Shiver (5 page)

“Not much I can tell you yet, Seb,” Ralston said in answer to Delgado’s unvoiced question. “So far Frommer has hardly let me touch the deceased. He’s rather protective of his crime scene, as you know.”

“You’ll get your chance. Have you taken the temperature readings?” That part of the pathologist’s examination had to be done as soon as possible.

Ralston nodded. “Rectum and liver. Body temp is ninety-two point three. That puts the time of death at roughly midnight.”

Delgado scribbled in his notepad. “The body wasn’t moved.” It was not a question.

“Uh-uh. Definitely not. That arterial spray makes it pretty obvious she died right here. Standing up, I’d say. The evidence techs will have to chart the trajectories of the spatters in order to fix her exact location.”

“Anything else I ought to know?”

“Nothing you didn’t notice for yourself. There are no apparent abrasions, contusions, incisions, or ligature marks on the limbs or trunk, not even any defense cuts. The damage must have been inflicted exclusively on the head and neck.”

“Just like the others. Did you smell sulfur?”

“No. I don’t think it was a gunshot. We’ve never found any traces of powder on the previous victims.”

“And there’s no sound of a shot on the tapes. More like … cutting or strangling ... a combination of the two.” Delgado shook his head.

“Knife or a straight razor,” Ralston suggested. “With a sideways jerk of a sharp blade”—he demonstrated with a slash of his hand across his own throat—“he could tear out the carotid arteries. Plenty of blood then.”

“Yes,” Delgado said, looking at the living-room walls. “Plenty of blood.” He sighed. “Okay. Thanks, Rally. See you at the autopsy.”

He rejoined Nason and Gray, standing a few yards away.

“We were just saying the interval’s shorter this time,” Gray remarked.

Delgado had been thinking of that too. He nodded. “Julia Stern was killed on December first. After that, the Gryphon was dormant for more than two months. Rebecca Morris died on February eighth. Now this one, on March sixth.”

“He’s going faster,” Nason said. “The high doesn’t last as long as it did.”

Gray nodded. “He’s lost it, all right. Out of control.”

“Perhaps.” Delgado was thoughtful. “Or he may simply be gaining confidence.”

“Is that what you think?” Gray asked.

“Yes. This is a man consumed by grandiosity. He sees himself as more than human—as a god. He believes he is without weaknesses or blind spots. He teases us, certain he cannot be stopped. You know, of course, how he ended both tapes.”

“ ‘Catch me before I kill again,’ ” Nason quoted. “Like that guy in Chicago in the Forties. What the hell was his name?”

“William Heirens.”

“Yeah. Didn’t Heirens write something similar at one of his crime scenes?”

“In lipstick. On a wall.”

“So what’s the significance, do you think?”

“The psychiatrists call it a cry for help. A desperate plea to be apprehended, treated, rescued from the irresistible compulsions that drive him.”

Nason had caught the skepticism lacing Delgado’s voice. “But you don’t agree?”

“No. I don’t.” Delgado looked at him. “Those words are not a plea. They are a taunt. A mocking challenge. He is not asking to be caught. He is defying the very possibility of capture.”

“I guess you could look at it either way,” Nason said. “How can you be sure?”

Delgado’s voice was iron. “Because I know him.”

A beat of silence pulsed among them. Gray broke it.

“Well, whether he’s losing it or just getting cocky, he’s heading for a fall. He’s got to make a mistake soon.”

“Got to,” Nason echoed.

“Oh, yes,” Delgado said quietly. “He will. Every man has a weakness, and this man has his. Some flaw in his character—hubris, perhaps, or something else, something we have not yet seen—will trip him up and bring him down. But ...”

He looked away, not to let them see his face.

“But even so, his fall will not come soon enough.”

He stared at the body on the living-room floor, not seeing it, seeing only the future he could not prevent.

If the next interval was shorter still, as Delgado believed it would be, then soon, much too soon, another clay gryphon would roost in a dead woman’s hand.

2

The alarm clock shrilled, dragging Wendy Alden out of sleep.

