Shiver

by Michael Prescott

  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 ev
eryone 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.

  Of course, she reminded herself, I wouldn’t have visited an automatic teller machine after dark in the first place.

  She hooked left onto Olympic Boulevard. Before her, the twin Century Plaza Towers leaped up, crowding out the sky. They were three-sided modernistic high rises, the sharp edges of their roofs cutting the morning mist like scalpel blades, forming a starkly modern backdrop to the rows of townhouses and shops lining the street—older, homier buildings, almost Victorian in appearance, that reminded Wendy for some reason of false fronts on a Hollywood studio lot.

  After an irritating commercial in which the toll-free 800 number was repeated at least ten times, the newscaster updated the story that had dominated local news for weeks. The serial killer known as the Gryphon remained at large; no apparent progress had been made in the case since the discovery of his third victim, Elizabeth Osborn, thirteen days ago.

  Wendy clicked off the radio. She wished she hadn’t heard that report. She should never listen to the news. The things that went on today were too awful. It was better not to know.

  Still, she couldn’t help thinking about that killer. His three victims had all been women in their twenties or thirties, and they had all lived on the Westside—her part of town. Unconsciously her hand strayed to her neck, as if feeling her head to confirm that it was still attached.

  She reminded herself to double-check the locks on her front door and windows before she went to bed tonight. Of course, she always double-checked them anyway.

  A sign marking the Avenue of the Stars glided into view. Flashing her directional signal, she turned right. She checked the dashboard clock. Eight-forty-seven. She would make it easily. Not that it would be any big deal if she were a few minutes late. Except she hated being late, because she always made such profuse apologies for it. She couldn’t seem to help herself.

  “God, what a wimp,” she said aloud, sighing.

  She wished she weren’t so ... so damn timid. She wanted to be strong and confident and free, yet it seemed she felt safe only when alone in her apartment with the door locked, huddled in her hidey-hole like a rabbit in its den. The city scared her; it was so big, so loud, so full of senseless violence—like that serial killer with his hacksaw and his heads. But she couldn’t fool herself, couldn’t place all the blame on L.A. and its craziness. She’d grown up in the suburbs of Cincinnati, and she had been afraid there, too.

  A headache was coming on. Suddenly the car was stuffy and too warm. She thumbed a button on the dash, and fresh air jetted through the vents, cooling her face. She felt a little better. But the bad thoughts, the unwanted, unkind, unsparing thoughts, still pressed in on her.

  She was afraid of life. It was that simple. Her fear had stunted her, crippled her, cut her off at the knees and left her half a person, an invalid wary of human contact, shunning closeness and intimacy, avoiding love or simple friendship. So she’d learned to live through books and videocassette movies and crappy TV shows, which offered an escape of sorts—but she knew they were an escape to nowhere, a dead end.

  For the most part she could brush aside that knowledge and go on sleepwalking through her days; but sometimes, late at night, when darkness had fallen like a hush over the earth and she lay awake, unable to sleep, in an apartment that had become a cage of shadows, her mind turned restlessly to the life she wasn’t living, the chances left untaken and the things left undone, the years of her youth passing by, never to be hers again. She would press her face to the pillow and listen to the slow rhythms of jazz playing low on her bedside radio, a lonely saxophone crying for her in its mournful voice, as she thought of the city beyond her four walls, the great sprawling expanse of lighted streets and glass towers, of nightclubs where couples danced till the sky ran red with dawn, of neon signs aglow with promise, beckoning her—all the mysteries and wonders of this city she hadn’t dared to know. She felt old on those nights; she knew the hollowness of a life lived only in dreams.

  Those bad nights would pass, as would the nagging sense that she was living her life with blinders on, imposing a kind of tunnel vision on herself, moving through the blur of her days without risking a glance at anything she hadn’t seen before. But the fear, the constant tension twisting her gut, would remain.

  How long could she continue this way? How many more years would she waste, hiding from the world, eating dinner alone and talking to herself and watching too much TV? Would she still li
ve as she did now when she was forty? When she was sixty? Was this the shape the rest of her life would take?

  “No,” Wendy whispered, chilled by the thought. “No, I won’t let it be like that.”

  She sat up straight at the wheel. A wild notion seized her. She would not go to work today. She would stop at a pay phone, call in sick, then drive up the coast to Santa Barbara—she’d always meant to go there, and it was only two hours away—and spend the day wandering the city, exploring out-of-the-way shops, buying presents for herself. Perfume, maybe. Or a necklace. A beautiful gold necklace. She’d wanted one for so long, and Jeffrey never gave her jewelry. He never gave her anything at all.

  Well, she’d find a necklace she liked and buy it for herself. Perhaps she would even stay overnight in a hotel, make it a real adventure. And she’d never tell anyone, not Jeffrey, not her friends at work, not her parents. Nobody would ever know. It would be her secret. Her special day.

  She would do it. She was entitled to go a little crazy once in a while, wasn’t she? Sure, she was.

  Wendy smiled, pleased with the idea. She kept thinking about it, adding detail and nuance, imagining every shop she would visit in Santa Barbara and all the charming knickknacks she would buy. She was still mulling it over and smiling when she pulled into the parking garage of the Century City office building where she worked, took a ticket, found a space, and parked.

  On her way to the elevator, she checked her watch.

  Eight-fifty-five.

  She was on time. Of course.

  3

  The morning had not gone well.

  Delgado should have known he was in for a bad day when at six A.M. he was awakened from a troubled sleep on his office cot by shouts and running footsteps in the hall. It seemed that a juvenile offender on his way to the holding cells at the rear of the station had somehow appropriated a can of tear gas from the arresting officer’s utility belt. A dozen cops had the kid surrounded, but he kept yelling that if they tried to take him down, he’d Mace them.