Primal Scream (20 page)

To reach the racks I had to pass shelves of adult magazines: Life and Look and Ellery Queen and Saturday Evening Post. The head was on the cover of Real Man's Adventure. The title of the pulp mag among the slicks was as red as the blood dripping from the eyes, nose, and neck of the mounted trophy. Between shreds of skin dangling from the cut peeked an ivory vertebra. What I remember most is the eyes, rolled back in their sockets so just slivers of pupil hypnotized me.

I was seven years old.

A strange thing happened as I gawked at the eyes. I was no longer in Thorson's Drug Store. As if sucked off my feet and vacuumed through the door of the pulp's cover, I sat in the prow of the dugout canoe facing the Great White Hunter at the stem. His khaki jacket was soaked with sweat and plastered to his chest. I could see a St. Christopher's medal around the tensed muscles in his neck. Bullets in loops sewn across the front of his jacket. A safari hat with a leopard-skin band was pushed back from his knitted brow. A finger was on the trigger of the Remington.

We were surrounded.

A circle of severed heads ringed our canoe, each trophy stuck on a pole affixed to the prow of a dugout. The boats were manned by Amazon Indians. . . .

Assuming command of the Headhunter squad was the second-worst decision of DeClercq's life, topped only by what resulted from his successful involvement in the Quebec October Crisis. Marriage to Genevieve had done wonders for his psyche, eventually repressing his guilt over Jane's death, so when the commissioner asked him to lead the Headhunter manhunt, Robert thought himself a healed man taking on the case.

He was wrong.

For no sooner was it public knowledge that he was top cop than the psycho zeroed in on him as a worthless : adversary. His first da
y on the job brought the taunt
WELCOME ABOARD, ROBERT. DO YOU THINK YOU'RE UP TO THIS? with the Polaroid of Portman's head. Already tinder dry with fear, the city exploded in riot when the rape and beheading of the nun ignited a feminist rally decrying the lack of police suspects. A grinning jack-o-lantern left in pl
ace of the nun's head was fol
lowed by another Polaroid and taunt: a punk-rock; tape of "Jimmy Jazz" by The Clash. No matter what tactics Robert employed, the killer stayed one step ahead. Guilt over Jane had been repressed, not exorcised. Bodies and taunts came faster and faster as cracks opened in his mind. Each butchered woman mirrored the daughter he hadn't saved in time.
All my daughters. All my fault. All this blood on my hands
. First he popped Benzedrine to work around the clock, then began drinking to kill the pain, sliding rapidly downhill after Na
tasha Wilkes was raped and be
headed, his name pasted across the nose of the W. C. Fields mug replacing the skier's head, etched with the taunt NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK. Again and again he dreamed of finding Jane too late in the cabin, and awoke with night fright to the pitiful cry from her head stuck on a pole:
"I knew you'd come, Daddy. I knew you wouldn't fail me. ..."

November 13, 1982, it all came to a head.

Public hysteria spooked the politicians. Chartrand, was forced to yank DeClercq from command of the; squad. Haunted, depressed, sleep-deprived, and on thef verge of public disgrace once news he was fired was released the next day, Robert drank. Unknown to h
im,
another taunt had arrived at the VPD: SAY UNCLE, ROBERT. HAVEN'T YOU HAD ENOUGH! PS YOU DEVELOP THIS ONE, with the negative of Wilkes's head. The taunt wasn't necessary. He'd already had enough. So after pulling the phone from the wall, he locked himself away in the greenhouse of his home to commit suicide.

Hara-kiri.

I'm coming, Jane.

The honorable way out.

But also unknown to him, a flying patrol of Spann and Scarlett was closing in on John Lincoln Hardy, the pimp of the headless hooker recovered from the river. Earlier that same night the killer had made a mistake, beheading a student of Genevieve's instead of her when the luckless woman left a North Van seminar to fetch a bottle of port from her instructor's car. DeClercq knew nothing of this because the phone was unplugged. When Spann and Scarlett located and searched Hardy's North Van mountain hideout, they discovered a cache of coke, the freshly severed head of the student, and the knife with the nicked blade secreted under the floorboards. Then Hardy arrived and was shot by Spann as he lunged to knife Scarlett.

