Headhunter (20 page)

"And finally: Does the Headhunter take the head because he has a fetish for female hair? Again very likely.

"In one of your reports, Superintendent, you have noted that the first three victims all had long black hair. To my mind the killing of the nun might also fit this pattern, for in that case her black cowl is a symbolic representation. What one must realize is that a fetishist is a person preoccupied with symbol. ,

"The psychological link between sex and hair goes back a very long way.

"Prostitutes, of course, have used this knowledge for centuries; a large percentage of them keep a selection of wigs to meet the psychological needs of their various clients.

"A problem arises, however, when a mania develops.

"In a case of mania we find that the affected person's mind has upset or lost its natural connection with reality. An obsession has taken over resulting in the collecting of or concentration upon some concrete object which the mind links to sex.

"Hair is a prime example. Take the case of John Reginald Halliday Christie, a sexual psychopath who committed eight murders of women between 1940 and 1953.

"Before disposing of the bodies he would shave off the pubic hair and store it in a tobacco tin. Later when his fetish overtook him, he would gloat over the tin of hair, masturbating as he did so."

At this point Dr. Ruryk glanced around for an ashtray. DeClercq handed him an empty flower pot.

"So," Ruryk began again, "where does all this leave us?

"I believe back at the question which to my way of thinking is at the center of this case: 'Why have the heads gone missing?' That is our real mystery—and the key to the Head-hunter's illness. Answer that question and you will be well along the road to revealing his identity. For you see everything else in this case revolves around those heads. Not only the fact that the heads have gone missing, but also the fact that in the later crimes the killer has gone to great risk to leave a head-substitute.

"This attention seeking is typical for a psychopath. Such a person believes himself superior to and better than everybody else. He doesn't make mistakes, and if he does he blames it on another. In effect this killer is saying: 'I can do no wrong. You have not caught me on four occasions. See what you can do now.'

"So believe me. Superintendent, center on the heads."

For a moment Ruryk turned away from the microphone and looked out over the ocean beyond the glass of the greenhouse. With a swoop a cormorant took a dive at the water. Ruryk watched the bird a while, then brought his attention back.

"I believe," the psychiatrist said, "that we are now able to return to your original question. You asked me for my general impression of the killer whom you seek.

"Most likely he is a sexual psychopath with one of those three perversions concerning his victims' heads—cannibalism, trophy hunting or hair fetishism.

"Less likely he is a psychotic with one of the same three perversions.

"And then there is one more
very
rare possibility."

"What's that?" DeClercq asked with a bare trace of a frown.

Ruryk met his eyes and said: "There's the off-chance, Superintendent, that what we have here is the most dangerous of men. For it is possible that the Headhunter is a psychiatric crossover. He may just be a psychopathic sadist with psychotic overtones."

That afternoon when Genevieve DeClercq arrived home she found her husband sitting by himself down by the edge of the sea. Across the water clouds were boiling above the city of Vancouver.

"A penny for your thoughts," she said, crouching down beside him.

For several long seconds Robert DeClercq was silent. Then he said: "I was just thinking how life affects the very young. And how those young grow up to become an effect on life."

Out on the water a cormorant was swimming with a fish clamped in its bill.

The Price of Your Skull

11:50 a.m.

That morning as Dr. George Ruryk was driving out Chancellor Boulevard from the University of British Columbia on his way to meet Robert DeClercq, Spann and Scarlett were driving in. Earlier they had tried to contact Corporal William Tipple at Commercial Crime in order to get a lead on John Lincoln Hardy but it was Tipple's day off. The member who answered the phone told Spann that the Corporal had gone hiking in the North Shore mountains and wouldn't be back till tomorrow.

They had decided late last night to follow the trail of DeClercq. What was the use of a manhunt if you didn't know your quarry? Therefore, they had spent the morning reading psychology texts.

"Okay," Katherine Spann said. "I've read enough. I think I'll recognize this guy if we bump into him in the dark. Let's sweep the pubs again."

