Primal Scream

by Michael Slade

  "You never let a Member face death alone, even if he doesn't want backup. The problem was how to get help silently to you, so as not to tip the killer. A chopper dropped the Mad Dog out of earshot, and he mushed a dog team up the valley on your trail."

  "You certainly picked the right man."

  "It was you who taught me: The secret of command is to know your personnel, so when the need arises you choose 'the right tool for the job.' "

  "Thanks," said DeClercq.

  On-screen was a view of Totem Lake taken from the air, the sundance circle visible in the snow on shore as the sun went down behind the majestic peaks to the west. The voice-over of the TV reporter was closing out the piece:

  "In the end, the native spirituality that inspired the rebels delivered a peaceful solution. Medicine men released them from the spiritual obligation to protect Totem Lake. The RCMP succeeded where law enforcement in Waco, Texas, failed by taking the time to listen to what the rebels said. In both cases rebels built barricades out of passionate belief. In Waco it was belief in an apocalypse. Here, it was belief in Doomsday, too, plus belief they had been oppressed and cheated by the Canadian government for a century. The RCMP the time to exhaust every feasable option before tactical force. The one concession they made to camp was that a native spiritual leader could stay the lake to guard sacred sundance objects, including four buffalo skulls and a buffalo robe."

  Fade-out to the setting sun.

  "Good job," said DeClercq. "How'd you do Bob?"

  "The problem was, there were two leaderless groups in camp. They let the spiritual leaders in to counsel them. Ceding the sacred land to the Gitxsan undermined the Doomsdayers. There wasn't a Gitxsan among them, so they were asked to leave. The Gitxsan spiritual leaders were disturbed by violence on the sacred land. The sundance is a Plains tradition embraced by natives across Canada who are frustrated, alienated, and seeking new strength in revived spiritualism. Sundancing is foreign to Gitxsan, but I'm Plains Cree, and we fought with the Sioux against Custer when Sitting Bull called on us. So I called the keeper of the sundance ceremony, the chief of the Lakota-Dakota-Nakota Sioux Nation, the custodian of the White Buffalo Calf Woman's pipe and bundle, and asked him to fly from South Dakota to counsel the Totem Lake Sundancers in the traditions of the sundance."

  "You knew what he'd say?"

  "Yes," said George. "I've done the sundance in my time. He told them violence is not the way of the sundancer. The sundance is a renewal of life and a tie back to Mother Earth. You can't have a gun in one hand and a pipe in the other. He called for 'mending the hoop' by a return to spiritual values. To live by the precepts of the sundance, you must learn to live in harmony with the Earth and all its creatures, and get along with all people. He'll have used the words Nitakuye oyafin: 'All my relations.' They signify each of us is connected to every other person on Earth. That's what we say in the sweat lodge when we finish our turn speaking. A native amen, in effect. If people would look at each other as brother and sister, we'd all feel good because there'd be no person higher than another. 'Believe in the pipe, and what you want will be. You will get what you need.' He is wakana. Spiritual. A sundancer's pope. How could they not follow him?"

  "So that's why they came out?"

  "The way to resolve outstanding grievances doesn't go through the barrel of a gun."

  "Thank God it's over," Chandler said.

  "I'll be glad to get back to RFISS," agreed Staff Sergeant George.

  "You're not returning to RFISS," said DeClercq. "I tip my Stetson to how you averted a bloodbath here. It took guts to quell emotion for the common good. You had to shoot Grizzly to save Members. You took an arrow to stop those arms. And you found a way to pull down those barricades. I'm sickened by how Canada has treated its First Nations, and part of me rooted for those in the camp. I can't imagine the emotions in you. But I'd hate to see what whites would do if someone walked in and booted them out of their rightful homes, then told them henceforth you bow to me. At the powwow in my office, I saw you look at The Last Great Council of the West on the wall, and wondered how it felt being pitted against those of your people unwilling to bite the bullet over past wrongs. Whatever you felt, it didn't sabotage your doing the job.

