Headhunter (5 page)

Call to Duty

2:19 a.m.

The call clocked into the VPD at 2:19 that morning. The telephone call shouldn't have come through to the Vancouver Police at all, but the dispatcher didn't catch the error. He had spent the previous evening drinking at the Police Athletic Club and even now his head felt as though the iron ball of a wrecking crane was demolishing it piece by piece. At the mention of the words dead body, however, he sat up straight at the switchboard and pushed the headphones to his ears.

"Where's this body?" the dispatcher demanded, a whisky growl to his voice.

"Man, it's hangin' from a totem pole. And it doesn't have a head!"

"The totems in the Park?"

"I said a totem pole, didn't I?"

"Who's calling?" the dispatcher inquired of the nervous and jumpy voice at the end of the line.

"Chris. Chris Seaton."

"Well, hang on, Chris, while I patch this through. I'll get back to you." The dispatcher disconnected the line and then threw a toggle switch to feed into the street patrols. "We've got a possible 212. Stanley Park. Brockton Point totem poles. Code 4 response." Then he switched back to Chris.

"Okay, Mr. Seaton. Full name and date of birth." The dispatcher picked up his pen and quickly began to write.

2:20 a.m.

Within a minute of the emergency broadcast hitting the police radio band the first blue and white car from the street patrol of the Vancouver Police Department tore into Stanley Park, its tires squealing off the Causeway and then skidding in the snow. The moment the patrol car hit the park, the cop riding shotgun kicked in the siren and started the wigwag lights Blue, then red, blue, then red. reflected off the snow. It took no more than three minutes for the car to reach Brockton Point, and its totem poles.

Even before the car had stopped moving the officer riding shotgun was out the door and running. The driver quickly followed twenty feet behind him. Fifteen seconds later they found the totem poles, each one of the mythical giants now shrouded by crystalline snow.

What they didn't find was a body.

2:22 a.m.

It was Detective Al Flood of the VPD who first caught the squeal. Because the call came into his building. Because it was a possible murder. And because he was catching up in Major Crimes.

Flood was thirty-eight and stood six feet tall exactly. He was large-boned with broad muscular shoulders. His fair skin was a backdrop for freckles surrounding sharp blue-gray eyes. His hair was strawberry blond. Whenever he walked to the water cooler—as he was doing when the squad room phone rang—he moved like a natural athlete.

"Major Crimes," Flood said, catching the phone call on the third ring.

"It's Jenkins in Dispatch, Detective. We got a possible 212. Caller says the totem poles in Stanley Park."

Flood moved a pad into place. "Where's the caller now?"

"At a phone booth."

"Which phone booth?"

"Uh . . . I forgot to ask him." The dispatcher's head was still pounding.

"Well, if he's still on the line, do it now. I'll wait."

The phone went dead.

For about two minutes Flood remained standing where
he
was. It was now 2:25 a.m. on a snowy graveyard shift and the squad room was practically empty. It felt like a deserted cavern of unmanned desks and stilled typewriters. One of
the fluorescent lights was failing and it softly strobed the floor space about him. In some other part of the building a telephone was ringing. It wasn't answered. As he stood by the desk biding time until the dispatcher came back on. Flood picked up a circular put out by the RCMP. It was a Coordinated Law Enforcement Unit request for any information remotely connected to either of two deaths. Both bodies, CLEU said, had been found without a head. Flood was still reading when the line reactivated.

"Detective. It's Jenkins again. You still there?"

"Of course. Where is he?"

"Out at UBC. Guy says he's phoning from the Museum of Anthropology, a phone booth nearby."

"That's at least five miles from Stanley Park. How does he know of the body?"

"Well, it seems it's not Stanley Park. It's the totems at UBC."

"I thought you said that he said that it was Stanley Park."

"I made a mistake."

"Uh, huh. Didn't I see you, Jenkins, yesterday, surrounded by empty bottles in the Athletic Club?"

"Uh . . . yeah, maybe."

"Well get onto the Mounties. The stiffs in their jurisdiction."