"Why not wait for Tipple? It'll save us some time."

"Why give the collar away? Besides what else do we have to do?"

"All right," Scarlett said, "but give me another minute. I'm at a juicy part." The book he was reading was Wilson:
The Origins of the Sexual Impulse.

"I'll meet you upstairs by the card catalogue. I need some air."

Spann left Scarlett buried several stories underground. Climbing the stairs to the stacks she passed row upon row of old texts housed in sunken levels; the only sound was that of the compressors and convectors pumping oxygen into the subterranean space.

Ten minutes later when Scarlett emerged he found Spann standing at the catalogue studying a card. "You'd better look at this," she said as he came up beside her. She pointed to the card.
It read:
HOODOO
.
See
VOODOO
.

Two minutes later they were back in the stacks searching out a volume called
Voodoo and Hoodoo: Their Practice Today.
Scatlett only had to scan a few paragraphs before he began to feel like a fool:

Detectives smashed a grave-robbing ring early today as they rounded up the last of five suspects accused of stealing the skulls of long-dead women. The macabre loot was worth an estimated $1000 on the occult market, and was headed for voodoo rites, detectives said. There was no connection made between the grave robbery and a grisly discovery in a Bronx apartment yesterday. Maintenance men who entered an empty apartment found an altar, a human skull, a goat's skull, dried blood and feathers apparently used in voodoo rites. An investigation was ordered.
        New York Post,
November 18, 1977.

Spann looked up and said: "I think we now know 'what's happenin' with that 'nigger hoodoo man.' "

"Yeah," Scarlett said sheepishly. "And it sure the hell isn't limestone pillars between the Rocky Mountains and the prairies."

        9:00 p.m.

That night they sat together at the water's edge, huddled against the chill of the dark, combining the heat of their bodies as the world slowly turned toward winter. Waves lapped against the shore and to the east a Hunter's Moon hung in the sky like a moist overripe piece of fruit, half its surface shining in purple twilight, the other half obscured by clouds. Occasionally a dead leaf would flutter down to the ground.

Later they built a fire in the living room and both took off their clothes, but when they tried to make love DeClercq couldn't get an erection. When they finally gave up he noticed once again that both his hands were shaking. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and whispered, "Oh my God."

Genevieve sat up. "Roll over on your stomach," she softly said to him. She began to deep rub his back. As her fingers moved she could sense the stress built up in him. "Relax, just relax," she said.

She moved down to massage his feet, the most important part of the human structure when it comes to relaxation.

"Will you listen to me, Robert, or have you shut me out? I won't let you close up on me, not without a fight. Hey, relax, relax, I can feel that foot tensing up. Can you hear me, Robert? Is anyone home in there?"

"I hear you, Genny," he said, his voice buried in a sigh.

"Good, then let's talk it out." She began to work on his legs. "Robert DeClercq, I've told you before—you hold yourself too tight. You cling to the values of a time that has gone forever. Then you wonder why life never seems to work. The value of a man's word as the currency of friendship: help your neighbor; the compact of love. I think at long last you're beginning to doubt that your values have any place. You're a throwback to another time and you're beginning to feel very old."

"And it's starting to show, isn't it Genny?"

"Starting to ... ? Oh, you mean our missing erection, and you'll note I said
'our.'
So what am I to do? Is this such a major problem that I should run naked from the house to find some young buck stud who'll do sexual service? You're only fifty-five, man. Believe me, I'll squeeze a lot more fun out of you yet."

Her hands massaged his lower back.

"Just because you're under a monumental amount of tension, and just because you're burning the candle at both ends to try and catch this killer—and, love, we did drink wine with dinner—then if suddenly we find on this occasion that a hard-on is not instantly forthcoming, don't sell me short and think that
I
think that
you
have a problem. You're the only man I ever met who honestly holds my sexual satisfaction as more important than his own.
Cheri,
I'm with you to the end."

Her hands moved up to his shoulders.

She then said: "Tell me what's bothering you."

