Shiver

22

Delgado was the first to reach the wreckage of the patrol car.

It lay on a broad shelf of granite a hundred feet above Thornwood Place, sprawled like a lazy cat, its chassis resting on the rock, its front end overhanging the lip of the outcrop. Fire had left the car a charred and smoking ruin. The domelights had melted; gooey tentacles of molten glass slimed over the roof. The tires were puddles of liquefied rubber. From inside the sedan came an acrid smell. Delgado wanted to believe it was the odor of burnt flesh, the Gryphon’s flesh. He hoped the bastard had been roasted alive.

But he was no longer sure.

He and the members of his task force had been granted permission to hike up the mountain only fifteen minutes earlier. The twelve of them had made their way swiftly through the thinned and blackened brush, rarely speaking. The blistered landscape discouraged conversation. It was a study in charcoal, all stark tones and harsh contrasts, reminding Delgado of the engraved illustrations of Gustave Dore. And Dore, he thought grimly, had been particularly expert at depictions of hell.

In the pale morning light, the crust of diammonium phosphate-dumped at dawn by a swarm of helicopters-looked pink and gelatinous, like the vast puckered surface of an amoeboid monster in a science-fiction movie. Wisps of smoke curled from rare places where spot fires still burned under the chemical coating. At various distances, fatigued fire crews could be seen tramping up and down the mountainside, dampening the last stubborn smokes with handheld soda-and-acid fire extinguishers.

As Delgado climbed higher, he observed that the grade of the mountain was not as steep as he’d first believed. What appeared from above to be a sheer drop was actually a gentler slope angled at about forty-five degrees. The patrol car would not have cartwheeled and somersaulted two hundred feet; instead it must have sledded down like a maniacal toboggan, chewing up clumps of blueblossom, greasewood, and Christmas-berry as it went. The tough, congested brush no doubt slowed its progress, preventing the buildup of lethal momentum. Only when the car struck the granite shelf did it receive the powerful impact that ruptured the gas tank. A fatal impact? Not necessarily. Delgado had seen cars folded into steel origami, from which the drivers had walked away with only minor scrapes and cuts.

Briefly he comforted himself with the thought that, even if the Gryphon escaped from the car before it exploded, he could not have outrun the brushfire that followed. But the wind had been gusting westward; if the Gryphon headed east, away from the flames, he could have descended to Thornwood Place, then hurried through the network of intersecting streets till he hooked up with Nichols Canyon Road a mile to the south. From there it would not have been difficult for him to find his car, parked on some dark side street, and drive off, unnoticed in the confusion.

Yes, Delgado decided as he planted one shoe on the spur of granite and stood looking at the wreckage three yards away. The Gryphon could have done that. But had he?

Slowly he approached the car. Without looking back, he knew that the other detectives had halted at the edge of the rock, watching him tensely.

The car ticked and hissed and creaked, sounds of the jungle or the swamp. Every window had exploded in the intense heat, and the spray of glass fragments littering the ground had melted, fusing with the rock to form lumpy starbursts, transparent as ice. Picking his way among the slippery mounds, Delgado reached the driver’s side of the car, taking care not to touch the smoldering metal, and peered in through the twisted window frames.

The front and back seats were craters of ash. Plastic stalactites dripped from the dashboard. Cinders drifted lazily in the air like dust motes.

There was nothing in the car. Nothing. No human remains.

Delgado turned and shook his head once. “Gone.”

“The scumbag might be dead anyway,” Tom Gardner said with desperate optimism. “Even if he jumped clear, he could have been torched. The whole mountain went up like a bucket of super premium.”

Delgado shrugged. He wasn’t hopeful. “Let’s fan out and see.”

They obeyed. Delgado remained at the car, circling it slowly, looking for clues he did not find. He wondered if this man could ever be killed.

“Seb!”

The cry was Donna Wildman’s. She stood near the black remnant of a scrub oak thirty feet away, her outstretched arm arrowed at something in the brush.

Delgado clambered off the rock and ran to her. Looking down, he saw a body lying facedown on the ground, burned so badly that most of its skin had crisped like bacon and peeled off. The body was nude, the clothes apparently incinerated along with the flesh.

“Son of a bitch.” That was Eddie Torres. Delgado glanced up and saw the other detectives ringing the scene. “We got Tweetie Bird, after all.”

But Delgado didn’t think so. An ugly suspicion was taking shape in his mind.

“Turn him over,” he ordered, his voice ominously low.

Tallyman and Robertson donned plastic gloves and gently rolled the corpse onto its back. The front of the body was crusted with dark soil.

“Scrape him clean.”

The two men wiped away the filth, exposing the corpse’s face, preserved from the fire by the dirt. One sightless eye gazed up at them; the other was a bloody hole.

“Oh, Christ,” Blaise whispered. “It’s Sanchez.”

Delgado nodded, unsurprised.

Harry Jacobs scratched his jaw. “Was he thrown here by the force of the blast, you think?”

“No.” Delgado knelt by the body. “He was dragged.”

With the flat of his hand, he wiped a long strip of grime from Sanchez’s chest. The same dirt that had protected his face from incineration should have protected the front portions of his clothes, as well. But his uniform was gone. Only a soiled undershirt remained.

“Dragged… and stripped.”

Then Delgado’s radio was in his hand, his finger pressing the call button.

“Eight William Twenty. I need to have Eight Lincoln Ninety meet me on a Tac frequency.”

He waited, heart pounding, while the female dispatcher selected an available frequency and contacted 8L90, the watch commander at the Butler Avenue station.

“Eight Lincoln Ninety”-the dispatcher’s voice crackled over the handset’s speaker-“meet Eight William Twenty on Tac six.”

Delgado switched the handset to Tac 6 and keyed the mike. “Eight William Twenty to Eight L Ninety.”

“Eight L Ninety, go,” said the gravelly voice of Lieutenant Nat Kurtz.

“Nat?” Delgado fought to keep his own voice level. “I have some news here that won’t wait.”

“Hey, so do we, Seb. We’ve got what you might call a situation. The unit dispatched to Cedars just called in. The civilian they were sent to pick up is gone. Hospital staff reports she left with another officer less than five minutes ago. The guy was in uniform, but he’s nobody we know. And here’s the worst part. One of the security guards got a look at the mystery cop’s nameplate.”

Delgado closed his eyes. He barely heard the watch commander’s next words. He didn’t need to hear them.

“The name on the tag was Sanchez.”