Ripper

by Michael Slade

  “At least you aren’t asking if you’re the best. Do it outside, and I count stars. Inside, I count the holes in the ceiling tiles.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Irene. And yours?”

  “Nick,” he said. “Time to get off the street, Irene.”

  “And do what? Medicine? Physics?”

  “A husky voice like yours? Telephone sex. Put a mile or two between you and the knives. It’s safer to let the come splash on the other end of the line.”

  “Talking dirty doesn’t earn eighty bucks a BJ, one-fifty a lay.”

  “Chloe and Zoe? Did they have a pimp?”

  “No, they were fancy-free between bloodworms. You can’t work the stroll without “choosing” a pimp. But theirs got juked in a turf dispute.”

  “What about you?”

  “Mine’s a woman. Fairer with the money. Less grandstand.”

  “Any idea who killed the twins?”

  “A pair of bad tricks in a red ZX.”

  “Whoa,” Nick said. “Drive by again.”

  “I was here the night they were last picked up.” Irene ground her cigarette under one spike. “A car stopped there”—she pointed—“and let them out. No sooner had it peeled away, than the ZX stopped. The twins got in and off they went.”

  “See the driver?”

  “No, but it was a man. Male hand in a tuxedo flashed a K-bill at them. The driver’s window was down.”

  “What about the passenger?”

  “In the back seat. Shadow on the window. Could be either sex. Zoe got in back. Chloe in front. That’s the last anyone saw of them.”

  “When was this?”

  “Yesterday. Three A.M.”

  “A Nissan 300ZX 2+2. Red in color. Anything else?”

  “We look out for each other. Want the license number?”

  Nick checked the plate through the ghost car’s computer. It had been stolen off another red ZX parked underground that night.

  TAROT

  3:17 P.M.

  Witchcraft thrives in British Columbia. After all, it’s the West Coast. On 1981 census forms—the last available—900 British Columbians said they were pagans. In fact there are 5,000 witches in B.C., more than 500 of whom live in Vancouver. One hundred thousand pagans practice in North America, 100,000 more in Britain, and over 1,000,000 worldwide. Witches subdivide into magicians, magi, thaumaturges, theurgists, thelemites, goetics, wizards, sorcerers, conjurors, necromancers, demoniacs, warlocks, druids, Satanists, and Wicca followers. With the revival of New Age interest, their number grows each day.

  The symbol for witchcraft is the five-pointed star: the pentagram. Chan was running it through the Special X computer when Craven entered the Communications Room. “Found something,” he said, indicating the screen.

  On the desk beside the Inspector was an autopsy photo of the pentagram scratched on Chloe’s torso. “One point up is a positive sign,” said Chan. “One point down symbolizes evil. The pentagram on the body used as an altar points toward her feet.”

  A copy of Jolly Roger lay open on the desk. The spine was cracked at the page showing the Tarot cards. Chan had circled the head of the Devil, capturing the pentagram between his horns. “It, too, points down,” he said.

  “The ritual in the Marsh killing bothered me. It seemed to originate outside the stalking team. The feeling I got was it was grafted on.

  “Now we’ve got three bodies, confirming they’re serial killers. The witchcraft aspect clarifies both profiles. Whatever internal fantasies drive this pair, they’ve adopted an external ritual as well. They may have practiced witchcraft for some time, building up to these murders. Did they carve a pentagram into someone else? Checking, I ran a scar search through the computer. Scored a hit as you walked in.”

  Craven took out his notebook and flipped to a clean page.

  “Four months ago a runaway was busted on Granville, trying to lure an undercover into the Buckley Hotel. Karen Lake. Fifteen. Booked for soliciting. The kid had scabies, so she was stripped, exposing three pentagrams carved into her back. Wouldn’t say how she got them, but didn’t do that herself.”

  “Released?”

  “Pending trial. Failed to show.”

  “Address?”

  “None fixed. Unless the Buckley Hotel.”

  “Worth a try,” Craven said. “I’ll check it out.”

  Chan unlocked the desk drawer and pulled out his gun, a snub-nosed .38 with a belt-hook. “It’s been twenty years since I hit the street. Too long in an office. I need some fresh air.”

  3:55 P.M.

  Sex shops, porn shops, strip shows, peep shows, bondage arcades: Granville Street near the bridge is one of the city’s slums.