  "I made a mistake. I promoted Spann. The secret of command is to know your personnel, so you choose 'the right tool for the job.' Militants and barricades won't undo the past, but Members like you will. You're promoted to head of Operations B."

  DeClercq clasped the Cree's shoulder.

  Chandler clasped the other.

  "All my relations," said Inspector Bob Ghost Keeper George.

  Katt sat waiting in the hall outside the hospital room. DeClercq emerged to find her playing with a charm around her neck.

  "What's that?"

  "A gift. From the Mad Dog."

  "It looks like a .308 cartridge casing strung on a chain."

  "It fired the bullet that saved my life. The Mad Dog says it had my name on it."

  "I hope this puts to rest all future consideration of you becoming a cop. It's not the world it was when I recruited."

  "Au contraire, Bob. Someone's got to stop them. We can't let psychos run amok."

  Katt stood up, turned sideways, and bent over with her butt out and arms hanging down.

  "What's that?"

  "Threat display. How a grizzly shows its size when you challenge it."

  Robert laughed. Never a dull moment. To think he was here to see the birth of this permanent addition to Katt's repertoire!

  "We have a plane to catch, but before we go," he said, "never again question if I'll come for you. I'll always come . . ."

  He hugged her.

  " 'Cause you're my kid."

  Buzz Buzz Buzz

  Vancouver

  Monday, January 15

  Gill Macbeth was about to knock on the closed door to Robert's office when suddenly it opened and was face to face with Nick.

  "Gill."

  "Nick."

  "How's things?"

  "Fine. And you?"

  "Okay," he said.

  "Good. See you around."

  "Right."

  "Well."

  "Take care."

  It's over, said their eyes.

  He went down the stairs.

  She entered the office. And closed the door behinc her. And approached the desk.

  DeClercq was seated behind a stack of files. Phone to his ear, he motioned her to a chair as he booke two reservations.

  "Security still in effect? Good, we'll be there three."

  Gill remained standing as he hung up.

  "To what do I owe this visit?" Robert asked, br preoccupied.

  "I came to ask you out for dinner tonight."

  "Sorry," he said absently. "Prior plans."

  "Tomorrow, then?" Frowning. "What about Nick?"

  "Nick and I were right for each other for a while. That time has passed. We're moving on."

  "Maybe."

  "Maybe what?"

  "Maybe I'll have dinner with you. Last time I was dating, we asked you out."

  "We. You. Us. Times change," said Gill.

  "Can't teach an old dog new tricks," he said.

  She winked.

  "Wanta bet?"

  Gill was about to leave the office when suddenly the door opened after a knock and she was face to face with Anda Carlisle.

  "Hi," said Anda.

  "Hi," said Gill.

  They say two things in life are certain: death and taxes.

  In Vancouver, add rain to the list.

  The last vestiges of snow were washed away by the rain that cleaned the car that carried them down Cambie Street, past Queen Elizabeth Park crowning Little Mountain and over False Creek to the downtown core, bounded west by Stanley Park against English Bay, bounded east by Chinatown, and bounded north by the harbor backed by mountain peaks.

  As he drove, they talked.

  "Dissociation, right?"

  "Dissociation," she said. "
Remember when you asked me: 'If two killers are loose—the Headhunter here and the Decapitator north—how have different psychologies led to similar crimes?' The answer is both psychologies were the same."

  Robert had passed her the class picture of native kids and missionaries shot at St. Sebastian Residential School.

  "Dodd, like Spann, was a homophobe toward his sex. Reverend Noel saw to that. By dissociation Dodd, like Spann, created a separate killer for homosexual revenge on his sex. By switching sexes, Spann psychologically dissociated herself from homophobia, killing women as a psychotic heterosexual. By switching races, Dodd became a killer who could rape men, for it was Winterman Snow who wreaked revenge, not only for the abuse that drove Snow to suicide, but also for the abuse Dodd suffered at St. Sebastian."

  "From Reverend Noel backed by Corporal Spann."

  "From white men," Anda stressed. "Switching races distanced Dodd."

  "And headhunting?"

