Shiver

5

After a moment’s hesitation, Delgado selected the copy of the first audiocassette he’d received. He loaded it in the tape recorder. His finger pressed the button marked Play. Tape hiss rose in his ears like the phantom ocean caught in a conch shell. An anonymous official identified the tape as a duplicate before reciting the case number and other details.

Then a louder hiss sizzled through the headphones, signaling the start of the dubbed portion of the tape.

Julia Stern’s voice faded in. She’d stepped out of the bathroom, fresh from her morning shower, and the killer had grabbed her from behind. He must have told her not to scream for help, that the first sound she made above a whisper would mean death. Delgado could picture the young pregnant woman standing just outside the bathroom doorway in her blue terry-cloth towel, drawing shallow scared breaths as the Gryphon hissed in her ear and held the knife-if it was a knife-close to her throat.

Perhaps Julia had tried to reason with him, tried to find out what he wanted. The killer had told her. He wanted her to beg. To plead for her life.

Delgado doubted that the Gryphon had mentioned the tape recorder. But he’d been carrying one, all right-probably a small portable unit, either tucked in his coat pocket or snugged to his belt. It was unlikely that he’d used a handheld microphone; he would have needed one hand to grab Julia and the other hand for his weapon. But a built-in omnidirectional mike, standard in portables, would have worked just fine.

For about five minutes, the killer had recorded Julia’s voice as she asked him to please let her go. Five minutes was not a long time, but it must have stretched to hours for Julia Stern and her pounding heart.

Excerpts from that recording now crackled and hissed in Delgado’s ears.

“… didn’t see your face. So I can’t identify you. We’ve got a lot of nice things here. You can have any of it. There’s silverware in the kitchen. A color TV, a stereo. In the closet I’ve got some birthday presents for my husband: a camera, a watch, a new coat. Oh, God… Please, take anything you want and just go”-her voice cracked on that word-“and you’ll never get caught. I swear. I won’t even tell the police. I won’t tell anybody. Only, don’t hurt me… and my baby…”

Slowly Delgado fisted his hand, then raised his fist to his mouth. He chewed on his knuckles and finger joints. He wanted to turn off the tape, turn it off and throw the goddamned obscene thing in the garbage can and set fire to it, but he couldn’t. He listened. He had to hear it.

The killer’s words had been excised from the tape. The cuts and transitions were neatly done, indicating the use of a mixing board. There were too many audiophiles in L.A. to make it possible to track down the equipment.

Julia was begging now. There was a theatrical quality to her voice, even though her fear was unquestionably genuine. It was obvious that the Gryphon had explained the exact words he wanted Julia to say, words she’d haltingly recited.

“Please don’t kill me,” Julia Stern was saying. “I don’t… want to die. I’ll do whatever you say. I know you’re much more powerful than… than I am. You’re so strong. You frighten me. You’re the strongest and most terrifying person I’ve ever… encountered in my life.”

A momentary drop-off in volume indicated another edit. In the excised segment, the killer must have delivered new instructions. Based on what followed, Delgado assumed Julia had been told to say something personal about herself, her aspirations, her reasons to go on living. That was a particularly cruel aspect of the psychological torture the Gryphon inflicted. He let his victim remember and express, clearly and in detail, all the values life had to offer; then he ended that life.

“I’m only twenty-four,” Julia whispered. “I’ve got a husband, and we love each other; we really do. We got married two years ago this April, and we promised it would be forever, and it will be. And… and I’ve got a baby coming. A boy. We’re going to name him Robert. That’s my husband’s name… If you don’t care about me, at least think about my baby. You wouldn’t hurt a baby, would you? Would you?”

Desperation spiked her voice. Tears were audible, thickening the words to paste. Her breathing was faster, huskier. Perhaps the knife had been pressed closer, the blade drawing blood.

Another edit in the source material. Next came the bad part, the unbearable part. The killer must have let Julia in on his little secret, must have informed her that, despite her compliance with his demands, she was going to die. When she spoke again, Delgado heard her hopeless, helpless terror.

“No…” Less a word than a moan. “It’s not fair. I did what you wanted. I said all those things. You promised…” A sobbing little-girl voice. A whimper. The beginning of a scream: “Please-”

The scream tightened into a gargle. Wet. Rasping. Then faded out. Gone.

In the silence, a new voice, a man’s voice. The voice of the Gryphon.

He had not recorded his commentary at the crime scene. Analysis of the tape had shown a measurable difference in room tone as the recording segued from Julia’s murder to the Gryphon’s remarks.

The killer spoke in a whisper, his mouth apparently pressed close to the microphone, and nothing about his normal speaking voice could be determined except that he had no obvious accent or speech impairment. Occasionally the breathless words were interrupted by sloppy smacking sounds as the Gryphon licked his lips.

“I hope you enjoyed that performance. Detective Delgado. I found it exquisite. Mrs. Julia Stern conveyed real emotion, don’t you think?

“Oh, but forgive me; how terribly inconsiderate. I haven’t introduced myself. Call me the Gryphon. I suppose the objet d’art I left with Mrs. Stern is sufficient to make the reference clear.