  The Buckley Hotel was home to rats, cockroaches, and pimps, bloodworms who forced girls onto the streets to keep themselves in drugs. The sign out front was broken, its neon letters dead, while the alley in back was heaped with condoms, junk food, booze bottles, and hypodermic syringes. The lobby was patched and water stained, the far corner fanned with blood in a shotgun spray. Someone had either shot up or been shot in the only chair. While Ginger Lynn fucked two guys on the TV screen above, a hollow-eyed woman and greasy-haired man necked on the sofa. Muscle and throbbing gristle in a Jackyl T-shirt, ducktail backed by a redundant Vacancy sign, the clerk slouched in a grimy cage right of the street door. Literate, he was reading Locker Room Lovers when the cops walked in.

  “Twenty-five bucks a night,” he said. “Deposit five bucks for the key.”

  “Recognize her?” Craven said, holding Lake’s mug shot against the bars of the cage.

  The clerk shrugged, nonchalant, and returned to his book.

  “No ID, no signature, no address gets you a room. If you were somebody, would you stay here? I mind my own business and let them mind—”

  Screaming …

  Hammering …

  Cursing …

  Shrieking …

  Hell erupted above.

  Echoing down every pipe and chute from the upper floors.

  “Spring the door!” Chan ordered, unbuttoning his jacket to draw his .38.

  “Do it!” Craven shouted, pounding his Smith on the cage.

  Cringing from the wavering muzzle, the clerk hit the security lock that buzzed the inside door.

  Zzzzz. Open sesame. The cops sprinted across the lobby into the dingy stairwell.

  Craven the point man, Chan his backup, they clambered up the staircase as Ginger let out an orgasmic wail behind them.

  The screams above weren’t from sex.

  One, two, three flights up, each stairway got seedier. The red carpet nailed to the steps was soiled and torn, one hole tripping Nick and hobbling him to his knees. The first staircase stank from years of drunkards’ piss. A pair of cranked-up junkies lolled on the second landing. A mound of fresh excrement steamed on the third, in which someone had butted a half-smoked cigarette. One, two, three flights up, the shrieks got worse. Pound … scream … pound … scream … from the upper floor.

  The top-floor hall was lit by a naked forty-watt bulb. Outside each door a bucket labeled Diversol doubled as a trash can, the overflow of garbage spreading across the hall. As Craven ran toward the room at the far end, Chan close on his heels a yard behind, cockroaches and used outfits crunched beneath their shoes.

  The hammering and screaming rattled the last door.

  The door was locked.

  Of all the skills in a cop’s repertoire, taking a locked door is the most dangerous. Here the game is Russian roulette with too many cylinders loaded. Inside might be a wacko with a Sten gun aimed at the hall, or a cell of terrorists wiring a bomb. Equally pregnant with death is a ghetto domestic dispute, but worst of all’s a coven of hypes mainlining coke or crackheads on the pipe.

  The ruckus inside hinted that was the case here.

  Adrenaline pumped through Nick’s heart like the good old days of hog-racing trains. Back to the wall beside the door frame, .38 snub white-knu
ckled in both hands, Chan gave him the Do it! nod. Nick positioned himself across the hall. Catapulting away from graffiti-covered plaster, one leg raised as he propelled toward the door, Craven’s foot slammed the wood just above the knob. The door burst open in a spray of splinters, then whammed shut in his face. A burglar chain within had thwarted the assault.

  Nick was knocked across the hall like a tennis return. His mind shouted Hit the deck! as he hit the graffiti hard, bouncing back toward the chained door. Craven pistoned both legs to launch a shoulder hurl, combined momentum converting him into a human battering ram. This time the door gave, tearing from its hinges, as CRACKKKKK!, Nick crossed the threshold into the unknown.

  Chan followed, gun fanning as he dropped to one knee.

  The room was filled with smoke from a crackhead on the pipe. She sat on a mattress opposite the door, the chain around her neck bolted to a concrete block. The mattress was as lumpy as a sack of spuds covered with a crusted blanket peppered with burn holes. The pipe queen was naked to her skinny waist, black top torn down to hang in tatters about black knee-ripped tights. Her black hair was a rat’s nest of back-combed tangles, four thin Rastafarian braids dyed red to give it color. Her head slumped forward so the tangles masked her face, just one ear pierced with nine rings and the pipe curling smoke poking through. Nick hit the floor, tumbled once, and skidded facedown across the room. His hand touched the blanket, which should never touch human skin. The girl’s head snapped back, exposing her face. The pipe dropped from her mouth as Nick looked up. Black fingernails clawed his gun hand.

