Piercing the Darkness (50 page)

CLAIRE JOHANSON GOT
Dr. Mandanhi on the phone only minutes after Jefferson had hung up on Wayne Corrigan.

“Doctor, your report is too weak.”

Dr. Mandanhi was nonplussed, and also a little impatient. “Now . . . which report is that, the first one or the second one, or the second version of the first one?”

Claire made a disgusted face only because Dr. Mandanhi would not see it over the phone. “The first version of the second report, the one establishing that Amber is in too delicate a mental condition to be deposed or to testify.”

“And what do you mean when you say it is too weak?”

“It just doesn’t have enough persuasiveness; it would be too easy for the defense to play down. Corrigan is going to ask for a hearing to decide whether or not Amber should be made to testify, and we need something stronger to present to the court.”

Mandanhi paused a moment. He was clearly unhappy. “Ms. Johanson, we’ve been down this path before. You didn’t think my first report was strong enough either!”

“Well, it’s the way things go—”

“Ms. Johanson, when you first brought me into this, I gave my fairest, most objective opinion regarding Amber’s condition. I agreed with you and with the child’s mother that the child had suffered harm. Why wasn’t that enough?”

Claire was feeling the pressure from above and now from this doctor below. “Because, Dr. Mandanhi, in a court of law an argument has to be forceful, it has to have overwhelming power to persuade. Your first version was too . . . too . . .”

“Too factual?” Mandanhi suggested. “You would rather I lied and fabricated additional trauma just to win a court ruling?”

“Not fabricate, doctor. Enhance maybe, just make your opinions more forceful.”

“Well, I feel I did that with my first report. I gave you what you wanted, and I think more than the facts warranted. Now you want me to do that again?”

Claire hesitated. Then she snapped, “With the facts at hand your second report could be enhanced. Make it stronger, make it persuasive! It shouldn’t be too hard to show how the stress on Amber would cause her permanent psychological harm.”

“Are you asking me to lie?”

“I’m asking you to use the facts, be an advocate, and protect Amber. She must not testify!”

SALLY GOT HER
appointment with Professor Samuel W. Lynch, and made it to his office on time at 6 in the evening. It was an odd hour, but he was usually in his office at this time anyway and would be happy to see her.

He had a new office now, on the second floor of Whitcombe Hall, the main hub of the Bentmore School of Education. Whitcombe Hall was a newer structure of steel, marble, and glass and towered ten stories over the rest of the campus. Apparently Bentmore was proud of its contributions to education and wanted to display that pride in a big way.

Room 210 was more than just a room; it was the whole north end of the floor, divided off by a wall of glass with impressive double doors. The secretary was working late as well, and could look through that glass wall from where she sat and see anyone coming down the hall. She saw Sally the moment Sally got off the elevator, but she didn’t seem to linger on the sight too long. That was comforting.

Sally pushed through the doors and tried to address the secretary from a distance. “April Freeman to see Professor Lynch.”

The lady smiled and nodded. “Yes, the woman from the
Register
?”

“That’s me.”

“All right, fine.” She picked up her telephone and pressed a button. “The lady from the
Register
is here to see you.” She looked at Sally. “He’ll be right with you. Go ahead and have a seat.”

Sally stood near the couch in the waiting area, but did not sit in it. She was too uncomfortable to sit, and apt to run. The fib about being a reporter from the campus newspaper was working so far, but if anyone should think to call the
Bentmore Register
office to check on any of this, her disguise was history. Besides that, a man was already sitting there, and she’d caught him looking at her once, even though he was supposedly reading a magazine. Maybe he was reading that magazine, but maybe he wasn’t. What was he doing here at 6 in the evening? The way she felt right now, every person in that place was a potential killer.

Her heart was pounding; if her hands shook much more, it would
show. She tried to take some deep breaths to steady herself.

“Miss Freeman!”

That voice! After twelve years she still remembered it. She turned.

There stood Professor Samuel W. Lynch. Oh! That tremble was so great, it had to show! She stiffened her body to remain steady, forced a smile, and extended her hand. “Hello.”

He shook her hand. “A pleasure. Come this way.”

He turned, and she followed him back toward his office.

This wasn’t right. It wasn’t twelve years later. It had to be twelve years
ago.
He hadn’t changed. He was still the same, distinguished, overweight, gray-haired gentleman, the same articulate pedagogue she’d admired. She would have recognized him anywhere.

Was she as familiar to him? Hundreds of students must have passed through his life since she was last here; surely her face would be lost behind all the others.

He led her into his office and offered her a comfortable, padded chair. She sat immediately and found herself looking up at just about everything. The booklined walls in this room towered so high overhead that she felt she was sitting in the bottom of a deep well. The room was dead silent, like a crypt.

Lynch took a seat behind his desk and relaxed for a moment, studying her face, his hands clasped in front of his chest.

She looked back at him and tried to smile. She was beginning to feel the silence. This wasn’t right. Someone should be saying something by now.

“So you’re with the
Register
?” he asked, still relaxed, leaning back in his chair.

“Yes, I just started this quarter.”

“And what is your major?”

“Um . . . economics.”

He smiled. “Good enough. What do you think of Professor Parker?”

Oh-oh. Was this a test? Who was Professor Parker? Was it a he or a she? Was Parker even alive?

Sally fumbled. “Oh . . . I still get the profs mixed up. I just transferred in . . .”

He laughed. “No matter. You’ll get to know them, and I’m sure they’ll get to know you. You’ll find we’re a cordial institution, one big
family. Where are you from, anyway?”

She was using a phony accent. “Oh, uh, Knoxville, Tennessee.”