“You may wonder what I’m up to. Well, I’ll tell you. I’m playing a game. A wonderful game I invented. The object of the game is to take living women and turn them into dead ones.

“Have you ever killed anybody. Detective? In the line of duty, I mean. If so, you may understand what I’ve learned from the game I play, the transcendent truth I’ve discovered.

“Other men, lesser men, measure power in terms of money or political influence or sexual conquests. But I have seen what true power is, and it is not found in checkbooks, voting booths, or bedrooms. No, true power is the power of life and death. Now, consider Mrs. Julia Stern. She wasn’t important, merely one anonymous soul among millions, never to be missed. But when I ended her life, I ended a universe. Yes, a whole universe. The private cosmos that had been Mrs. Stern’s world. The earth, sun, and stars, human history, culture, and art… all of it had existed, for her, only in her own mind. Now Mrs. Stern is dead, and, for her, those things exist no more.

“That is the secret I have learned. To wield power, ultimate power-the power to erase existence, void reality, blot out stars and galaxies with one stroke-it is not necessary to bring on Armageddon. It is necessary only to take a life.

“The God of the Old Testament is said to have created the world in six days. But I can wipe out a world in less than a minute, and I can do it whenever I please. Who, then, is the more powerful? Who is the greater god? The creator of one world-or the destroyer of many?

“Well, enough of this philosophizing. We’re practical men. Detective; you have your work to do, and I have mine. Let’s both get on with it. I know I will. You’ll be seeing more art objects, many more. I hope you’ll take the time to admire their beauty. Art adds so much to our enjoyment of life, doesn’t it? Art and myth and ritual-see how neatly I’ve blended all three. Or perhaps you don’t share my taste in aesthetic matters? Then try to stop me. Do your best.

“Catch me before I kill again.”

The tape faded out.

Delgado switched off the tape recorder, then tugged off the headphones, grateful to escape them. Quickly he returned the cassette and the headphones to the drawer, slamming it shut.

He’d learned nothing new. But he hadn’t expected to. He already knew what little the tapes could tell him.

After the second murder, Delgado had asked the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia, to prepare a psychological profile of the man who called himself the Gryphon. As part of its Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, or VICAP, the BSU had amassed files on every modern serial killer, and its experts used the known tendencies of those who had been caught to extrapolate the probable behavior and personal characteristics of the ones still at large.

The BSU analyst, a glib, chatty man named Landers who gave the impression that he enjoyed his work too much, had called Delgado to go over the profile with him. The evidence was necessarily sketchy, the results largely guesswork. Still, it was better than nothing.

“Most serial killers,” Landers told Delgado breezily over the buzz of the long-distance connection, “are adult males in their twenties, thirties, or forties. Typically the younger ones strike quickly, while the older ones draw out the murder, often making their victims beg. On this basis I’m tentatively placing the Gryphon in the upper age bracket. Thirty to forty is my working hypothesis.”

Delgado listened, taking notes, saying nothing.

“The tape indicates that he’s intelligent, fairly well educated. Good verbal skills. Pronounces difficult words without strain-even objet d’art, for Christ’s sake. The name he’s picked for himself suggests a knowledge of mythology, the classics, maybe ancient or medieval history. Let’s see, what else? It’s hard to say for sure, but I think I noted signs of effeminacy in his choice of words. Also a strange sense of humor-well, I guess you’d expect it to be strange, wouldn’t you? Puckish. That’s the word I’m looking for. You know what I mean. Detective?”

“Yes.”

“Now, this is a guy who broke into Julia Stern’s apartment during the day, when he knew she was home. You have to ask why he would do that. Why not ring the doorbell, pretend to be a salesman or a new neighbor? Two possibilities occur to me. One is that he lacks even elementary social skills; he’s withdrawn, a loner-what we call a ‘disorganized asocial’ personality type. For a man like that, breaking in might seem easier than talking his way inside. The other possibility is that he’s actually deformed, disfigured in some way. It’s a long shot, but it could explain the decapitation of the victims. Maybe he projects his self-loathing onto these women and takes their heads as a punishment of himself.

“Of course, there are other possible reasons why he decapitates the bodies. He may use the heads as totems, as sexual objects, or as objects of further violence. There was one guy who hacked off his mother’s head and used it as a dartboard. Or-I hope you’ve got a strong stomach, Detective-he may consume the heads, or parts of them, in order to gain his victims’ life force; conceivably he eats their brains to gain knowledge or their eyes to gain vision.”

“Or perhaps,” Delgado said slowly, “there is a simpler explanation.”

“Such as?”

“I was ten years old, Mr. Landers, when my family moved to the United States from Mexico. That was in 1965. On our way north we stopped to visit Disneyland. I kept the ticket stub for years afterward. I probably still have it somewhere. Every time I looked at it, I remembered the excitement of that day, the escape I’d found from everyday life. For the Gryphon, his victims’ heads may serve the same purpose.”

