Shiver

by Michael Prescott

  “After all this shit,” Porter said, “that’ll take some acting job.”

  “Well, you’re in the movie capital of the world. Acting should be no problem, right?”

  “Right, sir,” Sanchez said crisply. “No problem at all.”

  Delgado led the two men into his office.

  “Wendy,” he said pleasantly, “I think you know these gentlemen.”

  She stood up, smiling. Her tears, Delgado noted, were almost dry. “Yes, I do. You just can’t get rid of me, can you?”

  “We don’t want to,” Porter said with an answering smile of his own. “You’re a lot better looking than the usual suspects we get paid to round up.”

  He was playing the part fine, just fine.

  “Ready to go?” Delgado asked her.

  “I think so. Not that I don’t like it here or anything.”

  “What’s not to like?” Sanchez cracked.

  Delgado took Wendy’s arm and guided her out of the office. Walking with her down the hall, he became aware, for the first time, of how small she was. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder. Her hair looked very soft.

  At the rear door he waited with her while Sanchez pulled the squad car close,

  “We think the TV people may have set up cameras to take some footage when you leave,” Delgado lied smoothly. “For that reason it would be a good idea if you could get into the car as quickly as possible, then lie down till you’re well away from the station house.”

  “Yeah, I definitely don’t look my best for a TV debut.”

  “It’s not just that. If these reporters know which car you’re in, they may follow you to Jeffrey’s. Then, if they give away the address, you’ll have to go somewhere else.”

  “Would they do that? Report the address?”

  “They might. Their sense of civic responsibility can, at times, leave something to be desired. That’s why it’s important for you to keep your head down till the two officers tell you to look up.”

  “Okay. I will.” She shifted her weight nervously.

  Delgado tried to lighten the mood. “Look, don’t worry about it. Everything will go fine. Tomorrow morning I’ll call you at Jeffrey’s. In the meantime, do your best to put this whole miserable experience out of your mind.”

  “I’ll try.” She pulled her features into the pale imitation of a smile. “But I’m making no promises.”

  Delgado watched tensely as Sanchez and Porter led Wendy to the squad car. Within two seconds she slid into the backseat. She ducked her head immediately and stayed down. So far, so good.

  The patrol car pulled away with Sanchez at the wheel. Porter’s voice crackled over Delgado’s radio handset: “Eight X-ray Forty-four. Code Twenty, Code Twenty.”

  An endless minute passed while Delgado waited for the all-clear signal.

  “Eight X-ray Forty-four. Code Four. Repeat: Code Four.”

  Delgado expelled a shaky breath. Done.

  He returned to his office, shut the door, and sank wearily into his desk chair. Rubbing his forehead, his eyes, his neck, he tried to think.

  He now knew why no clay statue had been left in Jennifer Kutzlow’s hand. Wendy, not Jennifer, had been the Gryphon’s target from the start.

  That much was clear from the fact that the Gryphon had known Wendy’s name and from the details of the ritual she’d described. Poor Jennifer had merely gotten in the way somehow. The Gryphon had killed her and turned the lights off in her apartment—Wendy said the place was dark when she arrived home—then turned them on again before fleeing the scene.

  Delgado made an effort to review his notes and put together the rest of what he’d learned in the interview. But he couldn’t concentrate. He could think only about Wendy. From her date of birth he knew she was twenty-nine; she seemed younger. Young and shy, yet tough too, tougher than she herself might have realized, tough enough to punch a bloody hole in the Gryphon, depriving him for the first time of the prize he sought. How the discovery of her secret strength would affect her, Delgado couldn’t say; but he suspected she wouldn’t be reading as many self-help books in the future. She would be less shy, less timid, not so easily cowed by the world. Having faced death, she would learn to live.

  Then he thought of the Gryphon, still running loose, still holding on to the clay statuette he’d made for Miss Wendy Alden. And he was afraid. His fear was groundless; of course it was. Every reasonable precaution had been taken. There was no possible danger to Wendy tonight. He knew that.

