Bed of Nails

by Michael Slade

  “Now you’re back to suspecting the Ripper?”

  “He’s the source of the motive.”

  “A puppet master?”

  “Right. With the key to the occult realm.”

  “Who’s the puppet?”

  “Don’t know. One of two lawyers.”

  “Wes Grimmer?”

  “Possibly. He’s the Ripper’s lawyer. That put him above suspicion on the FPH visitors’ list.”

  “Why suspect him now?”

  “He was in Seattle. At a World Horror Convention that is tied to the sites of the Hanged Man murder down there. Did you know that he just published a novel about the Hanged Man murder up here?”

  “No. Title?”

  “Halo of Flies. The title refers to the nimbus of nails pounded into Cardoza’s head.”

  “And the other lawyer?”

  “Bret Lister.”

  “I thought he left practice.”

  “He did, after he wigged out in court and was sent to Colony Farm on a psych remand.”

  “Where he met the Ripper?”

  “And referred him to Wes for legal representation. Bret was in Seattle. At the same convention. Did you know that he, too, just published a novel about our Hanged Man? Crown of Thorns, a title that also refers to the nimbus of nails.”

  “Sounds like competition.”

  “It is. They loathe each other. And it doesn’t help that they’re both bedding the same woman.”

  “Who?”

  “A goth named Petra Zydecker. She’s the rebellious daughter of a minister with a church up the Fraser Valley. Petra’s the artist who designed the cover of Bret’s book. The image, titled The Antichrist, depicts a man spiked upside down on a bed of nails shaped like a Christian cross. That, too, was inspired by our Hanged Man murder, and it doubles as the Hanged Man card in her tarot deck.”

  “Bed of Nails,” DeClercq said. “Cardoza’s movie.”

  “So many tie-ins.”

  “I see why you suspect them. That explains the cleanup.”

  “Lawyers and forensics. DNA is the nightmare of defense lawyers these days. That’s why condoms were used and removed, the victim was scrubbed with chemicals to destroy fluids, fingerprints were wiped away, and the bed was vacuumed.”

  “Describe Petra.”

  “Mid-twenties. Oversexed. Hard-core goth. Tattoos, piercings—the works. Schooled in the Bible. Hooked by the Tarot.”

  “The tarot card in Cardoza’s room?”

  “Used to chop coke.”

  “Sex, drugs, and the occult?”

  “That’s how I see it,” said Zinc. “Bret Lister or Wes Grimmer fell under the combined spell of the Ripper and the goth queen. Whichever it was, he and Petra stalked Cardoza in the bar of the hotel and lured him upstairs for a two-on-one with lots of coke. Before the three got into bed, Cardoza was slipped Viagra. They cuffed him, gagged him, screwed him in front and behind, then hammered nails into his brain to get off on his death throes. Having signed the triad of the Hanged Man with his cuffed arms and the nimbus of nails, they suspended Cardoza from the ceiling beam with his legs crossed to signify the tetrad. Then the pair cleaned up the room and snuck away.”

  “Leaving us with Bed of Nails.”

  “What you’d expect from a lawyer. How better to bamboozle cops than with a false motive?”

  “Clever cover-up.”

  “It was the perfect location. A hooker bar with drug dealers is full of suspects. The coke snorted during the crime did come from Gord. The lawyer knew we’d match the traces.”

  DeClercq fell silent.

  He contemplated the window.

  The feather from the bird fluttered in the breeze.

  “It might be helpful to check the FPH visitors’ list again,” said DeClercq. “Let’s see exactly who talked to the Ripper around the time of the Tarot killing of Cardoza.”

  “I phoned this morning. No luck, Chief. Their computer’s down. Some sort of worm or virus got into their database and gobbled up past records. The hospital doesn’t know how long it will take to retrieve the lost information.”

  DeClercq frowned. “We’re not seeing the whole picture.”

  “How so?” Zinc asked.