Sally opened her notebook just for something to do, something to fill the awkward, empty time. Her mind had suddenly gone blank as if a dark cloud had entered it. One moment she knew what she was going to say, and the next moment she felt that part of her brain had died.

And Professor Lynch was just sitting there, not saying a word. Silence filled the room like deep water; the warm, stuffy air pressed in on all sides.

“Uh . . . I just wanted to ask you some questions . . .” Sally said, pulling a notebook from her carry bag and leafing through it. Where were the questions? She’d written several down, but now . . . “I’m just trying to find my questions; I had them here somewhere.”

“Don’t be nervous,” said Lynch. “I won’t bite you.”

She laughed. So he’d noticed! “Thank you. I’m still a bit new at this.” She found the questions. “Oh! Here we go. I thought it would be interesting to track down a Bentmore success story and do an article about Owen Bennett.”

He smiled. “Ahhh . . . That would make an interesting story. Owen Bennett is a fascinating man.”

“He was a professor here for many years, I understand.”

“Oh, yes! But say, would you excuse me for just a moment?”

“Certainly.”

He rose from his chair and hurried from the room, leaving her alone in the bottom of this dark, oppressive well.

The silence closed in again, heavier than ever. She had trouble breathing, as if her chest were collapsing, as if the air were too thick to inhale. It had to be her imagination, the stress, the nervousness.

She closed her eyes and opened them again. The room still seemed dark. Maybe darker.

High above her, the walls holding hundreds of books on all those shelves looked like they were leaning more and more toward the center of the room. It was a wonder all the books—and some of them were massive—weren’t sliding off the shelves and crashing down on her. At the same time, the ceiling, distant as it was, seemed to be receding even further away, making this well, this pit, this trap all the more deep.

Sally closed her eyes. She did not want to believe that her old tormentors
were lurking about. She could not accept that she might be trapped in this pit with them, with no escape, helpless, with no choice but to wait for the first clap of their invisible jaws.

But try as she could, she could not shake this . . . this
presence.
No, it wasn’t the walls and the books that were closing in. These illusions were only born out of a devouring, inner terror. There was something else oozing into this room, something from her childhood nightmares—that steady, unrelenting, slowly advancing
thing
of terror, that bogeyman, that monster, that unseen, voracious, undefeatable enemy she could never run fast enough to escape from. It was here somewhere, hiding behind the books, maybe wriggling through them, staring at her, watching her shrink into the chair, watching her tremble and sweat.

Her palms were leaving wet patches on the arms of the chair. Her skin was crawling.

She had to get out of here. She’d made a mistake; she’d walked into a death trap. This room was alive with evil, about to crush her.

She saw it! A cry escaped from her throat before she could stop it. Just behind the desk, directly opposite from where she sat, a row of angry, golden eyes glared at her from the bookshelf. Her own eyes blinked shut. She thought better of that, and opened them again.

They were still there, not moving. But . . . no. They were not eyes. She exhaled slowly and tried with all her might to steady her emotions and her thoughts. She looked at them deliberately; she gazed at them, even challenged them.

They were four golden symbols on the spines of four ornately bound volumes. They still seemed to be staring at her. She tried to stifle her imagination. She had to be objective about this.

She leaned toward them. They were faces. Ghastly, triangular faces, all staring, all seemingly snarling at her. Little gargoyles. Deep, vacant eyes, almost like sockets. Bared teeth. High, shining foreheads.

Her heart began to race. Her mouth dropped open, and she stared transfixed. With fingers numbed and fumbling, she pulled at the chain around her neck. The two rings emerged from hiding and she held them side by side in front of her face, looking at them and then beyond them at the faces on the four volumes.

Identical.

CHAPTER 28

WHEN LYNCH RETURNED
to his office, he found his guest looking quite wilted and noticeably white.

“Are you feeling all right?” he asked.

She smiled weakly. “Oh, to be honest, I think I’m battling a little bit of flu or something.”

“Oh, I’m very sorry. Let’s try to proceed with this interview as quickly as possible, then.”

Sally didn’t feel like proceeding, but she did. She got out her pen, and prepared to take some notes.

Lynch started talking without any questions. “As you must know, Owen Bennett was a law professor here for several years, and a good friend to all of us. He was adventuresome, innovative, intelligent . . .”

This moving tribute to Owen Bennett continued for several minutes. Sally wrote it all down as best she could, hoping desperately to find some point where she could just cut it off, thank Professor Lynch, and get out of there.

Professor Lynch had been sitting in his chair, turned slightly away from Sally, looking at the books on the wall and speaking in fluid sentences, his fingers spread and his hands bouncing against each other, fingertip to fingertip. Now, with hardly any pause at all, but with a strange, ominous change in his tone, he turned his chair toward Sally and continued his comments. “Now, it was in that particular year that
Owen, having completed the initial structuring of the Law Advisement Council and having entrusted its administration to capable hands, took up another, even more pioneering challenge, that of serving on the advisory board for a new visionary effort: The Omega Center for Educational Studies, located in Fairwood, Massachusetts.”

Sally wrote it down. She noticed that he stopped to watch her write it down.

“This came as a surprise to some people. They asked, ‘What interest could you possibly have in that place?’ For a man of Owen’s professional stature, such a role on the advisory board of an obscure, metaphysical institution seemed a condescension.

“But they didn’t know Owen as his closer friends did. Those who knew Owen well knew that he was a master of the politics of power; he understood that power can be a commodity to be sold in exchange for favors and more power, a bribe that can be slipped to the right people to accomplish a certain agenda, and even a lever to control the wills and purposes of underlings or professional enemies. He was already welcome in the company of legislators and judges, corporate executives and politicians, all the
right
people who could make the right things happen in the right places for anyone who had enough influence with which to bargain. Owen had influence, but taking this position gave him even more.