Shiver (22 page)

Delgado nodded slowly, scribbling in his notepad. “Homemade. That makes our job more difficult. If he’d bought it on the street, we might be able to ... well, never mind.”

Wendy sighed. “I take it you don’t have any idea who this man is. No clues, no leads ... ?”

“Clues and leads, yes, a few. But if you’re asking me if we have a specific individual in mind, or even a list of individuals, the answer is no.”

“Must be tough to track down a killer with no motive.”

“Tough?” Delgado chuckled without humor. “Yes, you could say that. But perhaps you can make it a little easier. Did your assailant give any indication of why he’d chosen you?”

“No.”

“Did he suggest in any way that you might have met him previously?”

“You mean at a party or something?”

“Perhaps. Or in some business connection.”

“No. No, he didn’t say anything like that.” She closed her eyes briefly. “I’m sure I’ve never met him. I couldn’t have.”

“You didn’t recognize his voice?”

“No.”

“Don’t answer too quickly. Think for a moment. Are you sure his voice didn’t remind you, even slightly, of someone with whom you might have come in contact, either in person or over the telephone? Perhaps an anonymous phone caller ... or the mailman ... or a neighbor you barely know.”

She shook her head. “It didn’t remind me of anyone. But he was whispering. I guess everybody’s voice sounds pretty much the same in a whisper.”

“Did any of his statements reveal personal knowledge of you?”

“Well, he knew my name.”

“How did he refer to you?”

“Miss Wendy Alden. Or just Miss Alden. He always said it that way, very polite.” She clucked her tongue against her teeth. “Doesn’t that sound crazy, calling him polite? But you know what I mean.”

“Yes.” His gaze was suddenly faraway. “Yes, I know exactly what you mean.”

Delgado stared into space a moment longer; she wondered what he was thinking of. Then with sudden energy he stood up.

“All right,” he said briskly. “What I’d like to do is go over this from the beginning. I want to know everything in detail, as much detail as you can remember, starting with ...”

“Wait.” She swallowed. “There’s something I have to know first.” She took a breath, then asked the question that haunted her. “Who was killed in my apartment building tonight?”

Delgado looked down at his desk, his lips pursed, and made no reply.

“I know somebody was,” she went on urgently. Despite the water Sanchez had brought, her mouth was suddenly dry. “I heard about it in the police car, on the radio. Homicide, they said. A homicide at my address.”

“Miss Alden,” Delgado said slowly, “you’ve already been through a lot tonight. Wouldn’t it be better if ... ?”

“No, it wouldn’t be better. I need to know.” She would not be put off. Yesterday she would have meekly dropped the subject, but not now. She had faced the Gryphon. She could face this. “Who got killed instead of me? Tell me. Please.”

Delgado met her gaze. “As best we can determine, her name was Jennifer Kutzlow.”

Wendy stared at him, trying to take in what he’d said. A rush of blood thrummed in her ears with a conch-shell roar.

Jennifer.

Jennifer, who was always playing her record albums at a million decibels. Jennifer, who’d smiled at her just this morning, making small talk about the weather, before hurrying off to the airport. But Jennifer couldn’t be dead in her apartment; she was in Seattle, wasn’t she?
Wasn’t she?
She couldn’t have gotten back this soon. And, anyway, if she’d been home tonight, she would have been making a racket, like always.

Unless she was dead already ... Unless he’d killed her first ...

Did he kill Jennifer because he thought she was me? Wendy thought in trembling horror. Is that it? Did he think she was me?

“Miss Alden?” The voice was Delgado’s, and it came from some great distance. “Are you all right?” She couldn’t answer. “Miss Alden?”

“Don’t call me that,” she heard herself say. “That’s what he called me. Just say Wendy. That’s my name. Wendy.”

A hand was touching her arm. “Are you all right, Wendy?”

She looked at the hand. His hand. She realized he was leaning over her. Concern showed in his gray eyes.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I ... I’m fine.”

“I’m very sorry,” he said gently. “Was she a friend of yours?”

“No. Not really. Not at all, in fact. To tell you the truth, I thought she was kind of a bitch ...” She hitched in a breath. “Oh, God, I don’t even know what I’m saying.”

“You’re doing just fine.”

She lowered her head. Her eyes were burning. “I hate this. I hate this so much.”

“I know it’s hard,” Delgado said softly. “But at least you got away. You made it. You’ve got to hold on to that. You’re alive.”

She looked at him. A new thought entered her mind.

“For how long?” she asked quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“He’s still out there. He wants to kill me. He’ll try again.”

“Not necessarily. You gave him a lot more trouble than he bargained for. After tonight he may not want to tangle with you a second time.”

“Or he may want to get me back. Even the score.”

Delgado nodded, not with his head but with his eyes, dropping the heavy lids in a way that signaled assent. “I won’t argue the point. Anything is possible. We won’t know for certain what he’s thinking till we find him.”

“How will you do that? You don’t know who he is. You don’t know anything about him.”

“Sooner or later he’ll make a mistake.”

“And in the meantime?”

“I’ll assign uniformed officers to watch you around the clock on triple shifts. You’ll be constantly protected. You won’t have to face this thing alone.”

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t. But she knew Delgado was wrong.

Of course she would face it alone.

She was always alone.

13

Rood arrived home at eleven-twenty. He parked the Falcon at the curb, then staggered across the courtyard of his apartment complex, lugging the heavy canvas bag.

Once safely inside his apartment, he went immediately into the bathroom. He placed the bag on the counter by the sink, took out the bloody knife, and held it up to the ceiling light. He smiled as he read the words STAINLESS STEEL printed on its handle. Already he was much relieved. Stainless steel didn’t rust, thus reducing the danger of tetanus.

