Headhunter

by Michael Slade

  "You know. Rusty, I was so sure that the Headhunter was Pitt." With a sigh of released frustration, Macdonald put her drink down on the small kitchen table.

  "If it's any consolation, so was I," the man said. "Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. We'll be a winner next time."

  "Yeah, sure," the woman said. Then she knocked back a stiff swallow of rye which burnt her throat going down. "Would you believe that I once made a choice between going to Art School and joining up with the Force. I had plans to open my own interior design studio. It was going to be called The Finishing Touch. What do you think of that?"

  "Sounds sexy," Lewis said.

  The woman laughed. "That's nothing," Macdonald said. "My original idea was to call it Monica's Interiors."

  At that Rusty smiled. "My ultimate reason for joining the Force was to be in the musical ride. I still plan to get there. Besides, we put forth a good try and I think you're a good cop."

  "May I ask you a question?" "Fire away," he said.

  "Instead of as a cop, what do you think of me as a woman?"

  Rusty Lewis blinked. "You're just like one of the guys," he said, then added, "I'm only kidding." "How would you like to find out?" The man blinked again.

  "Are you hungry?" Monica asked. "I'm offering to buy you dinner. Ply you with a little wine—not too much—and let you think it over. We'll go somewhere ritzy." "I'm hungry," Lewis said.

  "Good, let's go," the woman said, rising from the table. "But understand one thing, my man. I'm going to spend some money on you, so you'd better come across later."

  And then she gave him a wink and added: "Ever since I've been dating, that's been a rule of the game."

  7:05 p.m.

  "Okay, let's make a decision," Bill Tipple said. "Should we call in Special O?"

  "My vote's no," Rick Scarlett said. "Me too," Spann agreed. "Why?" the Corporal asked.

  "In a nutshell," Scarlett said, "because I want to be promoted. I think we're on to something big, 'cause I think Hardy's the Headhunter. Whoever makes the collar, his career is laughing."

  "Or her career," Spann added.

  "Look, Bill," Scarletfsaid. "You know as well as I do that this Force has got too many chiefs and not enough Indians. Quite frankly, I have no wish to remain a Constable for the next ten years. I want up the ranks. This case is the best crack I've had at making a quantum leap. I'm sure Rackstraw is going to lead us to Hardy. Why should Special O get the credit for our investigation? I say let's do the round-the-clock ourselves."

  "Here, here," Tipple said laughing. "My sentiments exactly. Just testing you out. A future Sergeant should do that, before an issue's settled."

  "Yes,sir," Spann said—and then all three of them laughed.

  They were sitting in a windowless black van parked on the street half a block away from Rackstraw's recording studio. Although the telephone bugs from the building were channeled into West 73rd Headquarters, the listening devices in the walls had been channeled into this van. In the rear of the truck behind them, several Uher machines stood idle and waiting. As they sipped their lukewarm coffee out of styrofoam cups, one of the tape recorders cut in by voice activation and its reels began to revolve.

  They all three picked up headphones and listened to what was being said.

  7:31 p.m.

  Tonight Genevieve had a faculty dinner, so Robert DeClercq arrived home to an empty, lonely house. The first thing he did was pour himself a straight, stiff drink of Scotch. It was the first hard liquor that he had had for eight and a half years. It seared his throat going down, but it calmed him and that's what he wanted. He took the drink through the greenhouse and walked down to the sea.

  Tonight storm clouds were blowing in quickly, surging and exploding like nuclear bombs across the Straits of Georgia. He sat down in the driftwood chair and took another belt of Black Label.

  You're all washed up,he thought.

  For a while he slouched there wondering how Genevieve would enjoy living with a failure. A man who had no future and who was twenty years older than she was. It hurt him to think of all the effort that she had put into trying to patch this Humpty Dumpty together again, only to find it worthless. And then he thought of Jane.

  Oh why did you have to die, Janie?he asked. Then took another drink.

  It was more than an hour before DeClercq climbed back up to the house. He walked through the greenhouse—still cluttered with all his dying plants and the multitude of papers and reports on the Headhunter case—then he went into the living room and turned the stereo on. He poured another drink.

  With the glass in one hand he searched among their albums until he found the recording of Wilhelm Kempff playing Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto. He placed the disc on the turntable and cranked the volume up loud, then he crossed to the center of the room and stood directly between the speakers. As he slammed back another hit of Scotch the first chords of "The Emperor" shook the walls of the room. An involuntary shiver wormed its way down his spine. Then he closed his eyes and let the music take him away.

  When the first movement was finished, DeClercq came to himself to find that he had one of his fists clenched and that his lips were repeating again and again: "This is not going to break me!"

  For a moment he was embarrassed. Then as the slow second movement began, he unclenched his fist, took the record off, and walked back out to the greenhouse.

  Robert DeClercq sat down at his desk and surrounded by darkness beyond the glass went back to work.

  10:25 p.m.

  Genevieve DeClercq was very concerned and had no idea what to do. She was afraid for her husband, afraid for herself, afraid she was going to lose him. The easiest task in the world for her was to make men fall in love, yet she knew in her heart that Robert was not someone she could replace. Where would she find another man to give her the freedom that he did? Where would she find someone to love her the same way he had—unselfishly, gently, roughly, thinking only of her? Before him her life had been a litany of men who said the same dull things as they maneuvered her into bed, each one eventually smothering her with that pillow called possession.