"He's laughing at me, Genny—and perhaps he has reason to be."

"Robert, it's common knowledge that the insane laugh without reason. This is so unlike you. I thought you were the one who believed that order and precision could always meet the match of chaos."

"Maybe once, but not now."

"Believe me, Robert, if you still weren't Number One they'd never have brought you back. In fact, what with your reading in tactics you're more equipped for this investigation than you were in the past. Just trust your knowledge and use it. Put it into practice and I'll bet it sees you through."

From out of nowhere DeClercq said: "Genny, I'm having nightmares. Actually one nightmare, over and over again."

"So tell me," she said.

The dream is all in silver.

He can see a silver room beyond the door, a room of silver walls with silver windows and a mist of silver vapor rising up from the floor. Even the sound of the sobbing has a metallic tone about it. And the silver blade of the silver knife is silver-cold in his stomach.

A tree beyond the window is stripped and bare of leaves.

Now his hands are closing about a neck and his fingers are pushing in, crushing the muscles and the veins and the pipes that feed life to this man's brain. The man's silver eyes seem to bulge out of their sockets. Suddenly with a pop they fall out on the floor. But it doesn't stop him squeezing. Now the tongue of the man is slithering out of his silver mouth like an eel dropping down from a hole in a rock five feet up from the ocean floor.

Silver, all is silver. Silver sobbing electric in the air.

Then abruptly there is color in this monochromatic dream, for the face of the man whom he holds in his hands has now turned livid blue. He opens his grip to let the dead man drop to the floor.

Janie,
he whispers.
Janie.
For it is her sobbing in this room.

Turning toward the sound he sees a silver figure shrouded in mist lying on a bed. He crosses the floor; he opens his arms; he holds her against his chest. Then he screams in anguish at the source of the sobbing sound. For the surface of the cut that has taken her head is fiat and silver-smooth. The sobs are coming from an open tube sticking out of her throat.

Screaming, he tears the room apart.

But he doesn't find her head.

"Robert," Genevieve asked, "what does the dream mean to you?''

He thought for a moment, then said: "That I'll never find those heads."

"You're wrong. It means that you are afraid that you'll never find those heads. Not that you'll never find them. You see the difference, don't you?"

DeClercq forced a smile. "Genny, they never caught Jack the Ripper. Nor Zodiac in San Francisco. Nor the Axe Man of New Orleans. The Thames Nude Killer was never found. Nor the murderer of the Black Dahlia. Nor the . . ."

"So what," Genevieve said, almost spitting out her words. "None of those killers ever went up against the RCMP."

The force of her exclamation stopped him in midsentence.

"Steele. Walsh. McIllree. Blake. Get it through your head. I've read your book. I know where you're coming from and so does most of the world. Men who wore the tunic: it's time to believe the myth. For all your doubts about modern times they still produce some wisdom." Then she softened. "Don't you think it's time you took a lesson from Obee Wan Kenobe?"

"And what's that?" DeClercq asked frowning, for he rarely went to the movies.

"Let the Force be with you," she said—and DeClercq actually laughed.

For even he understood. Such is the grapevine of culture.

She waited until he was asleep, knowing that she had soothed him and made him forget his work for a while, then she curled herself in against the warmth of his body and let the void take her too. She fell asleep smiling.

At 3:00 a.m. Robert DeClercq woke up in a sweat. For the dream had come again.

He lay on his back for several minutes listening to his wife's even breathing. Then he slipped out of bed and out of the room and dressed to go down to the sea.

Next morning Genevieve DeClercq found her husband in the greenhouse with a pistol in his hand. The revolver was almost one hundred years old, a six shot Enfield Caliber .476.

The Superintendent didn't tell his wife about the nightmare.

Voodoo

9:15 p.m.

That evening Katherine Spann arrived home to find a cockroach in her kitchen.

Actually three cockroaches.

