Shiver (40 page)

“I guess I was wrong about you, wasn’t I?” He sighed. “You’re not special. You’re not my equal. You’re nothing but a dumb, frigid cunt, like all the others. I’ve got no use for you now.”

He looked at her, and she swallowed.

“Or at least,” he whispered slowly, “I’ve got no use for you ... alive.”

31

At eleven-thirty, half an hour after putting out an APB on Franklin Rood’s 1963 Ford Falcon, Delgado received word of an almost definite sighting.

Patrol units had been advised to be particularly alert when cruising Sepulveda Boulevard, since Rood was believed to have switched cars in an alley near that street, one of the city’s main north-south traffic corridors. When two Studio City patrol officers stopped in a Union 76 service station on Sepulveda to use the rest room, they asked the employees if any car resembling the Falcon had been seen there that morning. The answer was yes.

The attendant on duty at the full-service island said he filled the tank of a car matching the Falcon’s description at approximately nine-thirty. Furthermore, he was told by the man in the passenger seat that the car was a 1963 model. Although he didn’t get a good look at the man, the attendant remembered the woman behind the wheel as attractive, blonde, and young-looking.

Five minutes after he heard the report, Delgado was speeding north on the San Diego Freeway. He wanted to interview the attendant personally in the hope of eliciting further details. More than that, he wanted—needed—to be in motion, to be active. It was the only way to combat the heavy, suffocating sense of helplessness that pressed down on him otherwise.

“I already told them everything,” the young man in orange coveralls said with a shrug when Delgado got out of the car, flashing his badge.

“I know you did, sir, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to go over it with you anyway.”

Another shrug. “Sure. Okay. You must be awful interested in these people. They fugitives or bank robbers or something?”

Delgado led him into a corner of the lot, close to the rattle and roar of the service bay. “Not exactly. If the man in that car was who we think he was, then he kidnapped the woman you spoke with. It’s possible he was holding her at gunpoint during your conversation.”

“I didn’t see any gun.”

“He might have been concealing it. Did either he or the woman leave the car while they were here?”

“No. She paid me through the window. Never got out. Him neither.” He brightened. “I get it. You figure he was keeping her inside, huh? With a gun in her back or something?”

“Possibly. Now, I’d like you to take a look at this photograph and tell me if this is the woman you saw.”

Delgado removed a four-by-five black-and-white glossy from his pocket. The photo, taken from Jeffrey Pellman’s house, showed Wendy smiling self-consciously, posed against a brick backdrop dappled with sun. Her hair was knotted in a bun, not loose as Delgado remembered it.

He waited while the attendant studied the glossy. “Yeah,” the young man said finally. “That’s her.”

“You’re certain?”

“Sure am.”

Delgado took back the photo. “Did you see which way the car went when it left the station?”

“I might have, but I can’t remember now.”

“But you think you did see it leave?”

“Yeah, but like I said, I don’t remember for sure.” A note of testiness crept into his voice. “We get a lot of business in here, man. Cars going in and out all day.”

“All right.” Delgado was not quite ready to drop that subject, but he decided to approach it from another angle. “What time did you service the car?”

“It was maybe nine-thirty. Little before, little after.”

“Did you check the oil? The tires?”

“They didn’t want me to. The lady just asked for a full tank. That’s all.”

“The bill was paid in cash. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“And while you were making change, you talked briefly about the car, what year it had come out, what sort of condition it was in?”

“Uh-huh. I like old cars. They’ve got, you know, character.”

“How would you describe the vehicle’s condition?”

“Good. Real good, considering the model year.”

“Anything wrong with it?”

“Some of the chrome had fallen off.”

“Where?”

“On the sides.”

“Rust? Dents?”

“No rust I could see. No dents either.”

“Did you notice if the headlights or taillights worked?”

“He didn’t have the headlights on. It was broad daylight. Taillights ... um, yeah. I saw the brake lights flash when they pulled out.”

Delgado was careful to show no reaction. “How about the turn signals? Did they work?”

“The right-hand one did. It was blinking.”

“Where were you when you saw the turn signal?”

“Still at the pump.”

“And the car was where? At that exit?” He pointed.

“No, the other one.”

“So if the car used that exit and the right-hand signal flashed,” Delgado said slowly, “then it must have turned north onto Sepulveda.”

The attendant blinked. “Hey, I guess so. Jeez. I didn’t even know I knew that.”

“Well”—Delgado allowed himself a smile—“we both know it now.”

He asked a few more questions but obtained no further information. After thanking the attendant, he returned to his car and radioed an update to Dispatch, informing them that Rood’s vehicle, when last seen, was heading north on Sepulveda near Magnolia Boulevard.

Then he left the service station, taking the same exit the Falcon used, heading in the same direction.

As he drove, he scanned the wide thoroughfare. He knew there was no realistic possibility that he would see the Falcon parked at the curb or nosing into traffic from an intersecting street. He watched anyway, alert for any flash of chrome; and as he did, he pondered the destination Franklin Rood might have had in mind.

He hadn’t taken Wendy to his apartment. Why not? Presumably because the apartment offered too little privacy. Someone in the neighborhood might hear a woman’s cries. He must have wanted to find a remote, secluded area, where he could do whatever he wished to his captive, with no chance of being seen or heard.

But then why had he gone to the San Fernando Valley, which was nearly as crowded as West L.A.? True, there were pocket parks scattered throughout the Valley, but on a sunny day they would be brightened with scampering children and their watchful parents. The Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area was large enough to provide places of concealment, but Rood had been within a few blocks of that park when he’d made Wendy pull into the service station. There was no reason to stop for gas, let alone to fill the tank, if he had only a short distance left to travel.

