“What, Wendy? What did he say?”
“He said I was too good a specimen. He wanted me for his… his collection.”
Delgado winced.
Wendy stared at him with brimming eyes. “His collection of heads. That’s what he meant, isn’t it?”
Delgado’s own voice was hoarse when he answered, “I believe so.”
She nodded weakly. “That’s what I thought. Oh, well, I guess that part doesn’t matter. I mean, who cares what happens once you’re dead? Who cares what he does with you then? Except… I can’t help but think about it. About him having part of me like that. And about… the body. I mean, what do they do at your funeral? Do they just bury you without…?”
Delgado did not reply.
“Anyway, that was when he started tightening the garrote. I could feel it digging in deeper and deeper. I’d forgotten all about the knife in my pocket. I’d forgotten everything. All I knew was that I was going to die. And… and I was so afraid…”
Something broke inside her. She slumped forward in her chair and cupped her face in her hands, weeping, her voice ragged with the catch-and-gasp sobs of a child. Delgado rose from his chair and reached out to her. She took his hand. He said nothing. There was nothing to say.
During his fourteen years on the force, Delgado had endured many discussions with psychologists and psychiatrists, sociologists and criminologists, all the vaunted experts smelling of books and grants who maintained with erudite complacency that criminals of every variety were sick, diseased, dysfunctional, that they were the products of cruel childhoods or damaged brains or an unfeeling society, that they merited pity, not contempt, and treatment, not punishment. Men who robbed and raped and killed for kicks were not autonomous agents but helpless victims, he’d been told, victims crying out for understanding, begging for release from the prison of their psyches, a prison they’d played no role in creating. And if he didn’t see it that way, if he insisted on judging and condemning, then he was intolerant, close-minded, arrogant, cruel; he was a man devoid of compassion, a man with a heart of ice.
But where were those experts now? Why weren’t they here, in this room, holding Wendy Alden’s hand? Why did their compassion, which they prized so highly, extend only to the perpetrators of evil, and not to the innocent ones whose lives evil ensnared? When the Gryphon was caught, those anxious humanitarians would gladly devote hundreds of unpaid hours to the job of treating him, reclaiming and redeeming a man who murdered for pleasure; when he was put on trial, they would eagerly testify for the defense, peering into the Gryphon’s past or into his skull to find extenuating circumstances that would relieve him of all responsibility, legal and moral. Not one of them would speak on Wendy’s behalf. Not one.
In the Mexico of Delgado’s boyhood, the parish priest had delivered many long, stammering sermons with the same message: that the man of God must love the sinful, and the greater the sin, the greater the love that was called for. And Sebastian Delgado, nine years old, had listened, frowning. He felt no love for evil, nor for those who willfully committed evil acts; and if God commanded him to feel such love or fake it, then God must be the devil in disguise. A blasphemous thought, yes, but one he would not disown.
Compassion? he asked himself now. Yes, there must be compassion. Compassion for the innocent. For the victims. But not for those who’d made them victims. Not for the killers, the torturers, the predators. Not for the Gryphon. No compassion for him. To treat him as a social product, as no more than a victim himself, was to give him the psychological excuse and the moral justification he needed. To feel love for him, or pity, or sympathetic concern, was to aid and abet him in his monstrous crimes, and in so doing, to become a kind of monster as well.
He waited for Wendy to regain some measure of composure, then said quietly, “I think we’ve covered enough for tonight.”
“Yes.” She coughed and rubbed her red eyes. “I… I’m a little tired.”
“You have every right to be. Look, tomorrow, when you’re rested, we’ll go over it all again and see if there’s anything you missed. For now, I think you’d better try to get some sleep.”
“I don’t even want to think about the nightmares I’ll have.”
“Maybe there won’t be any. Maybe you won’t dream at all.”
“I hope not.”
He took down Jeffrey Pellman’s address and phone number, then told Wendy to sit tight a moment longer. Leaving his office, he talked briefly with Lieutenant Grasser, the night-watch commander, then found Sanchez and Porter waiting near the water cooler.
“Time to roll. Detective?” Sanchez asked.
“Soon. First there are a few things we need to get clear. Number one, you leave the same way you came in, via the rear door. I want the cruiser pulled up nice and close, so Miss Alden doesn’t have to walk more than two steps. Two quick steps. Got it?”
“Sure.” Porter was plainly puzzled. “You afraid some creep with a telephoto lens might be trying to snap her picture over the wall?”
“Something like that. Once Miss Alden is in the car, she lies prone on the backseat. Before moving out, get on the radio-on the simplex setting-and show Code Twenty twice. On that signal, three other cars will leave from different exits and split up, heading in various directions. I’ve already worked it out with Lieutenant Crasser.”
Sanchez smiled. “Decoys. You don’t want any of those TV creeps to put a tail on us, right?”
“That’s part of it.” Delgado hesitated, then decided to be straight with the two men. “Part, but not all. The Gryphon knows I work out of this station. He’s got to figure Miss Alden was taken here. He may be watching.”
“Shit.” Porter’s dark face had lost some of its color. “It’s not a telephoto lens you’re worried about. It’s a goddamn rifle scope.”
Delgado ignored the comment. “Once you’re certain there’s no pursuit, radio a Code Four. But even if you get away clean, I don’t want you to let down your guard. You’re going to stay alert every minute till your relief shows up. Every damn minute. You hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” Sanchez said.
“As you may have guessed by now, this detail you’ve pulled isn’t a PR job. The Gryphon wants Miss Alden very badly. I don’t believe there’s any way he can predict where you’re taking her, but I could be wrong. Perhaps he’s way ahead of us.”
“How could he know?” Porter asked.
“ESP. Lucky guess. Divine inspiration. This son of a bitch is capable of anything. Oh, one more thing. I don’t want Miss Alden to know we’re even thinking about a possible threat. As far as she knows, you’re only there to make her feel better. That’s the way I want you to play it when she’s with you.”
“After all this shit,” Porter said, “that’ll take some acting job.”
“Well, you’re in the movie capital of the world. Acting should be no problem, right?”
“Right, sir,” Sanchez said crisply. “No problem at all.”
Delgado led the two men into his office.
“Wendy,” he said pleasantly, “I think you know these gentlemen.”
She stood up, smiling. Her tears, Delgado noted, were almost dry. “Yes, I do. You just can’t get rid of me, can you?”
“We don’t want to,” Porter said with an answering smile of his own. “You’re a lot better looking than the usual suspects we get paid to round up.”
He was playing the part fine, just fine.
“Ready to go?” Delgado asked her.
“I think so. Not that I don’t like it here or anything.”
“What’s not to like?” Sanchez cracked.
Delgado took Wendy’s arm and guided her out of the office. Walking with her down the hall, he became aware, for the first time, of how small she was. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder. Her hair looked very soft.
At the rear door he waited with her while Sanchez pulled the squad car close,