Headhunter

by Michael Slade

  The girl ran to the dusty surface spread with polished, gleaming blades. Then with a butcher knife in one hand and a skinning knife in the other, she turned to face the door.

  Suzannah grinned. "Crystal, you are precious!What a scene," she said.

  "I want out of here," the girl hissed through tightly clenched teeth.

  "Good. Then it works," the woman replied, never moving an inch. "For that is precisely the thought, my dear, that this theater is designed to induce."

  "Yeah! What's this place for? You just tell me that!"

  "Crystal, Crystal, Crystal," Suzannah said, shaking her head. "This is where I work."

  "Work!"

  "Yes,work,silly. What do you think it's for?"

  "What sort of work would ever need a place like this?"

  "The sort of work, sweetheart, that pays a hundred grand in two weeks. The work of relieving guilt."

  "Go to hell!" Crystal screamed. "Let me outa here!"

  "So what's stopping you? You're the one with the knives."

  The girl blinked. For a split second she glanced down at her own hands and the two razor sharp instruments that they held. Then, fearing a trick, she flicked her eyes back to the door. Suzannah had not moved.

  "What you see around you, dear—what you seem to be so afraid of—is really nothing more than a million-dollar fantasy— the essence of masochism. These are just a few of the props."

  Crystal shook her drugged head. "But why would anyone want this?" She gestured at the walls.

  "Ah, now that's the question . . . and it shows you don't know men."

  "Tell me," Crystal said. And she put down the knives.

  The Graveyard

  Vancouver, British Columbia, 1982

  Sunday, October 31st, 5:30 a.m.

  Twelve years, and he could still get into the uniform. The fact made him feel good.

  It was usual for the Superintendent to be at work before dawn, and most mornings he would climb quietly out of bed so as not to disturb his wife, make his way into the kitchen to drip a pot of coffee, then carry a steaming cup of it, strong and black, out into the greenhouse where he would sit among his plants. For it was here at this early hour, alone with his thoughts and away from the sensory input that would come with the light of day, that Robert DeClercq would run the gauntlet which stretched back into his past. With each new day the same ghosts were lined up and waiting for him, all of them with knives. And each morning he would subdue them in that hour before dawn.

  Most mornings DeClercq would then pour himself another coffee, dress for the weather and go out through the back door of the greenhouse and down to the edge of the sea. There he would sit very still in the old driftwood chair on a knoll above the ocean, the sundial at his left, and think about the day's work while he awaited dawn. Only when the eastern horizon was ablaze with shafts of glory would he return to the greenhouse, to the wicker chair, and place the clipboard on his knee.

  That, of course, was most mornings. Today was different.

  DeClercq put the kettle on and ground the coffee as usual, then he went to the closet in the spare bedroom and took his

  uniform down from the rack. For eleven years it had hung there, unused and untouched. Finding a soft-bristled brush, he sat down on the bed and with short brisk strokes removed the lint of a decade from the dark blue serge. He pressed his trousers and shined his shoes. Then sitting in the greenhouse with his first cup of coffee, Superintendent Robert DeClercq polished each brass uniform button until it gleamed in the light from the desk lamp. Only then did he return to the spare bedroom and put the blue serge on.

  The man who stared back at him from the closet mirror was a man who had not been seen since the Quebec October Crisis of 1970.

  Twenty minutes later when DeClercq closed the front door and stepped out into the dark, the chill of autumn was in the air and maple leaves scraped the ground. For a fleeting moment his mind was touched by a sense of deja vu, a pale glimpse of that other autumn many years ago, of dead leaves in a moaning wind moving through the graveyard—but he shook it off sharply and began to climb the driveway. He had parked the cars up near the road after the freak snowstorm. He warmed up the engine of his Citroen, then drove off down Marine Drive and toward the center of town.

  Dawn was yet an hour and a half away.

  6:35 a.m.

