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course, how he ended both tapes.”
    “ ‘Catch me before I kill again,’ ” Nason quoted. “Like that guy in Chicago in the Forties. What the hell was his name?”
    “William Heirens.”
    “Yeah. Didn’t Heirens write something similar at one of his crime scenes?”
    “In lipstick. On a wall.”
    “So what’s the significance, do you think?”
    “The psychiatrists call it a cry for help. A desperate plea to be apprehended, treated, rescued from the irresistible compulsions that drive him.”
    Nason had caught the skepticism lacing Delgado’s voice. “But you don’t agree?”
    “No. I don’t.” Delgado looked at him. “Those words are not a plea. They are a taunt. A mocking challenge. He is not asking to be caught. He is defying the very possibility of capture.”
    “I guess you could look at it either way,” Nason said. “How can you be sure?”
    Delgado’s voice was iron. “Because I know him.”
    A beat of silence pulsed among them. Gray broke it.
    “Well, whether he’s losing it or just getting cocky, he’s heading for a fall. He’s got to make a mistake soon.”
    “Got to,” Nason echoed.
    “Oh, yes,” Delgado said quietly. “He will. Every man has a weakness, and this man has his. Some flaw in his character—hubris, perhaps, or something else, something we have not yet seen—will trip him up and bring him down. But ...”
    He looked away, not to let them see his face.
    “But even so, his fall will not come soon enough.”
    He stared at the body on the living-room floor, not seeing it, seeing only the future he could not prevent.
    If the next interval was shorter still, as Delgado believed it would be, then soon, much too soon, another clay gryphon would roost in a dead woman’s hand.
     

 
    2
     
    The alarm clock shrilled, dragging Wendy Alden out of sleep.
    Numb fingers groped for the alarm. Found it. Switched it off. She did not lift her head from the pillow. She couldn’t get up today. Too tired. Groggily she pulled her mind into focus, trying to figure out why she was so sleepy, so utterly exhausted. Something had kept her up late last night, much too late. But what?
    “Jennifer,” she mumbled, remembering. “Right.”
    Wendy stared at the ceiling, lost in the dreamy twilight of half-sleep, thinking of Jennifer.
    Last night, at quarter to eleven, Jennifer Kutzlow had cranked up the volume on her stereo to fill the night with the tuneful strains of Guns N’ Roses and contemplate the band’s mellow reflections on life. Since Wendy’s apartment was directly above Jennifer’s, she was able to savor every subtle nuance of the racket, which continued until well after midnight. On a Monday night, yet, when people had to get up for work the next morning.
    Wendy had paced her living room, fuming and muttering and fantasizing Jennifer’s violent demise, while the floorboards trembled with bass shockwaves that registered 6.5 on the Richter scale. Even after the noise finally stopped, fury and frustration kept her awake till half past two.
    Of course she could have—should have—gone downstairs to complain. Sure. Just as she could have complained the last time Jennifer tested the upper limits of her amp, or all the times before that. But she never had.
    Wendy sighed. She had to face it. She just wasn’t cut out for confrontations.
    The sigh stretched into a yawn. Warm waves of sleep rippled over her, a lulling glissando felt rather than heard. Her eyelids slid shut. The room was spinning, spinning ...
    Don’t do it, she warned herself. Come on now. Wake up.
    Reluctantly she opened her eyes, rolled onto her side, kicked off the covers. With groaning effort she hauled herself out of bed and shuffled down the hall to the bathroom, where she splashed handfuls of cold water in her face to scare sleep away. That done, she tugged off her pajamas and ran the shower till it was hot, then stepped under the spray and shocked her body alert.
    Toweling off, she studied her reflection.