pleasanter because it was dreamless oblivion. The voice persisted. "Can you hear me? Come on, Mr. Loesser, wake up. You're safe now. You'll be all right. Wake up, Mr. Loesser."
He was being pulled back in spite of himself.
"A little more, Mr. Loesser, then you can sleep again." The voice changed slightly. "He can hear you and answer if he wants to."
A different voice spoke. "Who shot you, Mr. Loesser?"
He opened his eyes, realized that only one seemed to work, and reached up to feel a bandage that covered most of his face. He remembered being awake earlier, remembered wanting, being denied, a sip of water, being allowed to sleep again.
"Who shot you, Mr. Loesser?" The speaker was out of focus, thin-faced, sad-looking.
"Gary," Carson said and heard it as a croak.
"Did you say Gary? You mean Gary Danvers?"
"Gary," he said again and closed his eye. "My wife-"
"Yes. Your wife? What about your wife?"
"Dead," he said in his strange croaking voice.
The other voice came back, the soothing one. "Go back to sleep now, Mr. Loesser. Your wife died a long time ago. Remember? That was a long time ago."
"What that all about?" the sad man asked.
"He confused. Shock, trauma, loss of blood. His wife died in an airplane accident more than five years ago. Let him rest now. You won't get much out of him until the Demerol wears off, anyway"
"Okay. Okay. I'll drop in tomorrow."
Carson Danvers drifted and thought that if he were John Loesser, he would have grieved for his dead wife a long time ago. He slept.

Chapter  2
"Mr. Loesser," Dr. McChesney said, "go back home. Don't hang around here. I can recommend a doctor to oversee your convalescence now. You need to be with friends, relatives, people who know you and care for you. All this brooding about what you might have done is pointless, Mr. Loesser. I've talked to the detectives, and they all agree that there was nothing more. In fact, it was very brave, perhaps even foolhardy, for you to try to help at all."
Carson Danvers sat on the side of his bed. His face was swathed in bandages. A bullet had grazed his cheekbone, had torn away most of the flesh on one side. He would need plastic surgery. His right arm was in a cast. A bullet had gone through his shoulder. His torso was bandaged. They had gone in and removed part of a rib shattered by the third bullet. The rib had deflected it, sent it back outward through a second hole. Except for the plastic surgery, he was repaired, healing, ready to be 'discharged from the hospital.
Dr. McChesney stood up. "If you decide to stay around here, I can recommend a rooming house where they'll take care of you, and I'll have my nurse set up an appointment in my office next week."
"That's what I'll do," Carson said. Talking hurt; he kept it at a minimum.
"Okay, I'll make the arrangements. Your company will pick up the bill, they said. You're on sick leave for the next three months and we'll evaluate your situation then. Nothing to worry about on that score." He regarded his patient for a moment, then put his hand on Carson's shoulder. "I don't know how the hell you dragged yourself up those stairs, either. God knows, John, you did more than was human as it was. Don't torture yourself. I'll send in the nurse for you."
Carson knew he had to tell them the truth about who he was, but not yet, he thought. Not yet. Elly parents, her sister, his parents .... How could he tell them Gary had gone crazy and killed his mother? Even trying to form the words it would take to tell them brought a long shudder and made his eyes sting with tears. Not yet.
The strange thing was the ease with which he was getting away with being John Loesser. They had found a wallet-Loesser's wallet-in his pocket; Carson's things were in his coat left in the Buick that day. Even the man the company sent out had accepted him. Of course, he had not known Loesser personally, but he had seen him a time or two. Carson had not been expected to talk then, and the bandages had concealed his identity further, but even so, he mused, even so. The few times he had started to explain, he had gone dumb, started to shake, lost control. Twice they had given him an injection to put him to sleep again, and the last time they had sent in a new doctor whose name had already escaped him. A shrink, he had realized after a short time. Guilt, the shrink had stated ponderously, was the most debilitating emotion of all. He had talked on, but Carson had stopped listening. Guilt of the survivor, he realized, was what the shrink assumed he was suffering from. And he was, he was. Guilt over doing something so horrible to Gary that he had turned on his own parents with a gun. Guilt over not being able to help his dead wife. Guilt over not being able to help his child. Guilt, guilt, guilt. But as John Loesser the guilt was abstract, distant. He would tell them later, he had decided that day. Much later.
