Primal Scream

by Michael Slade

  "You want me north?" Chandler said.

  "On the front line. If push comes to bloody shove, the call is yours. Set up a crisis-management team and bounce all communications with the Sundancers off Ghost Keeper and a Force psychologist.

  "Bob"—he turned to the Cree—"you're second in command of the CMT. You have to live and work with your people after the standoff is over, so I want to absolve you of blame for making potentially unpopular decisions up north. I'm sending you there to investigate the case within the case. The search for the Decapitator is your command."

  Spann frowned at losing the file she hoped was her passage to inspector and head of Administration here at Special X.

  "Topic two," said DeClercq. "Winterman Snow. Where do we stand on linking the two headless bodies up north to him?"

  Macbeth rose from her seat and approached the left half of DeClercq's Strategy Wall. The code name for the Totem Lake headhunter was The Decapitator, printed on a label above the collage. Displayed were two clusters of morgue photographs, one set catching the autopsy on Jed Vanderkop, the Idaho hunter frozen headless under Totem Lake falls, and the other set the Polaroids of Cy Flint that Chandler had just pinned up. Because both victims were American, the Decapitator case also belonged to Special X.

  "Vanderkop died from an arrow to the heart. He was beheaded after death," said Gill, illustrating within the appropriate photo. "I found no semen in the rectum, but he was anally raped." Macbeth switched to the Polaroids of the new victim. "Though not yet dissected, my prelim exam of Flint confirmed his arm and leg were pierced by arrows; then he was beheaded while still alive. That is shown by active circulation bleeding into tissue around the cut margin." Her finger encircled the inner edge of the neck stump. "He, too, was anally raped, and again I found no semen." "It's gotta be the same killer," added Spann. "The arrow to Vanderkop's heart was an Easton XX75 2219. The shaft with olive drab cam, fletched with yellow plastic vanes, drove a Wasp three-bladed 130-grain chisel-point broadhead. The arrow that killed Vanderkop was key fact evidence, and the exact same type of arrow spiked Flint to the tree."

  Key fact—or hold back—evidence refers to those details known only to the offender and a limited number of cops, held back from general knowledge and the media to assist in trapping the real killer during interviews or court proceedings.

  "The beheadings are linked," George agreed, "and a prime suspect is Winterman Snow. Moses John— the Totem Lake spiritual leader—saw an archer bow-hunting above the falls just before the freeze. 'The white man' Kathy heard him describe fits the albino 'White Man' known as Winterman Snow. Dodd says north of Totem Lake is Snow's trap line. He's a lone wolf who lives off the land and only comes out, according to Dodd, to sell his furs. We found Flint dead on Snow's trap line, and recovered his skinned face and three others on a miniature totem in a sweat lodge."

  "If the Decapitator is Winterman Snow, what do you see as his fantasy motive for homosexually raping, then hunting whites?" asked DeClercq.

  "Snow's reasserting the red man in him through his crimes," said George. "That's why the only tobacco plug on the sweat lodge mound was red. The key to what fuels his revenge is the crucifix smeared on the floor of the cabin, to which he crucified a white man for anal rape, before releasing him naked into Snow's realm of snow to stalk and face-skin for a ritual totem. He's acting out what was done to him as a child, so surely the crucifix points to—

  "Sexual abuse in a church-run residential school," completed DeClercq.

  "That's where I'll begin," replied the Cree. "What I'm hunting is a white hater with a headhunter's trophy collection of skulls."

  DeClercq approached the right half of his Strategy Wall as Macbeth resumed her seat. The smile she flashed him as they passed warmed the room, while Craven's eyes on the back of his head ran a paralyzing chill down his spine.

  Robert's eye twitched.

  Her look said she thought it a wink.

  An image of Gill in bed shot through his unbridled id.

  Whoa! he thought.

  Shrink was the code name for the killer who'd mailed the shrunken head to Special X. The name was printed on the label above the second collage. "Topic three," said DeClercq, "is Shrink and Bron Wren. Though at first the two cases seemed to blend together, I now believe we're searching for two head-hunters, not one. The Decapitator up north and Shrink down here."

  "I took hairs found on a brush in Bron Wren's room to the lab," said Craven. "Comparing them with those on the shrunken head produced a probable match. The tattoo and that make it safe to assume the head is his and not from up north."