After she and Scarlett had left the University library late that afternoon they had driven downtown once again to look for the Indian and John Lincoln Hardy. When they had found neither one by 9:00 p.m. they had agreed to call it a day. With Scarlett at the wheel of the unmarked Ford the two Constables had driven along Fir Street under a half-hidden moon, the dull silver glow of the moonlight shimmering on the pavement, then had crossed 16th to enter Shaughnessy where the car slowly picked its way among the shadows of the trees. A wind was coming up from the direction of the sea so the light-ghosts were moving. Scarlett pulled the cruiser into the curb and Katherine Spann climbed out.

"Pleasant reading," he said as she closed the door. Then the car drove away.

For a moment Spann stood on the curb listening to the autumn wind moan in the boulevard trees, then removing a ring of keys from her pocket, she unlocked the gate at the servants' entrance and entered the yard of the mansion. Tonight the grounds were aromatic with the smell of decaying autumn leaves, and as she walked toward the groundkeeper's house those same leaves crunched beneath her feet like cellophane candy wrappers. Having closed the gate on squeaking hinges she had locked the city outside.

The groundkeeper's house stood in the shadows this side of Sussex Manor. As she approached it, her hands shoved deep in her pockets, both library books on voodoo clamped firmly under one arm, Spann could hear the chill November wind skating under the eaves of the mansion. The sound was like a thin scream escaping from an aged mouth lost somewhere in the darkness. Mixed with that noise she could also feel the gathering storm as it rattled through the old gutters and downspouts, scraping with it the rusty leaves that clawed at the metal.

Altogether it was a night fit to follow Halloween. The type of autumn night that Katherine Spann enjoyed. Eerie. Weird. Mysterious. A night to curl up at home.

With her windbreaker still zipped up under her chin to keep out the creeping cold, she came in through the back door of the groundkeeper's house and switched on the overhead light. And that was when she saw it, smack-dab in the middle of her kitchen floor.

Like all cockroaches this bug had a flat shiny body, six hairy legs, and a pair of long feelers that waved above a head hidden beneath a plate of armor. The insect was nibbling at a spot of goo caked to the linoleum floor. But the moment the light lit up the room it began to move. And though the roach moved quickly, Katherine Spann was quicker. She caught the ugly insect over near the sink.

Crunchhh!
With a heavy stomp the woman squashed both the external skeleton and internal pulp underneath the heel of her boot.

It was as she was cleaning the mess from her foot that she saw the other two insects. There were two more shiny roaches in front of the garbage container. With two successive stomps she managed to get them also.
Ughh,
she thought.

At first Spann's reaction was to blame the age of the building:
When you live in Edwardian premises, kiddo, what do you expect?

Katherine Spann had made up her mind to go out and buy some Raid, in fact she had opened the back door to venture forth with that purpose, when a realization slipped in and tugged at her brain. She stopped in her tracks, turned, and looked about the kitchen. The problem was not, it would appear, the advancing age of the building. The problem was her.

It's strange,
Spann thought,
the way that blindness can strike you in degree. It can shut out all the lights at once or just put blinders on.
For there was not a clean plate or coffee cup in the entire kitchen. The sink was overflowing with dirty dishes, most still caked with the remnants of meals she could not remember eating. How long had it been since she had scrubbed the floor? One month? Two months? No, it was probably half a year. Suddenly she could smell the stink of garbage in the room: why had she not noticed it on entering this evening?

Spann closed the back door and walked from the kitchen into the living room. It was in no better shape.

The closet was just to the right inside the front door of the building. On entering the room she could see that it was empty, just a metal rod hung with skeletal wire hangers. The clothes that once had hung there were scattered about the place. Every stick of furniture was now buried beneath her discarded clothing. There were turtleneck sweaters and parts of her uniforms strewn about the floor. In one corner lay a pile of high-heeled pumps, loafers and running shoes. There were dressing gowns and socks and skirts and underpants here and there. There were blouses and T-shirts and overcoats hither, thither, and yon. One of her bras was hanging limply off a table surface; it reminded her of those Dali clocks, surreal and warped and melting. Not one picture upon the walls hung on the horizontal.