  And besides, Robert had values. These days a man with values was very hard to find. Unless the value was him.

  Early that afternoon she had made up her mind to shock her husband. Genevieve could not recall who had first made the statement "a woman's greatest weapon is man's imagination," but she did know that the human body is programed so that at the moment of orgasm each and every problem haunting the mind is transcended. It may not be much but Robert needed every escape he could get. So Genevieve had dyed her hair black and tonight, with a little of that knowledge that separates the English from the French, she was determined that Robert DeClercq would take another woman to bed.

  This evening Genevieve planned to set her husband's fantasies free.

  It was with that in mind that she slipped the key in the lock and opened the front door. It was still in her mind up to the moment that she found the Superintendent in the greenhouse passed out over his desk. He had knocked over a glass of Scotch and it had smashed all over the floor.

  "Oh, Robert," she said in a whisper, and then she saw the tears. They were running down her husband's face, secretly escaping while his body was asleep.

  It took Genevieve ten minutes to get Robert into bed. He was too exhausted to wake up, and he was too big a man for her to carry to the bedroom. In the end she went into the guest room and brought out a roll-away cot. This she wheeled into the greenhouse, made up beside the desk, and then pulled her husband across it. Soon he was sound asleep on the other side of the room.

  Finished, the woman went out to the kitchen and put on the kettle to boil. Once she had dripped a strong pot of coffee she poured a steaming cup of it and walked back into the greenhouse. There she sat down at the desk.

  Genevieve was not a woman to give up without a fight.

  At 10:56 she looked at her watch, then she picked up the nearest Headhunter file and flipped
open its cover.

  And that's where she started to read.

  Saturday, November 13th, dawn.

  The sun came up next morning at exactly 5:57 a.m.

  As it broke the horizon and day burst forth, the greenhouse light was still burning.

  Red Serge

  9:30 a.m.

  Silver. All in silver.

  His legs feel heavy, so very heavy as if they are forged from lead, while he tries to move fast, has to move fast to close the gap, to find Jane, to wrench his frightened daughter free from the kidnappers' grasp. It is with mounting anxiety that he looks down to find out what is slowing his progress, with shock that he discovers that both his feet seem to have taken root in the ground. ' 'No!'' DeClercq cries out. Then a panic grips him and he drops the crossbow and he grabs one leg in an attempt to tear it free from the forest floor. His leg refuses to budge. He tries the other one, tugging at it with both hands and using all his strength. It begins to break free. The earth lets go of the roots, lets go of his foot, lets go with a groan as each tiny filament clings for life to the soil of the—

  "Daddyyyy!" A stark shrill scream shatters the autumn air.

  "Let go of me!" DeClercq cries out to the silver trees around him.

  Frantic now he tries to run, tries to free his other leg, tries to reach the silver cabin from which that scream is coming. His heart is now straining in his chest and pains from overexertion are running up and down his left arm. He can feel the tension in his temples and in the cords of his neck.

  "Daddyyyy!" This time it's longer, the scream suspended in the air.

  "Don't leave me, Princess," DeClercq cries out. "I'm coming! For God's sake I'm coming!"

  Then his legs are free and he is moving forward, dragging half the forest floor with him, closing the gap, the door before him, the clods of earth breaking away from his feet as the roots rustle like snakes in the autumn leaves around him, past the body with the crossbow bolt jutting out of its eye, up the steps and across the porch and swinging the door open wide, the knife now piercing his stomach, the blood now flowing down his abdomen and legs, his hands now closing tightly around the throat of this man in his path as the eyes, the tongue, the killing fades and the body drops to the floor.

  "I'm over here, Daddy," Janie cries. "I'm hiding in the corner.''

  So he whirls about in the silver room, searching the monochromatic space, desperately trying to find her.

  "Princess! Janie! Where are you?" he cries, and at that very moment he sees her eyes in shadow in the corner.

  "Oh thank God!" he says aloud, running to her and taking her small body in his arms, a body that now shrinks, getting thinner and thinner until it becomes a pole.

  In utter horror DeClercq steps back and looks at those innocent eyes. For Janie's head is stuck on the end of a stake.

  "I knew you'd come, Daddy," she says, and then she begins to cry.

  He awoke in a sweat to find himself on a roll-away cot in the greenhouse. For a moment he was disoriented, then he sat up with a start. He looked at his watch and saw that it was 9:30 in the morning.

  "Genevieve," he said aloud as he climbed out of bed.

  He searched the entire house for his wife.

  But Genevieve was gone.

  9:45 a.m.

  The value of fiber forensics stems from a theory that is known as Locard's Exchange Principle. Postulated by a French criminologist half a century ago, this theory states that a person passing through a room will unknowingly deposit something there and take something away. British researchers have subsequently found that most of the hundreds of loose fibers on a person's clothing are shed and replaced every four hours.