  They had set up Headhunter Headquarters in the old Command Building of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Located at the corner of 33rd Avenue and Heather Street, this was a structure of massive stone blocks and acute-angled timbers that very much resembled an Elizabethan mansion. The Maple Leaf was flying on the flagpole outside. Once the Vancouver Headquarters of the Force, the building had more recently found use as an officers' mess and a police training academy. Even more recently it had been gutted, and was now in the process of reconstruction. Gutted or not, however, it still looked from the outside like a Headquarters should. That's more than could be said for the real Headquarters building up on 73rd. It looked like a transistor.

  It was now just after 6:30 a.m. and a light rain overnight had washed the mist from the air and left the lights of the city sparkling like diamonds on black velvet.

  As DeClercq walked toward the doorway at the front of the Headquarters building the air felt crisp and clean within his lungs and the freshness of the morning seemed to add a clearness to his sense of purpose. It had been a long time since he was last a cop. It feels good to be back,he thought.

  The first day of his resurrection—October 29th, the morning of Chartrand's call—DeClercq had met Sergeant Jack MacDougall of North Vancouver Detachment and Corporal James Rodale of Richmond Detachment to form the second Headhunter Squad. Earlier that morning while the Sergeant was overseeing the investigation out at the totem poles in front of the Museum of Man, Rodale had done a computer projection of the manpower available to the Force. A printout on the background and service record of each member in "E" Division was ready by noon that day.

  That same afternoon, DeClercq, MacDougall and Rodale had put together the Squad. Then the duty calls had gone out.

  The second day of his comeback DeClercq had spent shut up in his new office working over the files. He had read, digested, culled, and reconstructed each report on each crime at least seven times. The room now showed his work.

  The office was at the end of a corridor that met the top of the stairs. A spacious room, thirty feet square, with a bank of windows along one side that looked out at St. Vincent's Hospital across 33rd, it had once been an officer's billiard room and an adjunct to the mess. But whatever purpose it had once served, it had now been modified to DeClercq's specific instructions. For on the first day of his resurrection— while he had been putting together his squad—a team of workmen had stripped the place and then reconstructed the three windowiess walls with floor to ceiling corkboard. And it was the Headhunter's work that now adorned the corkboard walls.

  For furniture the office contained three Victorian library tables arranged in a horseshoe surrounding a single chair. The chair—which had once been at the center of the commanding officer's quarters generations ago and only just discovered in the basement—was highbacked with a barley-sugar frame and the crest of the RCMP carved in wood to crown its user's head. The chair faced six seats in front of the desk.

  It was now 6:46 a.m. on the third day of the return of Robert DeClercq—and it was time to take off his jacket and sit in the chair and analyze yesterday's work. It was time to ride out on the hunt for the ghoul who was standing in the graveyard.

  DeClercq sat down and rolled up his sleeves.

  At the center of the wall across from his chair a large map of the Lower Mainland of British Columbia was pinned to the corkboard.

  Next to it was a section of wall visually depicting the North Vancouver murder. In the center the Superintendent had pinned the unidentified Polaroid photograph sent to Skip O'Rourke at the Vancouver Sun. The Polaroid had itself been photographed and blown up, but though this
enlargement was also on the wall it was too grainy in texture to add very much. The photo was of a young woman's head—she was probably in her teens. Her eyes were rolled back into her skull with just the barest trace of pupil moon peeking out beneath the eyelids. Her hair was black and tangled and matted with blood, her mouth open slackly as if stopped in a scream. Shreds of skin at the base of her neck dripped gore and curled toward the pole like several thin snakes.

  What struck DeClercq was the fact that except for the head and the top of the pole on which it had been stuck, the photograph revealed nothing. No ground. No backdrop. Just a white surface as though the snap had been shot facing a linen sheet set up to highlight the head and the pole. A specially constructed pose,was the thought that entered his mind.

  To the right of the Polaroid of the victim's head, DeClercq had attached two helicopter shots of the area around the bone site. They both revealed the North Shore hillside from about two hundred feet. With a sharp eye it was possible to make out the tattered tent half hidden by the bushes.

