Carefully, Delgado stepped through the doorway into the apartment and looked around. It was a modest mid-rent place, neatly kept and unimaginatively furnished. His circling gaze took in a sofa, a coffee table, a potted plant. Corner windows framed a leafy fig tree. A chest-high counter divided the living room from the kitchenette, brightly lit by overhead fluorescents.
In a corner lay a heap of torn, bloody rags. The victim’s clothes, obviously, which the Gryphon had ripped off her body and cast aside. Delgado couldn’t tell what kind of outfit it had been without handling the clothes, and he wouldn’t do that, of course. There was always a chance the Gryphon had neglected his gloves this time and left a nice bloody fingerprint for Frommer and his SID team.
He knelt by the body. The woman was a young
Caucasian, probably in her twenties, perhaps five feet tall. She was slender, as all the Gryphon’s victims had been, with shapely legs and small pert breasts. No doubt she had been attractive. They always were.
Delgado wondered what her name was, what her life had been like, what dreams she’d nurtured. He would learn the answer to such questions soon enough, he supposed. Her name would be determined at the morgue; her lifestyle would be reported by friends, neighbors, and relatives; and as for her dreams ... A tape would come in the mail, a recording of her last words, and when he listened to her whispery plaintive voice, Delgado would know what she’d wanted out of life, and what she would never get.
How many more voices would he have to hear?
He got up slowly, feeling tired, very tired. He backed away from the corpse, careful to disturb nothing around it, and returned to the doorway, where the uniformed cops were watching him intently, as if trying to read his thoughts in his eyes.
“Who were the first officers to arrive at the scene?” Delgado asked, fatigue thickening his voice.
Two men stepped forward. “We were, Detective,” one of them said.
Delgado recognized the pair. The cop who’d spoken was named Branden. He wore wire-rim glasses and longish hair that tested the limits of departmental regulations, giving him the appearance of a disaffected intellectual of the existentialist stripe, the sort who could go on at tedious length about Plato’s cave or Dostoevski’s underground man. There were a lot of them in L.A., and a few had even found their way onto the police force, for motives impossible to guess.
Branden’s partner, Van Ness, was a farmboy, or should have been; he had the kind of build the word “strapping” had been coined to describe: thick neck, broad shoulders, huge meaty fists like hams. Excitement shone in his eyes. Clearly he was getting a kick out of being involved in a case with this much heat on it.
Flipping open his memo pad, Delgado fixed his gaze on Branden, whom he judged the more intelligent of the two. “Let me have your report.”
“We were cruising this neighborhood,” Branden said, “when a call came over the radio. Some civilian nine-elevened a report about the Gryphon. Apparently he was seen at this address—”
“Seen?” Delgado interrupted, his heartbeat speeding up. Nobody had ever seen the Gryphon before. A description would be invaluable. If an artist could work up an IdentiKit sketch ...
Branden shrugged. “That was how I understood it, sir. But the details were fuzzy as hell. Frankly, we didn’t think there was anything to it anyway; people have been calling in false alarms for weeks.”
“The whole Westside is scared shitless,” Van Ness added. “Jumping at shadows. We figured somebody saw a drunk taking a leak in the bushes, and got spooked.”
“All right.” Delgado tried to hold impatience and frustration at bay. He would find out about the alleged sighting later, from somebody better informed than either of these two. For the moment he would dig out whatever information they had. “You arrived at the scene at what time?”
“Ten-thirty-four,” Branden answered.
“Go on.”
“We checked out the grounds of the building first, then the apartments. That was when we saw the stiff. Couldn’t miss her. The door was wide open, and the lights were on.”
“He always leaves the place lit up like that,” Van Ness said. “Like a frigging laundry-mat.” That was how he put it: laundry-mat.
Delgado ignored him. “You found the body. What then?”
“Van Ness called in the homicide. In about two minutes, we had more backup than I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Everybody wants to be in on this one,” Van Ness said, smiling.
