Read Online Demon's Door by Graham Masterton - Free Book Online Page B

Every time we get called out here to West Grove, it always involves you , and it’s always something spooky.’
    Dr Ehrlichman gave a sharp, disapproving cough. ‘I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational explanation for this, Lieutenant. It’s my first guess that Ms Lopez was attacked at random by some intruder from outside the campus.’
    The sun was bouncing brightly off the top of Dr Ehrlichman’s bald head. These days he wore rimless spectacles and he had shaved off his droopy moustache, because a woman friend had told him after too many vodkatinis that he looked as if he had bought it in a joke store. As far as Jim was concerned, he now looked like a six-month-old baby that was just about to burst into tears.
    â€˜We don’t yet know if she was – ah – sexually interfered with,’ Dr Ehrlichman added. ‘No doubt we’ll discover that when the doctors have been able to examine her.’
    Nurse Okeke looked unimpressed. ‘Myself, Dr Ehrlichman, I am not at all certain that Maria was attacked by any intruder.’
    Nurse Okeke was Ibo, from Nigeria. She was nearly six foot tall and every move she made had a complicated elegance. Her skin was intensely black, almost blue-black, and she had a haughty, sculptured face, with high cheekbones and hooded eyes. She wore a pale blue button-through overall and a pale blue cotton headscarf, folded with intimidating neatness.
    â€˜Oh, you don’t think so?’ Dr Ehrlichman retorted. ‘Frankly, I don’t see who else could have been responsible. Even the most unruly of our students isn’t capable of doing anything like this. This is the work of some whackjob. Some psychopath.’
    â€˜You misunderstand me, Dr Ehrlichman,’ said Nurse Okeke. ‘I was not suggesting for a moment that any of our students did it. In fact I was not suggesting that anybody did it. To me, Maria’s injuries look more consistent with some kind of accident with farming machinery. I saw similar lacerations and bruises in West Africa, when people fell in front of harvesters, or corn-threshers.’
    Lieutenant Harris dabbed the back of his neck with his Kleenex, and then blew his nose on it. ‘With respect, Nurse Okeke, there probably isn’t a harvester or a corn-thresher within fifty miles of here.’
    â€˜We have lawnmowers here on campus,’ said Nurse Okeke. ‘The blades of a lawn-mower could account for such trauma.’
    â€˜Maybe so,’ said Dr Ehrlichman. ‘But our lawnmowers don’t happen to be in use today, do they? And even if they had been, and the unfortunate Ms Lopez had somehow managed to get herself tangled up in one of them, I am quite certain that the groundsperson involved would have raised the alarm immediately.’
    â€˜Have you informed her next-of-kin?’ asked Lieutenant Harris, trying to change the subject. He didn’t like speculation, or theories, or hunches. This was real life, not Murder, She Wrote .
    Jim said, ‘Maria’s mother works for Sunbright. It’s a domestic cleaning company in Burbank. I managed to get in touch with her boss and he’s agreed to pick her up and drive her to Cedars-Sinai, so that we can meet her there.’
    A black Taurus came up the college driveway and parked at an angle alongside Lieutenant Harris’s Crown Victoria. Two detectives got out – a middle-aged Chinese American in a loud plaid coat, and a young woman with curly blonde hair and a turquoise suit that was half a size too tight for her.
    â€˜Ah – Wong, Madison,’ said Lieutenant Harris. ‘Good of you to join us.’
    â€˜We got here as soon as we could, Lieutenant,’ said Detective Wong. ‘A cattle truck turned over on the Ventura Freeway, and there was prime rib all over.’
    â€˜This man and his excuses,’ said Lieutenant Harris. ‘What was it the last time? That freak storm, with hailstones as big as