Ripper

by Michael Slade

  “You want my opinion, I don’t think he cares. Some nut walks into a restaurant and mows the diners down, then turns the barrel on himself, think he gives a shit about being caught? My gut says that’s the motive here.”

  Zinc shook his head. “Too calculated. The motive’s more than ‘I’m checking out and taking you guys with me.’ There’s warped reason at work.”

  “If he’s just getting started, what next?” Melburn asked.

  “We outthink him,” Zinc said, climbing to his feet.

  Barney Melburn looked like a blond Mephistopheles, the sneerer at all values and the devil who tempted Faust. Head triangular with a broad unruly thatch of hair, his long thin chin was hirsute with a wispy Vandyke. According to Elvira’s thumbnail sketch in the cab, Melburn wrote cross-genre novels he called horror-whodunits. One foot in detective fiction, the other awash in blood, his sleight-of-hand stories straddled both fields. Horror aficionados complained because they had to think, while mystery lovers tut-tutted at the level of gore. But there were enough brave brains in-between for his books to sell.

  These traps were so diabolical, they fit a horror writer. You had to be a little bent to think up plots like his, and Zinc suspected Melburn had suffered a trauma in a meat market as a kid. Poe and Lovecraft were certainly strange, but King and Barker—from what he’d seen—seemed okay, and if Melburn wanted to kill him (as the crossbow suggested), he’d blown a second chance with the quicksand rescue. Tested through trial by ordeal, Zinc acquitted him. So that left Devlin and Bolt, assuming the killer was male.

  No more whirling dervishes twirled by the time they scaled the cliff. That was just the warm-up act, an intra divertissement. Now the Bolshoi Ballet of all snowstorms was underway, muscular white Nureyevs and Baryshnikovs spinning about in the air, doing brisés and pas de chats across the flat of the bluff. A few more minutes of this and the tracks in the snow would be gone.

  Zinc paused at the top.

  Two roads diverged in a wood, wrote Robert Frost, and here the problem of “The Road Not Taken” faced Zinc. The path to the left led back to the house by the trodden route, humping over the crest where Quirk had rolled to his fate. Take it, the angel on one shoulder whispered.

  The path to the right cut through the precipice woods. A set of footprints running this way marked the killer’s attack.

  The tracks disappeared around a bend partway in. Zinc wondered if they circled back to the climb from the cove to the house they’d taken yesterday. If so, the prints might originate at Castle Crag. One way to find out, urged the devil on his other shoulder.

  “Uh-uh,” said Melburn. “That’s how we lost Holyoak.”

  “What if the tracks lead back to an exit only one person could use? We miss unmasking the killer while he or she keeps stalking us.”

  “Y’ never see Tarzan when you were a kid? Tripwire with a shotgun? Bent-over tree with a leg-noose on the path? Remember Jungle Jim?”

  “We can’t be deer frozen in the headlights.”

  “Better than deer tied over the fenders of a car.”

  “I go right, you go left, and we check the ground with sticks. Hold hands and we can yank the other guy free from any traps.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Then I’ll go alone.”

  “Shit,” Melburn grumbled. “Cowards die often, and look where Holyoak is. Forming a fossil they’ll find in a million years.”

  “Well?”

  “You go left. Right’s my lucky side.”

  Snowflakes fluttered, flipped, and floated about them Each man found a stick the size of Little John’s staff, then gingerly—Hawkeye and Chingachgook—the pair advance

  Poke …

  Scrunch …

  Poke …

  Scrunch …

  Step-by-step and side by side, cautiously following the oncoming tracks …

  Poke …

  Scrunch …

  Poke …

  Scrunch …

  Hand in hand like lovers enjoying the monochromatic hush …

  Poke …

  Scrunch …

  Thunk …

  Yawn …

  Suddenly a pit opened beneath Zinc’s foot, the end of his stick having struck its square snow-covered lid, pivoting it like the tip-top of a litter bin. Too late to step back, momentum plunged his leg toward the hole, a gaping well sunk five feet down to a bed of stakes, metal tubes cut at an angle to fashion vertical points. The stench wafting out of the pit told him the spikes were smeared with shit. Vietcong punji stakes hidden on Deadman’s Island.