  Until recently chemists could look at a fiber with seven different types of microscope and bombard it with neutrons, X-rays and fluorescent light. They could measure its density, weight, melting point, solubility and patterns of refracting light. When they finished they could tell whether or not it was permanent-press and the shape of its molecules—but they could not state that the fiber came positively from a particular piece of material.

  Avacomovitch had changed that.

  For his theory was based on identifying a fiber according to how it ages. Under the scientist's technique, a laser light scattering was used to study the molecular changes in a fiber as it becomes worn. Though two men may buy a similar shirt made from identical fabric, after those shirts are worn a while they will be very different. Body oils, perspiration salts, exposure to sunlight, whether laundered in hot or cold water: all these factors will alter a fiber. Although such knowledge is not crucial for synthetic materials—here specific characteristics can be measured by size, shape, chemical composition and by looking at the arrangement of additives—it is essential for natural fibers. Without the Avacomovitch laser scatter technique, cotton threads from a Mississippi mill are hard to distinguish from those produced in Georgia. A laser scatter, however, gives each fiber a unique characterization. So unique in fact that it's like a fingerprint.

  Joseph Avacomovitch had worked right through the night. By 9:45 that morning he had determined that the two black threads from the bramble bush were synthetic nylon fibers from a fairly new water-repellent garment. The red fiber, however, was natural and he suspected that it was a twilled worsted or woollen material. To take his assessment further he would need some laser equipment. He had arranged for access to such machinery later on in the day. It was time to take a break.

  That morning as Joseph Avacomovitch left the RCMP laboratory a thought picked at his mind.

  For that red thread looked a lot like the color of red serge. Red serge is the fabric used to make the RCMP scarlet tunic.

  Politics

  10:45 a.m.

  He recognized her at once.

  For though her hair was now black instead of auburn and she was with another man, a woman like Genevieve DeClercq does not slip from the mind. The moment that she walked into the restaurant, Joseph Avacomovitch looked up from his meal and instantly connected her with the photograph on the corner of the Superintendent's desk. He watched them take a table on the far side of the room.

  On leaving the laboratory the Russian had suddenly felt hungry. It had been at least twelve hours since his last meal—and besides he wanted to think. What was concerning him was the fear there had been a screw-up. He was worried that perhaps one of the several dozen Members at the site of Natasha Wilkes' killing had broken the cardinal rule about preserving a crime scene and had snagged his or her red serge tunic while tracing the route that the body had tumbled by climbing up to the trail. With time of the essence Avacomovitch did not relish wasting hours analyzing a red herring.

  At the back of his mind, however, he had another thought: What if the killer did leave the thread? And what if it is red serge?

  The restaurant was crowded. Avacomovitch had never dined here before, but DeClercq had mentioned to him once that it served the best eggs in town. As the scientist enjoyed a good omelette he had decided to give it a try. It was as he was finishing off his meal that Genevieve and the other man came through the door.

  For a while the Russian toyed with the idea of crossing the room to their table and introducing himself. He nodded to the waiter and motioned for the check. Then he sat there unnoticed, watching Genevieve. She was without a doubt one of the most vivacious and animated women that he had ever encountered. Occasionally as she talked with the man, perhaps to emphasize a point, she would reach across the table top and touch him lightly on the arm. At the moment the waiter came to take their order she crossed her legs and a slit in her long skirt parted. Avacomovitch caught himself eyeing the sweep of her leg and thigh.

  Once more he thought of his friend DeClercq and turned his gaze away. In that moment he made two very quick decisions. One was that he would not tell the Superintendent of this encounter. DeClercq had problems already. And the other was that he would not walk across this room. For what bothered him in what he saw was not so much Genevieve: it was the man whom
she was with. The Russian knew in the back of his mind that he had seen the fellow before, though just where he could not place. What he could put in perspective, however, was the look in this man's eyes.

  He's in love with her, Avacomovitch thought. Then he paid for the meal and left.

  3:02 p.m.

  Politics, Chartrand thought with disgust as he hung up the telephone. All for expediency.

  The Commissioner had taken the call from the Solicitor General, Edward Fitzgerald, in DeClercq's office at Headhunter Headquarters. The Opposition, it seemed, had been roasting the Government once more about the lack of progress in the Vancouver case. It had not helped matters any when both the CBC and CTV television networks had shown footage on the news of several thousand candle-carrying citizens holding a vigil outside this very building all through the night. The Prime Minister himself had told Fitzgerald to make the call.

  "Look, Francois," the Solicitor General had said, "we're not playing tiddlywinks. This situation's explosive. Something must be done."

  "Edward, I have been right through DeClercq's investigation. Believe me this Force is doing everything in its power to bring this to an end."

  "I'm well aware of that. Francois. I'm not talking about what goes on beneath the surface. I'm talking about public consumption. A bone to throw to the masses. Keep them quiet a while."

  "What sort of bone do you mean?"

  "I'm beginning to get reports about this fellow DeClercq.”

  "What sort of reports?"

  "Lawyers are screaming all over the place about their clients' rights being trampled under this so-called sweep. Some people are also saying that the man does not look well. Francois, a man who doesn't look fit can't go before the cameras. And if he's not good media what use is he to us? We're selling confidence here, plain and simple."