Shiver (23 page)

“Maybe you had a few other things on your mind.”

“If I can use your phone, I’ll call a ... a friend of mine right now and see if I can sleep over.”

“Be my guest.”

He handed her the desk phone. She balanced it on her lap and punched in a number. He could hear the faint ringing of the phone at the other end of the line, then the flylike buzz of a voice.

“Jeffrey?” Wendy said. “It’s me.”

Abruptly Delgado turned away. He realized he’d been hoping the friend she called would be a woman. He didn’t want her to have a boyfriend.

Now why would he care, one way or the other?

Out of the corner of his eye he studied Wendy Alden. Her face was pale, her eyes huge and frightened. A scared little girl. Yet the impression of helplessness was at least partly an illusion. She’d fought off a killer—stabbed him with a kitchen knife, according to what she’d told Sanchez and Porter.

So what is it, Seb? he asked himself. Do you admire her because she heat the Gryphon? Or do you feel sorry for her after what she’s been through?

Both, he decided. Her open vulnerability made him want to protect her; her inner strength challenged him to pursue her. The combination, rare and paradoxical and intriguing, was one he’d never encountered before.

Delgado believed he had a pretty fair idea of who Wendy was and what kind of life she’d made for herself. She lived alone. That much he knew from having explored her apartment after Porter’s phone call from Cedars-Sinai had cleared up the confusion at the crime scene. He’d learned other things while in the apartment. She did not drink; no alcoholic beverages were stored in the refrigerator or pantry. No sign of drugs either; having put in two years in Narcotics, Delgado knew where to look. She read a great deal; paperbacks were lined two deep on the shelves of the bookcase in her bedroom. Self-help books predominated; she had personal problems she needed to solve, and she felt she must solve them alone. She was neat; she liked order—everything in its place.

Frowning, Delgado turned his attention to setting up the tape recorder on his desk. There was no point in thinking about her. His three years with Karen had left him painfully aware that he was unfit for a serious relationship.

Many times in the sixteen months since he’d last seen Karen, Delgado had tried to imagine the pain he had unthinkingly put her through. Her love for him must have been like the unrequited love one feels for the dead. That was what he’d been to her—a dead man, a ghost who materialized occasionally in the bedroom of their apartment, tired and preoccupied, a ghost who left her questions hanging unanswered in the darkness, who rarely responded even to her touch.

Hostility became her only means of contact with this man who was not there. She got angry at him with increasing frequency. Sometimes her sarcasm cut too deep, and then he would snap at her, and she would retreat into another room, a slammed door between them.

Still he paid her no attention. He was busy getting ahead, proving himself, being the best.

And so he lost her. Literally lost her—she was something he’d misplaced in the clutter of his life, like a file folder buried under a stack of more urgent priorities, and by the time he thought to look for her, she was gone, leaving no note and no address where she could be reached.

But he had learned a truth about himself, at least. His obsession with his work had left him no room in his life for anything else. Not even for the beautiful young lady in his office now.

Anyway, he reminded himself, she has a boyfriend.

“I’m at the police station,” Wendy was saying. “Yes, the police.” A pause. “No, Jeffrey, I wasn’t arrested.”

Delgado smiled.

“Something bad happened to me,” she went on, “but I wasn’t hurt. Well, not much. Look, I’ll explain later. The thing is, I need to stay with you tonight. I mean, I can’t stay at my apartment, and I don’t know where else to go. That’s all.”

Delgado noted the care she took to spell out exactly what she meant by staying the night. Her caution suggested that she and this man Jeffrey were not lovers. Perhaps Jeffrey wasn’t even her boyfriend, just somebody she worked with or knew socially. He felt a brief, furtive stab of hope.

“Uh, let’s see,” Wendy said. “It’s on Butler Avenue, just south of—”

“Wait a moment,” Delgado interrupted. “He doesn’t have to pick you up.”

Wendy put her hand over the mouthpiece. “I think he wants to.”

