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Authors: Michael Prescott
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The tool used to decapitate the bodies was a hacksaw. Thanks to the lab, Delgado even knew the specific brand. Microscopic analysis of the torn flesh had revealed minute particles of tungsten carbide, which had been matched to those found in a commercially available hacksaw blade. The blade, twelve inches long, was made of high-carbon steel to which tungsten carbide was metallurgically bonded to form a highly effective cutting edge. It could cut easily through cast iron, hardened steel, reinforced cement, and, of course, bone.
Delgado had ordered Eddie Torres and the officers working under him to trace every purchase of that hacksaw and its replacement blades that had been made in the Westside during the past six months. The number of customers was large, the records poor, the job nearly impossible.
At each of the crime scenes, evidence technicians had picked up short-nap rayon carpet fibers, industrial gray; the cheap material, ubiquitous in low-rent offices and homes, was impossible to trace. The Gryphon had left no fingerprints, but the techs had found a few dark brown head hairs. And they had found semen in the dead women’s vaginal vaults as well as, in one instance, the anus. Postmortem examinations indicated that penetration and ejaculation had occurred after the victims were dead. Like eighty percent of the male population, the Gryphon was a secretor, meaning that analysis of an antigen secreted with his bodily fluids could determine his blood type. His blood was AB positive.
Then, of course, there were the clay statues. Delgado had given Blaise and Robertson the assignment of making inquiries at art galleries and gift shops, looking for any local artist who could conceivably fit the Gryphon’s profile. They were still on the detail; so far no useful leads had developed.
Delgado had given himself a crash course in mythology to better understand the symbolism of the gryphon. The peculiar hybrid of eagle and lion, he had learned, had haunted the minds of human beings for four thousand years. Its point of origin was the Levant; from there it had been conveyed to Asia and eventually to Greece. The Athenian playwright Aeschylus had his Prometheus warn of the hounds of Zeus, the sharp-beaked gryphons; the animal, thought to be the guardian of treasure hoards, was ever-vigilant, cruelly predatory, capable of a swift, deadly attack in which its ruthless talons would slash its victim to bits.
It was a symbol of blood and death, of patient observation and sudden violence, of the lion’s cunning and the eagle’s swiftness. Regal and vicious, mythic and monstrous, a creature to be both feared and revered.
Now the city of Los Angeles was experiencing the same primitive terror Aeschylus’s audience had known: terror of the sharp-beaked, bloody-clawed Gryphon, the beast that struck without warning and killed without remorse.
Delgado shook his head. Having learned all that, perhaps he understood the killer’s psychology slightly better, but he was no closer to catching the man.
The other major phase of the investigation focused on earlier unsolved homicides that might roughly fit the Gryphon’s pattern. In a city as large and as violent as L.A., there was no shortage of brutal attacks on women; but two cases struck Delgado as particularly intriguing. Last June a Culver City woman had disappeared while on a shopping errand, then had turned up dead in a trash dumpster several days later, her neck deeply gashed and nearly severed by what might have been a hacksaw. Six months earlier, in December, a teenage Santa Monica girl was found dead in an alley behind the video rental store where she’d worked; her right hand had been lopped off and stuffed in her mouth. In each case the victim had been sexually abused after death, and the killer’s blood type had been established as AB positive.
The task force was also looking into out-of-state crimes that might be connected with the Gryphon’s activities. So far a murder
The tool used to decapitate the bodies was a hacksaw. Thanks to the lab, Delgado even knew the specific brand. Microscopic analysis of the torn flesh had revealed minute particles of tungsten carbide, which had been matched to those found in a commercially available hacksaw blade. The blade, twelve inches long, was made of high-carbon steel to which tungsten carbide was metallurgically bonded to form a highly effective cutting edge. It could cut easily through cast iron, hardened steel, reinforced cement, and, of course, bone.
Delgado had ordered Eddie Torres and the officers working under him to trace every purchase of that hacksaw and its replacement blades that had been made in the Westside during the past six months. The number of customers was large, the records poor, the job nearly impossible.
At each of the crime scenes, evidence technicians had picked up short-nap rayon carpet fibers, industrial gray; the cheap material, ubiquitous in low-rent offices and homes, was impossible to trace. The Gryphon had left no fingerprints, but the techs had found a few dark brown head hairs. And they had found semen in the dead women’s vaginal vaults as well as, in one instance, the anus. Postmortem examinations indicated that penetration and ejaculation had occurred after the victims were dead. Like eighty percent of the male population, the Gryphon was a secretor, meaning that analysis of an antigen secreted with his bodily fluids could determine his blood type. His blood was AB positive.
Then, of course, there were the clay statues. Delgado had given Blaise and Robertson the assignment of making inquiries at art galleries and gift shops, looking for any local artist who could conceivably fit the Gryphon’s profile. They were still on the detail; so far no useful leads had developed.
Delgado had given himself a crash course in mythology to better understand the symbolism of the gryphon. The peculiar hybrid of eagle and lion, he had learned, had haunted the minds of human beings for four thousand years. Its point of origin was the Levant; from there it had been conveyed to Asia and eventually to Greece. The Athenian playwright Aeschylus had his Prometheus warn of the hounds of Zeus, the sharp-beaked gryphons; the animal, thought to be the guardian of treasure hoards, was ever-vigilant, cruelly predatory, capable of a swift, deadly attack in which its ruthless talons would slash its victim to bits.
It was a symbol of blood and death, of patient observation and sudden violence, of the lion’s cunning and the eagle’s swiftness. Regal and vicious, mythic and monstrous, a creature to be both feared and revered.
Now the city of Los Angeles was experiencing the same primitive terror Aeschylus’s audience had known: terror of the sharp-beaked, bloody-clawed Gryphon, the beast that struck without warning and killed without remorse.
Delgado shook his head. Having learned all that, perhaps he understood the killer’s psychology slightly better, but he was no closer to catching the man.
The other major phase of the investigation focused on earlier unsolved homicides that might roughly fit the Gryphon’s pattern. In a city as large and as violent as L.A., there was no shortage of brutal attacks on women; but two cases struck Delgado as particularly intriguing. Last June a Culver City woman had disappeared while on a shopping errand, then had turned up dead in a trash dumpster several days later, her neck deeply gashed and nearly severed by what might have been a hacksaw. Six months earlier, in December, a teenage Santa Monica girl was found dead in an alley behind the video rental store where she’d worked; her right hand had been lopped off and stuffed in her mouth. In each case the victim had been sexually abused after death, and the killer’s blood type had been established as AB positive.
The task force was also looking into out-of-state crimes that might be connected with the Gryphon’s activities. So far a murder
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