  “Why get reckless? Wes and Petra, Bret and Petra—take your pick of suspects. Having got away scot-free with the Hanged Man killing up here, why would either pair go out of their way down in Seattle to make themselves prime suspects, not only in that murder but also in our killing?”

  Zinc shrugged. “They’re crazy?”

  “We’re missing something. I want you to tell me everything that happened in Seattle.”

  So Chandler told DeClercq about everything.

  Except the Odyssey to the Cook Islands.

  “So tell me about the Cook Islands,” DeClercq said after Chandler had finished his narrative.

  Zinc blinked.

  Could the chief read minds?

  Was his subterfuge about to be exposed?

  “What made you pick them as your destination to get away from it all?” DeClercq added.

  Zinc recovered quickly. He had planned for this. “Revival of the Ripper case reminded me of Captain Cook’s link to Deadman’s Island. And the fact I’ve heard you say Cook is history’s greatest explorer.”

  “Ah, the Northwest Passage.”

  “And the St. Roch.”

  It’s surprising what you can do with a limited budget and limitless history. Formed in 1873, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police dates from the height of the British Empire. Early detachments were furnished with what were now antiques, so DeClercq had rummaged through storage rooms from coast to coast, commandeering treasures from Queen Victoria’s realm to turn the lower floor of Special X into a museum.

  Here, in the main squad room at the foot of the stairs leading up to the chief’s office, cops worked with state-of-the-art computers and high-tech forensic data in an environment reflecting their frontier tradition. Mannequins displayed the changes that had been made to the classic red serge uniform over time: from the pillbox hat to the white pith helmet to the wide-brim Stetson. On the walls hung an armory of Wild West weapons: the Adams, Enfield, Colt, and Smith & Wesson sidearms; the various rifles carried in a sling that attached to the pommel of the California stock saddle; the cavalry swords of officers. Off in one corner by the coffee machines, which had enticed DeClercq and Chandler down for a caffeine fix, stood the Maxim machine gun, acquired in 1898 to police rambunctious miners in the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush.

  History was the best training for a homicide cop.

  Every murder has a motive rooted in the personal histories of its participants. A homicide detective ferrets out the scattered pieces of each history and looks for clues from back then to solve the puzzle presented by the now. A flatfoot with one hand scratching his noggin as he tries to muddle his way through the conundrum “What in hell’s going on here?” doesn’t stand a chance against a trained historian. Every criminal trial is a history book.

  There was no need for Zinc to sketch in the historical background to his ruse for the chief. DeClercq had written several history books, one of which—Men Who Wore the Tunic, his history of the Force—detailed the epic voyage of the St. Roch.

  The Northwest Passage was the Holy Grail of the Age of Discovery. Ever since John Cabot had bumped into North America’s mainland during his unsuccessful quest for a western route to Japan in 1497, merchants had dreamed of charting a northwest passage to traffic in a fabulous wealth of gold and furs. Jubilant over the success of Captain Cook’s two voyages to the South Seas, Britain sent its finest mariner in search of that mythic Arctic route across the top of the globe. With William Bligh—of mutiny fame—and George Vancouver—whose name now graced both Ralph’s and Zinc’s hometowns—in his crew, Cook sailed to the far side of the New World.

  In March 1778, Cook’s ships—the Resolution and the Discovery—finally reached the coast of Oregon. Foul weather forced them out to sea as they sailed north
, and about two-thirds of the way up the west coast of what is now Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Cook dropped anchor in the sheltered inlet of Nootka Sound. The Resolution required a new mizzenmast, so the British spent four weeks among the Nootka Natives doing repairs. When they left on April 26 to head north to Alaska, the ships sailed past Deadman’s Island, which was used by the Nootka as a burial ground.

  “It’s layered, isn’t it,” Zinc said.

  “What? History?”

  “There I was, trapped on Deadman’s Island with the Ripper, and I didn’t know that Captain Cook had sailed past that hellhole over two hundred years before. Likewise, when Cook was sailing off to Alaska, he didn’t know he was passing a Magick place.”