  "As I explained the first time we met, headhunting is a practice common to the history of all cultures. It is also a common mutilation among the insane, for the illness they suffer is focused on the head. Spann lived among Jivaro natives in Ecuador. Headhunting as fetish. Dodd lived among Tsimshian natives here. Headhunting as trophy."

  "As a detective, I feel inferior to you," said the Mountie.

  Anda laughed. "There's a joke psychiatrists share. 'I have at last isolated the cause of your inferiority complex. You are inferior.' "

  Robert laughed, too.

  The car turned north on Burrard Street toward the waterfront. Between the office towers looming on either side, they could see the peaks of the North Shore above Lonsdale Avenue, which Nick called home. Encircling his apartment was Bron Wren's hunting ground of twenty-five years ago. After crossing the foreshore railway tracks, DeClercq turned west on Coal Harbor Road toward Stanley Park, then angled north to stop the car beside a float-plane dock.

  "I thought we were going to The Teahouse."

  "Change of plans," he said. "A gourmet recommended a hard-to-get-to restaurant tucked away in a quiet cove on Mayne Island."

  They walked through drizzle to the terminal, where Robert paid for two tickets on the three-thirty flight to the Gulf Islands.

  "The departure lounge is there," the airline clerk said, pointing.

  "Robert?"

  "Yes?"

  "How will we get back? Float planes don't fly once it's dark."

  "Afraid I'm trying the old ploy of running out of gas?"

  "Are you?"

  "No. An RCMP launch is picking us up on its return from patrol."

  "Good," said Anda. "Let's be up-front. I view this dinner as closing out the case, not the beginning of a new relationship. I like you. Platonically. But that is all" Disappointment registered on his face at the door to Departures.

  "Ladies first," he said.

  "How quaint," she replied.

  Anda was about to enter when she was stopped by a security guard. The guard waved a metal detector in her hand. "Sorry," she said, "but we haven't been released from orders to search passengers for skyjackers to the north."

  "Totem Lake," DeClercq explained behind her ear as the electronic wand swept down Carlisle's torso, making no sound until it passed over her groin, where it went as wild as a Geiger counter.

  Buzz . . .

  Buzz . . .

  Buzz ...

  PART THREE

  Shrink

  We are puppets, Man in his pride, and Beauty fair in her flower;

  Do we move ourselves, or are moved by an unseen hand at a game . . . ?

  —Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Puppets are people, and the way they play depends on how they are made and the way their strings are pulled.

  —Catherine Reighard

  Puppet Master

  Carlisle turned to find the Mountie holding out a photo of a girl.

  "You changed your name, but you didn't change your face. Computer enhancing shows this picture is you. The photo is from an album kept by Bron Wren, along with a lock snipped from your hair. To trace the kids involved in the DSO hearing that sent Wren to prison for twenty-five years, Corporal Craven checked the Gazette in case some had changed their names to try to shed the person ruined by Wren.

  "He found the new you.

  "Craven came to see me just before you arrived for our date. He had the North Vancouver Detachment file on you, and told me how he sat in his apartment one night, reading the files on the six cases that went to court, when it struck him that he was surrounded by the scenes of crime:

  "An Indian boy on the reserve along Burrard Inlet;

  "Two brothers west by Mosquito Creek;

  "A boy near the Upper Levels Highway to the north;

  "And twin sisters by Grand Boulevard east of Lonsdale.

  "Craven had our ViCLAS Section generate a map, and on it place the scenes of crime and Bron Wren's lair. The pin map showed Wren lived behind the twin sisters' home. His lust for the girls must have overpowered his fear of arrest, because he abandoned his buffer zone to attack the pair. He raped and sodomized each repeatedly while her sister was forced to watch. To ejaculate Wren cut a lock of hair, like the Krafft-Ebing fetishist you outlined to me.

  "In court, both twins described flame tattoos that ' licked up Wren's belly from his groin.

  "A month later, one twin killed herself, doused in lighter fluid she set aflame.

  "The other twin was you."

  Outside, the Beaver to the Gulf Islands roared in, I cutting its engine to glide to the dock. The passengers in the lounge prepared to depart.