No, he must have had miles yet to cover. Miles of shapeless, urban sprawl—a grid of streets lined with shops, restaurants, office buildings, apartment complexes, and rows of stucco bungalows. Few isolated locations there.

But perhaps he had gone still farther north. Out of the Valley ... and into the desert.

Delgado remembered the sandstone paperweight in Rood’s apartment. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

Rood must have picked up that rock in the Mojave.

Did he spend a lot of time out there? Was that where he kept his trophies?

He imagined the attraction a man like Rood would feel for the desert—vast stretches of emptiness, of desolation and dust—no strangers’ eyes watching him, no police cars patrolling the streets. A lonely place where he would be free to be himself.

It seemed right. Felt right.

The high Mojave was too big to survey by car. Fifty patrol units would not do the job fast enough. But an aerial surveillance was a different matter.

As he hooked left on Sherman Way and raced toward Van Nuys Airport, Delgado was already speaking into the microphone in his hand, requesting a helicopter.

32

Wendy lay on the futon for what seemed like many minutes while the Gryphon paced the trailer, talking to himself in a muttering undertone. She had no idea what he was saying and no desire to find out. She still struggled to free her hands, but the tape binding her wrists was thick and strong, and she couldn’t work it loose.

Finally he approached her. She waited for him to begin whatever torture he had planned. But he merely stooped and picked up the statuette that had fallen from her pocket.

“The poor thing is chipped,” he said sadly. “Broke one of its wings. That’s a shame, isn’t it, Wendy? A shame that such a beautiful thing could be damaged.”

She watched as he carried the figurine to the card table and set it down gently. It lay there, recumbent, a tiny sphinx.

“Still,” Rood whispered, “it’s lost only a wing. Could be worse. Suppose its head had come off.” His lips parted in a chilly, feral smile. “Wouldn’t that have been a tragedy?”

He clapped his hands once.

“Get up.”

She didn’t move.

“You heard me,” he said quietly.

“I’m not going to help you kill me.”

“Sure you are. You’re going to do exactly as I say.” He tapped the butt of the holstered automatic. “Because if you don’t, I’ll shoot off your kneecaps. Bang. Bang. Then I’ll still be free to do whatever I wish with you. So what will you have gained, besides unnecessary pain?”

“All right,” she mumbled, defeated. With difficulty she climbed off the futon.

“Now come here.”

She walked to the card table. Her unbuttoned blouse hung open, exposing her red raw breasts to his eyes.

The Gryphon turned one of the folding chairs sideways to face the shrouded cabinet. “Sit.”

She obeyed.

“Very good. I’ve been considering how to do this, Wendy, and I’ve decided to put on a show for you. A very special show, one that means a great deal to me. I hope you enjoy it. It’s the last entertainment you’re ever going to have.”

He tore a strip of cloth from his shirttail, then blindfolded her. She drew a sharp breath when the room disappeared from her view.

“Is that necessary?” she whispered.

“Humor me. I have a flair for the dramatic.”

She heard him move away from the chair. Some stretch of time passed, filled with faint rustling sounds and circling footsteps and his low breathing. After that, silence. Silence and darkness.

Then from somewhere before her, a woman’s voice, faint and whispery, rising in a trembling monotone like a furtive, frightened prayer.

“Please don’t kill me. I don’t ... want to die. I’ll do whatever you say ...”

A second woman began to plead, joining the first.

“Of course I’m afraid of you. What kind of question is that? My God, who wouldn’t be afraid?”

A third voice mingled with the others in an unreal chorus.

“... never done anything to deserve this. It’s not fair, not right, not right at all ...”

Wendy felt the Gryphon’s hands at the sides of her face. The blindfold was lifted. She gazed straight ahead.

The white sheet that had draped the cabinet was gone. In its place were four heads displayed in a neat row. Four pale staring faces, each in its own jar. One was Jennifer’s, and one was Elizabeth Osborn’s. The other two were new to her, but she knew them too; she’d seen their pictures in the newspaper after the Gryphon’s first two kills. Julia Stern and ... Rebecca somebody. But those photographs had been of living women, young and vital and intelligent, women who bore only a passing resemblance to these surreal laboratory specimens, these freak-show exhibits with their bulging eyes and swollen tongues.

Every candle in the room had been extinguished, save two that had been placed on the cabinet. Their dim flickering glow trembled on the waxen features of the women in the jars.

But it was not the faces that held Wendy paralyzed with disbelieving horror. It was the voices.

Of the four women, Jennifer alone remained silent, speaking of her terror only with her wide staring eyes. The other three were pleading for mercy, whispering and moaning, their cries emanating—it seemed—directly from their open mouths.

“... promised you’d let me go if I said those things.” The words were spoken by Julia Stern, the first woman in line, a brunette with sharp, clear features that reflected the fear and indignation in her voice. “You
promised
...”

“Reasons?” asked the redhead beside her, Rebecca somebody-or-other. Girlish freckles were scattered across her nose and cheeks. “Of course I have reasons to live.” Dead Rebecca made a sound that might have been a laugh or a strangled sob. “For God’s sake, I’m only thirty-one ...”

“And I want to get married again,” Elizabeth Osborn said. “The first time didn’t work out. I want to have a family before it’s too late. What else? I want to travel. The Grand Canyon, the Rockies. There’s so much out there, so much to see ...”

Speaking. They were speaking. Dead, but alive. Their spirits bottled along with their flesh.