  “The Nootka Whalers Washing House, the West Coast shamans’ shrine.”

  “Later, the Ripper’s door to the occult realm.”

  “Or so he thought.”

  “The best-laid schemes …” said Zinc.

  Not until 1942 would the Northwest Passage finally be conquered by the RCMP. The Mounties dispatched their floating detachment—the supply vessel St. Roch—on a two-year voyage across the frozen Arctic from Vancouver to Halifax to assert Canada’s sovereignty in the North. In 1944, the ship sailed back, and by passing through the Panama Canal in 1950, the St. Roch became the first vessel in history to circumnavigate North America. Today, the ship is on display at the Vancouver Maritime Museum.

  “Born too late,” Zinc said. “I could have sailed with Larsen.”

  “Now there was one tough sergeant.”

  “Imagine finishing the voyage Cook didn’t complete.”

  “And freeze your balls off doing it? You want to follow in Cook’s wake, go to the South Pacific.”

  “Good idea.”

  “When does your flight leave?”

  “On Wednesday,” Zinc said. “But after what occurred in Seattle, I think I should stick around.”

  “No!” emphasized DeClercq. “That’s what you shouldn’t do. The shit is going to hit the fan in the media over this. They’ll say we botched the North Van case a year and a half ago, resulting in the deaths of those two innocents in the bar. Not to mention the crash that killed Gord and Joey and destroyed so much property on the Low Level Road. That left the real killers free to kill again, which they did in Seattle over the weekend.”

  “But we had no evidence.”

  “Think they’ll give a damn? Your bones are much bloodier for the media to feed on than having no one to blame. Eating you alive will sell papers and fill airtime.”

  “You want me out of the way?”

  “You’re damn right I do. If only to put off the feeding frenzy for a few weeks. From what you just told me, the Seattle police don’t have a case. Both the ghost tour past Ted Bundy’s house and the directions to the Thirteen Steps to Hell were advertised beyond those attending the convention. Just as they used hookers and drug dealers as a smokescreen up here, the killers chose horror fans as the haystack in which to hide their needles in Seattle. The deleterious influence of the macabre has always been a convenient scapegoat. Many would see that gathering as a massing of unstable freaks, any one of whom could flip out and kill. A convention inherently destroys forensics because those attending mill in and out of each other’s rooms.”

  “The permutations are mind-boggling,” Zinc concurred.

  “Now add two wily lawyers to that mix. The Hanged Man killings are linked by the identical nails. The M.O. is slightly different—in that the nails were pounded into the victim’s face as opposed to around his head—but the Cthulhu murder is also linked to the Hanged Man killings because of the make of nails and the connection to the World Horror Convention. Agreed?”

  “Yes. All three murders are linked.”

  “Bret has an alibi for Friday night. He was in bed with Petra while the head was being spiked at Ted Bundy’s house and the body was being strung up in Maltby Cemetery. Agreed?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “Backed up by room service and the lack of sufficient time to commit the crime.”

  “Yes,” said Zinc.

  “Wes has an alibi for Saturday night. He was also in bed with Petra while the Cthulhu sculptor was being killed. Agreed?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “Backed up by two peeping Toms.”

  “That’s why I need to be here. To find out who’s lying about who was with whom when.”

  “Until we have our ducks in line, we’re not taking on two lawyers. If Bret hates Wes and Wes hates Bret, each will try to portray the other as the Seattle killer. And if you are the investigator trying to straighten that out, each will also accuse you of harassing him to try to shift the media’s attention away from your own earlier foul-up. So that’s why I want you away from it all.”

  “What about the case?”

  “I’ll take over.”

  “Do I have to go to the Cook Islands?”

  “That’s an order.”

  Zinc sighed with resignation. “You’re the boss,” he said.

  MAN MEAT

  Mission, British Columbia

  April 15 (The next day)

  The sketching pad on the Goth’s lap was folded back to a blank page. The psycho sat in the center of a huge bed that had been set up in the sanctuary of what was once a church. From the outside, this structure still looked like a mission, but on the inside, it now served different gods. Elder gods worshiped long before the Christian God was born.