  Christ! Nick thought. And I think I’m tattooed!

  The crackhead’s face and torso were a living Tarot deck. Karen Lake’s face was so pale and gaunt it looked like the painting of Death on the wall behind: a giant skeleton sweeping a scythe to lay waste the land, the heads, hands, and feet of its victims scattered around. Unlucky XIII, the card’s number, loomed above her hair, which bobbed and writhed like Medusa’s snakes. The skin of Lake’s torso was etched with tattoos, 78 overlapping Tarot cards. The Wheel of Fortune, the Tower, and the Fool ringed one breast. The Hierophant, the Hermit, and the Juggler circled the other. Temperance, Strength, Justice, and Judgement arced her upper chest, while the Star, the Moon, the Sun, and the World dipped below. The rest of the Major Arcana spread down her belly, the cards of the Minor Arcana lining her arms and etched on her back. Three of the tattoos trickled blood.

  Nick yanked his gun hand back and scrambled to his feet. Hissing, the crack demon went for his eyes, unable to connect because of the restraining leash. The pounding to Nick’s right had stopped but not the shrill screams, unearthly gibbers behind the smudge rising from black candles lining the pentagram on the floor. Suddenly, a sledgehammer swung sideways through the haze, slamming Nick’s gun, knocking it back, and breaking two of his fingers.

  The Smith barked once as Craven yelped in pain. The wayward slug whizzed in Chan’s direction. Eric hugged the floor not a moment too soon, anticipating the wild shot before it came. Thunk! A fist gripping a spike plunged through the smoke, pinning the sleeve of the Inspector’s gun arm to the floor. Eric jerked his head up to face a crack demon of his own: a man/woman with another spike in his/her grasp.

  The sledgehammer blow spun Nick toward the left wall. Cracking his head, he dropped his gun as chunks of loosened plaster rained down on him. The Devil painted on the wall was coming apart. A horned demon with batwings and the hindquarters of a goat, the Devil sat on a half cube like the room’s concrete block, naked male and female half humans chained by the neck beneath his taloned feet. The Devil’s right hand was raised, fingers spread, to reveal the zodiac sign on his palm. The phallic torch in his left hand was downturned. An upside down pentagram was wedged between his horns.

  The dropped gun skittered across the floor toward the crackhead harpy.

  Chan’s attacker was also chained to the block, but his/her leash was longer than the harpy’s. Effeminate, the tranny’s face was painted like a whore’s: red cocksucker lips and smoky bedroom eyes. His/her naked body jitterbugged from crack, animating his/her Tarot tattoos. The blade of Death’s, scythe was etched on the tranny’s penis.

  The spike came down as Chan reached for the immobile gun with his free hand.

  Still shrouded by smoke, the screamer went hoarse.

  Beyond the tranny, another crack demon emerged.

  Six-foot-four and humped with muscles, no-neck bullet head as bald as Kojak, black leather jacket studded with swastikas, the biker raised the sledge in the air and went for Nick. Potential pancake material slumped against the wall, unarmed because the harpy held his fumbled gun, Craven threw a life-or-death punch at the biker’s balls.

  “Ooonnnphhh!” The skinhead dropped the sledge. He doubled over as it crashed to the floor. Scrunched with pain and anger, his scowl met Nick’s. Schwarzenegger arms slipped through the cop’s, crushing the breath out of him in a full bear hug. Craven was wrenched from the floor and held gasping in the air, his mouth gawping like a fish out of water. Over Kojak’s shoulder, the harpy waved his gun. Chan grunted as the tranny stabbed him with the spike.

  Across the room, the candle smudge swirled and parted. Now you see him, now you don’t, the screamer appeared. He was wild-eyed with electric hair: Charlie Manson on a bad day. Left foot nailed to the vertical stem, both hands spiked to the crosspiece below, he was crucified upside down to an inverted cross. Painted on the wall behind was the Hanged Man. Like his Tarot counterpart, the screamer’s right leg crossed his left and was nailed in place. The Tarot card was unlike any Nick had seen before: the figure’s upper foot a snake wound about an Egyptian Ankh. The crucified man bled profusely around the spikes. His penis was permanently erect from injecting it with cocaine. A swirl of smoke and he was swallowed up.

