Shiver

Epilogue

A cold wind kicked up a swirl of snow, misting the windshield, as Wendy steered her car through the wrought-iron gates of the cemetery.

It had taken her all of yesterday and most of today to drive here, to this graveyard on the outskirts of a small town in Idaho. Delgado had offered to go with her, but she felt the need to make this pilgrimage alone. He seemed to understand; and that was strange, because she wasn’t sure she understood it herself.

Franklin Rood was dead. She knew that. She had shot him and watched him die. She had seen his body zipped into a plastic bag and wheeled away on a gurney. And yet at times she’d found herself wondering if his last spree of violence had been merely a vivid fantasy. There were nights when she woke up short of breath, having been chased through corridors of dreams by a man with a knife or a shotgun, a man whose glasses flashed with amber light. And whenever a prison break or a manhunt was reported on the news, she would think: He’s loose, he got out of jail, he’s after me again.

Many times in the seven months since Rood’s death, she had visited the graves of his victims, often laying flowers there. But she had never stood before Rood’s grave. And gradually she came to realize that she would be free of him only once she saw where he lay buried.

Early yesterday morning she started out from L.A., heading northeast on Interstate 15. She made good time racing through the desolate stretches of the Mojave and the sagebrush desert of Nevada. Then last night, as she slept in a motel outside Cedar City, Utah, a blizzard hit, the first of the winter, icing the roads. The rough driving conditions slowed her progress today, delaying her arrival until evening. As she guided her Honda along the narrow lane winding like a dry streambed among rows of marble headstones and bronze markers, the last of the sun was vanishing behind the bare skeletons of trees, leaving the bleached earth brighter than the sky.

From newspaper accounts of the funeral, Wendy knew where to find Rood’s burial plot. It lay far from the other grave sites, on a lonely hill unsheltered by trees and unshielded from the wind.

She parked at the foot of the hill, got out of the car, and trudged up the whitened slope, trailing plumes of frosty breath. She came up short before the grave marker half-hidden in the snow.

Crisp letters were carved in the polished marble, spelling out two words: FRANKLIN ROOD.

Wendy looked at that name for a long time. Then slowly she stripped off her gloves, reached into the pocket of her coat, and removed the last clay gryphon.

She had taken the statuette from Rood’s body, the clay still soft and pliant, and hidden it on her person only moments before the police arrived. At the time she hadn’t known quite why she wanted it, except that, after all, it had been meant for her.

Thoughtfully she turned the model between her fingers, studying the crude suggestions of beak, wings, and claws. The clay was hard and brittle now, dusty and dry, reminding her of old bone.

Wendy brought her hands together, pressing the statue between her palms. She twisted her wrists in a slow grinding motion, crushing the gryphon to powder, to dust. She thought of Jeffrey, of Jennifer, of Sanchez and Porter, of Elizabeth Osborn and Rebecca Morris and Julia Stern. She thought of Kathy Lutton, a waitress in Twin Falls who was Rood’s first victim, and of the other women he killed before he became the Gryphon. She thought of the deputies, the security guards, the random office workers-all the people whose lives ended in his final, pointless rampage. She mourned for them, for every one of his victims.

Opening her hands, she let the dry flakes of the crumbled statue settle like ashes on the grave.

“It’s done now,” she whispered. “It’s finished.”

As she walked down the hill to her car, she knew Rood would not haunt her any longer.

At the gates she parked and got out to take a last look at the cemetery. Even from a distance the solitary headstone was visible, high on the hillside in the drifted snow, alone in the gathering darkness.

She gazed at the small monument that stood over Franklin Rood’s grave, the grave to which his every choice had led him. She went on looking at it until the twilight had deepened and the stone was lost to sight.

Then she climbed back into her car, pulled through the gates, and retraced the route she’d traveled, gliding past frozen fields and leafless trees under the cold, friendless stars. The dark back roads were poorly marked, the signposts hidden in shadows, and as she searched for the highway that would take her home, Wendy got lost several times.

It was late, but not too late, when she finally found her way.