Michael Prescott - Shiver

Delgado sighed. “I hope you’re right.”

As he returned to his office, Delgado found himself envying Tony Sachetti. The man was out there working the streets, hauling in punks like Leon Crowell, accomplishing something. Yes, that must be nice.

He remembered the quiet excitement he’d felt when he’d been assigned to lead the task force a month ago, after the second victim was found. He hadn’t even minded seeing the rest of his caseload transferred to other officers. He was intoxicated with the luxury of devoting twenty-four hours a day to a single case, supervising seventy-five detectives, uniformed cops, and plainclothes officers all working with equal single-mindedness.

It was the kind of massive, resource-intensive investigation that could be launched only when a case was sizzling with media heat, heat that had made it the top priority of the political heavy-hitters downtown.

But after four weeks spent killing himself with work and worry, his excitement had faded, replaced by frustration. He was no closer to a solution than he’d been at the beginning.

Out-thinking Leon Crowell was easy. But the man Delgado was hunting, the man who held the city in the cold clutch of fear, was no small-time street punk. That man would not make the easy, obvious mistakes.

Delgado closed the door of his office and sat at his desk. He picked up the BSU profile and, for no particular reason, began reading it again. He was still on the first page when the telephone rang.

Slowly he lowered the report, looking at the phone, while a chill fluttered briefly in his gut.

He knew. Even before he lifted the handset from the cradle, he knew.

Four minutes later he was guiding his unmarked Chevrolet Caprice south on Sawtelle Boulevard, then east on Pico. He drove fast, whipping around slower traffic, grateful that the streets were still largely empty; rush hour would not begin till seven.

From the crosstalk crackling over the radio, Delgado gathered that Detectives Nason and Gray were already on the scene. Apparently they’d been heading home after a nightlong stakeout when the 187 came in; although not part of the task force, they’d volunteered to secure the crime scene and supervise the uniforms until Delgado arrived.

At six-fifteen he turned onto a narrow residential street lined with thick-boled date palms and leafless elms. Yellow evidence tape had been strung between trees and hydrants to cordon off half the block. Delgado was pleased to see that Nason and Gray had protected a wide area; it was possible, however unlikely, that tire tracks or a discarded object might be found in the street.

The TV crews and print reporters had yet to arrive. A few neighbors in tossed-on street clothes or robes and nightgowns stood well back from the ribbon, their staring faces flashing red, blue, red, blue in the stroboscopic light of patrol-car beacons. The dawn sky, cloud-wrapped, was the color of bone. The air was thick and clinging, like fog.

Delgado parked alongside the cordon, got out of the car, and approached the nearest of the uniformed cops guarding the scene. He flipped his badge at the man, more out of habit than necessity; most of the beat cops knew his face.

“Good morning. Detective.”

“I wish it were.”

He stepped over a sagging stretch of ribbon, his long legs clearing it easily, and walked swiftly down the street, trailing plumes of breath.

The house was a stucco bungalow indistinguishable from the others lining this street, one sad little box among hundreds of thousands of boxes checkerboarding Los Angeles. Its ordinariness was redeemed only by a garden in the front yard, splashed with waves of silver-blue juniper, spiky yuccas, and snow-flurry dwarf asters.

On the street outside, Nason and Gray were waiting. Delgado shook hands with each in turn.

Frank Nason was a large loutish man, as tall as Delgado and twice as wide, with a battered nose squashed sideways across his face. He made a sharp contrast with Chet Gray, small, soft-spoken, sad-faced. Together they gave the impression of an ex-prizefighter in the company of an unusually somber funeral director. Despite their differences, the two cops had been partners a long time, and, like an old married couple, they had grown to resemble each other, not physically, but in their mannerisms, thought processes, and patterns of speech. Delgado had seen the same phenomenon many times, and it always secretly amused him.

“You got here in a hurry,” Gray said.

“I broke some laws.”

“Good thing, too. Gonna be a circus. Channel Four is on their way over, so you know pretty soon all the other TV assholes will be doing stand-ups, getting video of the body bag on the stretcher.”

“If it bleeds, it leads,” Nason said, quoting the alleged motto of all local news teams.

Delgado surveyed the area. He saw perhaps a dozen uniforms; nobody else. The only sounds were low, uneasy conversation and the intermittent crackle of the beat cops’ radio handsets.

“Under the circumstances,” he said, “I would have expected a greater display of political firepower. Where are our friends from City Hall?” He spoke slowly, his diction impeccable as always, his words edged with the trace of an accent from the Guadalajara barrio of his childhood.

“Those pretty boys are still curling their hair to look nice for the cameras,” Nason replied with a snort. “They’ll be here when the tape rolls, not before. The mayor’s office is sending somebody, ditto the D.A. And you can bet the chief will want to pose for his picture.”

Delgado shrugged, having already lost interest in the subject. “What was his means of entry?”

Nason picked at something green in his teeth, working his thumbnail like a dental tool. “Kitchen window. Want to take a look?”

“Later. First give me the rest of what you know.”

“This place is owned by Elizabeth Osborn,” Gray said. He spelled the last name. “Real-estate agent. Thirty-four. Divorced. She goes jogging every morning with a friend of hers from down the street.”

Gray paused, and Nason picked up the story smoothly. Delgado thought of the ’88 Lakers, of Magic passing the ball to Kareem.

“Friend’s name is Lucille Carlton,” Nason said. “So today, at five-thirty, Carlton jogs over here as usual. Sees the door is open. Lights are on. She takes a peek, has herself a coronary, and scrams.”

“She runs back to her house,” Gray said, “and nine-elevens it.”

“Where is she now?”

“At the station, I think. Unless maybe they took her to the hospital. She’s in bad shape. In shock, almost.”

“I take it Ms. Carlton believes the deceased is Elizabeth Osborn.”

“She thinks so.” Nason finally succeeded in dislodging the green thing in his teeth. He flicked it away and watched its arc. “Almost sure. But…”

“But she can’t make a positive ID,” Delgado finished for him.

“Can you blame her?”

“No. I can’t.” Delgado sighed. “Who was the First Officer?” The first officer present at the scene, he meant.

“Stanton. Over there.”

“I’ll get his report. In the meantime, I want a modified grid search of the crime-scene perimeter. The gawkers and loiterers-we need their pictures taken. Surreptitiously, of course. Have the SID shutterbug do it. And send a couple of uniforms to record the plates of every car parked within a radius of three blocks. My people will track down the owners and conduct interviews later.”

“You think the scumbag would hang around?” Nason asked doubtfully.

“With this one,” Delgado said softly, “anything is possible.”

Stanton was standing near a palm tree, one hand holding fast to the rough diamond-textured trunk. The patrolman was young, maybe twenty-two, still starchy with Academy training. He looked green in both senses of the word. His eyes kept wandering toward the house, then away. His lips wore a wet sheen.