  "Vanderkop had pockmarked skin," said Macbeth. "So does one of the skinned faces on the totem found in the sweat lodge."

  "The shrunken head was mailed when only Members of the Force knew about the headless body frozen under the falls. The three explanations are one killer, a leak in the ranks, or coincidence. If one killer, why change M.O. for Wren? Unless Wren was already dead and his head was pre-shrunk, a leak in the ranks wouldn't give a copycat enough time to mail the head for Friday's delivery. The main post office got back to me on chute cut-off times. If the headless body and bodiless head are coincidence, was Bron Wren a stranger-to-stranger victim of Shrink," asked Chandler, "or was he beheaded for a more personal reason?"

  Feeling as if he and Macbeth had already cuckolded Nick, DeClercq steeled himself to face the corporal eye to eye.

  "If the motive for killing Wren is personal," said DeClercq, "it follows from the album hidden in his room that the pedophile's killer might be a victim he abused as a child. I want you to vet the six kids involved in the DSO proceedings which put Wren away for twenty-five years, followed by those photographed in the album from whom he snipped locks of hair."

  DeClercq requested that Spann stay behind as the powwow dispersed. He closed the door, then motioned her to one of the minion chairs, then circled behind the horseshoe desk to seat himself.

  "Congratulations on your promotion, Inspector," he said. He smiled as elation registered in her eyes. "Due to expanding caseload, I'm restructuring Special X. The position Head of Administration is no more, and Head of Operations will be split in two. You will henceforth be head of Operations B and third in command of Special X, after Inspector Chandler—who will head Operations A—and me. The reason you're not going north is I want you in Vancouver. Because you and I are going to reopen the Headhunter file."

  Primal Scream

  Sparky was in a dungeon like that dungeon in New Orleans, though decades had passed since Mardi Gras and Mother's House of Pain. Hallucinations are a symptom of florid psychosis, and Sparky was hallucinating memories of Ecuador.

  Ecuador, too, was decades ago, but not as far back as Carnival. . . .

  "Wanta do some acid?"

  "Huh?" "LSD. Wanta do some?"

  "Oh ... uh ... no ... no, I don't think so."

  Selena cocked her head to one side, eyebrow arched archly. "What's the matter, Sparky? Why the hesitation? You've done dope, haven't you? Surely you can't be that straight."

  "I've done drugs."

  "Well, then ..." The hippie shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not offering you grass or coke or bombers or speed or booze. It's acid, babe. The ultimate. Straight from God to Owsley to me to you ... I mean, you have done acid before, haven't you?"

  A pregnant pause, then Sparky muttered sheepishly, "No, I haven't done that."

  "Bummer. Look at the living you're missing, the fun you've never had. Try everything once, I say. Don't you agree?"

  Another pause, before Sparky said, "Yeah . . . yeah, I guess so."

  "Good! Then it's settled." And with that Selena's hand popped open like a magician's to display two small tablets of White Lightning washed by tropical sun in her palm. The hippie wet the index finger of her other hand to touch it to one of the hits and transfer the drug on her fingertip to the end of her; stuck-out tongue. Mouth closed, she swallowed.

  "Okay. Your turn. Do it, Sparky."

  Th
e Canadian swallowed the other tab, and expected something astounding.

  Nothing happened.

  Yesterday afternoon had been spent drifting lazily down the Santiago. By high noon the merciless sun beat down harshly on the glaring river, and it turned suffocating as the day wore on. Haze shimmered between the dripping trees like a mirage, while musky scents frond the jungle seduced Selena's senses. A woof of displeasure drew her gaze to the riverbank, and she caught anf evil eye going blank as a long snout and armored body sank in the warm tributary. "Jacare," said Sparky. "Cocodrilo. They make nice handbags."

  A covey of vampire bats hung asleep upside down! in a hollow tree, bellies bloated with blood thosdr drained could ill afford.

  A crack of twigs, then guttural voices murmured hi the bush. Scanning and squinting, Selena discerned four dark faces peering from the gloom, the ivory teeth that spiked their mouths sharpened to points. Then they were gone, these furtive men, leaving behind the soft rustle of released branches.

