Rood held up the knife. The serrated blade was smeared with blood and pus. He wiped it clean, then let his head fall back against the headrest as he expelled a shaky breath. He was trembling.
After a few minutes he was calm again. Calm and vastly pleased with himself. He’d carried out his mission with remarkable expertise. There were not ten men in the world who could have accomplished what he’d done. When his story was told by future generations, as it would be, the execution of Officers Porter and Sanchez would occupy a prominent place in the myth. And the two cops themselves would achieve a kind of immortality, a place in history they had not earned, but which Rood, in his magnanimity, would not begrudge them.
With effort he roused himself. He could hardly afford to slow down now.
He left the car and retrieved the drawstring bag. He needed the bag, which contained his tools for entering the house, as well as the hacksaw with which he would take his grandest trophy.
Crossing the street, he approached the house and circled it. Although he would have liked to break in through a window, as he’d done at Miss Osborn’s place, he found he couldn’t; all the windows on the ground floor were protected by the iron security bars he’d noticed earlier. Well, the locks on a house so old and poorly maintained should give him no trouble.
They didn’t. Within two minutes he’d defeated the rusty latch bolt and dead bolt on the front door. Cautiously he entered the dark living room, then stopped, his attention caught by the low burr of a snore. The noise came from the sofa, where Mr. Jeffrey Pellman lay fast asleep. Alone.
So Miss Alden wasn’t sleeping with him, after all. For some reason Rood was relieved. He wasn’t sure why. He supposed he wanted the woman all for himself. Yes. That must be it.
Well, he would have her soon enough.
18
Wendy couldn’t sleep. Her body hummed with adrenaline. Though she’d lain in bed for over an hour, pressing her face to the pillow, she’d been unable to nod off. She felt the need to talk, not about what had happened tonight, but about other things. That park she liked so much, the one Sanchez had reminded her of-she wanted to talk about the summer afternoons she’d spent there, and about how much she loved summer, June especially, when the daylight lasted so long that anything seemed possible. She wanted to say things she’d never dared to say, reveal secrets long hidden even from herself. Then cry a little-she was getting good at that-and let herself be held.
But she didn’t feel right about waking Jeffrey, even though she was sure he wouldn’t mind. She hated to interfere in his life any more than she already had. Or maybe she hated to admit that she needed him, needed anyone.
Anyway, morning would come soon. It always did.
She smiled at the thought, appreciating the optimism contained in it, the optimism always so foreign to her in the past.
At the other end of the house, in the living room, a floorboard creaked.
She rolled over on her side and listened. She heard another creak, then another.
Footsteps.
Jeffrey was awake. Apparently he couldn’t sleep either.
Slowly she raised herself to a sitting position. Since he was up anyway, she decided there was no reason not to seek his company. Maybe he would fix her a cup of that hot chocolate he’d offered earlier. She could picture the two of them seated at his kitchen table, earthenware mugs steaming in their hands, talking in hushed voices till the sky was glassy with dawn. The scene was vivid in her mind, like a clip from a movie.
Smiling, pleased with the prospect, Wendy rose from bed and crept across the bedroom in her socks, holding up her loose pajama pants with one hand. Jeffrey’s robe felt warm and comfortingly heavy as she shrugged it on.
She stepped out of the bedroom and looked down the hall. At the far end, in the doorway of the living room, stood an indistinct figure in a field of grainy darkness. Ambient starlight glinted on his glasses. His breathing was low, almost husky.
“Jeffrey?” she called softly. “Have you got insomnia too?”
“Uh-huh,” came the whispered reply.
“Guess I can’t blame either one of us.”
She walked swiftly toward him. The photographs on the walls glided past her, glossy squares, faintly luminous, like pieces of dreams.
“Hey, you think maybe I could have some of that hot chocolate now?”
“Okay.” The word a breath.
As she got closer, she noticed that he was wearing a robe, bulky and shapeless, which made his shoulders look broader. She thought it was funny the way he was standing there, unmoving, his hands at his sides. His gloved hands.
Halfway down the hall she froze.
Not Jeffrey.
Him.
“Hello, Miss Alden,” the Gryphon whispered.
She couldn’t breathe. Tightness in her chest. Squeezing pain.
“I’m afraid,” he said quietly, “the hot chocolate will have to wait.”
A scream struggled to take shape at the back of her throat. She heard it rising and falling like a siren, but only in her own mind.
He’d found her, tracked her down, even though there was no way he could have known where she was. He’d broken into the house, past Sanchez and Porter, stationed outside. That wasn’t possible either. None of it was possible. None of it was real. She was asleep in Jeffrey’s bed, asleep and dreaming.
The Gryphon was coming toward her now. Floorboards squeaked like mice. The folds of his robe-no, not a robe, a coat, a bulky winter coat-rustled around him. Silver glinted in his right hand. A knife.
She stared at him as he approached. She knew she ought to run, but she couldn’t. Her knees were locked, her muscles rigid. Anyway, there was no point in running. He would always catch up with her. She could never escape him. Never. She could board a plane bound for the other side of the world, and when she disembarked in Australia or Singapore or Taiwan, she would find him waiting at the airport, holding up a sign with her name on it, a name written in blood.
The knife swam out of the darkness, cutting a silent wake like a shark fin. Her knife-she recognized it as it loomed closer-the knife from her kitchen drawer, the one she’d used against him. He would cut her with it. Cut her to pieces. Then take her head and leave a clay gargoyle in her hand.
No. No.
Her paralysis broke. She turned. Ran. Nearly tripped over her baggy pajama pants. Fast footsteps behind her. The bedroom was too far. She’d never make it. Ahead, a doorway. She ducked inside, slammed the door, locked it. Her hand swatted the wall switch. An amber safelight snapped on. Seven and a half watts. The darkroom. That was where she was. The door thumped. A fist or a shoe. Again. Louder. He was going to break it down.
She ran for the window, covered in black paper to make the room light-tight. Her fingernails peeled the paper away in curling strips of confetti. The window looked just large enough for her to climb through. If she could get it open. The door thumped again. She unlocked the window and tugged at it. Stuck. She was making noises like sobs, though her eyes were dry. She tugged harder. The door shuddered under another blow, but held, and in the same moment the window popped free and slid up. She grabbed the sill, hoisted herself off the floor, and came up short against the iron security bars. Her hands fumbled at the bars, groping for a latch, some way to open them from the inside. There had to be a way-fire hazard if there wasn’t-but this was an old house, pre-code; there was no latch. She was caged like an animal.
She thrust her face at the bars and hammered them with her fists and screamed.
“Help! Police! Help me! He’s in the house, oh, Christ, get in here, hurry, he’s in the house!”
They had to hear that. Even from across the road they had to hear it on a still night.