  He was afraid anyway.

  15

  Rood crouched low in a thicket of wild buckbrush, watching Mr. Jeffrey Pellman’s house from across the street.

  The lights in the house were on, and Rood could see the silhouette of a moving figure projected on the yellow window shades behind iron security bars, passing first in one direction, then the other, over and over again. Pacing.

  He had little doubt the figure in question was Mr. Pellman, awake and restless. But why? Perhaps after having been awakened by Rood’s phone call, the poor man had found himself unable to get back to sleep. Possible. But Rood thought it far more likely that Mr. Pellman had heard from Miss Alden and was worried about her.

  Still, if he’d heard the news, why hadn’t he rushed to the police station to be at his sweetheart’s side? Why had he remained in the house, walking the floor? Rood didn’t know.

  His knees stiffened up as he crouched, as they had in Miss Alden’s apartment. Out here, at least, he could flex his joints without fear of being overheard. There was nobody around. There was nothing for a quarter mile in any direction save Mr. Pellman’s house and stands of weed and the parched Santa Ana wind.

  Nichols Canyon Road was one of several winding two-lane strips of macadam that traversed the Santa Monica Mountains, the modest range dividing L.A.’s Westside on the south from the San Fernando Valley on the north. Unlike Coldwater Canyon Avenue and Laurel Canyon Boulevard, Nichols Canyon Road was not yet crowded with houses along every inch of its switchback trail. The lower stretches, just north of Hollywood Boulevard, were densely built up, the stucco bungalows sardined together, guarding their fragile privacy with high walls and lush gardens. But as the road rose higher into the hills, the homes thinned out, giving way to sections that were entirely undeveloped, merely chaparral-choked chasms on one side and sheer cliff faces on the other.

  Mr. Pellman’s house stood alone in one of these forgotten areas. It was an old, sad, one-story frame building with an attached one-car garage. A white Camaro was parked in the driveway. Mr. Pellman’s car, Rood assumed.

  Rood had encountered no difficulty in finding the house. After crawling past it at a mile an hour to confirm the address, he’d driven on up the road till he found a narrow, lightless side street, where he’d parked the Falcon. He’d removed his canvas bag from the backseat, then retraced the route to the house on foot, ducking into the roadside chaparral whenever car headlights swept by.

  Directly across from Mr. Pellman’s house there was a dusty turnout sprouting gray stalks of deerweed, buckbrush, and chia. At the rear of the turnout stood a wall of rock, colorless in the wan starlight, tufted with rare clinging shrubs like flecks of mold on a hunk of stale bread.

  Rood retreated to the rock wall and hunkered down in the brush. Invisible from the road, he enjoyed a clear view of the house. If Miss Alden showed up, he would see her easily.

  So far, however, he’d seen nothing but Mr. Jeffrey Pellman’s shadow sweeping like a pendulum across the window shades.

  While he waited, Rood considered his next move. If Miss Alden did arrive, then he would simply watch till the lights went out and the two were in bed, either asleep or satisfying their coarser needs like rutting animals. At that point it would be a simple matter to silently break in and kill them both—the boyfriend quickly, Miss Alden with the exquisite slowness she deserved. Then his hacksaw would claim its prize, and the clay gryphon, still wrapped in plastic in his drawstring bag, would find its proper home in her
hand.

  But if Miss Alden failed to make an appearance, the situation would become considerably more complicated. Rood could practice the art of ungentle persuasion on Mr. Pellman to extract his whore’s whereabouts. But the man might not know where she was, and then Rood would have gained nothing. He had no interest in killing Mr. Pellman just for the fun of it; a man’s head held no mystique for him. The specimens he collected were objects of art, each capturing the delicate beauty that only an attractive young woman’s features, twisted by the final extremity of terror and pain, could convey.

  There were other possibilities. He could follow Mr. Pellman the next time he left home. The man might lead him to Miss Alden’s safehouse. Or ...

  Tires hissed on the macadam. A northbound car pulled slowly around a curve in the road, then cut its speed and turned into the driveway, parking behind the Camaro with a yelp of brakes.

