Michael Prescott: Shiver

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.

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 everyone would notice.