  To the left of the Polaroid photograph, beside the police blowup, DeClercq had yesterday tacked up four Ident. Section pictures taken on MacDougall's orders. Two of the photos were shots of the shallow creekbed grave. Though the bones could clearly be seen, the amount of dirt dug away from them by the two girls' father—plus the statements later taken from the three of them—indicated that before the disturbance the remains had been hidden from sight. The creekbed was clogged with autumn leaves and broken branches, several of which appeared to have been cut and placed over the grave. One of the other two Ident. shots was of the cut ends of several of these branches. On later examination, the police lab had found striation marks identical to those discovered by Dr. Singh on the neck bones of the river floater and of the skeleton in question. The fourth photograph was a blowup of the marks on the upper neck of the unidentified corpse where the head had been cut from the body.

  Put together, DeClercq thought, these pictures raise a number of questions. They offer very few answers.

  He removed a sheet of paper from the drawer of the library table that formed the bottom of the horseshoe and began to write:

  1. Was the woman killed at the location of the tent? Or was she carried there after her death by the Headhunter? If the latter, then a strong person indeed! It's very rugged terrain.

  2. If deposited there after death, was the corpse carried down from the road up above? Or up from a boat on the sea? Or along the shore? It was probably done at dusk or in the early morning—dark enough for cover, but light enough to see.

  3. Was the body meant to be found? Cut branches indicate that it was purposely hidden. Was the stream running at the time that it was left? Was it buried mainly by the act of nature?

  Looking over the questions, DeClercq's gut reaction was that the woman was killed at the tent site, that she was probably camping there, and that the killer had then cut off her head and buried the body and in a frenzy ripped the tent to pieces. His reasoning was that up in the North Shore mountains there are a thousand sites more deserted than this one where a body would never be found. Here the risk of being seen was just too great. But the corpse was left at this location—so that indicated that either the Headhunter had stumbled upon her in the wood, or they had met at some other location and returned to the murder scene. If the Headhunter was camping here, one of the people in the houses nearby might have seen him coming and going. And that could lead to a description. No, the chances were the victim was the one who pitched the tent. But even that was conjecture. It might have been there before.

  What concerned him most and tugged at his mind was not, however, the answer to these questions. It was the question that arose from these questions in the light of subsequent facts. For if this corpse was meant to be hidden, why had the Headhunter changed his style?

  Look at the case of Joanna Portman.

  Tacked to the corkboard wall in the section for the North Vancouver crime there were many other sheets of paper: lab and autopsy reports, police memos, witness statements, interforce inquiries—but these added little to his knowledge. From the angle of the cuts on the branch ends (plus the blade shape left in the flesh of Grabowski and Portman) the lab had determined that the weapon was probably a large bowie knife. That was more an American instrument than one found in Canada. The autopsy report revealed that there were cuts on several of the rib bones indicating that the North Van corpse might also have suffered a slash through the breasts. The time of death was estimated at between three and five months ago, but probably closer to three, since the last days of August had been very hot and decomposition would have advanced rapidly. A soil search of the entire gravesite was negative; a diver search of the shore waters by the RCMP frogman team had turned up nothing; an infrared helicopter scan of the area recorded no temperature differences that might indicate other rotting human remains. A check of the Harbor Patrol had proved fruitless and not one of the neighbors living on top of the hill had noticed anything suspicious. In fact only one had known that the tent was there.

  The only positive fact in the investigation so far was that the tent had been traced to an outdoors shop in Luzern, Switzerland. It had been purchased eight months ago.

  DeClercq rose from his chair and crossed over to the wall. For the next twenty minutes he again reviewed the entire North Vancouver case as reconstructed and focused on the corkboard. At the end of that period he had confirmed that on this part of the investigation there were only two constructive things to do: wait for the European Missing Persons reports requested through Interpol.

  And have Joseph Avacomovitch go to work on the bones.