  "What was it you said about Ruryk the day we were alone in his office, where you were searching his files for evidence of kink? Psychiatry draws some doctors who seek to resolve their own mental problems, and at the same time puts them in a position of master-slave dominance over weak, crumbling minds? You were describing you, Anda. Not George Ruryk. You, not him, was shrink to the Shrink. The tape with Spann's monologue was from her therapy with you. The session that gave you a blueprint of her fantasy. A fantasy you then warped to your own ends.

  "Spann was in a battle with Mother for control of her mind. If you have a problem with your head, best to see a shrink. So Katherine Spann consulted you, and you assumed the role of Mother in psychotherapy to exorcise the demon from her head. What was it? Primal therapy? A form of psychotherapy in which patients are encouraged to relive traumatic events, often screaming and crying, to achieve catharsis and the breakdown of psychological defenses? Did you set-decorate a dungeon in the cellar of your home to revive the 'original conditioning situation'? Spann's fetish was the rings, not shrinking the heads, so you pierced rings through your labia to play the role of Mother in the antecedent or 'fantasy phase' of a killing you had planned. Spann suffered attachment disorder, so you attached her to you, face nuzzled in the now loving, not menacing, maw of Mom's sex. Scream, Sparky, scream. Let it all out, as a prelude to sending her out to prove her love for you by raping and killing 'Dad' in the form of Bron Wren, as payback for what he did to you that made Mom hurt Spann as a child. As you put it: In the realm of madness, symbolism reigns. When the crime was going down, you were off somewhere for a perfect alibi.

  "Puppet master.

  "You knew the strings to pull.

  "Wren owed you his life, not twenty-five years in jail. Did you spot him on the street—Ruryk's Gastown office was near his skid-road hotel—or did you stalk him for decades, waiting for parole? Whatever, you sent Spann after him, to abduct and rape in her lair on Finn Slough.

  "To her, she was raping Dad.

  "To you, it was Wren.

  "Sometimes Spann heard the 'Voice,' and sometimes she heard you. Did you ask her to shrink Wren's head, or did she do that on her own? She was conditioned to shrink a head after a murder. Luckily, the Decapitator struck up north. Spann heard about it through the Force grapevine and told you before news of the beheading got out. With Wren missing, you knew we'd come searching for him,
and once we suspected foul play, our list of prime suspects would encompass you. Your sister's suicide was a motive Wren's other victims didn't have. Knowing I was already her stand-in for Dad from the Headhunter case, did you have Spann mail Wren's shrunken head to me? Or did she do that on her own and you picked up on it? Knowing I'd link the head to the headless corpse at Totem Lake, and follow that red herring instead of linking it to Wren, you bought time to send your puppet out to kill again. To behead random victims we'd link to Wren because they were ambushed where his headless corpse was dumped. You thereby converted Wren to a random victim, too, instead of a I specific target linked to you.

  "Serial killer.

  "Random hunt.

  "Four students dying to smudge your smoke screen.

  "I wish I knew the role George Ruryk had in this. Was he kinked or not? I was wrong about Alfred Spann—how did you put it? Do you not feel as if you carry a separate 'sexual self around with you?—and lM could be wrong about him. Or was he also a victim of yours? Wrongly battered by a campus cocktail of erotomania and psychiatrist's fallacy, he set up practice on his own, and brought you in to bolster his reputation, providing you with the opportunity to induce a similar erotomania in one of his new patients. With George suspended, you took control of his practice to become— how'd you put it?—the busiest shrink in town.

  "Very slick.

  "Right place at the wrong time, you said.

  "Right time, you meant.

  "Working with George put you in a perfect position to deflect me. The first time we spoke about the fetish of the shrunken head, you postulated a male sewing his anus shut. When I returned with the photo of the rings in the burning tin, you knew I was closing in on Spann, so again you deflected me toward a male who used female heads as a masturbation aid. It gave you time to have your puppet kill Ruryk, while you set her up to be shot to death.

  "What'd you tell her? Not to be taken alive? Shoot to kill if cornered by the RCMP? Whatever it was, Spann went out in a blaze, forcing me to gun down the puppet you controlled.