Sure you hate housework, kiddo, but this is ridiculous!

It occurred to her now as she stood in the room letting the mild shock sink in, that perhaps this mess was no more than the external manifestation of just how hard she had been working. While training in Regina on how to go underground, Spann had had an instructor who put the art like this: "And you women, you gotta pretend that you're nothin' but scummy sluts. No combin' your hair. No washin' your bods. No ironin' your clothes. When your pits are gettin' high as a kite, you're ready for the jungle. That's the way of survival."

This was sound advice, Spann had learned her first day on the skids. She had followed it and had survived among those who hated narcs. Perhaps she'd followed it too well.

The problem, as she now saw it, was that she had not come all the way back: she had jumped from her undercover posting right to the Headhunter Squad, donning her uniform without also taking the time to clean up and change her act. There had not been time for mundane affairs like housework and doing the laundry,
And come on, girl, be honest, that's the way you like it. Housekeeping is the shits!

Tonight it took Katherine Spann almost two hours to get her home in order. Finally at 11:30 p.m. she put on her jacket and opened the door to take out the garbage. All six bags of it.

Outside the wind was howling like a banshee on a drunk. Across the pockmarked face of the moon, now high and full and yellow, rafts of cloud were sweeping by on the river of the storm. Suddenly Spann felt a chill worm its way down her spine, like a freezing finger that slowly touched each vertebra. She turned on instinct and looked back at the windows of Sussex Manor. For lately the eldest of the sisters who lived there—the one without hair or teeth—had taken to sitting up late at night behind the upper left-hand window. Several times Spann had seen her there in ghostly silhouette. Tonight, however, all she could see of the two-storied house were the three high-pointed gables and the massive stone turret bulging off to one side.

The woman crossed the yard to the gardener's shed and dug out the two-handed axe.

For the next fifteen minutes Katherine Spann chopped up alder rounds. Then, having lathered up a sweat, she carried the wood, quartered and split, back into her house. She lit a blazing fire in the antique cast-iron hearth. Entering the bathroom she stripped off her clothes and turned the shower on. For ten minutes she stood in the tub with her eyes closed, languishing and relaxing beneath the sharp needles of hot water. When she climbed out, refreshed, Spann toweled herself dry with a rough brisk rub and put on a pair of blue pajamas, a maroon velour bathrobe and fuzzy sheepskin slippers. Then she toweled her hair dry one more time and shuffled out to stand by the fire.

The flames of the hearth were licking and snarling within the bricked-up cage, every so often emitting a crack like a circus master's whip.

Her world now in order and everything clean, Spann picked up a voodoo book. Then she curled up in an easy chair off to the right of the fire, cracked the cover of the Huxley volume and slowly began to read.

The roots of voodoo twist among the myths and tribes of Africa. That much she knew. What she was about to find out was just how developed and widespread that root system was.

It was now midnight.

Outside the autumn wind continued to scream in the trees.

11:32 p.m.

In an article dated September 26, 1979, the Toronto
Globe and Mail
informed its readers that sometime in the previous week about 800 French paratroopers and marine commandos had flown into the Central African Republic to stage a bloodless coup to end the rule of Emperor Jean Bedel Bokassa. The Emperor had subsequently gone into exile on the Ivory Coast. When David Dacko, the new President of the Republic, held his first press conference he told the international journalists gathered in Bangui that "pieces of human flesh have been found in the refrigerators in Bokassa's Colongo villa."

Old habits die hard.
Rick Scarlett thought—and he put down the book. The newspaper clipping was Scotch-taped inside its front cover.

For over an hour the policeman had been reading about how prevalent the practice of voodoo was—and is—in Africa, particularly when it overlaps with cannibalism and human sacrifice. The number of cases was startling.

In the early fifties it had surfaced dramatically among the Kikuyu tribesmen of East Africa. That was when the Mau Mau took on the British in Kenya.

