Shiver

6

Franklin Rood stepped dripping out of the shower.

He took a shower every afternoon at four-thirty, immediately after getting home from work. He had a strong belief in the importance of personal hygiene. Many of the world’s problems, he felt, could be solved or at least significantly ameliorated if the common herd of people simply learned the value of cleanliness. Instead, just look at them, greasy and unwashed, sweat-stained and foul-smelling, the filth and dreck of the human cesspool. Disgusting.

Briskly he dried himself with a clean white towel, a towel as fresh and new as any that might be found in a hotel bathroom; Rood had no tolerance of dirty laundry, of anything dirty. He was, he supposed, a rather fastidious man. That was a nice word, wasn’t it? Fastidious. He said it out loud, enunciating each syllable clearly, then grinned at the mirror. What a fine smile he had. He looked lovingly at himself, freshly washed, his brown hair tousled and ropy, the skin of his shoulders flushed with the heat of the shower spray.

In the bedroom he put on his glasses, snugging the stems behind his ears, then dressed briskly in blue denim jeans, a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to expose his muscled forearms, and white Reebok running shoes. The Reeboks were excellent for his purposes, permitting rapid movement while ensuring relative silence, and he’d sprayed them liberally with a silicon formula to keep off the worst of the stains.

On his way out of the bedroom, he paused to execute half a dozen pull-ups on the bar screwed into the doorframe. He did them easily, feeling no strain. Every morning and evening he performed a minimum of twenty chins and twenty squats to keep his arms and legs in condition.

He walked through the living room into the kitchen, and stopped before the refrigerator. Arctic air gusted against his face as he opened the door to the freezer compartment and peered inside. The freezer was crowded with unidentifiable leftovers in aluminum-foil wrapping. At first he couldn’t find the Swanson Hungry Man chicken pot pie he wanted. He rummaged in the freezer, looking past plastic trays of ice cubes and cans of orange juice. Then, with a delighted smile, he saw the corner of the box sticking out from behind the frozen blue mass of Miss Elizabeth Osborn’s head.

Rood slid the chicken pot pie out of the package, punched a few holes in the pie crust with a fork, and placed his dinner in the oven.

Checking his wristwatch, he saw that the time was now one minute to five. There were local newscasts at five. Couldn’t miss them. He hurried back to the living room, turned on the TV, loaded a blank videotape into the VCR, and settled into his armchair with the wireless remote in his hand. He pressed the button marked Record. The VCR started with a whir just as “Eyewitness News” began.

The female news anchor was afraid of him. Rood could see the fear furrowing her forehead, tugging at the corners of her mouth, moistening her lips. Every woman in the city was afraid. Well, they ought to be.

The top story was a fire in Topanga Canyon, fanned by the dry desert winds. Rood was disappointed. Fires were common. Fires had no business taking priority over the Gryphon.

He waited impatiently for the real news, the only news that counted. Finally it came on-the daily update on the city’s waking nightmare.

He quickly gathered that there were no new developments in the case. Ignoring the reporter’s meaningless commentary, he focused on the snippets of file footage, mostly pertaining to Miss Osborn’s murder.

Her bungalow, looking seedier in daylight than it had at night. The crowd of spectators, like vultures, disgusting. The camera peering past the yellow crime-scene ribbon, panting for a voyeuristic glimpse through the doorway. A metal gurney, and on it a black plastic body bag. The doors of a coroner’s wagon slamming shut.

Then an unexpected treat: Detective Sebastian Delgado standing outside the police station, delivering a statement to the press.

Rood leaned forward, studying the man’s face, a face he’d seen in other newscasts and in newspaper photos, but one he found endlessly fascinating. The black hair swept back from the high forehead. The sharp nose, hawklike. The angry mouth bracketed by chiseled grooves.

“Catch me. Detective,” Rood whispered. “Catch me before I kill again.”

The newscast continued, but it was not about the Gryphon anymore. Rood flipped through the other channels and caught a few seconds of other, similar reports. Then there was nothing. Ah, well. He could get more air time whenever he liked.

There would be newspaper stories too, of course. He’d brought home today’s edition of the L.A. Times, the Evening Outlook, the Daily News and, although he could not read Spanish, La Opinion. More clippings for his scrapbook.

He rewound the tape and played the “Eyewitness News” story again. As he watched, he leaned back in the chair, lacing his fingers behind his head, smiling. The game was such fun.