Robert had his gun in his mouth when Genny burst into their home. Finger pulling the trigger, he heard the news. "Don't do it, Robert! You got him! A flying patrol brought him down!" A smidgen away from joining Jane, he didn't blow his head off.

Later, he wished he had. For the tragic irony of it was that history repeated itself. Just as success in the October Crisis brought kidnappers to his door, so solving the Headhunter case had a heartbreaking aftermath. Exactly what happened remained unclear, but the facts gleaned by subsequent investigation were:

Flood enrolled in Genevieve's workshop during the Headhunter case. Obviously the beheadings exacerbated his childhood trauma.
Whatever the reason, I can't stop dreaming of hacked-off heads, and find my neurosis fed by the psychosis of a killer on the loose.
The killer sends us Polaroids of mounted severed heads, and I find myself compelled to blow them up on the photo enlarger I use for astronomy shots.

While Robert's psyche fractured under stress from his past and the taunts, Genevieve met Flood privately for lunch. They we
re seen together by Joe Avacomo
vitch of the forensic lab. About the same time Robert caught traces his wife was delving into the Headhunter file he had brought home from work. Was she reading it to help Flood with his neurosis, the same way she had once helped Robert deal with Jane, and had that relationship blossomed into an affair?

Whatever happened, Flood gave in to his compulsion to blow up the heads, for after his shoot-out with Spann on the night of the Red Serge Ball, investigators found the walls of his apartment plastered with enlargements of celestial wonders and the Polaroid taunts. The blow-ups were still exhibited six weeks after John Lincoln Hardy was shot, so evidently Flood never conquered his neurosis.

Did it drive him mad?

With the help of cocaine?

Robert was the hero who took down the monster. If not for his tactic of reviving flying patrols to secure the dragnet, the Headhunter might still be stalking women. The same politicians who had called for his head were now demanding he be made chief superintendent. In December, six weeks after the case was closed, the RCMP feted him with a Red Serge Ball. The governor-gener
al himself flew west to host De
Clercq at his posh men-only club for congratulatory drinks, so Robert asked Genny to meet him at the ball in the Armories.

He was still at the G.G.'s club when Genny phoned the Armories and got Sergeant Rodale:

"Fetch Robert, Jim. It's important."

"He's not here yet. We expect him soon."

"The moment he arrives, pass this on. I'm with one of my students, and
there's a serious problem. Tell
him he's a policeman and has to speak to him on a matter of grave concern."

"I'll make sure he gets it."

"Good. I'm on my way."

Katherine Spann had been undercover on a drug bust when she was called to duty with the Headhunter flying patrols. As she was leaving for the Red Serge Ball, one of her snitches from back then called with a cocaine tip. Later that December night the fink died from an overdose. The tip was half a pound of coke was hidden in the left front wheel of a Volvo parked in the underground lot of a West End apartment building. Detouring on her way to the ball, Spann found the drugs in the hubcap of a car registered to VPD Detective Al Flood. As Spann replaced the hubcap to summon backup, Flood and Genny emerged from the elevator servicing the lot. The VPD cop drew his gun and fired at the Mountie. In the ensuing shoot-out a ricochet killed Genevieve. Flood escaped from the lot down the back alley to a costume shop. Breaking a cellar window, he scrambled inside and hid among the costumes. Afraid her quarry would get away through the shop, Spann followed. Guns blazed underground, and when the smoke cleared, Flood was dead and Spann was critically wounded.