Landers chuckled. “You ought to be in my line. You can think like them. That’s the whole secret, right there.”

It was a secret Delgado had never wanted to learn.

“Is there anything else you can tell me?” he asked heavily.

“Only the classification,” Landers said. “We classify lust murderers-our term for serial killers-according to their presumed motives. There are four categories we recognize. The first is the so-called visionary killer, the guy who hears voices or sees visions that compel him to kill. Personally I’m skeptical about this category; most of the visionaries turn out to be faking it. But it’s irrelevant anyway, because your man doesn’t mention any voices in his head.

“Then there’s the mission-oriented killer. He feels it’s his sacred calling to eradicate a specific group of people. You get a nurse who pulls the plug on terminal patients, or a Jack-the-Ripper type who kills prostitutes. Well, the Gryphon doesn’t say there was anything about these women that caused him to single them out, so we can ignore this category too, at least for now.

“Third, the hedonistic killer. He murders for sexual gratification and usually performs sex acts with the victim or the victim’s body. Obviously, the Gryphon fits this profile-up to a point. But he doesn’t mutilate the women’s genitals, buttocks, or breasts, as we would expect a classic hedonistic type to do.

“Finally, the power-oriented killer. This is the guy who kills because he likes control, likes to dominate his victims. I think it goes without saying that your man, the Gryphon, is definitely into power and control in a major way. He says he’s greater than God, after all, and he makes his victims pay homage to him before he kills them.

“So my tentative conclusion is that he’s a mixture of the last two categories. A sexually twisted sociopathic personality working out his frustrations by means of a violent power trip.”

‘“All right, Mr. Landers. Thank you. I take it you’ve covered everything I need to know about serial killers.”

“Except for one last point.”

“Which is?”

“They’re damn hard to catch.”

In the final analysis, however, Delgado based his understanding of the killer not on the BSU’s psychological profile, but on a fragment of ancient history that he remembered from one of his college classes-a small, bloody episode that merited barely a footnote in most texts, but which had been printed indelibly on his mind.

In A.D. 408 the grand minister Olympius had ruled the western half of the Roman Empire through the intermediary of the weak-willed and ineffectual emperor, Honorius. A lifetime of manipulation, scheming, and murderous betrayal had lifted Olympius to a position of nearly absolute power. Only one significant threat still faced him, the threat posed by the militant Goths, who wanted to claim the Empire for themselves. The Gothic armies had the manpower and the martial skills to defeat any forces loyal to the emperor. But they were held in check by the knowledge that their wives and families, sixty thousand women and children who had settled in Italian towns, were at the Romans’ mercy.

Olympius had everything he wanted. He controlled the Empire. He ruled the world or what was then known of it. As long as those sixty thousand hostages were his, the Goths could do nothing.

Olympius ordered the hostages killed.

There was no logic to what he did. In murdering those sixty thousand, he ensured his own downfall. He freed the Goths to move against him and avenge their loved ones. He must have known the consequences of the orders he gave; yet he gave them anyway.

Delgado’s teacher, perhaps embellishing the story, reported that as the slaughter was carried out, the bodies heaped high, and the mass graves filled, Olympius capered in his palace, exulting with frenzied glee: “This is greater than the Empire!”

Delgado believed the Gryphon was a man like that.

People assumed that anyone capable of senseless murder must be deranged. The popular stereotype, endorsed to a large extent by psychologists and sociologists and bright young experts like Landers of the BSU, was that of a man driven by irresistible impulses, unable to control his wild urges.

Delgado disagreed. Whatever his inner compulsions, the Gryphon was in final control of his actions. He knew what he was doing, just as he knew how to reach the police if he wanted to confess, or a psychiatrist if he wanted to get help. He planned his crimes with care, taking elaborate pains to avoid leaving evidence that might lead to his arrest. Afterward he showed no sign of remorse or even regret for what he’d done. Quite the contrary. Like Olympius, or like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, he reveled in death, intoxicated by the bloody elixir of the suffering he caused.

There was a word for such a man, a word so simple it had been all but forgotten in this complex modern age. A word Delgado’s grandmother in Guadalajara had known.

Evil.

Delgado nodded. Oh, yes. There was good and evil in the world. Underlying each of these three murders was the will of the man responsible, his private volition, his conscious choice to do violence to the innocent. He had felt the need to kill, and rather than resist that urge, he had given in to it, had acted on it three times and laughed about it later. His compulsions did not drive him; he allowed himself to be driven by them. And for what? An illusory sense of power, a sexual thrill, a few hours of fun. He was a man who took pleasure not in living, but in denying life to others.

Delgado stared moodily at the map on his wall, at the three red dots scattered across L.A.’s Westside. Somewhere in that sweep of lookalike houses and anonymous apartments and gas stations and stores, there was a killer who struck with the brutal impersonality of accident, an Olympius for a meaner and sorrier age. He fashioned his clay sculptures and then he played his game, choosing victims by some means Delgado could not guess, stalking them, killing them, and taking his hideous souvenirs.

Delgado knew everything about that man, except his name.