  The spike jabbed Chan’s free arm as he transferred the gun. The tranny yanked it out and went for his throat. The point was streaking toward his neck when Chan opened fire … one, two, three slugs into the tranny’s chest. He drilled the Magician, the Lovers, and the Charioteer. The spike stopped dead as the tranny crumpled until the leash jerked him back.

  The biker tightened his hold to crack Nick’s ribs. Hands open flat as cymbals and braced against the pain, Craven slapped both palms hard over Kojak’s ears. Pop, Pop, in unison the biker’s eardrums ruptured, synchronized compression deafening him. Squealing in agony, the skinhead released the cop, then one hand seized Nick’s face in a vise and slammed him against the wall.

  Kojak pulled him forward and slammed him back again.

  Nick’s skull powdered the plaster, disintegrating the Devil.

  Kojak pulled him forward and slammed him back again.

  Blood from Nick’s scalp smeared the wall.

  Another crack like that would smash his skull like an eggshell.

  Kojak pulled him forward and … Chan shot the biker in the back.

  The first slug lodged in muscle bulk. The second slug perforated a lung. The third slug entered the base of his skull and blew out through an eye. Eric’s .38 clicked empty as the biker dropped.

  “She’s got my gun,” Nick warned, pointing at the harpy.

  Chan looked down the muzzle of certain death.

  Karen Lake swung right and repeatedly pulled the trigger. She emptied the five remaining shots into the crucified man. His body bucked against the spikes as each bullet hit. She threw the gun when it was empty, breaking the dead man’s nose. Then she threw her head back and laughed like a lunatic.

  Nick took a deep breath and almost gagged on the stench.

  The smoke from the pentagram candles could have been tires burning.

  Human tallow, Nick thought, and glanced at Chan.

  Eric shook his head and lowered his gun.

  “Air fresh enough for you, sir?” Craven asked.

  THE EROTIC WITCH

  Bowen Island, British Columbia

  3:50 P.M.

  “Mom. Telephone.”

  Katt’s voice echo
ed down the hall of the ramshackle pioneer house clinging to the slope of the island south of Snug Cove. Beyond the multipaned windows beside Luna’s desk, veiled by the torrent of dismal rain that lashed the rugged coast, boats plowed Queen Charlotte Channel between here and Lighthouse Park. The room looked east across English Bay toward Stanley Park and the city, with West Vancouver to the left and Point Grey to the right. A twenty-minute ferry ride put you on the Mainland.

  “Mom. It’s long distance.”

  Luna’s desk was inlaid with a black pentagram. Books and papers cluttered the surface around a half-written novel. The novel was from the point of view of a burning Salem witch, warning her modern sisters through a communal dream. This was poetic license, since Salem witches were hanged. The books and papers provided imagery: alchemy, palmistry, and reincarnation; Sybil Leek, Shirley MacLaine, yoga, and astral projection; spiritualism, voodoo, astrology, and the Tarot; ghosts, omens, talismans, and ritual Magick; channeling, crystal gazing, charms, and ESP; phrenology, cartomancy, numerology, and Runes; telepathy, levitation, and teacup leaves; alomancy, precognition, and New Age mystic fads. As she wrote, skirt hiked up, Luna played with herself.

  “Mom. Are you coming?”

  Almost, Katt.

  Luna Darke, the “Erotic Witch” to her fans, was a compulsive mother and an oversexed vamp. She was a woman men fucked on the sly but would never marry, afraid she’d boff their best friend as soon as their back was turned. As with most hypersexual people, the cause was child abuse: raped by her father before she was five. Her mother knew, but cast a blind eye.

  Darke—not her real name—was pregnant by thirteen. Over the next four years she had three lads. Her boyfriend was a vindictive man who caught her screwing around, the punishment being he disappeared with their family. Luna— not her real name either—hadn’t seen them since. That same year, an ectopic pregnancy required an operation that left her barren. The teenager suffered a nervous breakdown and had to be confined.