“Everybody except the victims,” Delgado replied coolly. He returned his attention to Branden. That 911 report still teased his curiosity. “Do you have any idea who tipped us off? Could it have been somebody in the building?”
Branden shook his head. “We asked all the neighbors. Nobody here saw anything.”
“Did they tell you who rents this apartment?”
“Yes, sir. It’s a woman, and the description they gave us matches the deceased. I mean, as far as you can tell.”
“Did she live alone?”
“According to them, yes. And there’s only one name on the mailbox.”
“Which is?”
“Kutzlow, sir. Jennifer Kutzlow.”
“They say she was a stewardess,” Van Ness added.
11
This was bad. Very bad.
Franklin Rood sat in his car, breathing hard, fighting pain and weakness. His shirt was untucked, his belly exposed to the pale yellow glow of a streetlight. Blood oozed from a jagged vertical gash in his side. Not a great deal of blood, but enough to have trickled down his pants and pooled on the driver’s seat, soiling the tan upholstery. He hoped he could remove the stain.
He’d driven at least a mile from the apartment building on Palm Vista Avenue before parking on a quiet side street to inspect the wound. He couldn’t tell how serious it was, though it sure hurt like the dickens.
He sighed, a low wheezing sound that startled him, the kind of sound an invalid would make. He had to admit that the last round of the game had not gone exactly as planned.
Shortly past eight o’clock Rood had arrived in Miss Wendy Alden’s neighborhood and parked in a curbside space. Before leaving the car, he clipped the cassette recorder to his belt. He played the blank tape for a few seconds to get past the leader, then pulled on his gloves and checked the pocket of his coat to confirm that the garrote was inside.
He smiled. Ready to go.
Holding the bag by its strap, he got out of the car and walked toward the apartment building where Miss Alden lived. It was a simple two-story frame structure, put up back in the late Fifties or early Sixties, in those simpler times when nobody felt the need for a security gate or an intercom system or any protection at all. The doors opened directly onto the street—or, in the case of the apartments on the second floor, onto a gallery that could be reached easily enough via the outside staircase.
How wonderfully convenient.
As the building drew near. Rood became aware of raucous rock music blaring from a ground-floor window. He wondered if Miss Alden were throwing a party. He hoped not. If she were, he’d have to wait for her guests to leave.
A few yards from the building Rood stopped, removed the night-vision binoculars from his bag, and squinted through the eyepieces. The world was suffused in a green fog; the brass numbers affixed to the apartment doors shone brightly in the enhanced luminescence of the streetlights. He rotated the focusing knob, bringing the numbers into crisp resolution, then located the door marked 204. Miss Alden’s apartment.
She lived in an upstairs corner unit directly above the noisy apartment. The curtains in the side window were drawn, the place dark and silent. She must be out.
Rood replaced the binoculars in his bag and considered his options. He could wait in his car till he saw the lights go on in the apartment. Eventually the window would darken again when she retired for the night. An hour or so after that, he could silently break in and surprise her in bed. She would awaken from a dream into a nightmare.
Yes, he could do it that way. But there was another, more interesting, slightly riskier possibility. He could pick the lock on her door, conceal himself in the apartment, and wait for her to come home. There was danger in an ambush; suppose she returned with her boyfriend or with a group of friends. But then again, suppose she didn’t. He could watch her from his hiding place, then pounce for the kill. What fun.
He decided to chance it.
Briskly he walked up to the staircase. He’d just put his foot on the lowest step when the door to the ground-floor apartment swung open in a blast of frenzied guitar chords and a young woman emerged with a bulging sack of garbage in her arms. She stopped short, her eyes fixed on Rood from a yard away.
“Oh,” she said very simply, as her eyes tracked from his face to his gloved hands, mottled in dried blood.
“Hello,” Rood said pleasantly. “What’s your name?”