"Right. Thank God it's not in ours. The body's got no head."

Flood almost dropped the phone. As with most people in this city who could read, he had consumed the front page story on the headless bodies in one of the two major newspapers. And he had seen it on TV. He had just read the RCMP flyer on the crimes sent out to the private municipal police forces—and then to top off all this, here he had a hungover police dispatcher telling him there was yet another headless body around and that for those most important moments in any police investigation—namely the first few minutes when the force reacts to the squeal—they, the VPD, had been fumbling the ball. Flood did not need to remind himself of the police response equation: that for every initial minute lost the chance of a case being ultimately unsolved went up by mathematical proportions.

"Well, go on! Move it, man! Get the Mounties on the line!" Flood almost shouted the words into the phone. It was out of character, for usually he was an easy gentle-mannered man.

"Right!" the dispatcher said, and the line went cold.
 

2:31 a.m.

Constable Ron Mitchell stood among the tumbling flakes and stared up in disbelief. The scene was almost surreal: it was that weird. The body nailed to the Dogfish Burial Pole was now illuminated not only by the light at the base of the totem but also by the headlamps of Mitchell's patrol car. He had driven the vehicle down the access road off Chancellor Boulevard and right out onto the plaza in front of the Museum of Man. Then, careful not to get too close and do damage to the scene, he had climbed up onto the hood of the car to get a better look. What he saw was diabolical.

For whoever had carried the body out here and nailed it to the wood had also dumped a container of blood over what remained of the corpse. The plastic container, an Imperial gallon in size, was lying on the ground and Mitchell could make out streaks of dried blood on the body in among the wet ones.

2:36 a.m.

The phone beside the bed rang and wrenched him out of sleep. He reached for it quickly, fumbling in the dark, hoping that he would catch it before it woke his lover up. He yanked the receiver from its cradle before the second ring. There was a mumble from across the bed as he spoke in a whispered tone.

"Hello," Jack MacDougall said, glancing at the clock.

"Sergeant, this is Constable Ron Mitchell. University Detachment. I don't think you know me."

"I don't," MacDougall said frowning. Then he waited.

"I'm sorry to bother you, sir. I hope it's the right decision."

MacDougall felt like telling him that for his sake he hoped so too. "Well," he said.

"We've got another body. One without a head."

The Sergeant threw back the covers and sat up on the bed. "Where?" he demanded, abandoning the whisper.

"The Museum of Anthropology. Nailed to a totem pole."

"Where are you, Mitchell?"

"I'm right at the scene."

"Well, you stay right where you are. I'm on the way. You guard that area with your bloody life. Nobody goes near it. Nobody, you hear. You report directly to me."

"Yes, sir." Then Jack MacDougall hung up.

The Sergeant was already off the bed and halfway into his clothes—same blue blazer and crest, same gray slacks—when there was the squeak of bedsprings and a sleepy voice from the sheets. "Is something the matter, Jack?"

"We've got another body. This one's worse." "Oh God no. Want some coffee?" "I haven't got time, love. One quick phone call and then I'm out the door."

"Will I see you later? Spend another night?" "I hope so," MacDougall said, glancing at the bed, taking in the gymnast's body outlined beneath the covers. Chances were good that body would perform in the next Olympics. "I hope so, too," Peter Brent said.

Ottawa, Ontario

6:11 a.m.

When Commissioner Francois Chartrand put down the phone, he carried his cup of coffee through to his study overlooking the Ottawa River. There he lit a Gauloise and stood smoking in contemplation in front of the double-glazed window. Off to the east the first faint light of predawn was advancing slowly to engage in battle with the silver beams of the moon. A wind down from the Northern Tundra was whipping up the metallic waters that flowed before him, while waves of Canada geese flying in V formation slipped across the pale orange lunar surface above. Finished with the cigarette, Chartrand lit another.

The Commissioner was a stout man who had struggled for most of his adult life with a recurring weight problem. At one time he had also tried to control his habit of chain-smoking, but quickly found that fighting a double front was beyond all human effort. Besides, he enjoyed cigarettes.