For most of his thirty-two years Rood had found little that brought him pleasure or pain. His life had been a blank, his days drudgery, his nights dreamless. He had been a zombie shuffling through the motions of living, dead inside.

His first kill, five years ago, had changed all that. Freed from the strait jacket of normal existence, hunting his prey, Rood felt alive-wonderfully, intoxicatingly, dizzyingly alive-more alive than any other man had ever been. He was a god, vertiginously elevated above ordinary humanity, towering over the teeming mob as an average man would tower over a nest of squirming maggots. He was in total control of every aspect of reality, free to do as he pleased, utterly unconstrained. Nothing could compare to the exhilaration of taking a woman’s life, then using her body while the flesh was still warm, the blood still wet. It was a thrill as dark and heady as black wine.

A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts.

He froze. Suddenly he was afraid. Nobody ever visited him. In his two years in L.A., he’d never once had company. The very idea seemed unreal. In a distant, rather abstract way he was aware that people did such things; they learned one another’s addresses and dropped in now and then to say hello. But the ritual was as alien to him as the social habits of bees in a hive.

He had no idea what to do. Perhaps if he made no sound, whoever was out there would go away.

There was another knock, then a faint, muffled voice. A woman’s voice.

“Franklin? It’s me. Melanie. From next door.”

Rood swallowed. Oh, God. What was she doing here?

He’d exchanged pleasantries with Miss Melanie Goshen on a few occasions while entering or leaving his apartment. She was a tall, pale blonde who spoke quietly, rarely meeting his eyes. Very shy and innocent. Or so she seemed. But Rood knew that her innocence was an act. On more than one night, she’d had a man over at her place. Rood had heard the noises of their lovemaking through his bedroom wall.

“Franklin?”

He didn’t want to answer, didn’t want to talk with her at all, but he felt he had to. Vaguely he thought it might seem suspicious if he didn’t. Lately he’d grown extremely conscious of avoiding any activity that might raise suspicions of any kind.

He tried to imagine what a person would say when company called. After a moment’s thought, the correct response came to him.

“I’m coming,” he said loudly, his voice pitched an octave higher than normal, his vocal cords stretched taut by nervous tension.

He rose from his chair and switched off the TV, then hurried to the door and opened it. Miss Goshen was standing on his front steps, lit by the porch light, the empty courtyard behind her. Her sleeveless blouse was much too tight. Indecently tight.

Fear squirmed in his gut. He felt droplets of sweat squeezing out all over his body.

“Hello,” he said, straining for calm.

“Hi.” She smiled, and her cheeks dimpled sweetly. “Sorry to bother you, but I’m making dinner, and the recipe calls for olive oil. Which I thought I had, but it turned out that all I’ve got is peanut oil. Which won’t do at all.”

“You… want to borrow some?”

“That’s what I’m trying to say. Yes. If you’ve got any, that is.”

“I’m… I’m sure I do.” Don’t look at her breasts. Don’t think about the noises from her bedroom, the groans of pleasure, the creaking mattress springs. “Just a moment.”

He meant to have her wait in the doorway, but as he headed for the kitchen, he realized she was following him.

“Thanks so much,” she said. “I appreciate this.”

“Don’t mention it.”

The oils were kept in a cabinet over the sink. He saw the jar of extra-virgin olive oil immediately. He reached for it, fighting the panic that sent ripples of light-headedness radiating through him.

“You’ve got something in the oven.” Her voice startled him, and he nearly dropped the jar.

“Uh-huh.” Speech was difficult. He cleared his throat. “Chicken pot pie.”

He could feel his body shaking, knees liquefying, fingertips tingling. It was intolerable to have her in here with him. The kitchen was too small, and she was too close. The nearness of her body, a woman’s body, not safely dead but warm and living-he couldn’t stand it. He wanted to run. To run and hide in the bedroom with the door closed until she went away.

“It figures,” she was saying. “Bachelors always go for those pot pies. Hungry Man, right?”

“Right.” The word was a dry cough.

“Bet you’ve got a big appetite, a big guy like you.”

His fear receded before a flare-up of anger. What did she mean by that? She’d insulted him just then, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she, the little bitch?

