Primal Scream (27 page)

* * *

DeClercq dealt a second photo faceup on the floor beside the print of the head and the bucket of sand. It was a head shot of Al Flood, dressed in the blue uniform of the VPD. Late thirties, strawberry blond, freckled and puffy face, his eyes reflected the self-awareness letter to his dad: tired, haunted, cynical, and burnt-out. For years he had pigeonholed Flood as a renegade cop mixed up with drugs who took Genny down with him, but now historical perspective offered another point of view.

He fetched the honeymoon shot of Genny on a beach in Western Samoa from the mantel, and set it on the floor beside the head shot of Flood.

Think
, he thought.

The Headhunter is on the loose, and I'm cracking up. Flood is VPD liaison to my squad, and neurotically obsessed with severed heads. He takes the self-awareness course from Genevieve, and falls for her like I did. His love is unrequited because Genny loves me, but he'll do anything for her. Afraid I'm going to snap and unable to consult the Mounted for fear I'll be yanked from the case, she goes through the file at home and consults the outsider—Al Flood—over lunch.

She knows he'll do anything for her.

The night the Headhunter is supposedly shot, Flood receives the taunt of the head and the bucket of sand mixed with maple leaves. Genny's ordeal is over. But not his neurosis. So, still obsessed, Flood enlarges the taunt as he did the Polaroids.

He spots the different maple leaves.

For some reason he doubts Hardy's guilt. Perhaps the same reason that vexes me. The Headhunter raped his victims but didn't come. Before AIDS and DNA, that was evidence of sexual dysfunction. Hardy climaxed with the hookers he pimped.

Flood conveys his doubt to Scarlett, Lewis, Spann, Tipple, Mad Dog, and Macdonald.

He follows the trail of maple leaves to Elvira and beyond.

Flood finds the missing heads and takes them home. All are shrunken, with stitched lips pierced by small rings.

At lunch Genny had asked him to help save me from public disgrace.

I got the wrong man, so disgrace looms again.

Flood still loves her, and has honor.

He calls Genny before she leaves to join me at the Red Serge Ball, and asks her to meet him as she passes through the West End.

She does, learns what he found, and phones me at ' the ball.

"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."

DeClercq reached for the booklet of Ident photos from the alley shoot-out. He opened the Acco fastener to remove the prints, then discarded those above the shot of ashes and gold rings in the burning tin. Dealing the photo off images below, he laid it on the floor beside the taunt of the head stuck on a stake in the bucket of sand.

The Headhunter discovers the shrunken heads are gone.

He recalls Flood expressing doubts to him and the other Members.

Back when he framed Hardy by planting the head of Genny's student and the nicked knife in the mountain cabin, hoping the bust later that night would boost him up the ranks, he stole a bag of coke from Hardy's cache under the floor.

He takes the coke to Flood's apartment in the West End.

Flood meets Genny away from home.

While he's gone, the Headhunter breaks in to steal back the heads, and burns them in the tin smoldering in the alley.

Flood returns with Genny, and they park their cars. They take the elevator up to his apartment to show her the heads. The Headhunter plants the coke in the hubcap of Flood's car, then calls Spann anonymously and tips her to the fact.

Spann arrives and finds the drugs a moment before Flood and Genny return to the lot, on their way to the ball to tell me.

The shoot-out between Flood and Spann is a set-up, Flood mistaking her for the Headhunter on the prowl, and Spann reacting in self-defense to a coked-out cop going for his gun.

Flood runs.

Spann follows.

It fits, he thought. If Spann was mistaken about Charlotte Clarke phoning in the tip.

No longer was he the child arranging soldiers on the floor, for now—or so he thought—the battle plan was clear, prompting him to rise from his knees to sit in the Watson . . .

... no, the Holmes chair.

But no sooner did his flayed bum hit the cushion than a wince of pain jerked both hands in the air, and there before his eyes was the final clue to solving the Headhunter mess.

The armchair detective stared in disbelief.

Jesus Christ!

When he had been called this morning about the attack at UBC, DeClercq had been going through the Ident photos of the shoot-out scene. Interrupted at the picture of the burning tin, he'd bookmarked the booklet to continue on later. The photo jerked up before his eyes was the next in the pile: shot into a garbage can beside the burning tin.

In the can was an open Adidas bag.

In the bag was an object resembling a Janus head. Two small faces back to back, with eight-inch rounded tongues protruding from each mouth curving up in opposite directions.

It was a fetish.

And something else.

DeClercq wrote a note for Katt, then went to get his gun.

He had a reopened file to close.

And a score to settle.

The Headhunter passed DeClercq on Marine Drive. So deep in thought were hunter and hunted that neither saw the other drive by. From his home DeClercq headed east toward Lions Gate Bridge. The killer passed him driving the opposite way. Conversation with Mother an hour ago in town echoed in the psychotic mind unable to separate fantasy from reality:

"Mommy, he knows!"

"Easy, Sparky. We've been through this before."

"DeClercq isn't Flood!"

"DeClercq can be broken. You broke him once. We'll break him again."

"It's too late! He knows!" "If he knew, you'd be under arrest. Or there would be a takedown alert for you."

"If he doesn't know, he's damn close."

"And that's why you must do exactly what I say to cover our tracks."

"Our tracks, Mommy?" "The tape of you and me. We're not the only head-shrinkers in this." "What tape, Mommy?"

"Think, Sparky. Think. The tape in the recorder on his desk."

"I was taped!"

"You were under hypnosis. Taping what patients say is standard procedure."

"What did I say?"

"You spilled the beans. His office, and his desk, and his tape recorder. Your deepest secret on the tape in his hands. What if he decides to play the tape for DeClercq?"

