Shiver

31

At eleven-thirty, half an hour after putting out an APB on Franklin Rood’s 1963 Ford Falcon, Delgado received word of an almost definite sighting.

Patrol units had been advised to be particularly alert when cruising Sepulveda Boulevard, since Rood was believed to have switched cars in an alley near that street, one of the city’s main north-south traffic corridors. When two Studio City patrol officers stopped in a Union 76 service station on Sepulveda to use the rest room, they asked the employees if any car resembling the Falcon had been seen there that morning. The answer was yes.

The attendant on duty at the full-service island said he filled the tank of a car matching the Falcon’s description at approximately nine-thirty. Furthermore, he was told by the man in the passenger seat that the car was a 1963 model. Although he didn’t get a good look at the man, the attendant remembered the woman behind the wheel as attractive, blonde, and young-looking.

Five minutes after he heard the report, Delgado was speeding north on the San Diego Freeway. He wanted to interview the attendant personally in the hope of eliciting further details. More than that, he wanted-needed-to be in motion, to be active. It was the only way to combat the heavy, suffocating sense of helplessness that pressed down on him otherwise.

“I already told them everything,” the young man in orange coveralls said with a shrug when Delgado got out of the car, flashing his badge.

“I know you did, sir, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to go over it with you anyway.”

Another shrug. “Sure. Okay. You must be awful interested in these people. They fugitives or bank robbers or something?”

Delgado led him into a corner of the lot, close to the rattle and roar of the service bay. “Not exactly. If the man in that car was who we think he was, then he kidnapped the woman you spoke with. It’s possible he was holding her at gunpoint during your conversation.”

“I didn’t see any gun.”

“He might have been concealing it. Did either he or the woman leave the car while they were here?”

“No. She paid me through the window. Never got out. Him neither.” He brightened. “I get it. You figure he was keeping her inside, huh? With a gun in her back or something?”

“Possibly. Now, I’d like you to take a look at this photograph and tell me if this is the woman you saw.”

Delgado removed a four-by-five black-and-white glossy from his pocket. The photo, taken from Jeffrey Pellman’s house, showed Wendy smiling self-consciously, posed against a brick backdrop dappled with sun. Her hair was knotted in a bun, not loose as Delgado remembered it.

He waited while the attendant studied the glossy. “Yeah,” the young man said finally. “That’s her.”

“You’re certain?”

“Sure am.”

Delgado took back the photo. “Did you see which way the car went when it left the station?”

“I might have, but I can’t remember now.”

“But you think you did see it leave?”

“Yeah, but like I said, I don’t remember for sure.” A note of testiness crept into his voice. “We get a lot of business in here, man. Cars going in and out all day.”

“All right.” Delgado was not quite ready to drop that subject, but he decided to approach it from another angle. “What time did you service the car?”

“It was maybe nine-thirty. Little before, little after.”

“Did you check the oil? The tires?”

“They didn’t want me to. The lady just asked for a full tank. That’s all.”

“The bill was paid in cash. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“And while you were making change, you talked briefly about the car, what year it had come out, what sort of condition it was in?”

“Uh-huh. I like old cars. They’ve got, you know, character.”

“How would you describe the vehicle’s condition?”

“Good. Real good, considering the model year.”

“Anything wrong with it?”

“Some of the chrome had fallen off.”

“Where?”

“On the sides.”

“Rust? Dents?”

“No rust I could see. No dents either.”

“Did you notice if the headlights or taillights worked?”

“He didn’t have the headlights on. It was broad daylight. Taillights… um, yeah. I saw the brake lights flash when they pulled out.”

Delgado was careful to show no reaction. “How about the turn signals? Did they work?”

“The right-hand one did. It was blinking.”

“Where were you when you saw the turn signal?”

“Still at the pump.”

“And the car was where? At that exit?” He pointed.

“No, the other one.”

“So if the car used that exit and the right-hand signal flashed,” Delgado said slowly, “then it must have turned north onto Sepulveda.”

The attendant blinked. “Hey, I guess so. Jeez. I didn’t even know I knew that.”

“Well”-Delgado allowed himself a smile-“we both know it now.”

He asked a few more questions but obtained no further information. After thanking the attendant, he returned to his car and radioed an update to Dispatch, informing them that Rood’s vehicle, when last seen, was heading north on Sepulveda near Magnolia Boulevard.

Then he left the service station, taking the same exit the Falcon used, heading in the same direction.

As he drove, he scanned the wide thoroughfare. He knew there was no realistic possibility that he would see the Falcon parked at the curb or nosing into traffic from an intersecting street. He watched anyway, alert for any flash of chrome; and as he did, he pondered the destination Franklin Rood might have had in mind.

He hadn’t taken Wendy to his apartment. Why not? Presumably because the apartment offered too little privacy. Someone in the neighborhood might hear a woman’s cries. He must have wanted to find a remote, secluded area, where he could do whatever he wished to his captive, with no chance of being seen or heard.

But then why had he gone to the San Fernando Valley, which was nearly as crowded as West L.A.? True, there were pocket parks scattered throughout the Valley, but on a sunny day they would be brightened with scampering children and their watchful parents. The Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area was large enough to provide places of concealment, but Rood had been within a few blocks of that park when he’d made Wendy pull into the service station. There was no reason to stop for gas, let alone to fill the tank, if he had only a short distance left to travel.

No, he must have had miles yet to cover. Miles of shapeless, urban sprawl-a grid of streets lined with shops, restaurants, office buildings, apartment complexes, and rows of stucco bungalows. Few isolated locations there.

But perhaps he had gone still farther north. Out of the Valley… and into the desert.

Delgado remembered the sandstone paperweight in Rood’s apartment. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

Rood must have picked up that rock in the Mojave.

Did he spend a lot of time out there? Was that where he kept his trophies?

He imagined the attraction a man like Rood would feel for the desert-vast stretches of emptiness, of desolation and dust-no strangers’ eyes watching him, no police cars patrolling the streets. A lonely place where he would be free to be himself.

It seemed right. Felt right.

The high Mojave was too big to survey by car. Fifty patrol units would not do the job fast enough. But an aerial surveillance was a different matter.

As he hooked left on Sherman Way and raced toward Van Nuys Airport, Delgado was already speaking into the microphone in his hand, requesting a helicopter.

Michael Prescott

Shiver