The Dark Door by Kate Wilhelm Read Free Book Online Page B

touch of makeup.
    “Wanda, if I weren’t such an old man I’d sweep you off your feet,” Charlie said and kissed her on the mouth. “You’ve lost a couple hundred pounds.”
    “Twenty, Charlie. Just twenty so far. But thanks.”
    He joined Constance and saw with surprise that she had a bottle of wine in an ice bucket and was already drinking it. Before he could comment, she asked, “You’re taking the case? Tell me what you’ve been up to. Okay?”
    He put his hand over hers for a second, then poured wine for himself and started to recount his morning’s activities. He knew about Patrick, knew it must have been bad. Later she would talk about it, he also knew, but now he would fill in the silence.
    Afterwards, he thought that if it had not been for Patrick’s approaching death and his warning that had so disturbed Constance, everything would have been different. She would have been sharper with her questions; he probably would have turned over more of the investigation to Tom Hoagley. Aware that the very fine food Wanda served them was being wasted on Constance, that she was deeply abstracted, he found himself including her in his plans, assuming a partnership, taking it for granted that she would allow herself to become involved. Anything, he thought, to wipe that blank look from her face, to make her refocus her eyes on the here and now, not on some vision Patrick had implanted. He would need her help in reading the newspapers, he said, and she blinked finally and looked at him.
    “Tom is going to get newspapers together from the communities where the fires broke out,” he explained again. “It’s going to make quite a stack, I’m afraid. I’ll need help in going through them, searching for anything that might link one area to another. Okay?”
    He had intended to have Tom Hoagley do that, but saying it this way made him aware that he wanted to do it himself, with Constance helping him. Together they might spot relationships that someone like Hoagley might not see, although he was quite clever.
    “You really think all those fires are related, make a pattern?”
    “Yes,” he said without hesitation; until that moment he had reserved judgment. Even then it might not have been too late if she had pressed him for a reason, pressed him to defend his position. He could not have done it then, but it might have made a difference.

Chapter 5
    Charlie paused outside the partly open door to Constance’s study.
    She was talking: “… and the children who remained in the environment until adolescence never did develop a recognizable form of xenophobia. Instead, what they manifested throughout their adult lives was an attitude of acceptance, empathy, and curiosity about other people. God damn it to hell!” Something slammed onto a table. He glanced inside. She had banged her notebook down. She glared at him.
    “Sorry,” he said. “Lunch. If you want some.” She got up, carefully pushed her chair under her desk, her motions exaggerated, the way she moved when she was mad, then left her room.
    “That idiot! That damn thickheaded idiot!”
    “Waldman?”
    “You know what he told me on the phone? Ten minutes! Because Isaacson wants on the panel, they’re cutting our presentation time to ten minutes each!”
    They went to the dining area in the kitchen and he ladled soup for her, then himself. “You have to condense your presentation?”
    She tasted her soup, nodded, then nodded more vigorously. “Good soup. Let me try it on you. First I’ll start with definitions. Derivations. Xeno from xenos , an old Greek word that was derived from an even older word, xenwos , of unknown origin. The word means strange , stranger , foreign , alien . That sort of thing. As far back as language has existed and been recorded there has always been a word for the others. Okay. Phobia from phobos , Greek again, meaning fear , flight , panic . That derives from bhegw , and phebesthai , and means again, panic , to flee in terror .