  His forward foot—his right foot—plummeted into the hole.

  Yanked off balance, his hand wrenched free from Melburn’s grasp.

  His body twisted as he fell, swinging the stick in his left hand up to whap his groin.

  The hole was six feet square, the stick five feet long.

  The ball-bashing end of the pole caught the edge of the pit near Melburn’s boot.

  The end above Zinc’s fist hit the upright half of the pivoting lid, rotating it away from him like a Ferris wheel, until the lower half struck his plunging thigh.

  The stick slipped off the lid and caught against the left edge of the flip-flop fulcrum, wedging the pole diagonally across the gap. The pivot bisected the hole into three-by-six halves.

  Zinc’s left leg hooked over the stick.

  The spur on his right boot clinked against one of the stakes.

  Melburn reacted like a hockey team goalie, dropping to the ground, leg outstretched, to brace his end of the pole.

  Stomach in knots and seeing stars, Chandler gripped the pole for dear life.

  “How much you got in your bank account?” Melburn asked.

  MISANDRY/MISOGYNY

  Vancouver

  9:23 A.M.

  It wasn’t a snowfall. It was a snow hurl. The cops walked out of Havelock Ellis School for Boys into freak weather. The cyclone wind and flying rain grounding all planes and docking all boats had tightened their strangle hold, adding sleet, then snow as reinforcements. Keeping the car on the road with just eight fingers and two thumbs was a herculean task, so Craven with his splinted hand relinquished the wheel to DeClercq. Chaos ruled the streets.

  Communications relayed a message as they neared Special X: Chan was at the Thai restaurant where Marsh ate her last meal. Detouring down Cambie Street past City Hall, they crossed False Creek near the Expo lands to enter the downtown core, parking by the Law Courts on Homby where Justice Maxwell’s throat was slit during the Cutthroat case. Leaning into a wind so harsh every step threatened to become a slapstick pratfall, they made for the restaurant kitty-corner to the Registry. Chan met them at the door.

  Even at this early hour the King of Siam was jumping. Waiters in purple collarless shirts and waitresses in pink sarongs flicked table cloths to set a matrimonial banquet, King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit watching from wall portraits. A statue of Nang Khwak near the door promised to sweep in good fortune and money, while a tank full of prawns—dull red in blue—eyed the cops suspiciously, afraid they were here to order Goong Tod or Goong-Bai-Grapau. Through peppery smells from the kitchen so hot they could set off fire alarms, the manager led them to his office behind a cook carving carrots into flower blossoms.

  “Food?” he offered hospitably. “Here’s your chance to taste a wedding feast.”

  “Thanks,” DeClercq said. “But just a taste.”

  An ebullient man of mixed blood who emphasized words with his hands, the manager spoke Thai with the carrot cook, then shut the door. He apologized profusely for not seeing the fan-out on Marsh until today, but he’d been in Seattle launching another King of Siam. “I returned last night to prepare for the wedding at noon. When I opened the flyer this morning, I recognized her at once.” He rolled his brown eyes toward the ceiling. “What a row.”

  Handing Chan the merchant’s copy from an American Express form signed “Brigid Marsh” for $69.25, he said, “I dug this out to confirm it was her. Las
t Sunday evening, she and two men dined in one of our private booths.”

  “At what time?” DeClercq asked.

  “A 6:30 seating.”

  “Who made the reservation?”

  “The name in the book is Reg Skull. At 7:15, one of the staff came to my office to say we had a problem. It was a busy night and the house was full. Extra chairs at several tables narrowed the serving aisles. A man and a woman were shouting in one of the booths. Every patron in the house could hear the argument. Such language!” the manager said, rolling his eyes once more.

  “What did they say?” Craven asked.

  “The exact words?”

  “If you recall them.”

  “How could I forget? He shouted ‘You cored me, cunt. You and that dyke.’ She yelled ‘Lower your voice and stand on your own two feet.’ He repeated the word ‘Cunt!’ ten or more times. She replied ‘You embarrassed me then and you embarrass me now.’ I poked my head into the booth and asked if we had a problem? Her response was ‘This man’s had too much to drink.’ He cried ‘I’ve had one Singha. And I’m not this man. I’m your son.’ To which she replied ‘No you’re not. We dumped you years ago.’ ”

  We? DeClercq thought. Marsh and Kripp? The Dianic Lovers?