Numb fingers groped for the alarm. Found it. Switched it off. She did not lift her head from the pillow. She couldn’t get up today. Too tired. Groggily she pulled her mind into focus, trying to figure out why she was so sleepy, so utterly exhausted. Something had kept her up late last night, much too late. But what?

“Jennifer,” she mumbled, remembering. “Right.”

Wendy stared at the ceiling, lost in the dreamy twilight of half-sleep, thinking of Jennifer.

Last night, at quarter to eleven, Jennifer Kutzlow had cranked up the volume on her stereo to fill the night with the tuneful strains of Guns N’ Roses and contemplate the band’s mellow reflections on life. Since Wendy’s apartment was directly above Jennifer’s, she was able to savor every subtle nuance of the racket, which continued until well after midnight. On a Monday night, yet, when people had to get up for work the next morning.

Wendy had paced her living room, fuming and muttering and fantasizing Jennifer’s violent demise, while the floorboards trembled with bass shockwaves that registered 6.5 on the Richter scale. Even after the noise finally stopped, fury and frustration kept her awake till half past two.

Of course she could have—should have—gone downstairs to complain. Sure. Just as she could have complained the last time Jennifer tested the upper limits of her amp, or all the times before that. But she never had.

Wendy sighed. She had to face it. She just wasn’t cut out for confrontations.

The sigh stretched into a yawn. Warm waves of sleep rippled over her, a lulling glissando felt rather than heard. Her eyelids slid shut. The room was spinning, spinning ...

Don’t do it, she warned herself. Come on now. Wake up.

Reluctantly she opened her eyes, rolled onto her side, kicked off the covers. With groaning effort she hauled herself out of bed and shuffled down the hall to the bathroom, where she splashed handfuls of cold water in her face to scare sleep away. That done, she tugged off her pajamas and ran the shower till it was hot, then stepped under the spray and shocked her body alert.

Toweling off, she studied her reflection. Caught in the steam-frosted mirror was a small woman; “petite” was the word her mother always used, a word Wendy hated but had never dared to challenge. She stood a fraction of an inch over five feet tall, weighed a hundred and two pounds. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, her diminutive size had led her to be mistaken for a younger girl. Now, at twenty-nine, she could have passed for a woman in her late teens.

The face that returned her critical stare was that of a child, or a child’s doll. Wide china blue eyes, pert mouth, button nose. She’d been told she was appealingly cute and innocent, but she didn’t believe it; her impression was that she looked half-formed, like a featherless chick, all raw skin and vulnerability.

Turning away from the mirror, she set to work drying her ash-blonde hair with vigorous strokes of the towel, like a carwash attendant buffing chrome. Then briskly she brushed it, combed it, coiled it in a bun at the nape of her neck, and clipped it in place. She always wore her hair that way. Jeffrey had suggested that she let it fall loose over her shoulders, but she was afraid to try. Loose hair could behave in unpredictable ways; it might blow in the breeze or swing in front of her face. A chignon, tightly knotted and clipped, allowed no such wild, dangerous license.

After spraying herself liberally with antiperspirant, she returned to her bedroom and picked out a two-piece tan suit from her closet. She rarely wore bright colors, even on sunny days like this one. There was something assertive, vaguely frightening, about the hot pinks, burnt oranges, jades, and citrons favored by the other women at the office.

Low-heeled sensible shoes and a well-worn purse completed her ensemble. She put on lipstick; then, concerned that she’d applied too much, she patted her mouth with a tissue, removing most of the color. She wore no other makeup.

Once dressed, she went into the living room, an icy cave of white pile carpet and bare white walls. There were no paintings or posters, no hanging rugs, no shelves cluttered with knickknacks, nothing to suggest the imprint of a distinctive personality on the room.

In her narrow kitchenette, under the steely glare of a fluorescent lighting panel, she nuked breakfast. As she unwrapped the sausage-and-egg sandwich and put it on a tray, she worried briefly about cholesterol.

