She had no choice. If she didn’t obey him, he would kill her. And even now, she wasn’t ready to die. Even now.
Her lips parted. She accepted him. Though he had no erection, still he seemed huge to her, his manhood a grotesque slimy mass crowding her mouth like a second tongue. The hairy bush of his crotch, jammed against her face, reeked of stale sweat.
“Lick me.”
She couldn’t do it. She would vomit. Would die.
“Goddammit, I said lick me.”
Crying, she moved her tongue over him, hoping she was doing it right, having no way to know.
He remained limp and soft inside her. She knew now that nothing she did, nothing he could make her do, would bring him the sexual release he wanted.
He seemed to reach the same conclusion. Angrily he pulled free. She jerked her head away, coughing spit.
“What are you doing to me, you little whore?” he muttered. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Not… not doing anything.”
“Liar!” He sprang upright, his pants sagging around his knees. “You think you can make me weak. Think you can steal my power. You’re wrong, bitch. Very goddamned wrong.”
He thrust his hands between her thighs and pulled her legs apart, then scrabbled at her underpants, shredding the thin fabric. She heard herself screaming. Then he was on top of her, mounting her, grinding his pelvis desperately, humping her like a dog. She felt him in her, the head of his cock tickling her sex, but still he wasn’t swelling with the erection he needed. He would never reach a climax, never. And she was glad. No matter what he did to her afterward, no matter how awful his punishment might be, she was grateful that his semen would not bloom inside her body.
“Bitch!” he shouted again and again, as his legs pumped and his back arched and the silver shield on his shirt flashed in the candlelight. “Goddamned sexless bitch!”
Finally, in fury and shame and frustration, he withdrew. Wendy turned over on her side and retched dryly, tasting peanut butter and Pepsi and death.
When she looked up, she saw him standing over her, his belt buckled once more, his shirttail hanging out in disarray. He had retrieved his glasses and put them on. Rage colored his face.
“All right, Wendy. All right.” He was nodding furiously, as if in agreement with something she’d said. “I guess it’s not going to work out between us, after all. You can’t say I didn’t try. You can’t say I didn’t give you every possible chance to prove yourself worthy of me.”
“I did… everything… you asked for. Everything.”
His hand flew at her, and his knuckles cracked hard against her jaw.
“You did nothing!” He slapped her again. “You gave me nothing!” He planted his fist in her belly, and she doubled up in pain. “You fucked with me, you lying slut! You fucked with me! Playing your evil tricks. Making me weak. Making me weak!” He grabbed her hair and slammed her facedown into the foam pad.
She waited for another blow. None came. Instead he backed away. Suddenly, inexplicably, his voice was calm again. Calm and thoughtful and almost sad.
“I guess I was wrong about you, wasn’t I?” He sighed. “You’re not special. You’re not my equal. You’re nothing but a dumb, frigid cunt, like all the others. I’ve got no use for you now.”
He looked at her, and she swallowed.
“Or at least,” he whispered slowly, “I’ve got no use for you… alive.”
31
At eleven-thirty, half an hour after putting out an APB on Franklin Rood’s 1963 Ford Falcon, Delgado received word of an almost definite sighting.
Patrol units had been advised to be particularly alert when cruising Sepulveda Boulevard, since Rood was believed to have switched cars in an alley near that street, one of the city’s main north-south traffic corridors. When two Studio City patrol officers stopped in a Union 76 service station on Sepulveda to use the rest room, they asked the employees if any car resembling the Falcon had been seen there that morning. The answer was yes.
The attendant on duty at the full-service island said he filled the tank of a car matching the Falcon’s description at approximately nine-thirty. Furthermore, he was told by the man in the passenger seat that the car was a 1963 model. Although he didn’t get a good look at the man, the attendant remembered the woman behind the wheel as attractive, blonde, and young-looking.
Five minutes after he heard the report, Delgado was speeding north on the San Diego Freeway. He wanted to interview the attendant personally in the hope of eliciting further details. More than that, he wanted-needed-to be in motion, to be active. It was the only way to combat the heavy, suffocating sense of helplessness that pressed down on him otherwise.
“I already told them everything,” the young man in orange coveralls said with a shrug when Delgado got out of the car, flashing his badge.
“I know you did, sir, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to go over it with you anyway.”
Another shrug. “Sure. Okay. You must be awful interested in these people. They fugitives or bank robbers or something?”
Delgado led him into a corner of the lot, close to the rattle and roar of the service bay. “Not exactly. If the man in that car was who we think he was, then he kidnapped the woman you spoke with. It’s possible he was holding her at gunpoint during your conversation.”
“I didn’t see any gun.”
“He might have been concealing it. Did either he or the woman leave the car while they were here?”
“No. She paid me through the window. Never got out. Him neither.” He brightened. “I get it. You figure he was keeping her inside, huh? With a gun in her back or something?”
“Possibly. Now, I’d like you to take a look at this photograph and tell me if this is the woman you saw.”
Delgado removed a four-by-five black-and-white glossy from his pocket. The photo, taken from Jeffrey Pellman’s house, showed Wendy smiling self-consciously, posed against a brick backdrop dappled with sun. Her hair was knotted in a bun, not loose as Delgado remembered it.
He waited while the attendant studied the glossy. “Yeah,” the young man said finally. “That’s her.”
“You’re certain?”
“Sure am.”
Delgado took back the photo. “Did you see which way the car went when it left the station?”
“I might have, but I can’t remember now.”
“But you think you did see it leave?”
“Yeah, but like I said, I don’t remember for sure.” A note of testiness crept into his voice. “We get a lot of business in here, man. Cars going in and out all day.”
“All right.” Delgado was not quite ready to drop that subject, but he decided to approach it from another angle. “What time did you service the car?”
“It was maybe nine-thirty. Little before, little after.”
“Did you check the oil? The tires?”
“They didn’t want me to. The lady just asked for a full tank. That’s all.”
“The bill was paid in cash. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“And while you were making change, you talked briefly about the car, what year it had come out, what sort of condition it was in?”
“Uh-huh. I like old cars. They’ve got, you know, character.”
“How would you describe the vehicle’s condition?”
“Good. Real good, considering the model year.”
“Anything wrong with it?”
