Michael Prescott - Shiver

“What’s that?” she whispered.

He ran his hand through her hair again, his fingers crawling over her scalp like beetles.

“I’m going to make sure you give me no further trouble, Wendy. No trouble at all.”

He removed a roll of heavy black electrician’s tape from the drawstring bag.

“Put your hands behind your back, please.”

She obeyed. A strip of tape was wound snugly around her wrists, binding them.

“That’s awfully tight.” She tried to keep her voice level, not to betray her mounting panic. “I think it’s cutting off my circulation.”

“Well, I suppose that’s what you get for being such a bad girl. I don’t take kindly to people using guns on me, Wendy. I don’t take kindly to it at all.” He pressed his mouth to her ear. “Better be glad I’m in love with you. Otherwise you could be in real trouble.”

She made no reply.

“Now how about if I fix you that lunch I promised?” He thrust his fist in front of her face and worked his thumb like a mouth. “Sorright?”

She nodded weakly. “Sorright.” The word came out like a cough.

Whistling, he busied himself with the preparations for their meal. Wendy sat in the chair and tugged uselessly at the tape, knowing there was no hope of working her hands free.

She’d been given one last chance, and she’d blown it.

No way out now. No escape.

Delgado drove fast, Lionel Robertson at his side. Hugging their tail was a second motor-pool sedan carrying Donna Wildman and Tom Gardner. Four black-and-whites loaded with eight patrol cops took up the rear.

The trip would be short; Rood’s address was less than half a mile from the station.

“Right in our backyard,” Delgado muttered as he steered the Caprice onto Nebraska Boulevard, heading west. “Right under our damn noses.”

Robertson glanced at him. “You say something, Seb?”

“Never mind. Look, when we get there, I want you to cover the rear exit, if there is one. I’m going in through the front door with Wildman and Gardner.”

“Right.”

“Warrantless entry should be no problem, given the exigent circumstances. I thought about securing a Ramey warrant anyway-it would have taken ten minutes-but that’s ten minutes more than I care to waste.”

“Believe me, Seb, we’re not going to have to kick this guy loose. You got him. You fucking nailed him.”

“It’s all circumstantial so far. We’ve established a link between Rood and the four victims, but we’ve got no hard evidence.”

“Just wait,” Robertson said confidently.

They arrived at Rood’s address. A group of teenage boys bouncing a basketball watched with mingled curiosity and suspicion as the eight uniformed cops and four plainclothes officers converged on the apartment complex. The U-shaped one-story building, its wood-shingle walls painted an unappealing shade of green, bracketed a courtyard of weed-tufted cement. In one of the units, a dog barked loudly and monotonously in a deep throaty voice.

According to Khouri, Rood lived in Apartment 2. It was not a corner unit. The occupant could escape only via the front or the rear.

Delgado sent Robertson and two patrol officers around to the back. A minute later his radio handset squawked with Robertson’s transmission: “Glass sliding door opens onto a patio with a high brick wall. He could probably climb it.”

“Stay there. I’ll alert you just before we go in.”

Delgado ordered the remaining six uniforms to fan out silently and position themselves on either side of Rood’s front door. Then he drew his Beretta 9mm. Gardner and Wildman did the same.

“I hope you two have been logging some hours on the shooting range,” he said, his mouth dry,

“That’s why they call me Dead-Shot Donna,” Wildman cracked. Nobody laughed.

Delgado keyed the transmit button on his radio. “Lionel. We’re doing it.”

“That’s a roger.”

He nodded to Gardner and Wildman. “Let’s go.”

Then he was moving up the front steps to the door, throwing open the screen door, raising his foot to deliver a powerful kick to the lock-a second kick-the door popped open, and he was inside, Wildman and Gardner following, the three of them breathing in the smell of air freshener and disinfectant.

The apartment was dark, the windows curtained, but there was enough ambient light for Delgado to see that the living room was unoccupied.

They checked out the kitchen. Empty. Bathroom. Empty. Bedroom. Empty.

“Looks like nobody’s home,” Wildman whispered in a shaky voice.

Gardner swore.

Delgado was on the handset again. “Lionel, any activity out back?”

“Not a thing.”

“Okay. The Gryphon has flown. Come around to the front.”

He switched to the duplex setting and made a connection on Tac-4 with the West L.A. watch commander. Before leaving the station, he’d requested a Department of Motor Vehicles computer search to learn Rood’s vehicle registration. The watch commander relayed the information, which Delgado jotted down. He was telescoping the handset’s antenna when Robertson stepped into the living room.

“Lionel,” Delgado said briskly, “I want you to take two officers and search the vicinity for a white sixty-three Ford Falcon.” He recited the license number. “If it’s around, you ought to find it within a radius of two blocks. There’s no shortage of parking spaces in this neighborhood.”

“Got you, Seb.” Robertson hurried out.

Delgado looked at Wildman and Gardner. “The three of us are going to toss this place. Quickly but thoroughly.”

By unspoken agreement they checked out the kitchen first. Delgado tensed his body before opening the refrigerator door. He remembered Jeffrey Dahmer in Milwaukee, the things he had kept in the fridge among the leftovers and the jugs of milk.

But Franklin Rood was a different story, apparently. Delgado saw nothing unusual in either the refrigerator or the freezer compartment.

He told Gardner to explore the rest of the kitchen and sent Wildman to look at the bedroom. Then he set to work in the living room.

There was no dust anywhere, no dirt, no clutter. The place was immaculate, almost obsessively so.

Clay figurines were displayed around the room. Small, tidy sculptures of mythological subjects: centaurs, dragons, mermaids, unicorns, satyrs, the multiheaded Hydra, the cydops Polyphemus, the Minotaur, the Roc, the Kraken. A clay menagerie.

No gryphons, though. Rood had found another use for them.

Near the TV was a stack of videotapes. Delgado loaded one into the machine and watched it for a few moments. A news report on the Gryphon. He saw himself delivering yesterday’s statement to the press, and suddenly a picture came to him of Rood watching this tape, freezing the image, studying the face of his nemesis with hungry, hateful eyes. Delgado shut off the tape as a chill passed over him like a ghost’s caress.

Nothing else in the living room was of interest. He entered the bedroom, passing under a chin-up bar screwed into the door frame, and found Wildman poring over a stack of bills and receipts.

“Found these in a desk drawer,” she said. “Thought I could find some reference to another address, a second home. No luck.”

On Rood’s desk lay a chunk of red sandstone, presumably used as a paperweight. Delgado was reminded of the geode of agate on his own desk at work. The comparison disturbed him. He wanted nothing in common with the Gryphon.

He picked up the rock, wondering where Rood had gotten it. In the Mojave, most likely. Huge projections of sandstone could be seen out there, breaking the skin of the earth like the jagged spines of buried dinosaurs. Small pieces were constantly being chipped off by time or tools.