thoughts in his eyes.
“Who were the first officers to arrive at the scene?” Delgado asked, fatigue thickening his voice.
Two men stepped forward. “We were, Detective,” one of them said.
Delgado recognized the pair. The cop who’d spoken was named Branden. He wore wire-rim glasses and longish hair that tested the limits of departmental regulations, giving him the appearance of a disaffected intellectual of the existentialist stripe, the sort who could go on at tedious length about Plato’s cave or Dostoevski’s underground man. There were a lot of them in L.A., and a few had even found their way onto the police force, for motives impossible to guess.
Branden’s partner, Van Ness, was a farmboy, or should have been; he had the kind of build the word “strapping” had been coined to describe: thick neck, broad shoulders, huge meaty fists like hams. Excitement shone in his eyes. Clearly he was getting a kick out of being involved in a case with this much heat on it.
Flipping open his memo pad, Delgado fixed his gaze on Branden, whom he judged the more intelligent of the two. “Let me have your report.”
“We were cruising this neighborhood,” Branden said, “when a call came over the radio. Some civilian nine- elevened a report about the Gryphon. Apparently he was seen at this address-”
“Seen?” Delgado interrupted, his heartbeat speeding up. Nobody had ever seen the Gryphon before. A description would be invaluable. If an artist could work up an IdentiKit sketch…
Branden shrugged. “That was how I understood it, sir. But the details were fuzzy as hell. Frankly, we didn’t think there was anything to it anyway; people have been calling in false alarms for weeks.”
“The whole Westside is scared shitless,” Van Ness added. “Jumping at shadows. We figured somebody saw a drunk taking a leak in the bushes, and got spooked.”
“All right.” Delgado tried to hold impatience and frustration at bay. He would find out about the alleged sighting later, from somebody better informed than either of these two. For the moment he would dig out whatever information they had. “You arrived at the scene at what time?”
“Ten-thirty-four,” Branden answered.
“Go on.”
“We checked out the grounds of the building first, then the apartments. That was when we saw the stiff. Couldn’t miss her. The door was wide open, and the lights were on.”
“He always leaves the place lit up like that,” Van Ness said. “Like a frigging laundry-mat.” That was how he put it: laundry-mat.
Delgado ignored him. “You found the body. What then?”
“Van Ness called in the homicide. In about two minutes, we had more backup than I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Everybody wants to be in on this one,” Van Ness said, smiling.
“Everybody except the victims,” Delgado replied coolly. He returned his attention to Branden. That 911 report still teased his curiosity. “Do you have any idea who tipped us off? Could it have been somebody in the building?”
Branden shook his head. “We asked all the neighbors. Nobody here saw anything.”
“Did they tell you who rents this apartment?”
“Yes, sir. It’s a woman, and the description they gave us matches the deceased. I mean, as far as you can tell.”
“Did she live alone?”
“According to them, yes. And there’s only one name on the mailbox.”
“Which is?”
“Kutzlow, sir. Jennifer Kutzlow.”
“They say she was a stewardess,” Van Ness added.
11
This was bad. Very bad.
Franklin Rood sat in his car, breathing hard, fighting pain and weakness. His shirt was untucked, his belly exposed to the pale yellow glow of a streetlight. Blood oozed from a jagged vertical gash in his side. Not a great deal of blood, but enough to have trickled down his pants and pooled on the driver’s seat, soiling the tan upholstery. He hoped he could remove the stain.
He’d driven at least a mile from the apartment building on Palm Vista Avenue before parking on a quiet side street to inspect the wound. He couldn’t tell how serious it was, though it sure hurt like the dickens.
He sighed, a low wheezing sound that startled him, the kind of sound an invalid would make. He had to admit that the last round of the game had not gone exactly as planned.
Shortly past eight o’clock Rood had arrived in Miss Wendy Alden’s neighborhood and parked in a curbside space. Before leaving the car, he clipped the cassette recorder to his belt. He played the blank tape for a few seconds to get past the leader, then pulled on his gloves and checked the pocket of his coat to confirm that the garrote was inside.
He smiled. Ready to go.
Holding the bag by its strap, he got out of the car and walked toward the apartment building where Miss Alden lived. It was a simple two-story frame structure, put up back in the late Fifties or early Sixties, in those simpler times when nobody felt the need for a security gate or an intercom system or any protection at all. The doors opened directly onto the street-or, in the case of the apartments on the second floor, onto a gallery that could be reached easily enough via the outside staircase.
How wonderfully convenient.
As the building drew near. Rood became aware of raucous rock music blaring from a ground-floor window. He wondered if Miss Alden were throwing a party. He hoped not. If she were, he’d have to wait for her guests to leave.
A few yards from the building Rood stopped, removed the night-vision binoculars from his bag, and squinted through the eyepieces. The world was suffused in a green fog; the brass numbers affixed to the apartment doors shone brightly in the enhanced luminescence of the streetlights. He rotated the focusing knob, bringing the numbers into crisp resolution, then located the door marked 204. Miss Alden’s apartment.
She lived in an upstairs corner unit directly above the noisy apartment. The curtains in the side window were drawn, the place dark and silent. She must be out.
Rood replaced the binoculars in his bag and considered his options. He could wait in his car till he saw the lights go on in the apartment. Eventually the window would darken again when she retired for the night. An hour or so after that, he could silently break in and surprise her in bed. She would awaken from a dream into a nightmare.
Yes, he could do it that way. But there was another, more interesting, slightly riskier possibility. He could pick the lock on her door, conceal himself in the apartment, and wait for her to come home. There was danger in an ambush; suppose she returned with her boyfriend or with a group of friends. But then again, suppose she didn’t. He could watch her from his hiding place, then pounce for the kill. What fun.
He decided to chance it.
Briskly he walked up to the staircase. He’d just put his foot on the lowest step when the door to the ground- floor apartment swung open in a blast of frenzied guitar chords and a young woman emerged with a bulging sack of garbage in her arms. She stopped short, her eyes fixed on Rood from a yard away.
“Oh,” she said very simply, as her eyes tracked from his face to his gloved hands, mottled in dried blood.
“Hello,” Rood said pleasantly. “What’s your name?”
The bag slipped from her fingers and hit the ground with a moist plop. She whirled. She was almost inside the doorway of her apartment when Rood caught her from behind. He pushed her forward into that cave of crashing stereophonic sound. She fell sprawling on hands and knees. He kicked the door shut, tossed his bag on the floor, advanced on her. She tried to crawl away. He grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head back. She screamed. It