  The killing of the second Hanged Man victim in Seattle was the bait designed to lure Insp. Zinc Chandler toward the hook that was waiting for him at the World Horror Convention. The killing of the Cthulhu sculptor at the convention was the tug on that hook, a tug intended to yank the Mountie toward the suspects who were about to embark on the Odyssey to the South Seas. Now it was time to reel Zinc in and gaff him into traveling to the cannibal island so that the Ripper’s cold revenge—after a year and a half of scheming by the Goth—could reach its bloody climax.

  To that end, the Goth was time-traveling again, wormholing back through the astral plane on a follow-up research junket to the Christian mission in Fiji in 1838, in order to witness firsthand the fate the Tarot had in store for Zinc.

  Back …

  Back …

  Back …

  “Vakatotoga!”

  That’s what I’m here to see.

  The yard in front of the chapel was deserted when I materialized a moment ago, for the time warp has returned me to where I stood before, but not at that instant when the cannibals were at the gate. Instead, I have moved the clock forward long enough for the blood-crazed man-eaters to seize the reverend from the threshold of the church and drag him, along with the old missionary inside, across the shallow stream that separates the mission from the god-house.

  Black smoke belches from the oven pits dug in the temple grounds as bonfires heat the stones that will bake the meat. At least a hundred bakolas have been butchered on the dissecting surface, and human flesh wrapped in plantain leaves lies waiting to feed those fiery mouths so that human mouths might eat. Except for those heads retained by the high priest to mount on top of the counting stones, the cut-off noggins are passed around like tins of chewing tobacco. Warriors tear off the ears and masticate them raw, then finger dollops of the goo onto the lips of their toddling sons to ensure that the boys acquire an early taste for long pig.

  But now attention shifts to the sacred grove. There, amid the bone trees wedged with their skeletal trophies, both missionaries are being stripped of their clothes. The chief carver cuts their garments away piece by piece with his butcher knife, then tosses them into the narrow stream that runs red with discarded offal. How white the naked pair seem under this harsh sun. Their skin is unaccustomed to its rays.

  Now the king himself waddles into the sacred grove, his multiple layers of consumed human fat jiggling like Jell-O with each jouncing step. Behind him skulks a bloated vulture: his high priest.

  The
old missionary is too weak to stand on his own. He is held up by the burly pair who dashed the bakolas against the braining stone. The king smirks in triumph as his archenemy is bound with vines, the upper and lower halves of his legs cinched together and lashed to his body, his arms secured in a similar fashion by tying both elbows to his knees and a hand to each side of his neck.

  Locked in a sitting position by those restraints, the white bakola is carried across to the high priest. As the old missionary mumbles prayers to his God, the pagan priest mocks him with insults intoned loudly enough to be heard by the bloodthirsty mob crowded on the beach in front of the grove. My view across the stream is kept clear by the foul water. I watch as temple assistants decorate the new bakola to resemble the enemy dead who were brought home for the feast. His face and body are painted with obscene designs, and a fan is stuck in one hand for ornamentation. Then the burly brain-bashers hoist their human cargo shoulder-high and parade it around the trophy grove.

  The king’s cooks have dug a special lovo within the grove. The pit oven is deep enough to bake a man whole. Volcanic rocks are thrown atop a bonfire of ironwood stoked in the bowels of the pit and left there until they glow red hot. Now those cooks are leveling the bottom of the hole, removing unburned branches so the oven won’t explode after it’s closed. Fresh banana leaves are smashed to layer on the rocks, then the greens of palm fronds are crosshatched on top. That done, the oven is prepared to receive its meat.

  The gibbering starts as the old man is lowered into the pit.

  Though he tries to be as brave as Jesus on the cross, sickness takes its toll on the missionary’s resolve. As I watch him slowly sink into that hellish furnace, I imagine my granddad in the old man’s place, and that puts a smile on my lips every time he screams.