The Gryphon took another step toward her. He was laughing, enjoying her fear, savoring the pain he was soon to inflict. It was all a game to him, wasn’t it? Torture, murder-a game. He’d used that very word in the alley. The women he killed were the unwilling contestants in that game, and their heads were the prizes he won.
Their heads…
Suddenly she saw a way to hurt him, really hurt him, let him taste at least a hint of the suffering he’d caused.
With a sweep of her arm she sent the four jars sliding off the cabinet to shatter on the floor.
His laughter died in a hiccupping gasp. The sharp, biting odor of formaldehyde rose in the air. He stared aghast at the wreckage of his trophies, the pools of clear liquid soaking into the carpet, the four heads rolling amid the litter of glass shards.
“No,” he whispered in disbelieving horror. The word trailed into a moan, then rose to a wail of pain that reminded her incongruously of a baby’s cry.
His head jerked up. His eyes locked on hers. She stared at him past the leaping flame of the candle in her hand.
“You… you shit,” he hissed. “You filthy, evil little shit!”
He tossed the hacksaw aside. Scrabbled at his holster. He would point and shoot. Couldn’t miss at this range.
Unless he couldn’t see.
With a puff of breath, she extinguished the candle.
Darkness.
She dropped to her knees, then crawled blindly, seeking a place to hide. The darkness was total, absolute. Even her own hands, groping inches from her face, were invisible.
The disembodied voices of the dead went on and on, still more eerie in the sudden unreal night.
“… help me, somebody, please help, oh, God, please…”
“I’ll do anything you say, anything…”
“… want to live, that’s all, don’t you understand, I want to live!”
She kept crawling. Her breath came in ragged bursts. Could he locate her by the sound of her breathing? Maybe he already had. He might be right behind her. At any second she might feel his hand on her neck. Her body shivered with ghost sensations of his touch. She glanced around wildly and saw nothing but impenetrable blackness on all sides.
“I’ll get you, Wendy,” the Gryphon boomed from some indeterminate distance, not near, not far. “You can’t escape.”
He was right. He could flick his lighter and find her, or hunt her in the dark if he preferred.
She crawled faster, then collided with something-him-his legs-no, no, only the futon, that was all, keep calm now, try to stay in control.
Her hands scurried along the edge of the futon and discovered a lumpy, shapeless object lying near it. The drawstring bag. There might be a weapon inside. She rummaged in the bag, feeling its contents. A square of metal the size and thinness of a credit card. A wire hook. A plastic cylinder, perhaps four inches long, which she couldn’t identify. She fumbled with it, and a beam snapped on, shining in her face, blinding her-a flashlight-some sort of lightweight, miniature flashlight-it was revealing her position-turn it off, turn it off!
She twisted the top of the cylinder counterclockwise, and the beam winked out, and then three shots exploded, blue muzzle flashes cutting the darkness, and she was screaming.
35
Delgado jumped out of the helicopter even before it set down on the road. He sprinted toward the Falcon. A yard away he stopped, read the license plate, and almost smiled.
Rood’s car.
Drawing his Beretta, he approached the trailer. He wanted to make sure the door visible from this angle was the only exit before he went in. The two Air Support Unit officers would have to cover him. Like all flight officers, they were armed, and they would have been required to log time on street patrol.
As Delgado drew nearer, he became aware of faint, muffled sounds from inside the trailer. Voices? Perhaps.
A sudden loud pop, like a firecracker. Another. Another.
Gunshots.
A woman’s scream, abruptly cut off.
Wendy’s scream. He knew it. Rood was killing her. Killing her right now.
Then he was racing for the trailer door, his jacket flapping around him, shoes kicking up desert dust.
Rood knew exactly what had happened. Wendy had found his Tekna Micro-Lite in the canvas bag and turned it on without realizing what it was. That was why her face had appeared briefly in the gloom, a white circle lit by the beam. Then the light had vanished, and he’d aimed and fired three times in the direction of the blue image fast fading on his retinas.
He was fairly sure he’d hit her. He’d heard her sudden cry, a cry of either pain or fear. She was silent now. Dead, perhaps, or unconscious. Or, just possibly, unhurt and hiding.
He needed to see. Needed light. But how? He’d already checked his pockets and discovered that his cigarette lighter was missing. He must have put it down absent-mindedly on one of the tables. He couldn’t find it now.
The door, then. Of course.
He would open the door and let in the sun.
Swiftly Rood moved toward the door, feeling his way. He hoped Wendy wasn’t dead. He hoped he’d only wounded her. He wanted to take more time with the killing, wanted her to suffer, wanted to watch her eyes grow huge as he pressed the hacksaw’s blade to her throat and began to stroke. That would be fun, such fun. Then, when she was dead, he would take her headless body and make it his. Yes, and take her head too. His manhood, swollen and empurpled, would slide into her screaming mouth and find release.
Let her try to rob him of his power then. Rood chuckled. Just let her try.
His questing hand slapped the door. He groped for the lever that controlled the dead bolt, found it, and retracted the bolt with a click. He turned the knob. The door swung open and daylight flooded in like water cascading through a burst dam, and a man was there.
He stood in the doorway, his tall figure outlined in an aureole of sun. Rood took a step back, staring at his face, at the jet-black hair swept back from his high forehead, at the sharp, hawklike nose, at the angry mouth bracketed by chiseled grooves.
He knew that face. He’d studied it in newspaper photos and on television newscasts. He’d memorized every detail.
“You,” Rood said, his voice hushed.
Detective Sebastian Delgado nodded once. “Me.”
Delgado had been poised to shoot off the locks securing the trailer door when suddenly the door opened from inside and he found himself facing a man in a police officer’s uniform-a man with a gun held loosely in his hand, pointing down-a man who was, of course, Franklin Rood.
Shock held Rood paralyzed. He muttered one word, signifying recognition, and Delgado answered, confirming it, and then before Rood could react, before he had time to raise the gun hanging uselessly at his side, Delgado struck.
He lashed out with his pistol and whickered it across Rood’s face, breaking off one stem of his glasses, then seized Rood’s gun hand and twisted hard. Rood’s fingers splayed, and the Beretta dropped from his grasp. Delgado spun him around, put him in a choke hold, and hauled him out of the trailer onto the landing of the iron staircase. Rood drove his elbow into Delgado’s abdomen. Delgado took the blow without flinching, then shoved Rood headfirst down the stairs. He hit the ground on his side and tried to rise, but already Delgado was on top of him, slamming his face into the dirt again and again, then yanking Rood’s hands roughly behind his back and pinning them there.
He fished a pair of handcuffs from his jacket pocket, snapped them on, and rolled Rood onto his back, hands manacled behind him. Rood gazed up at him, breathing hard. His eyes, half-concealed behind the glasses askew on his face, were small and gray and lifeless. They caught the sunlight, glittering colorlessly like flecks of pond scum.