He stripped off his clothes. Naked, he examined himself. The wound was still bleeding slightly. In his medicine cabinet he found a package of sterile cotton balls. He used them to sop up the blood, tossing each one in the toilet as soon as it was soaked through.

When the wound had been thoroughly cleaned, he stepped under the shower, parted the skin flaps of the bloody cavity, and let icy water stream inside. He stood there, gritting his teeth against the pain, thinking of nothing, while blood and water streamed down his bare legs.

After a full five minutes, he turned off the shower and toweled himself dry. He was not bleeding anymore.

He rummaged in the medicine cabinet till he found a tube of bacitracin ointment, then spread the antiseptic around the edges of the gash, though not in the cavity itself.

Those precautions ought to minimize whatever risk of infection he faced. Now to dress and bind the wound.

He got out more of the cotton balls, placed them directly on the cut, and glued them down with Band-Aids. Next, he found an old bed sheet in his hall closet, tore it into strips, and wrapped the strips tightly around his waist, a makeshift bandage.

That ought to do it for now, although he might need to repeat the whole procedure two or three times until the wound healed. His side still ached; it would probably hurt for days. He swallowed two aspirin tablets, then tried to put the pain out of his mind.

His clothes were blood-spotted and useless. He tossed them in the garbage and selected a new outfit, retaining only his white Reeboks and his coat.

Once dressed, he carried the drawstring bag into the kitchen, removed Miss Kutzlow’s head from the jumbo Baggie in which it was sealed, and placed the head carefully in his freezer. He looked slowly from Miss Kutzlow to Miss Osborn. They made a pretty pair.

Then he considered his options.

He was reasonably certain Miss Alden was at the police station on Butler Avenue right now. Detective Delgado, after all, would be anxious to speak with her. Rood doubted she could identify him; he didn’t think she’d ever gotten a look at his face, and he’d kept his voice in a whisper the whole time.

Sooner or later she would leave the station. Perhaps, Rood thought hopefully, he could ambush her then. But no, that wouldn’t work. The detective was sure to arrange a police escort. Besides, with the news media watching for any sign of her departure, the cops would have to spirit her away unobserved. Rood could neither attack her nor follow her under such circumstances.

Well, where would she go? Back home? Impossible. For one thing, detectives and forensic technicians would be combing her apartment for the rest of the night in search of clues. For another, still more members of the news media would congregate outside her apartment building in an all-night vigil. And because the police would expect him to return to the apartment and strike again, no doubt Miss Alden would be told to avoid going home not only for tonight but for several days.

She would need a place to stay. A motel, perhaps. Or a friend’s home. A friend ...

Three messages had been left unerased on the reel of tape in Miss Alden’s telephone answering machine. Three messages from the same man. A man named Jeffrey.

She might very well stay with him. And even if she didn’t, she would certainly contact him soon enough to let him know where she was. Once this man Jeffrey knew her whereabouts, Rood would find it simple enough to extract the information from him by whatever means necessary.

That left only one small problem. Rood had no idea who Jeffrey was or where he lived. He didn’t even know the man’s last name.

But he did have one piece of information. Jeffrey’s home telephone number. The man had recited it with every message he left. Rood had an excellent memory for numbers.

He dialed the seven digits. A sleepy voice answered.

“Hello?”

“Jeffrey?”

“Yes? Who is this?”

“Sorry to call you so late. I wanted to apologize for not making it to the party last weekend.”

“Party? What party? Who’s calling, please?”

“Isn’t this Jeffrey Booker?”

“My name is Pellman. Jeffrey Pellman.”

“Oh, I’m
so
sorry. I must have dialed the wrong number. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

Rood cradled the phone.

Mr. Jeffrey Pellman.

Rood flipped through the residential listings in his telephone directory, hoping Mr. Pellman would not be one of those uncooperative souls with an unlisted address. He wasn’t.

According to the listing, he lived in the 2100 block of Nichols Canyon Road. Rood knew that street. It wound through the hills above Hollywood Boulevard. Not terribly far away.

He could get there in no time.

14

“Did you hear me, Wendy?” Delgado asked softly. “I said you won’t have to face it alone.”

He gazed down at her, curled up in the chair, huddled in her robe and the borrowed blanket. The news about the Kutzlow woman had hit her hard, triggering a sudden desperate fear for her own safety. That fear was far from irrational. Although Delgado had done his best to persuade Wendy that the Gryphon wasn’t likely to come after her again, he knew he hadn’t been entirely convincing—perhaps because he was by no means convinced, himself.

The Gryphon was a man who craved power. Such a man, Delgado believed, was driven by a terror of his own fundamental weakness and by the need to avoid confronting that weakness at any cost. He had to see himself as a master of reality in some cosmic sense in order to compensate for a basic, unconfessed inability to deal with reality on the mundane, everyday level. He had to be a god because he could not live as a man. Failure, any failure, was a threat to the extravagantly grandiose identity he’d crafted, his precariously artificial sense of self; and as a threat, it would be met with anger, with blind, furious rage, rage projected outward at the most obvious target.

For the Gryphon, that target would be the small, frail, trembling young woman who sat before Delgado now.

“I heard you,” Wendy whispered. She brushed a loose strand of hair from her face. “But I’m still afraid. He can find me again if he wants to. He knows where I live ...”

“Well, that’s something I wanted to discuss with you.” Delgado picked his words with care. “It would be best if you could make arrangements to stay somewhere else for a while.”

“Somewhere else?” She blinked. “Oh. Of course. You’re right. I can’t go back there. And even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. Not so soon. I don’t know what I was thinking of.”