  A police car.

  Rood retreated still farther into the brush, dragging his bag with him, and lay on his belly peering out from between two clumps of bedstraw. He fumbled the night-vision binoculars out of his bag and raised them to his face.

  The car doors opened. Two uniformed policemen got out warily, their bodies stiff with tension.

  From the backseat Miss Wendy Alden emerged, looking tired and bedraggled, a blanket wrapped incongruously over her night things. A bandage on her throat marked the garrote’s work. Rood hoped the wound hurt.

  “Hello, my dear,” he whispered. “So nice to see you again.”

  The front door of the house banged open. A man hurried down the steps into the twin funnels of the patrol car’s headlights. He was tall, about thirty, with wire-frame glasses and sandy hair standing up in dry patches that spoke of interrupted sleep.

  “And hello, Mr. Pellman,” Rood said.

  Mr. Pellman embraced Miss Alden briefly, perhaps a shade self-consciously in the presence of the two cops.

  “What happened to you?” the boyfriend asked as they parted. His voice carried clearly in the night stillness.

  She shook her head. “Later.” She turned to the policemen and handed them the blanket. Now she was clad only in the robe and pajamas Rood remembered. “Thank you, Officer Sanchez. Officer Porter. Thanks for everything.”

  “Our pleasure,” replied the one she’d called Officer Sanchez.

  Mr. Pellman took Miss Alden’s hand and led her inside, shutting the door with a solid thump that reminded Rood, most appropriately, of the closing of a casket lid.

  The two cops lingered in the driveway, beaming flashlights first at the bushes in the front yard, then at the encircling eucalyptus trees. Each man kept a hand on his hip, where a gun was holstered. Rood was suddenly glad he hadn’t chosen to conceal himself close to the house.

  Finally Officers Sanchez and Porter seemed satisfied. Switching off their flashlights, they climbed inside the squad car, which backed out into the street.

  “Good night, officers,” Rood breathed. “And thank you very much for a job well done.”

  Naturally he expected the car to execute a U-turn and drive off, down the mountain, back to the station or to wherever cops went when they were through delivering delightful young ladies to their death. And that was why he was so badly disappointed when, instead, the patrol car swung into the turnout, tires crunching on dirt like hungry mouths, and parked ten yards from Rood’s hiding place. The engine was silenced, the headlights darkened. He heard a low creak as the windows were cranked down, then the quiet conversation of the two men inside.

  They weren’t leaving. They were going to stay all night. Stay and watch the house.

  Rood pursed his lips, fighting an absurd and quite undignified urge to cry. It wasn’t fair. Miss Alden was so close—he could see her silhouette dancing on the window shade along with Mr. Pellman’s now—so tantalizingly close, yet still out of reach.

  Then he steadied himself. He was Franklin Rood. He was a man superior to all others. His temporary failure with Miss Alden had shaken his confidence, true, but that was all the more reason to persevere and redeem himself.

  He must not be denied. He must have his revenge. And he must have it tonight.

  There had to be a way.

  Calm once more, relaxed and in control, he contemplated his next move. It occurred to him that he had one advantage over Officers Sanchez and Porter. He knew exactly where they were and what they were doing, while they had no idea that he was even in the area, let alone that he was positioned thirty feet from their car. Nor were they likely to discover him, even if he crept closer. Their attention would be focused on the house and the road, not on the dry brush rustling at their backs.

  A plan of action was already forming in his mind.

  Rood replaced the binoculars, then rummaged in the bag till he found Miss Alden’s kitchen knife. A good weapon, as he ought to know. More efficient than the garrote. Perfect for a swift, silent kill.

  He shoved the bag behind a patch of weeds, out of sight. Later he would come back for it; now he needed to be unencumbered as he wriggled on his stomach through the dirt, snaking toward the car and the two men inside it, who were still speaking softly, trading jokes and sharing laughter and watching the empty road.