  It was 7:23 a.m. when the Superintendent turned his attention to the Helen Grabowski case. Though technically the corpse had been found within the jurisdiction of University Detachment, because that outpost was so small the investigation had been usurped by Rodale out of Richmond. DeClercq was pleased to see that the Corporal had done a thorough job.

  Again, however, there were questions—and not very many answers.

  As with the case of the North Van bones, this display centered around the Polaroid print sent to Skip O'Rourke. Once more there had been a blowup by the lab—same grainy quality—and this along with the subscription form from Buns and Boobs Bonanza was pinned up to the left. MacDougall had determined that the form came from the July 1982 issue of the publication which was available at any corner store. DeClercq's eyes moved back and forth from the clipping to the Polaroid.

  The picture was of another head with the eyes rolled back in the skull. Helen Grabowski had black hair, a narrow face, and her mouth hung slackly open. Even in the photograph she looked like a junkie, the ravages of the drug having pinched and lined her skin. Blood ran from both comers of her lips. And again the picture was confined to the head and the top of a pole, no ground, no backdrop except for the same white surface.

  Another pose, DeClercq thought.

  It also occurred to him, judging from the lack of decomposition and freshness of the blood, that both photos had been taken immediately after the killings. The bodies had probably then been dumped very shortly after. Obviously the pictures were saved for the killer's titillation and his subsequent taunt. But what had then happened to the heads?

  Immediately to the right of the Polaroid was tacked an aerial shot of the wharf where Heller and Simpson had found the floater, and next to that a close-up of the bloated nude remains stretched out on the dock. The slash through her chest had halved her breasts, each withered wrinkled quadrant pointing in a different compass direction. Bare ribs could be seen. Two other photographs were off to the right of these. One of them showed the striation marks on the vertebra that Dr. Singh had removed. The other the woman's fingertips. DeClercq could see that Dr. Singh had injected glycerin beneath the fingertip skin to smooth out the washerwoman's wrinkles before printing the remains. Singh was obviously a very cautious man. He knew that without the head a dental identification was gone forever. And
that left just her prints. In the photo—which was a blowup—the fingers of the corpse were positioned below the individual print of each one on a fingerprint sheet. Thus, though the flesh would have long since rotted before any case got to court, Singh's opinion on identification could withstand any cross-examination. Look for yourself, counselor!

  Beside that photograph was Rodale's earlier fingerprint sheet. And tacked next to that the reports from New Orleans.

  The Superintendent picked up his pen and turned to his Question sheet. He began to write:

  1. Where was Grabowski killed? No water in the lungs so it wasn't in the river. Was it on a boat, the best of murder scenes? Is that a connection between the two remains? The North Van woman killed at sea and then taken ashore? If so why not just use a sea dump like Grabowski?

  2. Does bruising to vagina mean sex attack? Is vertical stab to the throat made during intercourse? Sexual stimulation connected to female death throes? Slash to the breasts significant as mother mutilation?

  3. Was Grabowski picked up hooking by a sadistic client? Perhaps the North Van girl too? Perhaps, but then Portman doesn't fit. Drugs?

  4. What about John Lincoln Hardy aka "The Weasel"?

  5. Connection with New Orleans?

  DeClercq once more got up from his chair, crossed over to the wall, and scanned the papers and reports pinned there.

  Helen Grabowski, also known as Patricia Ann Palitti, was an American heroin-addicted prostitute from New Orleans. Dr. Singh, in his report, estimated that her body had been in the Fraser River approximately a week. Just over a week before the body was found she had been arrested on a charge of junk possession while hooking near the Moonlight Arms. She had been released in the early morning and no one had seen her again. Rodale had done a blanket sweep through skid row questioning the street people and greasing the palms of the stoolies but all to no avail. As near as anyone could tell, Grabowski had been in Vancouver no more than three or four days. She had been identified from her mug shot by several working girls—and one or two had also tentatively fingered John Lincoln Hardy as being around from a rather poor stakeout photo wired up from New Orleans.