“No, that will only make things more complicated. Tell him to stay where he is. The officers who brought you here will escort you to Jeffrey’s place. And they’ll stay there, parked outside, till another unit relieves them. Somebody will be on duty all night. Just in case.”

“I’m feeling better already.” She spoke into the phone again. “Jeffrey, the police are going to take me there ... No, it’s okay; it’ll be easier to do it their way. Anyway, I don’t know how long I’ll have to be here. I’ve got to make a statement. You know.”

She was quiet for a moment, listening to the voice in her ear. Delgado saw her swallow.

“Me too,” she said quietly. “I ... I’ll see you.”

She hung up.

What had Jeffrey said to her at the end? “I love you,” perhaps. Probably. Then again, it might have been something as innocuous as “I’m glad you’re all right.”

Cut it out, Seb, he ordered.

Delgado took back the phone and sat behind his desk. Briskly he flipped open his spiral notebook and uncapped his pen.

“Even though I’m taking notes, I’d like to record our conversation, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure, that’s fine.”

He switched on the tape recorder, took down Wendy’s date of birth and other particulars, and led her slowly through the events of her day.

She told him she got up at the usual time and left for work without incident. “I ran into Jennifer as I was leaving. I wanted to yell at her for playing her stereo too loud the night before. Now I’m so glad I didn’t.”

At the office she talked with two of her coworkers about the Gryphon, ate lunch at her desk, and made a date with Jeffrey. That was what she called it: a date. He must be her boyfriend, then.

“After lunch I went for a walk in the shopping center next door to the office building. I bought a necklace at Crane’s.” She fingered her neck self-consciously, touching the bandages there. “Funny—I thought that was the most exciting thing that would happen to me today.”

She worked till half past five, then went to dinner with Jeffrey at a Chinese restaurant, and returned home at nine-thirty.

“Were the lights in Jennifer’s apartment on when you got back?” Delgado asked.

“No. I noticed that her place was dark. And I remembered she said she was going to Seattle.”

“We checked with her airline. The flight was canceled.”

“Canceled?”

“Mechanical problems.”

“You mean, if not for that, she would ...?”

“Go on, please,” Delgado prompted gently.

At home she changed into pajamas and robe, then fixed a snack. She was in the living room when she heard the creak of a knee.

As she continued the story, her words came more fitfully. Her hands, knotted in her lap, twisted and writhed.

Delgado was impressed with her presence of mind under stress. She hadn’t panicked, hadn’t bolted for the door. Instead she’d pretended everything was normal. She’d even gone through the motions of washing the dishes—a nice touch. In the kitchen she’d stashed the carving knife in the pocket of her robe, an action that had saved her life.

Listening to her describe the ritual the Gryphon had performed, the lines she’d repeated and the secrets she’d confessed, Delgado tried not to think of how near he’d come to hearing her voice speak those words on a cassette tape mailed to his office.

“... and so I told him all the reasons why I wanted to live,” she whispered. “He told me he was satisfied—‘well-pleased’ is how he put it. Then he said he was sorry he’d lied.” She ran a shaky hand through her hair. “He wasn’t going to let me go. And he said ... he said ...”

“What, Wendy? What did he say?”

“He said I was too good a specimen. He wanted me for his ... his collection.”

Delgado winced.

Wendy stared at him with brimming eyes. “His collection of heads. That’s what he meant, isn’t it?”

Delgado’s own voice was hoarse when he answered, “I believe so.”

She nodded weakly. “That’s what I thought. Oh, well, I guess that part doesn’t matter. I mean, who cares what happens once you’re dead? Who cares what he does with you then? Except ... I can’t help but think about it. About him having part of me like that. And about ... the body. I mean, what do they do at your funeral? Do they just bury you without …?”

Delgado did not reply.

