“He came and took her,” Nason answered, outrage in his voice. “The nerve of the bastard-he put on Sanchez’s uniform and just waltzed right in here and signed her out.”
“Fed the receptionist and the guards some cock-and-bull story about taking her to the station for safekeeping,” Gray added. “Detective Delgado’s orders, he claimed.”
“The staff must have gotten a look at him,” Delgado said.
Gray nodded. “Yeah, the IdentiKit artists are sharpening their pencils, but I don’t think they’re going to come up with much. The nurse on duty remembers he had brown hair and he was tall. The guards say the same thing.”
“And the uniform,” Nason said. “They remember that, for all the good it does us.”
“Nothing else?” Tom Gardner broke in impatiently. “Nothing specific?”
Nason spread his hands. “You know how it is. One dude in uniform looks like any other.”
“He would have been counting on that,” Delgado said grimly.
“Yeah, he’s smart, all right,” Tallyman muttered. “And he loves taking chances, spinning that wheel.”
“From what we can tell, even Miss Alden was fooled,” Gray said. “No one observed any indication that she left under duress.”
“How the hell did he even know where to find her?” Gardner asked.
“That one’s easy.” Nason shrugged. “Every TV and radio asshole in town has been broadcasting that information all morning. You should see these TV creeps doing their live stand-ups on the steps outside.”
“Freedom of the press,” Gardner hissed. “Fucking First Amendment gets on my fucking nerves.”
“Funny how his cover story matched your orders,” Tallyman told Delgado thoughtfully. “You think he was monitoring the police band and picked it up?”
Delgado shook his head. “I delivered those orders by landline. And the black-and-white was told to keep it quiet on the way over for exactly that reason. It’s just a coincidence. Or perhaps he knows the way my mind works.”
“Wish we could say the same about him,” Gardner said.
In the parking garage, Delgado got a break. The attendant who manned the exit gate remembered one car in particular that left within the appropriate time frame. It was a late-model blue Dodge Aries-he was pretty sure it was a coupe- and it caught his attention because his girlfriend’s mother drove one just like it. Yes, there was a man at the wheel, but the attendant recalled nothing about his face. No, he wasn’t wearing a uniform; the attendant was certain he would have noticed that. And no, there was no woman in the car-none who could be seen, anyway.
Delgado radioed Dispatch with orders to put every patrol car on the alert for a blue Aries coupe driven by a brown-haired man, possibly alone, possibly in the company of a blonde female.
He was interrogating the security guard who’d noticed Sanchez’s nameplate, hoping to coax an additional detail from the man’s memory, when Tallyman ran up to him, out of breath.
“News on the Dodge.”
“They found it?” Delgado asked, forgetting the guard.
“No. But they know where it came from.” Tallyman consulted a scrawled note on his steno pad. “Vehicle matching the Dodge’s description was stolen at eight-fifteen, approximately one half hour before the kidnapping. Owner is a guy named Levy, Robert Levy. He parked outside a health spa on Sepulveda Boulevard-outdoor lot-and was struck from behind by a blunt instrument while locking the door. Regained consciousness roughly five minutes later; car was gone.”
“Did he see the assailant?”
“No such luck.”
“This man Levy should consider himself fortunate,” Delgado said slowly. “The Gryphon doesn’t normally leave his victims alive.”
“Maybe he was in a hurry.”
“Could be. All right, I want unmarked cars dispatched to cruise Sepulveda for at least five miles north and south of the spa. If the Gryphon was there once, he might have returned to lift a new car or ditch the stolen one. Tell them to look in the side streets, alleys, everyplace a car might be hidden, and take note of any suspicious vehicles, not just the Dodge.”
“Right, Seb.”
While he waited for word of the car, Delgado returned to Wendy’s room. The empty bed pained him. He checked out the bathroom, opened the bureau drawers, and looked under the bed, being careful to touch as few things as possible; the room had not yet been dusted, and it was possible the Gryphon had left prints. He told himself that he was searching for some small item the Gryphon might have dropped, some clue that would magically reveal his identity, but he knew the truth. He simply wanted to be in a place Wendy had recently occupied, to feel some connection with her, however tenuous and unreal. He didn’t want to feel he’d lost her forever.
In the middle of the room, between the two beds, he stopped, wondering for the first time if he had fallen in love with Wendy Alden.
No, he decided after a moment’s reflection, he was not in love, not exactly. What he felt for her was the prelude to love, the wordless intuitive conviction that he could love her if given the chance.
It was a chance he might never have now.
There was a knock on the frame of the open door. He turned and saw Gardner standing there.
“Seb, they recovered the Dodge.”
“Where?”
“About two blocks from where it was lifted. Parked in an alley just east of Sepulveda.”
“And?”
“It’s empty. Looks like it was abandoned there.”
Delgado lowered his head. “Damn.”
Obviously the Gryphon had anticipated the possibility that the car used in the abduction would be seen and remembered by someone. So he’d taken a sensible precaution. He’d stolen Levy’s car, then switched to another vehicle- probably his own.
Delgado had no idea what kind of car or truck or van that might be. And he could not put out an APB on every brown-haired man in Los Angeles.
There was no way to track the Gryphon now. No way to guess where he might go. No way to find Wendy and save her.
No hope for her at all.
“Seb? Are you all right?”
Delgado didn’t answer. Slowly he raised his head and looked at the sun-streaked room around him, the room where he’d sat at Wendy’s bedside only a few hours earlier, holding her lovely, delicate hand.
26
The time was exactly ten o’clock by Rood’s wristwatch when Wendy guided the Ford Falcon onto San Fernando Road. His special place was less than fifteen minutes away.
The road swept into the lower fringes of the Mojave Desert, where windblasted rock formations jutted up at unnatural angles amid bleak stretches of pinkish alkaline sand. In the crisp, slanting sunshine the landscape was rendered forebodingly alien and slightly unreal, like a movie fantasist’s vision of the surface of Mars.
Rood was fond of the desert. He liked its ugly desolation and arid inhospitality to man, the stony friendlessness of its monuments, the bite of the dusty air. But today he took little interest in the scenery around him. He had something far more interesting to occupy his attention.
Leaning back in his seat, he studied the young woman behind the steering wheel as she drove. He really did prefer her hair loose as it was now, not coiled in that dreadful chignon. He loved the innocence of her face, the smooth skin, the china-blue eyes. She was a porcelain doll. His doll. His to play with and fondle and hold. A life-size toy, all for him.
That was what love was. Wasn’t it?
He was wonderfully happy. Everything had gone flawlessly so far. His good fortune seemed all the more amazing when he considered how close he’d come to the ultimate disaster last night. He’d very nearly lost the game for good. He could have been killed in the crash, yet incredibly he escaped without injury. He even showed the presence of mind to drag Officer Sanchez’s body away from the car before the fuel tank blew. Then it was a simple matter to remove the man’s shirt, pants, shoes, and gun belt. Once back in his apartment, he scrubbed off the dirt and blood stains.