The inference drawn from these facts by detectives who investigated the shoot-out was that Flood was a renegade cop who had cracked under the stress of neurosis. Unable to cope with the torment, first he turned to the self-help workshop, then to cocaine. Whether he was a coke addict or dealing to run away rich, the blown-up heads proved Flood was a sick man. Genevieve had sought to help him as a psychologist or lover, and ended up in the wrong place when he crumbled.

The file in Robert's lap was the police file which condemned Flood. Too many times had he studied it back then for answers, and finally gave up when nothing but questions rose. If Genny loved Flood, why had she loved Robert so ardently to the end? Had Genny sought solace because her husband was lost in a realm of depression, Benzedrine, and drink? If coke drove Flood mad, why was no trace of the drug found in him at the postmortem? If he was trafficking, why stash valuable contraband in a car registered to him, in a hubcap which could easily fall off? If Flood wrote the letter on file to his dad at Genevieve's suggestion, why was no follow-up odyssey journal found? And if this file held no answers, why did
maple leaves
draw Robert back to it now?

The Mountie thumbed through the booklet of Ident photos.

Here was Flood's apartment with blow-ups of the severed heads pinned to the walls. Enlargements of the Greiner, Grabowski, Portman, and Catholic nun taunts. The Polaroid copies among shots of the heavens through a telescope.

Here was . . .

Wait a second.

Robert flipped back.

For only now did he grasp the
fifth
taunt
on the wall.
The Ident shot was framed so it was barely seen, just a few black lines within the border of the blowup extending beyond the width of the camera's lens. Robert recognized the pattern of the black lines as strands of Wilkes's hair, and realized Flood had also enlarged the taunt the cabbie had brought to VPD headquarters the night Hardy died.

The taunt with the pole in the pail of sand mixed with
maple leaves.

The maple leaves his mental ouija linked to Flood.

Now the ouija spelled E-L-V-I-R-A.

As Robert thumbed on in the booklet of photos.

Here was the elevator from Flood's apartment down to the underground lot.

Here was Genny sprawled dead beside the Volvo in the parking lot.

Here was the trail of blood Flood left in the snow when he fled wounded up the ramp from the underground lot to the back alley and down the alley to the costume shop.

Here was Flood shot dead among the costumes stored in the cellar of the shop.

Here was a sequence of photos recording details in and around the lot: bullet holes and shell casings and the glove-marked hubcap full of coke; a burning tin and garbage can across the alley from the mouth of the ramp sloping down into the lot ...

The phone in the greenhouse rang.

His finger for a bookmark, Robert pushed up from the Watson chair to answer the call as Katt led Catnip like the Pied Piper from the bathroom belching steam to her bedroom. Instead of a pipe, the cat followed a boom box playing Depeche Mode.

"DeClercq," he said.

"Chief, it's Katherine Spann. Rick Scarlett of UBC Detachment called. This morning, four headless men were found near Pacific Spirit Park. One was cuffed around a tree and anally raped."

Through the greenhouse glass Robert gazed across the onyx bay at the wigwags flashing along the Spanish Banks shore. A sense of deja vu washed over him, for back in 1982 the Headhunter victims also had been dumped within sight of his home.

Upping the taunt.

"Where are you, Kathy?"

"I'm driving to the scene. The Oak Street Bridge is dead ahead."

"I'll meet you there," he said, and punched off the portable phone.

Returning to the Watson chair, he found a bookmark to replace his finger in the book of photographs. About to mark his place to continue later, the Mountie froze in the act.

Hackles rose on his neck, and a chill ran down his spine.

For in the photo under his finger was that elusive detail with new meaning now.

The Ident shot was taken vertically into the mouth of the burning tin across the alley from the parking lot ramp. Nestled among the ashes was a small triangle that could be the unburned corner of a book. Robert had wondered back then if it was Flood's journal, but too little remained to confirm or reject the suspicion. His mind recorded and dismissed the other unburned objects in the tin, for only now did he possess a reference to give them meaning.

Scattered in the ashes were dozens of small gold rings, identical to the rings through the lips of Bron Wren's shrunken head.