As the initiate climbed the Mau Mau ladder, the oath and rituals performed increased in bestiality. One of the pledges required that whenever an initiate to the society murdered a European, he had to cut off the head and extract the eyeballs and drink the fluid from them.

In a postscript to the volume that Scarlett had been reading it was stated that in order to intensify the atmosphere of these oath-taking ceremonies, they were usually accompanied by sexual orgies and perversions involving animals. Rams or dogs or sheep were used, or whatever was available. It was said that the authenticated reports were so disgusting that they were not available for general study. They could, however, be consulted on the premises of the Colonial or Commonwealth Relations Office Library.

Although the British had crushed the Mau Mau in 1956, the same type of structure had arisen again with the Zebra killings in San Francisco. Was it now arising here?

For the last quarter hour Rick Scarlett had found that he had trouble in concentrating. That was the reason he had finally put down the book.

After dropping Katherine Spann off earlier in the evening, he'd returned to the Headquarters building up on Heather Street. He was hoping to find Rabidowski or other suitable male company, for the truth was that Rick Scarlett felt like a horse's ass.

Right from the start he had somehow felt that this woman had taken effective control of their flying patrol. It worried him that the good ideas seemed to come from her. As a boy on the prairies he had spent a number of years in Alberta. Scarlett's father had been a regular member of the RCMP posted to "K" Division. Many a day the boy had spent with his dad up around those sandstone pillars where men like Sam Steele and Wilfred Blake had once maintained the law. When the word
hoodoo
had shown on the taps, a connection to the Rocky Mountains had instantly linked in his mind.

Oh God,
Scarlett thought.
Do you think she's gloating right now? Why did this have to happen to me immediately after DeClercq gives us a warning on tunnel vision?

Up at Headhunter Headquarters, Scarlett had not found Rabidowski. What he had found was a group of constables sitting around a tape recorder listening to a lecture by a guy named Dr. George Ruryk. Hoping for something to one-up Spann, Scarlett had joined the crowd. He had left when one of the other cops had turned to him and asked: "Don't you think hearing this ruins your independence? I thought you were part of a flying patrol?"

Tonight as he had inserted his key into the lock of his apartment door Scarlett had wondered what Katherine Spann would be like in bed. Hot, he suspected.

It was now just after 11:30 and he was thinking that same thought.

Scarlett got up and walked over to the living room window to see if Miss Torso was dancing tonight. The window of the apartment across the street was dark and the curtains were drawn.

With a sigh Scarlett went to put on his strip and go for a run in the park.

Wednesday, November 3rd, 12:31 a.m.

From an upper floor window of Sussex Manor the old woman looked down at the groundkeeper's house in the yard. Framed in one window by firelight she could see Katherine Spann reading.

In the development of voodoo, the most important feature was the way the original African beliefs and practices were combined with Catholicism. For just as the Roman Catholic Church has a pantheon of its God and saints, so the slaves who came to the New World had a religious pantheon of their own. Thus a form of the Catholic religion became at once acceptable to these transplants from Africa.

A tvpical slave religious altar might bare a statue that was flanked by colored oleographs of St. Peter, St. George and St. Patrick. To the African these figures represented the
Loa: Legba,
the god who guarded the way to the world beyond;
Ogoun,
warrior god to the Dahomey; and
Damballah,
god of the snake. Under this altar the slaves would place bottles of rum or whisky, alternating them with cloth-covered bundles and white porcelain pots which were used to house their
loa
and the spirits of the dead. These spirits eventually came to be called by the African word
zombi.

Among the slaves carried off to America there were voodoo priests, medicine men and sorcerers. It was these priests who connected the African pantheon with the Roman Catholic religion of the New World. It was the sorcerers—who in Africa had thrived during times of war and destruction—who now found their position enhanced by the confusion and disorientation rampant among the slaves. It was not long before the sorcerer rose in power and totally absorbed the profession of the priest. And out of this blurring came to flourish the practice known as voodoo.