The engine crews’ strategy quickly became clear. Using Mulholland and Thornwood as firebreaks, they targeted the leeward fringes of the fire, spraying streams of water at the upslope flames and driving them back. Brush strike forces were formed, teams of smokechasers masked in bandannas and wearing yellow Nomex fireshirts; working with grub hoes, hatchets, shovels, and McLeod fire rakes, they cleared the brush in advance of the fire, digging firelines eight feet wide, then set backfires to consume excess fuel. From time to time Delgado saw the smokechasers staggering out of the chaparral, sweat-soaked and gasping, the fire having consumed much of the oxygen in the air. After sucking on air packs and guzzling bottled water, they would tramp back into the hell of whirling embers and superheated air to continue raking and shoveling. Delgado was glad he would not be joining them.
Having completed his examination of the scene on Mulholland, he left the fire crews to their hot and hazardous work, and drove to Jeffrey Pellman’s house. He found it swarming with uniforms. The first TV vans and print reporters were already there, as were the key members of the task force, disheveled and jittery, running on adrenaline and black coffee. Tom Gardner was among them, having just arrived after witnessing the autopsy.
“Give me the details,” Delgado said tersely.
“Porter is dead,” Donna Wildman answered as she led him inside the house. “Throat slashed. Sanchez is missing. We’re assuming his body was in the patrol car when it crashed. And here’s another one.”
She gestured toward the living-room couch, draped with a white sheet.
“Jeffrey Pellman?” Delgado asked.
“Yes. The neighbor who called in the report has already been over to I.D. him.”
“Same wound as Porter’s?”
Wildman nodded. “Cut throat. Nasty.”
As Delgado moved through the house, reconstructing the events that had taken place there, he became aware of an ugly tension around him, the tension that always developed in any crowd of police officers when one of their own had been killed. Or in this case, two of their own; nobody had any serious expectation of finding Sanchez alive.
The Gryphon had added a pair of cops to his roster of corpses; and the men and women who had worked alongside Sanchez and Porter, who had sat beside them at the night-watch roll call, who had swapped stories with them in the locker room, were upset and angry and seething to obtain the rough justice of vengeance. Delgado caught whispered remarks concerning what they would do to the Gryphon if he was somehow still alive.
Of course, Delgado had known the two officers as well. Other than Wendy and her boyfriend, he must have been the last person to speak with them. In a sense he had sent them to their deaths. The thought cut him like glass. Despite himself, he felt stirrings of the same wild anger that simmered around him, the animalistic fury that, unchecked, would drive a lynch mob. With effort he suppressed those feelings, slamming the lid on any thoughts of the two patrolmen. He had to stay in focus. There was a job to do.
“Something happened in the darkroom,” Eddie Torres was saying. “We think she locked herself in, and he broke down the door.”
Delgado peered into the half-bath, past the door leaning on shattered hinges, and saw that the black paper sealing the window had been stripped off, the window raised.
“She tried to escape, but the security bars stopped her,” he said.
“Goddamn firetrap,” Ted Blaise muttered.
“There’s a latch,” Harry Jacobs said, “but she must have been too panicky to find it.”
Wildman grunted. “Can’t say I blame her. Suspect was chasing me down an alley once, and I could barely remember how to pop the strap on my holster.”
“I’ll bet you did remember, though,” Torres said.
“Yeah, and shot the bastard in the knee. He’ll never play soccer again.”
“What’s that on the floor?” Delgado asked.
Rob Tallyman followed his gaze. “Frommer says it’s acid.”
“She tried to splash him, turn him into the Phantom of the Opera, I guess,” Jacobs said.
Blaise frowned. “He wouldn’t have been any scarier that way than he was already.”
“You can see somebody took a swipe at somebody else with that photographic enlarger.” Wildman was pointing at a dented chunk of metal on the floor. “My guess is she brained him with it.”
Delgado got down on hands and knees. He peered under the sink, then pulled on a glove and carefully retrieved a knife. “Take a look at this.”
“Kitchen knife, it looks like,” Tallyman said.
Delgado studied the serrated blade. “This could be what he used to kill Porter and Pellman, and quite possibly Sanchez as well. It may even be the same knife Wendy wounded him with, the one from her kitchen drawer.” He bagged and labeled it.
Spots of blood mottled the floor of the hallway. “The lab’s doing tests on them right now,” Lionel Robertson said. “Ten-to-one odds they match the Gryphon’s blood type.”
“Or Wendy’s,” Delgado said quietly.
The blood trail, cordoned off by evidence tape, led them back into the living room and out the front door. In the driveway, the beam of Tallyman’s flashlight picked out a pile of shattered safety glass.
“The Camaro had a broken window on the driver’s side,” Delgado said.
“Then it all fits together.” Wildman sounded pleased. “She ran for the car and got in. He caught up with her and broke the window, but she got away.”
“Pulled out fast, bounced over the curb,” Gardner said. “See the tread marks in the lawn?”
“After that, the Gryphon ran across the road to the black-and-white,” Delgado said. “He had already taken care of Sanchez and Porter before entering the house. He jumped behind the wheel, pushing Sanchez’s body into the passenger seat if necessary, and took off in pursuit.”
“Most of the locals heard the car chase,” Tallyman said. “High-speed pursuit. The Gryphon was using the siren and maybe even the loudspeaker; somebody heard what sounded like an amplified voice.”
“And gunshots,” Blaise put in. “He was firing at her.”
“Probably using Sanchez’s gun,” Delgado said. “The Camaro’s windshield was blown out, and a nine-millimeter Parabellum round was embedded in the headrest of the passenger seat.”
Gardner rubbed his chin. “If the bullet entered through the windshield, he must have been in front of her. That doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe they were careening back and forth, jockeying for position.” Wildman shrugged. “Who knows?”
Delgado had another idea. He thought Wendy had deliberately maneuvered behind the Gryphon and rammed him, forcing him off the road. But he kept that opinion to himself.
“Then the guy loses control of his car,” Robertson was saying, “and takes the big plunge. Ka-bam! The car goes up like a drum of gasoline and rockets him straight to hell.”
“Think that’s it, Seb?” Wildman asked.
“Yes,” Delgado answered slowly. “That, or something very much like it.”
“Guess what, folks?” Eddie Torres wore a huge grin. “I think gryphons just became extinct.”
“I’ve got just one question,” Tallyman said. “Why did he take the patrol car, and not his own?”
“Because obviously his car was parked somewhere else,” Gardner replied. “On a side street, I’d guess.”
“If so, then it will still be there,” Delgado said. “And that means you talented people are going to find it.”
Wildman groaned. “We’ll have to check out all the cars parked on the street within a two-mile radius. Wake up everybody in the neighborhood to determine the ownership of every vehicle in sight.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“A lot of people who managed to sleep through the rest of the excitement are going to be awfully upset at being dragged out of bed,” Torres said.
Delgado smiled faintly. “Well, isn’t that just too damn bad?”
Shortly before dawn, Delgado finally received word of Wendy’s condition. He was told she’d suffered a mild case of shock but had come out of it unharmed. She had no broken bones, no internal bleeding, no serious cuts or contusions. All she needed was rest. He experienced a wave of relief so intense it was physically draining.