Shock!. Donald Ph.D. Ladew
we aren't going to be very real to each other."
He walked over to the sofa, sat down next to her, picked up her hand and held it tightly.
"I am going to like you very much."
She started to say something.
"No," he smiled at her tenderly, "don't worry, I will let you set the pace. I can't help how I feel. I wouldn't if I could. To feel affection at all amazes me. Last week, I was convinced the capacity was gone." He took her hand and raised it to his lips gently and placed it back in her lap.
She couldn't answer. She sat silently at a loss for words. "I have a thousand questions, but I think I'll save them for the next time we meet."
As she got up to go, he smiled at her and said, "That's the nicest thing I've heard in a long time."
"What's that?" Grace asked.
"The next time we meet."
"Oh, yes. I'll see you soon, Gilbert." She walked back through the garden. Her legs felt shaky. She was puzzled and elated at the same time.
Chapter 8
Rachel followed Grace out into the garden. Gilbert stood for a long time staring after her, going over everything they'd said. I really don't want this now. I have things to do. She's right; of course, I've seldom been the aggressor. But I know how, I do know how.
He walked slowly across the room to the French doors, closed and locked them, and then more purposefully walked to the other side of the room and opened a smaller door. Two colorful still life paintings covering it made it almost indistinguishable from the rest of the wall.
He went through the door and down a hallway toward the back of the house. Beneath a paneled staircase, he pressed a piece of molding and a small door, only slightly higher than his head, opened silently. Beyond it a light went on automatically. All that could be seen was another staircase going down, and a dark wall covered with unfinished oak planks.
When his great grandfather built the place at the turn of the century his only experience with houses had been those in the East and in England where he'd lived as a boy. A house should have a cellar, he said, in this case a wine cellar.
His grandfather, had for reasons of his own, paneled the area beneath the stairs, and had hidden the entrance to the cellar.
At the bottom of the stairs, Gilbert flipped a switch and the whole area was lit by hooded hundred-watt light bulbs.
Directly in front of the stairs were ten rows of double-sided racks. They stretched from the floor to the ceiling and were filled with bottles. If wine were the only thing of value in the cellar, there was good reason to protect it. Gilbert, like his father, didn't see it in those terms, but as part of his heritage. Like the house, the paintings and other treasures, the wine was something to be protected, preserved and appreciated.
Opposite the last row of racks light shone into a smaller room. It contained a dozen cases of unracked wine and a small desk with a ledger on top and ten other ledgers inside. On a small extension leaf on the side of the desk were several old crystal decanters, a funnel, a sieve and candles.
He leafed through his father's wine log. He'd posted each purchase of wine and spirits, along with the date and his comments regarding the vintage. On the opposite page were entries showing when each bottle was used, with notes on what guests were present, how the wine had fared and other personal comments. His father had been meticulous about keeping the log up to date until the day he died.
He looked forward through the log and saw that his mother had tried to keep it up also. He'd do an inventory one of these days.
He needed a houseman. His father's servant had died a year to the day after his father. Gilbert understood that it would be difficult for him to find someone with that kind of loyalty. Perhaps Mr. Nakamichi could help.
He moved further into the cellar, turned right and moved across an open area toward a solid oak door. On the door was an old brass U-shaped handle. It had a keyhole for a large old-fashioned key, but no lock mechanism.
Near the right side of the door, out of sight on the backside of a twelve-by-twelve oak post, was a small square metal box with a black matte finish. He reached up and snapped a catch on the front and a hinged door dropped down. On a panel above a keyboard red and green LED indicators flashed alternately once every second.
He quickly punched in a series of numbers and the lights stopped flashing, leaving only the green LED lit.
After the last number the door jumped back and a light inside the room came on automatically. When he went in, the door closed quietly behind him.
The room, compared to the rest of the cellar, was surprisingly bare. In the center there was a Spanish refectory table, twelve feet long and three feet wide. There were drawings and charts spread all across the top of the table.
The most prominent was an architectural floor plan of a large building covered with marks and notations in different colors. In the lower right corner in the clear style of the professional draftsman, it said:
PLAN VIEW-CABRILLO SPRINGS PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL & CLINIC
Included were areas showing exterior grounds, entrances, paths, delivery spaces and fences; it was all there in elaborate detail. Weaving through the whole drawing, yellow lines had been added to the drawing. In small neat letters next to a small red box, which joined all the yellow lines at one location, was the legend, 'Alarm System'.
At the other end of the room on a low table covered with electronic equipment sat a modern computer. Surrounding it were several display screens, a high-speed laser printer and a separate rack of telecommunications equipment.
In an office upstairs he'd installed an IBM PC, and a printer connected to a stock-market program. It was a fully functional system that served no practical purpose except to give a legitimate reason for all the phone lines that went to the room in the cellar.
Gilbert wasn't interested in the stock market. It certainly wouldn't have accounted for the almost continuous traffic on three different lines since he'd returned three weeks earlier.
In a world of computer hackers, unknown except to those with his security clearance, Gilbert was a master among amateurs. As an engineer he never undertook a project without all the facts and a thorough plan.
Spread across the rough-planked walls of his subterranean CIC—Combat Information Center—were the products of his training. A close look by someone trained to understand flow charts and the symbols of the systems engineer, would reveal no information about the number of products shipped to customers. There were no graphs showing on-time delivery of sub-systems performing at or above customer expectations. No blocks on his carefully created charts contained engineering information.
What appeared at the top of an elaborate flow chart were four names; the names reduced to code. Beside each name a timeline of one week had been created. The last date noted was two weeks in the future. The closest to present time was one week in the past.
On or about the dates entered beside those names, the persons represented by the codes in the blocks were scheduled to die. To die in ways the public wouldn't understand, but those in the business of clinical psychiatry who committed murder in the name of therapy would surely understand.
At the moment Gilbert applied power to the computers, Grace Melville sat down with her grandmother for afternoon tea. She was late for the event and in a state of high excitement.
Her grandmother was a Porter from Boston and would have been as comfortable in an upper-class English drawing room as she was here, in this house in Los Angeles. A shrewd judge of people, she knew her granddaughter very well.
At five foot one, with rounded cheeks, bright-blue eyes and a cap of pure-white hair she might have been taken by some as a harmless old lady. She was anything but.
"Sit down, Grace, stop fidgeting. You've been up and down four times. You're making my neck sore trying to follow you around the room."