The bag slipped from her fingers and hit the ground with a moist plop. She whirled. She was almost inside the doorway of her apartment when Rood caught her from behind. He pushed her forward into that cave of crashing stereophonic sound. She fell sprawling on hands and knees. He kicked the door shut, tossed his bag on the floor, advanced on her. She tried to crawl away. He grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head back. She screamed. It was a healthy scream, the shriek of a vital young animal, a high, ululant wail that ordinarily would have alerted the neighbors, who might have summoned the police. But the stereo was awfully loud; Rood was certain nobody outside these four walls had heard a thing.
Still clutching a fistful of reddish-blond hair, he pulled the woman to her feet. She screamed again, a lovely trilling sound registering pain and terror, infinitely sweeter than that raucous noise she seemed to regard as music. He spun her to face him and clapped a hand on her mouth, then swept his gaze over the living room, a place of white pile carpet and teakwood occasional tables, lit by ceramic lamps and the fluorescent panel in the adjacent kitchenette. A hallway led to what must be a bedroom and bath. Corner windows looked out on the lower branches of a fig tree.
The apartment appeared empty. He saw no sign of company. Well, she had company now.
Gripping her thin shoulders. Rood pulled the woman close.
“Tell me your name,” he ordered.
She swallowed. A tremor ran over her face, like a current of wind rippling through a field of tall grasses.
“Jennifer.”
“Your
full
name.”
“Jennifer Kutzlow,” she said hastily, then caught herself and corrected, “Jennifer Ellen Kutzlow.”
Rood nodded. Still holding her by the shoulders to prevent any attempt at escape, he examined Miss Jennifer Ellen Kutzlow. He estimated her age at twenty-five and her height at five-two, a head shorter than Rood himself. Her feet were bare, the toenails painted pink, a detail he found oddly alluring. White beltless shorts showed off her lithe, shapely legs. A low-cut blue T-shirt was pasted to her breasts, the thin cotton pinched by the hard knobs of her nipples. Small brown freckles stood out prettily on her cleavage, her pert nose, her flawless cheeks. Her green eyes made a pleasing contrast with the strawberry blond of her hair, long silken hair so marvelously luxuriant it seemed to beg you to put your hands in it and feel its gossamer softness, its spun-gold delicacy.
“Lovely,” Rood said softly.
Miss Jennifer Kutzlow shuddered. Her lower lip went spastic, squirming and writhing, a worm on a hook. Rood felt the trembling of her shoulders in his fingertips.
“No,” she whispered. “Please, no.”
She thought he was going to rape her. Rood realized. But he wouldn’t. He wasn’t even going to make her beg or recite the words he liked to hear. That ritual was reserved for those whom he chose as contestants in the game; Miss Kutzlow was merely an innocent bystander. Besides, the noise of the stereo would make a decent recording impossible. No, it would be a swift, clean kill this time.
“Don’t worry, my dear.” He smiled kindly. “I won’t try anything. I just happened to notice how attractive you are, that’s all.”
His words did nothing to reassure her. She trembled violently in his hands. Her body shook as if with palsy.
“And I wanted to know,” Rood went on smoothly, “if you don’t mind my asking, why such a charming young lady as yourself would be home all alone, taking out the garbage, when she ought to be on the arm of some dashing young gentleman, enjoying life.”
“I ... I was supposed to be out of town tonight.”
“Where?”
“Seattle. I’m a flight attendant, see? But my flight was canceled. Mechanical problems ...”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yes.” She giggled. “It is, isn’t it? I ... I really wish I’d gone to Seattle.”
“I’ll bet it’s nice up there,” Rood said. “Beautiful.” His smile widened. “Like you.”
Miss Kutzlow swallowed. “Look. Don’t hurt me, okay?” She spoke so softly that her words were covered by the thunder of the stereo, and Rood had to read her lips to make out what she was saying. “You can take all my stuff, take everything, but please don’t hurt me,”
He didn’t answer her directly. Instead he asked, “Who’s that you’re listening to?”