“Anyway, that was when he started tightening the garrote. I could feel it digging in deeper and deeper. I’d forgotten all about the knife in my pocket. I’d forgotten everything. All I knew was that I was going to die. And ... and I was so afraid …”

Something broke inside her. She slumped forward in her chair and cupped her face in her hands, weeping, her voice ragged with the catch-and-gasp sobs of a child. Delgado rose from his chair and reached out to her. She took his hand. He said nothing. There was nothing to say.

During his fourteen years on the force, Delgado had endured many discussions with psychologists and psychiatrists, sociologists and criminologists, all the vaunted experts smelling of books and grants who maintained with erudite complacency that criminals of every variety were sick, diseased, dysfunctional, that they were the products of cruel childhoods or damaged brains or an unfeeling society, that they merited pity, not contempt, and treatment, not punishment. Men who robbed and raped and killed for kicks were not autonomous agents but helpless victims, he’d been told, victims crying out for understanding, begging for release from the prison of their psyches, a prison they’d played no role in creating. And if he didn’t see it that way, if he insisted on judging and condemning, then he was intolerant, close-minded, arrogant, cruel; he was a man devoid of compassion, a man with a heart of ice.

But where were those experts now? Why weren’t they here, in this room, holding Wendy Alden’s hand? Why did their compassion, which they prized so highly, extend only to the perpetrators of evil, and not to the innocent ones whose lives evil ensnared? When the Gryphon was caught, those anxious humanitarians would gladly devote hundreds of unpaid hours to the job of treating him, reclaiming and redeeming a man who murdered for pleasure; when he was put on trial, they would eagerly testify for the defense, peering into the Gryphon’s past or into his skull to find extenuating circumstances that would relieve him of all responsibility, legal and moral. Not one of them would speak on Wendy’s behalf. Not one.

In the Mexico of Delgado’s boyhood, the parish priest had delivered many long, stammering sermons with the same message: that the man of God must love the sinful, and the greater the sin, the greater the love that was called for. And Sebastián Delgado, nine years old, had listened, frowning. He felt no love for evil, nor for those who willfully committed evil acts; and if God commanded him to feel such love or fake it, then God must be the devil in disguise. A blasphemous thought, yes, but one he would not disown.

Compassion? he asked himself now. Yes, there must be compassion. Compassion for the innocent. For the victims. But not for those who’d made them victims. Not for the killers, the torturers, the predators. Not for the Gryphon. No compassion for him. To treat him as a social product, as no more than a victim himself, was to give him the psychological excuse and the moral justification he needed. To feel love for him, or pity, or sympathetic concern, was to aid and abet him in his monstrous crimes, and in so doing, to become a kind of monster as well.

He waited for Wendy to regain some measure of composure, then said quietly, “I think we’ve covered enough for tonight.”

“Yes.” She coughed and rubbed her red eyes. “I ... I’m a little tired.”

“You have every right to be. Look, tomorrow, when you’re rested, we’ll go over it all again and see if there’s anything you missed. For now, I think you’d better try to get some sleep.”

“I don’t even want to think about the nightmares I’ll have.”

“Maybe there won’t be any. Maybe you won’t dream at all.”

“I hope not.”

He took down Jeffrey Pellman’s address and phone number, then told Wendy to sit tight a moment longer. Leaving his office, he talked briefly with Lieutenant Grasser, the night-watch commander, then found Sanchez and Porter waiting near the water cooler.

“Time to roll. Detective?” Sanchez asked.

“Soon. First there are a few things we need to get clear. Number one, you leave the same way you came in, via the rear door. I want the cruiser pulled up nice and close, so Miss Alden doesn’t have to walk more than two steps. Two quick steps. Got it?”

“Sure.” Porter was plainly puzzled. “You afraid some creep with a telephoto lens might be trying to snap her picture over the wall?”

“Something like that. Once Miss Alden is in the car, she lies prone on the backseat. Before moving out, get on the radio—on the simplex setting—and show Code Twenty twice. On that signal, three other cars will leave from different exits and split up, heading in various directions. I’ve already worked it out with Lieutenant Crasser.”