Chartrand was the sort of man born to be Commissioner, for he was a natural leader. His face was nondescript—short hair cut high above the ears in military fashion and balding at the crown, sparse restrained eyebrows, an easy mouth, soft perceptive eyes—and not in the least threatening. Chartrand gave orders by advising you of his opinion and asking if you could help. He took you into his confidence—or at least seemed to—from the very first moment you met him. No one likes to be told what to do and Chartrand would no more think of doing that than asking you to help where your help wasn't needed. And yet no matter what happened, if he was involved he always assumed complete responsibility for the outcome. No sloughing off of blame, no sacrificing of those who gave him aid. He was the sort of man who commanded voluntary respect.

As Chartrand stood now in front of the window contemplating the implications of what the Attorney General for British Columbia had told him, the telephone rang. He put down his coffee cup and caught it on the third ring.

"Chartrand," he said quietly.

"Francois, this is Walt Jessup. I'm calling from the coast. We've got a serious problem."

"I've already heard, Walt. By a different chain of command."

The Deputy Commissioner of "E" Division snorted. "I'm going to need muscle and machines, Framjois. This'll be worse than Olson. Even there we had vigilante squads and private police forces and phony ransom demands and God knows what else. I don't expect the feminists to be as restrained as parents."

"You'll have them."

"What else are we going to do? What shall I tell the

press?"

"Leave that with me, Walt. I'm thinking about it now. I'll call you back shortly once I've made a decision. I promise I'll give you something. You just give me time for a second cup of coffee."

The Deputy Commissioner managed a shallow laugh. "All right. But no longer," he said. "Or I'm going to sneak out of town."

After replacing the receiver, Chartrand walked through to his kitchen and poured himself another cup. He lit a third cigarette and went back to his study. And it was then, with the advancing light of dawn, that the idea struck him.

He knew what had to be done.

For when you are the head of an organization with both a sacred duty and a mythical legend in trust—

You use the very best you've got.

Even if you no longer have him.

Vancouver, British Columbia

8:15 a.m.

Genevieve
was dying.

He held the rose bush gently in his left hand and carefully examined it for signs of blight or disease. But all he could find were two minuscule white dots where the flower joined the stalk. Whatever they were, he had never seen this symptom before.
That's the problem with exotic plants,
he thought.
They contract exotic diseases.
Outside the greenhouse lay a world of dazzling snow. The maple trees, and the city far beyond were blanketed with white and the sun now blazed down, bouncing off the snow crystals and the prisms in the greenhouse's glass walls. Rainbows were everywhere.

Except for the weather, it was a bad day all the way around.

As usual, he had begun his work this morning at five-thirty. But the moment he sat down in the white wicker chair and placed the clipboard on his knee was the moment that he knew the block had settled in for good. He merely sighed with resignation. To be honest with himself, there had been a lethargy about the project from its very beginning. Did the world really need another history of the First World War? Hadn't Fay and Albertini, Tuchman and Falls and Liddell Hart said what had to be said?

He put the plant down gently and in the doing knew that the book had died.

Now
Genevieve
was dying too.

While lost in thought he had not heard his wife open the door of the greenhouse that led to their home. She touched his arm as she always did and spoke to him in French.

"Robert, on tu demande au telephone."

He looked at her for a moment—the auburn hair now piled on top of her head, here and there a wayward strand tumbling down to her shoulders, then he nodded and went quietly out of the greenhouse and into the living room, across the pegged wood floor with its Persian carpet, and into the entrance hall where he picked up the telephone.

He felt a little depressed. The day was shot. What else could go wrong?

"Hello," he said in English. "This is Robert DeClercq."

4:55 p.m.

He was smiling as he stopped just inside the door to the pub, his eyes skipping from table to table, checking to see who was strung out and twitching and looking for some smack. He knew that for a moment all eyes in the Moonlight Arms were furtively sizing him up to see if he was holding. Especially the blond jerking and jumping in the corner. She was always here, waiting—-but then she was a big girl and a fix wouldn't hold her long.