  A fetid stench from the bank assailed the hippie's nose. Like pieces breaking off a whole, black-and- white vultures abandoned something bloody in the shore mud to flap up and line the lower branches of the sun-drenched canopy.

  "Urubu," said Sparky, nosing the dugout toward the shallows. "Nature's gravediggers. They bury jungle dead in their gizzards."

  As the dugout neared the bank, the birds glared in glum silence. The flank of their meal was a sticky clot where hide was torn from the flesh. The bullock's horns had been smashed by savage blows from wooden clubs, and broken spears jutted from the exposed rib bones. Flocks of blue, white, and yellow butterflies hovered over the gore, wings fluttering in ecstasy as tiny mouths tasted blood.

  Selena said, "I thought butterflies lived on flower dew."

  "Even the most beautiful may hunger with abhorrent desire."

  "Those Indians looked savage."

  "They're Jivaro. They were headhunters not so long ago."

  "I hope they're civilized now!"

  "They are," said Sparky. "Or so I'm told."

  Once the boat passed on, the vultures swooped down to pick the carcass clean.

  Today, Selena had awakened to dawn in the Ecuador jungle. She rolled over onto her back to gaze up at the sky. Huge trees with trunks forty feet in diameter grew to heights two hundred feet above her eyes, lower limbs a palette of every hue of green, the canopy white where sun had bleached life from the leaves. Parasitic growth hung tangled from the armpits of the trees: red orchids clinging to sweet gum hosts, creepers twisting serpentlike from branch to branch, and poisonous fruits luring the unwary. So alien was it down here among these ferns wet from ground mist that she felt as if she lay at the bottom of the sea.

  Sparky was not in the campsite.

  Rubbing sleep from her eyes, Selena rose and wound her way to the riverbank, where she found Sparky in the dugout yards from shore.

  "You're up early. Whatcha doing?"

  "Taking the last of my water samples. I'll only be a minute." Sparky sealed a jar.

  "Take your time," Selena said. "I've nowhere to be but here."

  Late yesterday afternoon, they'd detoured from the main channel of the Santiago River into a side stream. A few miles up, this waterway opened into a lagoon, where they pitched camp for the night on its shore. As Selena watched Sparky collect samples, she sat on the bank and basked hi the glory of a new day. Gone was the forest's oppression of constriction and decay. Gone was the murk of the Santiago from loam carried downstream to dump in the Amazon. This was the Garden of Eden, and everything seemed peaceful, primal, and serene. The mud flats were shadowed purple by overhanging trees that paddled their roots in the water. Low in the sky to the east, the sun and moon shone side by side like Gemini twins, as light from their faces forged the lagoon into precious metal. On the far side it was silver tinged with mauve. At her feet it was pure gold.

  Foam creaming around its prow slightly raised from weight at the helm, the dugout nudged the bank with its blunt snout.

  "Jesus!" marveled Selena, rumpling her black hair. "This spot's a blow-away."

  "Like it, eh?" Sparky said, stepping onshore. "Not a soul for miles except a headhunter or two."

  "Want some help?"

  "Sure. Carry these jars to the shade and I'll moor the boat."

  As Selena took the samples she asked, "How long ya been in the Peace Corps?"

  "Six months," said Sparky. "I work with the Corps, but I'm not a member."

  "How come?"

  "You gotta be American to volunteer. I was born in Quebec."

  "So how'd you end up in this neck of the woods?"

  "Long story," Sparky said, coming up the bank. "My mom died in New Orleans when I was young. As my dad was already dead, my grandma took me in. She loved the sun, so for a while we lived in Tahiti, then Martinique, and finally French Guiana. She passed away some months ago, and I kicked around the north coast, pondering where to go. Then I met two guys in Venezuela, on the beach, whom the Corps was reposting to Ecuador. I had money from my grandma's estate, so I tagged along, paying my own way. When we got to Quito, one guy caught dysentery, and the other didn't want to brave the jungle alone. He had the Corps take me on as 'local labor,' and voila, I'm here. Mostly I take river excursions by myself. Which is fine since I like my own company."

  "I like your company, too," Selena said, and again rumpled her hair.

  Sparky grinned. "You hold the samples while I tape and label the jars."