  16

  Wendy didn’t feel really safe until she was inside Jeffrey’s house with the door shut and locked to keep out the darkness.

  Aimlessly she circled the living room, grateful for the table lamps blazing everywhere. Like the rest of the rented house, the room was small and musty and cluttered. The white walls were covered with photographs, some framed, most simply tacked up with pushpins, all of them Jeffrey’s own work and all of them in black and white, a medium he preferred for complex, idiosyncratic reasons he’d once explained to her at tedious length. A few sticks of worn, mismatched furniture were scattered across a lusterless hardwood floor patterned with an intaglio of decades-old scratches. The floorboards creaked under her restless motion.

  “All right,” Jeffrey said briskly, clapping his hands once. “The first thing to do is get you into something dry to wear. Sound okay?”

  “I think I’d like to freshen up a little. Wash my face. I want to ... feel clean.”

  He looked at her, his face an unasked question.

  “No,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t raped, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I’m not sure what to think.”

  “I just feel dirty. Like I’ve been touched by”— death—“something bad.”

  “You can take a shower.”

  “Uh-uh.” She touched her neck. “The doctor said I can’t get the bandages wet for twenty-four hours. Just a washcloth and a sink full of water will be fine.”

  “Well, I believe I can arrange that. Follow me.”

  “Oh, wait a second. I want to check on something.”

  She peeled back a corner of the window shade and peered out through the security bars. She saw Sanchez and Porter slamming the doors of the squad car. As she watched, the car reversed out of the driveway, then parked in a weedy lot across the road.

  “What is it?” Jeffrey was right behind her.

  “Those policemen who brought me here—they’re going to watch the house.”

  “Watch it?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What for?”

  “It’s just a precaution.”

  She expected him to press her for details, as anybody would; but strangely he didn’t. When she turned away from the window at last, she read distance in his eyes, distance and what might have been pain.

  He seemed to realize she was staring at him. His expression cleared.

  “Ready to get cleaned up now?” Jeffrey asked, his voice normal, too normal.

  “You bet.”

  He led her down the hall. More photographs glided by, interrupted by the doorway to the half-bath Jeffrey had converted into a darkroom, then the closed door of the guest bedroom, which, Wendy knew, contained no furniture, only cartons of junk he’d never bothered to unpack. In th
e one-car garage he used as his studio, still more boxes were piled high against the walls. He’d once told her, while working on his third bottle of beer, that he saved all his notes and conceptual sketches because he believed his photographs would make him famous someday, and then his papers would be of historical value.

  At the end of the hall Jeffrey opened the door to the master bedroom and showed her inside. The bed was scattered with tangled sheets and blankets hastily thrown aside.

  “Sorry I had to call so late,” Wendy said pointlessly. “You must have been sound asleep.”

  “Actually, no. I got a wrong number just about five minutes before you called me. That’s what woke me up.”

  Adjacent to the bedroom was the master bath. Jeffrey opened the bathroom door and switched on the overhead light. The ceiling fan came on simultaneously with a rattle and whir.

  “Your wash basin, madam. As for a change of clothes, I’m afraid the selection of outfits available at Chez Pellman is limited, basically, to blue jeans or pajamas.”

  “Pajamas, I guess. I’m not sure I can sleep, but I’d better try.”

  “One pair of clean, dry, much-too-large men’s pajamas coming up.” He removed a folded pair from a dresser drawer and handed them to her with ceremony. “Followed by one slightly ratty bathrobe.” He plucked a robe, not ratty at all, from a hanger in the closet. “And slippers. No, that won’t work. They’ll be way too big for you. How about thick wool socks?”

  “Perfect.”

  He found a pair. “Anything else?”

  “I think you’ve got me covered. So to speak. I’ll be right out.”

  “Take your time. And, Wendy ... like I said on the phone, I really am glad you’re okay.”

  “Me too,” she answered, using the same words she’d spoken earlier.

  He hesitated, as if feeling the need to say something more, then apparently decided against it. He shut the door behind him. Wendy heard his footsteps recede down the hall.