  “That’s when he tried to storm out,” the manager said.

  “The other man in the booth? Did he take part?” asked Chan.

  “Not a word. He smiled as if pleased by the fight between mother and son.”

  “Tried to storm out?” DeClercq said. “Who or what stopped him?”

  “The extra chairs in the serving aisles. They were added after he arrived, narrowing the space he had to maneuver his wheelchair. The staff had to clear a path before he could depart.”

  “The woman left alone?”

  “No, with the other man. He asked if there was a rear exit as she paid the bill. No doubt they were too embarrassed to walk through the restaurant. They left by the kitchen door.”

  “Where does it lead?”

  “To the back alley.”

  Where Marsh was chloroformed less than a block from her hotel, thought DeClercq.

  Craven showed the manager the photograph on loan from the Headmaster’s office: Havelock Ellis School for Boys’ ‘83 grad class. “Is the man in the wheelchair here?”

  Donning glasses to study the faces, he scanned the lineup. “That’s him,” he said, pointing to Coy who stood in the front row.

  There was no wheelchair in the photograph.

  “The man who left with Marsh? Can you describe him?”

  “Easy,” said the manager, sliding his finger to the student smirking next to Samson Coy in the Havelock Ellis class. “That’s him.”

  A TERRIBLY STRANGE BED

  Deadman’s Island 9:24 A.M.

  Shrieks of phobic terror met them at the door. Not shrieks of pain, shrieks of fear, but shrieks of all-out over-the-top oh-my-God dread. Shrieks to curdle the blood and raise hackles on the neck.

  From punji-stake pit to Castle Crag, Chandler and Melburn kept to the trodden path. No more Holmes and Watson tracking tantalizing clues. No more wandering afield in search of grisly death. Zinc couldn’t shake the mind’s eye horror of shit-smeared spikes rammed through his chest, nor grudging respect for the devious way the trap was set. On the underside of the flip-flop lid hiding the bed of spikes was a pressure catch that hooked the edge of the well. When the killer ran down the path to attack Quirk, the lid was shut and latched to provide support for his foot. A layer of leaves and the blanket of snow masked the deadfall pit. The killer stepping on the lid released the pressure catch when he stepped off, leaving the cover free to rotate the next time it was pressed, plunging that person to the bed of stakes.

  “Clever how the killer adapts his traps,” Melburn said. “Stereo cabinets and TV stands use a similar catch. Push once and the door springs loose, held in place by a magnet that gives easily. His magnet was the carpet of leaves.”

  “Lucky devil,” Chandler said, opening the front door to Castle Crag. “The snow allowed him to leave tracks to lure us over—”

  The shrieks!

  Pandemonium was rife in the Receiving Hall. Hunt and Katt topped the dogleg stairs, then branched left into the upper South Wing. Yates and Franklen hobbled up behind, slowed by arthritis and the drag of age. As Chandler and Melburn joined the climb, Devlin dashed barefoot into the Hall, loins wrapped in a towel and body wafting steam, trailing puddles from the Turkish bath.

  “Mom!” Katt’s cry echoed down the corridor. The phobic hysteria came from their room. “Leave her alone!” the teenager yelled, banging on the door. Then Lou Bolt screamed louder than Darke.

  Hunt tried the knob. The door was wedged shut. She peeked through the keyhole. And saw the back of a chair.

  “Melburn, Devlin, on the count of three,” Chandler ordered. The men fell in beside him like Horatius at the bridge.

  Katt and Alex got out of the way before “One, two, three …” shoulders hit the door. “Again,” Zinc urged. “One, two, three …” The men crashed into the room as the ruptured jamb and broken chair showered them with splinters.

  “Back!” Melburn shouted, eyes bugging out of his head, while the force of the hard entry propelled them toward the bed.

  Unlike the Wilkie Collins story, no ratchet canopy smothered Darke and Bolt. Instead, nylon mesh the gauge of a butterfly net encased the pillared bed, hoisted mechanically up the bedposts like a windjammer setting sail. Yesterday Zinc had checked the canopy for overhead traps, but not the lower part of the bed beneath the wraparound skirt. Even if he’d found what looked like mosquito netting, run up the posts it posed no threat. Something else wrenched the shrieks from the netted humpers.