  The hippie held each container as the Canadian cut adhesive tape from a roll with a knife withdrawn from a belt sheath. A yellow and blue macaw shrieking from the treetops caused Selena to squint up and see a flight of green parrots taking off. The four jars labeled, Sparky sheathed the knife.

  "You finished work?" Selena asked, fishing a glass vial from the breast pocket of her shirt.

  "Yep," Sparky said.

  "So we got time to relax?"

  "Sure. Nowhere to go."

  "Oh, but there is, babe. Let's take a trip."

  "Where'd you have in mind?"

  "The mind," Selena echoed, tapping the contents of the vial into her palm.

  "What's that?"

  "Heaven, babe. Wanta do some acid?"

  "I don't feel so good "

  "It'll p a s s."

  "No, really. I don't feel well a t a l l."

  "Hey, don't freak out on me, babe. Acid always starts in the gut."

  "It's not my gut. It's my h e a d."

  "Shush. Listen to the sounds."

  Forty minutes had flown since they had dropped the acid, and now it seemed to Sparky as if the slow-moving river were an eerie sound conductor, an evil whispering gallery that gathered the noises of an entire continent and delivered them in distorted form to this lagoon. It seemed as if the Amazon jungle had gone electric, every rustle adding to a shrillness that rose eventually into a nerve-shredding, brain-fraying crescendo of metallic abuse. Paradise had transmogrified into something weird . . . something dank and plagued like a diseased, festering wound.

  God! What's happening to me?

  Barbs of acid-addled thought hooked into the flesh of the Canadian's brain, and each tug on a fishing line yanked latent psychosis up another notch . . .

  Nothing to fear but fear itself. . . Fear itself afraid of fear . . .

  Nothing but fear. . . FEAR . . . FEAR . . .

  I gotta get outa here!

  Stumbling in the effort, Sparky stood up. Whatever was expected, it was far from this. Distortion . . . nausea . . . tremors . . . My body is out of control! Sparky's heart had lost its rhythm to take on a crooked beat. Sparky's lungs were choking, unable to squeeze enough oxygen out of this putrid decay. Throat dry, very dry, and tasting the color gray. Sounds formed geometric patterns before Sparky's eyes, a phantasmagoric kaleidoscope that fused with the background until the boundaries of life, body, and self were fluid and dissolving. Sparky was becoming a part of this vast, foul-smelling, oozy stretch of bog undulating like an unsq
ueezed sponge.

  My brain is out of control!

  At first it was gradual, like the rot that follows death. Selena's skin seemed to fluctuate between pallor and flush. Pupils dilated, her eyes began to bulge like a fish. Increasingly, her body took on a surreal pulse, throbbing arteries and veins worming through her flesh, flesh which itself was changing as half turned metallic blue, the muscles beneath the jumping skin telegraphing erotic cues. Selena's face contorted into a frightening caricature, a perversion of female incarnate with every orifice dripping sex, as something tore within Sparky's mind for a total letting go, with Selena uncoiling from the ground like a waking cat, the real world as elusive as the fragments of a dream, her arms stretched skyward to worship the sun, psychosis going latent to florid as the hippie unbuttoned her shirt, Sparky plummeting into the deep valley between her breasts, a tiny white tick, a garapate du chao, adhered to one milky mound, turning pink as the woman's blood filled its transparent belly, vision on vision wavering in the flicker of afterimage, this slow strip seemingly planned a century in advance, paranoia creeping up from the dungeon of Sparky's id as Selena shed her shirt, danger hiding everywhere, inside and out, Selena's breasts bursting forth in challenging nakedness, exposing every pocket of fat, every duct and highlighted blemish, as one breast bloated larger, then shrank smaller, before again ballooning larger than its mate. Both nipples were dry and cracked like a sunbaked riverbed.

  "It's positively primal! This p l a c e is fucking alive!"

  Black mane tossing in wild abandon, Selena pranced down the mudbank toward the lagoon. Hers wasn't a fluid motion, for after each step she seemed to disintegrate, her flesh reconstructing in time to disintegrate again, first one foot, then the other, buried ankle-deep under ooze, mud suuuck suuuck suuucking each retracting foot as Selena threw back her head and growled, "Eat me, you horny b i t c h. That's it, Mother Nature. S u c k your daughter dry."