Two weeks after leaving the hospital he flew to Richmond and let himself into Loesser's apartment. He still had bandages on his face, would have them until plastic surgery did its magic. People he met averted their gaze, and that was fine with him. The apartment was scrupulously neat almost obsessively so-with good paintings, good books, good furniture, good stereo and television. Money, he thought bleakly. Loesser had had money. He had not given it any consideration until then. He went through the apartment carefully, getting to know his host, not liking him, but reassured because it became more and more apparent that Loesser had had no friends or relatives. Had he become a recluse after his wife death, or had the trait always been there? There were names in an address book; he recognized a few from cards he had received impersonal, duty cards-while he was still hospitalized. He found the financial statements. There was real money. Mrs. Loesser insurance had been half a million dollars, a traveler policy that anticipated the worst scenarios, and now and then paid handsomely. He found her picture, a pretty woman with a small mouth, upturned nose, blue eyes. A forgettable face. The picture had been put away in a closet in a box of mementos, along with her college diploma, and medical records dating from childhood up to the time over five years ago when they had ceased to matter.
He spent the weekend there, learning about Loesser, learning about money, about stock holdings, bonds, certificates of deposit. No one challenged him. The building superintendent knocked on the door, and when Carson opened it on the chain, the man hardly glanced at him. He had heard, he said; what a hell of a thing. If there was anything he could do.... He went away.
Carson sat in the darkening room on Sunday and suddenly was overwhelmed with grief that shook his frame, made his cheek hurt with a stabbing pain, made his chest tighten until he feared-and would have welcomed a heart attack. He had to call her parents, he knew, but not yet. Not until they found her, found Gary. No bodies had been recovered. Not yet.
He drove Loesser Malibu back to Washington, and collapsed into bed as soon as he arrived at his rooming house. He could get an apartment, he thought, staring at the ceiling, a good apartment with a view, and there he would wait until they found her, found Gary, and then he would call her parents. The next day he drove out to the inn.
Someone had come and boarded it all up again, exactly the same as it had been the first time he had seen it. He walked around the building and stopped at the back porch where he had found her. Although it had been scrubbed clean, in his mind the blood was there, her body was there, one sandal missing. Where had it gone? He almost went down the stairs to the tangle of briars to search for it. He clutched the rail with his good hand and rubbed his eyes with the other. He remembered rising, seeing his son with the rifle. Suddenly, cutting through the memories, there was the other thing again, just as it had been the last time. Something present but out of sight. Carson did not move, held his breath listening. No sound. But something was there, he knew without doubt. Something. Slowly he turned, and now he closed his eyes, concentrating on that something. He felt as if he had moved into an electrical field vibrating on a level that did not affect muscles and skin, but was active deep inside his head, making it ache. For a moment he swayed, but the dizziness passed quickly and all he felt now was a headache that was growing in intensity. Like a hangover, he thought from a distance, spacing himself away from it, the way he had learned twenty years ago in college. Pretend it isn't there, think yourself away from it, and let the damn thing ache all it wants. Cholly's advice. Cholly, his college roommate whom he had not thought of in years. The headache became manageable and he opened his eyes with caution, as if afraid of startling away that something that was there with him. He could still feel it; he felt surrounded by it, pressed from all sides. Moving very slowly he started to back away, backed down the steps to the overgrown path, walked deliberately around the building to get inside his car, Loesser car. It was still there with him. He turned on the ignition, and then it was gone.
That night he stood naked before his mirror and regarded the long ugly scar that started somewhere on his back out of sight, curved under his arm and went up to just under his nipple. The scars on his shoulder were uglier, bigger. The skin and bone grafts would blend in, the doctors had said, but it would take time. His face was the worst of all. Hideously mutilated, inflamed, monstrous. Plastic surgery would hide it all, they assured him. He was an excellent candidate for the kind of reconstruction they were capable of now. His gaze traveled down his body and he was mildly surprised to see how thin he had become. He had lost nearly forty pounds. The doctors had been amazed that he had lived through his attack, that his recovery was going along so uneventfully, so quickly. He had been amazed at the same things, but now he knew why he had been spared, knew what he had to do. He had been spared because he had to kill the thing in the inn.