"I'm fucked."

"We're not fucked yet. Both he and the tape must be erased."

"What about DeClercq?"

"Break him, Sparky. Fill his mind with anguish so he can't solve the case."

"The kid?"

"That'll break him."

"What if it's too late and DeClercq comes for me?"

"I'm dead, child, yet I live on. Death is a door to afterlife. If he comes for you, come to me. Promise you won't let him take you alive."

"I promise, Mommy."

"Good. Give 'em hell."

Beams probed the darkness for numbers up the road. Except for artificial light, this was a black-and-white world. The night was clear; the stars were out; and the moon had yet to rise. From black sky right to black sea left the mountain sloped white. The Jeep scurried along Marine like a black bug. Trees looming along the route gloomed it with shadows. The eyes of houses glared gold from the seaside woods. The address jumped like a jackrabbit into the beams. Sparky drove on and parked the Jeep out of sight.

Like Marine, the path to the house was shadowed by trees. Wind jerked the shadows like a silent film. Bony black bogeymen stripped of leaves voodoo shuffled amid thin pyramids on a snow-white screen. One hand around a limp sack to bag the head, the other gripping that two-foot machete with sliding six-ounce weight, the shadow of the Headhunter spooked the dark.

The windows of the cottage ahead glared like cat's eyes. Twin gables jutted from the roof like cat's ears. Bushes bristled by the door like cat's whiskers. Jagged icicles over the threshold yawned like cat's fangs. The Headhunter crept close to peer in one eye.

A real cat snoozed in front of the cheery hearth. The hearth was flanked by reading chairs. Glow from the fire gilded several books circling one chair. Window to window, the psycho circled the house, but there was no sign of the reader within.

No one home.

Sparky would have to wait.

The wait was filled with winter sounds. Foghorns out on English Bay. Trees groaning and creaking before the wind, and occasionally the snap of a broken branch. The swoop of an unseen owl overhead, then the squeal of prey caught in its talons. Cars slushing by on the road up the path. A car pulling in off the road, followed by the slamming of a door. The trudging of footsteps along the path. The soft crunch of snow as Sparky hid behind a tree near the cottage door.

Machete raised.

Weight near the handle.

The footsteps drew closer as a new shadow entered the horror film. The newcomer passed the bogeyman cast by Sparky's ambush tree. The shadow hugged something to its chest. Breath plumed from passing lips to blow back on the breeze.
Swoooshhh!
the machete arced from behind the tree. The leafless bogeyman near the door sprouted an extra arm. The weight slid to the tip of the blade with a metal-on-metal clang, centrifugal force added to the beheading.

The head of the shadow jumped off its shoulders in fright.

A fountain of fake blood exploded on-screen.

Moments later, real blood showered the path.

The headless body crumpled to its knees, releasing the bag clutched to its chest, then pitched stump first toward the door.

Sparky emerged from behind the bogeyman.

Sparky plucked the head with twitching lips out of the film.

Sparky gazed into the fading eyes of consciousness dying.

Like a servant of Madame Guillotine, Sparky showed the head to a mob of one.

"Delicious!"
Mother cried in glee from deep within the Headhunter's head.

Vancouver

Don't buy a new dress

Don't hire a baby-sitter

Don't pay for parking

and

DON'T ATTEND!

Rather, stay at home and read a book and have a ball.

The Friends of the Vancouver Public Library request the pleasure of your participation in a "novel event." Don't pay for a ticket, a baby-sitter, and parking and get all dressed up to attend a glamorous public function in shoes that don't quite fit. Instead, sometime on Saturday, January 13, send us a donation (it's 100% tax deductible). Then snuggle down with your bunny slippers in your favorite cozy chair and get into your novel, knowing that just about all the proceeds from this fundraiser will go to supporting the efforts of the Vancouver Public Library.

My kind of party!
he thought.

Stamping his feet and hugging himself to ward off
the cold, DeClercq stood in the
concourse of Library Square, perusing the notice taped to
the door of the staff entrance
promoting
The first edition of the Stay Home and Read a Book Ball
as he waited for someone to
answer his insistent pushing of the intercom button. He had no intention of wearing a dress a
nd
he didn't
own a pair of bunny slippers, so he pondered whether a
ll the Friends of the Library
were women, and if not,
how the gender-centric ad got
approved in such an oh-so-proper P.C.
institution, and what was this
just about all the proceeds
. . . but that was the cop in him.

Answer the door, dammit!

The wind roared in the concourse like a Colosseum lion.

The teeth of its bite bit into his bones.

The glory of ancient Rome survives in Vancouver, B.C. At the heart of this city with a downtown grid of tall,
narrow, glass-faced buildings
spreads a coliseum to rival Nero's spo
rt. The only Christians fed to
lions and gladiators clashing for a t
humbs-up from the crowd are in
History & Government on Level Six, unless
you count novelists flayed by artless critics on the
ground floor. The building, too, has suffered
its
share of rebuke, trashed by the Tink
er Toy elite as "reflecting an
ancient culture not relevant to a modern
world-class city, blah, blah,
blah." A full downtown block in girt
h and eight stories high (nine
including the subterranean level), the Col
iseum, opened in 1995, is a
$100,000,000 offspring of the "free public
library" launched with a $250
grant from the city council in 1887.

Now, that's inflation!

The security guard who released the door was six foot four in a blue uniform stretched as tightly around his b
ulk as Batman's get-up, with a
ponytail cascading to his bottom and han
ds so huge they could tear the
Mad Dog apart. Special Collections on Level Seven must recently have