Big, she’d called him. But he wasn’t big. Five-ten wasn’t big at all. So what had she really meant? That he was fat? He wasn’t. A hundred eighty pounds was not excessive for his height. And a good deal of it was muscle. His upper body, particularly. Strong arms. Powerful hands. Hands that could snap this cunt’s neck with one twist of the wrists. One twist-

Suddenly he wasn’t afraid anymore. He had never been afraid. She couldn’t frighten him. No woman could. He was Franklin Rood. He was the Gryphon.

He smiled and handed her the jar of olive oil. “Here you go.”

“Thanks so much.”

“Is there anything else you need?”

“No, this’ll do it.”

“I’ve got some fine things in my freezer.”

“Yeah, you single guys always go for frozen food.”

“Want to take a look?”

“Uh, no. Not really.”

“Why not?” He put a hand on the freezer door. “Lots of nice things.”

She was looking at him strangely now. She was afraid of him now. And she ought to be. They all ought to be.

“No,” she said, as she took a sliding step toward the doorway to the living room, “seriously, the olive oil is all I need. Hey, look, I’d better get going. I’ve got stuff on the stove.”

He almost did it. Almost grabbed her by the hair and jerked open the freezer door and made her look. Then he would throw her to the floor and beat her to death, the same way he’d beaten the whore-bitch waitress who’d been his first kill.

But he couldn’t.

Her disappearance would raise questions. The police would be sure to interview the next-door neighbor. And they would know.

With effort he damped down the fires inside him. He followed her to the front door.

“Hope your recipe turns out okay,” he said.

“Oh, I’m sure it will.” She flashed a nervous smile, keeping her distance. “Thanks a lot. I’ll return this to you… uh… tomorrow.”

“The jar’s nearly empty. You might as well keep it.”

“You sure?”

He nodded.

That frightened smile flickered again. “Okay. ’Bye.”

Then she was gone. Rood shut the door and released a long shuddering breath.

He tried to relax, couldn’t. He paced the living room, breathing hard, perspiring freely. Once or twice his glasses threatened to ski off his nose; each time, with a swipe of his hand, he knocked them back into place.

The feelings were strong in him, too strong to be denied. He needed to release them-now, immediately-and there was only one way to do it. Only one.

He could not kill his next-door neighbor without risking capture. But he could kill another woman instead. He even knew who it would be.

Flipping open his wallet, he removed the scrap of paper marked with the name and address of the next contestant in the game. He stood staring at it for a long moment.

Previously he had waited longer between kills. He didn’t care for the idea of hurrying the process. That was the way to get sloppy, to make mistakes. He really should wait another week or two.

Yes, Should. But wouldn’t. Couldn’t.

Eyes shut, he watched Miss Melanie Goshen’s lips split as his fists hammered her face. Slowly his fingers moved, squeezing air, as in his mind he fondled the soft mounds of her buttocks. His tongue clucked at his lips as he imagined himself licking her wet secret parts.

He had to play again. And he had to do it tonight.

“And so,” Franklin Rood breathed while a grin like a grimace warped his face, “let the game begin.”

From a cabinet under the kitchen sink he removed a package of modeling clay. He set the bag down on the counter, then put on a pair of thin rubber gloves. It would hardly be a good idea to chance leaving impressions of his fingerprints m the material as he worked it.

He opened the bag and tore a hunk of soft brown clay off the large mass, then modeled it quickly, expertly, with his nimble hands. First the general shape of the beast-four limbs, two wings, beaked head. Then the subtleties of musculature and texture. With a pencil point he etched ruffles of fur into the creature’s hindquarters and suggestions of feathers into the wings. Last he pushed the pencil gently into the head on each side, creating two small black holes that passed for eyes.

Normally he would have let the sculpture dry overnight, but this time he could not wait that long. Heat would harden the model faster than air alone.

Rood placed the clay gryphon on a baking sheet and slid it into the oven. While he waited for it to bake, he consumed the chicken pot pie, barely noticing the taste.

Finally he tested the model with a spoon and judged it done. The clay was no longer soft and yielding, but rock-hard. With oven mitts he removed the baking sheet. He let the figure cool for half an hour.

Then he picked it up and studied it in the light of the overhead fluorescents. He admired the stylized simplicity of the artwork. A lovely thing. His best work so far. Any woman would be proud to have it. But it was not meant for just any woman.

“For you, Miss Wendy Alden,” Rood whispered. “Only for you.”