He moved the next day to a bright, airy apartment with a view of the Potomac that looked lovely, inviting. He thought of the river below the inn; was that's where the bodies had been hidden? He knew even as he wondered that that was wrong; they had been taken behind that darkness of the doorway. This time no tears came. He began to think of what he would need. Crowbar. Flashlight. Gasoline. He already had decided he had to burn it out, let fire consume and purify the house. Matches. How terrible it would be to have everything ready and no matches. After a thunderstorm, he decided, when the woods would be wet. He did not want a conflagration in the woods, did not want to hurt anyone, or chance having the fire put out before its work was done. An interior fire that would be out of control before it could be spotted from outside, at a time when no one would be on the road to call a fire department. He made his plans and the next day began to provision himself. There were thunderstorms almost every afternoon; he was able to pick his night.
He felt it as soon as he stopped the car at the inn. It was three-thirty in the morning, an inky black night, the air heavy with leaf mold and forest humus, earthy smells of the cycle of life and death repeated endlessly. He could smell the river, and the grass. He circled the inn to the back, where he forced open the boards on several windows. He climbed in and opened the door, then went back to the porch. Carefully, he poured gasoline where her body had been, followed her invisible tracks through the house, one foot shod, one bare, both bloody; no traces remained, but he knew. He covered the trail with gasoline. Up the curving stairs, through the hallway, to the door where the bloody prints had stopped, where the abyss still yawned. That was where Elinor and Gary were, he knew. They had been taken into the abyss. He sprayed the walls with gas, soaked the floor with it, then finished emptying the can as he retraced his Own trail from that day, down the back stairs, to the porch. It was done. A distant rumble of thunder shook the air. The things all around him, pressing against him, vanished momentarily, then returned as the thunder subsided. Now and then he found himself brushing his hand before his face, as if to clear away cobwebs; his hand passed through emptiness, and they were still there, pressing against him. The dizziness did not come this time, but his head was aching mildly. He struck a match and tossed it to the gleaming wet gasoline where she had lain. The porch erupted into flames that raced through the building, following the trail he had made, through rooms and halls, up the stairs. There was a whoosh of flame from the upper floor. He had not closed the back door; belatedly he wondered if he should have knocked boards off in the front to admit a cross draft. He stood watching the flames blaze up the kitchen wall, and he knew he had done enough. Slowly he turned and walked to the car, taking the something with him, oblivious of the death he had planned for it. He got in and turned on the ignition; as before, it fled. He drove away without looking back.
Over the six months he had more surgery on his shoulder, plastic surgery on his face. A scar gleamed along his cheekbone. They could fix that, they told him. Give it a few months first. He did not go back. He learned to use his right arm all over again; the bank, lawyers, no one questioned the changed signature. They all knew the trauma he had suffered, the difficult recovery he was making. He took from Carson Danvers very little. Carson had been a master chef, and the new person emerging equipped his kitchen with the best cookware available and bought good spices and herbs, but he used them very little. John Loesser had been obsessively neat; the new man liked neatness more than he had realized, but not to such an extreme. Carson had been outgoing, friendly, talkative. He had liked people, liked to entertain people, kid around with them. The new man knew no one; there was no one he wanted to talk to, no jokes, no stories worth repeating any more.
He spent many hours in his darkened apartment in Washington watching the lights on the river, watching the patterns of light in the city, thinking nothing. He spent many hours reliving his past, going over scenes again and again until he knew he had recaptured every detail, then going on to other scenes. At first the pain was nearly intolerable, but over time it lessened and he could even smile at the memories. Their first date, how awkward he had been, how afraid he would offend her, bore her, even frighten her. He had loved her from the very first, and had declared his love much too soon, long before she was ready to consider him seriously. He had been so dumb, tongue-tied with her, and adoring. The pain diminished, but the emptiness grew.
The company sent someone out to see him again, and for the first time he suggested that he might never return work. He talked to the man-Tony Martinelli-in a shadowed living room, making certain he was hidden by shadows. Martinelli did not press him, was probably relieved. They would wait, he had said; there was no rush, no quick decision to be made. But no one had urged him to mend quickly and return. Loesser had had no real friends in the company; no one would miss him. Intime they sent papers; he hired a law firm to represent his interests, and paid no more attention to any of that until one day when he received a letter asking politely if he would mind sending back certain records, certain computer information. He went to the study where he had John Loesser computer, records, files, books-all boxed. He had not looked at any of it. That afternoon he unloaded one box after another and examined the contents. He got out the computer manual and connected parts to other parts as directed, but he did not know what to do with it. There were books on the insurance industry, on computers, on statistics and rates and liability schedules; there were actuarial tables. At last he had something to do, something he could not ask for help with; Loesser was supposed to know all this. It had been weeks since he had called the police to enquire about the missing bodies, weeks since he had thought about revealing his