  On hands and knees, her limbs splayed to form a pentagram, Luna Darke had her rump in the air when the ceiling panel above the bed dropped silently. Like the pit pendulum in Poe’s Inquisition tale, a crescent blade swung down from the hole to sssslllit the canopy. Hairy, horny, hungover Bolt was in his favorite position, beating his chest like a mountain gorilla hunched over Luna’s ass, pounding those patented strokes as if to the thud of jungle drums, when the nest of snakes caged in the soundproof roof dropped through the hole, slipped through the slit, and rained down on the lovers. “What the fuck ..,!” the startled fuckers gasped in alarm.

  That’s when the shrieking began.

  If you want to do someone in with snakes, select baby ones. Adult snakes conserve venom by giving “dry bites,” but young’uns of every species are barbarians, so baby snakes frightened by humans will empty their poison glands. “Snappier” is what herpetologists call “wet bites.” The snakes slithering on this bed were two to three feet long, though some of them would mature to nine feet or more. Hissssssing, all vibrated their tails, even those without rattles.

  The fer-de-lance, browny black with a pale diamond pattern, delivers ninety percent of tropical American bites. A pit viper that strikes like a heat-seeking missile, loreal pits between its nostrils and its eyes home in on the hottest flesh around, which on this bed was Lou Bolt’s big hairy balls. The snake caught him on the backstroke and gave him both fangs. The venom of the fer-de-lance is a blood toxin, so Bolt’s balls blew up as big as balloons in a matter of seconds. The swelling made him bellow through suddenly bleeding gums.

  The snake that went for Luna Darke was an Egyptian spitting cobra. Tawny brown to olive colored, it hooded up in front of her face and spit venom in her eyes with amazing accuracy. Nerve toxin attacks the nervous system instantly, leading to respiratory failure, heart attacks, and seizures. Between shrieks she gasped for breath.

  The snakes were in a frenzy when the door burst open. Coral snakes with black and red bands separated by narrow white and yellow ones … vicious nocturnal bushmasters with spines along their tails … eastern diamondback rattlers, America’s deadliest snakes, gray, white, and black patterned, easy to miss, the older they are the more rattles they have, one for each skin shed … gaboon vipers from Africa
with horns above their nostrils, fat, toxic, and camouflaged brown and cream like combat fatigues … taipans from Australia and New Guinea, dark on top, light below, which hunt during the day … green mambas out of West Africa, very fast on the kill, with long narrow heads and dark green tipped by light green scales… death adders, puff adders, and water moccasins … lancehead vipers and cottonmouths … copperheads and boomslangs … you’d be shrieking, too, if you were netted on this bed.

  As the venom took hold, causing convulsions, the pair jackhammer humped …

  Then one, two, three vipers slid around the net, hitting the floor like World War II Marines on a beach, wriggling and squiggling toward the open door.

  Lou died in the saddle.

  Luna died bucking him off.

  And the would-be rescuers slammed the door, stuffing Devlin’s towel under it to keep the snakes inside.

  A woman who fucks in a horror movie always ends up dead. Horror’s consistent subtext is Don’t mess around, you tramps. If Bolt were alive on this side of the door, not dead behind, he’d be horrified that fate had befallen a man. So ends his harassment of Alex, thought Zinc. Leaving Devlin the only suspect still in the frame.

  Go for him.

  Hunt, Franklen, and Yates comforted Katt in Zinc’s room. Through the half-open door she sobbed, “Mom … Mom … Mom.” Listening to her, anger twisted inside Zinc like a snake, tightening his muscles and poisoning his blood. Behind the square indent in his brow, the rhythmic hammering of a migraine began.

  Tick …

  Tock …

  Tick …

  Tock …

  Time was running out.

  How long until the inevitable seizure gripped him?

  Tick …

  Tock …

  Tick …

  Tock …

  The Dilantin level in his blood thinned, draining with every heartbeat until the levee holding back his epilepsy broke, at which time he’d be of no use to them or himself.

  Push it away, he thought.