She carried the tray into the dining area and set it down on the drop-leaf table. With the leaves up, the woodgrained Formica tabletop would expand from four feet to six. Wendy had never put the leaves up. That was the kind of thing you did when you were having company over for dinner, wasn’t it?

She sat with her back to the living room, in her favorite chair. Her apartment was an end unit, and from this vantage point she faced two corner windows framing the branches of a fig tree. As she ate, she watched the dark green leaves rub against the windowpanes softly, sensuously, like cats against legs.

After breakfast she returned to the bathroom and brushed her teeth, digging the toothbrush bristles into her gumline to root out plaque, then gargled Listerine, wincing at the raw acid burn. Mouthwash was awful stuff, but not as awful as the thought of walking around with bad breath; she was certain everyone would notice.

Before leaving the bathroom, she took a final glance in the mirror. The woman she saw shocked her just for a moment. Dressed, groomed, and wide-awake, she looked attractive and intelligent, clear-skinned and clear-eyed; when she smiled in surprised pleasure, her cheeks dimpled sweetly.

That’s me, Wendy thought as she experienced a flash of positive self-appraisal so rare as to feel almost hallucinatory. I can be pretty, see?

Then she shook her head, dispelling the thought and the mirage in the mirror.

From the hall closet she grabbed her coat; from the refrigerator she plucked a brown-bag lunch, her first name neatly printed on it in Magic Marker. She left her apartment at eight-thirty-five, taking care to shut the door firmly and secure the dead bolt.

She hurried along the outdoor gallery, then down the stairs. As she reached ground level, the door to the apartment directly beneath hers swung open, and Jennifer Kutzlow, patron saint of the hearing-impaired, emerged.

“Hey, Wen!” Jennifer flashed a Pepsodent smile. “How’s it going?”

“Hi, Jenny.” Wendy’s voice lilted up, making the words a question. Why the hell did you play your stereo so loud last night? she wanted to say, but didn’t.

She glanced at the suitcase swinging loosely in Jennifer’s hand—an overnight bag, it looked like. Under her light spring coat, her blue stewardess’s outfit was visible, glamorous as a comic-strip crimefighter’s costume half-concealed beneath street clothes. Wendy envied the lifestyle implied by that uniform, the casual trips to distant places, the casual affairs in hotel rooms with men who smelled of Brut or Lectric Shave.

“Off to Seattle today,” Jennifer said, as if reading Wendy’s thoughts and confirming them. “Probably be raining up there.”

“Probably.”

“They get lots of rain. I knew this guy once, he was from Seattle, and he told me—”

A Mazda hummed up to the curb, and a horn blatted.

“Oh, hey, there’s my ride.” Jennifer ran for the car, her strawberry-blond hair raveling behind her in slow motion, a TV-commercial cliché. “‘See you!”

Her free hand flapped a wave. She hopped into the passenger seat, and the Mazda sped off.

Wendy stared after it. Her mouth, she noticed, was still smiling. Very weak-willed, that mouth. It had this pitiful, childish need to be liked. She was very annoyed with her mouth right now.

At the side of the building, she found her blue Honda Civic sedan parked in its assigned space. She climbed behind the wheel, snugged her seatbelt firmly in place, and backed carefully into the street, checking both the rearview and sideview mirrors.

She drove west on Palm Vista Avenue, past rows of apartment buildings. The radio was on, turned to KTWB, the all-news station. The newscaster informed her that the recent spell of warm weather, unseasonable for mid-March, would continue through the end of the week; a Santa Ana condition was predicted for later this afternoon. Wendy frowned. She hated the Santa Anas, those dust-dry devil winds that blew in from the desert, whistling through the canyons like banshees to suck the moisture from the air and leave eyes red and skin parched.

At Beverwil Drive she turned north, easing into a sluggish stream of traffic. The newscast reported a shooting at an automatic teller machine. A customer making a withdrawal after dark had been ambushed; apparently he’d offered resistance. Now he was in critical condition at Cedars-Sinai.

Not me, Wendy thought reflexively; she always had the same reaction to stories like that. I wouldn’t put up a fight. If they want my money, they can have it.